Keep Beta Alive!!!

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I don't like BeeJay's suggestion at all, and here's why:

* The final versions don't come out for 2 or 3 months inbetween ... in that time, very playable and stable beta versions do come out. To just discount these in the high score tables would lessen the fun.

* I think one of the most things about MARP is that you can jump in with a new game, get a high score up there, and have instant competition ... by the time that a new version of the final is out, that fun just won't be there.

* I would be willing to help with providing new game and renamed game entries ... I run Windows 98 and MAME like crazy! :)

Scott

-- Scott Vieth (vieths@nku.edu), November 16, 1998

Answers

keep betas alive

I think BeeJay's opposition to keeping scores from all the various different betas is that it means you have to keep copies of all the betas around to play the recordings back with.

I agree that it's good for competition and level of interest to allow new games to be played for highscores as soon as they are playable. It's just that it's going to become more and more of a disk-space problem as the collection of old betas grows.

I think that was it, anyway...

There's no problem with generating the list of new games - that's just a few UNIX commands thrown together. I didn't put the beta 7 list up when I updated the page last night just because I didn't think anyone would be very interested, since beta 7's kind of old news now... I'll add the list if anyone's interested.

Chris.

-- Zwaxy (zwaxy@bigfoot.com), November 16, 1998.


I'm not trying to kill the use of Betas.....

Chris is absolutely correct in that I don't want to keep a huge supply of Beta versions around just to be able to playback the games.

My suggestion was not to disallow the use of the betas but that once the final release came out all Beta recordings that don't work with the final release have to be recorded again on the final release.

How would we ensure this works ?!

Probably the easiest way is for Chris to have a script that removes all the beta recordings when the final release comes out. Then all those of us who have made recordings (I keep a copy of all of mine just in case) can check their Beta recordings. If they still playback without any problems we can upload them again selecting the final release.

This will not prevent those great little battles we have with some of the new releases nor will we necessarily always need to re-record our recordings. Obviously for some of the older huge recordings such as the 20million Steve did on Galaga we would probably have to let these stay (since it doesn't playback with v0.33 Final) but we could introduce this structure for all future releases. After v0.34 Final comes out.

How else will we be able to playback 10 year old recordings in 2008 when we only have Mame v0.65 and above still on our HDDs (assuming they're still called HDDs in 2008) ?

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 16, 1998.


Or how about this?

Maybe just the points awarded to beta recordings could be removed. This would help in case we don't keep our recording or have had a hard disk crash or format.

Also, another idea I had is that on the submit page, you could have an extra listbox for each MAME platform (DOS MAME, X/MAME, PMAME, AMAME, MAME32, and so on) and also maybe a list for the OS used (probably because of all the various platforms that X/MAME can be compiled for). This would be nice in case there are any small differences in recording/playback of INPs (which there shouldn't be). Of course, this could make everything incredibly confusing as most people probably use DOS MAME anyway. Any thoughts, ideas?

-- Barry Rodewald (bsr@hn.pl.net), November 16, 1998.


Waste of time

What about the MARPers that have over a 100+ recordings, checking each and every one on a final release would be a massive undertaking-and futile in the long run as who's to say the inp file will work on the next final release.

I reckon it's best to leave the beta scores as is, the majority of scores on MARP are from beta versions anyway. If someone desperately wants to watch a playback of a certain game, they can download the corresponding beta from Chris' versions page.

-- JSW (jwilson@sv.net.), November 16, 1998.


Not all recordings need to be rechecked....

Only ones made with a beta release.

ie: We would continue to keep all v0.30, v0.31, v0.33 compatible scores. So the only ones you would need to check are ones made with the latest Beta when that release goes final.

The thing to do would be to only use the beta for the newer games and use the latest final release for any games that it supported. That way its only games new in the beta phase that you are going to have to check.

Remember this is only a suggestion for keeping the number of versions down as low as practicable. If the majority disagree I'm more than happy to keep using the latest betas so long as Chris can continue to have them all available on his site for download... ;-)

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), November 16, 1998.



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