Scoreboards and tagging...

[Jhooqe]

I think a couple of the biggest (non-gameplay related) complaints players had about AS were about scoreboards and tagging. I for one was very annoyed by Audiosurf's inability to change the tags in-game without screwing with the actual tags of the file on your hard drive. And how scoreboards only used the "Title" and "Artist" tags, which causes many boards to be filled with alternate versions of the track, or completely different tracks altogether (I know this particularly affects those of us who love our old chiptunes... do you know how many tracks are called "Ending" by "Tim Follin", and the like?)

And cheaters. It would be nice to have some sort of automated means of comparing the track and run data to others on the board and deleting it if the discrepancies are too large. Having to look at blatantly hacked scores taking up spots on the board for months at a time (even though I've "reported" them a dozen times now) on even the top played songs is starting to bum me out.

There's plenty of other little issues related to scoreboards and tagging, but I'm sure you are aware of them, so I won't blather on about it. I was just wondering if ASA would have any significant changes in how these things are handled?

If not, oh well. I'm much more interested in actually playing the game, of course.

[Lebon14]

Probably.  I think that ASA will solve many problem AS had.  A lot of people were complaining about separating the Mono scoreboards from the puzzle caracthers.

As for cheaters, it'll always be hard to really stop them.  As long as they are files that they can edit on the hard drive or they can manipulate processes, we can always expect them.  But that doesn't mean that there won't be any efforts in order to reduce the amount of cheating.  I believe there will be!

[Passerby]

comparing run data could end up killing scores of legit people too, i got serverial songs where i got 4 or 5 versions of the songs, and some of them produce quite different tracks.

[Dylan]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

[JAYYSINNx]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

Great feature! I have a lot of live albums I avoid playing for that reason alone.

[GeoLuz]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

There can always be new methods of cheating including methods not currently used. Perhaps there can be an efficient system of reporting cheat scores to see to it that the reports are reviewed expeditiously.

[NovaTerran]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

Great feature! I have a lot of live albums I avoid playing for that reason alone.

couldn't you just add (live) to the end of the song title?

[Lebon14]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

Great feature! I have a lot of live albums I avoid playing for that reason alone.

couldn't you just add (live) to the end of the song title?

Even then, what if the band released two live album where song x is played on both album and sounds a bit different on both?

[Passerby]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

not even just live albums i have the EP's and demos of a lot of bands so quite often i got 2 or 3 mixes of the same song.
Great feature! I have a lot of live albums I avoid playing for that reason alone.

couldn't you just add (live) to the end of the song title?

Even then, what if the band released two live album where song x is played on both album and sounds a bit different on both?

[NovaTerran]

Cheating will probably always be possible, but I do have a new scoreboard feature that makes it harder.  At the very least, it will help players avoid accidentally cheating with remixes and live versions.

Great feature! I have a lot of live albums I avoid playing for that reason alone.

couldn't you just add (live) to the end of the song title?

Even then, what if the band released two live album where song x is played on both album and sounds a bit different on both?

It just seems a bit drastic to not play a song because your live version is slightly different. If you are that worried about just add keyboard smash to the end or something?

Audiosurf isn't just about the scores you know.

[blue_h3x]

Audiosurf isn't just about the scores you know.

+1


Just add (live) at the end if you are that bothered. A slight difference between albums is negligible anyway, it's not going change scores that much.

If you want to get that pedantic then you might as well ask that ASA will only accept one codec at one bit rate.

[NarooN]

Yeah, I kinda think each character should perhaps have their own scoreboards, or at least separate Mono from the rest. I never had any interest in playing the puzzle characters, so it always sucked to ninja a ridiculous song on Ironmode Elite Mono and not even be anywhere close the top scores lol.

[MarimbaSurf]

Don't forget Unicode support. A lot of music games, like Beat Hazard and Audiosurf and the likes, mess up my tags quite a bit. For example, Audiosurf keeps deleting the ' character, and Beat Hazard is restricted to its goddamn bitmap font. (Also, Japanese music looks like ? - ? in almost every game.)

[blue_h3x]

I thought AS had Unicode support already....

See update log for 4th Feb 2009 and 20th March 2009.



Beat Hazard's engine (HGE) only uses bitmap fonts but that's a separate issue that's way off topic.

[Mincus]

Don't forget Unicode support. A lot of music games, like Beat Hazard and Audiosurf and the likes, mess up my tags quite a bit. For example, Audiosurf keeps deleting the ' character, and Beat Hazard is restricted to its goddamn bitmap font. (Also, Japanese music looks like ? - ? in almost every game.)

They work fine in Audiosurf and Rhythm Zone. Since Rhythm Zone uses Unity as well, the support for Unicode is there for Audiosurf Air.
Not really sure what you're doing to cause Audiosurf to mess them up. It deletes ' for scoreboards though, it's not a character recognition issue.