Separate different versions of the same song on scores

[idomagic]

As far as I can tell the only real problem is when a version would end up in between two other versions.
Lets say you have
Artist A - Track A [3:10]
Artist A - Track A [3:20]
Artist A - Track A [3:30]

But it could be solved by giving the player an option to choose, or simply by always sorting it under the longer version, should not be a very common problem in any case.

As for old scores, just let them be for now? And later on they can be corrected either by simply running a sorting script that'll use the recorded tracklength or simply by letting players continue reporting until it's sorted.

Honestly, this feature should really be there, from what I've seen cheating per se isn't very spread out or disturbing, but most of the scoreboards are still pretty useless due to the amount of versions people play on.

[sp4rv13ro]

It's been suggested before.  Many times.  And the problem is not that people aren't marking the song as such, the problem is that the songs aren't supposed to be marked as such.  They are supposed to have the same name, therefore that's how most people are going to have them tagged.  Scoreboards will indeed tend to be dominated by the more popular version.  You may think this isn't asking much, but apparently things that modify the scoreboard view are either hard to make, or Dylan hasn't gotten to it yet.

Holy .... no! The problem is that the people aren't marking the song as such! If this is extended mix when you buy the single you read «X (Radio edit)» «X (Extended mix)» «X» «X (promo version)» etc.
The point is exactly that people bad tag their songs.

However, if you are talking about songs like "sultans of swing" which exist in live version and in normal version within the same name, well in this case I've the solution: force audiosurf to read also the album's information in the audio file, and if this is ≠ [void], for every song with the same name&album≠[void] locate the high score in subpage of the global ranking of that song.

is this understandable? scheme cuz my english su.. and I want to be clear:


ok now I feel an idiot

[Melodia]

Holy .... no! The problem is that the people aren't marking the song as such! If this is extended mix when you buy the single you read «X (Radio edit)» «X (Extended mix)» «X» «X (promo version)» etc.
The point is exactly that people bad tag their songs.

Why is it bad? If someone prefers to not use "live" or "radio" for their own personal library, why is that BAD per se? The fact is, AS lets us use any  digital audio file we want. I've said it before, but people should not emphatically NOT have to retag their music just to satisfy what MIGHT be the most popular way of doing it. just to be allowed to play a track on a game whose main draw is the allowence of playing anything you want.

However, if you are talking about songs like "sultans of swing" which exist in live version and in normal version within the same name, well in this case I've the solution: force audiosurf to read also the album's information in the audio file, and if this is ≠ [void], for every song with the same name&album≠[void] locate the high score in subpage of the global ranking of that song.

Not quite sure what you mean by the [void], but if you're saying it should look at the album tag and cross check with some database and VOID it (i.e. make it not count), that's about the worst suggestion I've ever seen to fix this problem. Popular tracks will often show up on TONS of compilations, not to mention slight variences in reissues. If you just mean, use the album tag in addition, well that has been suggested MANY times, and shot down, because of the above reason.

Really, the only real way would be to use acoustic fingerprinting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint) though that's far from perfect and wouldn't help for less popular stuff. It would be a good start, and certainly would help not just with the album vs live issue, but spelling errors and spelling varients (does it have a 'the' for some and not others, for instance) and even cases like with video game music where often people will use one of five different possibilities for the artist name.

[blue_h3x]

Rejecting songs based on the album tag is not a good idea. The strengths of AudioSurf is that it allows you to surf any track and doesn't use some draconian system to limit what you play.

[lavacano201014]

Not what he's doing. He's asking for scoreboards to seperate by album.

Also bad. Have fun with only 20 people per scoreboard.

[blue_h3x]

Adding albums over complicates things, and then leaves some lesser distributed albums to have a small league table as lavacano201014 said.
The only way album could be added, is if you could optionally sort by album, which would prevent the smaller tables, though how much would this feature be used to make it worth the effort is the big question.

[Mincus]

I think he's suggesting tiered score boards.

So if you have a particular song that was released on two albums it would work like this:

Main scoreboard for song (shows track from all scoreboards listed below)
 - Scoreboard for Album 1
 - Scoreboard for Album 2
 - Scoreboard for songs with no album tag

And you could look at each. It's an interesting solution and probably one of the best, but it does still fall into my "too complicated" category.

I've said before, it's possible to fix this problem, but how much time do you think Dylan both wants and should spend time fixing what is a fringe problem. It would be nice to have, but the current solution is fine for >95% of the time and multiple boards like this would require a significant overall of the system with additional UI features for browsing the different boards.

Meanwhile Dylan is looking at Ogre and we may finally get rid of Quest3D.
I know which I'd prefer he spent his limited time on.

[sp4rv13ro]

That's exactly what I've tried to explain

Main scoreboard for song (shows track from all scoreboards listed below)
 - Scoreboard for Album 1
 - Scoreboard for Album 2
 - Scoreboard for songs with no album tag

By the way I hope this would not be so hard to make for Dylan because in my opinion is a pretty needed feature.

[Rynex]

Audiosurf is meant to be a simple game at heart, not something overcomplicated. Having scoring tiers for different albums is only going to overcomplicate things more, that's why we had the song graph to show how each song is different.

Also, don't abuse the report function to make Dylan look at stuff. I'm pretty sure he checks this Feature Request section for things that will improve his game, as he always has done from when I first joined the forum.

[sp4rv13ro]

Audiosurf is meant to be a simple game at heart, not something overcomplicated. Having scoring tiers for different albums is only going to overcomplicate things more, that's why we had the song graph to show how each song is different.

Also, don't abuse the report function to make Dylan look at stuff. I'm pretty sure he checks this Feature Request section for things that will improve his game, as he always has done from when I first joined the forum.

Okay, sorry for the abuse, but... Let me write that I don't think that a different scoreboards for different albums will complicate the game; maybe is an hard work for dylan -I can agree sincerely on this point- but to split the scoreboard will just make a better score system which something that almost everyone sure will appreciate. Maybe you usually run songs with different titles and you think that an unfair score is caused by a bad-tagging, but I can guarantee that there are lot of songs with exactly the same name and different length (sultans of swing live for example), and this is the part where this implementation can gives to Audiosurf a longer life.

I think this is more important that the bug of the number of collected achievements (I've 170 or more baumer while I've got it just one time) because in my opinion the scoreboard in audiosurf is a big percentage of the game... I mean... I must admit: I've downloaded Audiosurf by torrent before to buy it. I've bought it just because scoreboards, because I've thought that that was a nice thing to compare my scores with the others, and now I say that surely if someone doesn't want to buy Audiosurf, surely this upgrade will not make him/her change his/her idea, but as much will make all the users more happy, and maybe them will buy an extra copy for someone. Probably I'm wrong as much as all I said is true but if I consciously abused of the report is because I love this game and I want to take care of it, meanwhile I know that Dylan have other things in his mind further Audiosurf and here's why I've reported: to make him understand that this is an upgrade which will make the game better.

Nothing agains anything, just to be clear and love for Audiosurf.

[Rynex]

To be honest, working on the scoreboard function will only start catering towards the more hardcore audience of audiosurf who actually compete. I'm pretty sure the majority of people play audiosurf to just "ride music" and enjoy it.

[sp4rv13ro]

You're right, maybe. But the system that I proposed and which Mincus explained clearly will not modify the global scoreboards. I mean that we would have a button or something semi-hided which will bring us to the other detailed scoreboards. But, as I've said maybe you're right, and this detail will make just confusion among the fans and /or the new players. I thought to separated scoreboards for the different character, but THIS is «in my opinion» a bad idea; giving us the opportunity to see from which album the songs are from would just improve the global score system.
However, I understand -now- the point: Audiosurf is ARTIST'S SONG -> WHO FEEL IT BEST? this is a ridiculous and silly vision but it's just to say all what I think.

I've thought to improve the ninja... I'll talk about this in another topic but I wanna remark how I feel an update like this needed. I play Grabbag by Lee Jackson (Duke Nukem 3D any1?) and I love the song from psx version, but that is 3min and about30sec, the original is 2minutes and 31seconds long.. this is unfair for others, bad tagging? maybe, but I use last.fm too and tagging that song in another way will cause me lot of troubles with the group "Get Your Damn Tags Right".
However I understand, so, sadly, I say goodbye. Is useless to improve the scoreboards since some people still playing «Unknown Artist -- song name - artist» song.

If I can be loquacious and to talk too much: I swear, GET YOUR DAMN TAGS RIGHT! This is a little reminder to put on the screen with "Play", "Credits" and Exit" on Audiosurf.

I've finished.

Have a nice ride!

[blue_h3x]

It's a free world, and people will do as people like, and that includes badly tagging their songs.

[0VERS33R]

I've noticed this problem. I play Sheep by Pink Floyd, but I play the 6 min version on the echoes album, not the 11 min version. I'm second on the scoreboard and I just see it as more of a challenge. I've learnt not to priorotize place over score or skill rating, and I usually compare my scores to the medals. As in, if a song says gold is 40k, I aim for at least 150k. If I get it, I feel good about myself. I feel good about myself on that 6 minute sheep song and I feel good about myself if I get beaten by Vegas... win win!

[Bleevoe]

Is it just me, or is there a very simple and obvious solution to this problem? I haven't seen it being suggested before. Then again, I haven't really searched that much...

Why not have skillboards instead of (or in addition to) scoreboards? Although skill rating isn't a perfect measure of your performance, it's a tremendous improvement to score.

And the problem isn't just different versions of the same song varying in length, but different encodings of the same song generating different amounts of traffic. All my music is lossless, so this is a constant problem for me (although most of the time it isn't that big a deal).