high-scores table

[turin]

i am not sure if anything like this has been proposed before, i think it has not.
this is an idea for whenever the campaign is finished (who knows when that will be). i think we should have a high-scores table or something, listing:
name of campaign
name of winner (they type this in)
amount of gold at end
total recall value (1st level=+1, 2nd level=+2 (or maybe +3?), 3rd level=+3 (or +5), 4th level=+4 (or +7), units like delfador and kalenz would probably not be included.

and possibly other values that might be interesting. this high-scores table would be accessible from the main menu, probably.
i don't know if you will like this idea, i just thought i'd throw it out, and it didn't really seem to fit into any of the other discussions.
if you like it, i could do the graphics required for it, just to make sure it gets done.

[Dave]

Giving a total score at the end, and allowing insertion into a high scores table could be fun. Of course, we do have to finish the campaign first

Of course, scores would also have to be divided by difficulty level.

IMO the best metric of score would be a combination of total recall value, and least turns to finish the entire campaign in.

David

[turin]

my idea was to have a 3X3 table, each column represents a difficulty level (there could be a title at the top) and each row represents a place (first place, second, third)

making turns finished in a stat would hurt those who stay around to get extra experience. well, since they would have more recall points, i guess it is fair.

[Woodwizzle]

Can we have one massive shared HS table too that gets downloaded from the internet. A global HS table if you will

[Ave]

Can we have one massive shared HS table too that gets downloaded from the internet. A global HS table if you will

Then it should be encrypted

[miyo]

If we would have global/public high score list who would we make sure that cheaters don't get all the top scores. As we are not going to prevent cheating I think global/public high score list does not really make a sense.

- Miyo

[turin]

well, we could have something see if the player cheated, but this would be too complicated:

define cheating. is save-load cheating?
if so, what is save-load?

btw, one thing i think we would want is a way to watch a replay of the winning game from the high-scores panel, such as a button watch replay' that maybe went to a menu of scenarios to choose from and you could watch each scenario separately.

[Dave]

The only way to do a good global high scores table is an idea I have brought up before: using "verified games".

It'd work like this: you connect to the server, and select to play a verified campaign game. Every time you make a move, it sends that move to the server, and the server records it. When you are done playing for the session, you quit, and the server saves your progress automatically. There is no save option for you -- quitting will automatically save the game on the server. (There'd be an "abandon campaign" option too, to say you don't want it saved on the server anymore).

If your game wanted a random number, it'd have to ask for a random number from the server, instead of generating it itself.

The server wouldn't verify your game to make sure you didn't cheat, however it will have stored a replay of your game. Other players could come and view the replays of games on the high score table though, so anything using cheating would show up as a 'sync error'.

This idea is almost certainly post-1.0, because among other things, to be useful it'd have to be done at a point where development has slowed enough so that replays remain valid for months instead of days.

I think it is an idea that is useful though, and could add a new form of competition and entertainment to the Wesnoth community.

David