[PLUGIN] Game Tagger

[Adultery]

Ahh you may be right indeed.

I'm going to have to change things a little, this is all too confusing. I also said layer 1-4 but forgot it starts at layer 2, I added the first layer and 3 layers for the snapshot after the release, so those won't be available until the next release, sorry!

None of that will matter when I make a theme creator to put inside the plugin anyway. Just bear with me while this is in beta.

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.0.6 with a lot of new features!

• Now there are four customizable layers for all existing layers (z-indexes are 1-4, except the snap which is 1-3)
• Ability to change font colors for each line of text
  • You can set the default color if you don't want to specify a color for each and every category by setting line="0" in the XML attribute
  • See the below XML for an example
• Added 3 new overlay layers for the snapshot
  • These are handled differently than the overlays are. Instead of being scaled to the tag size, they are specific to the snap size.
  • This is useful if you want to round out corners or maybe add a scanline effect to your snapshots
  • The avatar is overlaid after the layers are applied
  • See the below XML for an example
• Rewrote the theme XML to be more descriptive to the overlays and the font colors
  • You can see the attributes are now labeled as z-indexes, 1 being the bottom and 4 being the top
  • "LOW" is the bottom-most layer, "MID" is applied before the text, and "TOP" is overlaid on top
  • All current themes will be checked and updated automatically as needed without any user intervention
• Added game history integration for each user with a play counter
  • The user's history will be updated as you launch a game and bypassed if in attract mode
  • This has been integrated into the web portal, and the 20 most played games are displayed on the user's landing page (see here for an example)
  • For now the play counter is only set to count while the plugin runs and does not take your GameEx play count into consideration, which I will probably code in later. I will need to add in a new dll to do so though, and I'm not wanting to add more files to the plugin ATM.
• Added a user status to the database
  • When GameEx is running, this will show you as being online
  • I will be adding this to the user landing page soon as well
• Started work on an integrated theme editor and some online options
  • Once I get the PM system in place, I will hook this into GameEx so you will be notified via popup if you have a new message
  • You will soon have a mailbox you can access through your user control panel
  • Theme creation and editing options are currently underway, but not available as of yet

---

Here is a look at the new theme XML. You don't have to worry about making any changes to your current themes, they are updated in the background when you run GameEx:

<tagger_theme>

<theme name="Zelda: A Link To The Past" author="Adultery">

<description>A GamerTag skin tribute to Zelda 3 for SNES!</description>

<version>1.1.0</version>

</theme>

<images>

<background>zelda3\tag-bg.png</background>

<no_image>zelda3\no-img.png</no_image>

<avatar>zelda3\avatar.png</avatar>

</images>

<layers>

<low zindex="1">zelda3\bg-textbox.png</low>

<low zindex="2">zelda3\bg-triforce.png</low>

<low zindex="3">zelda3\systems\[emulator].png</low>

<top zindex="1">zelda3\border.png</top>

<top zindex="2">zelda3\icons\[emulator].png</top>

<mid zindex="1">zelda3\zelda.png</mid>

<snap zindex="1">zelda3\snap_effect.png</mid>

</layers>

<font>

<outline type="html" line="0">437C17</outline>

<outline type="argb" line="0">192,67,124,23</outline>

<outline type="html" line="1">437C17</outline>

<outline type="argb" line="1">192,67,124,23</outline>

<fill type="html" line="0">FFFFFF</fill>

<fill type="argb" line="0">255,255,255,255</fill>

<fill type="html" line="1">FFFFFF</fill>

<fill type="argb" line="1">255,255,255,255</fill>

<path>zelda3\zelda3.ttf</path>

</font>

</tagger_theme>

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to ask. I really tried to simplify the themeing with this release... Hopefully I succeeded.

---

I'll be working on the site for a while, and integrating the new features (social media links, play history, online status, theme uploads and downloads, etc) so this will probably be it on the plugin side for the time being. Most of the noticable changes will be on the site for the forseeable future. I have some work to do to keep the IE xide looking like the Chrome side, but I still recommend using Chrome for the most true to form experience. I'm really developing with a focus on Chrome so I can make it as mobile as possible, but I will catch up on the IE side soon too.

Get it from the first post as always.

Thanks again for all your help in testing and the awesomesauce gamer cards you have made! It makes everything worth it.

[stigzler]

It just gets bigger!

[nullPointer]

The new XML schema looks great Adultery. Nice use of attributes for defining the Z-Index! Amazing work as always

[Adultery]

Thanks! I feel like the big improvement here is in the player history, which I hope to figure out a way to add icons and snaps to eventually.

[stigzler]

Love the little system icons, Adultery. Whas the Link? Is that category?

[Adultery]

For those I use the [emulator].png wildcard.

The icons themselves are based off of several icon sets I found in the interwebz and customized myself.

[stigzler]

We all gotta do an icon set for categories, right!? Damn, i goyta stop giving myself projects

[Adultery]

I'm working on adding Hi-Score comp integration to the site. If you guys could go to your User CP page, and click the button that says "Edit Hi-Score Info", and type in the username for the Hi-Score competition, that would help me test features as I add them.

This goes for the side comps too, not just the main competition. If you're in a competition, your username is in the DB. It's case sensitive, and it's gonna be your GameEx forum username most likely. If you're not sure, look at a hi-score table for a game you've submitted a score for.

Greatly appreciated.

[DazzleHP]

I'm working on adding Hi-Score comp integration to the site. If you guys could go to your User CP page, and click the button that says "Edit Hi-Score Info", and type in the username for the Hi-Score competition, that would help me test features as I add them.

This goes for the side comps too, not just the main competition. If you're in a competition, your username is in the DB. It's case sensitive, and it's gonna be your GameEx forum username most likely. If you're not sure, look at a hi-score table for a game you've submitted a score for.

Greatly appreciated.

Awesome & done.

[GimmeClassics]

I'm working on adding Hi-Score comp integration to the site. If you guys could go to your User CP page, and click the button that says "Edit Hi-Score Info", and type in the username for the Hi-Score competition, that would help me test features as I add them.....

Very awesome Adultery !! I've added my hi-score info to my CP page.

[Adultery]

Okay, so here we go... Hi-Score integration done. You can also see your standings in the cp.

http://tags.hfc-essentials.com/gametag.php?user=Adultery

[nullPointer]

Dude I'm probably just missing it, but I don't see any high score info on the various User CPs that I've looked at yet. OTOH I've not submitted any high scores either. Does it only show up when you're viewing your own User CP? Or maybe I need to refresh my browser cache? Lemme try that real quick ...

Edit: No luck (which still could be indicative of my simply overlooking it - also entirely possible)

[Adultery]

Ahh good call. I have some code in there that makes it so only the ones looking can see it if their username is in the hs db. I'll fix that in a few.

Good catch.

[Adultery]

That has been fixed. Have a look now.

[GimmeClassics]

Very nice Adultery I really like it you can very easily see your hi-score position on each game. Very well done !!

Some ideas:

# it would be nice if on your tagger a hi-score competion symbol / icon with a text like "click here for your hi-score results" would be added which shows that an user is playing in our competition.

# a really nice incentive would be to add small hi-score award icons to an users tagger. It is nice to be able to show off your hi-score skills directly by having them added to your forums tagger I don't know if this could perhaps be related to an users active hi-score position or only fixed (already earned) awards...? Just spitting some ideas here

Anyway, really nice work so far Adultery !!

[stigzler]

Whilst not into the high score thingy yet (I never play the bloody thing!!) - this does look very snazzy!!

Another great feature

[DazzleHP]

Whilst not into the high score thingy yet (I never play the bloody thing!!) - this does look very snazzy!!

Another great feature

And why not?? You get your name in lights (we have our own RSS feed, so with compatible themes you will be scrolled, in lights...) we have Games of the Month comps, an overall leaderboard, member voting... in fact what are we missing?! Why have you not joined yet? tell us

[nullPointer]

I don't know why, but this was the first thing that popped into my head. It's true ... I am not well ...

/hijack

[stigzler]

And why not?? You get your name in lights (we have our own RSS feed, so with compatible themes you will be scrolled, in lights...) we have Games of the Month comps, an overall leaderboard, member voting... in fact what are we missing?! Why have you not joined yet? tell us

OK,OK,OK - I'm crap at games, OK?? Seriously - have the reaction times of a dead brick and the motor coordination of an inside-out 1-legged spider.

Could we have a low-score competition?

[Adultery]

I'll be taking a few days off, hopefully you guys are in good shape right now anyways. I have some new features coming soon, but I just had my wisdom teeth extracted and I'm gonna take some time off and actually play some games while I recover... I have quite a few steam games i'd like to get into that I haven't even touched yet.

So far in the next release I have added plugin version checks to the cp, streamlined the history a great deal, and am working on getting play counts from GameEx's db3 file.

I plan to add a new page to view full history info instead of just your top 20.

Then I will make a proper hi-score page with overall standings for all users, and finally finish the theme uploader and add user customized titles instead of admin only ones. After that I will do the instant message system, and probably put up a chat board on the main news page.

I am probably gonna recruit another admin in the near future also to help me maintain the site while I catch up on my other projects (game info and mame commander most notably), so expect that sometime here soon.

I would like to take this public once Evolution comes out, so I've got a lot of half complete features to finish up.

So if there are any reasonable suggestions, now is the time to think about them.

[stigzler]

Whoa - GameInfo with Layer and dynamic data.... now there's a thought..

Get well soon, dude.

[Adultery]

The plugin has been updated to 1.0.7! Here's the rundown:

• Adds full integration with GameEx's play count, last played, and favorites status
• Supports both MDB and DB3 formats
• More status information has been added to the plugin
• Please be sure to extract the whole zip, the two DLL's inside will be required from this point forward
• Fixed a problem where status was not being updated when GameEx was exited using GameEx Online
• Added additional logging for support issues should they arise

As I stated, the GameEx database is now fully integrated. You will notice your last play time, favorites status, and overall play count are current when you launch the game. I did some php coding to manually add to the play count if you play multiple times in one session, since the physical database only updates when GameEx exits (I assume Tom stores it in memory until then).

You will also notice that the plugin will report the version you are using and notify you if an update is available in your User CP.

I did a bunch more work on the site also, including play history on your User CP, and some various CSS stuff. Make sure you do a hard refresh on the page to reload the new CSS. I also went ahead and added some code to skip any users with tags that haven't uploaded any data to the server yet, and capped the limit at 10 tags per page. The most played games count is an overall count, and will display your top 20 for now. I'll probably make a spot for your top 10 overall, and then do a spot for the last 10 you played based on the new data I recieve from the plugin, as soon as I get cracking on the user stats page. Then I'll keep working on the Hi-Score page, which is coming along but not quite ready to be released to the public. Soon.

That's it for now, I'll be back at work on the site for a while.

Grab it from the first post. And please, if you use the plugin, update ASAP. It's lame seeing all those 'unavailable!' spots on the new data fields. Enjoy!

[DazzleHP]

Wow man seriously impressive work! You really are going for this and it's felt! I'll be MIA for the foreseeable future but hope to get back to testing this bad boy soon

[GimmeClassics]

Thank you Adultery for this amazing update ! I've grabbed and installed the latest version