jbluestein
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OK, so I have a variety of questions about how high scores are managed.

Here's what I observe:

Weird Thing #1:

The 'My Stats' tab shows me with about 2300 points.

The 'Players' tab ranks me in the high 70s with over 3000 points.

Is this because of unverified demos? It seems that I have almost 900 of them.

Weird Thing #2:

Some of my scores just don't show up at all. I completed Nightmare Dungeon and Beethro's Bad Dream while the server was undergoing its genetic reprofiling. Nightmare Dungeon doesn't show up under My Stats at all (well, it shows up as 'unexplored'), and Beethro's Bad Dream only shows one score, for a secret room that I didn't complete until the server came back up.

I also started A Quiet Place and Beethro's Day Off, but no scores show up for that one either.

Things I've tried:

1) Edited drod.ini to force full upload of all demos. Verified that a demo is created each time I defeat a room.

2) Gone to various levels of various holds and hit 'F6'. I am able to get a list of completion demos for every room in Nightmare Dungeon (and to see that I have a demo save for each room as well), so I know that *somebody* believes that I've completed the rooms. I'm not clear on who makes the determination as to whether I can view the demo or not.

In any case, nothing is showing up on CaravelNet that I can see.

As an interesting contrast, I began and finished Beethro's First Job recently, and those scores seem to show up with no problem on CaravelNet, so it does not appear to be simply a queueing issue, unless new scores are automatically verified rather than being placed in the queue to be verified by the spider.

But since I really don't understand how it's all done, I am not even sure what I should be looking for.

For the record, I'm not really that concerned with having a high score. I don't think I'll be breaking into the Top 10 anytime soon. But I would like to have the list of holds that I've explored/conquered be accurate, just because it gives me a nice list to look at.

(and yeah, I realize that Schik probably has bigger fish to fry at the moment, but I just thought I'd get it out there)



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Schik
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jbluestein wrote:
The 'My Stats' tab shows me with about 2300 points.

The 'Players' tab ranks me in the high 70s with over 3000 points.

Is this because of unverified demos? It seems that I have almost 900 of them.

Yeah. Fixed.

Some of my scores just don't show up at all. I completed Nightmare Dungeon and Beethro's Bad Dream while the server was undergoing its genetic reprofiling. Nightmare Dungeon doesn't show up under My Stats at all (well, it shows up as 'unexplored'), and Beethro's Bad Dream only shows one score, for a secret room that I didn't complete until the server came back up.

I also started A Quiet Place and Beethro's Day Off, but no scores show up for that one either.

.....
so it does not appear to be simply a queueing issue, unless new scores are automatically verified rather than being placed in the queue to be verified by the spider.

That's it exactly - scores that are uploaded as you play are assumed to be valid (but still queued for verification) while scores that are batch uploaded are not assumed to be valid - they only show up after they've been verified.

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jbluestein
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Schik wrote:
That's it exactly - scores that are uploaded as you play are assumed to be valid (but still queued for verification) while scores that are batch uploaded are not assumed to be valid - they only show up after they've been verified.

Cool...it's almost as if the scales have fallen away from my eyes, or some such.

Thanks, Schik!

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jbluestein
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OK, at this point, my Unverified Demos count is at 0. But I still have a few questions:

For example, Nightmare Dungeon now shows up as a Conquered Hold, but with 2 of 96 High Scores. Similar case with Beethro's Bad Dream, and a bunch of other holds where I know I've completed 100% of rooms but my scores list is smaller (or substantially smaller) than the list of available rooms.

What do I need to do to force these scores to be counted?





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Tahnan
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I'm having a similar problem. Last night, to be safe, I told the game to Upload All Scores (and, sure enough, when I went to bed I had 1700 unverified demos, so something uploaded). This morning, a spot check shows that in Veere's Dungeon, which I have completed, I don't have scores for 1N2W, 1N3W, or 5N2W; and on the "My Stats" page, Veere's Dungeon is listed as 68% explored, 63% conquered. (I don't even know what those latter numbers mean...how can the hold be 63% conquered when I have high scores for 11 out of 14 rooms?)

Scanning other uncompleted holds, I see that I'm missing scores for Lendy's Dungeon (completed, but listed as 80% conquered, no scores on the 5th level plus scores missing elsewhere); Phil's Dungeon; war7; and war8. (I also see that I've got way too many unfinished holds. Gotta get on that.)

So something very weird is happening. Is the spider mysteriously rejecting some of my demos? Are my demos somehow corrupted?

Syntax
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Yeah, I'm seeing similar issues.
For example,
Unfortunate Architect Compilation : Restricted Resources : 1E.
I have a 380ish move demo which won't upload.

Also, most of Beethro's teacher demos won't upload (I'm currently as far as it's possible to get yet I've only got 4 HS uploaded).

There are others I notice whilst playing, but I tend just to replay and improve on them.

Tahnan
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Tahnan wrote:
Are my demos somehow corrupted?

Just to clarify: I was quite surprised to go back to "Beethro Goes Fourth", only to find that I didn't have a valid demo for the entrance. ("What?" I said to myself. "It's hard to believe I never made it out of the entrance, since I've cleared other rooms.")

In fact, the only demo in that room was a 12-move demo in which I died. ("How odd," I said to myself. "I don't record demos on death, only on success.") What was even weirder was that it was described as follows:

Beethro gets himself killed pretty quickly. (This demo is corrupted or from another version of DROD with different gameplay behavior.)

("How odd," I said to myself. "I seem to be talking to myself a lot.")

Anyway, I bring this up because, while it clearly is possible for a demo to be corrupted--not that I know how that one was--the demos for the rooms I mentioned above in Veere's Dungeon are not marked in that way. That's not to say they didn't somehow corrupt, but however it is that the game recognizes corruption, those aren't corrupted that way. (I watched one of them--5N1W--just to check. It plays through fine.)

Syntax
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Tahnan wrote:
Just to clarify: I was quite surprised to go back to "Beethro Goes Fourth", only to find that I didn't have a valid demo for the entrance.

I can confirm that my demo too for this room is corrupted (as is VodkaAndCoke (most recent on April 6th 2006).
This would indicate that the hold got updated at some point (which I don't remember being the case), or that a patch changed mimic scripting (looks more promising). Looking at my corrupted demo, it looks like I'm trying to counter the mimics' swords as if their left and right were inversed.

I'll leave it corrupted for now in case someone wants to investigate. On an aside note, the hold comes up as unexplored in my holds list despite visiting 3 rooms (only entrance completed though) so that's probably correct behaviour under the circumstances.

[EDIT]

Another demo which won't upload:
KDD 2 - 1N 1W - Have a 33 and a 34 move demo locally

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[Last edited by Syntax at 06-11-2006 12:21 PM]

Tahnan
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Er, so--any clue why certain high scores don't seem to upload?

jbluestein
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Tahnan wrote:
Er, so--any clue why certain high scores don't seem to upload?

Yeah...I still can't get my Nightmare Dungeon or Beethro's Bad Dream scores to upload...and believe me, I've tried...



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UrAvgAzn
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Tahnan wrote:
Er, so--any clue why certain high scores don't seem to upload?

That was your 200th post!

Keep posting,
-Jeremy

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Elfstone
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I have a similar problem. I have completed

A Hold by any other name
Bjorn's Evil Tower
Impossible defence
The Choice
KDD 2

None of these appear in the list of conquered holds in 'My Profile/High Scores'.
In fact I can't find Impossible Defence in any list, conquered or otherwise.

I'm not sure about demos; the scores page says I don't have any, but I know that in 'Settings' I have "Automatically save a demo when you conquer a room" ticked. Can anyone tell me where I would I find my own domos in my own computer (iMac G5)?

Elfstone.

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michthro
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Demos are all stored together in one big file, so it won't do much good to try and look for them directly on your computer, but you can see your demos by pressing F6 while playing a room, or in the restore screen. You can then check the box next to "Display all demos in level" to see more demos at a time.

I can't remember if Impossible Defense was ever uploaded to CaravelNet. Did you download it from the Architecture Board?

As for the rest, try doing a full demo upload. Look here for instructions, and remember that it may take a while before they actually show up on your scores page.

Elfstone
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Many thanks for replying and for your help.

michthro wrote:
I can't remember if Impossible Defense was ever uploaded to CaravelNet. Did you download it from the Architecture Board?

I don't think so - I can't remember clearly where it came from but as I hadn't looked at the Architecture Board until I read your post, I don't think it came from there.

michthro wrote:As for the rest, try doing a full demo upload. Look here for instructions, and remember that it may take a while before they actually show up on your scores page.

I read the link - many thanks for pointing it - and tried to do the following:
Also, before posting here, please ensure you've performed a "full demo upload". To do this, close down DROD, locate the drod.ini file in your DROD directory ("data" sub-directory), and change "FullScoreUpload=0" to "FullScoreUpload=1".
but I can't find the DROD directory. I used spotlight but it only came up with 1 link - a changelog.txt to do with "DROD Version 2.0.11, 2 December 2005".

Is it possibe the necesasry file is called something else in the Mac version of the game?

Elfstone.

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michthro
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Elfstone wrote:

michthro wrote: I can't remember if Impossible Defense was ever uploaded to CaravelNet. Did you download it from the Architecture Board?

I don't think so - I can't remember clearly where it came from but as I hadn't looked at the Architecture Board until I read your post, I don't think it came from there.

I can't find it on the Holds Download page. Could be that it's been removed. Either way, you can't upload scores for it.

Is it possibe the necesasry file is called something else in the Mac version of the game?

It's possible, but I can't help you there, not knowing the first thing about the Mac. Hopefully someone who does will come along.

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[Last edited by michthro at 06-18-2006 02:11 PM]

Syntax
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Like michthro, I don't know the first thing about the mac port so it's possible that the filename is different. In any case, please let me know where the equivalent resides so I can update the highscore bug thread. I'm also thinking that an equivalent of "find in files" should point you in the right direction (though may take a while unless the mac indexes ascii files as Win XP does by default). Baring that, a drop to the prompt and something like:
find / -exec grep {} FullScoreUpload ;\
may do it (again, a long process). Can't quite remember the find syntax either so may not work verbatim (could be \; and there's a grep switch to display only filenames too (I think it's -H)).

Also, I don't believe that hold was ever on caravel. It certainly rings no bells, and so, as michthro said, I doubt you'll be able to upload high scores for it. If it turns out you can and have any issues please post in the thread linked by michthro.

Briareos
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Syntax wrote:
find / -exec grep {} FullScoreUpload ;\

Oh my...

Here, let me fix this for you:

find / -exec grep FullScoreUpload {} \;



Dunno if it'll solve the problem, though...

EDIT: Or, even easier:

grep -r FullScoreUpload /

(instead of / you might want to try other directories first, like your home directory or the one DROD is installed in... I seem to faintly remember that OS X's .app-files are in reality just a directory as well...)

np: Underworld - Mmm Skyscraper I Love You (Underworld 1992-2002 (Disc 1))

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[Last edited by Briareos at 06-18-2006 03:12 PM]

Syntax
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That looks better

Elfstone
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Thanks again to michthro, Syntax and Briareos.
I can forget about Impossible Defence, but it would be nice to sort out the other errors. Your technical answers have lost me a bit but I will scour through the "Missing Manual" book and see what I can find by diggng into parts of the computer I don't 'visit' very often, if at all. I'll continue to search for the file and if I find it I'll let you know what the Mac version is.

Elfstone.

____________________________
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FAPCA - Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics