then rather than redifining "emu" a suggest a new name for going forward. the longer this gets delayed the more there is to correct and the harder it becomes thereby delaying it furhter. a vicious cycle. create new category only for going forward and then at least the problem doesnt get worse in the meantime.

Originally Posted by Snowflake

then rather than redifining "emu" a suggest a new name for going forward. the longer this gets delayed the more there is to correct and the harder it becomes thereby delaying it furhter. a vicious cycle. create new category only for going forward and then at least the problem doesnt get worse in the meantime.

Creating a new category just makes the problem worse anyway. It does not help. Items in that new category will have to be moved and recategorized in the forward organization. The issue is structural.

Originally Posted by Jace Hall

Creating a new category just makes the problem worse anyway. It does not help. Items in that new category will have to be moved and recategorized in the forward organization. The issue is structural.

We have to continue "as is" for a while.

In the meanwhile - the only suggestion I have is to create an EMU track if one is needed. Which is what Old TG did....

How about instead of regrouping platforms, we regroup things by game genre? If the sole purpose of ESI is compare gamer's skills with one another, the best way to do that would be within a specific genre. Imagine all racing games in the database found under it's own filter, with an "overall" formula that compares all competitors. You could see the number of submissions they have, their average rank, and probably the most important factor, the average number of competitors they have competed against per track. I also believe that a ranking system for each individual track should be done based on number of competitors per track. "1 Rank" for 1-2 competitors, "2 Rank" for 3-4 competitors, and so on. This would actually weight tracks based on competition making a first place finish worth "more" but not appear as biased since games are not equally played.

For example, I have many 1st place finishes across the Game Boy racing genre, but I'm only competing against 2-3 other people per track. That doesn't look nearly as impressive as someone having 1st place finishes in a game like Mario Kart which has 6-10 or more people competing per track. Overall, I think this would even out for a fair comparison.

TG wouldn't have to make a complete overhaul, they would be adding more to things already in place. Not sure if I explained that correctly so I apologize if that is confusing.

As for original and EMU, until TG makes a determination on what is considered "original hardware" this conversation will literally never be solved because of all the "non original" being done already. Originally released console is probably a more accurate term then "original hardware" for what is allowed at this point.

Side note: I really do enjoy how SRC does their leaderboards. All tracks for one game across all platforms are all under one area. I understand a game may be slightly different based on console, but it's still there for comparison. I've always wondered what my Tiger Woods scores look like compared to other platforms, mainly against @stygian who plays a lot. It's just not worth looking myself, but if they were already grouped together that would be a nice bonus for users. One stop shop for all scores on a specific game in one spot.

Originally Posted by Snowflake

then rather than redifining "emu" a suggest a new name for going forward. the longer this gets delayed the more there is to correct and the harder it becomes thereby delaying it furhter. a vicious cycle. create new category only for going forward and then at least the problem doesnt get worse in the meantime.

Amen. This problem was solved for MAME and Arcade gameplay years ago. And it isn't a issue now. The old TG didn't the understand emulation problem of other platforms would create this leaderboard organization issue. Or the person/ Refs who created tracks for EMU Atari 2600, and C64 back in the day didn't have the authority to create a new platform, etc.

I agree with Snowflake here. TG needs to Create that category for new EMU tracks only, cause the manual labor that will be needed to be put into organizing it is going to get worst. Just imagine how many less tracks wouldn't need to be moved if something like this was done back when I made this image???????????????

Originally Posted by timmell

Amen. This problem was solved for MAME and Arcade gameplay years ago. And it isn't a issue now. The old TG didn't the understand emulation problem of other platforms would create this leaderboard organization issue. Or the person/ Refs who created tracks for EMU Atari 2600, and C64 back in the day didn't have the authority to create a new platform, etc.

It wasn't "solved" at all. MAME was considered alien to Arcade and Arcade was precious to the backbone of TG & nothing could tarnish view of Arcade. It was incomprehensible that MAME scores be considered the same as Arcade. Mark Longridge took the responsibility for MAME and evolved it differently than Arcade. The two were simply never been considered the same in previous eras.

Refs could create new platforms & chose not to because the situation was not the same as MAME vs. Arcade. A different approach was chosen to merge all emulator scores with the main scoreboard for home systems (which were not as relevant to TG) until the NTSC/PAL/EMU split. The number of supported emulator platforms were then reduced based on referee man power (and expanded again then reduced again) leading to "grandfathering" tracks which could be no longer supported by the current ref man power.

All generations of the scoreboard have suffered from a lack of fluid design: the base assumption that two tracks cannot be similarly thought of and lack meta data. Flip the design to track-only and assign meta data to the submission. That's a much bigger overhaul than any "emulation" suggestion. ESI would have to be ditched & something new in its place (or an ad hoc calculation with no overall tallies).

I dont think you'd have to ditch esi with your suggestion (which is a good one), in fact i think it could allow for more levels of esi. that metadata can still be used to find console level esi, and depending on what other tags it could also be used to find genre esi or any number of other things.

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Until there is a 'target state' database structure with clear definition of the different structure levels, its difficult if not impossible to figure out what needs to be done to 'repair' the established track/structure and prevent further deterioration via new tracks. In order to effectively compare a 'game' or 'track' across multiple 'platforms', 'consoles', 'regions', and 'hardware / emulation', TG would need to establish a taxonomy with structured naming conventions and controlled field values to form the proper database joins.

Adding additional fields such as genre can be done to allow for ESI aggregation or whatever other competitive measurement that may be developed in the future, but this will also has its own set of challenges. For instance, decision need to be made on whether the genre is at the game level, track level, or both. Just about any open world game from the new consoles has challenges that consist of racing, fighting, puzzles, shooters, etc.... There's also a question about sub-genres of games/tracks such as arcade, simulation, and combat racing.

Lots of things to consider and plan out before jumping into the work with haste.

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one thing that could be done early on, and could even help with derivatives being done right, is commonly used fiedls. the new track creation box already has many fields. why not add a drop down for "ntsc/emu/pal/misc", the misc keeps the door open for people to still have full freedom, but a field for the commonly used ones will make it a tag thats recorded in an easy way for programs to read. perhaps make it a non-required field. genre could also be a non required field. maybe this would be a way to ease into it so that in the future alot will still have to be done manually, there will be these that can be looked back on and done programatically?

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All generations of the scoreboard have suffered from a lack of fluid design: the base assumption that two tracks cannot be similarly thought of and lack meta data. Flip the design to track-only and assign meta data to the submission. That's a much bigger overhaul than any "emulation" suggestion. ESI would have to be ditched & something new in its place (or an ad hoc calculation with no overall tallies).

Until there is a 'target state' database structure with clear definition of the different structure levels, its difficult if not impossible to figure out what needs to be done to 'repair' the established track/structure and prevent further deterioration via new tracks. In order to effectively compare a 'game' or 'track' across multiple 'platforms', 'consoles', 'regions', and 'hardware / emulation', TG would need to establish a taxonomy with structured naming conventions and controlled field values to form the proper database joins.

Adding additional fields such as genre can be done to allow for ESI aggregation or whatever other competitive measurement that may be developed in the future, but this will also has its own set of challenges. For instance, decision need to be made on whether the genre is at the game level, track level, or both. Just about any open world game from the new consoles has challenges that consist of racing, fighting, puzzles, shooters, etc.... There's also a question about sub-genres of games/tracks such as arcade, simulation, and combat racing.

Lots of things to consider and plan out before jumping into the work with haste.

Yes. These types of concerns are why it needs to wait a bit before we take steps on this. It is not a small or cheap($$$) problem to solve properly.

It is however, on the list....

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Originally Posted by Snowflake

I dont think you'd have to ditch esi with your suggestion (which is a good one), in fact i think it could allow for more levels of esi. that metadata can still be used to find console level esi, and depending on what other tags it could also be used to find genre esi or any number of other things.

At the loosest of the idea, think of all the Points tracks - one track called "Points" (floating point not integer), one track called "Time". That's it. A submission then receives the tags of meta data: an Arcade tag, a Atari 2600 tag, a set of different rules tags, a "no boot up" tag. Tags can be disputed and added to existing scores so the scoreboard can evolve with knowledge. A certain score on Dragster to get the "mythical" tag... TGSAP would need a redesign to vote on the individual meta information - the single entity of submission is no longer the disputed & contentious point: so many rejected subs have information which is correct... TG then has the say on what defines the default view & say someone is only interested in time achievements using a Porsche or RUF car: filter to those three tags: time, Porsche or RUF.

Hugely complex overhaul not just of the database but of the interface and logical use. Ultimately, everyone gets their view of the scoreboard and can assign new tags to old scores: "no video evidence" tag for the newbies that don't like pre-TGSAP.

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