Idea: Achievements plugin for Emulators

[Rubedo]

Now before I even get into my idea, let me just say first that I have no programming knowledge whatsoever and thus have no ability to actually make this, but rather, the point of this thread is to maybe inspire someone who CAN make such a thing to want to do it, assuming it's possible in the first place.

My idea is to create a plugin and accompanying program that would load an Achievements list when running a ROM in an emulator. The Achievements themselves would be dictated by a small group of people (the programmers of the program and perhaps a few others chosen by them) and would cover both simple Achievements (such as "Beat the game" or "Complete (x) Sidequest") and expert level Achievements (such as "Beat the game without dying" or "Reach 100% Completion").

At first, it would most likely be compatible with a small handful of older, but popular games (Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, etc), but it would hopefully eventually be compatible with games up to the PS1/N64 era (as anything later is somewhat difficult to emulate on many PCs), with every major, popular game having it's own Achievement list.

Naturally, there would be a "Gamerscore" that you could compare with other people, and online leaderboards. And of course, if you activate the Emulator's Cheats function, the program will auto detect it and you won't be able to earn any Achievements while they're enabled.

However, the problem is figuring out how to make the program recognize that you have completed an Achievement. Like I said, I have no programming knowledge so I'm not entirely sure how such a thing would work, but from what I can imagine, having Achievements like "Beat the game" and "Beat (x) sidequest" would be easy, only requiring the plugin to check if a "switch" has been triggered, so to speak, but things like "Beat the game without dying" or "Use every special move with every character (in a fighting game)" would be more difficult for it to notice...

 

[Clookster]

Why for an emulator? You should add that to the Akaio feature requests.

 

[tijntje_7]

Eh eh eh. VERY sorry to dissapoint you, but this already EXISTS > XD
This is for the iPod touch, there are some emulators. Not made by zodTTD.
Those emulators seriously have built-in achievements.
I got one on zelda oracle of ages (which I got legally

, but I broke itWait a sec, ME didn't broke it :/ a friend of mine did

but imo, it's still legal that I have a backup

)

 

[Satangel]

Why for an emulator? You should add that to the Akaio feature requests.

The DS cannot multitask (running 2 things at the same time). So it cannot run a DS game and run an achievement thing.

 

[Rubedo]

Eh eh eh. VERY sorry to dissapoint you, but this already EXISTS > XD
This is for the iPod touch, there are some emulators. Not made by zodTTD.
Those emulators seriously have built-in achievements.
I got one on zelda oracle of ages (which I got legally

, but I broke itWait a sec, ME didn't broke it :/ a friend of mine did

but imo, it's still legal that I have a backup

)

Because not everybody owns an iPod Touch, duh.

 

[Clookster]

Why for an emulator? You should add that to the Akaio feature requests.

The DS cannot multitask (running 2 things at the same time). So it cannot run a DS game and run an achievement thing.

There's no need to do that at the same time. You could press a "Check Savefile for Achievements" button after each gaming session.

 

[The Pi]

Well, breaking the problem down, the save file stores everything, highscore, items etc

Having mutiple saves files of the same game allows finding certains parts of save that corresponds with certain in-game events, it's a matter of creating the save files, comparing them then implementing the "Achievements" in the emulator.
This is a time consuming task which would take many people to working together to cover many systems

I'd recommend only working on one system, or as least until you've covered all popular games for the first system.

Edit: about the DS, you'd need to check with a dedicated homebrew after everyplay (I doubt you'd get AKAIO or YWG implementing this feature however creating a custom wood is possible http://code.google.com/p/woodrpg/ )

Edit2: You could have it the same way as a 360 (realtime) on a DSTWO but you'd need to convince supercard team or make a custom firmware. The custom firmware route would need to be coded the old fashioned way. (can't use the SC SDK)

 

[Rydian]

It would take one person perhaps a day or two per game just to make a few achievements.

I honestly cannot see any programmer bothering, since it'd need to be done differently per emulator as well.

I got one on zelda oracle of ages (which I got legally

, but I broke itWait a sec, ME didn't broke it :/ a friend of mine did

but imo, it's still legal that I have a backup

)

Downloading a ROM from the internet is illegal no matter if you own the cart or not.

 

[Rubedo]

Well, breaking the problem down, the save file stores everything, highscore, items etc

Having mutiple saves files of the same game allows finding certains parts of save that corresponds with certain in-game events, it's a matter of creating the save files, comparing them then implementing the "Achievements" in the emulator.
This is a time consuming task which would take many people to working together to cover many systems

I'd recommend only working on one system, or as least until you've covered all popular games for the first system.

Edit: about the DS, you'd need to check with a dedicated homebrew after everyplay (I doubt you'd get AKAIO or YWG implementing this feature however creating a custom wood is possible http://code.google.com/p/woodrpg/ )

Edit2: You could have it the same way as a 360 (realtime) on a DSTWO but you'd need to convince supercard team or make a custom firmware. The custom firmware route would need to be coded the old fashioned way. (can't use the SC SDK)

But it's still theoretically possible, right?

 

[Rydian]

Theoretically yes, it's possible. Older game didn't encrypt their saves and it's proven time and time again they can be checked for certain stats and flags, in addition to simply memory sniffing while the game is running...

But it's a lot of work to make something to check for stuff automatically in an achievement sense.

 

[Sylar1]

If you run Dragon Quest 9 on an emulator it has achievements, some leet video game hacker put them in and called them "accolades",

 

[Rubedo]

Theoretically yes, it's possible. Older game didn't encrypt their saves and it's proven time and time again they can be checked for certain stats and flags, in addition to simply memory sniffing while the game is running...

But it's a lot of work to make something to check for stuff automatically in an achievement sense.

Well, at least it's possible.