Quote:

I'm actually working on this right now. Not for online submission but to be able to replay and create video clips. But the same data could of course be used for a highscore feature as well in the future.

Cool, I was also planning to work on it right after our release! (You probably saw it announced on our -devel list anyway.)

Quote:

For most gamers, the first part is very interesting and could be viewed as a bonus in both emulators. Actually, it requires to add a field in the existing database, that field should contain a link to the ad hoc page on Generation MSX. It should be an optional version of the blueMSX/openMSX database, because it will extend the size of the database and some gamers are not interested by this bonus.

Um, 2 things:
1) the idea is actually not to extend the software database with links to Generation MSX, but to fetch the data from Generation MSX using the sha1sum of the software you are playing.
2) If you include 2 databases, it will double the total size a lot more than adding that (unnecessary) field.

About using non-ROMs: it's indeed not easy to support this. BUt let's do ROMs first.

Quote:

And even in this case, a vicious user (like me !) could change some unused bytes to make the sha1 value different ...

What good would that do? You won't get a match on Generation MSX then, so your game is unknown and will not be used in the stats. (Or you won't get the GenMSX data for your game.)

Quote:

The fact that they should be collected on an anonym way or with a personal login does not change anything for me, as we know that hacker tools can reveal what's hidden.

Some questions:
- why would a hacker do this?
- what 'hidden' stuff can the hacker reveal?

Quote:

The fact that it should be collected on the MRC server, on the blueMSX server, on the openMSX server, on the Generation MSX server, or on my own server, does not change my point of view : I'm simply against any way of looking in the privacy of the users.

It wouldn't be looking into the privacy of users. It would be users that want to share their stats.

Note that there is another quite wildly used system in the world which is very similar to this: Debian popularity contest. It submits data about what software you installed via e-mail to the Debian project so that the good folks there can decide which packages are the most popular. This way they can know which software to put on which CD, amongst others. See http://popcon.debian.org/ As you can see in the graph, more than 15000 people have this enabled. Also opt-in, just like the gamestats.

Quote:

The fact that it should be disabled by default in the emulator is not enough to avoid abuses, because an hacker could change some parameters of the emulator and enable GameStats without your consent.

The same questions as above! Why? What's so interesting about the data??
In fact, any hacker can modfiy your blueMSX or openMSX executable and let it send him any of your personal data. Someone changes the binary, puts it on a download site, and there you are. You really wouldn't notice.

A ROM-game is fixed data, I can understand such a ROM can be recognized by some database. But there were also made diskconversions from ROM-games. There are also lots of DSK-images with multiple games on it. And they all can have a different Basic loader. How on earth can all these games be recognized correctly by the database? I don't quite understand the system here. In order to have a representative database, it is an absolute necessity, the database DOES recognize the games correctly. All of them.

Oh uhm, no, it's not spyware, you can disable the feature. Simple as that. But I'd like to have some more info on the above, thx......

Quote:

Um, 2 things: 1) the idea is actually not to extend the software database with links to Generation MSX, but to fetch the data from Generation MSX using the sha1sum of the software you are playing. 2) If you include 2 databases, it will double the total size a lot more than adding that (unnecessary) field.

1 : you do not consider the case that the user plays offline and wants some minimal infos about the game, what's the case in blueMSX with our beautiful interface
2 : the extended database with the link to Generation MSX should be available only as apart download on the blueMSX site, because it does not interest all the gamers

Quote:

Some questions: - why would a hacker do this? - what 'hidden' stuff can the hacker reveal?

- you can not guess which are the good or bad intentions of an hacker, so maximum security is the only good option
- hidden stuff like your IP, tracing your way to the server and more ... it's only the beginning of the hacker's work ....

Quote:

In fact, any hacker can modfiy your blueMSX or openMSX executable and let it send him any of your personal data. Someone changes the binary, puts it on a download site, and there you are. You really wouldn't notice.

This is a lot more likely scenario than someone hacking the gamestats. Many game sites provide their own downloads of the emulators and it would be very easy to add a small spyware compiled into the binary and noone would notice.

I think its possible to do a secure version with the stats feature built in to the emulator. The important thing is to NEVER open any TCP or UDP ports unless the user activly select to do so. If no ports are open, there is no way to break in to the emulator from the outside. blueMSX doensn't open any TCP ports now and will not do so later unless the user activly enables the feature.

The generation-msx database will only be a request/reply type service to get additional info or to sync the database. So this part of the feature doesn't require user login. Although a hacker could potentially pretend to be a server and send other data back to the emulator, the information sent back is just a plain xml (or similar) that can't harm the computer. The emulator can also verify the size of the received data and then make sure the data has a valid format.

The stats doesn't really contain any personal information and what is shared is only limited to game stats. Although it will require a login, general password/username guidelines apply, e.g. don't use the same password to gamestats as you do for your internet banking.

Quote:

2 : the extended database with the link to Generation MSX should be available only as apart download on the blueMSX site, because it does not interest all the gamers

It is indeed important that the emulator can provide a snapshot of the generation-msx database with the release, and also that a user can connect to the internet to download the latest changes. So a copy of the rom database will be stored locally on the users PC and only updated on request. For additional info, it could be required to be connected (screenshots, video-clips, ...) but this should of course be optional and its important that the emuators will work like they do now without ever connecting to an online database.

The online database will be an enhancement to the MSX experience for the users that chose to use the feature.

Well, two things:

1) I think this is a great idea, especially the part where you could 'click here to view the details of this game' (orso). The 'favorite games' option is nice too, it'd be phun to see which games are still popular these days. I'd extend that option btw, to also (opt-in, ofcoz) allow people to participate, but only anonimously. That should save me the embarasment of having everyone see my impressive 30hrs/week Starship Rendezvouz habit

2) I think it's sad people are still looking to pick 'fights' every chance they get. If it's *clearly* an opt-in extra, why on earth would you want to spoil things for the normal people out there? It's a pity, really...

Oh, I forgot: indeed a dump is needed for offline usage as well.

Latok: the point is: that won't work. It will (for now) only work with ROMs, because they are more or less constant in their hash (sha1sum e.g.). Stuff that does not have a known hash (means: which is not in the GenMSX or local database), won't give results or won't have stats recorded.

So it won't be MSX stats, but MSX romstats......Statistically, a major difference. Anyhow, sounds like fun Thanks for answering, Quibus!

Why is somebody interested in the type of games I play without a reason?
Is it important to get information about the game I play because if I start the game I see the name, year, etc. on the opening screen.
During my whole life, so far, (almost) nobody did something without a reason (profit).
We are not living in a charity world.
So I doubt that the stats, high score etc. idea is only to make it more comfortable for the users but most of the time people with such an idea already have something in mind what's my or our profit in the (near) future
Could it be more visitors, more advertisement so more money?
I'm a simple MSX user (game player) and still own 2 working MSX computers but of course it's nice to have the possibility to use an emulator like blueMSX or openMSX on my PC.
However, I really don’t care, because I will use the emulators I have now and will not download updated emulators in the future with the here suggested possibilities.
MRC is always against links to sites with warez or even game requests but now it is no problem to give or get information from/about warez games?

About privacy I agree with Mars2000you.

What a discussion about an outdated system!!
And I’m part of it

Quote:

Why is somebody interested in the type of games I play without a reason?

Why do we track postcount? Why do we see what one's last forumsubmission was (click someone's name), why do we see who the most active users are? Statistics.. fun-factor perhaps..

Quote:

It could be more visitors, more advertisement so more money.

If it was like that, do we care? I doubt they'll ever make break-even, while at the same time we are here for free!
Apart from the 'why', I personally would be interested to see the results of such statistics btw..

Quote:

MRC is always against links to sites with warez or even game requests but now it is no problem to give or get information from/about warez games?

well, 'information from a game' / 'popularity of a game' is something different than the game itself eh.. For the same reason composers can rearrange gamemusic while MRC reports about them..

Retired: why do you think we develop openMSX? For profit, perhaps?

Or................. maybe...................



just for fun?

Some people, like me, have fun in seeing stats. Yeah. Really. No profit involved! Ah well. It can't be that simple for everyone, I suppose.

blueMSX has a donation button and we have received some money. If we don't count expenses at all (like webhosting) we make almost $0.03 an hour. So yeah we're definately in it for the money!!!!!

Fyi, the donations doesn't even break even with the webhosting expenses so in reality I even have to pay for the pleasure to develop blueMSX I'm pretty sure this is the case for the MRC crew as well.

OMG

Yo! You afraid-of-spyware-screaming-dudes! What are you actually afraid about? Don't go shouting all that general sh*t which is mentioned above in this thread.. Get real! We are talking about a user-base of a couple of thousand users (at it's best!!!)

What are you expecting? That MRC will sell the data to evil M$-Billy Boy, to convince him to make an MSX360? And that the owners of MRC/The Emulator developers/Sandy will get filthy rich of us?

We are talking about MSX.. A system that has been, at least commercially, dead since the early '90's here in Europe. That'almost 15 years ago... Please, get real!

If you are SO afraid of "spyware", at least be serious about it, and make a clean Linux install. Throw out you Windows and MacOS software. Don't register at any fora, stop using internet and go live in a cave and let your PC work on solar energy

Actually, the only company which I think will make a few dollars is Bazix after having sold the OCM, but I don't expect large margins, so spread over the 2 years it's here I guess they'll do only little better than dvik's bluemsx-salary ^_^