[HN Gopher] RetroAchievements: Adding achievements to retro games
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RetroAchievements: Adding achievements to retro games
Author : kaeruct
Score : 76 points
Date : 2023-09-11 19:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (retroachievements.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (retroachievements.org)
| vikingerik wrote:
| This has already happened in one way for many years, in
| emulators/simulators of pinball games. The Pinball Arcade does
| this, and has its own leaderboards for the achievements.
|
| It works by monitoring the internals of the pinball computer
| emulation, either looking directly at the RAM for cases where the
| memory locations are known, or at the display output for
| alphanumeric or dot matrix patterns that announce a particular
| event such as a jackpot or multiball or wizard mode.
| crawsome wrote:
| It seems in it's infancy.
|
| https://docs.retroachievements.org/Setup-Guide/#retroarch
|
| The front page says it's supported by retroarch, but you go to
| their docs section, there's nothing there.
|
| Looking forward to a straightforward way to put acheivements into
| my retroarch, and not piecemeal by emulator.
| Gygash wrote:
| Support for RetroAchievements is builtin to RetroArch [1]. You
| should just need to enter your credentials.
|
| 1. https://www.retroarch.com/?page=achievements
| pathartl wrote:
| It's been around for a while. It's more of a lack of docs than
| lack of support. RA has docs directly:
| https://www.retroarch.com/?page=achievements
| raspyberr wrote:
| This looks like a fun project to give some more incentives to
| playing older games. Although I do dislike that there's a large
| category of "achievements" nowadays that are nothing more than
| telemetry for developers. Like like at some of these for one of
| my favourite games: https://retroachievements.org/game/1458 "Use
| the Batarang for the First Time" "Complete Stage 1". These aren't
| achievements. Steam games are FULL of these. Open the game,
| complete the tutorial, open inventory... achievements should be
| interesting, weird, or challenging.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The good thing about "telemetry through achievements" is that
| players can see it too. It gives a good baseline about the
| other non-obvious achievements.
|
| For instance, an achievement that has about the same unlock
| rate as the "complete stage 1" achievement is probably
| something you stumble upon randomly in the very beginning of
| the game, if you don't have it, you probably missed something.
| If an achievement has a significantly lower unlock rate than
| "complete the game", it is probably end game content and may
| require dedication.
|
| Achievement can have more than one purpose. They can be used as
| progression markers (the "tutorial complete" kind). As hints
| about some secondary content. As a reward for curiosity or
| particularly difficult tasks. As an indication that you have
| finished something and there is no more of it. To taunt the
| player. As objectives that don't fit in the story. To
| acknowledge that a particular action is significant. Etc...
|
| For example "Use the Batarang for the first time" tells you
| that you will use it again. It hints that from now on, the
| Batarang will be an important part of gameplay, more important
| than the other items you didn't get an achievement for. On the
| achievement list, it is a progression marker. If you see it on
| an achievement list, it tells that the players is, say, at
| least 10% into the game, and puts other achievements in
| perspective.
| Chabsff wrote:
| > Although I do dislike that there's a large category of
| "achievements" nowadays that are nothing more than telemetry
| for developers.
|
| That's always been the case. Some XBoX360 games went as far as
| having "reached the main menu" achievements in order to create
| a baseline user count that didn't include demo terminals
| running the attract mode on loop.
|
| I agree that cheevos-as-telemetry sounds bad at face value, but
| consider it the other way around:
|
| Getting pain-free already anonymized telemetry stats via
| achievements through platform holders has long been a bulwark
| against intrusive bullshit telemetry by way of making the
| effort-to-reward ratio of the later just not worth it. This is
| not unlike the classic "The way to stop piracy is to provide a
| better UX" argument.
|
| It also has the very important added benefit of making what is
| being collected extremely transparent to users.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I like these, as they help show how far people get through
| games, or show that I've gotten so far in games (like in Fire
| N' Ice for NES, it shows I completed the first two worlds, and
| for Kickle Cubicle it shows I've gotten to World 4). I'm never
| going to do the vast majoity of the crazy proper achievements
| (that require you to do extremely hard or unusual challenges),
| so if they didn't have those, for most of these games it would
| just be a stat that said 'played X hours' without any
| indication of what I actually did in the game.
|
| Also, these are added after the fact by people who didn't work
| on the game, and are done by identifying and monitoring changes
| at specific memory addresses in the rom, so they're a bit
| limited in just how complicated they can get with these
| achievements. These 'how far did you get' are one of the things
| they can check more easily, as they can see level numbers
| change in memory and the like (it's a bit more complicated than
| that, check the docs[1] if you're curious). They still manage
| quite a bit with those limitations, though.
|
| https://docs.retroachievements.org/How-to-Become-an-Achievem...
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| An achievement is basically the accomplishment of an objective.
| I think that fits well with "Use the Batarang for the First
| Time".
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I don't mind this type of achievement at all. They're nice and
| easy rewards for playing the game, a form of acknowledgement
| that you've at least scratched the surface of what the game has
| to offer. Having a few achievements to commemorate early stages
| of game mastery is just neat, and harms no one (except if the
| achievement notifications spam you during the game).
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| And on the other hand, you have the community setting up
| achievements that I would argue are pretty bad. Parasite Eve,
| for example, has achievements for beating each boss without
| using the game's magic system.
|
| https://retroachievements.org/game/11277
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yeah, there's a lot of those types on the site. Like Super
| Mario Bros has Pacifist achievements to complete a World
| without hurting any enemies or becoming Fire Mario. I'm sure
| some people appreciate them, but it's not something I'm going
| to try.
|
| https://retroachievements.org/achievement/40405
| lapetitejort wrote:
| "Beat X without using System Y" is a pretty common
| achievement though. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 has an
| achievement that begged me to play the game again: beat the
| episode while only firing one shot.
|
| Being able to beat a game while not using a core system can
| be a sign of good game design, or an exceptionally skilled
| player. Look at Super Mario 64 and speedrunner's ability to
| finish levels with a single press (but not release!) of the
| jump button.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I don't have a problem with them being there personally
| (op did), just acknowledging that there's quite a few
| games with those types of achievements. I don't want to
| bother with them myself, but I know others do, and that's
| fine.
| fallat wrote:
| Why? It sounds fun! At the end of the day a game is just a
| challenge to overcome right?
| cableshaft wrote:
| I don't have time in my life to tackle every single
| challenge presented to me, and there are over 355,000
| achievements on Retro Achievements, not to mention
| thousands of speedrun leaderboards and other things. I
| have to pick and choose (or just play the game and get
| whatever I get). That particular achievement sounds like
| it would likely take a lot of time and be quite
| frustrating to pull off.
|
| That being said, I'm not asking for it to be removed or
| anything. It's just not something I'm ever going to try
| to complete myself (maybe I'll manage it on accident).
| Clearly 4.5% of the people who have played the game with
| Retro Achievements have managed to pull it off.
| kroltan wrote:
| I agree, but some people also like that kind of thing to prove
| how far they got in a challenging game. So for that I think
| some retro games would really benefit from that kind of
| achievement. Like the famously difficult games such as Ninja
| Gaiden, Battletoads, etc.
|
| Also, some of these "pointless" achievements can be used as a
| negative proof. For example, the lack of a "weapon used"
| achievement with the presence of a "last boss defeated"
| achievement proves you beat the game without using that weapon.
| This allows players to contrive challenges not foreseen by the
| explicit implementation of an achievement.
|
| Now, one issue is that on basically every platform,
| achievements are tracked per ownership of the game, so you
| can't scope down the achievements like that unless you only
| ever play the game with that challenge in mind. But in RA
| specifically, whose accounts are not tied to ownership, you
| could potentially make an account just to track a specific
| challenge, and have a public record of _your_ achievement.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Is that "telemetry" or just "low-effort achievements"? Lots of
| modern games have low-effort achievements, in part due to
| requirements to put in achievements even when the game
| developers don't want to do so. (Some games do a great job
| integrating achievements or even making entertaining gameplay
| elements out of them; others, not so much.)
|
| In the case of RetroAchievements, perhaps someone was
| enthusiastically adding achievements to that game without
| thinking about how fun they'd be?
| Lammy wrote:
| It's telemetry, and achievements have been used that way
| pretty much as long as they've been a thing. See Dan
| Teasdale's 2009 "Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band"
| https://vimeo.com/7087821 The relevant part starts at 32:35.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I _absolutely_ expect that lots of games are using
| achievements for telemetry.
|
| It would surprise me a little, though, if someone
| retroactively adding an achievement to an old console game
| is doing it for telemetry purposes.
|
| My original comment was based on reports from some indie
| game authors talking about their development experiences,
| and going "ugh, I have to add achievements, _fine_ ".
| infl8ed wrote:
| I have never heard of this before now, but what I instantly like
| about it is what a great way to learn about old games that might
| be worth a spin. Anyone can recommend an old game, but when
| someone goes the extra mile to add achievements it's a much
| clearer signal that it's worth a look.
| crtified wrote:
| I will politely express dissent, if that is ok. Not to be a
| grinch about it, because other people using it does me no harm.
|
| It's hard to even formulate exactly why the whole !Achievements!
| thing in gaming rubs me the wrong way. I guess it's a mix of
| several factors, centred around arguably picky purism (e.g. 'a
| games designed balance includes the inbuilt reward system'), and
| also around a worldview preference for (some) humility in life,
| which is somewhat an antithesis of constantly-blaring " _Wow! You
| Just Did This! Congratulations!_ " messaging/reassurance - a
| thing I don't put great value upon, in my worldview. Not in that
| outward manner, at least.
|
| I hope I've at least partially explained my dissenting viewpoint.
| As I said, this existing does me no harm as such, and I have no
| beef with it at all, except in personal preference, and insofar
| as casual discussion has filled these spare moments.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The best achievements to me act as hints on how to play the
| game in a certain way. Such as:
|
| * "Find all 25 widgets" I like finding widgets and I've only
| found 12 of them. I'll keep looking!
|
| * "Beat the game without using System X" Whoa, I thought System
| X was required! I'll figure out how to rely on the other
| systems to work around missing this one
|
| * "Get ending #3" I hear that ending is neat so I'll play again
| making different choices
|
| Achievements don't help mediocre games improve, they only
| compliment already good games. They also act as remembrances of
| games long past, something I can look up in a few minutes
| without having to install the game or hunt for a save file.
| Getting all of those achievements ten years ago must have
| really meant that I liked it.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I love achievements because when crafted well, they give me a
| bunch of artificial challenges to strive for.
|
| To be honest, I'm actually not sure I understand the "I get
| gaming but I don't get achievements." Achievements are just
| another scoring system.
| pests wrote:
| It rubs me the wrong way too. Battlepass rewards as well. I
| have a friend who will play for many hours a game he does not
| like - just to get the achievement points or some cosmetic that
| is limited time.
| glimshe wrote:
| What you need to realize is that the "game he does not like"
| isn't the game - the _achievement_ is the game your friend is
| actually playing.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I would have mostly disagreed, but after reading the following
| comment in this thread I think you have a point (emphasis
| added):
|
| > This looks like a fun project to give some more /incentives
| to playing older games/.
|
| I don't have an issue with achievements when they're built on
| top of a game that doesn't need them to be fun, but when
| they're added to try to "incentive" a game then maybe you
| should be playing an intrinsically fun game instead? Sometimes
| its okay to complete a game and not need to be "incentivized"
| to play it again.
| nlunbeck wrote:
| Definitely signing up for this one. It looks like the community
| is going strong over there. Also fun to have more achievement
| stats than Steam, there's so much you can do with that kind of
| data
| unixhero wrote:
| Probably to be included in ExoDos version 7, just a hunch!
| jordigh wrote:
| The fun thing is how these achievements are made.
|
| Basically, people have to reverse engineer retro games and figure
| out where to find the condition that triggers the achievement.
|
| https://docs.retroachievements.org/Getting-Started-as-an-Ach...
|
| Writing achievements is a good way to get started with ROM
| hacking. It's very similar to how you would do simple Game Genie
| codes too.
|
| I love that the retro community is staying fresh and vibrant.
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| "RAM hacking" you mean? ;)
| jordigh wrote:
| Well, once you know how the RAM is changed, it's often a
| simple matter of figuring out the ROM too. :P
|
| Often it's just copied over!
| and0 wrote:
| This is great. I was making a 3D NES emulator years ago, which
| just dug into the PPU memory (plus some register hooks during
| frames) to figure out what was being rendered (old archived
| explainer here
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160820051951/http://n3s.io/ind...).
| I then wound up having to add some simple scripting so
| contributors could determine if, for example, the sprite being
| rendered was the cloud or bush in the original Super Mario Bros
| (since both used the same sprite, just palette-swapped).
|
| It eventually got me thinking that I should try to standardize
| some sort of layers over Retroarch cores, which could interpret
| (RAM or GPU) memory values, value updates, and function calls as
| values and events to consume in some other application. My
| thought was that if someone used those hooks to create a
| "wrapper" for something like Contra for the NES then you could,
| say, handle rendering and audio from Unreal or Unity. So.. super
| HD remakes, reinterpretations, or art projects. Maybe play the
| original Final Fantasy and have twitch chat affect damage and
| other values.
|
| But then I got distracted, as usual :| But it is weird to see
| something like it in the wild now. I hadn't considered
| achievements.
| cableshaft wrote:
| If you have a SteamDeck, it's built in to the setup for
| EmulationStation. You can just enter your Retro Achievements
| username and password and it will automatically be hooked up for
| all emulators (It's case sensitive though, as warning. Didn't
| work for me until I updated it to match the case).
|
| Then when you launch a game, if it recognizes the game (seems to
| be based on checksums and not the name itself, renaming didn't
| seem to help for the games I had it didn't recognize) and
| achievements are set up for the game, you'll see a banner appear
| that says the game name, icon, and '0 out of X achievements' and
| you're golden.
|
| Really breathed new life into retro games for me. Now it's not
| just me playing many games for like 5-15 minutes an moving on, I
| try harder to complete the games now. Already gotten much farther
| in some NES games than I ever bothered to before, likely because
| of these achievements.
|
| One minor downside though, is you have to be online while doing
| the achievement for it to be recorded, there's no syncing after
| the fact. So if you're bringing your SteamDeck somewhere, either
| make sure you're online or play a game that doesn't have these
| achievements implemented yet (still quite a few games that don't
| still, including all Gamecube and Wii games) if you care about
| getting them.
| rcpt wrote:
| "Configure multiple Bluetooth controllers on retroarch" -- 100
| points
|
| "Disable autofire" -- 200 points
|
| "Move save files (not save states) between cores" -- 300 points
|
| "Get the right cemu keys.txt" -- 1000 points
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