Like a book club, but for games supported on MiSTer
Overview of the game selection process:
- At the beginning of each new round a core will be selected at random from one of three rotating categories (arcade cores, classic computer cores and game console cores). Currently this is done using a script tied to a Google Sheets document (viewable here though not editable or with the script usable. Script code below.)
- We will then nominate games that are supported on that core in the cases where more than one game is available.
- For cores that support only a single game, the nomination round will be skipped.
- You can nominate up to three games per core
- You cannot second your own nomination
- A game needs only one other person to second the nomination to add it to the list of possible games
- At the end of the nomination round, we will select a game from the list at random again using a script
- Each new core selected will have a separate post topic created for it. In that topic we can nominate games and announce the selection.
- Each game selected will also have its own post topic so we can keep the procedural part separated from the game enjoyment part.
- There is no "end" to that game's play period. If years from now, someone new wants to play it and add their thoughts to the discussion for it, they should feel free to do so. Or if you were just a week late to the action, you didn't actually miss out.
For help with coming up with games to nominate, the following two sites are a good visual guide to the games available on the platforms supported by MiSTer:
fpgafiles.com
system16.com
Why not just vote on games? Why nominate/second then use a randomizer?
The low amount of activity forums receive these days versus more popular mega-platforms like Reddit and Discord means that we will have a high likelihood of needing tie breakers with multiple rounds of voting as there simply won't be that many people casting votes. This will be slow and take a lot of time as we'd need to give each voting round a minimum of a couple of days - but more like a week - before we could move on. We wanted to keep momentum going, not get bogged down in procedure. This is also why the selected games have no rigidly-defined play period. Looser design fits forum activity better.
The idea is to get us playing games - hopefully games we wouldn't have played otherwise. It's also advantageous to the maintainers of this club if the required effort is low as it will help keep people involved and keep the whole thing going. This shouldn't be a burden, it should be fun!
The club's rules and structure are a living document. They will be changed and/or updated to reflect the needs and desires of the participating forum members. If you have any ideas for improvement or other feedback, please reply to this post.
Here is the simple code used to select random entries:
Code: Select all
function randButton() {
const ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
const sh = ss.getActiveSheet();
var cores = ss.getRange("A:A").getValues();
var listlength = cores.filter(String).length;
var randomcore = Math.floor(Math.random() * listlength) + 1;
sh.getRange('C1').setValue(randomcore);
SpreadsheetApp.flush();
}
, didn't want to add any confusion to this.