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Idea: Progress Bars for Non-Tracked Games

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
So I know myself and others have brought up the idea of having custom achievement sets for non-tracked games. While I'd still love to see that one day... it would be a lot of work. A light bulb went off in my head with a MUCH simpler solution.

We already have the ability to input hours played, the last played date and completion date for non-tracked games. What if we also had the option to input achievement progress? No actual list, just the numbers, 11/65 for example. Obviously, this shouldn't add to the actual achievement count on your profile and shouldn't have any EXP tied to it or contribute to ranking in any way, but it would give us a simple yet flexible way to track our own progress in any games that don't have tracked achievements. The site already knows how to generate progress bars based on a ??/?? number for a game so I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to implement?

Here's a little mock-up I did:

1 before.png
2 edit.png
3 after.png


Just a quick technical note. You might ask "why a custom number of achievements and not just a percentage?" Well firstly, for consistency in the game list. But also unless a game actually gives you a completion percentage itself, any percentage you come up with is largely going to be an arbitrary estimate until you hit 100%. Of course that's fine if you want to do it that way, and you can, simply by using ??/100. But many games missing achievements have achievement lists on other platforms you can use as a reference, and some games have built-in achievements but no actual tracked achievements. In other cases you might just work out a number yourself based on the number of levels, objectives, collectibles, etc. so the ability to use a custom number would offer the most flexibility.

Switch games, PC games without achievements, early PS3 games without trophies, all those older systems that aren't supported by RetroAchievements... they could all be covered by this.

And those who aren't interested in this can completely ignore it and continue achievement hunting, it would just be there for those of us who want to record progress in more games, and perhaps frown a little when we scroll past a game on our profile that doesn't have a progress bar. Now we'd be able to click the edit button and add a custom progress bar, just for our own satisfaction.

One last note. The most logical way to implement this would obviously be with the manually added/non-tracked games, but if possible it would be nice to have the option for any tracked game that doesn't have achievements as well.

That ended up being a long post but it's ultimately a fairly simple feature idea and I'm sure many of us would appreciate it.
I know I'd use it.
 
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CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
Bumping this because I think it's a really cool idea and it's killing me that I have a bunch of games I want to record my own progress in and put alongside my tracked games but can't. I never heard back on how difficult this would be to implement, at least for manually added games if nothing else. Any thoughts?
 

x3sphere

Administrator
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Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor
I'm open to adding it, wouldn't be difficult to implement. We can enable this across all games, including tracked ones that lack achievements, although yes I agree it shouldn't impact any of the stats for tracked services. So it'd just be for display purposes only. I'll try to get it added soon, maybe later next week.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
I'm open to adding it, wouldn't be difficult to implement. We can enable this across all games, including tracked ones that lack achievements, although yes I agree it shouldn't impact any of the stats for tracked services. So it'd just be for display purposes only. I'll try to get it added soon, maybe later next week.
Thanks boss, you're a legend 😎👍

Just realized we can use it to keep track of our Epic achievements too while they take their sweet time making them visible. Nice.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
Maybe I should start compiling a list of games with internal achievements/trophies/awards, this feature will be great for those.
A few off the top of my head:

SoulCalibur IV (PS3) - internal list identical to Xbox 360 achievement set
Cuphead (Switch) - internal list identical(?) to Xbox One achievement set
Crash Bandicoot 4 (PC - Battle.net) - no internal list, but tracks collectibles, unlockables, overall progress %

Might start a google spreadsheet or something.
 
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tyl0413

Member
As someone who often plays 360 era games on PC that usually don't have achievements this would be quite useful.
Loads of games from that time don't have achievements on PC but do on console obviously.
Maybe it's a bit too far but i wouldn't mind custom tracking for individual achievements as well not just progress, like i know for sure i beat the game on hard difficutly and at what date, would be great to enter that too, but even without this'll be useful.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
As someone who often plays 360 era games on PC that usually don't have achievements this would be quite useful.
Loads of games from that time don't have achievements on PC but do on console obviously.
Maybe it's a bit too far but i wouldn't mind custom tracking for individual achievements as well not just progress, like i know for sure i beat the game on hard difficutly and at what date, would be great to enter that too, but even without this'll be useful.
Yeah this has been discussed before, most notably in this thread. I also briefly mention it in the first post here.

It's a good idea and I'd still love to see it but it would be a lot of work. I proposed this as a much simpler all-encompassing solution for now. I think manually adding achievements could be explored afterwards at some point and done on a game-by-game basis. Some achievement sets could just be copied over from the same games on other platforms, others may have to be tweaked as certain achievements might be impossible to track manually and other games may need entirely custom sets. Then there's the issue of implementing tools to enable users to check off which achievements they've earned for those games.

It's been brought up multiple times, several times by myself and staff members, so it's been under consideration for some time. For now we should wait and see how people like this simple progress bar feature once it's implemented, which is hopefully soon as I'm itching to mess around with it. ;)
 

Gabrieludens

New Member
In addition to the excellent ideas expressed in this topic, I would like to suggest a proposal: what do you think of a "universal" achievement set for all games that do not have achievements?

Achievements to be checked manually, generic enough to be suitable for all games and specific enough to convey the idea of progress we have achieved in the game. Goals like:

-Main mode completed / Story completed
- Completed secondary activities
-Game completed in hard mode
-100% completed
etc.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
In addition to the excellent ideas expressed in this topic, I would like to suggest a proposal: what do you think of a "universal" achievement set for all games that do not have achievements?

Achievements to be checked manually, generic enough to be suitable for all games and specific enough to convey the idea of progress we have achieved in the game. Goals like:

-Main mode completed / Story completed
- Completed secondary activities
-Game completed in hard mode
-100% completed
etc.
Wouldn't be a bad idea as a starting point for manually added/custom achievements, there could perhaps even be a few different generic sets to apply to different types of games.

Ideally there could be an option per game between the basic custom progress bar or using custom achievements.

Still, need to get the bar added first and take it one step at a time so we don't complicate things, but I do like the idea.
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor
I've added this now!

Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 9.15.50 PM.png


Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 9.16.00 PM.png
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
yes-wwe.gif


Thank you!

Messing with it now, the only thing I've noticed so far is if it's a game from a tracked service like Steam there's no option to mark it as completed, I can fill the progress bar but it remains green. I don't know if you could either add the option to mark tracked games without achievements as completed or have them automatically trigger as completed by filling the progress bar?

Also not directly related but I'm not sure if I've brought up the fact that I can't seem to change the name of a game if it doesn't have achievements. I know we can't currently change the names of the manually added games, is this for the same reason or could it more easily be fixed? Not a huge deal, just figured I'd mention it.

Oh man now I can track my progress in ANY game! I feel FREEEEEE!
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor
yes-wwe.gif


Thank you!

Messing with it now, the only thing I've noticed so far is if it's a game from a tracked service like Steam there's no option to mark it as completed, I can fill the progress bar but it remains green. I don't know if you could either add the option to mark tracked games without achievements as completed or have them automatically trigger as completed by filling the progress bar?

Also not directly related but I'm not sure if I've brought up the fact that I can't seem to change the name of a game if it doesn't have achievements. I know we can't currently change the names of the manually added games, is this for the same reason or could it more easily be fixed? Not a huge deal, just figured I'd mention it.

Oh man now I can track my progress in ANY game! I feel FREEEEEE!
Should let you set a completion date on Steam games that lack achievements now.

I'll look into why the titles can't be updated on those. Not intentional but should be easily fixed.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
Should let you set a completion date on Steam games that lack achievements now.

I'll look into why the titles can't be updated on those. Not intentional but should be easily fixed.
Yep, that's working on Steam and the other platforms I have on my profile.

Another thing I just noticed - if you mark a game as completed it will fill the progress bar regardless of the custom numbers set, makes sense as they're independent settings I suppose. Not really sure it's worth "fixing" as such, since there's no real reason to mark a game with a partially filled bar as completed, just found that interesting.
 

Feral

New Member
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible or feasible to create and submit achievement sets to the site for games that don't have achievements for other people on this site to try to beat, rather than adding an arbitrary number to a game without achievements. Just a thought.
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible or feasible to create and submit achievement sets to the site for games that don't have achievements for other people on this site to try to beat, rather than adding an arbitrary number to a game without achievements. Just a thought.
Well the number isn't always necessarily arbitrary. Plenty of games have internal achievement systems which is ideal for this. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for instance has them listed as Challenges in the Vault menu and even gives you a total out of 194, which is absolutely ideal, just copy the numbers over.

But yes I mentioned the idea of custom achievement sets in the first post and there's a thread about it here. This is just a simple solution for now that can cover any game.
 

ApeOfMazor

New Member
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible or feasible to create and submit achievement sets to the site for games that don't have achievements for other people on this site to try to beat, rather than adding an arbitrary number to a game without achievements. Just a thought.

I think a good start would be a forum or something where people could detail achievements for games and then refine them based on comments until a consensus is reached. I mean once thats done I guess in theory badges could be added too to the games with approved lists but it would still all be on the honor system and not count for anything but to display.
 

CaptainScarLeg

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Game Info Editor
I think a good start would be a forum or something where people could detail achievements for games and then refine them based on comments until a consensus is reached. I mean once thats done I guess in theory badges could be added too to the games with approved lists but it would still all be on the honor system and not count for anything but to display.
I imagine that's more or less how it would work, we'd probably set up a thread for achievement ideas and submissions with guidelines for the sorts of achievements we'd want in the manually-tracked sets. I don't think we'd need to do any mass voting or anything, just have staff members approve submissions and if anyone has additional ideas or tweaks for a game they'd be welcome to post them for consideration.

I think we would mostly want achievements for progression type stuff like completing levels, finding collectibles, completing side-quests and in-game challenges and such. Anything that's clearly indicated to you in the game. We'd probably not bother with achievements for multiplayer stuff, super grindy stuff or otherwise "undesirable" achievements, for the most part. That'd be the advantage of refining the lists ourselves, we can cut out what we don't want.

Of course any games that already have internal achievement systems but no actual achievements would be ideal, they could have any kinds of achievements since they're tracked fully within the game already and we could just use that to create a set for the site. Those would be the easiest games to cover. That and games that have achievements on one platform but not another (a lot of PS360 era PC games fall into that category) so we could just copy over the achievements we want from say a 360 game to the achievement-less PC version.

That's the general idea anyway.
 
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