The massive amount of features and perks available on the Vizzed Retro Game Room is certainly the best thing about it, but do you guys know what it's missing (IMO, of course)? Achievements. Yes, like the XBOX Live/Steam/PSN (a.k.a. Trophies) ones. Yeah, I know that the RGR doesn't support their respective consoles (yet), so how could they be implemented on a website dedicated to old-school gaming like it? By the way of the RetroAchievements service, of course!

Here's how it works: You create an account on the main website, download their specially-modified emulators for each of the (few) platforms supported and ROMs, log in through the emu's menu and start getting "cheevos" (as they're called in the community built around them). Each achievement completed gives you a varying amount of points, with each game having a limit of 400 points obtainable. Your account accumulates these points, and the more you have, the better-known you are in the community!

But probably the best thing about the whole thing is how open it is. Any user can develop achievements to any game in the supported platforms directly through the emulators offered and the scripts that make it all work are open-source, being offered in the website itself! Pretty neat, huh?!

So here's what I was thinking: Why don't the Vizzed/RGR Plugin developers grab such scripts (with the original developers' permit, of course), change them a little bit and apply them to the RGR? The achievements could be linked to each user's Vizzed account with higher-ranking users being able to develop and modify them and points could be converted into Viz!

I think this would be an excellent addition to the RGR. What about you Vizzers?

I don't think its a good idea if you ask me. In the old days we didn't have these achievements on games there are always some hidden Easter eggs that make people want to keep playing so adding achievements will ruin the classic game.. If we were to use these achievements to get Viz it would be very easy to abuse it later on because its not really that hard to get one simple achievement. I would also advise not adding a system where achievements are made by players since many of the achievements could spam the game and leave a lot of lag. Lastly these achievements that pop up can ruin lets plays, speed run, and normal game play recording.

so in a way it not a all that good and can make people mad.

mastergame : In my opinion, achievements actually motivate easter-egg hunting by hinting at little things most players won't notice on their first go at a game. While there ARE some pretty unoriginal ones out there, I think the best kind of "cheevo" are the ones that make you play games creatively or complete a very hard/obscure task. Y'know, those that are tough to acquire.

Also, have you seen how the RetroAchievements service works? Each achievement completed gives you 5 to 50 points, which would be a pretty small amount of Viz in Vizzed's context. The "achievement got" pop-up in their emulators is pretty small, too - it probably wouldn't disturb a gameplay session/video/stream. If it does, however, you could just turn them off. Simple!

And as I said on my original post, only higher-ranked users (or users with a certain item equipped, I don't know) would be able to create achievements - this limitation isn't present in the RetroAchievements site, since it has a pretty small userbase, but on a much bigger community like Vizzed it definetely is neccessary. Not only that, developing achievements is hard, since it involves messing with code. Trust me, I've tried it.

Where did you get the idea that achievements cause lag? They don't! They're just an additional feature implemented in most games nowadays, meaning that code-wise they are pretty light.

I think this would be great, given you can still play the normal versions of the games, and that these achievements wont give you Viz.

mastergame : By my understanding of this system of achievements, you would need not only a special emulator for a system, but also a special made ROM, if you want to play a game like it was meant to be played, just use the normal ROM and emulator.

Also, I should say that for this to be added to the RGR, the emulators you have to use for the service have to have source available.

bigger0gamer : You actually don't need a special ROM, just one whose memory addresses match up to the ones set up to trigger achievements! For most games the U-! (USA region, perfect dump) version is the recommended one, but for some games (like region-exclusive ones) the recommendations differ.

Unfortunately, due to certain circumstances with the RGR plug in, adding this type of feature is probably not possible at this time. 

vanelan : Not possible at the time? So, maybe in a later time?

Actually, that would be nice, but taking account of all the games in the RGR, that would be crazy hard to implement even a single achievement for all the games...

steel_attacker :
I think it's impossible right now.
Maybe in about 5-10 ears when theres a new rom type file that allows to edit the roms into the site and have special feature, the it will be possible, but now?

pollution_stunk:

As stated above, we will need a special rom file for every game, and who knows? Maybe advance map for pokémon won't be updating it to make it compatible with the new rom type!

One day, we can add achievements easily (Yeah, in 30 years, but as the technologically goes by so fast, I guess we need 10 years), but what I do is go on workflowy and create a goal list there likes these are achievements xD