I've just uploaded beta3, which includes some game-balance-changing features and polishing. You can read more about what was added in beta3 here, but in particular: Tunics can give you a big advantage Potions can give you a shorter-lived advantage Several enemies have become a lot tougher Some bosses have become easier Since this has changed the balance of the game, the leaderboards might be biased towards playthroughs on older versions of the game. Clearing the leaderboards would solve that. The counter-argument is that future updates might mean I have to reset them again, and it would be less chaos just to wait. It all depends on how much you guys are keen for fair leaderboards, and how long you're willing to wait. I won't be resetting the boards for a couple of weeks at least - I want to observe how people (ab)use certain combinations of potions and tunics, and fix issues raised as a result of that. I will also ensure that old links to scores on the leaderboard continue to work. So you can continue to show off that time you beat the game in under 3 minutes, but it won't show up on the board by default. Let me know your opinions!
Archive the old leaderboards and/or have old versions display their particular leaderboards. Unfortunately, any potential tweaks to game balance can affect scores. I think using a system such as Major.Minor.Patch versioning and having gameplay changes relegated to a certain level would work well. So something like 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 etc. use the same leaderboard because gameplay mechanics were not changed, but 1.1.x versions are separate. It's just an idea anyways.
Yes, that's one possibility. I thought about this while setting up the leaderboards. The URL of the leaderboard loaded by the game looks like this: http://bytten.net/leaderboards/lenna/v1/ I can bump up the number in that last portion to /v2/ or above in any versions that alter the balance. Older versions of the game continue to use the old URL, while newer ones use the new URL.
It's done. The leaderboard link stays the same for now: http://bytten.net/leaderboards/lenna/v1/ (Clear your browser cache if it still shows the old scores.) Archived scores are there, but just not shown by default. You can display them by clicking the "..." button in the top right and then selecting the "Archived" checkbox. If you follow a link to an old archived score (e.g.), archived scores are automatically made visible for you.
