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Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

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sado1

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Post 27 Jan 2014, 22:11

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

This is interesting idea but it not necessary "fixes" all the problems: first of all you still need to somehow select those official maps and while you wrote "all the best ones" in the very next sentence you mentioned "popular maps" as well.. so I guess it's going to turn into yet another flame war about which map to include.
It will make much more sense to choose the best of the best maps instead of deleting others maps. Now everyone will have to actually convince us all (or to convince Lewin/TDL/...) that their map is good enough and/or popular enough. Someone who has a map in the Remake right now, will feel like someoen smacked him in the face if we delete his map. If we delete all maps then start adding them from scratch, it is a bit different.
There is also another problem with this solution - completely "locking" official maps is a bit counterproductive if you want to introduce file transfers because this feature was introduced to make it easier to spread new maps among other things, this also includes any new version of existing map made by the original author of the map. What if he/she wants to try out new version ? Back to "old" method ? Renaming it ? Sure it works but testing is limited to people willing to help and if the new version is simply better most people would be out of luck.
But also other people might steal official maps and make their own versions of them. There is no way to distinguish an average random destroying a map, and the true map author. Do you really want people to end up with incompatible, different versions of the official maps? With your way of thinking, if I update Frozen Waters, it depends only on players whether they will like it and will spread it through the entire community. And, which is a worse thing, it's very possible that someone will make an easier version of the map, with 2132143214214 iron and same amount of gold and coal and etc., and will spread it, like a virus, practically removing my version from the game. Do you want that to happen? I'm going to kill such people with my bare hands. I don't spend time on my map only to see some brainless guy replace my mountains which took a fair bit of time to make, with some ugly mountains of his own, only because he needs more resources.
As a side note, since this would mean that people installing the game for the first time won't have immediate "access" to all the maps - I didn't tested the file transfer yet but I assume it's just "download" button, if it's not then disregard this part completely - people new to the game might be unwillingly installing a lot of (possibly popular) junk, perhaps adding some metadata like screen shoots, etc. available before download would help mitigate the "clutter" ? Or perhaps maps should not be written to disk unless you actually start game on the map ?
Lewin will make sure only relevant map files can be downloaded, since this way you could download even viruses as well... I believe he even already made it so you only download the actual map files, and nothing more than that. Also, last sentence is a neat suggestion, but doesn't replace my idea in my opinion. And thanks for giving feedback instead of another trollpost! :D
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Nissarin

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Post 27 Jan 2014, 22:31

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

But also other people might steal official maps and make their own versions of them. There is no way to distinguish an average random destroying a map, and the true map author. Do you really want people to end up with incompatible, different versions of the official maps? With your way of thinking, if I update Frozen Waters, it depends only on players whether they will like it and will spread it through the entire community. And, which is a worse thing, it's very possible that someone will make an easier version of the map, with 2132143214214 iron and same amount of gold and coal and etc., and will spread it, like a virus, practically removing my version from the game. Do you want that to happen? I'm going to kill such people with my bare hands. I don't spend time on my map only to see some brainless guy replace my mountains which took a fair bit of time to make, with some ugly mountains of his own, only because he needs more resources.
In my personal opinion this method is a bit excessive given the fact we don't even know for sure people will do that. I guess other games don't have this problem because map pool is server dependant, i.e. you might have the map but can't play on it unless it's available on server. This is also one way of enforcing "map policy" - include official/allowed map list (map name/checksum) on server or even master server side. In particular it would be easy for map creator to "bless" new version this way.
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sado1

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Post 28 Jan 2014, 10:15

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

In my personal opinion this method is a bit excessive given the fact we don't even know for sure people will do that.
I do know. I am 100% sure that there will be an old version of Cursed Ravine that people will prefer to play because they will not like the new less campy one. I also saw lobbies a couple of times with some modified versions of popular maps, I think this will be even more popular given the new download feature is here.

edit: http://kam.hodgman.id.au/mapslist.php?rev=r5503 Just search for Cursed Ravine. 32 hits already. And we do not have file download yet...
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Nissarin

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Post 28 Jan 2014, 17:18

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

edit: http://kam.hodgman.id.au/mapslist.php?rev=r5503 Just search for Cursed Ravine. 32 hits already. And we do not have file download yet...
Among which there are 3 "official" variations (.11, .12) and the others include variations with very similar names (test1, test2, etc.), the most played one among them have been played 6 times, that gives you probably less than 50 in total (compare that to almost 9000..), not only that, if you look at last column (average players) you will notice that practically all of them have "1.00" there..
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dicsoupcan

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Post 28 Jan 2014, 17:35

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

edit: http://kam.hodgman.id.au/mapslist.php?rev=r5503 Just search for Cursed Ravine. 32 hits already. And we do not have file download yet...
Among which there are 3 "official" variations (.11, .12) and the others include variations with very similar names (test1, test2, etc.), the most played one among them have been played 6 times, that gives you probably less than 50 in total (compare that to almost 9000..), not only that, if you look at last column (average players) you will notice that practically all of them have "1.00" there..
thatis often becauserandom pubbers do not share any new map or altterations on anexisting one, with file transfer that will possibly happen. Nothing is certain but we should take it into acocunt nonetheless.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. ~ Winston Churchill
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Nissarin

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Post 29 Jan 2014, 02:56

Re: Solution to the number of the maps in the Remake

edit: http://kam.hodgman.id.au/mapslist.php?rev=r5503 Just search for Cursed Ravine. 32 hits already. And we do not have file download yet...
Among which there are 3 "official" variations (.11, .12) and the others include variations with very similar names (test1, test2, etc.), the most played one among them have been played 6 times, that gives you probably less than 50 in total (compare that to almost 9000..), not only that, if you look at last column (average players) you will notice that practically all of them have "1.00" there..
thatis often becauserandom pubbers do not share any new map or altterations on anexisting one, with file transfer that will possibly happen. Nothing is certain but we should take it into acocunt nonetheless.
In the above example "1.00" means that game started and ended with exactly one player, so we could assume it's some kind of play testing or practise (based on some of the map names), however if they are aiming to play on modified map with others, then obviously they are going to share it, otherwise this makes no sense at all. Granted, file transfers will make that process a lot easier but I'm interested how something which is currently almost a non existing problem became such a big threat.
That aside I see only two problems here: the original author may not like it when others mess with his map and the fact people will end up with a lot of junk on their hard drives (that's why I suggested the "do not save to disk by default") but it can happen with any map, "official" or not. The changes themselves (like a lot of additional resources), well it's kinda the same as the game speed, you might not like it but so what ? We already have such maps after all.

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