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Lix => Lix Main => Topic started by: Simon on May 29, 2018, 03:24:59 AM

Title: Key of a level: How to map replays/trophies to levels
Post by: Simon on May 29, 2018, 03:24:59 AM
Lix 0.9.17 has:
Problems of 0.9.17:
Ideas:
Questions
Older topic: Musings on level culture (https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=3350.0), 2017-07.

-- Simon
Title: Re: Key of a level: How to map replays/trophies to levels
Post by: Simon on July 29, 2018, 02:15:59 PM
I want to implement this. Trophies (checkmarks) should be tied to basename (not path), title, and author.

I will still keep the file format in ./data/user/yourname.txt even though I'm unhappy with it, for backwards compatibility. In the long run, all options should be stored e.g. in ./user/.

-- Simon
Title: Re: Key of a level: How to map replays/trophies to levels
Post by: Simon on August 06, 2018, 09:06:55 AM
More musing on the level-replay-trophy association. (Trophies are checkmarks for solved levels.)

I'm slightly hesitant about (tying trophies to basename + title + author), and will improve the level-to-replay-matching first.

In theory, the following associations can each follow vastly different rules:
Of course, Lix, as an ecosystem, is easier to understand if all these associations follow the same rule.

I'll implement: For a given level, find all replays that play meaningfully against it. I'll do this by looking at the basename (= filename without path) of level and replay: If the level is called mylevel.txt, I'll find mylevel-Simon-2000-01-01.txt. Rule: The basename should be identical to the head of the replay's basename, and the remainder of the replay's basename begins with a dash -. Maybe I'll ignore numbers or other versioning strings (people like to make copies of a level but still consider it the same level for replay-level-association).

That leaves the decision about the association for later. In particular, this doesn't change any existing format.

-- Simon
Title: Re: Key of a level: How to map replays/trophies to levels
Post by: namida on August 06, 2018, 05:46:16 PM
Let's suppose we did rely on just basename + title + author.

What happens when we have a level like We All Fall Down? (Admittedly, most fanmade levels following a similar pattern seem to name them Part 1, Part 2, etc - though if you ignore numbers, this could still cause problems as all of them would just register as "We All Fall Down Part". If they were instead "Part I", "Part II", etc, that would avert this problem, though I don't really know which is more common.)
Title: Re: Key of a level: How to map replays/trophies to levels
Post by: Simon on August 07, 2018, 06:43:01 PM
Yeah, a few levels have names mylevel.txt and mylevel2.txt, and they are distinct levels whose replays should not be merged.

I consider such levels dubious; for fresh ideas, I encourage fresh, independent visuals and names. But the game should function as expected even when designers do not follow such advice.

Nepster's suggestion is (never consider different level basenames the same for replay lookup by replay basename). Maybe consider two levels the same if their names are equal after cutting off anything past +, an arbitrarily chosen character? Or maybe don't bake anything at all into the dialog that retrieves replays.

-- Simon