responding to your various questions/concerns @Cernel
due to the traditional terminology being not always followed.
The traditional terminology is frankly wrong and made up, hence the confusion - but that is really besides the point.
By "Map Versioning" do you mean that the maps will have a version or are you referring to the version numbers within the game (xml) files?
The version number in the XML files would go away completely and the entire map would be versioned.
the map folder name will change with every version, so to allow to have more than one of the same map on your terminal (similarly to when, in the past, new TripleA instalments were not overwriting any previous ones)?
TBD, but likely so.
A thing I always disliked about the current map updating system (beside the time inconsistency due to the time between the map update and the moment in which someone merges your PR to update the "triplea_maps.yaml") is the update versioning number, that it is itself meaningless but for prompting users to update.
Yup, the version number in the triplea_maps.yaml is purely for notification purposes. It's much more involved to know the last version that users had and the existing game code has no concept of map versions. (Game versions are also there just for display purposes, that does not even trigger anything, it's only used for display in the lobby 'GV' column).
Will the process be the same (meaning the first time you add a map it will be version 1, the first update will be version 2, and so on)? In the moment that was not really a map versioning number, I'd rather keep track of it by registering the date in which the update was made (maybe limiting to no more than 1 update per day), which would also be a valuable information per se.
When a map is updated would be tracked. A single incrementing sequence for versions is likely. We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves as the game engine does not support multiple map versions. How that is to be done is TBD.
We could easily get into a state where a map truly becomes the XML file and the assets are decoupled from the map. Notably we could have a 'unit editor' feature where unit images, flags, resources, etc are all uploaded individually. Then a game would reference such elements by ID value. When you launch a game you'll have a units folder that has a collection of unit IDs and they are brought in as needed. This avoids all overlap between map resources and allows for map-makers to pick and choose which graphics they would want. Same thing could be done for map polygons. For now though the focus is on deprecating triplea_maps.yaml with a for-like replacement that can be interacted with from in-game.
If there is a map versioning akin to the release versioning in the current "triplea_maps.yaml" (meaning the first time you add a map it will be version 1, the first update will be version 2, and so on), I think it would be better the version being kept within the map folder
I don't think that is readily possible. What if two people update a map at the same time? How do you know a version before you go to upload it? What happens if one version is worked on for a long time and you then do not know the right version number. The version number I think must be external to the map, it should probably not be aware of any other map variants and just worry about being complete in of itself. Any version matching would then be the responsibility of tracking and the game engine.
(so it will be an actual map versioning) and a versioning increase being strictly required every time anything part of the map is changed
Very likely each map upload will be write-once and then read-only (immutable). When uploaded it would get a tracking ID and a version number to know which ones are which and which is latest.
you have to increase both the game version and the map version
That almost certainly will be unnecessary and both versions are just going to be removed from the map-maker domain.
if you change only any element outside all game files, you have to increase the map version but not the version of any game).
A map and its games are going to be more tightly bound. Perhaps even moving to where they are 1:1 and then it becomes a needless distinction.
as I'm not really understanding everything that is being said about this new process.
What is not clear?
