Short Attachment Names

Cernel

@roiex Anyways, this looks like a really nice clean-up, so I guess I'm disposable doing the needed changes where you linked, if nobody else, but I warn you I'm not going to really playtest any of those maps (I dislike them all). Is there an expert player of Neuschwabenland here that would volunteer to playtest the map working the same after the changes being made, in case?

Cernel

@roiex So, what I'm saying is that I guess I can do that (even tho not a fan of those maps), but, since I'm not going to test them but superficially and partially (definitely not playing them), and I've not played them before, I need to know if you are fine to take responsibility yourself for any mess-ups I might do (end eventually revert everything, if people complain), or if there are any expert players disposable to testify the maps working the same before and after I make the changes (I know, unlikely).

General_Zod

@cernel I've played those maps in the past. I suggest just changing game notes, rather than changing the known game rules. Since no one was ever upset about it.

Cernel

@general_zod Since that keeps track of the way the maps were supposed to be played, and I'm not a player of those, I'm oriented leaving game notes alone, even tho I agree (and I said it) that it is bad having game notes and engine behaviour conflicting, but I tend to think that would be up to a player of those maps to take ownership of them, and update them.
While I believe I've always seen those maps played by engine behaviour, not by games notes (otherwise people would be editing all the time), and this really sucks, as I would hate that (I think it is obvious that game notes are more important than the engine behaviour, otherwise wtf?), we cannot esclude them being balanced and meant to be properly played by game notes (like when World At War had canal rules not enforced by the engine: it would have been really bad to change Game Notes to follow the engine behaviour!).

Side note, all those maps but the classic mod are Sieg's.

Out of curiosity only, does anybody know or guess what this means (written in Neuch notes):

Grey Terretories belong to Start Country

?

For the matter at hand, let's leave rules and notes alone, and just limit ourselves making the code only changes that @RoiEX requires, if any (and if he still wants to take the risk).

Cernel

@general_zod (or any players of these) But if @RoiEX still want to do the code changes, if you would be disposable at playing the popular ones of those and confirming they are still working the same way as they used to, after I (or someone else) do the required changes, that would be much safer. The only concern is if anybody gets angry because we mess up how their Neuch works from current (even tho it is already messed up).

The only alternative I can see is that a developer code all those maps to work as the game notes tell they should, for the understeandable part of those game notes, but probably unlikely or not worth it (plus, people may not like a behaviour change from current, like when some people were against @redrum changing the behaviour of WAW canals to work as per its notes, preferring to old behaviour, no matter if faulty).

Cernel

@roiex For example, I just pulled the update I believe you required for "four_if_by_sea.xml" only.
https://github.com/triplea-maps/classic_variations/pull/3

Is this what you want and do you want it repeated for all the cases you listed?
Is it really fine to do so when I am not going to play any of those maps (and probably you aren't, either)?
Why not just automatically mass changing, like @LaFayette did, on several other occasions:

games.strategy.twoIfBySea.delegate
to
games.strategy.triplea.delegate

Also, @redrum @LaFayette @RoiEX @ssoloff do you think that:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/wiki/Upgrade-Maps-Information
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/wiki/Downgrade-Maps-Information
should be updated with these or any other missing past changes (are you missing any?) or do you prefer stop tracking that, and leaving that wiki at 1.9.0.0.3266, not giving further info, in there, for upgrading to higher versions, at least from 1.8.0.9?

This is on the account that people having maps outside the repository (like @RogerCooper) would need to be informed about what at this topic, as they would need updating, as well, and in case anybody want to downgrade a map not having the "package name" back to 1.8.0.9 (this is already an item, actually, as you already did that change).

Cernel

@roiex Also, in here:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/classic_variations/blob/05393b0c0662ce56675c6996fef3dbc8cf3071d7/map/games/four_if_by_sea.xml
when I click on the pencil icon, it tells me:
"You must be on a branch to make or propose changes to this file"
I was able to do it by going to "branch" and clicking on "master", but why the hell does it work this way? I bet some people would not figure it out.
Meaning, you cannot do the edit from the link you gave, here:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/classic_variations/blob/05393b0c0662ce56675c6996fef3dbc8cf3071d7/map/games/four_if_by_sea.xml
But, instead, you can do it from here:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/classic_variations/blob/master/map/games/four_if_by_sea.xml
Why?

General_Zod

@Cernel

Doubtful I will play those games anytime soon, if at all. I've played them to kill time in past. But these FFA are the ones that give FFA a bad wrap, imo. I've never seen anyone actually win total victory in them. Someone either bails and ruins game or it gets saved and never continued.

I guess, that's partly due to lack of a reputation or rank attached to a username, and the ability to change usernames for free. It encourages poor sportsmanship without consequences.

Cernel

@roiex said in Short Attachment Names:

games.strategy.twoIfBySea.delegate

To be clear, what I was saying is that I guess that is just the same thing as having games.strategy.triplea.delegate, kept working to just support the old maps that use it. If so, there should be no major problems in changing it over (probably the only reason to support it is not having to change it over), but:

I'm not sure, and I doubt you will get the guy who did it, or anybody who knows anything about it at all, so you need to delve into the code to verify. You may try asking Veqryn, tho.
Changing it to regular at best implies losing the info that those maps were supposed to work in a particular way (I guess not anymore supported), potentially burying "broken" maps into looking not broken anymore.
Can't you just do it as a mass change like @LaFayette did in similar cases?

RoiEX

Dear Map-Makers;
I opened a PR that also adds this feature for delegate names: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/3367
However I made some decisions there I'd like to hear your opinion about there.

Cernel

@roiex I'm not sure about a bunch of what you are saynig there, actually; so I hope you don't mind if I ask in here, instead of writing stuff in your GitHub that is of no interest to the developers.

With this:

Allow short hand names for delegates in games.strategy.triplea.delegate, because of the name conflicts for delegates in games.strategy.twoIfbySea.delegate, those names need to be spelled out regardless of this change (because usage of those delegates is rare)

Are you saying that:
"games.strategy.triplea.delegate.InitDelegate" etc. become writable as "InitDelegate" etc..
but:
"games.strategy.twoIfbySea.delegate.InitDelegate" will still be supported too, yet you get a warning those are deprecated.

So, basically, you can write it and have it working 3 different ways:
1- "InitDelegate" etc.
2- "games.strategy.triplea.delegate.InitDelegate" etc.
3- "games.strategy.twoIfbySea.delegate.InitDelegate" etc.

With:
Number 1 being the correct way.
Number 2 being deprecated (is it?), but supported without warning.
Number 3 being deprecated, and supported giving the warning that it is deprecated.

By the way, removing those in future versions of TripleA, as opposed to removing them right now, doesn't make a lot of sense, as I'm pretty sure all those maps will still be there, as they are, 10 years from now, all the same.

p.s.: Did you verify that the the "twoIfbySea" are factually doing the same thing as the regular "triplea" ones, game wise? I'm just guessing that in the past they were working differently, and that has been discontinued.

RoiEX

@Cernel Almost, I don't know if the twoIfBySea delegates behave the same as "standard ones". However almost no maps use them at all the other one, highly indicating it might not be really useful.
In any case it's very confusing to have 2 different things being named the same with no way to tell the difference.
We as developers have to deal with name conflicts which makes the code ugly, and map makers could get confused what really is the difference.
By "will be removed in a future version" I just wanted to strongly indicate the twoIfBySea delegates shouldn't be used to enable us to either rename it in an incompatible release, or to incorporate them into the existing delegates and to remove them from the twoIfBySea package afterwards.
TL;DR
To answer your question:
games.strategy.triplea.delegate.XYZDelegate = XYZDelegate
games.strategy.twoIfBySea.XYZDelegate ≠ XYZDelegate but all of these work.

General_Zod

@roiex That seems acceptable for me.

Cernel

@roiex Ok, then I've closed my pull example in here:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/classic_variations/pull/3