Map Tags for release 2.6

TheDog

I have been trying to do too much with the tags, so a change of direction.

Ideally one tag is required per map and that is the start year/code for the conflict, where;
0 = BCE, all maps that are 0 BC and before
1+= CE, all maps that are 0 AD and after
Fant = Fantasy with magic, fantasy/mythical creatures
SF = Science Fiction, near future, future with space ships

Examples
0=270BC Wars
1561=The Shogun
1939=WW2 map starting in 1939
1942=WW2 map starting in 1942
Fant=Lord of the Rings, Warcraft War Heroes
SF=Star Wars Tatooine War

I am hoping that this could be the default listing of all the maps, or similar.
Is this possible or does it have to be alphabeticall?

Cernel no need to have an age, era or period in history?

Then the map downloader player can enter optional tags to refine their search with optional tags like;
Map Quality like *, **, ***
Map author like alkexr, Cernel, Frostion
where in the world, like Europe, Global, Pacific, this is really useful for WW2 maps
and any other suitable tag.

Thoughts?

Myrd

What about maps that are "abstract" and don't have a clear age, e.g. Risk?

TheDog

Hmm, well we could add in Abstract as a required tag?
Tags: Abstract, Global, Risk

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But with what's currently proposed
Tags: Fantasy, Global, Risk

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I think I favour adding in Abstract as there are 10+ maps that could be classed as Abstract.

RogerCooper

Why not use negative numbers for wars fought BCE? 0 can be used for mods with no defined date.

MartyMoose

So… I was going to post that Bilbo left the Shire in 2941 of the third age. He was 50. Frodo left some months after Bilbo’s eleventy first birthday. So around the year 3001. Deciding that answer wouldn’t be useful, I read backwards to find out why the year tag becomes important. Oddly, I came full circle to my original question and answer. I think players know the timeframe of the game that catches their eye. At worst/best they could google Napoleon. With Napoleon/Hitler/Sauron, it’s easy to pick out the fictional character. It’s harder when the map is earth but the scenario imagined. Maybe group the maps on the download page - Earth Historic/Earth Fantastical/Fantasy. When choosing a map to try, I read enough of the Map notes to decide if I want to try it. I think the main distinction is for Earth based games, is it based on serious history or not. Just a drawn out thought. Edit: if Earth fantastical/fantasy doesn’t work, Earth Fictional/Fictional may be good enough. Sure, some believe the third age was a pre historic age on Earth, but I think we can stick to science on that one.

TheDog

@LaFayette
attached is a MapTags-01.xlsx as a zip
MapTags.zip

There are 42 unique tags, there might be a few more, as I only have 150 maps in my spreadsheet, out of GitHub listed of about 200.

I am unsure how the tags will work, is there a web link you can point me at?

For example if I want to list early war WW2 maps would I search for?
1939 1940 1941

then if I wanted just the Global ones?
1939 1940 1941 Global

If I wanted all WW2 that are the Best maps?
1939 1940 1941 1942 1944 ****

Cernel

@thedog I guess it doesn't really matter, but (for your information) there is no 0 BC nor 0 AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero

A year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini (AD) calendar year system commonly used to number years in the Gregorian calendar (nor in its predecessor, the Julian calendar); in this system, the year 1 BC is followed directly by year AD 1.

TheDog

Well I did know that.

LaFayette

@TheDog are you sure you want the 'year' to be so exact?

Some concerns that I think this raises:

What happens to maps that span many years?
What happens when we get more maps that do not fit?
What about maps where it is unclear which exact year it is taking place?

Would maybe having a time period be more flexible? EG: medieval / WWI / WWII?

TheDog

@lafayette
The date is when the war starts, eg 1939
If the map does not fit it will probably be FANT, SF or ABSTRACT
If the map is unclear then I will pick a guessed year.

Using labels like medieval / WW1 / WW2 would mean a lot less tags than using wars start. I prefer these labels as they can span many years.
But typing Ancient/Medieval to search would be laborious?

Trying to do this by committee is hard as it does not please everybody.

Lets look at from the players point of view, how does a player use the tags, do they type them in to a text box?
If so can you enter a few tags with an implied AND operator?
Can they use a "-WW2" to say exclude WW2 ?

Or do they select from pull down menus?

Cernel

@lafayette said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

@TheDog are you sure you want the 'year' to be so exact?

Some concerns that I think this raises:

What happens to maps that span many years?

What happens when we get more maps that do not fit?

What about maps where it is unclear which exact year it is taking place?

Would maybe having a time period be more flexible? EG: medieval / WWI / WWII?

The issue with that is that not everybody likes everyone else's categories. My proposals for the historical ones are:

ancient/middle age: before 1492

early modern age: from 1492 to 1815

early industrial age: from 1815 to 1914

WW1: from 1914 to 1929

WW2: from 1929 to 1945

early atomic age: from 1945 to 1991

digital age: 1991 onwards (Might be largely useless if nobody is allowed to make maps about the war in Ukraine and such...)

As for the "ancient/middle", a way in English to say "non-modern" is "antique", but I was told the term is not good in current English because I understood it is used only for non-modern merchandise.

RogerCooper

@cernel said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

As for the "ancient/middle", a way in English to say "non-modern" is "antique", but I was told the term is not good in current English because I understood it is used only for non-modern merchandise.

You could say pre-gunpowder instead of Ancient/Modern for the period before guns became the leading factor in warfare.

beelee

could just have the half dozen most popular auto dl. Used to be something similar. If people like it, they can figure it out from there.

LaFayette

Or do they select from pull down menus?

@TheDog Neither.

Right now there is just one column in the download screen for 'map name'. Each additional tag will add a new column. Players can click on the column name to then sort by that column. There will be no logic to do a number sort, it will be an alpha sort. That means a value like "20" will go after "100" So, this is another peril with using numbers/dates (won't sort correctly). I do recommend just picking some era names, it's easier to categorize and should sort in groups more nicely.

Cernel

@lafayette said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

Or do they select from pull down menus?

@TheDog Neither.

Right now there is just one column in the download screen for 'map name'. Each additional tag will add a new column. Players can click on the column name to then sort by that column. There will be no logic to do a number sort, it will be an alpha sort. That means a value like "20" will go after "100" So, this is another peril with using numbers/dates (won't sort correctly). I do recommend just picking some era names, it's easier to categorize and should sort in groups more nicely.

That's rather easy to work around: have "0020" instead of "20" if the greatest number is greater than 999 but lesser than 9999 (like 2022). I realize this is obvious, but it reminded me that I did the same in my "270BC Wars" game (all sea zones are two digits, also the ones from 01 to 09).

This reminds me that TripleA has a bunch of maps which start with "The". Also in this case, it is pretty bad that they are grouped as if their name starts with "T".

Namely:
The Pact of Steel
The Rising Sun
The Grand War
The Great Northern War
The Rising Sun Variants
The Shogun

In my opinion, mapmakers should write titles capitalizing only nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

Then, the engine should also capitalize the first letter of every title regardless.

Then, the engine should order titles completely ignoring every non-capitalized word and also ignoring the first word if it got capitalized by the engine itself.

For example:

The mapmaker writes the title as "the Pact of Steel".
The program shows the title as "The Pact of Steel".
When ordering, the program does so as if the title is "Pact Steel".

So, in the example, the user would see the title "The Pact of Steel" but it would see it listed between the titles starting in "P9" and the ones starting in "Pb".

I actually had this issue when I was trying to download the "The Shogun" map: I was searching it in the "S" bunches of titles instead of in the "T" ones.

TheDog

@LaFayette
Could this be one option?

Tags entered into GitHub? look like this, with a prefix of 3 characters, to force the order to be displayed on the download screen.
03-****
04-***
05-**
06-*
10-Ancient-Medieval
20-Early Modern
30-Revolutionary
40-WW1
50-WW2-Alternate
52-WW2-Europe
54-WW2-Global
56-WW2-Pacific
60-Nuclear
70-Future
80-Fantasy
90-Abstract

Tag tabs will look like this on screen, with the prefix removed
**** *** ** * Ancient-Medieval Early Modern Revolutionary WW1 WW2-Alternate WW2-Europe WW2-Global WW2-Pacific Nuclear Future Fantasy Abstract

Where

**** Showcase maps, the ones a new player should download first, perhaps one from each Tag group 
*** Excellent map
**  Good map
*   Experimental map
Abstract is a catch all for a map that does not fit any of the above.

Thoughts?

LaFayette

@thedog The set of available tags live in database tables. Once there, they can be applied to individual maps from the lobby toolbox admin menu.

I would not prefix the stars, those might already sort correctly.
I'm nervous to have one star be experimental. My 2 cents any experimental or abandonned maps we should just archive. A map that is barely playable (but otherwise complete) gets 1 star maybe. I do have a pretty significant concern that the download list is a bit of a dumping ground, I'm not sure the point to show so many abandonned and bad maps to the average player (it buries the good maps, less is more)

The number prefixes on era's is pretty legit to get that to sort correctly. The era's look pretty good too.

TheDog

@lafayette
For reference I have 199 maps in my map tag spreadsheet, with 81 of them being 1 *.

I would like to keep the truly bad maps available for download. Perhaps we could redefine the stars.
where

no stars = newly uploaded map
*     Abandoned or unplayable
**    Experimental
***   Good
****  Excellent
***** Best

This way the new maps would put in * or ** and ** would actually mean experimental.

Would that work for you?

@LaFayette

EDIT: Correction, almost 75% of the maps are 1 *, there are 145 (not 81) of them.  So I agree there is a lot of clutter.

LaFayette

@thedog Sure.. I wonder if some of those 81 break along "just half done" and/or "just broken" vs "not quite done and/or barely playable." So, the former, the maps that are just not at all there, those are the ones I wouldn't mind seeing archived.

I don't think it matters too much, the ranking definitions look good and I like the era names. Is your previous post @TheDog a good list to use for era names?

TheDog

@All @lafayette @Cernel @RogerCooper
Hopefully Last call
Tags will look like this, some with a prefix of 3 characters, to force the order to be displayed on the download screen.

where =and after is just a guide

***** =Best/Showcase maps (maybe one from each of the eras/genres below, so could be 5-12 maps)
****  =Excellent 
***   =Good
**    =Experimental
*     =Abandoned or unplayable (could be archived in the future)
10-Ancient-Medieval =(pre 1450)
20-Early Modern     =(1451-1764)
30-Revolutionary    =(1765-1869)
40-WW1              =(1870-1930)
50-WW2-Global       =(1931-1945) 
52-WW2-Europe       =(1931-1945)
54-WW2-Pacific      =(1931-1945)
56-WW2-Alternate    =(1931-1945) WW2 theme that does not fit into the other 3 WW2
60-Nuclear          =(1946-2100) includes near future
70-Future           =(2100+) Star Trek, Star Wars, Sci-Fi
80-Fantasy          = theme Magic, Mythical Creatures like Dragons
90-Abstract-Alternate = a catch all that does not fit the above list, like Steampunk, War of the Relics

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Tag tabs will look like this on screen, ideally with the prefix removed

***** **** *** ** * Ancient-Medieval  Early Modern  Revolutionary  WW1 WW2-Global  WW2-Europe  WW2-Pacific  WW2-Alternate  Nuclear  Future  Fantasy  Abstract

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@LaFayette I have a Lobby sign in TheDog, so when your ready I will start experimenting/entering the tags.