Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine
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Commenting here about the proposal renamings at:
https://github.com/triplea-game/assets/pull/40/commits/79a8356d4d4e82bea77554391cc1fb2e17af53ceWithout considering the removed items (your call here) or the changes from plural to singular (not much an opinion here, tho in general I prefer having either all singular or all plural, for consistency (for example, are you sure you want to have forest singular and mountains plural?)), the other renamed things are worsening, in my opinion:
coastal->coast
In a grand strategic game, the actual coast can easily be but a very small portion of the whole territory touching the sea. For example, you can have Italy as a single territory. It would make sense to say that Italy is a coastal territory, but it would not make sense to say that Italy is a coast. Even if the game would be so detailed as having Normandy as a sigle territory, it would definitely sound better to me to define Normandy as a coastal territory, rather than say that Normandy is a coast. Coast would really fit better than coastal only for tactical games.
mires->marsh
Mire (as well as wetland) is a more generic term, encompassing both marshes and swamps, among other things. However, I would agree that marsh is at least better than swamp, if only one of the two would be available.
high_sea->sea
It doesn't make a lot of sense having a "sea" territory, as usually sea zones are all sea. This can apply to some uncommon cases, like maps having "sea zones" represeting rivers, and such, but a division between coastal and non coastal sea zones would be most likely more relevant for a grand strategic game. Even if a game would have a representation of internal waters, the sea is probably going to still be the common type of sea zones, so you would rather want to have a territory effect for the rivers and lakes, leaving the sea as the default (thus no territory effect for it or only for forbidding units altogether). So, in this case, we could rather add a territory effects for "internal" or "river" sea zones (better internal, as I guess such an effect would apply both to rivers and lakes). -
@LaFayette Removing sounds that are not generally used is fairly agreeable, albeit I'm warning you that any of those sounds could be specifically used (and in use), by specifying the path to them, in the sounds properties. If removing, I would rather suggest moving them into some assets, that are not downloaded with the program, but available for mapmakers to find and use.
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@Cernel Indeed my suggestion for an 'assets' repo is a place to put these unused sounds images. AFAIK the sounds marked for removal are completely unused. There were not very many, but of some note, many images were unused.
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@LaFayette I was just saying that in theory there could be maps that have the path to those sounds specified in their properties, thus are using them. However, I would be surprised if this is actually the case and, as a mapmaker, I would not do it.
Generally speaking, this is the main reason why I rather prefer adding all the stuff within my map, even if unnecessarily covering or even duplicating something currently available in assets. So to avoid issues related to possible future changes in the program's assets.
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@Cernel said in Pruning image and sound assets distributed with the game engine:
Commenting here about the proposal renamings at:
https://github.com/triplea-game/assets/pull/40/commits/79a8356d4d4e82bea77554391cc1fb2e17af53ceWithout considering the removed items (your call here) or the changes from plural to singular (not much an opinion here, tho in general I prefer having either all singular or all plural, for consistency (for example, are you sure you want to have forest singular and mountains plural?)), the other renamed things are worsening, in my opinion:
coastal->coast
In a grand strategic game, the actual coast can easily be but a very small portion of the whole territory touching the sea. For example, you can have Italy as a single territory. It would make sense to say that Italy is a coastal territory, but it would not make sense to say that Italy is a coast. Even if the game would be so detailed as having Normandy as a sigle territory, it would definitely sound better to me to define Normandy as a coastal territory, rather than say that Normandy is a coast. Coast would really fit better than coastal only for tactical games.
mires->marsh
Mire (as well as wetland) is a more generic term, encompassing both marshes and swamps, among other things. However, I would agree that marsh is at least better than swamp, if only one of the two would be available.Mire is not commonly used in English at all as a noun... but
rather is generally used as verd... "He got mired down in the details".In close to 50 years of English as my native tongue I have never heard a single person refer to a swamp as a mire.
Generally speaking when someone uses the term Wetlands they are speaking about an area of connected lakes and rivers containing swamps... ergo the de-facto term is swamps when trying to describe a swamp.
What you seem to forget is that what we are trying to do here is use the most common terms in the wide spread use and with the highest level of recognition. Not the most accurate in terms of its dictionary definition.
high_sea->sea
It doesn't make a lot of sense having a "sea" territory, as usually sea zones are all sea. This can apply to some uncommon cases, like maps having "sea zones" represeting rivers, and such, but a division between coastal and non coastal sea zones would be most likely more relevant for a grand strategic game. Even if a game would have a representation of internal waters, the sea is probably going to still be the common type of sea zones, so you would rather want to have a territory effect for the rivers and lakes, leaving the sea as the default (thus no territory effect for it or only for forbidding units altogether). So, in this case, we could rather add a territory effects for "internal" or "river" sea zones (better internal, as I guess such an effect would apply both to rivers and lakes).You mistake the need for a terrain type because it has some effect verses just having one for consistency sake visually while playing a game. Sometimes a terrain effect can be added purely so that they appear at the bottom of the screen no matter what territory you cursor over. It adds a certain sense of continuity to the visual aspect of the game. The same thing can be said for plains... it is usually the terrain that is the basis for other terrains having bonuses or negatives applied to units... but when you add it to a game with terrains... it looks much better if every territory has one (whether it has an effect or not).
The other thing is there could be circumstances where you want a Sea terrain to have an effect. It might not affect a great deal of units... but those effects might be important for the game. An example is forth-coming.
Whether you call it High-Sea or just Sea... is a matter of semantics. Again the goal here is to use the most recognizable term that the vast majority of people are going to understand.
Furthermore, the idea is to keep these descriptors as short as possible. I doubt anybody is going to get lost if a terrain effect is called Mountain or Mountains verses Mountainous.
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@Hepps If not mire, then I would go with wetland. Wetland would also have the benefit of clarifying it is a "land" territory effect, as a marsh or a swamp could really be either a land or a water (that is, sea, in TripleA) territory.
I want also to point out that TripleA has the naming limit of calling water territories as "sea zones", so you are not supposed to have water zones that are not sea, but I see this rather as a limit of the general naming.
I don't think that giving all sea zones the "sea" territory effect just to see the related image would make sense (I'm not saying that having all sea territories having the same sea territory effect would be pointless; for example, I can see a very good use to it for having different combat values for air units in land and sea), and actually I would see it as a wrong use of what territory effects are for, but I guess this is purely subjective. The case of having a "plains" territory effect, doing nothing, is more interesting, but I still think that I'll rather skip having pointless territory effects (and something has to be the default, of course; tho you could decide that the default is "hills", and having territory effects for "plains" and "mountains").
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@Cernel Though also the case of all sea zones having the same "sea" territory effect to set different combat values for air units (from land) looks to me a workaround of something rather related to the more general land/water (actually, land/sea) distinction, that is missing from the engine. This also considering that, then, the battlecalculator would require you to set the "sea" territory effect every time you are in a sea battle, while it should rather automatically use the correct values, depending if the battle is land or sea (talking if the aim is just having some air units with different att/def values depending if battling on land or sea).
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@Cernel If you are battle calculating in a sea territory (or sea zone)... presumably with the sea terrain... then the engine already automatically adds the terrain type.
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@Cernel the renames was so that the territory effects would match territory effects that are in use. I'm sorry to have shifted the goal posts on you a bit, at this point if an image or sound are unused, they are pruned from the main game engine. As such, all of the new territory effects are unused.
If the territory effects being picked up by maps that previously were missing an icon will cause any kind of problem, then the action to take would be to remove the new territory effects.
If we have a new "triplea-maps/assets" repo, then they would have a home available to any map maker that would want to browse them. They could then copy them into their maps and name them as would suit their needs (I believe that pretty much was the original goal with providing a set of terrain effects, to give map makers something to work with).
FWIW, here is the list of all territory effects that are in use, the renames were done so that the territory effects would match something from the list below. It's of course easier and more consistent to rename the new territory effect images than it is to rename the territory effects already in use.
:~/work/maps$ while read map; do grep "territoryEffect" "$map"; done < <(find . -name "*.xml") | grep "territoryEffect name=" | sed 's/^\s*//' | sed 's/.*name="//' | sed 's/".*$//' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | sort | uniq air arctic capital cave city coast confined crossing deep desert earth entrenched fire forest fortified hill hills houseaethalos housebarowulf houseculst housedurn houseellowstan houseflynn housegregoran housejohanesal housekulfras houselannassey housepriminorth housestahl housetallimore houseustrahan housewilfred i ii iii island iv jungle lake land_territory major_river marsh mountain mountains northerncommand northrecruiting o ocean open pass plains port river sahara sea settlement shallow snow southrecruiting swamp t trees tundra ungovernable urban v walled waste water woodstl;dr: either the renames are useful or we remove all of the new territory effects and put them into 'triplea-maps/assets' (or some sort of other similar file hosting)
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@LaFayette Also since territory effects are rather niche, I think we should rather think about devising a good, coherent, limited set of territory effects to be the default for relatively basic games, from now on, rather than worrying too much, or at all, about what is being currently used or named by the relatively few maps having them, that were made at various points in the past.
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@Cernel For example, I see you have both "hill" and "hills", yet not both "forest" and "forests". I really don't think that the decision whether to have or not to have territories named "hills" or "forests", instead of "hill" or "forest", should be dependent from any of them existing in some maps somewhere.
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@Cernel your making my brain hurt I concede LOL
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@Cernel that list is the set of all territory effects from all maps available for download. If territory effects is rarely used, why provide a default? It seems the terrain type is just very map-specific, providing a default may not make sense. If it does, we should then choose something that would fit the common denominator, eg: pact of steel.
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@Cernel said in General Map Making Questions!:
Australians and the Canadians
All maps with those players had units for it, with exception of just one, sleeping giant.
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Funny enough, 'Dutch' would not be a bad one to include with the game engine, 35 maps use those units. The units included with game engine are used by over 100 maps each, with exception of italians (83). Essentially all other player units are used by under 15.
@Cernel here is a full listing of all players defined across all maps available for download with count of how many maps use that player:
1 Aalenian 1 Abyssal_Horde 9 AI 1 AI_Allies 1 AI_Americans 2 AI_Armenia 1 AI_Balkans 3 AI_Barbarians 1 AI_Blue 2 AI_Bosporus 1 AI_British 1 AI_Brown 1 AI_Carthage 1 AI-China 1 AI_Chinese 1 AI__computer 2 AI_Confederate_Commanders 1 AI_Eastern_Europe 2 AI_Egypt 1 AI_French 1 AI_Friendly 1 AI_GALAXY 1 AI_Germans 2 AI_GreekCityStates 1 AI_Green 2 AI_Macedonia 4 AI_Neutral 1 AI_Orange 2 AI_Parthia 2 AI_Pergamon 1 AI_Pink 2 AI_Pontus 1 AI_Purple 1 AI_Red 1 AirNavySupport 1 AI_RomanRepublic 1 AI_Russians 1 AI_Scandinavia 2 AI_Seleucid 1 AI-SinoPact 1 AI_Turkey 2 AI_Union_Commanders 1 AI_Yellow 1 AlAnfa 3 Albania 1 Alliance 2 Allies 134 Americans 2 Angmar 7 Anzac 21 ANZAC 1 Aquella 2 Arabia 1 ArabLeague 2 Arcadia 1 Archenland 1 Armenia 2 Army-Group-Center 2 Army-Group-North 2 Army-Group-South 2 Arnor 2 Arryn 1 Asai 1 Asakura 1 Asbirningar 1 Assyria 3 Australia 12 Australians 5 Austria 5 Austria-Hungary 3 AustrianEmpire 5 Austrians 1 Austro_Hungarians 1 Bajocian 1 Balkan 5 Balkan_States 2 Balkan-States 5 Baltic 2 Baratheon 2 Barbarians 1 Bathonian 1 Beiyang 1 Belgium 1 BlackArmy 6 Black-Sun 1 BlockhousesFire 6 Blue 1 BlueArmy 1 Blue_Army 1 Bolshevik 1 Bolsheviks 1 Borbarad 1 Borg 2 Bosporus 4 Brazil 1 Brazilians 5 Brigantes 9 Britain 135 British 1 British_Armament 1 British-Colonies 1 British-India 1 British_Movement 5 Brittonic 1 Brown 1 BrownZombies 5 Brythons 5 Bulgaria 5 Caledonians 1 Callovian 7 Canada 12 Canadians 1 Caravans 1 Cardassians 8 Carthage 5 Celtic 1 CentralAmericans 3 CentralCommand 4 Changer 1 ChihliClique 6 China 76 Chinese 1 Chmmr 1 Chosokabe 1 CitizensMilitia 2 ColonialFrench 2 Commonwealth 1 Communist 2 Communists 1 Confederacy 2 Confederate 1 Confederation 1 Constitutionalist 1 Conventionist 6 Corellian-Security-Force 6 Corporate-Sector-Authority 1 Croatia 1 Crowton 1 Dala-Sturlungar 2 Dale 2 Danish 2 DanubeAxis 2 Date 1 Denmark 1 Denmark-Norway 2 Diseases 2 DolGuldur 1 Dominion 2 Dothraki 1 Druuge 35 Dutch 5 Dwarves 1 Eastern 2 Eastern-Americans 1 EFF 12 Egypt 1 Egyptians 1 Egyptus 4 Elves 3 Empire 4 England 1 English 1 Erie 1 Escorts 2 EuroForce 1 Europe 2 ExiledAllies 1 Fallen_Empire 1 Federation 1 FengtianClique 6 Finland 17 Finns 1 Flame_Nation 1 Flemma 1 Forest_Folk 19 France 2 FreeCities 4 Freefolk 1 FreeFolk 1 FreeFrench 3 Free_French 1 FreeRussian 50 French 1 FrenchColonial 1 French-Colonies 2 Furyondy 1 Galatia 1 Gallia 1 GameSetup 1 Gaul 4 GDI 5 Germanic 128 Germans 1 Germans_Armament 1 GermansBlockhouseAA 1 Germans_Movement 16 Germany 6 G.Hisaichi 1 Gilcrest 6 G.Masaharu 1 Gnolls 1 Goblins 1 GoblinsAndOgres 3 Gondor 1 Graece 2 Grands 1 GrayZombies 2 Great_Kingdom 1 Greco_Serbian_Alliance 3 Greece 5 GreekCityStates 1 Greeks 4 Green 1 GreenArmy 1 Green_Army 1 Greenskins 1 GreenZombies 2 Greyjoy 1 Guominjun 1 Habsburg_Monarchy 1 Hannover 2 Harad 1 Haradrim 1 Hatakeyama 5 Hattic 1 Haukdaelir 5 Hellenic 1 Hettangian 2 HighElves 5 Hisaichi 1 Hispania 2 Hojo 2 Hoshida 2 Humans 4 Hungary 1 Huron 6 Hutt-Cartel 1 Illyrian 1 Ilwrath 1 Imperial 6 Imperial-Remnant 1 Independent 6 India 8 Indians 1 Iran 1 Iranians 5 Iraq 8 Iraqis 1 Iron_League 1 Israel 1 Italia 83 Italians 1 Italian_States 14 Italy 2 Iuz 1 Jandice 6 Japan 108 Japanese 6 Jedi-Order 4 Jordan 1 Kallela 2 Keoland 1 Ket 1 Khand 1 Kimmeridgian 2 KingdomOfPrussia 1 Klingons 1 KMT 1 KNIL 1 Kobolds 1 Kor-Ah 2 Korea 1 Kuomintang 1 Lancia 2 Lannister 1 LeagueofFiveProvinces 1 Lebanon 1 Lionia 3 Locals 1 Loch_Island 1 Lorenzia 2 Lorien 2 Low-Countries 6 Macedonia 1 Maflemia 1 Mali 1 Malliton 1 Manchukwo 2 Manchuria 6 Mandalorians 1 Manstein_Army_Group 2 Martell 1 Martians 2 Masaharu 2 Mazdak 1 MegaCorp 2 Meijou 1 Mexicans 1 Mexico 1 Michigan 1 MidEast 5 Minor_Axis_Powers 1 MinorClans 1 Minotaurs 1 Miyoshi 14 Mongolians 3 Mordor 1 Mori 1 Mula-Svinfellingar 1 Murlocs 1 Mycon 1 NAF 1 Narsia 1 Nationalist 1 NationalistSpain 1 NATO 1 NATO-America 1 NATO-Europe 1 NATO-USAN 1 Nature 1 NavalBombardment 1 Nemo_Pirates 6 Neutral 20 Neutral_Allies 18 Neutral_Axis 1 Neutral-China 1 Neutral_CP 1 Neutral_Greece 1 Neutral_MidEast 1 NeutralNations 1 Neutral_Nations 2 NeutralOcean 1 Neutral_Polish 1 Neutral_Russia 2 Neutrals 1 Neutral_Skandinavia 1 Neutral_Spain 18 Neutral_True 1 Neutral_Turkey 1 Neutral-USA 1 Neutral-USSR 1 Neutral_Yugoslavia 6 New-Republic 1 NightsWatch 1 N.Japan 2 N.Korea 4 Nod 2 NonAligned 1 noone 1 NorAm 1 Nordur-Sturlungar 1 North 1 Northern 3 NorthernCommand 2 Northmen 5 Numidia 1 Nylita 2 Nyrond 2 Oda 1 Oddaverjar 1 Ogres 1 Ontario 2 Orange 3 Orcs 1 Orz 1 Others 1 Otomo 3 Ottoman 4 OttomanEmpire 1 Ottoman_Empire 1 Ottoman_Empire-Ukraina_Cossacks 6 Ottomans 1 Oxfordian 1 ParaSurprise 5 Parthia 1 Pergamon 1 Persia 1 Persians 2 Philipines 3 Picts 1 Pink_Army 1 Pirate_Federation 5 Pirates 1 Pkunk 2 PLA.China 1 Pliensbachian 1 Poland-Lithuania 2 Polish 1 Polis_League 1 Pomarj 1 Pontus 1 Portsmouth 1 Portugal 2 Portugese 2 Pro-Allies-Neutral 2 Pro-Axis-Neutral 2 Pro-Confederate 2 Pro-Union 1 Prussia 2 Puppet_States 1 Raiders 6 Red 1 RedArmy 1 Red_Army 1 Republic 3 Rhun 2 RoChina 3 Rohan 1 Roma 4 Roman 5 Romania 16 Romanians 5 Romanic 6 RomanRepublic 1 Romulans 22 Russia 1 Russian_Flanks 133 Russians 1 Russian_Stalingrad_Defenders 3 Ryuzoji 1 Sacred_Order 3 Saruman 1 Satellites 1 Satomi 1 SaudiEgyptians 1 Saurian_Alliance 2 Saxony 2 Scarlet_Brotherhood 1 SCO-China 1 SCO-CIS 1 SCO-PSC 3 Scrin 1 SEATO 3 Seleucid 3 Serbia 1 Sharn 1 Shevik 2 Shimazu 1 Sinemurian 1 sixth_Army 1 Skaftafells-Svinfellingar 2 S.Korea 5 Slavic 1 Slovakia 1 Slylandro 1 SmallRaces 1 South 2 SouthAfrica 2 South_Africa 1 South-Africa 1 SouthAmericans 1 Southern 3 SouthernCommand 1 Soviet_Union 4 Sowjets_Puppet_States 1 Space 4 Spain 3 Spanish 1 Spathi 2 Stark 1 Suel 1 Superior 1 Surda 1 Svedic 6 Sweden 1 Swedish 1 Syracuse 5 Syria 2 Takeda 2 Targaryen 1 Terrabania 7 Thai 4 Thailand 7 Thais 1 Thorwal 1 Thraddash 1 Tithonian 1 Toarcian 1 Tokugawa 1 Toyotomi 2 True-Neutral 2 Tully 9 Turkey 1 Turks 1 Turquoise_Army 3 Tusken-Raiders 2 Tyrell 1 Uesugi 1 UK 15 UK_Pacific 1 Umgah 1 Undead 3 Union 5 UnitedKingdom 1 United_Kingdom 1 United_States 1 Urakami 1 Ur-Quan 2 Usa 6 USA 1 USAirforce 1 USArmy 4 USSR 1 Utwig 1 Uyghur_Khaganate 1 Varden 1 Vatnsfirdingar 1 Veep-Neep 1 Vestur-Sturlungar 2 VichyFrance 1 VichyFrench 3 Vichy_French 2 Viet.Minh 2 Vietnam 1 Violet 1 Visigoth 1 Vulcans 1 Vux 1 Warlock_Council 1 WarsawPact 5 Welsh 1 Western 2 Western-Americans 1 WFF 1 WhiteArmy 1 White_Khanate 1 Winged_Dominion 1 Winter_Kingdom 2 WoodlandRealm 1 Xenuria 5 Yamamoto 1 Yamana 1 Yaroslav 1 Yellow 1 Yellow_Army 1 YunnanClique 1 Zeep-Zeep 1 ZoqFotPik -
@LaFayette Definitely the Dutch deserve to stay in assets. Not sure if more or less than the Finns. Of course, they don't matter for the usual spring 1942 or later scenarios.
To be sure, when you say maps are you actually meaning maps or games? For example, if a map has inside 3 xml, all of them having Dutch, does that count for 1 or for 3?
I really don't see what is the problem providing even scarcely important nations like Canada in the default assets (tho Canada itself was economically about as strong as Italy, due to much higher productivity per person). That is really almost no additional download time or whatever other costs, and the benefit is that whatever new mapmaker will easily have the units for it available, without having to go search for the secondary assets repository in GitHub. The fact that many other maps have the units don't count, as the noob mapmaker will not know if he's allowed to liberally grab whatever he wants from repositories of unclear copyright state.
The puppet states I hate that as a country, so I would be glad the name disappears totally, instead. I cannot stand those maps that have a single country for all of them.
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Definitely the Dutch deserve to stay in assets.
'Dutch' would not be a bad one to include with the game engine,
To be clear, 'dutch' were never part of the assets in the game engine.
Assets in the game engine are there to avoid massive duplication and redundant downloads. Canadians were duplicated in every map that used them except for one. The other unit images were duplicated in every map that used them.
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@LaFayette Yes I knew that Dutch were not in assets. I meant they are a miss.
What is duplicated and what is not is really not a good basis for any decisions. It is virtually random really; you can have some maps that duplicate them or don't without a clear reason to it, either ways, also for the basic maps. You can easily find many cases in which you could remove those assets from those maps, or not, and I don't think there is much reasoning behind it, in terms of wanting to fix the units images rather than having what TripleA offers overtime.
Also I don't see why having so much more concerns about what is currently duplicated. That's just what happened in the past; it doesn't mean anything more, and it is not necessarily more important than what it is going to be for the future. For example, if an important country would be currently absent in assets, of course no games would use it, cause they can't, but this doesn't mean it shouldn't be there.
That also for the units. For example, I strongly believe that a "cavalry" unit should be added to all subfolders in assets, due to its historical relevance for WW2, even tho, obviously, it would have no use in the moment you add it (as, of course, no maps use something that doesn't exist yet).
Also, just to be sure, are you considering also the cases in which maps duplicate some units subfolders, but still rely on assets for some of the units of those players?
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What is duplicated and what is not is really not a good basis for any decisions
Can you elaborate and describe what you think would be a good basis? Are you thinking the assets folder downloaded with the game engine should be more of an image repository for map makers? I'm completely unaware of that being the recommended way to find images, usually map makers look at existing maps to find starter examples of what they are looking to build.
You can easily find many cases in which you could remove those assets from those maps, or not, and I don't think there is much reasoning behind it
I suspect there were at times reasoning behind the choice whether to include assets with a map or not. It could be freedom to change them, additions and modifications to the core set, and/or perhaps just ignorance that it was unnecessary.
Also I don't see why having so much more concerns about what is currently duplicated. That's just what happened in the past; it doesn't mean anything more, and it is not necessarily more important than what it is going to be for the future.
The duplication indicates non-usage.
Basically it comes down to that there is a real cost to including images, particularly unused images with the game engine. Whether you choose to look at or respect that cost is up to you. Again, the full set of maps is over 7GB on disk. It seems you are suggesting the game engine should be a repository for map maker images, " I strongly believe that a "cavalry" unit should be added to all subfolders in assets,". The answer is a hard no, the game assets never were a repository for game images, it's more of a cache to avoid redundant downloads and map's being larger than they need. Do recall that maps were typically downloaded over 100Kb/s connections and most took a few minutes. Optimizing the balance between game engine and map download was a decision struck some years ago.
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@LaFayette said in General Map Making Questions!:
What is duplicated and what is not is really not a good basis for any decisions
Can you elaborate and describe what you think would be a good basis?
Other than looking around what it is used and what is not, mostly just to take care not breaking maps by removing something, the TripleA assets should provide a high coverage of any possible needs for historical WW2 games (items currently missing may be cavalry, transport plane, train, railways, lorry/track units, etc., if anyone would want to work on such images and the developers would like such additions), in line with offering at least a main way to use what the program offers currently (for example, it would make sense adding a train and railway units for all asset players, since when the option "requiresUnitsToMove" was added; as currently a mapmaker cannot really use that option realistically in a ww2 setting, without having to do graphic work for it). Little point being stingy, as I doubt that any numbers of such additions would increase download time of more than 1 second.
Are you thinking the assets folder downloaded with the game engine should be more of an image repository for map makers? I'm completely unaware of that being the recommended way to find images, usually map makers look at existing maps to find starter examples of what they are looking to build.
Not sure what you mean with "starter examples" here. In case, maybe make a clear statement somewhere that all TripleA maps are to be fully considered public domain and anyone can take anything from them with no limits whatsoever, comprising no need of giving any credits. If you are not doing that, I don't think that maps' assets grabbing would be a good substitute of getting stuff from the surely free program's assets, if that is what we are saying here.
You can easily find many cases in which you could remove those assets from those maps, or not, and I don't think there is much reasoning behind it
I suspect there were at times reasoning behind the choice whether to include assets with a map or not. It could be freedom to change them, additions and modifications to the core set, and/or perhaps just ignorance that it was unnecessary.
You can simply find an example of this in the basic maps, from "world_war_ii_classic" onwards:
v1: Has no units folder.
v2: Has no units folder.
v3: Has the units folder, fully covering (I suppose).
v4, v5, v6: Have the units folder, fully covering (I suppose) (and with also a second "Chinesev3" variant subfolder, for a different colourization of "Chinese", except that "Chinese" is not even a player...).
Global: Has the units folder, fully covering (I suppose)
the pact of steel (can we rename the folder just as "pact_of_steel", instead of "the_pact_of_steel"?): Has the units folders, but only for some additional units, not covered in assets (for example, "air_transport").I believe the default colours of assets are tailored for "the pact of steel", so the v3 folder needs at least the Chinese subfolder, to have the different colourization for such player. Other than this, I think v4, v5 and v6 having the units folder is purely redundant, and I assume they could (or should?) do without it, like Classic and Revised.
So, I doubt that the fact that v1 and v2 don't have the folder while v4, v5 and v6 do is due to some actual reasoning behind it, but I suppose it is just kind of random; some mapmakers adding it, some others not (let me know if I'm not seeing something).Also I don't see why having so much more concerns about what is currently duplicated. That's just what happened in the past; it doesn't mean anything more, and it is not necessarily more important than what it is going to be for the future.
The duplication indicates non-usage.
The duplication, in all those cases in which maps are just using the same assets that were in the program when the map was made, or at some point in the past, probably just means that the mapmaker dumped the units folder there just to be safe (maybe for mistrusts of TripleA's assets reliability overtime?), or because it liked it better that way, for no particular reasons, or maybe even because he didn't realize that he didn't actually need to provide a units folder, in that case.
Basically it comes down to that there is a real cost to including images, particularly unused images with the game engine. Whether you choose to look at or respect that cost is up to you. Again, the full set of maps is over 7GB on disk. It seems you are suggesting the game engine should be a repository for map maker images, " I strongly believe that a "cavalry" unit should be added to all subfolders in assets,". The answer is a hard no, the game assets never were a repository for game images, it's more of a cache to avoid redundant downloads and map's being larger than they need. Do recall that maps were typically downloaded over 100Kb/s connections and most took a few minutes. Optimizing the balance between game engine and map download was a decision struck some years ago.
I guess that's your opinion. Of course, that also means that TripleA would be definitively stuck supporting the needs of the past only, with no possibility whatsoever to redefine it for the future, cause if an image is not currently provided, then of course no maps are currently using it. If such a point of view would have been actually the official one for this program, then now we should see in assets only the players and the units needed for WW2 Classic, so no artillery, no Italians, etc., cause those were obviously added to assets at some point, then used by WW2 Revised, Pact of Steel, etc., instead of having to add such assets in the maps themselves. Notice also that in case of Pact of Steel (the Chinese assets are for that, not for v3), we are not even talking of "clones", but a custom map, like whatever custom maps may be made now on.
