Map Tags for release 2.6

Cernel

@cernel Personally, I believe that it is virtually impossible to set apart Science-Fiction from Fantasy. Works of Science-Fiction may sometimes contain scientific constructs which virtually every scientist in the world would be sure they are scientifically impossible just as much as Gandalf's magic powers: they are often not writted by scientists (or without the consulence of any scientists) to start with.

I'll cite "Jurassic Park" (usually considered to be science-fiction) also to make everyone notice that science-fiction doesn't need to be set in our putative future (as this novel was published in 1990 and the events in it, as far as generating dinosaurs go, happened before 1989), so I also disagree with having "SciFi" in the thing explaining what the "Future" Era is (meaning that, if something is science-fictional, this doesn't imply that it is set in our future or in a fictional world which has to be scientifically more advanced than our own in everything).

According to wikipedia, what merges fantasy and science-fiction, amongst other genres, is "speculative fiction".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction

Such fiction covers various themes in the context of supernatural, futuristic, and other imaginative realms.[1] The genres under this umbrella category include, but are not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, horror, superhero fiction, alternate history, utopian and dystopian fiction, and supernatural fiction, as well as combinations thereof (for example, science fantasy).

So, I guess we can have a section called "Speculative", instead of "Fantasy". However, I really don't agree with the use that wikipedia makes of the term speculative, as such a term makes me think that you are conjecturing about something that may have happened or may happen within the real world, so I'm not seeing how something having nothing to do with reality (like "The Lord of the Rings") can be considered "speculative".

Anyways, my main point remains that I think "fantasy", as well as "science-fiction", are concepts which are not related to any era. So I think an era classification should not have "fantasy" in it: instead of having an "Era/Genre" classification I rather suggest having a "Genre" classification and, if the genre is "Historical", then you have the "Era" as subset of it, possibly only for the "Historical" maps. Of course, it would be needed to decide whether or not something like "Jurassic Park", which is set within our history but it is obviously something which never actually happened, would count as "historical" or not (meaning clearly defining the term).

TheDog

@Cernel @LaFayette
If we put the Other in Fantasy and call it Fantasy would that be OK for you both?

To get the project over the line we could lump Future+Other+Fantasy, maybe call it Non-Historic?

Within a week of starting I aim to;
Tag all maps with the Era/Genre Tag, so a new upload will be blank.
The Star Tag will be a copy from its current status, so all maps should have this Tag
The AI Tag is even more subjective, I have only rated about 50 maps, so will need help with the other 100 or so.

LaFayette

@cernel said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

Science-Fiction from Fantasy

I do think the distinction is clear:

Lord of the Rings: fantasy
Star Trek: science fiction
Star Wars: fantasy (then eventually it transitioned into sci-fi when they gave the 'force' a physical explanation and it was no longer just 'magic')
Jurassic Park: sci-fi
Starship Troopers: sci-fi
The Last AirBender: fantasy

To get the project over the line we could lump Future+Other+Fantasy, maybe call it Non-Historic?

@TheDog Requiring every map to have a 'tag' value is really changing this concept to 'categories', tags are generally meant to be one dimensional and perhaps not applying to some maps at all. Some other tags could be "fan favorite", the map author could be another.

Categorizing is much more difficult than just tagging as you need to create a taxonomy where everything fits. We can highlight new maps perhaps in the tag editor and allowing some maps to have simply blank tags rather than forcing them into a category would be my suggestion.

Cernel

@thedog This is my current take for the historical labels.
Notice that the labels are merely period labels: a war which happens somewhere in the world in 1930 would count as "WW2" no matter if it has nothing to do with the second world war.
On the other hand, the period refers primarily to Europe, so something can be labelled differently if it belongs to a technological level more akin to a different epoque: a war fought in Japan in the sixteen century can be labelled as ancient/middle instead of as early modern.

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...)

The main changes with what currently is at the opening post are:

Instead of having "renaissance" (also far too stretched till 1790), "napoleonic" (very stretched too) and "american civil war" (too American), you have only "early modern" and "early industrial".
The "contemporary" (1945 onwards) is split into "early atomic" and "digital".

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

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

.
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?