Adding "All Official Maps" in Server Configurator does not avoid repeats

[Pieface]

I realized today while playing in the super awesome "New England Adventure" server that there were a bunch of repeated maps in the map list. Vi told me this was because she selected "All Official Maps" as well as adding some of the maps by themselves. It's not a big deal, but perhaps eventually you could add a few lines of code to the game that prevent maps from appearing on the list if they are repeats?

[Karl]

uhh hmmm... All official maps means all official maps... not all official maps excluding maps you select o_O.

This seems like it would be waay too confusing and just wrong. but it's late so ill think on it a little

[Vi*]

No exclusion. I mean that I had a list of maps in my server, and when the new official map option became available I added that too. Some of the maps I had already in the server were official maps, so they now are repeated in the maplist.

The beauty of "all official maps" is that I don't have to reference a list of all official maps to get them there. But if I want to take off the repeats manually, I do need to reference a list, and hence it does not save me time anymore. Not a big deal, though.

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by Vi*

No exclusion. I mean that I had a list of maps in my server, and when the new official map option became available I added that too. Some of the maps I had already in the server were official maps, so they now are repeated in the maplist.

The beauty of "all official maps" is that I don't have to reference a list of all official maps to get them there. But if I want to take off the repeats manually, I do need to reference a list, and hence it does not save me time anymore. Not a big deal, though.

I think the goal is to save time for people in the future, as in if they add a new map you don't have to worry about adding it to your list. I don't think the purpose of this feature was to help you deal with saving time. But it really should only take a couple of minutes at most and then you will be set!

[Vi*]

Yeah, of course. Really the only concern is that the most popular of maps made by the community often turn into official ones, so if you like to keep your server full of good new maps you might end up with repeats when an update happens. Still though, not a big deal.

[DiogenesDog]

Maybe just have the official maps display in a dif color in the server configurator? easier to spot them then at least.

[Karl]

Originally Posted by DiogenesDog

Maybe just have the official maps display in a dif color in the server configurator? easier to spot them then at least.

Oh, now i finally understand what's going on. So the problem is you add tbd_heights when it's a community map and then when we make it official tbd_heights is in your list twice... Does this sum up the problem?

What I could do is strip all maps that have the same name as an official map. For example, say your map list is

<All official>, community/tbd_heights

. When tbd_heights becomes official I can remove all path-prefixed versions of tbd_heights.

Does this sound like a good idea? I'm leaning towards no since it will just lead to confusion and it's best to just have you maintain your launcher_config.xml if you're adding community maps.

[Pieface]

Originally Posted by Karl

Oh, now i finally understand what's going on. So the problem is you add tbd_heights when it's a community map and then when we make it official tbd_heights is in your list twice... Does this sum up the problem?

That's right, sorry if I didn't explain it well in the beginning. I agree with Dio that if it doesn't make sense to implement some code to avoid repeats, then a different color in server_configurator for official maps (perhaps a red or even bolder black) would do the trick nicely to make it easier to weed out the maps we have added that will be repeated when the list of "all official maps" are added. In short, it would be nice to have a simple way to make sure that we are not adding the same map more than once, but if it's too much hassle I guess it doesn't really matter that much.

[Karl]

In the map rotation list I will highlight official maps green. Sound good?

[Pieface]

Originally Posted by Karl

In the map rotation list I will highlight official maps green. Sound good?

That sounds great, and it would be good to do it for the full map list as well (so that you don't have one map in your list twice). That way the map can't appear twice in the rotation or the map list for the server without you noticing it!

In addition, perhaps instead of removing the map from the list in configurator you could just only have the server load one of each map with the same name? So, something like this (just my sketch of a possible routine without the actual code):

(initiate server launch sequence);
list1={};
add maps [official maps] to list;
if map_x is in the list already move on to next line, else add map_x to list;
other maps: same as above;
(have server load maps in list1 for the map list that you can access in-game);

Obviously I have no idea what actual code you'd use or if there would be a far better way, but that was the general thing I had in mind. This way the user could tell that they have map_x in their configurator list, but if it also appears in the official map list the server wouldn't load it. The main point of this would be to reduce the clutter of the map list when you're trying to changemap in-game, so that you don't have to reference the official map list to avoid repeats. It's obviously not that big a deal, but I think it would make things a lot less cluttered for people who don't have time to constantly check the official map list!

Edit: Obviously just highlighting the official maps a different color would make things almost as easy.

[Karl]

Map List is a unique set I.E. there are no repeats

Map rotation list intentionally allows repeats so you can customize the experience however you want... say you have a favorite map or something.

For example:
Map List:
my_favorite_map
other_map1
other_map2

Map rotation list:
my_favorite_map
other_map1
my_favorite_map
other_map2

NOTE: adding any "All official * maps" breaks any rotation you tried to specify.

Does that make sense? Anyways I'll just add the highlighting.

[Pieface]

It definitely makes sense to allow repeats in the map rotation list. However, if I have both "official maps" and tbd_core in my map list, does that prevent tbd_core from showing up twice in the list you can access by going to /changemap? Or is the list you access by going to /changemap the map rotation list?

I had always presumed the /changemap list was the full map list of the ones you add to the server, in which case it doesn't make sense for it to be possible to have repeats of maps in that list. Am I missing something or does that make sense?

[Karl]

Originally Posted by Pieface

It definitely makes sense to allow repeats in the map rotation list. However, if I have both "official maps" and tbd_core in my map list, does that prevent tbd_core from showing up twice in the list you can access by going to /changemap? Or is the list you access by going to /changemap the map rotation list?

I had always presumed the /changemap list was the full map list of the ones you add to the server, in which case it doesn't make sense for it to be possible to have repeats of maps in that list. Am I missing something or does that make sense?

Ok /changemap console command now works correctly (and sorts the list too).

Next patch this will be in.

[Pieface]

Great! It's always nice to hear feedback on an idea that actually gets implemented. Sorry for being so confusing as to what I actually was looking for in my previous posts.