Add-ons client/server support for add-on ratings

[vultraz]

I agree with Pent about disabled ratings being a flag for incomplete content, as well as ice(x3) about some creators not wishing their content to be rated, even if complete.

I must highly disagree, however, with your point, Dugi, about discouraging incomplete addons being downloaded. Of course we don't want new players to view UMC content in a bad light, but sadly we cannot control the quality of code or content uploaded to the server. For example, the Water Era is considered complete, I think, yet has about as many bugs and issues as a wedge of swiss cheese has holes. Then we have content like After the Storm, which, for a long time, remained incomplete. It wasn't until March 2013 that shadowm finally completed Episode III, and before that, what was playable was of great quality.

My point being, completeness is not a reliable indicator of quality. Lobbying for incomplete addons to not be downloaded would only hurt content creators trying to get feedback and stir up interest for their WIP projects.

[Dugi]

Vultraz, I see your example in this light:
Water Era isn't considered complete by the author if I remember correctly, he just doesn't seem to understand what is the meaning of version numbers (they are numbered in the way that 1.4.3 means 143rd version). However, it isn't a work in progress any more, he stopped making new versions to bump the download count after that his add-on stopped being the most downloaded one. It might be called abandoned now, it doesn't look like an abeyance. If it actually was considered complete, it would get very low rating and everybody would know it is low quality and would it would be downloaded very rarely.
After the Storm might not have even needed to be tagged as incomplete, first episode (and second episode later) that is pretty much a standalone story was very playable and the rest was like an expansion being worked on. It had a full story and full functionality (well, it was taken from IftU, but it was fully operational). Neither of the 3 subcampaigns has a story where you can tell here the saga ends, they were more like separate adventures. If it was tagged as incomplete, it would not be downloaded as much, but it would be one of the most popular works in progress (highest download count, most hours players spent playing) and if a player chooses to play an incomplete add-on, After the Storm is the first thing he looks at.
The incomplete add-ons are a second ladder, where the ones on the top are more likely to be noticed that the ones at the bottom of the ladder of complete add-ons. There can be ways to expect the quality of an incomplete add-on, for example from the number of hours players spent playing it in the times of late or number of downloads divided by the time it exists or an average of the two, and add-ons like After the Storm when incomplete are surely the most played and downloaded.

The way my campaign was written can be quite a problematic exception of the system, I've released when I thought it complete, with 60 scenarios, but almost two years later I decided to give an expansion adding extra scenarios and functionality, and I kept expanding it, expanding it. Later I decided when it will be complete again and named it complete when I reached that breakpoint, but I am still developing it from time to time even if it was sort of complete already three and half years ago.

[aquileia]

As to the textbox... I might implement a textbox variant that only accepts numbers and a dot and returns a floating point number. This could be used for your dialog.

[Ravana]

If you put it as textbox you need to understand that not every country uses same way to mark decimal part. (so not only dot)

[Dugi]

My textbox already rejects all inputs that aren't number as invalid, and you see the negative reactions. I'll be replacing it with a slider, it seems.

@Ravana
The whole problem is more complicated than you think, while some languages use dots to separate decimals, and others use commas to separate decimals, there are languages who have their own numbers. As far as I know, Arabs use their own symbols for numbers (I know that Europeans and Americans call their number system arabic numbers, but it's rather about the logic behind them and not the actual symbols, they evolved to completely different symbols through the centuries).

[aquileia]

But your textbox isn't an official mainline widget that blocks alphabetic characters during typing, I guess? Well, it's your choice. The reason I thought you'd dislike a slider is that it only works for integers, so it'll always display 47 if you want to rate 4.7

As to localization - It doesn't support different number systems, but commata are caught.

[Dugi]

What would be harder to do, creating a modified text box that rejects all symbols except digits, dots and commas or a slider that displays something slightly different? I think that the slider would be easier. I'll need to learn how to create modified widgets, though.

[vultraz]

The slider is much, much easier.

[iceiceice]

Off topic:

If you guys are getting into widget-crafting, maybe you will be inspired by this feature request?
https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?21755
(See shadowm's comments.)

[Dugi]

I have no skill with creating GUI widgets, only a bit with using them. Editing a slider would just mean duplicating it (or something with inheritance), and modifying how the string showing the number is created. Multiline text editor widget sounds like something far harder. But I would be grateful if somebody did that (or gave me very good and precise instructions how to do that), it might be useful for the implementation of the in-game review system.

[Dugi]

Made some progress.

[ChaosRider]

I can accept that rating only if this option show up for players who played/won whole campaign , this window with rating should show up at campaign end . Same for eras, after first game in which was used this era to ask player how he like it, or for how much he rate it.
Rating will have no sense when players who rate it:
- didnt play that campaign/era/scenario
- rate it once again (more than once, so it have to depence of used login, for each addon each login can rate only once)
- or they decrease value for rate only cause they know who is author of addon.

[Dugi]

this window with rating should show up at campaign end

Some campaigns don't end, like Mystery Campaign. Other campaigns have just scenarios with increasing difficulty and are hard to complete all, like World Conquest. With eras, finishing one game doesn't mean that the user knows all factions.

didnt play that campaign/era/scenario

They could have played it on a different version of Wesnoth.

rate it once again

Please, not again. I've written that the IP adresses are recorded and any subsequent votes from the same IP will overwrite the previous one.

or they decrease value for rate only cause they know who is author of addon

Ten ChaosRider haters will not cause so much trouble.

Still, troll ratings will affect all add-ons more or less equally, and will be averaged with serious ratings (and can't be spammed easily). Troll reviews will get little votes and it will become obvious that they are troll. Also, somebody can supervise it and delete obviously trolly comments.

[AI]

rate it once again

Please, not again. I've written that the IP adresses are recorded and any subsequent votes from the same IP will overwrite the previous one.

Dynamic IPs, ISP-level NAT (increasingly common now that IPv4 is pretty much finished) and such make that cause its own problems. IPv6 will make IP-filtering even less useful.
I'd rather tie reviews to forum accounts, potentially anonymously.

[Dugi]

Dynamic IPs would not be such a problem, people don't troll if it takes too much effort and switching IP takes some effort. Furthermore, if somebody has a dynamic IP, it usually changes only within a small range. NAT will mean that some votes will disappear, indeed. But I think that it would be overly complicated from the players' side to get to rate something, decreasing the number of reviews pretty low. We have already discussed this, there is no alternative whose drawbacks aren't too high.