Scheduled testing of UMCs

[Crow_T]

A good step for this project would be to have a machine test all (then only modified) add-ons on a daily or weekly basis and flag them if they are broken. Obviously if something hasn't been changed it wouldn't be tested, but if the auto-tester had an error upon opening a campaign/scenario it would flag it as broken. It could then notify the creator or in the least alert users who could then test/fix it. Plus the search could filter for these. As this evolves it could distinguish between errors that make something still playable and things that won't even open. Having broken campaigns on the server is OK in an FOSS kind of way, but people can be turned off by it and it can come across as hacky if one needs to search for working adventures. Maybe a good GSOC project?

[Anonymissimus]

Not all campaigns are made for debug-jumping through all scenarios. I'm not even sure it would work with my campaign, and probably not with mainline. Consider a unit which is unstored in some prestart event, but which is only stored in a previous scenario if it had been created at some mid-scenario spot.

[alluton]

Sorting out those campaigns which first scenario will trigger error and can't open and then marking them someway would be good. Propably you aren't in add-ons server to search non-functioning campaings.

[Dugi]

Imagine the guy who made Nightmares of Meloen (or some other campaigns near the top of the list, or some other campaign with a lot of downloads and reputation), and won the race to be the first on the list. Once, he makes a new version, checks if it loads, finds a typo, decides to correct it, accidentally writes a letter where it does not belong (easy to do with touchpad turned on), uploads it without checking it again (this petty change of a single letter makes no change), and it gets deleted because it crashes on startup, moving him to the tail of the list and resetting the download count.

Here is my suggestion:
Each add-on on the server would have reviews. Adding reviews would be possible only through the forums, but the game client would allow the people to vote up and vote down if it is descriptive. New and good rated reviews would be shown on the top of the list (old, but good rated reviews not). New reviews would let you learn about temporary problems with the add-on (like version with crash on startup).

Because of people like franz_mp (who download their add-ons themselves to get more downloads, or update when something is approaching instead of updating when something is really new), each vote up or vote down would be stored on the server, remembering the username (of the person logged to the computer), and operating system of the person who voted (the client would send it), and if somebody with the same username and operating system votes again within one month, it would not count (it is not very probable that two people using the same OS and logged to it with the same username would meet, and even if they did, they wouldn't probably notice it because the changes of numbers on the server are counted once per hour).

This should ultimately solve all problems with garbage add-ons or add-ons with an overly shining/overly modest description.

[Ceres]

Dugi, I don't think the idea was to instantly delete something that doesn't work, but rather notify someone who can fix it and flag the camapgin as "currently not working". Development versions often remove/change mainline macros or tags which makes older camapgins crash, so when the uploader wasn't paying much attetion to Wesnoth lately, he could be reminded about those changes.

[pauxlo]

Because of people like franz_mp (who download their add-ons themselves to get more downloads, or update when something is approaching instead of updating when something is really new), each vote up or vote down would be stored on the server, remembering the username (of the person logged to the computer), and operating system of the person who voted (the client would send it), and if somebody with the same username and operating system votes again within one month, it would not count (it is not very probable that two people using the same OS and logged to it with the same username would meet, and even if they did, they wouldn't probably notice it because the changes of numbers on the server are counted once per hour).

I imagine that lots of people are using default usernames like "Administrator" or "User" on some systems.
And if someone really wants to cheat, changing the user name is not really the big problem.

[Dugi]

I imagine that lots of people are using default usernames like "Administrator" or "User" on some systems.

Probably yes, but it is typical only for earlier versions of Windows, on Windows 7 and on Linux, there was no default username (and on Linux an account could not be administrator by default, and I suppose that Mac is similar to it too like in many other things).

And if someone really wants to cheat, changing the user name is not really the big problem.

Yes, but keeping 20 usernames is. And, as I wrote, it has to be also the same operating system, and usually you don't have a lot of them, rarely more than two (like Windows for gaming and Linux for other things).

[Crow_T]

Not all campaigns are made for debug-jumping through all scenarios. I'm not even sure it would work with my campaign, and probably not with mainline. Consider a unit which is unstored in some prestart event, but which is only stored in a previous scenario if it had been created at some mid-scenario spot.

This would be a more advanced case, I think just starting out in a more simple sense, like a campaign won't even start, would be a good beginning- adding more checks can happen early on yet more complex cases can be added as needed when something becomes the next most common case of a campaign being broken. Couldn't a script run through an entire campaign of scenarios, even in a basic sense?

[Pentarctagon]

I imagine that lots of people are using default usernames like "Administrator" or "User" on some systems.

Probably yes, but it is typical only for earlier versions of Windows, on Windows 7 and on Linux, there was no default username (and on Linux an account could not be administrator by default, and I suppose that Mac is similar to it too like in many other things).

Still, how many accounts do you think are out there called Admin/Administrator? Heck, I just used the account types as names: the Administrator account called is Admin, the Standard account is called Standard. Basing this on something that could be reused by anyone and everyone seems rather silly.

[Dugi]

Well, I could not find a better thing. The game has no CD-key, no idea if a unique ID of the OS can be obtained, MAC address can be changed, IP address is changed all the time in many cases. If the game generated a hash code when installing, that would be good. Maybe there is something, but I did not realise. The username seemed relatively improbable to conflict (not likely to have more than 10 000 voters somewhere, that is like 1000 voters for the same operating system, 100 voters for the same language (from the major ones, maybe 200 for english), and it is not very probable that among 100 people, there will be two with the same nickname), but I obviously didn't know how many people have admin or default as username.

[Dixie]

Anyway, isn't there an FPI about add-on ratings or reviews?

[Pentarctagon]

Anyway, isn't there an FPI about add-on ratings or reviews?

A rating system for the add-on server is FPI #32, though I don't think that covers reviews.

[Dugi]

The reason why ratings are on the FPI list is that they would be too subjective. A review can be objective, describing the good sides and also the odd sides of the add-on. And rating the reviews would be to show if they are descriptive and objective, or subjective and agitative, it seemed as a better option than just reviews, because there would be too many of them if it wasn't possible to simply mark that you have the same opinion as somebody else.

[pyrophorus]

Hi !
Yeah, but I think Wesnoth team don't want the addons server mess to be cleared, by them or anyone else, in any way. Many ideas have already been suggested, and all were rejected or ignored. I'll bet these ones will be too.

Friendly,

[Unnheulu]

Why not just use forum usernames like the server does?