Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

[Paulomat4]

well yeah, I excluded quite a few already like everyone that's below version 1.0, those that aren't really campaigns but rather scenarios and those like langrisser sample campaign or the campaign how-to.

[Ravana]

It would be more useful in sortable format.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

[Aldarisvet]

2 Paulomat4

Great work!
But for me some campaigns can be below criteria. I know that Dance Macabre, for example, have low-quality portraits and sprites and also strangely looking maps (despite funny storyline). Same could be about Elensefar.
But probably we let people to decide first, I dont think that this two would go atop in the vote.

____________________

Just for curiosity I made a list of top-12 campaigns by downloads. That would not say really much but at least partly can predict results of a vote.

1. LotI
2. Song of Fire.
3. After the Storm.
4. Rough Life.
5. Beasty Tale.
6. New Order.
7. Invasion from the Unknown.
8. A Group in War.
9. Fate of a Princess.
10. Bad Moon Rising.
11. Secret of the Ancients.
12. Soldier of Wesnoth.

[Inky]

Going through that huge list of campaigns seems like unnecessary work when, as Aldarisvet mentioned, many are not going to be voted for anyway.

We already have some idea of the most popular campaigns (there is the most downloaded list in the above post, and the What are the best usermade campaigns? thread in the user's forum). So maybe we could find a polling site which has an "other" option which allows people to write in suggestions, so we'd have those ~15 or so popular campaigns plus a write-in option?

p.s. I noticed Paulomat's list is missing the Ooze campaign.

edit: I think Aldarisvet's idea below works too; I thought of that too and it may be the best solution even if it is kind of stone age
edit2: Regarding Aldarisvet's idea: we could make a forum poll with 14 popular campaigns plus an "Other" option where you post your suggestion; this would sort of reduce the counting.

[Aldarisvet]

So we got the answer that we are not permitted to use more than 15-options poll in this forum: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=596586
I do not think that it is suitable to make a poll using external service because this would create very inconvenient necessity for the masses of people to register in a new service, also this would create a risk of manipulation by using multiple newly created accounts (I am not imply that someone will try to do this, but still).

But I have a solution

We will create a thread, put a list of campaigns to the first post, then everyone who want to vote just would make a post there and will name campaigns he vote for. I think that for 70 campaigns it would be possible to let people vote for 4 or even 5 campaigns. That means that the vote will not be anonymous, it would be open, but I do not think that this is a problem. It would take a little effort to count results, but that is not much problem. Yea, we will vote and count it manually as in pre-tech era, as in the Roman Senate.

What you guys think?

[skeptical_troll]

I declare my loyalty to the roman senate and support the idea. Simple, effective and transparent. I guess nobody should be ashamed of revealing which campaigns she/he likes. For me 5 votes for each user is fine.

[Aldarisvet]

I made a vote thread in Users Forum:

Feel free to participate:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44112&p=596605

[Velensk]

Although I like my own campaigns, I'm not sure they're what you're looking for here as they all require a different era and I think you want to keep your dependancies limited.

I'm not going to say "don't use them", just keep this in mind.

[Aldarisvet]

Although I like my own campaigns, I'm not sure they're what you're looking for here as they all require a different era and I think you want to keep your dependancies limited.

I'm not going to say "don't use them", just keep this in mind.

I do not think that including eras on the Pack would be a problem. If we speaking about Era of Chaos it weights only 5.26 Mb, that is not much at all. Unfortunatelly something should be done with music add-on which weights much, but this concerns many campaigns dependencies and this question can be solved later individually (by radically reducing set of custom music tracks I suppose).
___________

Also there is a specific issue, I know you all authors here in the forum, and it is kinda stupid to vote for your own campaigns. So dont do it, but dont be shy and vote for others campaigns. Even dispite it is somehow disadvantageous Finally all of this is for Wesnoth and not for determine who is the best author.

[nuorc]

I do not think that including eras on the Pack would be a problem.

Generally I agree, I don't know how that could be handled best. If I got it right the eras are sometimes much bigger than the campaigns. How do we avoid that players are in for a 'bad surprise' ('For this 100KiB campaign you have to download 5MiB era') or that they potentially have to unnecessarily download the eras multiple times?

This would also tie-in to Paulomat's idea of having a button on the title screen linking to the add-on server.

But there already is a button on the title screen linking to the add-on server! (It's labeled 'Add-ons'.)

Spoiler:

This made me want to push my suggestion to include a tip of the day about the Add-ons button; could you help me with a wording suggestion?

Code: Select all

Try the 'Add-ons' button to see additional downloadable content like user made campaigns, eras, map packs and other resources.

- [i]The Wesnoth Tactical Guide[/i]

Or with more 'excitement'?

Code: Select all

Try the 'Add-ons' button to see additional downloadable content like user made campaigns, eras, map packs and other resources to vastly expand your personal Wesnoth universe!

- [i]The Wesnoth Tactical Guide[/i]

[Ravana]

If I got it right the eras are sometimes much bigger than the campaigns.

Generally, large eras are intended for multiplayer not for singleplayer campaign dependency.

or that they potentially have to unnecessarily download the eras multiple times

When addon is already found, then there is no reason to download it again (since it doesnt check versions currently).

[Aldarisvet]

How do we avoid that players are in for a 'bad surprise' ('For this 100KiB campaign you have to download 5MiB era')

This (surprise) is a current problem of add-ons server not for the Pack we discussing. By pressing button people would download a whole pack with weight around 200 Mb, selected campaigns and needed eras would be included in the pack.

And about your Guide text, I found both texts ok, I think you should show it to zookeeper probably, "Lets rewrite description" looks like a thread suitable for this purpose - viewtopic.php?f=32&p=596435#p596435.

[marat]

Why five campaigns is not enough.

It is very difficult to make a choice between the great campaigns with huge elaborated world
(Eg, Bad Moon Rising and Trinity, Fate of a Princess and Brave Wings and others)
and small, but with love and diligence performed adventures of several scenarios.
(Many, many examples).
It might be worth to expand the list of selected campaigns.

PS. I think that the campaign Fate of a Princess and Brave Wings should be written as one. (same Invasion from the unknown and it's sequel After the Storm)

PS2. Only (The Underness Series) + (Bad Moon Rising and Trinity and Resources and Era) > 200 MiB.

[taptap]

Fate of a Princess and Brave Wings have very little in common except the author and plenty of caves. Well, maybe a little more, but just because they are related to each other does not make them one campaign. I would rather divide Fate of a Princess in two campaigns. Descent into Darkness can be played without Invasion from the Unknown as well.

[Inky]

Off topic - I'm responding to the UMC poll post here since it was requested not to reply in that thread.

But the first and most practical result of the poll would be a call for the community to help winner authors with testing&polishing their campaigns ...

I think these campaigns will be the ones which need feedback the least - the unfinished and unpopular UMCs are the ones that really need feedback!

There is poor feedback tradition in the community, mostly authors sitting in their corners and waiting for the feedback from others so even most famous campaign authors having obviously insufficient feedback

It's an unfortunate problem, but there really isn't much authors can do besides ask for feedback in the campaign description and make a forum thread for their campaign. It's up to the users to take the time and effort to post something.

Though I think there are some relatively simple things that could be done by devs/admins which may help:

• Make it so you can add a link to the feedback topic in the campaign's description from the campaign menu (right now the links are in the add-on manager description, which isn't useful since you only visit once when downloading the campaign.)
• Get rid of the Add-On feedback forum: this place is mostly dead and it has a much more prominent location that the Scenario & Campaign development forum. This is going to confuse new users who come onto the forum to provide feedback to an addon, only to find that either the campaign doesn't have a forum thread in the Add-On feedback forum, or the last post on the thread was several years ago. I know this confused me when I first joined to write feedback.