Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

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Aldarisvet
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Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

The idea is that community selects best UMC campaigns for hypothetical "Selected UMC Pack". I call it 'hypothetical' because we still get no answer whether devs are open to this idea. The idea is to put 'Get more campaigns' button in the bottom of Campaign menu which would download pack of preselected UMC campaigns. So the player would not have to dig in the add-ons server and would get immediate access (after downloading) to set of finished/polished UMC campaigns at the same place where he starts mainline campaigns.

First of all, we need to choose campaigns that are really suitable for "Selected UMC Pack". Second, we will conduct a vote to see which UMC campaigns are best to players tastes and should be really included in the Pack.

I will begin with the most formal criteria. I think that the whole UMC Pack, or at least Part I of it, must weight no more than 200 Mb supposing that we have 10 campaigns with average weight of 20 Mb. Too huge campaigns must not be permitted.
Second criteria is that a campaign must be finished, must be without bugs and must be passible in all levels of difficulty. That is a huge work for testers, but testers should start most of their work after results of the vote. But at least in the beginning we have to have some basic information about passibility of a campaign.
Third criteria is about a quality of sprites and portraits. It is too complex question to formulate it just now, but there must be some minimum level of quality.
Fourth criteria that a campaign must have an active and really willing to put his campaign to "Selected UMC Pack" author or at least maintainer.

Probably we cannot judge a quality of a storyline and a quality of a gameplay, this is too subjective so let the vote to decide such things.

Well, I think that community as a whole already have a view of best UMC campaign so we now just will gather a list of campaigns that worth playing.
Last edited by Aldarisvet on April 26th, 2016, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by Paulomat4 »

I think that the whole UMC Pack, or at least Part I of it, must weight no more than 200 Mb supposing that we have 10 campaigns with average weight of 20 Mb
May I disagree?
My idea was, rather than distributing an entirely different version of wesnoth with only these campaigns, to add a button called "download the developpers collection of quality UMC content" somewhere visible (be it campaigns or main menu).
After clicking on this button you enter the Add-On browser. But instead of seeing all add-ons, it shows only the collection. You can then choose to download each campaign if you wanted. This has many advantages:

1. The Add-ons are still on the add-on server. That makes maintaining easier for the maintainer since he can update it just as every add-on published on the server since it is an add on like every other, only on a more prominent Place.

2. The pre-selection by the community ensures generally good quality, so the user can be sure to download something good, while not having to filter through the entire add-on server.

3. Being placed on the add-on server makes it easier to draw more attention to other add-ons, since you can easily link the rest of the server.

4. The user is able download and delete these add ons as he wants. So If he hasn't got enough space on his disk he can just download one, enjoy it, delete it and download the next one.

5. Once the Option is built in the main game, maintanence is easier, it easily possible to remove or add add ons to the list

6. Mainline Campaigns and the work that has been put into them is not discarded entirely. I am one of the players who, while it has it's flaws, still enjoys mainline campaigns very much.
must be passible in all levels of difficulty
campaigns shouldn't be too easy as well, so let's just say they must be balanced :)
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by Sire »

I'll agree with Paulomat4's idea.

Essentially, the collection is a list of recommended campaigns and should have some sense of quality to it, and saves the trouble of trying to look for a good campaign in the Add-On Database. (Alternatively, there can be some kind of Add On rating system, which also solves this problem somewhat as well. However, that is an idea for another thread.)

As for criteria, since this is just a collection of higher quality works voted by the community, I feel like we can get rid of the criteria aspect, jumping ahead to saying "What are our favorite UMC Content?", and from there making a list and selecting the best from that list to incorporate it into the collection. Sure, there may be the basics of "Is the work completed and relatively balanced", but otherwise, the realm of Add-Ons is rather open.
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by kjn »

Personally, I'd be quite hesitant to do voting here, since the actual selection will have to be done at a different stage. The key point to me is that the chosen content should be curated. Popularity can be one way to reach that, but I'm not sure it's the best way here.

Having an open poll or brainstorming here can be a good way to solicit input, however.
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

Paulomat4 wrote:
I think that the whole UMC Pack, or at least Part I of it, must weight no more than 200 Mb supposing that we have 10 campaigns with average weight of 20 Mb
My idea was, rather than distributing an entirely different version of wesnoth with only these campaigns, to add a button called "download the developpers collection of quality UMC content" somewhere visible (be it campaigns or main menu).
I am speaking exactly about what you wrote, not about some different version of Wesnoth. That thing anyone could do without devs approval for sure.
Still we have to select some campaigns that would be downloaded as a whole pack after clicking that button. So that pack should have some weight limit. For example, in android version all Wesnoth is splitted to optional packs, and mainline campaigns is no more than a pack you can upload or not. We can have even have several packs to download as I wrote, but for the beginning we should get approval at least for one.
Sire wrote: I feel like we can get rid of the criteria aspect, jumping ahead to saying "What are our favorite UMC Content?", and from there making a list and selecting the best from that list to incorporate it into the collection.
In general, yes. We can start making the list just immediately, why not. But we must be sure that authors/maintainers of that campaigns agreed to participate in the idea. And that looks a bit stupid because the idea do not have an official approval.
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by skeptical_troll »

Personally, I'd suggest not to think in the perspective of this being an 'official' thing, but rather as an useful service for the rest of the community who browse the 'add- ons' list. At least, this is something I would have loved to see the first time I looked at the server!

I would even go further and start by doing the simplest and dumbest thing, i.e. start a poll among all the finished and balanced campaigns and let the voters do the rest of the filtering. In general I don't think it is fair to leave out good campaigns like LotI just because they are heavy. We can just be clear about the size and let the users decide if they want to go for it or not.

I'd also prefer to make more package with less campaigns, like 'Wesnoth users selection I,II,III', each with 5 campaigns. This way users do not have to download heavy files all at once (or we can do the way Paulomat suggests, but it requires a change in the interface).

Another point concerning 'sagas' like IftU + AtS, or I know there is one by whitewolf (?) and probably more: In these cases it makes sense to list only the first campaign of the saga, so that people do not play them in the wrong order, and if they like the first chapter they'll look for the sequel by themselves.
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Re: Selection criterias for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

Well, I got the idea.
We put all finished campaigns in the list, made a vote and only than we will communicate with authors/maintainers about whether thay want to participate in the project. If someone rejects, we would just expunge that campaign and will go to the next one below. However possibly no one author/maintainer will reject testers.
skeptical_troll wrote: Another point concerning 'sagas' like IftU + AtS, or I know there is one by whitewolf (?) and probably more: In these cases it makes sense to list only the first campaign of the saga, so that people do not play them in the wrong order, and if they like the first chapter they'll look for the sequel by themselves.
Well, LotI is not heavy as I see. There are some heavy campaigns but mostly because of music and we can possibly solve this problem with authors individually, if they can remove some music to lighten it.
...
But there is a problem, a restriction for 15 options in the poll!
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

I've been following these threads with some interest. Right now I have one question and one suggestion.

Question: Will the curated/recommended pack include add-ons other than campaigns? Seems other forms of UMC have been forgotten as the conversation has gone on.

My suggestion is this. How about adding an extra tick box (or some other filtering method) to the options box on the add-ons server that would allow players to search for all 'recommended' content? This way they could use the 'recommended' filter alongside the existing tick boxes for the type of add-on they are looking for (or leave the others blank if they're just looking for good stuff and don't have anything particular in mind).

This would also tie-in to Paulomat's idea of having a button on the title screen linking to the add-on server. In this case, it would bring up the add-ons sever with the recommended content ticked by default.

I'm not a developer so I don't know how easy it would be to implement, but the concept is straightforward - and doesn't rely on creating extra bundles or dependencies. I guess it relies on three things:

1. Can you bring up the add-on server with certain filtering conditions applied automatically?
2. Would it be possible for an admin or dev to somehow tag an already-uploaded add-on as being 'recommended'? Or could we use some sort of password or code in the .pbl file?
3. The difficult part: each new version of Wesnoth breaks many add-ons and leaves many others behind. Those given the powers to 'recommend' would theoretically have to play each add-on every time Wesnoth hit a new cycle release. Would that happen? Probably not. Therefore, the question is: once an add-on is awarded 'recommended' status does it continue to have that status over different versions? That's the only bit I'm not sure of.
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

Bob_The_Mighty, I am sorry but this thread is not about add-ons server and I am not a dev to answer you questions.
There is another thread recently created about it - viewtopic.php?f=10&t=44008

The final result of our project would be: a simple list of around 10 campaigns that passed 'quality and popularity control'. Then if devs accept the idea, they would put a button in the bottom of Campaigns menu list and attach a script to the button that would connect to an add-on server and download that chosen UMC campaigns. This is quite a simple thing to implement, to put a button and to attach that downloading script, I am 100% sure. And from the other side, it is very simple interface decision, you neednt to know about add-ons server at all to get more campaigns, you neednt to dig at that awfully long list of everything in that add-on server.

Concerning other forms of UMC than campaigns. A casual player that only tried some mainline campaigns have no idea about add-ons server, about eras, about multiplayer and other stuff. And he probably do not even want all of it for the moment, what he really can want to see is a more variety of campaigns. But if there would be an era attached to the campaign included in the Pack, this era would be downloaded for sure.
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by taptap »

Earlier attempts at trying to help people assess umc here:

* [wiki]Guide to UMC Content[/wiki]
* [wiki]Player UMC Reviews[/wiki]
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

taptap wrote:Earlier attempts at trying to help people assess umc here:

* [wiki]Guide to UMC Content[/wiki]
* [wiki]Player UMC Reviews[/wiki]
What are real chances for the player who downloaded this game from Android market, for example, to see this links? They a close to zero, be honest. A player would very doubtly even wisit wesnoth.org, and more doubtly he will find that texts in wiki.

Ah, I understood, you suggesting a list of campaigns for vote. I see, 43 campaigns there already, thank you. Must be checked if all of them at 1.12.
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by skeptical_troll »

Easy way forward for me: pick the list from Taptap's link, select only the campaigns available in the 1.12 server, than use some external resource for the poll to go beyond the 15 limit.
You said you have a wesnoth facebook page, why not using 'likes' on an album (or just post the name of each campaigns). Then you post a link to that page here, you leave the poll open for a couple of weeks and that's it.
Not the most elegant solution, I must admit, but at least it should work.

Then we will publish the selection(s) as an addon with 'forum users' or a list of users who agree, as authors.

What do you think?
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Aldarisvet »

I think we should avoid side activities.
Honestly, I cannot understand, if a poll about mainline campaigns is not against the Greater Good, why the same thing about UMC should not be permitted? Moreover, if you remember, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself suggested you a poll in the forum as an instrument instead of using external resources.
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by Paulomat4 »

Okay Guys,
I went through the 1.12 add-on server and made a list of all campaigns that have a version number above 1.0 .

That list is far too long for a poll. So we need to shorten it.

I'd like to exclude Campaigns...

... that are incomplete (not every campaign with a version number above 1.0 is complete)
... where the author doesn't want them to be published on the list
... that are buggy so it prevents you from playing

So, if everybody could check the list and tell me if an add-on is to be excluded, that would be a great help.
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Re: Selection criteria for UMC Pack Project

Post by fabi »

Only ~70?
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