Minetest Forums

The "rankings" page on the website will now show the top 25 rankings for each category. If you didn't make the top 10, maybe now you can see where you landed. This also means there are actually more than 25 established builders, which is great progress to getting more people to build and more content to play!

Kroukuk wrote: it would be nice, if the category signs/smileys had names, that show what they mean
like "fast" instead of "racecar"
or "easy" instead of "winking face"
or "surprising" instead of "o-mouth"
so that the categorization is more consistent.

Oh? That is what they're supposed to mean? I used "winking face" and "o-mount" way diffrently. Couldn't really make out what they where supposed to mean.

Sokomine wrote:

Kroukuk wrote: it would be nice, if the category signs/smileys had names, that show what they mean
like "fast" instead of "racecar"
or "easy" instead of "winking face"
or "surprising" instead of "o-mouth"
so that the categorization is more consistent.

Oh? That is what they're supposed to mean? I used "winking face" and "o-mount" way diffrently. Couldn't really make out what they where supposed to mean.

No, I don't really know, what they are supposed to mean ^^' That's just how I assume they could be used.
That's why I think they should have better names, so that not everyone reads them as something different

Kroukuk wrote: That's why I think they should have better names, so that not everyone reads them as something different

Please tell that to sofar...

Sokomine wrote:

Kroukuk wrote: That's why I think they should have better names, so that not everyone reads them as something different

Please tell that to sofar...

Here's how I intended it to work, but never found the time to implement it.

My idea was to allow organic categories. As players play levels and select icons by visual appearance, it doesn't really matter much what the icons mean to people as in the end most people will just largely agree on the icons' meaning, but there's no inherent meaning designated for them per se. I just drew a bunch to fill in enough different "perceptions" that I think we needed.

The backend job that parses the scoring file is supposed to perform a ranking for each icon, and create automatic series that the portal houses go into. So if for instance boxes 5, 10 and 15 score high on "sunshine", then those boxes would appear in the series that is linked by the "sunshine" house.

This needs 2 parts code. On the backend, the daemon that regularly runs to make the score boards needs to calculate rankings for each category. Then, this ranking data needs to be translated to series data that the server needs to regularly import into the Lua code (through a file read/json parse). It's not undoable, it's just a thing I've never gotten to.

After 2 days of reading Sqlite3 docs, I managed to complete the backend side of the category icon code! So, hopefully in the next few days I can make the in-game stuff work.

The category teleporters are now active! Each teleporter will dynamically take you to boxes that have been categorized by the icon by sufficient players, and then ranked before inclusion.

The teleporters currently take you to boxes that are unplayed only. I'll add something later for players who have done all of them.

If players add more categories, then the series update automatically, this happens periodically without a needed server restart.

sofar wrote: My idea was to allow organic categories. As players play levels and select icons by visual appearance, it doesn't really matter much what the icons mean to people as in the end most people will just largely agree on the icons' meaning, but there's no inherent meaning designated for them per se. I just drew a bunch to fill in enough different "perceptions" that I think we needed.

The idea as such is tempting. I'm just afraid that it doesn't really work that way. Perhaps if you'd take a really huge percentage of the population. Else...how many players are out there? How many of them will play enough boxes to have something to compare against? How much do their interpretations of icons match? Some things don't really scale well with small numbers. And I'd consider anything below tens of tousands small in this regard.

But: Thank you for your work! The server is really gerat. I hope to find time soon to enjoy some (hopefully!) not too much parcours-orientated boxes. There are many fine ones there.

Sokomine wrote:The idea as such is tempting. I'm just afraid that it doesn't really work that way.

We've had over 3000+ category icons assigned to boxes already. I'm going to look a the data and see which icons work well and which ones don't, and then we can see about adjusting or replacing the ones that aren't getting consistent picks. For now, it's going exactly to plan: hypothesis was made, experiment in progress, we're still testing the data, conclusion is far into the future.

I think most of the categories/icons are not very useful. Anyone could attach any meaning to them. Everyone interprets them differently, as they have no real description attached to them. The words you display just describe the icon itself, but not the actual meaning. There is no further explanation, nor are the icons self-explanatory. So essentially the icons assignments will be practically random.
When I walk upon those mini temples, I see those icons but I have absolutely NO idea what to expect for each of the icons.

I don't understand the choice of icons at all. It seems you just picked things that first came into mind, not something that actually has some meaning and will be actually useful. Also, NONE of the icons directly relates to the game. The icons are just too generic to have a generally excepted meanings: TWO arrows (WHY?), WAY too many smiley faces, question marks, house, sun, raincloud, car, snail.
The heart will be probably interpreted as “I love this.” but then this is just redundant to star ratings. Sun is probably used for boxes where the sun shines, but the sun shines in a lot of boxes, so this is pointless as well. I don't remember if there is any box for which I have used the raincloud. Probably none. There is no rain this game, so why this icon? I could go on forever …

Actually USEFUL categories would be things that actually relate to gameplay and have SPECIFIC, FIXED meanings that are easy to understand. Something like “this is a parcour box” or “this box has a lot of switches”.

Anywhay, I don't even understand what you want to achieve here, why you think this is useful or why you do so much work with this. Where will this lead to? If you want random boxes, just add a random teleporters.

Not that I mind this feature much (I can happily ignore it) but I am very confused by your game design decisions.

Anyway, have fun crunching and analyzing your data, but I fear your efforts will lead to nowhere because the data might not carry much value in the first place. Garbage in, garbage out. :-P

Wuzzy wrote:Anyway, have fun crunching and analyzing your data, but I fear your efforts will lead to nowhere because the data might not carry much value in the first place. Garbage in, garbage out. :-P

Some of the icons are getting used a lot, so there already is data on which ones are useful and which ones are not.

I've already written several times now that I'll adjust the icons where needed. If anyone else brings it up I'll ban them until they send a patch. I might actually be serious about that. The code is now open, anyone can draw 16x16 icons, you're spending more time heckling than it would take for you to open mspaint and make better icons.

sofar wrote: The code is now open, anyone can draw 16x16 icons, you're spending more time heckling than it would take for you to open mspaint and make better icons.

Can't :-( I can't even create the textures I need for my mods. Drawing with a pencil or other pyhsical tools is not really a problem (at least I used to be able to do that). But with a mouse...somehow doesn't work.

It might not even work to invent good pictograms for useful categories. Luckily, there are already labels.

Difficulty comes to mind. Time spent in the box may not always represent that. Hard to pick a symbol. Maybe sleep-walking (or just the existing asleep symbol), easy (1+1=?), normal (gaussian curve with a pointer at the middle?), difficult (head scratching) to extremly difficult (hairs falling out)? They'd all have to be presented to gether, with the player only choosing one.

Parcour (old jump&run 2d game?), puzzle (why not a classical puzzle piece?), search (magnifying glass) could also fit well.
Up/Down as in like/dislike may remain.
Then there's scenery (maybe a tree with a house?) vs. indoors (floor plan?).
Novelity is also important. A box with a surprising concept not seen before.
Story - is there one? A book could represent that. Some boxes are equipped with consoles and/or signs which tell the player what was going on.

Sokomine wrote:

sofar wrote: The code is now open, anyone can draw 16x16 icons, you're spending more time heckling than it would take for you to open mspaint and make better icons.

Can't :-( I can't even create the textures I need for my mods. Drawing with a pencil or other pyhsical tools is not really a problem (at least I used to be able to do that). But with a mouse...somehow doesn't work.

Here's a website that can help make 16x16, or any resolution Pixel Art: https://www.pixilart.com/draw

anyone who feels they are unable to create an icon, is welcome to contact myself (and I am sure there are a few others who are willing as well), and I will work with you to attempt to create what you are looking for.

You can contact me via pm to start

Personally, I like the icons a lot. I like how they don't have set meanings because not all boxes can be put into a set of hard categories. I choose the icons on how I feel after doing the box or how the box seemed to be like. For instance, if the box was a wintery/rainy/cold looking box, then I would choose the raincloud as one of the icons. If I felt like doing a coldish/rainyish box, I would choose the temple with the raincloud.

The other things have meaning too. The winking eye one might be for a funny box or one with a clever solution, and the racecar might be for a quick 'n' easy box, and the one with the house might be for a box that you felt was nice and homelike. I like how you can choose the icon depending on how you feel, and I think set categories wouldn't work nearly as well as this currently would.

v-rob wrote:Personally, I like the icons a lot. I like how they don't have set meanings because not all boxes can be put into a set of hard categories. I choose the icons on how I feel after doing the box or how the box seemed to be like. For instance, if the box was a wintery/rainy/cold looking box, then I would choose the raincloud as one of the icons. If I felt like doing a coldish/rainyish box, I would choose the temple with the raincloud.

The other things have meaning too. The winking eye one might be for a funny box or one with a clever solution, and the racecar might be for a quick 'n' easy box, and the one with the house might be for a box that you felt was nice and homelike. I like how you can choose the icon depending on how you feel, and I think set categories wouldn't work nearly as well as this currently would.

I agree.

May we have sprint in the lobby area? Walking is slow considering the distances. :)

texmex wrote:May we have sprint in the lobby area? Walking is slow considering the distances. :)

That would be nice ^
Maybe even allow box creators to enable sprint in their boxes

Lone_Wolf wrote:

texmex wrote:May we have sprint in the lobby area? Walking is slow considering the distances. :)

Maybe even allow box creators to enable sprint in their boxes

No, that would make boxes behave differently for players ("this box is undoable" "you can sprint in that one").

We've just crossed the 100 "ranked" boxes mark. That's worth a party! Free boxes for everyone!

sofar wrote:We've just crossed the 100 "ranked" boxes mark. That's worth a party! Free boxes for everyone!

Yaayy!! Where do we hold the party? Do we get cake? I think some of the sunny, partially forested boxes would make for a very nice outing ;-)

v-rob wrote:

sofar wrote:We've just crossed the 100 "ranked" boxes mark. That's worth a party! Free boxes for everyone!

Yaayy!! Where do we hold the party? Do we get cake? I think some of the sunny, partially forested boxes would make for a very nice outing ;-)

There is a Portal MT mod that has cake. :)

Christian_Soldier wrote:There is a Portal MT mod that has cake. :)

But ... but ... the cake is a lie!

Linuxdirk wrote:

Christian_Soldier wrote:There is a Portal MT mod that has cake. :)

But ... but ... the cake is a lie!

Lol, apparently not.

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