Streamlined Map Viewing

One of the challenges of managing a library of 2500 maps is that it becomes hard to weed out the good from the bad from the really bad. It is also a challenge to separate maps of certain criteria from one another.

Of course, I imagine there aren't a lot of us with that many maps, but even 100+ maps presents a sorting difficulty.

My proposal is to widen the map selection screen. Right now it is merely a list of maps, ordered from top to bottom. That list takes up maybe a quarter of the screen space if compressed. Let's use the rest.

On the right half, if technically possible, would be an image viewer. Would it be possible from a developer's standpoint to preload a map, take a screenshot (with or without saving it for efficiency) of the commander's map, then feed that into a selection screen? All within a couple seconds? The ability to see what a map looks like in order to jog memory is huge for choosing a fun map to play with a group. Especially with maps like Core03 that don't have distinctive names.

The leftmost quarter column would house the map names, perhaps with the font size shrank to fully fit the texts. The column immediately adjacent would contain author names in red, and if available, a Pleiades ranking.

This streamlined menu would be accompanied by a search bar at the top -- the press-letter-to-jump feature is helpful, but it shouldn't replace a search function -- with search criteria (search by author, number of teams, duration of map, and engineer on/off).

Thoughts? I realize this would be a huge undertaking, but I do hope it'd be worth it!

[Skybax]

You have all of my yes.

[kaen]

And all of my maybe.

We'd need to change the level format to encode a preview image, or else we'd have to load the level and render a thumbnail for every map in the list (which is a lot).

Maybe we can have another directory for the pictures like that you can still modify the files directly? If the image is not there, then Bitfighter could make one when you play that level?

[Skybax]

How does Pleiades get a picture of each level without there being a picture in the level file?

[raptor]

When you UPLOAD TO DB in the editor, we take a quick snapshot of the level behind-the-scenes and send it with the level file automatically.

[kaen]

It takes the picture right before you upload it, then it uploads to the website just like your browser does with a file selector. Then Pleiades has its own concept of screenshots being associated with levels.

I guess there's an argument for just carrying around a separate thumbnail with the file. Sam fixed /getmap so that it grabs a levelgen, so I guess the same idea could be applied to screenshots. But after a certain point, it's just cleaner and less error-prone to have a single blob with all the data you need. I hope manual level editing is becoming a thing of the past, since that's the only real argument for keeping the current file format.

[Skybax]

Wait, so if Bitfighter already takes mini-screenshots of the map whenever you upload it, can't it just do the same thing when it loads the level list?

OR maybe since it was also stated that the level should have the Pleiades rating next to it, only have screenshots for levels that are on Pleiades, in which case couldn't it just use the screenshot it's already taken? This would require an internet connected to verify with the Pleiades database, though.

[raptor]

There are a number of technical challenges with doing map viewing, even though I think it is a good idea:

1. The screenshots are easily taken from the editor because the level is already loaded. In a map viewing list, we would have to load each level to get a screenshot and some levels are... crazy big
2. Use prebuilt thumbnails/screenshots is a good workaround but would require, as you say, pulling from pleiades or other location for them. We could embed them in the level file, but that would require a significant change to how level files are specified - it may even require we completely remove the ability to edit level files as plain text and instead use a binary format. Maybe it's time to move to XML?

[Skybax]

Pulling from Pleiades seems like the best bet. It's rare that anyone plays Bitfighter without an internet connection, anyways, and if they are, they probably have a bunch of their own maps for the LAN party they're participating in.

The other constraint with relying on Pleiades to provide the image is if Pleiades doesn't have the level. I have a crapton of levels, and I don't want to upload all of them to Pleiades (some are not good enough, and there's a significant time crunch involved). On the other hand, maybe that's one way to encourage people to put their maps on Pleiades.

What would be the storage implications for the computer if each level had its own personal thumbnail? Like, could 2500 thumbnails require a lot of storage space on my computer?

[raptor]

A typical screenshot is about 50KB (because we do them at 800x600 and with a simple palette). So 2500 of those is roughly 125MB.

Thumbnails would probably be smaller.

[watusimoto]

The other issue I didn't see touched on is that normally, the maps are on the server, and the user is viewing through the client. So the server needs to provide the client with all the data it needs to select the level. This would probably include the preview snapshot. Which would be slow when the server is on a remote connection.

We could build previews when the level is loaded, and save those with a level hash, then show previews for previously-seen levels...

It would be a great feature, but will require lots more thought about how it could work.

A typical screenshot is about 50KB (because we do them at 800x600 and with a simple palette). So 2500 of those is roughly 125MB.

Thumbnails would probably be smaller.

Ok, that's not too bad. I suspect most people will have a thousand levels or so which is smaller.

@wat - Good point. I was only thinking about selecting maps from your own machine. But you're right, ideally the streamlined feature should exist on servers with maps outside of your machine.

why not jsut do a screenshot of the whole lev?

[watusimoto]

That's what we'd do -- the trick is getting those screenshots to all the players who can change levels on a server.

why would you need that?

[watusimoto]

So they can get a preview of the level they might change to.

on pleiades only or on BF as well being it on BF wold be nice...

on pleiades only or on BF as well being it on BF wold be nice...

Embedding the map preview into Bitfighter is indeed the primary goal of this proposal. Having it work for Pleiades would be a nice touch, but there already is an automatic map preview to an extent - upload from Bitfighter generates a screenshot.

but it is not a complete screenshot of te wholoe level which i think is better.