Pleiades Enhancements

If it's not too much work, I'd like to suggest a few simple Pleiades enhancements to make the database more usable.

1. Add date to entries: It'd be nice to see a date line added to entries on Pleiades, listing when the level was uploaded to the database, as well when it was revised (if applicable). A timestamp for comments would also be appreciated. I think it's cool to learn roughly when a level was created, and timestamps on comments are important for determining if a level was revised before or after the comment.

2. Expand front page collections: I like the categories on the front page that list recently updated, highest rated, and most downloaded levels. However these collections only stop at 8 levels. It'd be nice to either have a "more" link in the lower right of each collection or have the header clickable. These links would lead to a full search of the database, queried in order of latest revision, level rating, or download count, as applicable.

3. Search by tag: Judging by the lone word "Tags" on the search page I gather this is a work in progress, so I'm just adding my support here. The ability to add a few pre-determined tags to a level, then search by those tags, would be a godsend in filtering through the database. I'd suggest tags like: Large, Small, Teams (unchecking this tag = ffa), Engineer, Levelgen, Asymmetrical.

4. Edit author credit: I like uploading levels to Pleiades and sharing my favorites but am discouraged by the inability to change author credit. Without this I cannot upload levels by other users unless I specify in the description that it wasn't by me -- which is a hassle and I suspect isn't always read by users before downloading.

So to address this: Have an editable author text field in the level entry's settings. Backend-wise, you still have access to all of the entry's settings. Frontend-wise, it's credited to a different author, linked under their profile if they have a Pleiades account, and mentions you nowhere (except maybe an "uploaded by:" credit). If the user credited has a Pleiades account, they'll receive a notification about it and can contact you in case of error. If the user doesn't have a Pleiades account, their author name will be unclickable, until they register at which point the level will be added to their profile.

The advantage of an freely editable author line is that (a) someone not on Pleiades can still be credited and (b) "Anonymous" or "Undetermined" can be listed if author credits are not known. To avoid abuse, an accounted entitled "Anonymous" or "Undetermined" should probably be created by a Bitfighter dev. Just not "Unknown" as that's an actual user.

I can add these individually to google code if requested, but I'm not sure if the project is just for the game or if it accepts web stuff too.

Great idea no complaints here.

[raptor]

kaen was the maintainer of pleiades and has been MIA for a little while now. I will see what I can do:

1. Good idea. I will see if I can figure out how to do this.

2. I can attempt this, too, but is probably more difficult than #1

3. I added a few tags to the database that you can now select. These were sadly lost when the server died a few months ago. If you have more, please give me a list and I'll add them. They should be generic enough, and useful.

4. I am reluctant to allow normal users to upload levels and modify the author. I think an author should have sole control over if they release them on pleiades.

With that said, I do think we need to have the ability to add others' levels. To handle this, we currently allow forums admins to upload levels as other authors. Also, I have created a 'pleiades' user as a generic user for those levels owned by people without a forums account. We just have to have someone willing to upload them to that account.

sky_lark, I am willing to give you access to the pleiades account to upload such levels if you are willing to do it (please contact me in a PM for the credentials if you're willing). I only request that you respect author's ownership as much as possible. For authors of levels that do have a pleiades account, I can add those maps under the author. In all cases I think it's best that we only post levels that have been released publicly or have been given explicit permission to do whatever we want with them.

I would do that as well if its ok also some players are no longer on bitfighter so i dont think adding there levls would be a issue would it ?

Thanks for the feedback. I had forgotten about those tags and will use them more often when uploading levels. I'm not sure what 'art' is intended to be used for, do you mean like standalone art levels or levels that have some aesthetic appeal? I would also add Engineer, Levelgen, and Asymmetrical as tags.

The former two because engineer and levelgen are prominent enough that they should be emphasized and distinguished. A level with engineer tends to focus more on construction, a level with levelgen often has some kind of flashy or jarring effect worth noting. The latter because of the exact opposite -- in preparation for the last party I was stunned to find out just how few asymmetrical levels exist. In team games especially like ctf and retrieve, asymmetrical levels are very limited. It'd be cool to compile a directory of asymmetrical levels.

Regarding #4, I definitely agree with your reservations but acknowledge that, like you said, it is sometimes important to be able to upload levels created by other users. I do agree that it's important to respect an author's wishes by default. I would not plan to upload any of ducky's levels that I have, for instance. Here's what I'm thinking a good criteria should be for releasing a level you don't own on Pleiades:

- It was previously released to the public OR
- The author credits are known, but the author is no longer active and likely unreachable (ex. endless war, author has full name listed but hasn't been in contact for years) OR
- The author credits are not known, and there's no evidence to suggest who it might've been created by (ex. who made multi chaos?)

The above criteria also changes depending on how the level was obtained. For example ducky gave me his levels to back them up, so releasing levels from that directory would be inappropriate. But if someone gave me their levels to edit and play freely then that'd probably be fine. And there's influence based on the date a level was made. I have few qualms about releasing levels made in 2006.

With that in mind I'd love access to the pleiades account. There are a number of zap levels I'd like to share that meet the first criteria and I think people would enjoy!

PS. Is it possible to retroactively change author credit? I uploaded half a dozen levels by thread a while back at request of watusimoto and would prefer them in the proper place.

I think multi chaos was a zombier level not 100% sure.

It would be rather nice if there was a way to get all pleiades levels im colecting all the levels so if something ever happens to bitfighter again i'll have copys of everything for everyone.

I have a buch of levels I oculd uplaod some 600 levels quite a few of them are blank level gen levels that are broke so might need to filter those out.

there are plenty of tags missing

ctf htf crrt dngn sccr zc btmtch cre nxs rbbt rtrve.

basicly all the game modes i also agre engeneer and level gen should be tags.

This might be a good idea if we get more users but could we alow users to create tags for there levels and it would be added to a global list if its not already in it?

[raptor]

I only added back tags that I remember... maybe it was 'artistic'. I'll change that.

As for 'engineer' and 'levelgen' that is apparent from the level file itself, so maybe those can be level attributes in another area. But maybe not? I suppose I'd want to search engineer levels, too. Perhaps they could be auto-added...

Since these tags are self-added, it's left to the author to choose.

what about a dungeon tag

and what about my idea of letting users create tags ?

[raptor]

A Dungeon tag is a good idea. But letting users create their own... seems too open for abuse. I thought there used to be a way to create them in the pleiades user interface, but I can't find it - I remember bobdaduck and kaen working out the tags idea but i don't know how it ended up.

I dont think it would be to much of a problem many image sites use a user tags system and it works well maybe have a intermediate person who looks at te list and add or removes tags from the global list ?

( I would be willing to do it)

Trick question: Multi Chaos was a level I entered in for a contest in October 2008. It was pretty bad. I'd be fine if nobody knew who made it.

Raptor: New tags look great. Just added a bunch for all my levels. If it's not too much work, can you add an indicator next to tags listed on the front page that indicates there are more than two tags for the level (if applicable)? Maybe an ellipsis or +1 or +2 or +3 etc as applicable. Currently the front page will only show two tags at one time (presumably due to space limits) and this can be misleading if a level actually has a bunch of tags and only two shown. Alternatively, allow the two tags listed to be chosen by the author.

there are plenty of tags missing

ctf htf crrt dngn sccr zc btmtch cre nxs rbbt rtrve.

You can search by game mode by clicking on the drop down menu!

I dont think it would be to much of a problem many image sites use a user tags system and it works well maybe have a intermediate person who looks at te list and add or removes tags from the global list ?

This is a thoughtful idea but I too am concerned about abuse. Sites like Youtube are infamous for their free and open use of tags. While the Youtube search has improved to better avoid attempts of tag abuse, the site went through a rough period of dealing with that a few years ago. Users would fill their descriptions with a bunch of random verbs and clog up search queries.

I'm not saying that will happen here necessarily, but it's certainly possible a user will add a load of random tags featuring common search references to mess with the search engine. I also like the idea of keeping only half a dozen tags so a user doesn't feel overwhelmed when uploading their level, feeling like they have to come up with twenty appropriate tags to make their level stand out in the search query.

A Dungeon tag is a good idea. But letting users create their own... seems too open for abuse. I thought there used to be a way to create them in the pleiades user interface, but I can't find it - I remember bobdaduck and kaen working out the tags idea but i don't know how it ended up.

How would there be abuse in tags? Just curious
EDIT: Oh, never mind, sky_lark explained why: random tags to get more search results

[raptor]

Ideally, we'd have a merit system of some sorts (like stackoverflow.com) and once you reach a certain level, you could do things like add new tags or edit authors. That would require a larger community, however.

@skylark. I'm afraid I spent a good chunk of time attempting to edit pleiades code base to get the features you wanted but I'm not getting much further yet. I think you should do some feature requests on kaen's code base here:

https://github.com/bkconrad/pleiades/issues

Maybe you'll get him to come out of hiding

I won't give up on figuring out pleiades just yet, but it'll require much more time.

No problem, you're already doing a lot for this community that we all appreciate. We as players can also certainly help by uploading more levels to Pleiades, but also participating in the voting and commenting system. I've noticed hardly any of the front page levels have votes or comments so let's try to change that!

I'll look into adding the enhancement requests to the Github account.

There is a MAJOR problem with pleadies.

So I uploaded my levels from my mystery party 1 which were classic remixes of the stock levels and they uploaded fine with names like Encore1.1 but when i tried to edit there descriptions afterword it said I could not do so because the levels names were to similar so now I cannot edit them.

Oh wow, maybe uploaded levels should get a hash in the level file that is used as an id, like that people could modify level names?

[raptor]

amgine, how exactly can I duplicate your error? Can you give more information?

Well i uploaded levels with names similar to ones that already exist.

then i tried to edit them again after that and could not.

[raptor]

amgine, I need to know *exactly* how you triggered the error.

What file names did you use? Were you the author both times? Which specific map on pleiades had the error? What exact steps did you take to upload to pleiades? Through the editor? Using the online interface?

I could go on, but you probably get the idea - I need enough specific information so I can hit the issue, too.

filenames were like encore1.1 mazeracer1.1 soccer1.1... ect

they were uploaded on the online server.

all the maps had this problem.

yes i was the author every time.

I gave the steps for what i did on the post above.

I've experienced this before. Pleiades returns an error when two levels have the same level names. Search Push of War for example, there are two levels with the same name. If I try to publish anything in the settings of my Push of War (description, screenshot, etc), it requires me to rename the level first before accepting changes. I'm not sure how I got the level onto Pleiades at all... maybe Amgine can help answer that.

edit: Alright, got it. Looks like if there's only one level with the same name, you can upload a duplicate level and Pleiades will only get mad when trying to publish settings. But if there's two levels with the same name, Pleiades stops you at the gate.

You can test this by uploading a simple level titled "Chilled monkey brain" which is the same name of Little_Apple's level but different caps. It will upload fine, then prevent you from changing and saving any settings. Then try to upload a third version, perhaps this time titled "chillED monkey BRAIn" with varying caps and Pleiades prevents this version from being uploaded immediately.

Yep that about sums it up skylark.

I wonder how we should fix this as many levels on servers have the same name but if the publisher isnt around we shouldnt change the name...

[watusimoto]

@sky_lark -- I would err on uploading too much; my fear is that we have lots of great levels, but many are at risk of being lost forever. I would rather remove levels than lose them.

Also, if you haven't done so, please do create the github bug reports. Maybe kaen will fix it, maybe one of us will do so, or maybe we'll get a new dev looking for a project that doesn't involve c++ who will fork the repo and make the changes. Who knows? But what I do know is that if you don't record the ideas in their "proper" place, they will never be implemented.

Isnt it better to put it on pleadies and have it stored then have them be with a user who leaves and have them lost forever?

Sorry it took me so long, I added the first two entries to the Pleiades github. #3 looks to be already solved now that tags are in full swing and clickable too. #4 is already done as well.

AS our comunnity is small can we test letting poeple create tags and see if it works ?

I think if qwe allow for many tags it will make searching stuff easier and teh BF base grows.