Re: [Enigma-devel] par_times

[Ralf Westram]

Hi Daniel,

>>> send me your .enigmarc (or enigmarc.lua if you use Windows).
>> Come on. More configs please! :)
> I lost my level stats when I accidentally started 0.81, but I will send
> you my .enigmarc as soon as I have a few more finished levels on my
> list...

Not running a backup seems to be very popular these
days. ;-) Sven lost his config as well..

Maybe this has been my fault, because I forgot to send out a warning. I
actually thought starting old versions of enigma wouldn't work,
because the options.LevelStat2 command does not exists there.

I've just tried it with enigma 0.71:

> bin/enigma

Couldn't load level pack levels/index_test.txt.
/home/realsoft/stable_enigma
error: attempt to call field `LevelStat2' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
1:  main of file `/home/realsoft/.enigmarc' at line 17
[here enigma hangs forever]

How did you corrupt your file?

> Maybe we shouldn't use the best times achieved by members of this list
> for all levels.  We have some real Enigma pros here, beating our best
> times may be impossible for most players.

I think we should definitely use our best times, because
time hunting is meant for pros only.  Since nobody is forced to play
against the clock, it should be as hard as possible.

What would be the value of breaking a faked par time?

> This may be a good time to
> reorganize the current level packs into something like
>       Tutorial
>       Easy
>       Medium
>       Hard
> plus Esprit/Oxyd/Sokoban level packs

This is a difficult job. I guess everybody has his own opinion what's
hard and what's easy.

On the other hand I think it's ok if the difficulty varies from level
to level - so players neither get bored nor completely frustrated.  We
should only take care to move easier levels more towards the beginning
of the level packs and harder ones more towards the end..

An example for one level which is completely misplaced:
I know at least two people who stopped playing enigma at level #3 of the
'Enigma' level pack - this level is far too hard for newbies to be
the third one!

> Btw: Maybe we should switch to a new .enigmarc file format that allows
> us to run different Enigma versions without losing settings and valuable
> par times.

Maybe sth like

        options.versionRequired(0, 81) -- check for version 0.81

in .enigmarc would be safe enough if enigma refuses to start if the
version is older.

It could print out a warning to backup the .enigmarc and provide an
option to ignore the version mismatch.

cu
Ralf

-- 
It might look like I'm doing nothing,
but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy.