Re: [Enigma-devel] Reorganizing levels?

[Daniel Heck]

On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 08:20 +0000, Karen Pouelle wrote:
> > Relocating existing levels is problematic, cause it will break the
> > solved status / par time.
> > Ralf
> 
> First of all, did you try the script on a test install?
> 
> In hindsight, the restructuring should have been done in as
> soon as possible, before the user base became so large to
> call it "problematic" to organize the levels root folder.  

Of course, something like this is easy to say in hindsight.
Unfortunately we cannot break the config files of thousands of users
simply because something is a nice solution.

I just added a new tag to the level index files, "indexname", which can
be used to override the "file" tag that is usually used when saving the
enigmarc file.

Could you update your script to set this tag to the old "file" tag when
writing the new index files?

Cheers,
Daniel



> 
> It's also problematic in some way to leave the levels root
> folder containing so many files.  There currently exists
> duplicate and unused files in the levels folders after a 
> first-time install.
> 
> If your only objection is that it will cause newer versions of
> Enigma to "forget" users'  solved status and best time status,
> then there's a solution to that, as well -- I can script that status
> information to be re-indexed to coincide with the changed
> locations of the levels (which I have done myself on my own install).
> There are some things that can be done in the code to minimize
> this "forgetting" of user information by just matching the level's
> file name in a transitional series of release versions where a
> unique file name record will be re-written to the correct restructured
> path.  The people who might be affected the most would be those who
> would change from 0.81 to 0.95 for instance - having never tried versions
> between those.  
> 
> It also occurs to me that users are playing an unfinished game, 
> and (like myself) may want to start over again and enjoy going back
> to the levels again, playing them in the order they appear on the
> level menu instead of skipping around trying to solve as many
> as soon as possible.  
> 
> Version 1.00 should be the latest the levels are restructured into
> a level pack-centric form where folders (or even separate zip files)
> can be dropped in to install/uninstall level packs.
> 
> The sooner, the better, I say.  Daniel Heck says this to me in email
> more than a week ago:
> 
> "This is something I wanted to do for a very long time.   Not only is the
> current levels folder a real mess, it also makes installation and
> loading the game from CD for example much slower than it needs to be.  I
> once tried to sort the levels manually, but I gave up because it's
> simply too much work..."
> 
> Also, Illmind of http://www.mag-heut.net/ has made comments about how
> troubling it is to have so many files are in the levels root folder.
> 
> The levels root folder of version 0.92 is quite a disarray of files:
> 1,192 files, 4 folders in levels root
> 5,750,660 bytes of levels.
> 
> But after running my script:
> 16 files, 9 folders in levels root
> 5,510,288 bytes of levels.
> 
> So consider how soon and how you want to do this - doing it right as soon
> as possible would be best, but tempering it for existing users and "backward"
> compatibility is equally noble.  Perhaps we can create a transition to have
> the best of both?
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Enigma-devel mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/enigma-devel
>