Map Tagging Project

Hills is impassable by tanks, passable by bots - if map has lots of hills its hills.
Mountains is passable only by spiders or by nothing.

Chickens is for special chicken maps look at chicken nuggets etc. Those are unplayble in normal games.

Maybe i should add min-max players and min-max teams instead..

Special are maps that alter gameplay significantly, chickens, speedmetal,speedball etc. Those maps have weird gravity,extreme values of metal, special map structures etc.

Before investing time in it, maybe tags implementation should be reviewed.
A few proposals:

Symmetry:
provide ability to tag as either
- vertical-axis symmetry (dsd, blend warland)
- horizontal-axis (TinySkirmish)
- vertical+horizontal symmetry (warpy)
- diagonal-axis (island test)
- center symmetry (tabula, heartbreaker, wide pass, hide and seek)
- FULL symmetry??? horizontal+vertical+diagonal
- no symmetry (real europe)
and allow search by specific symmetry, any symmetry or none.
Agreed, it may seem overkill, but we can see "Altored Divide" versions have been tagged as either sym or asym, so people have a different understanding of what "symmetric" means. Either we explain that center-symmetry should (or not) be counted as symmetric to taggers, or ask them a more elaborate question of what kind of symmetry is present, with icons, so choice is obvious. Added benefit is we can autogenerate meaningful starting boxes.

Tagging should be ovious, or it becomes useless. If we ask ourself if a tag should be used because it isnt obvious, then the tag isnt worthy as a significant percentage of the maps may be wrongly tagged by ppl who think differently.

FFA tagging isnt very useful:
- some maps may be only suitable for FFA (kinda like real europe)
- some maps may also be suitable for FFA
- some maps maybe be unsuitable for FFA
current tagging doesnt allow for a clear distinction between these cases

Size/area inconsistency:
- 12x12 is considered small (area=144)
- 16x8 is considered medium (area=128)
I believe size should consider area rather than linear dimensions.
And why not compute aspect ratio for maps so you can search for roughly square maps, or particularly wide elongated maps.

And regarding hills and such... maybe it should be additive tags (like it has hills+water+flat). Maybe with rough proportions of each attached to each tag (like 20% water), or a qualification (like mostly water, or negligible water). If you want a sea battle, you can then search for a map with "mostly water".
Categories:
- flatland
- water
- hills
- moutains
Qualifications:
- fully
- mostly
- relevant
- negligible
- none (may not be required, depending on implementation)

Or something different, use tags to define whether unit classes are appropriate for a given map (like, map is inappopriate for water units). This would even provide beginners with hints.

Horizontal vs vertical vs diagonal symmetry doesn't matter - I can rotate my camera.

Ideal number is also good.
But consider autohost - say autohost which is set to host FFA. There are X people on it and it has to pick some suitable map, assign people to teams and prepare boxes.

Yeah but is CCR ideal for 1v1 or for 4v4?
If autohost has 8people cant it pick ccr?

Looks like good work so far. Last time I tried to get a listing of all FFA maps I got a horrible listing that included a whole lot of obvious non-FFAs. Now I can actually get a decent list of FFAs. Only exception I see right now is Supreme Lake up top being flagged as FFA.

NAh we can add boxes editor to map tagging. Just first need to decide what to tag and how before changing it.

Well maps could be grouped together in some way like under common name .. or something..
but many map versions differ a lot and often you want older version..

Chickcens have more maps than 3 im sure..

And size is width+height, i think its better than area for general perception.

Very looong map can have small area but is felt as "big"

Do people play different versions of maps? I am talking about things such as Ravaged vs Ravaged v2, not Speedball vs Speedball Wide or whatever. Maps that have minor adjustments that generally only affect aesthetics or minor balance issues. Search maps for "Mountain Pass Nixa" for an example.

There may be more Chickens maps. And I suppose I am looking at it the wrong way. This is what I should be considering: Regardless of the number of chicken maps, is it useful to people? Do people use that specific search function? Is there a way to change it into something more useful for people?

I see your point, Godde. Using that judgment, would it be better to classify maps with Sheep's proposed tag system, or our current one, but with perhaps a 'help' page that better define what should be classified as what?

You did mention something about an autohost picking maps for someone... I have not experienced anything other than PW and manual selection of maps. Can you tell me how this information is supposed to be used for bots?