Tahnan
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A small matter, but: it'd be cool if there were something (on the map? in the corner of the room?) to indicate that a room has been marked as "uninteresting" from a high score standpoint.

The spitemaster
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I think that this is a great idea. If there is a vast majority of first place ties the room should be marked uninteresting from a high score point of view.

It might help as well if the first room in a level didn't always get a first place. For sure if it didn't have any monsters in it.

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eytanz
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The spitemaster wrote:
I think that this is a great idea. If there is a vast majority of first place ties the room should be marked uninteresting from a high score point of view.

It might help as well if the first room in a level didn't always get a first place. For sure if it didn't have any monsters in it.

Hey! Don't hijack Tahnan's feature request (which is pretty useful) to introduce a totally different discussion. The question of which rooms to mark uninteresting is totally independent of the question of whether this information is visible in the game.

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NiroZ
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Tahnan wrote:
A small matter, but: it'd be cool if there were something (on the map? in the corner of the room?) to indicate that a room has been marked as "uninteresting" from a high score standpoint.

True, but you can just hit F6, which from memory tells you if the rooms is unhiscorable whether you have completed it or not. I admit that it is a bit inconvenient though.

Tahnan
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NiroZ wrote:
True, but you can just hit F6, which from memory tells you if the rooms is unhiscorable whether you have completed it or not. I admit that it is a bit inconvenient though.

But should I have to do that for every single room I enter? Especially in a hold like [mumble mumble], where a number of rooms seem to have been marked as uninteresting somewhat capriciously.

Maurog
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Uninteresting rooms are rooms with 1-move demos, are they not? Which not only means that there are no monsters in the room, but also that there is at least one place you can enter the room and immediately exit. It's not hard to recognize these right away and not try to optimize the trapdoors+orbs puzzles. I fail to see why you need a special indicator unless you are optimizing everything, if which case you're bound to use F6 anyway.

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[Last edited by Maurog at 12-03-2006 07:38 AM]

Rabscuttle
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Tahnan is talking about rooms that the architect has specifically marked uninteresting or unhighscorable

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 12-03-2006 07:37 AM]

Maurog
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Oh, I seem to be out of touch with events. Yeah, marking those is definitely a good idea!

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Syntax
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I second that idea. Countless times I've optimised a room to find it was in vain.

Someone Else
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Second?
It's already been seconded twice.
But I agree with the idea.

Kwakstur
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I third that idea.

Well, I can't first it because I didn't suggest it, and I can't second it because I'm no optimizer, and since I'm not an optimizer, I shouldn't care, but I do anyways, so . . . I third it.

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Mattcrampy
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How does this interact with people without CaravelNet or spotty connections? Would this introduce large amounts of lag, as happens if there's lag when submitting highscores?

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Tuttle
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If it means a check on the server each time you enter a room, then it'd have to be an opt-in feature (it really is only of use to the people who optimise).

When I was about to say that yesterday though, it struck me that maybe uninterestingness could be built into the downloaded hold file, or just updated in a batch periodically (each time you start playing or something, possibly even asynchronously). In theory, you only need to download one bit per room -- the HTTP headers would be more of a bandwidth hit for most holds.

I like the idea of it being opt-in anyway though. If it's on by default then I think there's a risk that new players will get confused between uninteresting rooms and non-required rooms.

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[Last edited by Tuttle at 12-04-2006 09:49 AM]

eytanz
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Since the game already needs to know whether or not there is an active caravelnet connection anyway, it could only perform the "uninteresting" check if it is connected.

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Syntax
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Well, couldn't the uninteresting rooms be flagged as such in the hold data itself? That way no connection would be needed.

eytanz
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How would that work? It's a purely server-side thing. I guess that room status could be synchronized whenever a connection is made and saved for later, but that would be a much bigger change to the game architecture, which means it's far less likely to actually happen anytime soon - I don't think Mike would do anything like that for 3.0. Moving the check (which is clearly done anyway) from being done after the room is completed to being done upon room entry seems like a smaller change and one which may happen in the near future. Therefore, I'd rather lobby for that now and if it is not sufficient, lobby for the bigger change later.

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Briareos
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eytanz wrote:
Moving the check (which is clearly done anyway) from being done after the room is completed to being done upon room entry seems like a smaller change and one which may happen in the near future.

That might also have the added bonus of telling the server you've just visited the room, if this info is used right server-side - that could also stop people from asking why they can't see the room image in H&S...

It might even be possible to send it in the same request used for uploading your highscore demo when exiting the room. And since that happens asynchronously in the background, you could just make an icon or message pop up to tell you the room is marked uninteresting, which would not take any more time.

(Of course, there's a slight chance you solve the room before said message pops up if you play lightning fast and the server lags, but I guess there's no additional harm in that... )

np: Yppah - We Aim (You Are Beautiful At All Times)

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