[SUG][PLAYER] Level Pack Downloader

[WillLem]

This has been alluded to in several other topics, but I thought I'd make a separate topic to discuss the idea.

Basically, allow content creators to upload their packs to NeoLemmix, from where they can be downloaded via a similar interface to the style manager. They could be grouped/searchable by Author, Title, Difficulty, Size and therefore make finding new packs very easy for everyone.

When uploading, creators could suggest a difficulty rating (maybe from Easy, Medium, Hard, Extreme) for their pack which indicates the average difficulty of the entire pack*. Of course, if community consensus places a pack higher or lower than suggested by its creator, then this could be suitably updated.

It would also have the added benefit of being a continuous, reliable source of the most up-to-date version of any given pack. Pack topics would still be very relevant for promotion and information regarding the pack, as well as general discussion, replay sharing, etc.

*I'd even suggest that this be a sliding scale, since packs often (in fact, usually) feature a wide range of difficulty. For example, an author could suggest "Easy - Hard" for their pack, and it would therefore be placed in this category. However, feedback and consensus may indicate that the pack is "Medium - Hard", or even "Medium - Extreme", in which case it would be moved to that category.

The way I imagine it, if a player searches "Medium" difficulty, they will be shown every pack whose difficulty spans across and therefore includes "Medium". However, they would be ordered so that "Easy - Medium" is higher up and "Easy - Extreme" is lower down on the list. The list would indicate the pack's entire difficulty range regardless of the search criteria.

[namida]

The NeoLemmix installer - if anyone even uses it anymore - had the ability to download some level packs. There clearly wasn't all that much interest in keeping packs in it, as I haven't received any request to add / update packs on the list for a long time now. (That is, unless Nessy is taking care of it and I've completely forgotten that I assigned it to him, but I don't think that's the case.)

Even then, updating such lists is a chore, especially if people don't notify when a pack has been updated / etc. So - it would need to be something that content creators do themself; either in terms of submitting links, or in terms of outright having a pack upload site.

Ultimately, for all of this to add up to a real-world useful pack download feature - it'd need to be paired with a fully-functional level storage website. And that's an amount of effort I'm simply not interested in putting in right now, especially given that it would likely have to be written in PHP, which let's just say, is not a language I'm a very big fan of.

So this is rejected - not because it's a bad idea (it isn't), but because it's in the "far too much work" basket. Now - if someone else was willing to step up and create such a website, which I would be happy to provide the hosting for (provided of course that the website has basic protections against people uploading things that aren't packs), that would be a different matter; I'd be happy to implement the NL side of this feature.

[WouterSmits]

i cant install withoud error it saying failed on everything but on clemmings it stopped failed to read zip files
even on seblems

[WillLem]

i cant install withoud error it saying failed on everything but on clemmings it stopped failed to read zip files
even on seblems

Hi WouterSmits, thanks for reaching out. Can you post a screenshot of what's happening?

[WillLem]

So this is rejected - not because it's a bad idea (it isn't), but because it's in the "far too much work" basket. Now - if someone else was willing to step up and create such a website, which I would be happy to provide the hosting for (provided of course that the website has basic protections against people uploading things that aren't packs), that would be a different matter; I'd be happy to implement the NL side of this feature.

From my side, I'll consider this one resolved in that case. Hosting the packs is something I could do myself, but I'm unlikely to get around to actually doing it anytime soon.

[namida]

So this is rejected - not because it's a bad idea (it isn't), but because it's in the "far too much work" basket. Now - if someone else was willing to step up and create such a website, which I would be happy to provide the hosting for (provided of course that the website has basic protections against people uploading things that aren't packs), that would be a different matter; I'd be happy to implement the NL side of this feature.

From my side, I'll consider this one resolved in that case. Hosting the packs is something I could do myself, but I'm unlikely to get around to actually doing it anytime soon.

This is not a suitable project for someone who's still learning.

I'm also at this stage going to reject this idea as a player feature altogether. This doesn't mean the entire concept is rejected; a level database and potentially a standalone level pack downloader app are still a possibility. For this reason though, I've moved it out of the engine bugs/suggestions board, and back to the main one (as there's no sub-board that it's particularly suited to).