Discussion: thiefguild.com / AngelLoader integration

FenPhoenix on 9/8/2019 at 04:25

Marzec, the owner of (https://www.thiefguild.com) Thief Guild, has made two suggestions to me about integrating AngelLoader (or potentially any loader really) with his site. One is to allow users to submit ratings and reviews right from the loader, and the other is to allow users to click on a "Play" link on the site which would tell the loader to open, download the mission if required, and play it right then and there. The first of these ideas is discussed below (from (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149955&page=3&p=2426872#post2426872) this post):

Quote Posted by Marzec

I really like some of the points made here in this thread. In fact, some of the aspects of mission rating can clearly be objective. On the other hand, subjective factors are more interesting.

When you do a global ranking of missions, you have some general top list that gives you the most likely place to search for a next mission, in case you have no idea at all what your needs are. Things get complicated when someone likes forced ghosting more, while the other guy is more into "escape" or "trail of blood" like missions. Obviously these are only two examples in a rich variety of interests.

What do you guys think about maintaining some groups of interest? Anybody could be able to create a group of players sharing the same attitude towards fan mission building and gameplay. We are already able to do what we want where we want but what I am talking about is to set a tailored system for it, so that we could classify missions better. Following my previous example, a Ghosting Guild could be created for instance. There, members would focus on related mission aspects when rating missions. As a result, we would have a top-list for each guild, separately, maintained by gameplay mechanics enthusiasts. For me personally, an editorial-office-like nature of such group would be the long-term target. Such group would then write a post from time to time, to explain their understanding of leading mechanics or other things, not necessarily closely related to the topic. Anyone interested?

Quote Posted by "PinkDot"

Not sure if currently you can sort by the mission rank but as far as I know, this is on a to-do list, being an easy one to implement.

Yeah, for sure I should release this very soon. You can still sort missions by ratings on Thief - The Circle, while Thief Guild waits for sufficient amount of ratings to rank them.

Quote Posted by "PinkDot"

I even have this idea, which I'm going to suggest to the site author of talking to Fen about maybe integrating review and ranking abilities in his new Angel Loader. So, as you tick mission as completed, you could immediately submit your score and review to the website. This would populate it with valuable info very quickly, I believe, for the benefit of us all!

I would love to! In my opinion, the best way would be to provide a system of plugins (or scripts) that can be easily created and added by anyone to the loader. I already proposed this idea to tolsen64 regarding his loader. However there was no interest. @All, please spam if you like the idea, maybe then tolsen will consider my request ... and Fen will do it, too. I should write to him now.

Rating/review submission would be relatively easy to implement, given an API to interact with the site.

The other suggestion - that of clicking a "Play" link and then playing right away - is more complicated and comes with potential pitfalls, but it also sounds like it could be really convenient.

Would people be interested in a "click a link and be playing immediately" type feature?

The way we're thinking it would work is like this:
-User goes to an FM on thiefguild.com and clicks "Play"
-AngelLoader automatically opens if not already open, and checks to see if the FM has an ID that matches any local FM. If so, it just plays the local FM. If not, it does a best-effort metadata match to see if an identical local FM exists. If it finds any, it asks the user for confirmation that this is the same FM, after which it will save this choice so the user doesn't get asked again for this FM. If it doesn't find any matches at all, it downloads the FM and then plays it.

Problems could be:
-It might have to ask the user for confirmation a lot, decreasing the convenience (I can't quite envision how often this would happen without trying it)
-Downloading a large FM might take a long time, and then if it played it right away, the user might be off doing something else and be interrupted, or else it would have to ask the user to confirm playing, possibly decreasing the convenience

I'm trying to get a better handle on whether it's a good feature and I'm having trouble sorting it out in my own head. I just want to open it up for any thoughts or ideas.

Unna Oertdottir on 9/8/2019 at 07:43

I don't think this is a good idea.

-Never rely on a (3rd party) service that you don't run yourself. It might be working at times, but it will be offline or corrupted in the future and you won't be able fix it. This happens all the time.
-Implementing 3rd party service means that you trust someone you don't know. Never do this. It's stupid.
-One-click ratings for FMs? Rubbish.
-Downloading FMs requires a lot of bandwidth. I doubt this page will be able to provide this.

Anglloader currently is a nice drop-in device, easy to use and user-friendly. If it is trying to connect to another website (with trackers) when starting, I wouldn't use it any more since it's potentially spyware and bloatware then. I don't want to care about that.
My tin foil hat has spoken, howgh.

PinkDot on 9/8/2019 at 12:49

Some serious overreaction here...

Quote:

-Never rely on a (3rd party) service that you don't run yourself. It might be working at times, but it will be offline or corrupted in the future and you won't be able fix it. This happens all the time.

If thiefguild.com is offline then too bad for thiefuild.com - not for the Angel Loader.

Quote:

-Implementing 3rd party service means that you trust someone you don't know. Never do this. It's stupid.

Speaking from your own bad experience with people? Well, not trusting anyone is not healthy either. There are ways to verify things and people.

Quote:

-One-click ratings for FMs? Rubbish.

Can you elaborate? I'd love to see more ratings and reviews of fanmissions available.

Quote:

-Downloading FMs requires a lot of bandwidth. I doubt this page will be able to provide this.

Marzec would be better person to confirm this, but I don't think he intends to host fanmissions, but rather keep links to existing mirrors.

Quote:

Anglloader currently is a nice drop-in device, easy to use and user-friendly. If it is trying to connect to another website (with trackers) when starting, I wouldn't use it any more since it's potentially spyware and bloatware then. I don't want to care about that.

And you realize, that linking Angel Loader with one's thiefguild.com account would be optional and volountary, don't you?

---
Thanks Fen for considering this integration.
Personally, as mentioned above, the idea of allowing people to submit their ratings and reviews in an easier manner would be beneficial for many.

The 'Play' button - it would be nice to have, but I don't think it's essential. I don't think this would be unsafe or something, but the benefit would not be huge. Good experience from developer's point of view though! ;) :)

Unna Oertdottir on 9/8/2019 at 13:13

Quote Posted by PinkDot

Some serious overreaction here...

This is an evaluation my yourself. Not helpful in a discussion.

Code:

If thiefguild.com is offline then too bad for thiefuild.com - not for the Angel Loader.

Are you sure of this? Doesn't Angelloader try to connect to this page?

Quote:

Speaking from your own bad experience with people? Well, not trusting anyone is not healthy either. There are ways to verify things and people.

In this case, I wouldn't rely on others.

Code:

Can you elaborate? I'd love to see more ratings and reviews of fanmissions available.

Of course. Garrettloader has this feature. One-click submissions. This is an invitation for trolls, we already have many of them. A well balanced review is always welcome.

Code:

And you realize, that linking Angel Loader with one's thiefguild.com account would be optional and volountary, don't you?

No, I don't. How do you know this? I'm not talking about accounts.

PinkDot on 9/8/2019 at 13:52

Quote Posted by Unna Oertdottir

Code:

Can you elaborate? I'd love to see more ratings and reviews of fanmissions available.

Of course. Garrettloader has this feature. One-click submissions. This is an invitation for trolls, we already have many of them. A well balanced review is always welcome.

Code:

And you realize, that linking Angel Loader with one's thiefguild.com account would be optional and volountary, don't you?

No, I don't. How do you know this? I'm not talking about accounts.

To post reviews and submit ratings on thiefguild, you need an account. This has not been clearly stated above, so maybe it should be clarified by Marzec and Fen, but I would imagine, that this is how it would work: you'd store login information for Thiefguild.com in Angel Loader to facilitate posting your comments or ratings directly from the loader.

Being non-anonymous would potentially help with trolling incidents. But why do you assume people would use it for trolling, instead of sending valid reviews? Of course anything might happen, and maybe a layer of protection/moderation would be required (like reviews having to be accepted by moderator or something, before appearing on the website), but let's not assume the worst.

The idea of Thiefguild.com website is to help folks choose their next fanmission to play. So it does rely on ratings and reviews. Let's facilitate it, if we can.

Quote Posted by Unna Oertdottir

Quote Posted by PinkDot

Some serious overreaction here...

This is an evaluation my yourself. Not helpful in a discussion.

Did you not mention the 'tin foil hat' yourself...? :) I really just re-iterated your own words. ;)

Twist on 9/8/2019 at 19:05

Well, Unna isn't gonna like this, but Fen, are you very familiar with the Quake modding community?

They have a tool called the (https://www.quaddicted.com/tools/quake_injector) QuakeInjector, which allows you to search, download and play Quake maps and mods from within a desktop app similar to our Thief loaders. It even checks to see if you need to install a specific mod in order to play a map, then installs it for you before then installing the map.

This is different from what you're describing and it may be too much work, but after I discovered the QuakeInjector, I sort of wished something similar existed in the Thief community.

Granted, the QuakeInjector has plenty of flaws. It has a slow, archaic and bare-bones interface and the database it draws from (Quaddicted.com) is frequently out-of-date with the most recent releases (and that community is crazy prolific). But in its basic function -- searching for a map by author or map name, downloading, installing, and then playing that map - it's remarkably simple and reliable to use.

Even if it's beyond the scope of what you're considering here -- which I like and support -- it's something you might keep in the back of your mind for a future project. :thumb:

SlyFoxx on 10/8/2019 at 03:13

Sounds like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. "One click" play??? Are we really that lazy? As for ratings and reviews. I get it. Marzec wants to be helpful and wouldn't mind driving some traffic to his site in the process. A simple hot link from AL to Thief Guild for those who would like to offer ratings and comments would suffice. To be honest I'd much rather see that kind of effort directed here first. This is taffer central after all.

Just my 2 cents. I'm here for the duration no matter what and hope to finish my last FM sometime before 2030.

FenPhoenix on 10/8/2019 at 05:47

Quote Posted by SlyFoxx

Thanks. As I'm sort of a grumpy oldschooler who is not as in-touch with tech as I should be anymore, I feel like I should at least listen if a perhaps more modern dev suggests something, lest I become too unwilling to do something that might be good. But I'm cautious which is why I asked, so thanks for the input.

R Soul on 10/8/2019 at 22:11

If you go through with this I suggest giving the user the option to specify which website to connect to, in case thiefguild ever goes offline permanently, or another website appears and uses the same system.

skacky on 10/8/2019 at 23:16

I'm not against it. The Quake community uses a similar system with Quaddicted (database where you can rate maps and leave comments) and the Quake Injector, which is a launcher where you can use filters, ratings and with a preview picture as well as a description. It works really well and people have been using it for years. I was actually surprised there wasn't anything like that for Thief when I first started playing FMs.

EDIT: DUH. I should read the thread. Twist said the same thing but a lot more eloquently.