Suggestions: vote system and search engine

[Magilvia]

First of all thanks Kevan for this great game! 
I think it would be great if each forum user could vote the difficulty level in-game for every custom puzzle. Then we need a search engine to serch puzzle by difficulty, author, title and post date.
Also It would be great if warehouse submission could be split in puzzle and solutions (in this case specifying for which puzzle), to trace them and to exclude/include solutions from the search engine results.

Thanks.

[Kevan]

I'm afraid I've got a bit too much on my plate to do any further work on Rubicon at the moment, but if any players want to set up a third-party interface for browsing and voting on existing levels, I'd be happy to make it official and link to it. The main difference between onsite and offsite scripts is access to the warehouse directory, so I might as well share the location of the warehouse data files:-

         http://kevan.org/rubicon/userlevels/warehouse/

(They're styled on the original ASCII-art format of RUBE, with extra characters for the new components. Old levels have a single first line beginning with an asterisk and having both level name and creator, separated by another asterisk. More recent levels have the data split over three lines, which also include a setting for the physics model.)

[jnz]

I put up a very alpha search engine at http://www.stardrifter.org/rubisearch/.  It is working off of a cached copy of the warehouse so new additions won't show up.  Try not to break it. 

[Magilvia]

I'm afraid I've got a bit too much on my plate to do any further work on Rubicon at the moment, but if any players want to set up a third-party interface for browsing and voting on existing levels, I'd be happy to make it official and link to it.

I put up a very alpha search engine at http://www.stardrifter.org/rubisearch/.

Ok, thank you it's alredy a good start 

[jnz]

Well I've got some rudimentary voting support available now.  Nothing to stop people from completely abusing it, but we'll see how it works out.  Of course I need some people to actually try voting.  That URL again is http://www.stardrifter.org/rubisearch/

[jf]

Hi jnz -- looks good. Could you add a way for the designer to mark a level as either Puzzle or Solution, as many of my solutions show up as puzzles. Also, in lieu of a delete feature, can you add a way to mark a level as "junk" (i.e. "would be deleted were there a delete interface".) I have a bunch of those in the warehouse.

[jnz]

Hi jnz -- looks good. Could you add a way for the designer to mark a level as either Puzzle or Solution, as many of my solutions show up as puzzles.  Also, in lieu of a delete feature, can you add a way to mark a level as "junk" (i.e. "would be deleted were there a delete interface".) I have a bunch of those in the warehouse.

You can mark something as a solution by voting on it and selecting Solution from the drop down.  That may be a bit clumsy, but it is how it is working right now.  The ones that are already marked as solutions were done automatically by just scanning for the word "solution" in the title.

The "junk" thing would be doable but I'm worried about abuse.  Some joker could come along and just start flagging everything as junk.

[Magilvia]

Good work jnz. What about preparing a new submission page to replace Kevan original one, if he agrees, with new fields to specify if it's a solution and for which puzzle?

[jf]

How about having another value other than Puzzle and Solution in the drop-down, which would be "Unused" or some such. Also, when the value changes from Puzzle to something else, do you save the current rating, so that it comes back to life when switched back to Puzzle? That would make a joker's switch from Puzzle to other harmless, as the owner could just switch it back.

[jnz]

Good work jnz. What about preparing a new submission page to replace Kevan original one, if he agrees, with new fields to specify if it's a solution and for which puzzle?

That would be nice but it would be tricky since I don't have access to the warehouse's internals (I can only read what's there).

How about having another value other than Puzzle and Solution in the drop-down, which would be "Unused" or some such. Also, when the value changes from Puzzle to something else, do you save the current rating, so that it comes back to life when switched back to Puzzle? That would make a joker's switch from Puzzle to other harmless, as the owner could just switch it back.

Ok, I added something called "Other" and tweaked a few things around to try to make the concepts a bit clearer.  It does preserve the rating behind the scenes.
Try out http://www.stardrifter.org/rubisearch/?designer=rene to see some of the votes in action

[Magilvia]

The search is quite good but now it seems I can't vote anything, only search. Should there be two button, search and vote ?

[jnz]

The search is quite good but now it seems I can't vote anything, only search. Should there be two button, search and vote ?

Have you tried clicking on the entries in the "Type / Difficulty" column?  That should take you to the voting page for the level.

[Magilvia]

Well, yes, I can't get the page to change.
I'm trying to mark zagexyg as other.
what about adding a link to the voting page ?

[Rene]

Well, yes, I can't get the page to change.
I'm trying to mark zagexyg as other.
what about adding a link to the voting page ?

I am not sure what is not working for you Magilvia. The "Puzzle - no votes" (and others) text is actually a link to the voting page. I have just tried to do the same as you did, and that worked fine: zagexyg is now "other". What browser are you using? Mine is Firefox.

[Magilvia]

Yes, I found it. I didn't notice where are the links, thought you were talking about the difficulty dropdown list