ARMA Mission Filename Convention

[terox 316]

In 2003 i started a discussion to create a mission filename convention for OFP

I would like to revisit the discussion and with community help create a similar filename convention to suit the majority requirements

The main aim was to standardise the filename in such a way that

a) The relevant information was laid out in an organised manner

b) It was easy on the eye when scanning through hundreds of mission listings on the server

c) The list was easy to navigate through to find the required mission

Here's the old thread link for those interested, there is some valuable information especially for linux server systems and omission of underscores and the md5 checksum (which i never really understood)

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....94;st=0

Very basically the old filename convention, which i believe became widely used but not a community wide standard was laid out in the following way

<span style='color:red'>map type</span>

<span style='color:blue'>addon tag</span>

<span style='color:red'>player slots</span>

<span style='color:blue'>map name</span>

An example of a cooperative mission filename, that uses NO addons

<span style='color:red'>co</span> <span style='color:blue'>08</span> <span style='color:red'>clear the hill</span>

An example of a cooperative mission filename, that uses addons

<span style='color:red'>co</span><span style='color:blue'>@</span> <span style='color:red'>08</span> <span style='color:blue'>clear the hill</span>

<span style='color:blue'><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>******** MAP TYPE ********</span></span>

The following abbreviations were used

a&d - (Attack & defend)

co - (Cooperative)

combi - (Combination of c&h and ctf

ctf - (Capture the Flag)

ctfr - (Reverse capture the flag)

c&h - (Capture and hold)

cti - (Capture the island )(Combination of rts and c&h)

rc - (Race)

sc - (Sector Control)

tdm - (Team Deathmatch)

dm - (Death Match)

ff - (Flagfight)

tff - (Team Flag Fight)

e&e - (Escape & Evasion)

rts - (Real Time Strategy)

misc - (Miscellaneous) not belonging to a map type)

@ - DENOTES Non BIS ADDON USED

<span style='color:blue'><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>******** ADDON TAG ********</span></span>

It simply denotes that a non BIS standard addon is used by the mission which helps the server admin decide whether he should load the mission or not depending on the clientel on his server

eg are they likely to have the server addon pack or not

<span style='color:blue'><span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>******** PLAYER SLOTS ********</span></span>

Denotes maximum number of playable slots

if less than 10 preceded by a "0"

eg

06

08

10

44

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In hindsight and with experience implementing this system on the zeus servers, which used to run numerous mods and an addon pack

i also believe that a further tag is required

This would be for missions that require a certain mod or/and official league maps by communities like ECL, BCL, WGL etc

this preceding tag would only be used if the mission was for that mod/league

however and if required, we could preced all missions with a tag and if it's a bis standard mission, simply use BIS

so it would look something like

wgl a&d 32 destroy the scud

ecl ctf 24 foot slogger

fdf a&d 32 winters night

bis co 22 aftermath

the addon tag could still be used to denote that the mission made for a mod also uses additional non mod addons

So, comments please

[hoz 0]

While a filename convention is nice, its not what you see when your admining a server. The onLoadmission="missionname" is now used to display the name of the mission and the mission type is taken from the header class in the description.ext. You will need to consider these options because it will be more important to have consistent description.ext's with these entries.

*edit: IF these items are are missing the filename is used.(I think)

[fasad 1]

Good initiative!

The mod tag is a great idea, but how would you name a mission that uses only unofficial addons, but is not a mod? Maybe the mod tags could be put into brackets to keep them at one end of the mission list? Missions that are not mod specific would just use the normal naming convention.

Oh, I think I would be a good idea to change all references to the mission name from "map" to "mission", it could be misinterpreted.

[.kju 3245]

ive wrote a small script (for powergrep) which takes the file name and sets that string inside the mission.sqm as the onLoadmission value - in case someone is interested

[terox 316]

While a filename convention is nice, its not what you see when your admining a server. The onLoadmission="missionname" is now used to display the name of the mission and the mission type is taken from the header class in the description.ext. You will need to consider these options because it will be more important to have consistent description.ext's with these entries.

*edit: IF these items are are missing the filename is used.(I think)

you would see the filename in your ftp/ssh client window, but i wasn't aware of the description.ext entry (Waiting for the linux server before we can launch arma)

thanks for the tip

The mod tag is a great idea, but how would you name a mission that uses only unofficial addons, but is not a mod?

The "@" or another character is used to denote that the mission uses an addon, and by this i mean a 3rd party addon, not one that ports with the game

there are, will be so many addons that it is nigh on impossible and certainly not practical to implement a tag for each studio

and what, in hindsight is important, is that the server admin simply needs to know if launching a particular mission will thtrow his fellow players off the server if he feels they may not have the server addon pack

ive wrote a small script (for powergrep) which takes the file name and sets that string inside the mission.sqm as the onLoadmission value - in case someone is interested

maybe there may be a way of implementing something similar

[jerryhopper 286]

im harvesting all mission names that are played online.

what i want to achive, is to filter out the 'semi official' ones.

so, the names you suggested, is a little problem.

since the MAPNAME can contain spaces.

if we can enclose the mapname somehow, its easier to harvest all official ones with a regexp match -or we do the name at the end.

next to that, wouldnt it be interesting to add a Version to it?

bis co 22 0.1 aftermath

About that SSH thing with long lists and hundreds of maps, im also working on a PYTHON serverApp, that will run on linux and windows... and controllable thru a php webpage...

But aside that servertool, there is just the NEED to be some uniform name.

i suggest some 'review' board that only reviews the 'correctly named' maps.

i'll eventually go along with that naming convention, and will spit out all possible info about the missions and addons needed and the popularity of these....

keep in mind, i record the addons that are used on that mission, the players, the server, the version etc etc....

the question is: HOW do we enforce this? and as of this moment? ( - note my review board idea above. )

Quote[/b] ]there are, will be so many addons that it is nigh on impossible and certainly not practical to implement a tag for each studio

And thats where i jump in. As long as the naming convention is used, i can spit out ANY detail of a mission and the addons required in any form.

Also my ArmA:Start tool , that launcges arma and joins a server via ArmA://ip:port links, can inform people of missing mods, or recently used addons before the player joins that server.

and again the naming convention will HELP the player to indentify what he needs.

edit :

i talked to Vult, and he uses this :

(Coop 2-42) Op. Eagle´s death (V0.93,Vult)

this is also sufficient, and suits my standards for sure.

[terox 316]

An enforcement of any unnoficial incentive like this simply wouldnt be accepted by the community

The only way is to have a general widely used agreement with the backing of such sites like OFPEC, who have already stated that if there was an agreed standard they would insist on that filename convention being followed for any missions they were asked to review

RE: the mission version being added to the convention, well in the past if one was to be used it was simply added to the end of the filename and as it would be the last piece of information that would be searched for, thats ideally in my opinion where it should be

There are so many issues to take into consideration here that maybe when we have a full criteria we should look azt each item in detail in turn

so i take it from the flow of discussion so far the convention would require the following elements

<ul>

1) A Mod or official league map tag, which could be ommitted for BIS standard missions

2) Map type as an abbreviation

3) A character to denote whether any 3rd party addons are used

4) No of playable slots

5) Mission name

6) A versioning system

A) All characters used would have to be lower case for LINUX compatability

B) It would need to integrate into JerryHoppers servertool project

C) It would have to be mirror'd into the description.ext file of the mission

and am sure as the discussion develops more issues may come to light

[jerryhopper 286]

An enforcement of any unnoficial incentive like this simply wouldnt be accepted by the community

and am sure as the discussion develops more issues may come to light

let me clear this up.

what im saying is : Vult's way is clear, and generates a far more unique name.

His additions - Version and Tag - make the mapname kinda unique.

what it misses is the '@' which is a good thought.

Note that the more info is in the mapname the more confusing it is.

eventually i can monitor the addons needed for this maps.

i could make the mission-scanner opensource, but im more into centralization of information, so it can be tapped by external sites.

for the rest...The points you noted are definatly needed.

only its so impossible to force mapmakers SUBMIT their mapversions, i think thats where my scanner could help too...

[dr_eyeball 16]

Good initiative.

but i wasn't aware of the description.ext entry

On the same topic, I wrote a post Adding a Mission Name & Description, which may assist this discussion, since one follows on from the other.

[celery 8]

I've used the OFP standard for quite some time now. I name the file and the mission similarly, like this:

ctf_80_ow_hexenkessel_v1-12.sara

CTF 80 OW Hexenkessel v1.12

[HitmanFF 6]

I'm following the same naming conventions as Celery, apart from leaving out the version number (that's added in the briefingDescription in mission.sqm, so the version number is still visible in the assignment pool).

So the only change I'd like to have concerning terox' proposal would be to use underscores instead of spaces in the file name: ArmA exchanges all spaces with %20, making a file name quite hard to read.

[celery 8]

...apart from leaving out the version number (that's added in the briefingDescription in mission.sqm, so the version number is still visible in the assignment pool).

The reason why I include the version number in the name itself is that on some servers, especially during beta testing and development, it would be impossible to tell apart the different versions because they would be named identically in the mission list.

[Silverr 0]

I will be happy that all maps on my server will be called like Terox suggested:

ecl ctf 24 foot slogger

bis co 22 aftermath

but with versions on end. Very comportable for admin. Great!

[celery 8]

In my opinion the league tag should be after the game type, like in the OFP convention. Some people just want to see all maps of a certain game type and it shouldn't be a problem in league matches because usually you know what type the map you're choosing is.

I don't know why the ArmA one should be any different anyway, just transfer the convention to briefing names too.

[terox 316]

In my opinion the league tag should be after the game type, like in the OFP convention. Some people just want to see all maps of a certain game type and it shouldn't be a problem in league matches because usually you know what type the map you're choosing is.

I don't know why the ArmA one should be any different anyway, just transfer the convention to briefing names too.

with experience running fdf, wgl, wglz, ecl, ecp and god knows what other mods zeus has run over the past few years, we did indeed find it much easier to group all missions together in the following order

MOD/League tag

type of game

number of players

Quote[/b] ]<ul>fdf a&d xx yyyy

fdf co xx yyyy

fdf co XX yyyy

fdf cti xx yyy

ecp a&d xx yyyy

ecp co xx yyyy

ecp co XX yyyy

ecp cti xx yyy

wgl a&d xx yyyy

wgl co xx yyyy

wgl co XX yyyy

wgl cti xx yyy

Your suggestion celery would look like the following

(and we arent just talking about scanning through the mission selection screen, we are also talking about scanning though our FTP/SSH windows, which doesnt subgroup them in island categories

Quote[/b] ]<ul>a&d fdf xx yyyy

a&d ecp 32 yyyy

a&d wgl 28 yyyy

co fdf 10 yyyy

co fdf 22 yyyy

co ecp 08 yyyy

co ecp 24 yyyy

co wgl 14 yyyy

co wgl 30 yyyy

cti fdf 20 yyy

cti ecp 16 yyy

cti wgl 22 wgl yyy

what i think you need to think about is the process that an admin uses to select a mission.

I am only speaking for myself here, but my selection process is as follows

try to imagine the flow of discussion over teamspeak

1) Ok we are currently running WGL on the server, so we need a wgl mission, dont need to ask this over teamspeak

2) QUESTION: ok lads, what type of mission do you want

ANSWER: Coop

3) Question, how many players are on the server

ANSWER: 24 (so forget any missions that run on less than 24 player slots)

... we have now got to the point where we have scanned down found all of our wgl missions neatly listed together, found or cooperative listings and have scanned further down until we are looking at the first

wgl co 24 ..........

4) Question: Ok we have 7 missions that suit our needs these are

aaa 1.01

aaa 1.3

bbb beta 1

ccc

ddd

eee

fff

ANSWER: lets play CCC, by the way aaa v1.01 needs removing from the server, oh and we havent tried bbb beta 1

<ul> aaa 1.01

In my opinion, i believe the MOD tag first is the better approach

What does everyone else think

_

So the only change I'd like to have concerning terox' proposal would be to use underscores instead of spaces in the file name: ArmA exchanges all spaces with %20, making a file name quite hard to read.

Damn, underscores cause clutter when reading, but if there is no solution, thanks to the 20% characters that arma places then we are a bit stuck with it

RE: the (Coop 2-42) Op. Eagle´s death (V0.93,Vult)

example of another filename solution

The way i see it, brackets add to the filename length and arent necessary (unless they can take the place of the underscore, maybe)

and i find in the majority of cases, it is only the maximum number of player slots that are really of any use and therefore the lower number of slots required is of limited importance and certainly not worth the addition filename length

I do however like the versioning in brackets at the end but dont see the need for the creators tag (although its at the very end so doesnt really cause cluttered reading)

RE: Dr_Eyeball's post Feb. 17 2007,13:43

As and when an agreed convention has been reached, i think we should try and get the moderators to allow a locked "Information" post at the top of the required forum and add the information in your post to it, along with the filename guidelines

___

<span style='color:blue'>I also have a few questions.</span>

<ul>

1) According to Hoz, we need to enter something to the description.ext,(he refers to the game type)... what exactly do we need

it would seem more than the onloadmission etc etc

and it would seem that the entry in the "weather selection"

eg briefingName would have to mirror the filename

2) is the use of the @ character going to cause any problems

3) is the use of the & (ampersand going to cause any problems

4) can we use something else instead of underscores (is there a method which will stop arma replacing spaces with 20%

<span style='color:red'>We really need to get more server admins and community leaders in on this discussion, otherwise 1 month down the line someone will come up with something that will destroy all the hard work thus far, so please spread the word</span>

[jerryhopper 286]

bump!

-weird, i see nothing on the second page of this thread?

[hoz 0]

Quote[/b] ]1) According to Hoz, we need to enter something to the description.ext,(he refers to the game type)... what exactly do we need

it would seem more than the onloadmission etc etc

There are 2 parts of the description.ext which are fairly new to ArmA but were present in Elite

The onLoadMission ="MissionName" is the name now seen in the server listing of missions.

The Header class is where the type of mission is presented to GameSpy, Coop, DM, Etc and the number of players for the mission.

I was merely pointing out that this is what is seen when selecting a mission on the server. In OFP I think it was the filename.

[crashdome 3]

I can tell you right now that I am leaning against using any sort of conventional standard for my mission names. The ONLY good of this is for server admins and IMO it is up to them to do their own organization. If you want to enforce standards in order for a mission to be used on your server, then that is ok... but I can say right now that as a mission maker the last thing I need is to follow some guideline to name my mission when it doesn't benefit me.

The best thing would be for BIS to allot some sort of folder structure to browse/categorize missions. It is much easier to do that than to suggest everyone use some ugly naming convention.

Keep in mind that I do not play on public servers. I am speaking strictly as a mission maker. IMO I do not want this added burden. I applaud the initiative, but I really think organization should be up to the server admins and some sort of support in that regard should be given by BIS.... not the mission makers.

[terox 316]

Thx for the input crashdome.

Yes i agree that BIS could help out here a bit

Yes i agree that any convention should be voluntary, (how would you force such a thing anyway) we all know how the BIS community hate being told what to do, which among other reasons is why ofp addons were of such varying quality.

However there is more to it than to just help out server admins.

For instance JerryHoppers initiative on his mission name harvesting project

It helps stop 32 different versions of hexenkessel (if you like that sort of thing) using exactly the same filename

It also sppeds up mission assignment and helps the player who requested a specific mission for loading by allowing the admin to quickly find it, without having to go through what can be literally hundreds of missions

Being a mission maker and a server admin, i dont find it at all difficult to follow a naming convention, i have done so for the past few years without any problems

Ofcourse server admins can edit the filename to comply with any convention their server uses, but wouldnt it be nice for a change, if these guys had a little help once in a while and then when we copy missions from 1 server to another we dont have to bother editing things, so the filename remains the way the original mission maker named it

IMo the 2 most important folks for the server are the admins and their mission makers, shouldnt they try and work together

The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard we try and push this and create a reasonably acceptable method, there will be communities and individuals who wont be interested in it. However i am not after creating a set standard that everyone must use I am trying to create a generally accepted method that those who wish to comply with can use and it doesnt conflict with third party devs and other such applications.

Where would we be without OFPEC's addon tags? This is now a generally accepted standard with good reason

Thanks for the Info Hoz

Quote[/b] ]There are 2 parts of the description.ext which are fairly new to ArmA but were present in Elite

The onLoadMission ="MissionName" is the name now seen in the server listing of missions.

The Header class is where the type of mission is presented to GameSpy, Coop, DM, Etc and the number of players for the mission.

The header class is new,

The onloadmission also had the same effect in OFP

so any such naming convention, should include instructions on use of these parameters also

[crashdome 3]

I wasn't suggesting that you were trying to force anything... and I do know that even if supported, there will always be a few who either A) don't know about the mission naming convention B) don't care.

What I was trying to really get at is that the information you include in this mission naming convention is already in the mission files (most of it anyway). Why could BIS not simply add a few more columns of the mission listing to include this information? It isn't hard ... and it should not reduce the servers performance.

I realize it probably isn't a priority, but if MP is a big part (or the biggest part?) of this game than BIS should provide this information like every other game I can think of does.

Again, I applaud the idea... <s>but I am getting a bit tired of BIS leaving things to the community to figure out...</s>

but I think not everything should be only a community effort. We should take this to BIS first and then, if they cannot help us, determine our own course.

I also think your comment about mission makers and admins is a bit overstated. Helping out is always good... but some mission makers do not make missions for public servers. In fact, I would probably guess a majority of them don't, which is why I think a naming convention should be the last option. It really only applies to a sub-group of mission makers... even if they are 5% or 50%, I cannot imagine the SP mission makers having to follow some silly MP naming convention especially if it is required to upload to OFPEC.

[jerryhopper 286]

time to make a point.

terox. please post your final scheme (if changed due to any thoughts/ideas broughts up)

i will use THAT formatting for indexing missions, and creating a 'mission' charts and graphs for those who use this naming convention. - every other map, wont get listed in the charts and infopages...

i think exactly the same about the team 'tags' as used by ofpec. - if you are not listed there, you wont show up in my services....

so... draw a line here Terox

[celery 8]

I'd like to see a broader selection of people deciding over this than having Terox work as judge, jury and executioner. Setting up a high profile poll with the suggested formats would be nice.

The file names don't matter so much anymore, right now it's the actual mission name that needs formatting to make a sensible list of map names on the server. None of the OP's examples have capital letters in the names and for the sake of sparing eyes there should be capitalisation in the mission names, not talking about the file names now.

I'm against the current ECL and Terox' standard of putting the league or whatever tag in front of the whole name. It makes mission selecting harder for public games or mixed map friendlies because you have a certain game mode scattered all over the list and public games happen many, many times more often than any league games to justify such an elitistic approach. Mods are different of course, but then it's a mod and not just a league.

[jerryhopper 286]

i dont like endless discussions....

OFPEC used that standard for years...

terox is listening to other suggestions here, and changes are maybe possible later.

right now, we need to take a stand. if you doubt objectivity feel free to discuss that later.

NOW, we need something solid. mod-toold coming out soon - a standard is needed, and ofpec is authority on that to my knowledge.

now is the time, not tomorrow..... or next week....

[Tom_Anger 0]

Can someone create a poll to see what players would like to see.  I am only offering an opinion.  Something to be added to the poll.  

Here is my suggestion followed by an appendix to describe it:

Mapname - Gametype (Playerslots Addontag)

Example:

Corazol Fight - TDM (16)

Corazol Fight - TDM (16*)

Deadly Anger - A&D (20)

Deadly Anger - C&H (64)

Warehouse - A&D (20)

Warehouse - A&D (20 AMA)

The last one is an example with a made up addon group.

Concerns:

Total allocated characters to allow a mission designer to put all the necessary info and keep the player informed.

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Appendix:</span>

Mapname

Self Explanatory the creative name for your map.  Looks clean in the maplist.

- (dash)

This is the separator to distinguish the map name from the abbreviated details that follow.

Gametype

Upper or Lower Case by discretion

a&d   -  (Attack & defend)

co     -  (Cooperative)

combi -  (Combination of c&h and ctf

ctf     -  (Capture the Flag)

ctfr    -  (Reverse capture the flag)

c&h    -  (Capture and hold)

cti     -  (Capture the island )(Combination of rts and c&h)

rc      -  (Race)

sc     -   (Sector Control)

tdm   -  (Team Deathmatch)

dm     -  (Death Match)

ff       -  (Flagfight)

tff      -  (Team Flag Fight)

e&e    -  (Escape & Evasion)

rts     -  (Real Time Strategy)

misc   -  (Miscellaneous) not belonging to a map type)

Player Slots

The total # of players designed for that map/mission

Addontag

This is a mnemonic which can be used to represent an addon group or if unnamed referenced by a '*' to inform the viewer that addons are being used.

[terox 316]

I'd like to see a broader selection of people deciding over this than having Terox work as judge, jury and executioner. Setting up a high profile poll with the suggested formats would be nice.

I thought this thread had died

I've got to agree there Celery, more input is needed from

a) Community server admins

b) League admins

c) bis representratives.

for example, the

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

class Header

{

gameType = Co; //DM, etc

minPlayers = 1; //min # of players the mission supports

maxPlayers = 10; //Max # of players the mission supports

playerCountMultipleOf = 1; //Auto bandwidth adjuster (For coop's use 1, for team v team games use 2)

};

does not allow for custom strings for a gametype value, these classes/values are infact stated in the config

and the filename spaces being replaced by %20 also causes problems.

and as Crashdome states, BIS should really be creating a template system for us

Here's the things to think about

1) The name seen in the gamepsy browser is:

The name stated in the "Name" field in the Intel section of the mission editor, i shall refer to this as "mission name"

if this is not present then i believe the filename is used

So ideally, the filename and the mission name need to look similar in layout

2) the second issue is to have BIS reconfigure their game type listing in the config, so that the description.ext class "Header" allows for either customised string options, or more "gametype" listings for its "gametype" attribute

The US release is in a few weeks, and shortly after that we should be expecting the next patch, maybe the %20 tag used to replace spaces in the filename will have been changed in this patch

It would be appreciated if we could get some BIS input here?

Closure on this thread would not be appropriate with such minimal response. maybe other communities dont see this as important, or simply dont know of it, who knows

Re: Tom Angers system

Corazol Fight - TDM (16)

Corazol Fight - TDM (16*)

Deadly Anger - A&D (20)

Deadly Anger - C&H (64)

Warehouse - A&D (20)

Warehouse - A&D (20 AMA)

that becomes a garbled mess when u have 50 + missions

from my experience, the most important selection is

Mission type

eg

<ul> co

a&d

c&h

the second most is selecting the mission type that has enough slots to house the number of players

eg.

<ul> 06

12

30

plus something to show that it requires addons

and something to define if the mission requires a mod

so ideally

mod tag <-> gametype <-> No of players <-> mission name <-> version

the addon tag symbol, eg "@" could be placed as a prefix to everything, or after the gametype