Mission database experiment

[VerySolidSnake 0]

The main problem with my last OFP Mission Database site was the fact that the admins got busy, therefor the missions stopped being uploaded. I was thinking about it and I believe there is a different way to run a mission database site that is entirely community driven.

Right now the site is live and at Fansn Armed Assault

It's a Digg clone, where anyone can login and submit links to their missions. In theory, the better missions will get "dugg", while the other missions will get buried. The ones that get "dugg" the most will be pushed onto the front page. The community will keep the good content pushed forward. Everyone is welcomed to submit ALL of their missions to this, only the non-missions/spam will get deleted.

It's entirely community driven so as long as the missions keep being created, the site will keep getting updated. We would probably want to designate a good file upload host to use alongside this.

What do you guys think of this? If it gets a positive response I'm planning on changing around the template to give it a more "Armed Assault" feel (no data will be lost, so go ahead and upload missions).

I want this site to be for the community, maintained by the community, and created by the community, so throw out some suggestions/ideas.

[boneboys 0]

Hi, I'm new to this ArmA game so I think its a good idea simply because trying to find out which missions are the most appreciated is not an easy task.

I will submit my first ever mission just to give you something to work with .

No problem if it gets buried deep down the list.

Thanks...

[dr_eyeball 16]

Sounds interesting.

1. - How does a mission get "dugg"? Does that mean downloaded or viewed or commented on or other criteria?

2. - Is there any other rating system associated with it?

3. - Does it upload the mission or just have a link to an external site?

4. - If uploaded, how do you handle updated mission versions? Deleted/Replaced or new separate addition?

5. - How complex can the write up be? Does it handle formatting, lots of text, images (how many)?

6. - What sort of "template" does it support? Do you mean like a Mission Template where various fields can be entered?

Categories:

7. - You may need a PvP category too. No-one wants to use "Other".

8. - What about mission packs & campaigns? Same deal or "other" category?

9. - With there being so many coop missions, it would be good to sub-categorise them somehow. Maybe: size/duration/scale/style?

[boneboys 0]

Well I've submitted my own effort. Not to sure about the other one thats been added, haven't checked it out

[Rak 0]

Good news, I'll try to support this for sure

IMO we need a community website focused solely on missions and this may be it. Good luck!

[maddogx 13]

Looks like an excellent idea to me.

Hopefully it will be taken up by the community.

[nobrainer 0]

Great!

If you can sort missions and replace outdated version with new versions of the mission, It's just great.

Dr-Eyeball is onto something I think...

Hope "dugg" is because of reports and not number of downloads...

[VerySolidSnake 0]

Sounds interesting.

1. - How does a mission get "dugg"? Does that mean downloaded or viewed or commented on or other criteria?

2. - Is there any other rating system associated with it?

3. - Does it upload the mission or just have a link to an external site?

4. - If uploaded, how do you handle updated mission versions? Deleted/Replaced or new separate addition?

5. - How complex can the write up be? Does it handle formatting, lots of text, images (how many)?

6. - What sort of "template" does it support? Do you mean like a Mission Template where various fields can be entered?

Categories:

7. - You may need a PvP category too. No-one wants to use "Other".

8. - What about mission packs & campaigns? Same deal or "other" category?

9. - With there being so many coop missions, it would be good to sub-categorise them somehow. Maybe: size/duration/scale/style?

1. The better word for it that I should use is "Vote". When viewing a mission and logged in, underneath the amount of votes it has, you can hit "Vote", or, you can click the link "Bury"

2. No other rating system, this seems to work great with www.digg.com, so I think it's worth a try.

3. At the moment it only links to an external site. With some modification I believe I could allow uploading directly to this site. Before I spent that time I just wanted to make sure I had a green light from everyone on this.

4. I believe it would be beneficial to keep all versions of missions, so each new version would be a new post.

5. At the moment no HTML tags allowed, however this can be changed. Not sure if there should be images, text always tells the better story.

6. I can have that template as the default values when submitting a mission. What does everyone else think?

7. PvP? If that stands for Player vs Player, doesn't Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch encompass that? Or am I mistaken?

8. Forgot about those. Added

9. This could be where the "tags" come in, which helps with searching for certain missions

[VerySolidSnake 0]

I'm in the process of adding the ability to upload missions onto the site. It should be working sometime tonight. The only limit is that they have to be less than 6mb (which most are), missions larger than that are going to have to be hosted elsewhere. Any recommendations on a good host to point users to?

[The_Captain 0]

TDM and DM are very specific categories of PvP mission. There are many different types like capture and hold, CTF, etc. It would be good to make a separate PvP category to hold all of these types of missions.

[VerySolidSnake 0]

Upgrades completed, you can now either upload your mission to the site or link to a different site. I also added "Player vs Player" which will encompass deathmatch, ctf, capture and hold, etc. I'll be adding the "Mission Description Template" tomorrow, does anyone else have anymore suggestions on making this better?

edit: there will also be a new template coming out soon. However, as of now, it seems like the site is ready to be fully controlled by the community.

[abs 2]

I think this is a great idea, and I wanted to spend the time to thank you for all your efforts!

Abs

[dr_eyeball 16]

Categories:

- Warfare doesn't require it's own category. It actually belongs under CTI. If there was no CTI, it would go under PvP.

(If Warfare had it's own category, then you might as well have one for Evolution & Domination too and every other major played mission. Don't make that mistake.)

- I'm now thinking 'Campaign' is always single player, so perhaps keep it under 'Single Player'. Probably not needed.

- Same with 'Mission Pack'. A mission pack would generally all be the same type: 'Coop', 'PvP', etc already, so again, probably not needed.

Stats:

Using Armaholic for statistics, it has 690 missions:

- 50% - 343 Coop missions

- 27% - 184 SP missions

- 11% - 76 PvP missions

- 8% - 59 mission packs

- 4% - 28 campaigns

Template:

Regarding that Template, it was created specifically for Coop & SP missions.

I found it lacking fields for other mission types: especially PvP.

Eg: win criteria, time limit, MP Setup params.

Also, if the PvP mission is non-symetrical (eg: one side is attacking, other side is defending VIP) then it's lacking BluFor & OpFor differences.

Specifically: respawn methods, objectives & rules could differ.

Voting:

I have doubts about the voting system. It requires players to come back later after downloading and playing the mission to vote, while others may vote without even trying it.

Also other places like Armaholic have a voting system with only maybe 5% of missions rated and even less having been rated by more than 1 person.

What I've been hoping for since the beginning of ArmA is to see voted missions using criteria, like: functionality, originality, complexity, working properly, working for JIP, suitable intro/outro, proper briefing, fun factor, realism factor, suited for public server play, etc.

[Jex =TE= 0]

The missions currently submitted lack information and the format is a mess. For this to work, we need to be able to see the specifics of the mission (like the template exampled above) - and I think it needs a check box to be ticked to say the mission has been play tested.

One of the most frustrating things about OFP/Arma is that a lot of missions suffer from the following

- Too many mods and no description say what they are or where to find them

- None play tested mission (don't work)

- Missions that suck

- Poor naming of file

Armaholic does a good job with this but I think that this stuff needs to be forced on those submitting missiosn so server admins that are required to download and test missions have an easier task ahead of them.

Without information available about the mission, submitted into a clear format that's easily understood, would put me off wanting to use the site. For every 10 missions I used to download for OFP, perhaps 3 or 4 would actually work off the bat and then only 1 or 2 were actually worth playing. So an hours work to essentially get nowhere which I'm sure most people don't really want to have to go through.

[VerySolidSnake 0]

I still believe this voting system will work, since the whole site relies on it (armaholic's is an after thought).

If someone spends the time to fill out the mission template thoroughly, I believe that will be a good indicator on whether or not the mission is worth even trying. If you do end up playing the mission and it sucks, press the bury button and make a comment and mini-review it using that comment.

Also, the person who made that mission will become blacklisted, you can check their mission history and see what people were saying about their previous missions, and decide whether or not its worth downloading their new one.

Along with a mission description template, I'll add a mission name template. What should I use for that?

I will also tweak those categories,.