Staredit Network

Basically, a bot/app that checks the map you're joining/hosting, then checks a centralized server, and returns to you info on it. Info can include:

• How big it is (hard to tell map sizes over bnet... except by how long the DL takes).
• How many players required/recommended (if known).
• What style of playing is involved (if known).
• How popular it is (maybe a function to count how many times its been hosted or something).
• What YOU think of it (a prompt after each game could ask that, then return the info to a centralized server).
• What others thinks of it.
• Who the author(s) is/are (if known).
  Note: This could help alert people to stolen maps, as well!

Why? Well I get the impression that a lot of people go around clueless to what games are good or not, and then end up being stupid and judging a book by its cover (or a game by its name) and joining the ones with the catchy names, then get disappointed when it inevitably sucks, and avoiding anything new at all costs.

With a program like this, it would help people tell between REAL quality and disease-spread maps (like madnesses, assorted rigged defenses, etc.)

Yes that would be nice if that can happen on b.net Tux. Because there are alot of people who do that, and they steal good mapmakers maps and just put there name in it or take there idea.

I don't see how this is possible... So as of now it's only a dream to me.

This would be good. Make just an app or something that runs in the background and somehow pulls out information of what you join to a central server, and sends back information. For pulling the info out, an inserted .dll file to tell SC to send the information to whatever? Then make so you can minimize and go he little program and it has "Comments about last played game:" and you can type something, and fill stuff out and submit it.

Off topic: A way to tell if a map has been stolen: You see a stack that sucks; or its like und over Bo. or if you saw the same map, but has better words and everything fits better (stacks etc.).

My question is, how would you display this information? A popup while in SC would be very annoying (to me at least) and there is only so much room for text in the pre-game chat room.

Yea, sounds like a dream mostly to me... I for one am not afraid of trying new maps and I've got a large collection of good ones as well as a list of authors I know make good maps (or make crappy maps). Inevitably though someone will think a map is awesome and someone else will think it sucks so I dunno about the comment thing... some people comment against maps for the dumbest reasons(like someone said there map wasn't good or they just don't like the map maker). I bet b.net tracks how much maps are played somewhere since they do it for ladder... though I doubt they save the information... maybe they could post it somewhere sometime... though it would be depressing because mucho cash maps would probably be near the top (those stupid rush ones that people finish in like five minutes) .

That'd be, awesome...

So.. is anyone going to attempt this feat?

Would be a miracle, , but.. how could you get accurate information, like BW said, some people despise maps for unknown reasons

Making this a separate application would be rather difficult. I like the bot idea:

When someone is on your friends list, it notifies you when they enter a game, correct? Well, you could make a bot that has everyone that signs up as its friend, and whenever they enter a game it will be notified. It can then get the game name and (probably) send a message to b.net to get the name of the map corresponding to that game name. And from there it's just database lookups and whispers to the player that joined the game.

Another advantage of the bot is that it can sit in a channel and people can ask it questions about highest-ranked maps and stuff like that. It could also record statistics about the most-played maps by its clients for that week, etc. I'd like to see it be able to distribute maps as well. I don't think a bot can host a game (and it wouldn't have the map anyway since it didn't actually download it) but maybe it can list the people who have certain maps and then you can ask them through the bot. You'd ask the bot to contact the people that have a certain map and it would whisper all the people that it knows have the map to contact the person that asked, etc.

I don't care so much that you guys doubt it'll work that I keep seeing you (and others) find reasons to doubt things like these in the first place. You know, by now I could justifiably go around turning down ideas and possibilities left and right, rolling in my own comfortable blanket of closed-minded ignorance for the petty bonus of being able to say "I told you so", but you see, I refuse to do that. I don't value that as much as I do the slim chances of finding new possibilities, because I appreciate the fact that without the ugly trial and error process of unlikely new ideas and failed experiments, as uncertain as it is, we would end up dying a slow and painful death as we fail to adapt and breed in our own weeknesses.


As for the idea itself, I don't care enough to try and convince everyone it might work or not. I'm suggesting it because it seems like something that might be useful, in the distant possibility people choose to adopt it. As either a form of a bot or maybe part of the automodder program, I don't see why it couldn't work.

But I'll leave that up to you.

But you can only have 25 people on your friend list heimdal ...

Couldn't it check the hosted games constantly and log them?

If people "sign up", then they could also have a client-side program to send messages to the bot when they join new games to indicate that kind of information.

ADDITION:
This could be of help.

Its still a great idea and after what Heimdal said I'm not so sure something like this couldn't be implemented though it would probably just be for a select group of people. (I.E. SENers downloading the program and having the messages sent to the bot when they host games). Though the bot would only be on east probably so not much use for those of us that use west a bit more than east, ah well.

EDIT: That Echo program sounds really cool, thanks for the link Tux .