question-circle On Marbleland level mutability

  • Vanilagy
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11 Jun 2022 16:31 #1
As some of you may know, Marbleland levels currently are immutable, which is fancy computer nerd terminology meaning they cannot be changed in any way after they're uploaded. I did this to prevent a host of problems that could appear if levels could change but keep their ID, such as invalidated leaderboards.

However, I see some pain points with this approach as well. Sometimes, level creators want to change or fix a miniscule detail about their level such as the description or gold time, and can't do it without deleting the level and reuploading it, which is also not optimal because it invalidates the old level ID, creating tons of dead links and such.

The best solution that I thought of until now is allowing metadata (name, author, description, gold times, etc) to be changed, but not anything else. What do you guys think?
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11 Jun 2022 20:23 #2
I think a reasonable compromise would be to allow modifying things that don't affect the physics of the level, such as title, gold/platinum/etc times, description, things like that. But actually replacing the level files would invalidate the leaderboard and should still be immutable.

Although I'm realizing as I type that, I'm pretty sure the name/description/times are stored in the .mis files...

Pardon me for asking since I've never used marbleland - when uploading a level, do you need to specify the title/description/times or are they pulled from the mis file? Because if they're pulled from the file, then it might be feasible to allow the owner to edit the details using the web interface, and those details will be reinserted back into the mis file, only replacing the small things that need to be changed. That would allow the leaderboards to remain intact.

I'm kinda talking out of my ass here though cuz I'm not very knowledge lmao, let me know if any of this makes sense

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  • Connie
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11 Jun 2022 20:57 #3
The Title, Description, Times, Author, and Level Order (I'm pretty sure there are more?) are pulled from the .mis file, but if Vani can find a way to make it possible for us to edit these, that would honestly be very very convenient.

Editing other stuff from the .mis file would most likely cause the level's LBs to be invalidated, so those shouldn't be mutable.

For the best Marble Blast levels, head over to:
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  • SummerArmy
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12 Jun 2022 00:18 #4
I TOTALLY AGREE!!!!!!!!!! My first three levels (Summer Seomdeul, Eoleum Estate and Obstruction) had to be re-uploaded just to buff challenge times and edit hints. There really must be a feature that allows the level creator to edit the following MissionInfo factors without reuploading:
- Challenge Times
- Description
- Hints
- Start Help Message
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12 Jun 2022 19:20 #5
Metadata editing is in Marbleland now!
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