TM2 [B3.1] Titles / Replays / Vehicles / EnvMix

[MrA]

We have problems with allowing Mania Exchange to understand env mix, as at the moment its possible to save replays with canyon car on stadium, or vice versa, but its not handled in the header.....

Replays
If you load a Canyon map into Stadium title, your replay has title"TMStadium"
If you load a Stadium map into Canyon title, your replay has title"TMCanyon"
If you load a Stadium map into Acrobatic title, your replay has title "Acrobatic@mr.dvd"

So title is always saved as whatever title you used, makes some sense.
Replay do not have any mention of environment, they only have the title.

However, maps are categorised on MX by the envir= value in the header, although there is now also a title= value in the header.... (Older Canyon maps have no title field in the header)

Maps
Modify & save Stadium map in Canyon title, and you get envir=Stadium, title=TMCanyon
Modify & save Stadium map in Acrobatic title, and you get envir=Stadium, title=Acrobatic@mr.dvd

There isn't necessarily any connection between environment and title, which would allow multi-environment titles to exist one day, which is cool, except that title tells us nothing about which car was used, it only tells us which title was loaded, and titles themselves are not telling us anything about environment (not such a problem in maps becuase we have envir=)...

So, could their be something added to the replay header to describe envir= or Vehicle=

[MrA]

We have been doing some more testing, and reach the following conclusions...

1)
Allowing maps to be loaded between titles, and resaved under a different title each time, with the title value being freshly recorded each time is too free. While it may be valid to load a Canyon map between titles and still be able to save the map to the new title, there needs to be controls so that the original environment is remembered. If the environment of a title is not the same as the environment of the map, then save should not be allowed.

2)
The above would not stop envmix.... it would still be possible to load a Canyon map into a Stadium title and play the map, and save the replay. But the replay needs to store the environment value of the title it was recorded in, not just the title.

3)
It will be important that the title value (and envir value) in replays can not be changed after a replay is recorded by loading the replay into the replay editor in a different title.

I think with these controls, we can be able to correctly match replay files with maps with titles with environments. We know its still beta, but we don't want to let this kind of stuff pass by.


* Of course one solution is just to make it impossible to cross load maps between titles, that would be very restrictive and would stop simple envmix racing, and people will certainly like playing the stadium car on purpose built canyon maps ^^

Simply the way it is at the point of B3.1 makes it almost uncontrolable. We need some controls.

[MrA]

It appears that autosaved replays are not current with standard replays, as MX has started rejecting them after we made a temporary modifcation to restrict replay uploading to just the TMCanyon & TMStadium titles.

[MrA]

It appears that autosaved replays are not current with standard replays, as MX has started rejecting them after we made a temporary modifcation to restrict replay uploading to just the TMCanyon & TMStadium titles.

As suspected, autosaves are not conforming, they record title="Unassigned" ...

So whatever the solution, pls include autosaves in it

[Electron]

Normally it is not possible to load a map or a replay from one collection/environment into another one.
ManiaPlanet prevent this.

This is only possible if you load one collection, exit it and load the other collection. Because if you exit a collection, the game doesn't unload this collection. I don't know if this is a bug, a dirty hack for something (preparation for multi-envir servers?) or only done to speed up the user interface. If the game allways unload a collection on exit, everything is solved.

Replay do not have any mention of environment, they only have the title.
So, could their be something added to the replay header to describe envir= or Vehicle=

Replays do store the collection/environment in the header (but not in the XML part). See my Gbx File Dumper utility.
In case of the new collections Canyon, Storm and Valley, the environment is stored as collection ID and not as string. But I guess Forzyy knows that.

[rubix.can]

So how do I upload something from my autosaves to tmx now? Just did a great time on my fav new stadium2 map and would like to submit it please!?


"Replay title does not match environment or title used. Please ensure the replay was saved with the correct title. E.g Canyon and Canyon"

[Omnixor]

At the moment, Stadium and ManiaPlanet are in beta, which means things are not finished yet. MX however, is not in beta, its a live site. If we allow people to upload envmix replays right now, then every Canyon record could be destroyed because the Stadium car is just usually going to be faster.

So therefore we can not just allow people to start uploading environment mixed replays. The measure we have put in place is temporary, to protect records hard fought on existing Canyon tracks.

We hope that Nadeo will be able to do something with the files so that sites like MX can correctly identify which car / title / environment was used. If they do this, we can then look at how MX will adapt to allow envmix replay posting.

Until then, and for now, we have to live with the restriction we have made.

* Autosaves are a side issue, if Nadeo update the way autosaves are saved, to be the same as how normal replays are saved, then autosaves would work again.