Being able to order by rating rather than score would also be astounding.

Yes i like this idea

you can rate the map by rating the associate suggestion - you're right though I need to make that clearer and show the ratings next to maps and allow sort by etc

Oh wow, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the new features on Created will turn out!

I played MR for the first time well over 10 years ago, and still keep coming back and finding it ever more interesting! A masterpiece, at the very least. :D

I wonder, what are your highest priorities regarding MR currently? What will happen to MR4? Scoring/speedrun modes?

My highest priorities are (in no particular order)
- Enabling maps to be created and edited from the website
- Enabling enemies, cut-scenes and quests (maps and cut-scenes strung together) to be created from the website
- Building in social stuff to the game eg when you die, your ghost haunts the screen and helps other players who come to the same screen until someone clears it. I like the idea of "collaborative single player". Speedruns fit in here.
- Rewriting the game engine in something else besides shockwave (or at least buying the latest version of Director and re-compiling). I would really like to expand the screen so the pixels are bigger and/or the play area is bigger.

MR4 is sort of already nearly done - note has added enough to stuff to the game engine and Air_O2 has already provided a very good candidate for the map. All I need to do is take some time out to put my own spin on it. I'll get to it at some point no doubt.

oh cool!

I think I could take writing better descriptions for TMB Robot 033 and fleshing out the rest of my maps for Created as my highest priorities, then.

But that'll have to wait until I've finished my market analysis and read some more law stuff. Running a business will probably turn out to be kinda fun (you get money and all), but preparing it is surprisingly time-consuming. Or maybe it's just Parkinson's Law all over again.

What business are you going into if it's ok to talk about it?

I'm looking into doing middle man work with product delivery - more precisely, ordering a bunch of electronics from Chinese producers and selling them forward to end-consumers and other customers. The profit margin is potentially enormous, but it might be a bit risky or terribly inefficient to just jump into. That's what results in all this prepatory work - I prefer to work smart over working hard :P

Something like this might be a good way to exit studies and start using time on more important things, I figured. There's no way I can tell quite yet where this startup will get me, but I'm willing to give it a shot at any rate.

"Made in china"

Sounds cool - good luck with it!

And yes you are smart to do as much preparation as possible beforehand.

Well, I guess there's also the flip side of not actually getting anything done at all, if you just do as much preparation as possible. I'm currently trying to get funding from the town center to get things started. Overall, things are looking good though! Maybe this'll end up being the next Google lol :)

Looking forward to seeing how the Screens of Death will turn out! I'm also looking forward to getting some time/motivation to work on those maps, but alas, life.

Ok cool!

The screens of death are done . It's a report to show you how people are playing the map. You can see it there are any inaccessible screens and any impossible ones. Maybe I should give it a different name

Sounds exciting with the business keep us posted with anything you don't mind putting in public :)

Yes please this is interesting stuff.

Telling me that they are done and then having it look as unintuitive as this?
http://i.imgur.com/Bxuo1Wh.png

Apart from that, it looks pretty interesting. Seeing how many people managed to get where really gives a good view on the progression of the map and any trouble screens.

Ok well I got back onto working on the merlin open maps I'm making. I really had to stop for a while it was so bad. Each screen was tearing my brain...but that was about a week ago so back into making it now!

megaman4ever press f5

Oh wow, it's very informative now! :)

Time to balance those maps out - thank you, steve!

Yes I'll have to find a way to force the style sheet to update in future.

How do you want to handle map updates?

-treat the new map as separate
- have the new version replace the old invisibly to user (keep existing stats)
- have the new one separate but linked to the old

I think my preferred is option 2. I can enhance the screen of death report to show only stats for a particular version (based on time)

Yeah, I guess #2 would be the best too, especially if you could choose which version's death data to view..

Then again, seeing how updates are (supposed to be) mainly improvements and not really drastic.. I guess just "resetting" the death data from the user's view would be quite alright. They wouldn't be able to play the old map anyway.

Then again, there might be instances where playing the old map would be preferable, but I think that improvement is a reasonable assumption to make from map designers. I wouldn't think that Created should be the place for incomplete maps - at least until there are categories or something. There are obvious downsides to having different versions separately too. Besides, the map creator could post an update as a separate map if the changes are large enough for them not wanting to use the update function, assuming that this gets to that level of automation at some point.

Exactly :)