I do not think that tag means what you think it means...

"Scenic" sounds good. I'd vote for anything if it solves the environmental+challenge problem, really.

Actually, if the new archive will have an option for rating the graphics of a level, that *will* take care of this problem to some degree. I'm very glad to hear this.

A problem I'm noticing within a few comments is what people will rate their levels to attract attention... And I have an idea, but I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement it.

An author could choose a genre for their work, but the system could also have a player genre rating. It's not offensive, because it wouldn't be like a 5 star system, but the players choose if it's "Environmental", "Scenic", "Challenge", etc.
After all, one author's "Challenge" is another player's "Very Easy".
How would that work?

An author could choose a genre for their work, but the system could also have a player genre rating. It's not offensive, because it wouldn't be like a 5 star system, but the players choose if it's "Environmental", "Scenic", "Challenge", etc.
After all, one author's "Challenge" is another player's "Very Easy".
How would that work?

I like that idea. It should tally the votes people make for each category, so you would be seeing what the majority thinks instead of what everyone thinks at once.

An author could choose a genre for their work, but the system could also have a player genre rating. It's not offensive, because it wouldn't be like a 5 star system, but the players choose if it's "Environmental", "Scenic", "Challenge", etc.
After all, one author's "Challenge" is another player's "Very Easy".

It should tally the votes people make for each category, so you would be seeing what the majority thinks instead of what everyone thinks at once.

These are all great suggestions, but we're starting to stray into implementation issues... and since LPChip has explicitly said he will not consider any suggestions, or even acknowledge suggested features he was already planning to implement, for the new level archive, I'd rather this part of the discussion go into a separate thread.

This thread is intended for us to come to a community consensus on what new term to use for the levels we tend to call "Environmental" but which don't match the official definition. It would be awesome if LPChip could actually include the new category -- whether it's called Scenic or something else -- but even if it's just a custom category each Knytter has to enter manually in the world.ini, we'll still have a term we can use to sort out the current confusion. And levels that are Scenic/Puzzle, Scenic/Challenge etc. won't be rejected by the level archive (if I understand LPChip correctly) the way levels tagged Environmental/[pretty much anything but Playground, Misc and maybe Tutorial] are going to be.

The system will natively support what Knytt Stories support, to ensure that finding a level in the archive will also be as easy to find as in the game itself. If Nifflas changes Knytt Stories to support a new category, it will also be supported in the archive.

And with this I mean: you can search/filter for specific categories, much like you can in Knytt Stories. You can always upload the level with any kind of category, but as in Knytt Stories, you can only find it if you don't apply a filter.

Just a suggestion: perhaps levels that are tagged as Environmental and Challenge should be displayed as Scenic? That way the old search filters would still work, and level designers wouldn't have to manually add their category.

Just a suggestion; you don't need to use it.

Encouragement of incorrectly labeled levels?  Pass.

Really, guys, this won't be a problem in the archive if anyone actually bothers to rate levels (good KS levels also look good).

Encouragement of incorrectly labeled levels?  Pass.

Really, guys, this won't be a problem in the archive if anyone actually bothers to rate levels (good KS levels also look good).

No, this would solve the problem of that, because then they would automatically be sorted to where they should be.

PYP, maybe you should reread my post.

Sorry to be breaking the rules of the discussion, I might be doing so like I did with my last comment.

Yes, I KNOW you can't change them.
But an Adventure genre would be nice. Like, it's not too challenging, not too much of a maze, focused on scenery and the environment to some extent, with a central plot? I don't see much option for something like that besides "Misc.", and nobody likes that genre. It just sounds so... Miscellaneous.

Usually, Adventure genre levels are just classified as "challenge." but I've always thought there should be an adventure category.

Anyways, asking LP to add a category to the archive isn't a viable option.  And this is not only because he isn't open to change.  You see, it's difficult to defy the logical reasoning in his current choice.  The category field in the archive is presumably currently read from the level itself, so the categories recognized by the archive should be the same as the categories recognized by the actual game.  So if you really want a Scenic or an Adventure category, your options are these:

• We could ask Nifflas what he thinks about adding a new category filter to the next version of Knytt Stories.

or,

• (to preclude the need for a separate Scenic category) We could try to get the Environmental category redefined.

or,

• After a public beta of the Archive is released and LPChip is open to feedback, we could ask LPChip about implementing a category system that isn't read from the level. Plenty of possibilities for this have already been suggested, like ratings systems and user-defined categories.
  or,
  
• As the Jack is suggesting (I think), reach a consensus on the name and definition of a new, custom category to use for this type of level.  Even if the game or the archive doesn't recognize it, we will.

or,

• ♪Don't worry, be happy.♪

I like option 3

When you open up KS and mouse over an installed level, the Difficulty, Size and Category are all displayed, regardless of whether the level designer used a default setting for each field or a custom one. It's perfectly possible to have a level display "Difficulty: Purple, Size: Monkey, Category: Bingo" for example. (Useless, but possible.) I haven't seen anything to indicate that the level archive would definitely not be able to display this same information.

As for searching, no, as of right now, neither KS itself nor the in-progress level archive support being able to search for custom categories (though I understand there's at least one KS mod which does support this). This is fine. It is not necessary to be able to search for Scenic-tagged levels for the Scenic category to be useful. Because the custom category tag will still display normally -- certainly in KS, and as far as I know in the forthcoming level archive as well -- all we need is to come to some community consensus about what to call the levels this thread is about, either "Scenic" or something else that covers the sense of "Environmental" as it's come to be (incorrectly) used.

Since levels can have two categories, and much of the issue with misuse of the Environmental tag has been that it's by definition mutually exclusive with Challenge and Puzzle, this means that users will be able to find the type of level they want by searching (so long as the designer didn't designate only the custom Scenic category and no second category) for Challenge, Puzzle, Playground or whatever other sort of level they're looking for, and just look for the levels within the displayed results which are also tagged Scenic in addition to the searchable category.

Obviously it would be most helpful if the level archive LPChip is working on will indeed display whatever categories each level is tagged with the way KS itself does for installed levels, but even if it doesn't (and again, LPChip is not taking any suggestions at this time, so let's not badger him, hm?) just being able to spot the Scenic levels in one's own installed-levels listing will be a good thing.

The category field in the archive is presumably currently read from the level itself

Yes, and this is exactly why having Scenic remain a custom category, rather than an official one, will work just fine. If the level designer puts Scenic in either the Category A field or the Category B field, then the Scenic tag will be read by the game and, hopefully, the archive as well. It may not be possible to search on Scenic as a category; but that, again, is fine.

Just a reminder, although levels whose world.ini list both Environmental and either Challenge or Puzzle are going to be rejected by the new archive automatically, according to Nifflas's definition an Environmental cannot contain any challenges, puzzles, or enemies... which means that quite a few excellent levels currently on the archive tagged Environmental only (or Environmental/Misc. or Environmental/Playground) are actually Scenic levels -- that is, they are "Environmental" only in the sense which the community has come to use the term to mean, which brings us back again to the reason why we need to settle on a term other than Environmental for these levels. Well-known examples include Flood*, Gaia, and Knytt on the Moon. (Contrast with Dark Waters, a 'true' Environmental despite having no encoded category designation.) While these levels could be re-uploaded to the new archive as-is, it seems far more useful to players (especially players who don't visit these forums, which do not show up in search-engine results nearly as readily as the level archive itself does) for only levels which actually meet the official definition of Environmental to be tagged as such. Scenic is self-explanatory enough that someone new to KS and/or unfamiliar with the forums shouldn't have to scratch their head too much over what it could mean.

I'm now going to briefly break my own rule -- though I still think this should be its own separate topic -- to touch on the idea of an Adventure category. I'm not actually sure whether Neotrice and Exp HP mean story-focussed levels in general, or quest-type levels in particular. Nifflas's own The Machine, A Strange Dream and An Underwater Adventure are what I would consider quest-type levels, whereas the gold standard (IMO) of a story-focussed level is Egomassive's A Knytt in Time -- though Alamaster Moody's The Outsider is a very different kind of level that is nevertheless equally story-driven. If we're going to have a consensus-termed custom category name for the latter type of level, too, I propose we follow JayIsGames.com's lead and call the genre of "story-games" Narrative... another self-explanatory word. "Adventure" as a category name might be too broad, as there are very few levels which couldn't be considered an adventure of some kind.

As far as getting Nifflas to OK adding one or more level categories to KS 1.2.2 or 1.3.1 or whatever it would be numbered, asking him about that is certainly an option, and if he were to say yes then the issue of level-archive (and in-game) searchability would be resolved also, yes. But let's not put the cart before the horse. I'd like to see a lot more players and level designers weigh in on what they would like their that-other-Environmental levels' categories to be called, and I'd like to give people at least a month or two of opportunity to find this thread and weigh in. I don't think the new archive is ready for imminent release, so there's no rush. I imagine that, if we wait until we A) build a strong community consensus for both what to call the new category (or categories), and B) hammer out a clear definition of what that category does and does not include, as well as C) pointing to specific existing levels which are caught in the non-Environmental-Environmental morass, we're more likely to get a positive response. Just PM'ing him and saying, "Please add these categories to Knytt Stories!" is unlikely to get us anywhere.

I still don't get it why people need to put Environmental and Challenge in the same level. Either its environmental or its a challenge.

Environmental means: focus lies primarily on the environment where the difficulty of the level will be easy. The hardest challenge will be the fact that there's water. The entire idea is that you wander around in it. Having tops one enemy on the screen and enough power-ups to get past it (or an alternate route) is no problem. That doesn't suddenly make a level challenging thus challenge. If you put more challenge in it, thus the level becomes challenge, then you simply have a pretty challenge level with difficulty normal. Its no longer environmental.


Its funny that this same mistake is being made with the music style Ambient. People often think: my song contains excessive use of strings, so my song is Ambient/electro or Ambient/disco or whatever.

Ambient is, like environmental, focused on creating an atmosphere. With ambient, your goal is to create one flow of sound that changes continuously (mostly very subtle) to challenge the listener to feel its texture. I fell for this trap before I knew what Ambient is all about, and as soon as I added strings with flow in it (while still maintaining a rhythm in the song) I labeled it Ambient. I got frown upon for this actually, but I didn't understand why. Basically I stopped using the ambient style together with my other styles to be on the safe side. Much later a new member asked for the definition of Ambient which led to a discussion making me understand why it actually went wrong all these time.

This very same discussion is one we should have here about Environmental. Many people believe its just about graphics, but there's a whole feel to it. Environmental definitely doesn't mean that a level looks good. There's a whole lot more to it.

---

http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/environmental ->
Main Entry: en·vi·ron·ment 
Pronunciation: \in-ˈvī-rə(n)-mənt, -ˈvī(-ə)r(n)-\
Function: noun
Date: 1827

1 : the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded
2 a : the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival b : the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual or community
3 : the position or characteristic position of a linguistic element in a sequence
4 : a computer interface from which various tasks can be performed <a programming environment>
synonyms see background


— en·vi·ron·men·tal  \-ˌvī-rə(n)-ˈmen-təl, -ˌvī(-ə)r(n)-\ adjective

— en·vi·ron·men·tal·ly  \-təl-ē\ adverb

---

So I again think that another label is still silly. By definition, an environmental level (which puts the main focus on its environmental feel) doesn't have challenges. If you put enemies in there because an environment can be hazzardeous, then note that in real life, you would not take that path either, but look for an alternate route. This is perfectly acceptable in an environmental level too.

Environmental means: focus lies primarily on the environment where the difficulty of the level will be easy. The hardest challenge will be the fact that there's water. The entire idea is that you wander around in it. Having tops one enemy on the screen and enough power-ups to get past it (or an alternate route) is no problem. That doesn't suddenly make a level challenging thus challenge.

Er, what?

; Environmental   An environmental level - No puzzles, no
;                 monsters, no challenge, just beautiful
;                 landscape.

(emphasis added)