Age of Strategy Forums

I suggest to add the function to directly send maps to other accounts. This may not only provide the opportunity to play multiplayer on private maps, but also incentivise collaboration with different players in making maps.

To limit spamming by strangers, this could be restricted to friend accounts with additional checkbox of whether that friend can send maps to your account (default: unable), as well as play checks (like sending to map market). A comprehensive ban could be put on frequent offenders/by default (lifted with permission).

To limit costs, sending maps could be restricted to once per day/24 hours after last send. Besides, sent maps could be deleted within 7 - 14 days (on server) to reduce server load (with potentially different periods for different types of maps). The total number of maps uploaded can also be restricted (the slots will be cleared after maps are deleted on server).

I will also suggest the functionality to send maps to more than one player (e.g. selecting accounts from available list, or just sending by default to all available accounts). This will improve mapmaking team collaboration and provide for more than two players in a private multiplayer game.

If the multiplayer part is hard to implement, just allowing sending of map drafts/single player maps can already improve mapmaking team collaboration. As a final thought, similar functionality can be attached to the unit editor in sending units when that is implemented.

i like the idea.

this way i would need less need of "moderation".

i think like
- you make map
- you can upload to server as "shared map" (eg. max 5 and vanishes after 1-2 days)
- other players can download maps of their friends, they all can modify it
- they
a) can not launch multiplayer matches (as that case maps would need moderation)
b) can launch but only "Friends" games

Stratego (dev) wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 5:44 pm i like the idea.

this way i would need less need of "moderation".

i think like
- you make map
- you can upload to server as "shared map" (eg. max 5 and vanishes after 1-2 days)
- other players can download maps of their friends, they all can modify it
- they
a) can not launch multiplayer matches (as that case maps would need moderation)
b) can launch but only "Friends" games

This has consistently been near the top of our list for most requested feature for years. Being able to share custom maps to play among friends would be amazing!

Sunrise Samurai wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2023 1:00 am This has consistently been near the top of our list for most requested feature for years. Being able to share custom maps to play among friends would be amazing!

i thikn only half of this was the requested feature - to launch games with your own mapdesigns.
the "share" map dradft part seems either new (or if it was mentioned) not part of that "mostly requested" thing.

but the point is - yes this way maybe a moderationless thing could work...
(but i am still a little afraid of trolls and inappropriate screenshots of gameplaying on a inappropriate map for instance.)

Stratego (dev) wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2023 11:29 am (but i am still a little afraid of trolls and inappropriate screenshots of gameplaying on a inappropriate map for instance.)

Players will moderate the trolls right out as long as it is friends only. Inappropriate maps we just have to handle like inappropriate speech or links. There's about as much stopping people from sharing inappropriate pixel art already, and a sizable chunk of our player base already knows how to do that. Even the ones who don't know can easily figure it out

After the map/draft has expired on server, the final version could be put into an offline list like downloaded map market section to ensure progress is saved.