If you had viewed my profile page, you may notice that I am programming a piece of software that can extract all the scores of players for every level, the difficulties of every level, and most importantly, the level configuration files. This means that an insightful statistical analysis of episodes and levels will be coming up to this wiki.
To celebrate my 5K edit, I am going to post the future content roadmap for this wiki. You are free to give any thoughts about the upcoming content, and how this will affect the wiki.
This is a very long opening forum post. For the best results, I recommend you to read over carefully and give any thoughts regarding the impact and originality of my work.
Current state
My programs are already operational now, and can extract scores, difficulties, and most config attributes quickly and efficiently. It may not be complete, but I am already able to post large charts and tabulations regarding many other aspects of the game and its levels.
So far, the upcoming content on this wiki will be:
- Statistical insights
- Score averages of all the levels (based on a player sample)
- Individual player's scorecard
- Includes distribution of player scores
- Player scores by number of digits
- x00000-series scores, as well as x0000-series and multimillion scores.
- Can be posted on Excel.
- Includes linear and logarithmic (aka digit-wise) graphs.
- Scores ordered by value. Look at the shape!
- Includes distribution of player scores
- Updated lists of levels by type and requirement.
- For jelly, you also get to see the net total jelly.
- For ingredients, it will also show the total ingredients on the table (Hazelnuts and cherries are no different in the game)
- For order, there will be a separate column for each type of order. The totals row will also tabulate the total number of order levels which require this type of order.
- For moves and timed, it will just show the score requirements and move/time limits.
- Capable of listing the exact number of levels by type.
- Difficulty Extraction
- A function allows you to convert into a Wikitable source code form.
- This Wikitable will update the difficulty colors live.
- Capable of extracting difficulty averages across episodes and worlds.
- This program, however, will require me to manually update the difficulties.
- Config Extraction
- Capable of converting a config txt file into a datastructure. Not complete as of now.
- Capable of extracting all basic information (type, colors, move/time limit, score requirements)
- Capable of extracting all Dreamworld features
- Balancing and Moon Struck moves.
- Number of moon strikes.
- Residual moves.
- The finished version is also capable of enumerating all candy cannons, all spawn points by type, all blockers, all secondary elements, and all spaces. It will work great on level infoboxes!
- Able to create tables of all levels or players that utilize one of the above features!
Regarding my status
This May has been an exceptionally good May, and I even attained a Very Active rating for the latter half. At that time, it is the start of the unusually light summer semester, and so my real-life workload will be quite light. It is very unusual for me to get Very Active besides late December of during a summer vacation. Another thing which also led me to get such a good rating is that I am spending most of my time studying a diverse range of programming languages; I utilized this skill to create my programs which can extract game files to provide level information and statistical analysis.
I will get somewhat busier in June, since I am going to focus more on literature and history. I will still be active though, as I will still devote a good portion of my time on programming which will help this wiki. July and August are busier. My activity should drop a bit during the month of September.
The next blog post will be posted on Friday June 2.
Potential FAQs
Will I do all the work regarding filling the infoboxes?
- No. This is a wiki for the community. I do not want to dominate the wiki contributions, because it will make the wiki look dead. I am using this program for statistical analysis, error checking, and level redesign detection.
Which programs did I use for this software?
- Java, Python, HTML, Wiki markup.
Will I give out the program to other people?
- For the config-extraction and scorecard generation. First of all, you have to know the original location of config files and scorecards. Then you have to place it correctly. I will have to make a read-me help file without any ambiguities.
- Then, the software I programmed cannot directly involve in level and scorecard updates. However, one part of the software is capable of extracting new level config files and scorecards, but I am finding a way to integrate them. Currently, my program is manually updated.
- I will however give out the source code when my program is sufficiently complete.
- However, I will give out .exe or .jar files for my difficulty-extracting files and the upcoming program which converts a config file into a GUI.
How complete is my program so far?
- You can look at my profile page. At the time of my posting The scorecard program is in beta state, and is 85% done. The difficulty table is probably the easiest, but I am having issues with extremely large and formatted Wikitables, so I will give it a 64%. The config files are the most difficult, but I will rate it a 65% since all the simpler tasks have been finished and I am able to make a table of it.
- This June will focus considerably of programming the remaining parts of the config files and some case analysis and debugging in case if an unusual config file arises.
Is there any other CCSW-related programs I am programming?
- A minor program allows me to extract all Sugar Drop, hexagonal, and thunderstorm levels.
- Yes. I am going to substitute the now-retired Flockky II by converting config files into blackboard representations of level boards similar to the boards. Getting the conveyors, teleporters, and spawn types right is definitely the toughest in my forecast (Program may be released)
- I am also going to program a custom chart-making software which can plot points exactly pixel-by-pixel. (Program may be released)
- Synchronization of level tables and average episode difficulty (level table synchronization may never be synchronized...)
What will my next blog post be about?
- There will be two. The first one will be another continuation about reviving Dreamworld. The second one, released on a Friday will be about the contributions I made using my program. Currently I am dividing my workload onto other aspects, so the date might have been delayed.
What notable contributions did I do in May?
- Template revision.
- 2-colored and 3-colored level columns hide themselves if the value is 0.
- Mixed levels column hide themselves for episodes < 114.
- Most fun levels hide themselves if one isn't given.
- Scorecard
- Friend scorecards (on their page, I will message them)
- List of levels color coded by difficulty (I thank User:Blueeighthnote for doing this first]].
- All moves and timed levels by score requirement and limit (from config extractor)!
- All jelly, ingredient, and order levels with color coding (from config extractor)!
- Final Dreamworld datasheet, with insights about basic information, Dreamworld attributes, level requirements, and spawn notes. (I thank User:3primetime3 for making me admin and making me able to edit on his wiki).