A Searchable Map List

[Bogus]

When GPGnet died it took with it a searchable database of all the phenomenal community-created maps that have been created over the years--the GPG Vault. I had a rare stroke of efforts the other day and created a website that catalogs all the maps in terms of size, number of players, and so on along with links to one of the GPG Vault mirrors for downloads. The utility that created the data was more of a guess than a concrete, for-definite readout but I think it's 95 to 98 percent accurate. Anyway, here you go.

http://brackman.wswarren.com/

Hopefully this will help people find maps they want to play, especially those hard-to-find maps that have AI markers. Per a couple of disclamers on the site I'll try to go through and slowly verify data and fix any bugs that pop up in the site, but being an engineer I'm naturally pretty lazy and will get around to such things "eventually".

Enjoy

[eXcalibur]

I do not know a lot about the GPG vault, but I have searched and downloaded quite a few maps in FAF. Just do to the Map Vault tab. Under the Search button is a little blue thing with "Filters" written on it. Click on it. There are a lot of search options to choose from. As far as I can see there are all options you have on your webpage as well except for one: AI Markers.

This would be useful for FAF, too. Can you tell people in this forum how you did this, so that they can implement it in FAF as well?

[Bogus]

For the AI markers I basically took the same approach used by both Sorian AI and the Lobby Enhancement mod:

1. Identify the filename for the map save file, it's usually something like mapname_save.lua and is stored as the "save" variable in the main map lua file.
2. If you're traversing directories in .NET or similar, you may need to strip off the directory path so you've just got the filename itself.
3. Open the file and search for the presence of "Land Path Node". This is a basic AI map marker name, if the map has map markers enabled there should be at least one of these present in the file.


Note that this isn't perfect and in testing I've noticed a couple of maps where Brackman/Sorian/LEM all think there's markers but the AI gets confused and shuts down anyway. I haven't done much research on why this happens and likely won't get around to it anytime soon, just something to be aware of.

[Rathik]

Any chance you can add pictures of the maps on the search results?
Its a great tool but kinda useless with out a preview of the map.

[Bogus]

Not that I can tell...it'd have to be generated based on the map file, if there's .NET friendly code floating around that can do that I could definitely plug it in but I currently don't have time for what sounds like a pretty major undertaking. I agree that it'd be a great feature though.

[Raging_Squirrel]

you can use faf's map vault with your browser http://faforever.com/faf/vault/maps.php