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I see thumbnail, play the map, see others thumbnails, comment, try to define, create my own, replay maps, discover new authors, see more and more thumbnails, discover new style, play more and more maps, re-comment, write, think about what a map is, give my advice, still playing maps, still create my own maps, my own styles, discover who I am.

It is human to want to classify things. They did it with animals, materials, people, arts… So Why not do it with N maps? I know that it is impossible to make a perfect classification system and that there will always be some unclassifiable authors/maps. But why not try?
So I decided to make with the help of all who want to help me a nomenclature system of maps.

Here are the 8 first basic types of maps, i mean objectively without considering aesthitic, atmosphere, kind of gameplay,...

Action: This is a map which is doable with or without gold by using different ways.

Race: This is a map where the flow is never totally broken (where you never have to slow down) and where there is very often only one way to complete it.

Puzzle: This is a map where you have to think for solve one or more set of logic for finish the level or for get gold.

Jumper: This is map where you have to make very precise movements for avoid dangerous objects or for go into some places difficult to access, there are usually long and don’t use a lot of active enemies.

Survival: This is a map wherein the goal is to make the longer demo without dying or complete the level.

Concept: This is a map where there is an original use of objects or tiles for making a new kind of concept. Sometimes others programs are used for create or use new kind of elements.

DDA: This is a map where you have to press always nothing or the same touchs for complete it.

N-arts: This is a map that uses objects or tiles for draw something and which is generally unplayable.

Tell me what you think of the 8 types I choose. You can suggest everything about it or about other aspect for classify a map. I apologies for my bad English grammar and hope that I’m understandable.

The provided categories aren't so much styles, but more of just types of maps. I think you would be doing better by making very particular tags: "Minimalistic" "Messy" "Rockets" "Puzzle" "Aesthetics", etc. Even further than that would be a better way. Think of the Pandora music system if that helps. I think it would be cool to classify maps with these types of tags, but it would also unfortunately be useless seeing as there's no way to browse by these given tags.

Don't forget penis or (phallic) maps.

The provided categories aren't so much styles, but more of just types of maps. I think you would be doing better by making very particular tags: "Minimalistic" "Messy" "Rockets" "Puzzle" "Aesthetics", etc.

Yes i agree, i finally won't make a dichotomous key but more a nomenclature system. I'm working on it and will sometimes post updates in this topic. I also changed the first post.

Hmm, not sure if this is exactly what you mean, but I like the sound of an official "Taxonomy of Maps." If this is to be created however, it seems necessary to be as particular and scientific as possible, and start out even broader, essentially as broad as you can go, which would be with:
Now, there are two possibilities for every map that you can load into the the game, the ones with a ninja in them that you can actually move around in, and the ones where you don't have a ninja and thusly cannot interact at all. Therefore, these can be deemed as:
While it may appear like only one of these is a broad topic, NON-PLAYABLE actually encompasses a much larger definition of maps or number of categories than may first seem apparent. In this post (for fear of going out of control), I shall only attempt to define the categories that branch out from underneath the NON-PLAYABLE category.

Now there is really only one type of map that would fit under NON-PLAYABLE, and that is the N-ART (It does seem debatable that there could be an ambiguous OTHER category in which maps such as a WORK-IN-PROGRESS/UNFINISHED could go, but it seems silly to include those as they are not finished maps and therefore wouldn't need categorization yet, and even if they were to be included, it would be even more silly to not already have a ninja loaded somewhere into the map so that people could play it and give feedback. In fact, it seems that the only way such a category could exist would be if the author wanted feedback solely on the map's looks and potential for gameplay without having added a ninja in yet. It is a very small category, yes, but as all should be included, perhaps this warrants the inclusion of an OTHER category... but then again, there's still the first counter-argument mentioned (Actually, there are those maps which are INSTRUCTIONAL or deliver some sort of MESSAGE/JOKE/SILLY, like a tileset that just says "hi!" or "ralph nadar" or something...). Now many mappers would argue that there is such a thing as a PLAYABLE N-ART, however that would obviously be in the PLAYABLE category and as such will not be discussed here (That could also be argued to be simply an aesthetically-pleasing action/race/puzzle/etc. map).

As of now I can only think of two types of N-ARTs, DRAWINGS and what could be called AVANT-GARDE/MODERN/STUPIDLY-MODERN-AND-OR-POST-MODERN/NON-DRAWING. The latter category (NON-DRAWING) would consist of those maps which have been completed and have purposefully left the ninja out of the map to make some sort of statement or something (This could supposedly be called AVANT-GARDE). In here would also be TILESETS which have been submitted just because they look cool and aren't a drawing of anything in particular. These could actually just be three separate categories as shown below.

DRAWINGS would consist of ORIGINAL and TRACING (Ugh, I'm not meaning to divide everything up into twos, maybe it can be fixed in revisions later), with TRACING being the most common and consisting of PEOPLE, which are either REAL or NON-FICTIONAL and you can divide those up but perhaps it's only necessary to go so specific before I go insane.

Bloody hell I can't go on anymore for now, I'm tired. But I'll just try and draw a tree of what I mean so far...:

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••MAP

•••••PLAYABLE•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••NON-PLAYABLE

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••N-ART•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••OTHER

•••••••••••••••••••••[••DRAWING••]•••••{••AVANT-GARDE••}••••[••TILESET••]••••••••••••••••INSTRUCTIONAL•••••••SILLY

••••••••••[••ORIGINAL•••••TRACING••]••••••••••{••}•••••••[••DESIGN••••PICTURE••]••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

And so on and so forth. Now you may have realized that with this current model there is arguably going to be overlap in the N-ART section, but this is probably just because I haven't sorted the categories efficiently yet.

The cool thing about this is that even though it would take a lot of work, if this "Map Taxonomy" were to be completed it could possibly even be included as a search option for the numa reworking, where authors could define their maps in the taxonomy and then players could search through the taxonomy to find the maps that have been included under, say MAP -> NON-PLAYABLE -> OTHER -> INSTRUCTIONAL. While this would of course require the participation of the authors (and the coders :P) it would create a really cool searching mechanism a.k.a. search engine, but you could of course still search the traditional way.

Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away, but this sounds like a cool project with a large amount of potential to be realized, and I'd be more than happy to work on it. :)

I think the 8 categories were a good place to start, but lord above knows i could better define 'race'.

Races aren't even races in the first place, they should be called Sonic 2 Levels

If you were there before NUMA was remade, you had to select the type of map from the drop down list which included most of your categories, plus a couple more

A DDA isn't nonplayable?

Some races are real races against time like beating a drone train, but most (like 29403 is saying) are not real races.

Pikman wrote:Some races are real races against time like beating a drone train, but most (like 29403 is saying) are not real races.

Would it be even theoretically possible to make a race so long you'd actually have to race the 90 second time limit? It seems doubtful but there are a lot of maps I've seen that I didn't think were feasible before.

well i think a race can be classified as a fast paced map with a pre-defined route.

Although linear maps would fit under this, the strictness of the path could be different.

and like aero was doing, the race category could be divided up into categories.
drone, flow, abstract, etc. etc.

Back in my day (hocks loogey and gazes into the sunset) a jumper was just a shortened version of Jumper-Puzzle which was just a puzzle based on performing difficult jumps.

Jumper, as I recall, is a subset of puzzle. Concept is not a type at all. Adventure, tileset, and retile should all be types, if not retile as a subset.

DDA's are playable and are great fun to highscore on.

Obviously as you don't have to do anything

rocket_thumped wrote:Back in my day (hocks loogey and gazes into the sunset) a jumper was just a shortened version of Jumper-Puzzle which was just a puzzle based on performing difficult jumps.

http://www.nmaps.net/24600
http://www.nmaps.net/6568
http://www.nmaps.net/201463
http://www.nmaps.net/109324

Is what I mean.

For me...

Action - A map that's fun to play and has flow.
Puzzle - A map which is hard to complete as it involves a certain level of skill and understanding of the game to complete.
Race - A map which is based on flow.
Survival - A map where you have to stay alive the longest in order to win.
Test - A map which tests a concept but isn't necessarily a playable or fun map.
DDA - A map which you aren't controlling. This can be by doing nothing, holding a key, or watching a demo.
N-Art - An artistic map.
Tileset - An object-less tile-template for others' to use.

amomentlikethis wrote:For me...

Action - A map that's fun to play and has flow.
Puzzle - A map which is hard to complete as it involves a certain level of skill and understanding of the game to complete.
Race - A map which is based on flow.
Survival - A map where you have to stay alive the longest in order to win.
Test - A map which tests a concept but isn't necessarily a playable or fun map.
DDA - A map which you aren't controlling. This can be by doing nothing, holding a key, or watching a demo.
N-Art - An artistic map.
Tileset - An object-less tile-template for others' to use.

Yeah exactly. Oldschool.

amomentlikethis wrote:For me...

Action - A map that's fun to play and has flow.

There are plenty of action maps that aren't fun ;)

rocket_thumped wrote:

amomentlikethis wrote:For me...

Action - A map that's fun to play and has flow.
Puzzle - A map which is hard to complete as it involves a certain level of skill and understanding of the game to complete.
Race - A map which is based on flow.
Survival - A map where you have to stay alive the longest in order to win.
Test - A map which tests a concept but isn't necessarily a playable or fun map.
DDA - A map which you aren't controlling. This can be by doing nothing, holding a key, or watching a demo.
N-Art - An artistic map.
Tileset - An object-less tile-template for others' to use.

Yeah exactly. Oldschool.

i'm pretty sure "experimental" was the test category, but oh well.