PR2 Level ID Creation Date Guide

[Overbeing]

I'm interested in being able to find out the date that a level's ID was created. We are able to see the last time a level was updated, but I'd like to see the day it made as well. I always feel bad when I update a really old level because I lose that old Last Updated date and will have a less good idea of when it was published. I've started compiling a list of levels of levels to compare to.

Here is a link to the spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

It is free for everyone to edit. The more levels we add, the more accurate it will be.

Please only add levels that are Version 1. That way it is likely that they were published the same day that the ID was made.

The way I found my first batch of levels, is I searched PR2 for levels with the name Run, then sorted by Plays Ascending, then looked for levels that are version 1 to add.

If you want to use it to date your own levels, please create a copy of it instead of editing the main sheet.
I plan on making a copy of the sheet, then adding each of my levels name and ID, then sorting the sheet by Column A Alphabetically. I should be able to get a good estimate once I have added enough levels to compare to.

Let me know if you have any questions or ideas on how to make this better, and thanks in advance to anyone who ends up helping to make it more accurate.

(You can find a level's ID by first clicking the ? Symbol of a level, then clicking the Green Arrow in the bottom left corner that says Share Level. It'll then show you something like this: [level=1040780]LOL RUN'S MAP[/level] by [user]lol run[/user]. I have made this level's ID Bold.)

[Stxtics]

This sounds great. I have something on my computer that could make things easier for this.

Back in 2016, someone made a level archive of .txt files which I then downloaded.

At some point maybe 2017ish I made this into a database of levels to search it easier.
I have also updated this with levels post-2016 and the most recent level ID I have is 6514098.



The database file is about 90GB so I could upload it somewhere but for this, I could just query it for levels that are version 1 which will probably be a lot. Some may also not be version 1 as I don't recheck levels and update their values but I have the ID.

If you'd like to feel free to message me on Discord (Stxtics) as I don't check here super often.

[Overbeing]

That sounds useful and interesting. With that, if I really wanted to pin down a level's publish date, I could search for the level ID, then find the nearest version 1 level and be able to tell its' date that way right?

Ideally, I'd want the spreadsheet to have a couple levels published on each month to give a fairly good estimate.

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding what you have and how it can be used, but I am very interested if you believe it can make this easier.

I think it would be fun to add the level id date to the description of each of my levels, which is why I started this. Making something that anyone could also use that is easy and accurate feels like the way to do this as long as I'm going to anyway.

[Stxtics]

That sounds useful and interesting. With that, if I really wanted to pin down a level's publish date, I could search for the level ID, then find the nearest version 1 level and be able to tell its' date that way right?

Ideally, I'd want the spreadsheet to have a couple levels published on each month to give a fairly good estimate.

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding what you have and how it can be used, but I am very interested if you believe it can make this easier.

I think it would be fun to add the level id date to the description of each of my levels, which is why I started this. Making something that anyone could also use that is easy and accurate feels like the way to do this as long as I'm going to anyway.

Yes, I think this would be able to help with that.

This screenshot is a query I did on the database to get my levels but I could instead do a query like ID is greater than and less than a certain value and version is 1, then get some results and view a level ID from those results on PR2 to get the date.

[Overbeing]

Yes, I think this would be able to help with that.

This screenshot is a query I did on the database to get my levels but I could instead do a query like ID is greater than and less than a certain value and version is 1, then get some results and view a level ID from those results on PR2 to get the date.

Ok, so if you're willing, it would be really useful if youd sort by version 1 or less, then alphabetize by level ID, then copy/paste a level every few thousand IDs (or however often is reasonable) into my spreadsheet. Then I (and whoever wants to help out) can punch those into pr2 to get their dates and add them over time. Or just look up the ones nearest to the levels we want to compare to ours.

And if it isn't too much to ask, would you be able to send me the level ID and name of each of my levels on Overbeing, moslof and The Duck like you have there for yours? It would save me a lot of time, no worries if not.

[Stxtics]

Ok, so if you're willing, it would be really useful if youd sort by version 1 or less, then alphabetize by level ID, then copy/paste a level every few thousand IDs (or however often is reasonable) into my spreadsheet. Then I (and whoever wants to help out) can punch those into pr2 to get their dates and add them over time. Or just look up the ones nearest to the levels we want to compare to ours.

And if it isn't too much to ask, would you be able to send me the level ID and name of each of my levels on Overbeing, moslof and The Duck like you have there for yours? It would save me a lot of time, no worries if not.

Sure I'll try to add a couple today but don't have long. I've also just sent you a PM for those users.

[Overbeing]

Sure I'll try to add a couple today but don't have long. I've also just sent you a PM for those users.

You are the best! Thanks so much. 

I'm going to be out of town and without PR2 for the next week, but I'll get working on it more when I get back. I just wanted to make a proof of concept now while i had the idea.

[Lego-man945]

I find it strange that there is only an update date and not an originally published date :/

[Overbeing]

I find it strange that there is only an update date and not an originally published date :/

Right? I'd love to see it added to the game. Mabe I'll add it to the suggestions. But for now, this seems to be working for me ok. I just got all of my levels and their IDs, so now I can sort them by ID and see the order that they were made, but without other levels to compare them to, I wouldn't be able to have a good guess when. But progress is being made!

[Mia]

I searched up Sonic and all of their levels are version 0. Anyone know what would cause this?

[Overbeing]

I searched up Sonic and all of their levels are version 0. Anyone know what would cause this?

That is above my pay grade. I have noticed some of those too. I have just treated them as version 1, but maybe that is a mistake on my part. What if they are levels that are older than the version feature?

[Stxtics]

I searched up Sonic and all of their levels are version 0. Anyone know what would cause this?

In my archive, I have levels with version -1, 0, and 1. However, when I checked some of these on PR2 they had different values in the different level info popups. I'll edit this post with an example later.

EDIT:
This level I'm pretty confident has a version of 1 but the original level info popup on PR2 says 6.



https://pr2hub.com/levels/2000001.txt - Does not contain a version
https://pr2hub.com/level_data.php?level_id=2000001 - Version 1

[Stunt]

I always just write "originally published: " on my levels but this would be much nicer

[Stxtics]

Okay, so I added some but thought there was probably a better way considering I have all the data.

This is an export from my database of levels that were live at the time of the archive and where the version was -1, 0, or 1.

I tried importing this to the spreadsheet but google didn't like it.

Some levels don't fit the pattern so those can be ignored but this will hopefully be useful in achieving what you want.

The file goes up to the last time I did an archive which was 20/Jan/2024 with level ID 6514098, and contains 3541033 levels. I have only included Date and ID for simplicity.

https://gofile.io/d/RVMbZC

[Overbeing]

Okay, so I added some but thought there was probably a better way considering I have all the data.

This is an export from my database of levels that were live at the time of the archive and where the version was -1, 0, or 1.

I tried importing this to the spreadsheet but google didn't like it.

Some levels don't fit the pattern so those can be ignored but this will hopefully be useful in achieving what you want.

The file goes up to the last time I did an archive which was 20/Jan/2024 with level ID 6514098, and contains 3541033 levels. I have only included Date and ID for simplicity.

https://gofile.io/d/RVMbZC

This is very helpful. I was just able to search my level's ID code without the last digit and find a level that was published for the first time at essentially the same time. So the earliest version of China that I still have was published on June 9th, 2009! The oldest level that I still have wsa published on June 8th, 2008. That is so cool to know.

It unfortunately didn't allow me to have more than 1048576 cells in excel. so it only goes through 4-Aug-09 for me. I may need to check it out at a different computer. Maybe I'll head over to the library some time. Is it fully opening fore everyone else?

[Master Raiden]

It unfortunately didn't allow me to have more than 1048576 cells in excel. so it only goes through 4-Aug-09 for me. I may need to check it out at a different computer. Maybe I'll head over to the library some time. Is it fully opening fore everyone else?

Excel is limited to 1048576 rows, but you can split the CSV file into multiple files using some online tools so that you can view the entire dataset.

Try https://mightymerge.io/split-csv-files/