Tile Sorting

Centralized sorting module for gameplay selector tiles - supports name, system, date, and automatic multi-criteria sorting.

Overview

tileSorting provides sort functions and utilities for ordering gameplay tiles within groups. It handles complex sorting rules including auxiliary/career item ordering, system priority, and UI-to-internal mode mapping.

Module path: lua/ge/extensions/ui/gameplaySelector/tileSorting.lua (loaded via require)

Exports (M)

Constants

Data Fields

Internals

GameplayAutomatic Sort Order

The multi-criteria sort applies in this priority:

1. Clustered items first - tiles from clustering sort by name
2. System order - Freeroam → Challenges → Scenarios → Campaigns → Other
3. Non-auxiliary before auxiliary - debug content sorts last
4. Challenges-specific: non-career before career, then by order property
5. Fallback: by order property, then alphabetically

local function sortByGameplayAutomatic(a, b)
  local clusteredResult = compareClusteredStatus(a, b)
  if clusteredResult ~= nil then return clusteredResult end

  local aOrder = M.SYSTEM_ORDER[a.system] or 999
  local bOrder = M.SYSTEM_ORDER[b.system] or 999
  if aOrder ~= bOrder then return aOrder < bOrder end

  local auxResult = compareAuxiliaryStatus(a, b)
  if auxResult ~= nil then return auxResult end
  -- ...continues with career/order/name comparisons
end

Date Sorting

Sorts newest first. Items without dates sort to the end:

local function sortByDate(a, b)
  if a.date == b.date then return sortByNameButOtherAlwaysLast(a, b) end
  if not a.date then return false end
  if not b.date then return true end
  return a.date > b.date
end

How It Works

1. The tiles module calls sortTilesFromUIValue(tiles, displayData.sorting)
2. UI value "automatic" maps to internal "GameplayAutomatic"
3. The multi-criteria sort applies system order, auxiliary status, and per-system rules
4. table.sort is called with the selected comparator function
5. Groups use sortGroup for convenient in-place sorting

Additional Exports

The following exports are available but not yet documented in detail:

• M.convertUIValueToSortMode
• M.getSortFunction
• M.isValidSortMode
• M.sortByDate
• M.sortByGameplayAutomatic
• M.sortByNameButOtherAlwaysLast
• M.sortBySystem
• M.sortGroup
• M.sortTiles
• M.sortTilesFromUIValue