@linyive
I understand the theory behind your method. I'm interested how it works in practice. This could be best presented via a real mission or the docs.
donperk
Send me your email, I will send one of my missions.
I'm still looking for a few more volunteers to submit their mission projects for testing. You'll join the elite group of brave pioneers that includes stoutes, starswordc, Castmodean (castsbugc), erei and Nagorak!
I hope to have "Valley of the Shadow II" completed and published by the time Season 8 drops. This is mainly so I can start playtesting it right away once the Foundry comes back, but having it ready for you to use in testing your new tool would be an added plus.
Obviously at this point you're just trying to get the tool done as is, but one thing that occurred to me is it might be possible to take the tool to another level, or create another tool, that could format a mission into a web-based presentation.
What I'm thinking is having it so that the chat bubbles are displayed in a way that you can click through them by having each response point to an individual html page that has the bubble for that response. Each of these pages could be formatted to accept a picture of the person presenting the information (set to something like [name of contact].jpg so we could easily screenshot and fill them in, with DEFAULT being programmed to be the contact in the initial dialogue box). Then in between chat bubbles a page would be inserted for each objective, which which could hold a text description of what happens, and perhaps some screenshots from the mission, or maybe even video footage recorded in-game.
The reason something like this might be useful is it would allow people to preview your mission without having to go in game. In addition, the sad reality is STO won't necessarily be around forever, so it would be a way to archive our work in some manner.
That's a very different goal and direction from where this initial tool is going, but it's certainly doable. One surprise I've had with the current output is that you can already "play" someone's dialogues due to the hyperlinks.
It's something worth considering if I go on to do the v2 engine that I've hinted at. The output could be either a web site (or sub-web site) or a .mht file, which is kind of web site in a file that most modern web browsers know how to read.
I know I keep mentioning "v1" and "v2" engines. The difference between the two is that v1 does the bare minimum work to extract information from a mission export using a tool called "regular expressions" to scan the export file for the information its interested in. v2 will build on v1, but will lose the regular expressions (for the most part) and will read EVERYTHING out of the file (even stuff it doesn't need or understand) line-by-line. v2 is a much bigger effort, but will have a big payout in that we'll be able to do a lot more with it and it will read mission files more reliably.
The good news is that any code using the engine that was built on v1 will still work with v2 -- from the outside they will look the same (only with v2 providing more information.) So my lowly HTML formatter will still work on the v2 engine.
With v2 in place, we can go in several different directions. And my hope is that OTHER developers, like Pendra, will use v2 as a starting point for implementing other ideas.
My immediate vision for v2 is to come out with a standalone app that will allow you to proof your missions, make changes/fixes to text and then have your changes pushed back to the Foundry. At the very minimum, it would have an internal spell check and editor and keep track of the dialogue elements that have changed. And if I can swing it, I can have it paste the changed dialogues into the Foundry for you!
Your idea, nagorak, is one that we could certainly pursue once v2 is ready.
Your idea, nagorak, is one that we could certainly pursue once v2 is ready.
That's cool. No need for it to be any time soon, if it happens at all. It was just an idea I had. Obviously the first goal should be to make the tool the most useful for interfacing with the Foundry. Any other sort of things like creating HTML previews of missions are of much less importance.
Good old text adventures games and Fighting Fantasy books. I loved them 20-25 years ago, but nowadays, not so much.
I don't know... if you look at the kind of games that are popular now on phones and such it's like going back to the SNES days. Granted text adventures are a little bit further back, but retro seems to be in.
Well, the last five missions that have been run through the tool have run cleanly without me having to do any tweaking. I'd like to get missions from four more authors before I release the tool.
If you are interested in getting a mission dump or just helping out, send me a PM or reply here.
REMEMBER:THE FOUNDRY WILL BE DOWN FOR A PERIOD AFTER THE SEASON EIGHT RELEASE TOMORROW! This is not rumor; this is confirmed by branflakes. This is a good opportunity to get your mission text polished up while there is downtime. So send me your exports while you still can!
Digging up an old thread here, but are either Donperk's or Pendra8080's parsers still available? I've got several cameo characters in my mission, and I agreed to show their dialogue to their real owners for approval before I published the mission - so it would be very handy to be able to quickly extract all the dialogue in the mission. I've successfully exported a text file (thanks for the instructions, all) but it's full of code guff.
I know that as well as you do, Greendragoon :P but it sometimes seems as if it doesn't apply to the Foundry section. Or is that only the "Mission Database" section?
Pendra8080's parser (mentioned on page 2) was definitely released to the public, a link was posted, it's just that the link doesn't work any more. Just wondered if anybody still had a copy.
Comments
I understand the theory behind your method. I'm interested how it works in practice. This could be best presented via a real mission or the docs.
donperk
Send me your email, I will send one of my missions.
I hope to have "Valley of the Shadow II" completed and published by the time Season 8 drops. This is mainly so I can start playtesting it right away once the Foundry comes back, but having it ready for you to use in testing your new tool would be an added plus.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
What I'm thinking is having it so that the chat bubbles are displayed in a way that you can click through them by having each response point to an individual html page that has the bubble for that response. Each of these pages could be formatted to accept a picture of the person presenting the information (set to something like [name of contact].jpg so we could easily screenshot and fill them in, with DEFAULT being programmed to be the contact in the initial dialogue box). Then in between chat bubbles a page would be inserted for each objective, which which could hold a text description of what happens, and perhaps some screenshots from the mission, or maybe even video footage recorded in-game.
The reason something like this might be useful is it would allow people to preview your mission without having to go in game. In addition, the sad reality is STO won't necessarily be around forever, so it would be a way to archive our work in some manner.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
That's a very different goal and direction from where this initial tool is going, but it's certainly doable. One surprise I've had with the current output is that you can already "play" someone's dialogues due to the hyperlinks.
It's something worth considering if I go on to do the v2 engine that I've hinted at. The output could be either a web site (or sub-web site) or a .mht file, which is kind of web site in a file that most modern web browsers know how to read.
I know I keep mentioning "v1" and "v2" engines. The difference between the two is that v1 does the bare minimum work to extract information from a mission export using a tool called "regular expressions" to scan the export file for the information its interested in. v2 will build on v1, but will lose the regular expressions (for the most part) and will read EVERYTHING out of the file (even stuff it doesn't need or understand) line-by-line. v2 is a much bigger effort, but will have a big payout in that we'll be able to do a lot more with it and it will read mission files more reliably.
The good news is that any code using the engine that was built on v1 will still work with v2 -- from the outside they will look the same (only with v2 providing more information.) So my lowly HTML formatter will still work on the v2 engine.
With v2 in place, we can go in several different directions. And my hope is that OTHER developers, like Pendra, will use v2 as a starting point for implementing other ideas.
My immediate vision for v2 is to come out with a standalone app that will allow you to proof your missions, make changes/fixes to text and then have your changes pushed back to the Foundry. At the very minimum, it would have an internal spell check and editor and keep track of the dialogue elements that have changed. And if I can swing it, I can have it paste the changed dialogues into the Foundry for you!
Your idea, nagorak, is one that we could certainly pursue once v2 is ready.
That's cool. No need for it to be any time soon, if it happens at all. It was just an idea I had. Obviously the first goal should be to make the tool the most useful for interfacing with the Foundry. Any other sort of things like creating HTML previews of missions are of much less importance.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
I don't know... if you look at the kind of games that are popular now on phones and such it's like going back to the SNES days. Granted text adventures are a little bit further back, but retro seems to be in.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
If you are interested in getting a mission dump or just helping out, send me a PM or reply here.
REMEMBER: THE FOUNDRY WILL BE DOWN FOR A PERIOD AFTER THE SEASON EIGHT RELEASE TOMORROW! This is not rumor; this is confirmed by branflakes. This is a good opportunity to get your mission text polished up while there is downtime. So send me your exports while you still can!
Not sure how it would be applicable by people who initially write their mission in a word processor though (aka me).
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
Also, necorthreads are against the forum rules.
Pendra8080's parser (mentioned on page 2) was definitely released to the public, a link was posted, it's just that the link doesn't work any more. Just wondered if anybody still had a copy.