Fomenting Mutiny

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

Pstemarie wrote...

What I am willing to do is work with you (and Andarian as he's done the CEP merger too - and if he's willing) to catalog the conflicting resources, making it easier for people that wish to come in and merge the two for their own use. This resource list could be maintained on both the Q site and the CEP site to make it highly visible for those that wish to use it.

Would love to see something like this.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

henesua wrote...

But please avoid mischaracterizing something just because you disagree with or misunderstand it.

My apologies, henesua.  I went back and reread your post from a day or two ago.  Evidently I should not ramble on at 2 am.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_KlatchainCoffee]

               

henesua wrote...

It requires other people to step forward to take on the unfun tasks of documentation, managing the websites, vault entries etc....

Documentation is key. It is highly desirable for CEP 2.5 and absolutely essential to a modular CEP 3 (should that ever come to pass).

Unless I am mistaken, it does not require as much technical know-how and thus I'd be quite happy to do some of the legwork related to this.

Incidenatally - it would be good to know if any is already in existence and what state it is in.


Also, in response to some of the posts further up - the creation of blueprints (and testing linked to that) is a good way of finding bugs.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par KlatchainCoffee, 17 janvier 2014 - 03:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Pstemarie wrote...

What I am willing to do is work with you (and Andarian as he's done the CEP merger too - and if he's willing) to catalog the conflicting resources, making it easier for people that wish to come in and merge the two for their own use.

+1. I think thats a great project to take on. Didn't see it until 3Ravens highlighted. So thanks, 3Ravens.


The Amethyst Dragon - nothing to appologize for. We all know you are busy. I didn't mean to attack you. There are no hard feelings on my end. I just want the decision to be clear. There's been repeated claims that such an endeavor would be more work, and I needed to set that straight.


KC - you know my feelings on documentation. Glad to see others interested.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 17 janvier 2014 - 04:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

KlatchainCoffee wrote...

Incidenatally - it would be good to know if any is already in existence and what state it is in.

What documentation does exist is scattered on the various incarnations of the CEP forums and I would also chack Annoklia as, in its final years, CEP updates seem to have been driven by what was needed/wanted on that PW more than by anything else.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_QlippothVI]

               Hey all,

I don't have a lot to contribute here, since I only dabble in module creation. I've assisted Deva Winblood (later including some small fixes on his works), and assisted in some small way new module creators by offering feedback or helping track down bugs in their modules.

I'm only chiming in because in the past I have offered to create projects for some builders on my bug tracking system and I'd be happy to do the same for this one. I use Mantis (Mantisbt.org), it is a very light weight but complete and useful bug tracking system that is connected to a mySQL database. Or if there is another system let me know, I've used many in my career. I have JIRA as well, but once you go over 10 users it is expensive, and I'm not sure you need all of those features. If the team is small enough I'd be happy to give most of those slots, I mainly use it to study JIRA and examine how I might do things with JIRA at work.
I am a QA Engineer by profession, and these tools are very familiar to me.
I could offer you an instance with its own database, and access to the DB to back up the project periodically (or I can do that, but people like their own access just in case). I can also assist you in how to use this tool and (if desirable) basic testing principles.

I have two VPS servers in Canada, one has about 8GB of free disk space, and my other server has about 50GB of space, though it sounds like you have file space covered by NWV.org. The smaller one hosts the Castle Defense module for some people that still play it.
I might also be able to set up an SVN, or have someone else who knows how to do so on my server. I've only used SVN through the GUI on Windows, and git in unix.

I would also mirror the bug base data and instance to my backup server (under my desk at home) to make sure if anything goes wrong you can still access your data (same login, bugs, etc, slightly different URL, maybe a few days old).
Anyway, I'm looking to contribute to this thing called Neverwinter Nights, since I'm not sure what I would do in my free time without it. 


 - Qlippoth
               
               

               

                     Modifié par QlippothVI, 18 janvier 2014 - 07:35 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Mantis is a great, absolutely GREAT system.  I hope that the team here will accept your offer and use it.  Tracking bugs is the only way to fix them.  You can't fix what you don't know is broken unless you stumble across the bug while doing something else etc.

CTP used Mantis for as long as we had a host willing to provide the db for us.  When that member left the team, we lost the mantis.  We had it setup so that you could actually go into any given area in our test mods, and click a button to get a report auto-generated, that would also ask you to add notes, then port that information directly from in game out to the mantis system... man what a pleasure it was to use that type of system!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Those are great offers, QlippothVI
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...

Mantis is a great, absolutely GREAT system.

That's what it was called - I couldn't remember for sure. Thanks, Bannor! I'll have to look into that for my own stuff.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               Mantis sounds interesting.  I have no experience with such a system, but if it's really easy to set up and easy for multiple people (who likely have no training) to work with, I don't see why it couldn't be of use.

As far as documentation goes, something I would really like to see (kind of wishful thinking here), is for the ability to have a set of online tables for each of the major 2da files (appearance, placeables, visualeffects) from CEP that has options for adding URLs of the (old/new) Vault entries where content originated from, and after adding said URLs, being able to just click on them to open a new tab/window to go to that page (to make voting on the stuff easier).  I know, I know, people very rarely vote anymore, but I think the option of making it easier would be nice.

I do plan on adding a new column or two to each of those 2da files for "creator" and "source", to both give credit and have a reference for the origin when we have that information.  Adding columns to the right side of the tables doesn't interfere with their function. '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 18 janvier 2014 - 05:25 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Amethyst Dragon, thats a good idea.

Regarding 2da extension, something I have done so as not to make it more difficult to DIF a 2da file is to add extensions to it in a separate 2da file. Basically I copy the 2da file, and save as the same name with _x at the end.
Then I wipe out every column except for the name and the index. After that I add on whatever columns I want. Its a little more work, but maintains compatibility with other 2DAs no matter what another user might do with them.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

henesua wrote...

Amethyst Dragon, thats a good idea.

I second that

henesua wrote...

Regarding 2da extension, something I have done so as not to make it more difficult to DIF a 2da file is to add extensions to it in a separate 2da file. Basically I copy the 2da file, and save as the same name with _x at the end.
Then I wipe out every column except for the name and the index. After that I add on whatever columns I want. Its a little more work, but maintains compatibility with other 2DAs no matter what another user might do with them.

I'd doing that right now for the 4E mod
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_QlippothVI]

               

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...

Mantis is a great, absolutely GREAT system.  I hope that the team here will accept your offer and use it.  Tracking bugs is the only way to fix them.  You can't fix what you don't know is broken unless you stumble across the bug while doing something else etc.

CTP used Mantis for as long as we had a host willing to provide the db for us.  When that member left the team, we lost the mantis.  We had it setup so that you could actually go into any given area in our test mods, and click a button to get a report auto-generated, that would also ask you to add notes, then port that information directly from in game out to the mantis system... man what a pleasure it was to use that type of system!

1. Button in-game: That sounds awesome, alas, I would not know how to hook that up without more info. Can you embed a URL in a module that would launch your browser? Did you click a placeable?

2. Your Mantis gone: Was there a backup of the Mantis bugbase? I could import it into mine.

If anyone is interested send me a PM. Even if you just want to take a look and see how it is used, I can show you Deva's old projects.

I can create a Project in minutes and it is WAY easier to work on and track who is fixing what in Mantis than a non-bug tracker system. A bug can always be assigned to someone so you can track who is working on it, people's notes about the issue, even discussions, though I would do most discussing outside of Mantis. Mantis is for facts or observations, screenshots illustrating the bug, files related to the bug, etc.


 - Qlippoth
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Going to answer backwards:

2) there was a backup years ago, it is gone now, and no real loss as there is no-one left on that team except me, and I am not doing anymore work on those sets at this time.

1) It was a scripted bug reporting system, direct sql links to the db.  We had a hidden placeable on every single tile (programmatically inserted) that gave us the location of the individual area and tile position within that area.  Once the report was started by using a wand to cast a spell, it would open a dialog where you could place basic info, and finally add specific notes... it was limited in space... something similar to the twitter limit of 144 chars, but I think ours was a bit longer than that.  That hidden placeable gave us the ability to locate the actual bug, up to and including directional facing, so you could paint the bug reporting arrow down, and go back to find it, in game, on the testing pw.  There was no need for backwards reporting, IE, we only generated the bug report in game, the rest of the management side of it was handled in the normal Mantis fashion.  

What made it most useful was the drop-down style dialogs when you entered the bug report, you could choose from predefined basic types, IE, missing texture, or hole in the ground or whatever the various types were we had setup.   Multiple choices were a godsend and by basically forcing the player to choose from a select type of listing of bugs, the bug reports were more accurate, and more easily fixed.

OMB created the wand, and he also created a set of scripts that I would run from within open office.  I would have to export the .are, .git etc, convert them to xml (there is an OLD tool still available for that on the vault) run the scripts in open office that scanned the data and auto-inserted the hidden tracking object, then convert back from xml to .are, .git etc, and reload the module.  Always had to remember to perform those steps if I added or changed anything in the testing areas.  OMB also created a separate set of scripts that would cross check the individual tiles that were painted against the full tile-set.set file to help me insure that I had every possible tile painted at least once in the module.  That took hours of toolset painting, but the scripts themselves were fast and accurate.  I don't think I have a saved set of any of that though.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TheExcimer-500]

               It's been a long time... As I've noticed a few comments about older CEP team members that might have an issue with this; I just thought I'd chime in and give Amethyst Dragon my full approval to use the content I added/revised in previous CEP versions towards updating CEP and/or creating CEPv3. (I cannot speak for other members of the old CEP team). Good luck & thank you.