[Dev Thread] Enhanced Thief Fan Missions Archive (Last update: 2017/12/24) - by EnYB0La
FenPhoenix on 23/12/2017 at 09:06
Sorry for my absence. I coded myself into a coma and lose sleep and then didn't wanna think about it :erg:
I see your point about alerting people what NewDark version they need. And your other points as well. Honestly maybe I shouldn't sweat these details for now. Locking in the data format (looks like we're about done?) and generating some real pages is more important. I'm getting close to being able to start writing out files. Detection is very accurate for most of the detectable values.
Titles are >96% detected. Authors about 85% or so are detected. Languages, custom stuff*, and NewDark Required are 100% detected. About 80 missions have their NewDark minimum version detected, which looks like about half of the existent NewDark missions according to the list. (These numbers include some duplicate missions and some non-English versions and stuff, so it's not an exact count). Campaign/single-mission is detected 100%. Individual mission names for campaigns are detected if they're specified in the titles.str. Which should be all the time in theory.
Descriptions are detected if they're specified in fm.ini.
The stuff that's not so well detected is:
-Version. About a third of all missions have some kind of version detected, but it's not necessarily accurate and there's a lot of "version 2010", "version 64 Cubed Contest", "version Perspex" (?!) and using the Version line to specify the required NewDark version rather than the FM version. I can improve this to some extent, but I don't really trust it. A misleading version number wouldn't be so great.
-Original release date / last update date. Only a small number of these are currently being detected. I could improve that, but the real issue is that not a whole lot of missions are going to specify both these dates clearly and accurately. I've seen some misisons with one date in the fm.ini and another in the readme, and some just specify a "release" date and don't say whether it's original-release or last-updated. I could detect the last-modified date of the .mis file(s), but that may well be inaccurate. Some of them have wonky dates ("3/9/2036", "4/27/1980"), and the last-modified date may not be the date the mission was actually released. Even if we accepted that margin of error, the Original Release Date is a bust. No way to tell that by looking at file dates; any one of them could have been modified for a new release. I don't think this one is going to work out so well for auto-detect.
All in all though, a lot of info is here. Getting pretty close I'd say.
I'm going to clone the etfma git repo and see if I can't figure out how to mock something up with it. Sorry I didn't do it earlier.
*except Custom Subtitles; I haven't tried to detect those yet
Inline Image:
http://fenphoenix.com/pics/2017-12-22-1.png
EnYB0La on 24/12/2017 at 07:09
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
Sorry for my absence. I coded myself into a coma and lose sleep and then didn't wanna think about it :erg:
I see your point about alerting people what NewDark version they need. And your other points as well. Honestly maybe I shouldn't sweat these details for now. Locking in the data format (looks like we're about done?) and generating some real pages is more important. I'm getting close to being able to start writing out files. Detection is very accurate for most of the detectable values.
Titles are >96% detected. Authors about 85% or so are detected. Languages, custom stuff*, and NewDark Required are 100% detected. About 80 missions have their NewDark minimum version detected, which looks like about half of the existent NewDark missions according to the list. (These numbers include some duplicate missions and some non-English versions and stuff, so it's not an exact count). Campaign/single-mission is detected 100%. Individual mission names for campaigns are detected if they're specified in the titles.str. Which should be all the time in theory.
Descriptions are detected if they're specified in fm.ini.
Just impressive dude. Nice work. Continue!
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
The stuff that's not so well detected is:
-Version. About a third of all missions have some kind of version detected, but it's not necessarily accurate and
there's a lot of "version 2010", "version 64 Cubed Contest", "version Perspex" (?!) and using the Version line to specify the required NewDark version rather than the FM version. I can improve this to some extent, but I don't really trust it. A misleading version number wouldn't be so great.
-Original release date / last update date. Only a small number of these are currently being detected. I could improve that, but the real issue is that not a whole lot of missions are going to specify both these dates clearly and accurately. I've seen some misisons with one date in the fm.ini and another in the readme, and some just specify a "release" date and don't say whether it's original-release or last-updated. I could detect the last-modified date of the .mis file(s), but that may well be inaccurate. Some of them have wonky dates ("3/9/2036", "4/27/1980"), and the last-modified date may not be the date the mission was actually released. Even if we accepted that margin of error, the Original Release Date is a bust. No way to tell that by looking at file dates; any one of them could have been modified for a new release. I don't think this one is going to work out so well for auto-detect.
All in all though, a lot of info is here. Getting pretty close I'd say.
Well, the version is a string, so... it can be "Whatever you want" or "1.x".
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
I'm going to clone the etfma git repo and see if I can't figure out how to mock something up with it. Sorry I didn't do it earlier.
I'm not coding but designing on Illustrator. Do you want the .AI file?
Like it!
1. Why are there two tabs located at the top?
2. You should invert "Archive Name" with "Title" columns.
3. You should sort the Languages values by A-Z.
4. What [r] means?
5. Are you doing a difference between TG and TDP FMs? I only see 'tdp' and 'tma'.
6. Included missions should be an integer, not a list of titles.
PS: Never knew you were able to rap :o
EnYB0La on 24/12/2017 at 07:11
2017/12/24Got free time. I just designed the generic single page template (About this project, How to contribute, Terms and Conditions, etc...) and modified the background color of the Header and Footer in order to focus the user on the content section. DId the same on the FM/Campaign Single Page template.
(
https://image.ibb.co/j0tnKm/Single_page_template.png)
Inline Image:
https://preview.ibb.co/iMJyQR/Single_page_template.pngThe
Table of content is fixed and should move up to bottom while scrolling.
FenPhoenix on 24/12/2017 at 15:29
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
I'm not coding but designing on Illustrator. Do you want the .AI file?
Oh, no wonder I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, toss me the .ai file and I'll have a play around!
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
1. Why are there two tabs located at the top?
Just a working thing. The first tab has a list of FM zips and a list of extracted folders (final version will probably just read the zips directly and not have to extract the whole thing). Second tab, as you see, is for listing the collected data.
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
2. You should invert "Archive Name" with "Title" columns.
Will do. Heh, that's the same thing I could say about NewDarkLoader and yet here I go doing it too.
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
3. You should sort the Languages values by A-Z.
All columns can be sorted A-Z by clicking on the header. They don't have an arrow symbol cause I guess they don't have one by default and I forgot to look into how to add it. Will do that.
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
4. What [r] means?
That's a temporary debug thing; it means the date was gotten from the readme instead of the fm.ini file.
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
5. Are you doing a difference between TG and TDP FMs? I only see 'tdp' and 'tma'.
I thought those were the only two options you were going to use. I personally don't think the distinction is very important; if you're interested in playing fan missions, why the heck would you be using T1 non-Gold and lock yourself out of anything that requires Gold, when TG is cheap and readily available online?
However, it seems that FM sites do make this distinction. I can attempt to detect T1 from TG, but it won't be fully accurate. The way I'm currently detecting game types is I scan the .mis file(s) looking for the "SKYOBJVAR" string (like DarkLoader) and detect like this:
Code:
// No SKYOBJVAR - OldDark Thief 1/G
// SKYOBJVAR at ~770 - OldDark Thief 2
// SKYOBJVAR at ~3092 or ~7216 - NewDark, could be either T1/G or T2
// SKYOBJVAR at any other location - OldDark Thief2
But I can't use this to distinguish between T1 and TG; I'd have to use the readme. I don't know how accurate that would be, but it would definitely not be 100%. Some readmes don't say anything about game type; some say stuff like "Thief: The Dark Project (Thief Gold compatible)"; some say "Thief: The Dark Project" when I'm pretty sure they mean Gold (ie,
Working Late). Even if you went through the missions manually, you would probably not get it right all the time.
What does everyone think about this? Is it important to know if a mission is T1 or TG? Are there old T1 missions that don't work right under Gold?
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
6. Included missions should be an integer, not a list of titles.
Oh, okay. So for campaigns, the missions that are listed on the page are just done in Markdown, then?
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
PS: Never knew you were able to rap :o
Oh, you found that stuff? :cool:
fortuni on 24/12/2017 at 19:57
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
Are there old T1 missions that don't work right under Gold?
Yes. There are 4 x T1 missions who's objectives do not work correctly when playing via TG engine. These missions can all be played fully via TG if you replace convict.osm with the old convict.osm. This needs to be done ONLY when playing via FMsel as you must NOT place oldconvict.osm in your main Thief folder.
In the Brief Summaries tables I have included footnotes for all those missions that are affected by this T1/TG conflict.
Missions include:-
Garrett's Revenge (any zip that does not have gold in it's title)
Trickster's Return (when playing on expert only)
Amida (but Voodoo managed to produce a dml to overcome this issue)
Information
EnYB0La on 24/12/2017 at 22:29
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
Columns can be sorted A-Z by clicking on the header. They don't have an arrow symbol cause I guess they don't have one by default and I forgot to look into how to add it. Will do that.
I was talking about "english, french...". In one case, we can see "french, english...".
And, yes the title of each of the included missions should be written down in the Markdown part (left section of the template). Instead, should we list them in the sidebar..?
FenPhoenix on 24/12/2017 at 22:53
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
I was talking about "english, french...". In one case, we can see "french, english...".
Oh, sorry, I misread. Okay, I'll do that too.
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
And, yes the title of each of the included missions should be written down in the Markdown part (left section of the template). Instead, should we list them in the sidebar..?
Not sure. The current way seems alright to me; I don't think we need a whole page's worth of info for each mission of a campaign.
Maxrebo6 on 25/12/2017 at 02:21
A new and enhanced Thief Fan Mission website with detailed and descriptive descriptions and screenshots.That sounds amazing.
EnYB0La on 25/12/2017 at 04:42
Quote Posted by fortuni
Yes. There are 4 x T1 missions who's objectives do not work correctly when playing via TG engine. These missions can all be played fully via TG if you replace convict.osm with the old convict.osm. This needs to be done ONLY when playing via FMsel as you must NOT place oldconvict.osm in your main Thief folder.
In the Brief Summaries tables I have included footnotes for all those missions that are affected by this T1/TG conflict.
Missions include:-
Garrett's Revenge (any zip that does not have gold in it's title)
Trickster's Return (when playing on expert only)
Amida (but Voodoo managed to produce a dml to overcome this issue)
InformationThanks fortuni :)
Renault on 24/5/2018 at 01:02
I see this thread died about 5 months ago - is the project dead too? Hoping that's not the case.