Andruha on 22/3/2005 at 15:17
Quote Posted by epithumia
I would ask that mission info files be in HTML and not RTF. I have to convert every RTF file to HTML anyway, and since there's no Windows crap in sight on the machines that host thiefmissions.com this just becomes an annoying pain.
Kingers, epithumia:
Intead of HTML and RTF, what do you think about briefing in structured text? It is human readable, format independant yet structured.
Some advantages I can think of right now:
* Because it is structured, it can be easily read by programs and translated on the fly into HTML, RTF, etc..
* Because there is no direct formatting, brifings could be easily styled, themed, etc..
* It will make writing briefing easier, as there is no need to think about representation, only about contents.
* Writing in structured text is easy - just a couple of syntax rules to follow. (though complex documents need advanced skills, but predefined templates will make writing even complex document easy).
* Updating briefings in multiple targets is easy: just paste the same text in your briefing file, your CSS-based web page, etc and the same up-today information will be representated according to target's style.
* Structured text syntax is well documented and there are plenty tools for it.
Kingers on 22/3/2005 at 15:33
structured text is new to me but I will investigate.
Gregorius on 22/3/2005 at 16:00
Quote Posted by Kingers
The whole idea of ratings and uploading to servers etc. is abit overkill and would doubtless cause trouble. It would also require a lot of extra code to manage server transaction as well as server admins building their websites around Shadow which I don't think is fair. XML is somewhat overkill, however I am looking into a ini style manifest for FM headers
OK. The XML is not a good idea. I forgot that probably the human (mission creator), not some "mission wizard app" will be making such a file so the XML is not good for writing...
The mission ratings? It will not be a problem.
It IS not a problem now!Take a look at this url:
(
http://thiefmissions.com/missions.desc)
Each mission present at thiefmissions is described there and the description contains mission RATING! (Many thanks to thiefmissions admins for such an idea :thumb: ). So the information is ready now and it may be obtained from single great place like thiefmissions ;)
And it probably will for T3 missions!
So there is no need for a complex code. 'Shadow' should do something like this:
1) Download this file from thiefmissions (it is very simple).
2) Find particular mission, and add rating(s) to mission description.
And that's all!
It should be started by some menu option etc. only if a user wants to (it should not be a spyware-type app ;) ).
One more thing:please don't limit the mission ratings to 1-10 range. If some incredible FM comes out someday ("CL 2" for example :) ) the user may not be able to rate it better than any mission he played... (Komag rates some missions '11').
SneaksieDave on 22/3/2005 at 18:29
The only rating I'm personally interested in (for the most part) is local rating. There are some highly rated missions that I thought were nothing special (even poor), and there are quite a few low rated ones that are gems. And, there is the fact that no one rates anymore, so for the most part, they're not rated at all.
I would only want a local record of personal rating, so I know what I thought of the mission, for replay's sake.
For info format, why not just use text? That works everywhere.
OrbWeaver on 22/3/2005 at 19:10
Quote Posted by SneaksieDave
For info format, why not just use text? That works everywhere.
I second that. Briefings in RTF is a solution looking for a problem.
Renzatic on 22/3/2005 at 19:12
Quote Posted by sparhawk
The mod manager is for mods. TDM is a mod, but inside this mod we will have the need to install individual FMs, as we sure don't shouldn't distribute the full mod for each individual FM. TDM is already about 90MB if compressed at full level.
Since you are writing this app from scratch it would be better to plan this interface already as we can work out the specs. If you hardcode stuff into your app and later is demand for other features it is much more effort to do it then. Unless you want to say flat out that you don't want to support TDM at all, in which case we can develop our own solution anyway. Just want to know.
Right, but once the mod is loaded it works exactly like Doom 3 does. All we have to do is tweak the multiplayer map selection menu to load up our FM's (and make it look cooler of course), which won't be hard to do once we get around to it.
The only reason we'd need an external loader like Shadow would be for people that'd want to launch both T3 and TDM FM's from the same program. It'd be nice and handy, but not necessary.
sparhawk on 22/3/2005 at 19:17
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Right, but once the mod is loaded it works exactly like Doom 3 does. All we have to do is tweak the multiplayer map selection menu to load up our FM's (and make it look cooler of course), which won't be hard to do once we get around to it.
Seems you were not reading the design docs. There is a start screen just like in the normal Thief games where you can start your loaded mission. This means that the mainmenu.gui has to be adjusted to start the mission, and of course the maps must be properly extracted and integrated into our TDm setup and the save games must be cleanup up. So it is not as easy as you make it. The structure of D3 is easy to handle, so we have a very clean interface and know what we must do, but it is not as if you download the FM and extract it into the directory and this is all there is to do.
I guess this discussion should be moved over to TDM boards though.
dracflamloc on 22/3/2005 at 22:14
Okay who here is actually gonna use a .net fm loader?
At any rate. Please let me know what you are doing for a FM settings file. Personally I think an INI file would be easy and effective.
Also, I will be using HTML for sure with my loader. It's a pretty obvious solution. Just about everyone knows enough HTML to get around. If you're worried about people here at ttlg running ActiveX stuff through thier FM... change your security settings.
Like the host of thiefmissions.com said, he won't host two formats so the first thing we should do is come up with a standard format.
Renzatic on 23/3/2005 at 06:10
Quote Posted by Spar
but it is not as if you download the FM and extract it into the directory and this is all there is to do.
Well not immidiately, but if we do our job it'll be that simple.
The engine will be able to load FM's from the menu easily, and if someone makes an FM that includes custom content all they'll have to do is make it a .pk4 file, drop in base and the engine will load it up along with everything else from within the mod.
dracflamloc on 23/3/2005 at 06:12
Announcement: I will be using a .INI file as the format for FM info. I'll post more details later so that if anyone wants to make thier own loader they can load this format as a standard.
Also you can check my FleshLoader program preview in the thread in this forum area.
