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ShadowOfHassen

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Posts posted by ShadowOfHassen

  4. Migrating to a new communication platform

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Stan` said:

    The link is already in the linktree of the website. The problem is that making it official means you have to offer game and modding support there.

    I don’t actually see that as a problem if we get more community members. Naturally they’ll start helping with that stuff.

     

    in the meantime basically there’d be a few devs who just need to be @ed after the community stops triaging (that already happens now )

  5. Migrating to a new communication platform

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    5 hours ago, Stan` said:

    We have a few unofficial discords linked on https://linktr.ee/wildfire_games :) I'm on at least ten :) But I prefer the ones I have linked there. One of them is handled by @psypherium Sadly, we have discord only gamers, and foss only developers. Also, given the harassment some developers have had in the past from the community, I think it makes sense to keep them somewhat separated for now.

    So what if we picked the biggest discord and granted it the status of "official community discord" have the people extended it and put a link somewhere on the website, then for anyone who wants to use discord they can. Because I think just a discord link for gamers/newer devs might be useful. (I will not be using it because I like the forums better, but I think it's a tactical choice that is needed.)

  6. Migrating to a new communication platform

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    My vote is for matrix. Yes you need to get an account, but Matrix can be encrypted, and I have had a very nice time using it. I have heard that moderation isn't the best, though, So that's one minus. Another worry is a good instachat might detract from the people who use the forums. I've looked around the Battle for Wesnoth project and literally no one's on the forums.

    Another thing though, and It's something some people might not want to hear, is we might want to have discord. I know the privacy policies are gross, and it's not open source etc. etc. etc. I hate discord probably more than the average person myself, but from what I can see this project has only a handful of people working on it.

    I'm not saying 0 A.D. is dying or anything, but it's tiny for a game of this quality and size. We need to try to make this project a bit more accessible for the "new kids". Moving to git/Gitea is a plus, because people won't have to deal with a weird/ outdated version tracker. But we also need an easy way for people to get into the community. Most people don't want to have to download a new app, get another account, figure out an entire new interface and all that stuff. The communities for minetest, endless sky and even battle for wesnoth (which none of them look as cool as 0 A.D.) are bigger than ours. What's the big difference?  Well they all use GitHub for version control, (but we have mirrors and that doesn't really help) but they also have discord.

    Again I'm not saying Discord is amazing, I really hate it, but we might want to grit our teeth and have a discord in some capacity in order to get more people. We can have bridges and stuff and backups and other methods but I think if we want 0 A.D. to flourish it might be our best bet.

    In summary, if we need an instachat my personal vote is for Matrix, but I would strongly suggest we as a community swallow our pride/take a hit on our lofty OSS values and embrace discord to a certain extent so we have more than two dozen people in the community. I know more people visit, but it seems like its only Gurkan Kan Wowgetoffyourphone, me, Vantha, and Stan and like 3 others are the people who post more than once or twice a month. And I'm sure contributing code is something similar.

    (Also, why does the forum text field say my content needs approved by a moderator?)

    • Like 1

  8. 0AD Memes, jokes

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

    And cooking the planet to be advised to eat glue or rocks doesn't convince me.

    This I think is the biggest point. So many resources are poured into AI just for some dude to save 5 minutes writing a non-important email. It's very silly, though I might be biased because I like writing.

    • Like 1

  10. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    42 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    What would you add to the English style guide in fine ?

    I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying.  If you meant "What would you add to the English style guide in time?" the answer would be the working style stuff that Vantha and I had been using, or it might be better to add in a separate writing style guide.

  11. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    About the names it would be nice to have the greek name next to the latinised version, just like specific and generic names for units

    That can be done (assuming there is a Greek name)

     

    16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    For the numbers I'm not familiar with what we do in the game

    What I said is kind of a standard in writing. Most people don't want to have to read "one-thousand-eight-hundred-twenty-two-billion" and one looks better than 1.

     

  13. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    Sounds like it's compatible with our English style guide. :)

    I guess I can make a "community writer" badge.

    https://code.wildfiregames.com/differential/ On that page click create diff:

    Paste the raw diff generated by git diff -x -U5000

    Set the repository to rDD 0 A.D. Design Document, then fill the form :)

    Now for reviews that's a bit trickier, since there is no one in charge. But unless it's huge changes, it should be okayish.

    You can see the generated version here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/design/

    More stuff here https://docs.wildfiregames.com/

     

     

     

     

    Thanks! I sent you a PM with more questions on the DD to keep this on topic.

  14. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    19 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    Well feel free to put your rules in writing so we can decide what we can agree on. Yes we're moving away from it, we're actually talking about it on IRC as I write these lines. It's not completely done yet, but it should be a matter of time.

    Here are the rules we've come up, they're mostly arbitrary that we had to decide in order to make the articles consistent, i'm ok with changing most of it except for the US customary system, I kind of wrote the encyclopedia for myself and I like being able to know how big things are.

    Quote with the rules:

    Quote

    We're writing for en_US. It really doesn't matter what you use but a tool like LanguageTool will help greatly with spellchecking. See 0 A.D.'s style guide here: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

    Here are some more that we've decided on:

    for consistency use BC and AD for the dates not BCE and CE

    Keep numbers simple. You can write One to Nine out or ones like Million but everything else write as numerals I.E. 12345 Instead of Twelve-Thousand Three hundred and Forty Five Likewise, all dates should be numerals. I.E. 100 AD Finally, we use decimals instead of fractions ie. 1.5 instead 1 and 1/2 likewise use 2 to 3 instead of 2-3 Use the US customary system in the text and use metric in parenthesis. Please do not abbreviate either. For example: "up to 60 feet (18.28 Meters)" Round metric mesurments to the nearest 2 decimal points

    As for content, some parts of history can be gruesome but try to keep the writing fairly clean no please no gruesome tortures, or sacrifice rites. Also, History is some complicated so write in a clear, polite style that tries to see everything in context of the history and place. Use the English version of any name, of there is one, for example: Plutarch (English) instead of Plutarchus (Latin) or Ploutarchos (Greek). If there is no English version, use Athenaeus (the Latin version) instead of Athenaios (Greek). If there is no Latin version, use the Greek version, like Xerxes (Greek) instead of the Persian version. For most names there is either a Greek or Latin version. If not, then use the name in the original language (can't think of an example). Names of people must always be capitalized. Same for names of groups of people (like Helots, Hoplites)

    Also put sources that you use for information in the sources folder in a file for the specific unit group. I.E. we'll have one for sparta and another for Animals.' Also when you add your sources. Add your 0 A.D. Handle at the end so we can contact you later if we have any questions.

     

    24 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    I can't promise it won't happen, but we'll try in good faith :)

    That works for me, just as long as we're on the same page. A badge though like the community historian would be cool (but in no way necessary) "Writer at large" or "Grammer Snob" or something more serious sounding.

     

    26 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    That's a git repo. :)  Feel free to ask questions about how to use trac though :)

    I might poke around, it looks like it's written well enough. I was thinking of working on "customizing" some of the articles this week but I might just give that a polish instead. The document is basically to make sure the devs know what they're doing right?

    How would I do a patch or PR or whatever?

  15. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    I see. Well on Phabricator there is the https://code.wildfiregames.com/owners/package/11/  for templates, so that mean if you are asked as reviewer by someone making a patch, you'll get notified. We could create one for the encyclopedia maybe. I don't expect that many patches, unless they are coming from you and Vantha, so it would probably notify only you two and be kinda useless.

    Aren't we moving away from phabricator? Still I think something like that could be easily done with gitea, all we probably need is a label for writing and we'd get notified if that's tagged. For the most part, all I ask is that devs don't merge any text changes from other people (if/when we get other contributors) until we can get it looked over. Though, it would be nice to also be able to make some additions to the style guide as we have our own style rules that we've been following.

     

    6 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    Yeah they do, the goal was to deport the balancing responsibilities to the vocal, multiplayer community, in order to mitigate the frustration with slow releases, and allow experimentation. I believe @real_tabasco_sauce now has commit access on the community mod and can now make new releases.

    Yeah, I'm totally OK working with the articles in a kind of "unofficial" capacity, as long as we get what I say, above.

     

    7 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    There is a significant amount of non technical docs on Trac :)

    Well, I'm not exactly sure I know how to maneuver trac, but when we finish up the encyopdia I'm certain we'll have moved to git, and I'll be happy to give those a look.

     

    8 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    The design document as it was made in the 2000 with updates is here https://code.wildfiregames.com/source/design/

    Not going to blame anyone, but that would've been extremely useful in writing articles. I'll try to remember to give it a look once we move to git (sorry, but I have no clue how trac works, I've tried to figure it out but it eludes me.)

  16. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    1 hour ago, Stan` said:

    I'm not the sole decider for this, but what do you expect for the "official" part? As opposed to say, community balancers.

    Basically the thing I'm hoping for is if in the far out future someone wants to add/change a new encyclopedia article, or campaign etc. text wise Instead of the devs looking it and say "Good," and merge it They contact me or Vantha to give it a look over to make sure it's consistent and doesn't have any errors that programmers might not see but drive English Grammar people crazy. I'm not really that worried about tooltips (though I'd gladly look them over) because I don't think someone is going to easily mess up a single sentence without people noticing. It anything longer, that might be bad.

    Now this doesn't require permissions, it just requires people to remember we exist, which I don't think would be too hard, from what I can tell the dev team here is smaller compared to some other projects and I don't think we would be lost in the masses. We just need people to be on the same page. However a fancy badge would be cool... but it isn't necessary.

    (Also, what does the community balancers do?  I mean, it's partly in their name, but do they run the community mod?)

    For items outside the game itself, I'm willing to make some edits, however a lot of the technical stuff will probably go over my head, and so I wouldn't be of any help. But if there's anything else that needs to be looked over (wiki entries, blog post social media etc.) someone can always message me. I try to do a bit of encyclopedia each day, but I've cut down the amount I actually peruse the forums to have more time for other things.

  19. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Stan` said:

    Ah yeah, I thought you wanted to give up on the project ;)

    That's not going to happen, the amount of time I have to actively write things myself might wax or wane, but I'm going to try to stick around at least for editing purposes. Beside's we've basically opened the whole dimension of long form texts into the game, and like I said before, I don't want to leave the devs with another thing they have to worry about (if they don't want to)

    Quote

    Second. I know for a project like this, we have reviewers for code, art and even music, and I think we should have the same thing for large portions of text in game. Between @Vanthaand I we've put a lot of work into the encyclopedia so far, and I'd like to try and get the same quality of writing in the rest of the game. It would be great if whenever there's a patch with anything bigger than a tooltip, the devs could let me know, so I can give it a look and wait until we can get the text right before merging. Editing and in game text might not sound that important compared to art, code, or gameplay, but I'd still like to get it the best we can.

    Besides, with rumblings of new tutorials, campaigns, and the like; someone to coordinate the narrative/writing side of things will help the devs time to be focused on things they are more interested in

     

    • Like 2

  21. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Stan` said:

    https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization

    https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide

    Basically every monday and friday we generate the translation templates and we pull new translations from Transifex.

    You have to tell the scripts which generate the templates to pull the strings from your code depending on where you put it.

    You can use translateWithContext for that particular purpose https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Implementation_of_Internationalization_and_Localization#JavaScriptTranslationCacheSystem

     

    Thanks, that answers my first question. I'd rather not make translators' jobs harder.

  22. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by ShadowOfHassen

    So because we're going to start adding articles to mainline, (as soon as @Vantha gets the amazing new UI) there are a few things I'd like to discuss/ask.

    First translating. I'm assuming it is just the community translates it? , will the new places we're putting the articles be able to be translated, and second how is translation done, and is there a set of guidelines because I think for anything not American English we can get rid of the US customary measurements, and I'd like the translators to know that.

    Second. I know for a project like this, we have reviewers for code, art and even music, and I think we should have the same thing for large portions of text in game. Between @Vanthaand I we've put a lot of work into the encyclopedia so far, and I'd like to try and get the same quality of writing in the rest of the game. It would be great if whenever there's a patch with anything bigger than a tooltip, the devs could let me know, so I can give it a look and wait until we can get the text right before merging. Editing and in game text might not sound that important compared to art, code, or gameplay, but I'd still like to get it the best we can.

    Besides, with rumblings of new tutorials, campaigns, and the like; someone to coordinate the narrative/writing side of things will help the devs time to be focused on things they are more interested in.

    • Like 2

  23. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    Looks nice. Make sure that hoplite image is CC0 or CC-BY-SA or equivalent. :)

    I figured we could start with images from Wikipedia . I'm pretty sure their pictures are in CC in some way.

     

    6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    I would quibble with the organization of the articles, but I'm not going to criticize too hard given the good amount of progress shown here. Carry on my wayward sons!

    If you have a suggestion, tell us! The only way we can get better is if people tell us what we do wrong (or even what they disagree with)

    • Like 1

  24. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Vantha said:

    I suggest we add the page to the game now (after fixing the bug), but only with selected articles for testing. The review process will take a lot of time anyway and in parallel we can already "customize" the rest of the articles (adding images, subtitles, links to other articles, etc.). And as soon as the page framework is merged we can add the bulk of articles to the game too. I don't think incompletion is be something to worry about in this case, since the page framework is indeed complete and we can simply remove the button from the main menu as long as it doesn't contain all the articles to prevent players from finding a (seemingly) incomplete and empty page in a full release. And the existence of temporarily unused files in 0ad's code wouldn't be anything new either. Howevere, I will talk to some developers and adapt to what they deem best.

     

    I made the mod for the latest version, but it should be working with A26 (except the unit portraits) as well. Have you verified the mod is installed properly? Does anyone else face the same issue?

    You can try opening the javascript console with the assigned hotkey (per default '^' and F9) and entering the following command: 

    Engine.SwitchGuiPage("page_encyclopedia.xml");

    So the way I see it we should proceed like this 

     

    1. Fix bug 

    2. add engine code (with minimal articles to mainline 

    3 add the rest of the articles  directly to svn

    4 finish writing articles and adding them to svn (or git if it shows up first 

    • Like 1

  25. 0 A.D's Built-in Encyclopedia

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    53 minutes ago, Vantha said:

    Big news regarding the encyclopedia page!

    New features:
    - the ability to put images in the article header. I decided to place the images to the top right and the title to the top left. This saves a lot of space compared to other possibilities and it looks good with images of most aspect ratios. But I will talk more in depth about the implementation in a future post.
    - the ability to add subtitles. They are fully optional, but really enhance the header's visual appeal (in my opinion).
    - a button below the title that opens up the the template viewer showing the unit's in-game stats. Its portrait is embedded into the button, so players can visually recognise the unit from in-game as well.
    - buttons to directly switch to the next or previous article in the same subcategory (to the suggestion of @nifa)
    They currently do not include any text as I think the arrow sprites are enough of a hint as to what the buttons do.

    Here is a quick showcase:

     


    Other improvements:
    - fixed GUI scaling on lower screen resolutions (down to 1024x768). This turned out as quite a hassle, but it had to be done eventually. I haven't tested it on large screens (yet), mainly because they usually don't cause problems. If you notice any problem with the GUI scaling, let me know.

     

    As always I packed it into a mod, please try it out, any feedback is welcome!

    encyclopedia.zip 14.5 MB · 1 download

     

    (unfortunately I have not yet managed to resolve the issue with the crashes, I recommend trying to open it multiple times and supressing the error, if you notice any patterns or have any idea on how to resolve it, please let me know)

    It. Looks. AMAZING!!!

    So what are the next steps? Fix the bug then convert previous articles, then merge? Or should we do a hybrid. Fix bug, merge, work converting articles and add them directly to game?

    On one hand, we might not want to ship something uncompleted.

     

    On the other hand, this is an open source project. (Joke, don't hit me!)

    Also, it might be easier to figure out where all the files go in the main game with only a few articles than a billion.

    • Like 1
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