Thursday, October 18, 2007

Frumple

So, the wikiserver is having a Moment with sufficient drama to keep a slew of tech-savvy drag queens happy for a while. It'll be back; ours is not the only domain hosted thereupon. It just...may take a little bit longer. I'm sorry for that, as it is quite the bother. What happened is that someone/thing hacked it and deleted everything it could. The worst of this means that anything that wasn't backed up may be lost for ever, though the drive was sent for such recovery as can be made.

I had written up some documentation on the wiki for the chargen and it was all entertaining and stuff. Being a genius, I also didn't back it up in a text file the way I do my code. Ah well! Here is a terse repeat:

Start with +setup. Do not start with anything else. I could not figure out a way to make the room force people to do this the first time they entered it.

Next, choose a background. Now, the backgrounds are listed on the wiki for the most part--but choose one first anyway! +bkground .

Then, set your attributes. +setstr # does Strength. Obvious variants are Dex, Con, Int, Wis and Cha.

Next, choose a role. There are seven total choices, also previously detailed on the wiki, and they are selected with +role . Man with the Machine is abbreviate to MWTM.

Next, choose feats, skills and powers. These can really be done in any order, but it's fairly important that they be done AFTER background, attributes and role. Feats don't limit your choices based on role, but powers do. The commands for this are +addfeat and +delfeat, +power , and +skill . Using +power or +skill for a power or skill you already have will delete it and free up the choice.

The usual stuff like desc, backgrounds, &etc is handled the usual way. I haven't installed a multi-descer, as I think about it, but I can probably find one somewhere, or if y'all have one you like we can use that. +notes are handled with +note--a command I had to write myself because the +cnote listed in +help is a lie.

+noteadd = to add, +notedel to delete, +nedit = to edit. +notes to list your notes, or +notes to list somebody elses. +note = to view notes. They are not limited in visibility at present.

+sheet views your own sheet, and +sheet looks at somebody else. Your innards are all exposed! Get used to it. My current revision makes feats that add a single bonus to stats show up in +sheet at this point, which means stuff like Iron Will and Lightning Reflexes and Wealthy should be reflected by immediate changes in stats. Things that have to manually set a bonus like Skill Focus and Talented will just have to be listed in +notes and remembered for now.

That should be it. If you can give it a shot, please do.

4 comments:

Jason Tondro said...

This is discouraging news.

I'm going to hope our data has not been lost, as I had been working on the presumption that even if some twerp came in and edited our pages to oblivion, it could always be reverted back. Since the wiki came online, 90% of what I did was found only there. And that means many J-hours of labour, including the magic, invention, vehicles, and martial arts chapters, will be lost if our data cannot be recovered.

Acierocolotl said...

To force a person to start with +setup, you need to set a variable somewhere, preferably on them. Call it _did_setup, for instance.

A brand new, non-setup character should not even have this variable (sorry, attribute) set, so testing for its absence gives you a brand new character.

If they've completed chargen, set _did_setup to OK, and if they're approved, set it to APPROVED; you can include other states if you like.

The +setup command will check for _did_setup and test to see if the variable is present, and if so, if it meets any illegal conditions (ie: OK, APPROVED, WHATEVER). If it passes, +setup can do whatever else needed, and set _did_setup to IP (In Progress), or STAGE1, or whatever you like.

Subsequent commands can check _did_setup to ensure they're at the correct state, and the very descriptions of the room can vary depending on the state of _in_progress.

ie: @desc here=u(@switch(u(%#/_in_progress))=
APPROVED,"You are complete, so get outta here",
STAGE1,"Now you can use +stats and build your stats.",
"Oops, this is an alternate state.")

I'm still poking at the +meetme stuff, though it really should just be slapped on the game and tested.

Midgardener said...

My advice, Prospero, would be to put *everything* on your pbwiki firstly. Then you can cut and paste and hammer it into the tikiwiki that is the official page. That'll give us a backup at these early steps, I'm thinking.

Jason Tondro said...

I appreciate that advice. I'm waiting to see what we lose and what we still have before I decide my next move. A conservative estimate places at least 50 hours of work at risk. I have zero enthusiasm for re-creating all that material when I also have a dissertation to write.