The Wiki Update Thread

[BMR]

We all use the OHRRPGCE, and whether we've finished a game or not (I'm n the not category unfortunately) I'm sure we've all derived a great deal of enjoyment from it. The community has given rise to legendary names and faces, people who we mere mortals can but aspire to become like. I'll be the first to admit that making a game is a lot of work. Before even starting a game, you need a story. Then comes the art, and the scripting. Cutscenes, music, battles, game balancing, and what-have-you.

But there is one vital step that is very easy to overlook: the creation of the engine. None of our games, whether they be finished legends, masterpieces in the making, or demos in the doldrums, none of them would have existed without the engine.

Now, not everyone can be a master coder, but we do all have experience with the engine. And that is experience we can give back in the form of going through the Wiki. I know that I've gone through it myself, flustered at how some information was out of date, others was difficult to understand, while at the same time other pages were brilliant and taught me a great deal.

My proposal is thus, let's get together, as a community, and band together to edit and update the Wiki. The developers have all put a great deal of effort into the engine as can be seen in Alectormancy. It boasts many new features, plentiful bugfixes, and oodles of new opportunities for new games. Let's put in the same effort towards aiding the community grow even further, to repay the developers' hard work.

It wouldn't take much, even a handful of us making an organized effort to update the wiki would be able to do a great deal. Many pages are obsolete, quite a few are lacking in pictures, details are missing, or wording can be misleading. Even without being a master OHRer, you can still give back to the community. Every little bit helps, even providing a screenshot, reading through an article for spelling errors, even asking a question that allows an article to be written even more clearly, all of that can help.

So the question now stands, can I count you in? Will you aid us in this task, nay, this quest? Who will join me in this grand adventure, this endeavor of a lifetime, this journey so grand that bards centuries forth shall sing of our deeds of valor and glory?

Will you be one such brave soul? Speak now your name, that the heralds and scribes may record it for the glory of you and your line!


TL,DR (Help wanted, Wiki needs updating)

Edit: I'm not sure if this should be in Game, or General discussion. If it would be better in General, please go ahead and move it, cheers!


People on Board and the Pages They're Working On

1. BMR
   • HowTo — Using Map Layers
   • HowTo — Distributing a Game
2. Ichiro
   • Custom Menus
3. Master K
   • Whatever pages need work
4. Meowskivich

[TMC]

I'm pleased as punch that someone is finally taking this initiative! This has been badly needed for years.

I'm doubly pleased that you immediately singled out the Map Layers HOWTO chapter. That's the most hopelessly inadequate of the main chapters. The part that confuses people the most is that you have to create layers in the layers menu before you can use them. Followed by the use of colour 0.

The other HOWTO chapters are all great places for other people to begin. All the screenshots and much of the text is out of date. The HOWTO games (sample.rpg, npctags.rpg, pstutor.rpg) could maybe do with updating or extending too. I'd love to see people create new tutorial games.

Other things to do are to write new chapters on features that have recently been added (most of those in the last 10 years), such as customisable menus, and write plotscripting HOWTO articles. You could regard the Plotscripting Tutorial as the first article in a series, but the rest never got written.

[Master K]

I'll help out. I'm gonna take on whatever pages need work. I'm not fussy. I've worked in the wiki times before (I wrote the entire Class System article for the HOWTO)

EDIT: I'll tackle battles and making heroes.

[Meowskivich]

Just an idea, but maybe the wiki should get, maybe, revamped? Like, taking from square one essentially, and trying to get down everything that is the OHRRPGCE today.
Seem to be easier to get everything than guessing which pages have or have not been edited up to date.

[BMR]

That's... actually not a bad idea... What say everyone? Creating a new How-To set of chapters from scratch?

[Meowskivich]

Make it a poll, and I'll vote yes.

I'll be down for helping where I can too.
I may be almost useless for most plot-scripting, but for using just the creation engine itself I'm pretty decent and will share my wisdom.

[Master K]

I vote yes. Let's just tear this whole HOWTO down.

[BMR]

If we are going to tear the old HowTos down, how would you guys want to go about structuring a new set of chapters? Basically the same chapters, but with different text? Or a completely new layout?

Edit: I'm thinking of a basic, "Walk the new user through a basic game" set of chapters, starting with downloading the game and then distributing it. The game would be ridiculously simple (The big bad is coming! Go find a sword in the other room, come back and learn how to use it, and then fight the big bad!), and RPG files at each stage of production (chapter) would be available for the new user to learn from.

[Baconlabs]

For the sake of history reference, I'd recommend keeping all the old HOWTO chapters intact, but out of the way, with an OBSOLETE disclaimer at the top.
From there, you can all reference them at will (make sure they connect with each other!) while constructing a brand new HOWTO.

EDIT: Ah, looking at the wiki brings back old memories. Before I was a forum regular, this was my sole information resource for the OHRRPGCE. If I had a question, I'd add a red-text entry on the FAQ / GLoQ page and eagerly wait for someone to edit in a response.

[Meowskivich]

That is a pretty sensible way of doing it.

And as for a new HOWTO layout, well, I'd say it'll be good to do it from scratch, but perhaps looking upon the old as a sort of "guideline of ancient times".

However, I can't seem to be able to view the HOWTO at this time, so I don't really remember how it goes.

[BMR]

Hmm, how's this then?

1. Keyboard Conventions
2. Getting Started
3. Artwork
   1. Maptiles
   2. Walkabouts
   3. Hero Sprites
   4. Enemy Sprites
   5. Attacks and Weapons
4. Importing BMP graphics
5. Map Construction
   1. Using Map Layers
   2. Animating Maptiles
   3. Doors
6. NPCs
7. Making a Hero
   1. Hero Stats
   2. Adding, Removing, Swapping, Heroes
8. Items
   1. General Items
   2. Arms and Armor
9. Battles
   1. Formations
   2. Stun, Regen, Poison, and Mute
10. Vehicle Use
11. Sound and Music
12. Text Boxes
    1. Portrait Boxes
    2. Linking Text Boxes
    3. Using an External Editor
13. Custom Menus
14. Slices
15. Plotscripting
    1. Introduction
    2. Variables and Strings
    3. Conditionals
    4. Flow control
    5. Working with Slices
    6. Tweaking Maps
    7. Advanced
16. Distributing a Game

[Meowskivich]

looks good enough.

[BMR]

I'm willing to take on:

Maptiles
Importing BMP graphics
All of Map Construction
Vehicle Use
Sound and Music
Text Boxes
Distributing a Game


I believe those are the areas where I can do the most work. Still, I can always take on other parts as well if no one takes them.

[Bob the Hamster]

I like this plan for the cleanup of the Wiki. Your outline is good. I think it should also include a chapter about tags, just explaining what they are. Explaining how to use them would go better in the NPCs, Textboxes, and other articles, I just think somewhere there should be an overview of tags saying, "hey, tags are switches that can turn things on and off. They are useful for lots of purposes, learn more about them elsewhere"


I wrote up a plan for cleaning up the FAQ and the RAQ http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce ... _Questions the only really hard part about it is the mindless task of replacing 542 instances of [[Category:FAQ]] with [[Category:Question]] ... if I could figure out a way to automate that mass-edit, I certainly would.

[BMR]

I'm not very familiar with MediaWiki, but is there a way to export the pages to plain text files? If there is, then you could just load all the files up into Geany, and do a Find+Replace through the session. It's what I do when I need to mass edit a bunch of files.

And aye, I agree about the overview of tags needing doing. I'll add it into the chapter list.

Is everyone on-board with this new outline? If it's good, then I'll go ahead and edit the page to use this new outline.

Edit: James, just ran into this, though I don't know if it's what you're looking for.