Rarva.Riendf
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#31 id:60092 Posted Jan 12, 2012, 12:58 pm
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'Basic' Olc has nothing to edit all the area rooms flag at once as an example, or sector or anything. That is macro editing. But about flexibility ? OLC does not lack any...
The UI Bedlam created is really nice, and it is probably easy enough to make it so it works real time instead of updating a databse. Or even make a command to poll the database and apply the changes whenever you want. I create dynamic area in game already (my random maze are dynamically created in game, not using any file), so it woul be easy enough to load an area after boot.
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Ssolvarain
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#33 id:60094 Posted Jan 12, 2012, 1:14 pm
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Rarva.Riendf said:'Basic' Olc has nothing to edit all the area rooms flag at once as an example, or sector or anything. That is macro editing.
Since you can just install a simple snippet to handle that, I don't really consider it a deciding (or even relevant) factor. Forget I asked.
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.........................
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KaVir
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#34 id:60095 Posted Jan 12, 2012, 1:15 pm
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plamzi said:KaVir,
I feel that we've covered this ground already.
Fair enough, but you necro'd the thread and addressed me by name, so I assumed you wanted another response. Of course you're welcome to use whatever type of editor you like, that goes without saying - but personally I moved away from offline creation 15+ years ago, and have no desire to go back to it now.
Of course this is all rather academic anyway, as your editor isn't designed to handle the sort of mud I run.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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Rarva.Riendf
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#35 id:60096 Posted Jan 12, 2012, 1:27 pm
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Ssolvarain said:
Rarva.Riendf said:'Basic' Olc has nothing to edit all the area rooms flag at once as an example, or sector or anything. That is macro editing.
Since you can just install a simple snippet to handle that, I don't really consider it a deciding (or even relevant) factor. Forget I asked.
Let say it is often easier to make a db request for those case than to have to code anything. I coded some of the one I wanted, but I admit I rarely need it as a matter of fact.
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plamzi
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#36 id:60097 Posted Jan 12, 2012, 1:40 pm
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Ssolvarain said:
Rarva.Riendf said:'Basic' Olc has nothing to edit all the area rooms flag at once as an example, or sector or anything. That is macro editing.
Since you can just install a simple snippet to handle that, I don't really consider it a deciding (or even relevant) factor. Forget I asked.
Actually, I meant macro-editing as in macro-economics. The use cases where I find the new UI really shines:
* Laying out a huge new area. Initial layout of a 100-room zone can literally take 2 min. And it's a human-designed layout, not a random dungeon you can generate in code and that will forever look random. It's very nice to have a "bird's eye" view of the area you're building, and it also help spot problems, move rooms around, etc.
* Editing an area in which many of the rooms have same or similar descriptions. You can copy room properties from one cell to any other a second. If you copy to an empty cell, a room is created and auto-linked.
* Balancing an area by editing multiple item and mob stats or tweaking where and how many entities load. In addition to the fact that all entities are listed and you can jump to them easily, there are now hyperlinks that allow you to edit a mob's items or jump from the room where a mob/obj loads directly into editing it. This makes balancing flow.
* Setting flags on multiple items/mobs/rooms at once (without having to write special code for yourself or your builders).
* This one's Bedlam-specific for now: The UI lets builders see what icons the iPhone and we app will use for their entities. It helps me identify entities with missing artwork.
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Jhypsy Shah
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#37 id:60287 Posted Jan 25, 2012, 10:10 am
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Interesting stuff.
Curious, if there was something like this that also allows builders to add (upload?) graphics and sound files?
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Rarva.Riendf
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#38 id:60291 Posted Jan 25, 2012, 1:10 pm
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Plamzi:every candy command you allow had to be coded at some point, so it could be coded in OLC anyway. What you did though is allow totally newcomer to actually use your interface and build without the need to know any commands at all, and that is the nice part of a graphical tool. Hell I do not even remember all the command I coded to ease my life when building (like setting all mobs a flag or all rooms a flag or something else). And the fact it is not graphical (and still vnum related) makes hard to select only some of an area rooms to apply the command as well.
Makes me think that if someone is motivated enoughlike you were he could probably build an interface that does everything with msdp too. That would be truly great
And it just gave me an idea..will make multiple mob/room selection possible with mxp, easy enough :)
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plamzi
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#39 id:60381 Posted Jan 29, 2012, 9:55 pm
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FYI, the tool is now a true Web OLC (see the updated first screenshot in the OP). Builders can now socialize, synchronize, and see/test their changes as they make them.
After a little bit of testing in builders' hands, I'll hook this puppy to the production server so we can use it make tweaks and push updates at runtime. The in-memory update logic is actually smarter than vanilla OLC - it is careful to update existing mobiles, objects, and rooms in a way that doesn't disrupt the current game state.
@Jhypsy Shah
So far, the media is provided by us only so we can steer clear of copyrighted material. I suppose that if we allowed people to customize the web app (for themselves only), we could be more liberal about that. But honestly, not too many people use the web app to play. People fall either in the category of "I love my existing MUD client" or "I love my iPhone app".
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Rarva.Riendf
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#40 id:60394 Posted Jan 30, 2012, 9:53 am
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plamzi said:FYI, the tool is now a true Web OLC (see the updated first screenshot in the OP)
Nice, I was pretty sure it would not take long to make it that way once you had it working offline anyway. What was your technical choice ? Updating the database and having a daemon check for changes every xxx time or the user decide himself to push the update online ?
Another question, how do you check for overpowered item ? Soa builder cannot sneak in some special stuff only he has access to ? (with mprogs as an example. so the item is perfetly hidden to anyone but the builder)
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Last edited Jan 30, 2012, 9:54 am by Rarva.Riendf
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plamzi
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#41 id:60400 Posted Jan 30, 2012, 10:38 am
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Rarva.Riendf said:plamzi said:FYI, the tool is now a true Web OLC (see the updated first screenshot in the OP)
Nice, I was pretty sure it would not take long to make it that way once you had it working offline anyway. What was your technical choice ? Updating the database and having a daemon check for changes every xxx time or the user decide himself to push the update online ?
Another question, how do you check for overpowered item ? Soa builder cannot sneak in some special stuff only he has access to ? (with mprogs as an example. so the item is perfetly hidden to anyone but the builder)
I decided to let the user choose when to push updates. That way, they can complete a batch of changes first. I'm thinking about an auto-commit switch at some point, which when flipped will save to db and fire the appropriate "reload" command. There's no need for a daemon because the flash app supports push and the UI can send commands directly through it.
For now, if multiple builders work on the same area, they'd have to do their own coordination (but having a live session right in the editor should make that easy). Not a common scenario for us to have multiple people working on one area at the same time (I wish...)
As for quality control, areas pass several rounds of QA before release. If someone manages to sneak something past that, they will get caught eventually while abusing it (ain't that true for all kinds of cheating). Storing everything in a db allows us to re-balance stored items easily whenever we become aware of a problem. I haven't had an issue with unruly builders yet--all balance issues so far have been unintentional.
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