Tome o' DarkRadiant

[Airship Ballet]

I, like a bunch of other people, learned the ins and outs of DR through Fidcal's awesome A-Z guide. It's great, has everything in one place and teaches you all you need to know to make a fully featured map. I'm afraid of stepping on people's toes here--and I in no way intend to devalue the work put into the wiki--but the documentation aside from the A-Z can be terribly inconsistent at times, giving outdated info or pulling up duplicate pages with conflicting instructions. So, what I'd like to do is create a comprehensive guide in .pdf form for editing in DR, taking the best of what exists and adding to it as I go, compiling things from the newbie questions thread and the like into a more cohesive and properly indexed guide. It'll be a big project, and I'll post as I go, but I'd love for there to be a central reference for people who are just now coming to learn how to map for TDM.

 

Like I said, my main concerns are stepping on people's toes, so if this is considered redundant or unwanted feel free to say as much. The wiki is helpful most of the time, but removing the need to search through years-old pages for a single and possibly obsolete spawnarg would be ideal, and I feel a standalone guide would be far simpler than making changes to existing wiki pages. I'll probably go ahead and make it anyway, but I'd like to know what the general response is beforehand as ideally I'd want a veteran editor or two.

[Springheel]

Sounds like a fine addition to me.

[Bikerdude]

+1

[SteveL]

Like you say a big task, but it'd be great to have. I really struggled with the inconsistent documentation to start with too. In fact, I wasn't able to really get to grips with TDM and DR until RJF pointed out to me that you can google "site:thedarkmod.com blah blah" to search both within individual forum posts and in the wiki at the same time. The built-in searches are really lacking, and that tip can't be repeated too often!

[RPGista]

I agreee with your general sentiment, it can be pretty frustrating to piece the information together scattered in forum posts and different wiki articles, specially when you are in a hurry and cant stand to waste time on research. However, as you say, it does seem like quite a big feat. One possible way to aproach this could be to replicate the AZ tutorial but go "A-Z tutorial and beyond", where one could rally all the relevant info for the main aspects of mission building and customising. A step by step, for all the things not really covered in the tutorial - things like how to add models in game, spawnargs and their usage, using conversations to set up events, etc.

Edited November 22, 2014 by RPGista

[Xarg]

I'd personally like to see the wiki pages updated (I've got 25 or so pages from it bookmarked, for example), and the wiki does have the pre-existing "headspace benefit", if that's the right phrase, of having been around for a long time, people constantly link to pages from it/have them bookmarked, and it's got a link at the top of the forum index. That said, a companion .pdf for those who want to access the content offline is also a bonus. Why not meet halfway, and build a companion .pdf and update the wiki at the same time, so that regardless of which way you choose to access the information, you're getting the info that actually works with current TDM/DR builds?

[Airship Ballet]

...replicate the AZ tutorial but go "A-Z tutorial and beyond", where one could rally all the relevant info for the main aspects of mission building and customising. A step by step, for all the things not really covered in the tutorial...

Yeah, that's the general idea. I can't see myself updating the wiki since it's too fiddly and some may object, and I don't want to be muscling in and undoing work that is fine in and of itself but inconsistent with the big picture. My current rough layout has it prefaced with a re-working of the A-Z guide brought up to date. Beyond that I'm hoping to go into more specific descriptions for how to make custom content, building techniques, defining entities and their args, additional DR features and the like. Everything technical listed alphabetically that can be referred to as a ctrl+f reference, basically. The initial map will most likely be accompanied with working examples in working map form, like Fidcal's map but with more of a focus on explanation rather than demonstration, as I think the only shortfall of the startpack map was that it was more of a "copy and paste this into your map and change it" rather than "this is how this works, go build it yourself now that you get it". Along with the reference sections I'd like to include maps dedicated to demonstrating the uses of particular entities, like a museum that people can open up and deconstruct with the help of an explanation. It'll be a fun project and, if my English holds up, should help a few people out. I wouldn't worry about the workload: I type for a job and ended up fairly good at it.

[Bikerdude]

I type for a job and ended up fairly good at it.

Impressive.

[AluminumHaste]

But that's the whole point of the wiki, anybody can make changes to it.

[Airship Ballet]

But that's the whole point of the wiki, anybody can make changes to it.

Sure, but it tends to be done in the form of an addendum which doesn't help the ambiguity/redundancy problem.

[Springheel]

If there is out of date stuff on the wiki that should certainly be addressed, regardless.

[jaxa]

If you make it comprehensive, I'll make a map.

[Goldwell]

I think an upto date PDF howto guide would be incredible, the wiki has advantages but most pages haven't been updated in years. Some pages have incorrect information (re: ROQ's and the need to split them up which is completely false) and some have broken pictures etc. It would be nice to have a handbook to go over, even experienced mappers might be reminded of something they forgot when going through it.

 

Also Airshipballet in relation to the video briefing section soon Crowind will post a guide on how to get high quality and good ROQ's into the mission (in a fairly easy way) so I would recommend adding that but it will be here in the forum and not on the wiki.

[Sotha]

Good idea.

 

Making a comprehensive pdf document will be a great service to the mapping community.

 

I personally don't think the wiki is that bad, but sure, it contains a lot of errors.

 

The scope of the document will be huge if you want to "beat" the wiki in information content.

 

In the end, the wiki will still be important reference to mappers, and should just be updated.

[Obsttorte]

I like the idea, too. It may be a good idea to create a working thread for it, so that other people can proof-read it and may suggest additions to it. I for example could help out with the scripting side.

 

In adition, it may also be a good idea to provide the "base" file the pdf is created from (the tex file for example if you are going to use Latex). This way other people could provide translations for it. Once it is ready I could provide a german translation for example.

 

The wiki contains a lot of technical descriptions, which are sometimes hard to understand if english isn't you mother tongue. I've once suggested making the wii multi-lingual, which wasn't possible for several reasons, but providing several pdf files should be doable, and would help getting non-english speaking persons to start mapping.

[Lux]

Updating the wiki afterward by copy and pasting sections out of the .pdf shouldn't be a lot of trouble. Sure, its still work but the hard part will be done.

 

I think this is a good idea as well.

[AluminumHaste]

I think an upto date PDF howto guide would be incredible, the wiki has advantages but most pages haven't been updated in years. Some pages have incorrect information (re: ROQ's and the need to split them up which is completely false) and some have broken pictures etc.

 

Then those should be fixed lol. I was going through the wiki years ago trying to fix image errors and such. A big problem was that some people posted image links from imageshack and a few others, and those accounts no longer work so images are broken.

Old information is easily fixed, especially if you have the answer; click the "Edit" button and correct the mistake.

 

Especially for new mappers, if you are going through the A-Z tutorial and find information that is incorrect or inaccurate, please edit it and correct it for the next person who is going to read it.

 

Redmaking a document as huge in scope and scale as the wiki seems a gargantuan waste of time and effort when 90%+ of the information already exists.

[Springheel]

think an upto date PDF howto guide would be incredible, the wiki has advantages but most pages haven't been updated in years.

 

That's going to be a problem with a pdf too, isn't it?

[Xarg]

Is wiki account registration still closed/approval needed, or have the spam bots moved to greener pastures?

[Airship Ballet]

That's going to be a problem with a pdf too, isn't it?

Not while I'm still breathin'!

[buck28]

Very ambitious, but much needed. This would be a very valuable asset to the community.

[RPGista]

It doesnt need to have the scope of the wiki. A technical wiki is essential as a reference and a huge part of working on TDM. What we are lacking are "articles" like those of Grayman's (cutscenes), Fidcal's (A-Z), Obs and others that give you a step by step explanation, which is very important for people like me, not versed or really interested in encyclopedic knowledge. Like Airship said herself, an expanded A-Z tome covering additional aspects of mission building. I remember having not that easy a time getting past some fairly simple bottlenecks in anything from how to put new materials in game, models, how to work with the briefing in a creative way, how to set up plot triggers with the conversation system, etc. I mean, the amount of pdf prints I had by the end of making the mission with articles from the wiki and from other sites and from all over the place was insane. I think this is mostly for the beginner, once you know how it works you can filter what you really need, but that jump start in the beginning, can be a huge help. And also, making technical stuff easy to grasp for anyone will surely increase the level of freedom and complexity in new missions, as even first time mappers can be bolder with their creations and avoid getting burnt out like many probably do.

[OrbWeaver]

This sounds like a great idea; however, I wonder if a static PDF is really the best way to distribute information in this day and age. Even with the PDF support in modern browsers it still feels a bit "paper-based", and I always find reading PDFs rather annoying compared to nice interactive web-pages with their automatic text-filling, hyperlinks, user-configurable fonts and so on.

 

Instead of publishing the work as a PDF alone, would you consider perhaps using something like Asciidoc which can be used to generate documentation in a variety of formats (including PDF if you really want it), and could be put in a Github repository to allow collaboration? I don't know if Asciidoc can populate Wikis directly but since it can generate HTML this might enable updating the Wiki based on your work at a later date.

 

I can also help with the editing if you need a native English speaker and can do the odd diagram too if necessary (I made the illustrations of how visportals work on the now-defunct Modwiki, which I keep meaning to update and put on the TDM wiki instead but haven't got round to it yet).

[161803398874989]

This sounds like a great idea; however, I wonder if a static PDF is really the best way to distribute information in this day and age. Even with the PDF support in modern browsers it still feels a bit "paper-based", and I always find reading PDFs rather annoying compared to nice interactive web-pages with their automatic text-filling, hyperlinks, user-configurable fonts and so on.

I'm the opposite. A PDF is nice and clean. A webpage often has all kinds of extra things like navigation and stuff around it.

[OrbWeaver]

I'm the opposite. A PDF is nice and clean. A webpage often has all kinds of extra things like navigation and stuff around it.

 

Those extra navigation controls can be pretty useful if you want to open another section in a new tab without scrolling back to the Contents page and losing your place.

 

However, my point wasn't to exclude the use of PDF for those who like it, but to suggest the use of an intermediate format like Asciidoc which can be used to generate both PDF and HTML output, rather than (for example) doing everything in Word and then distributing a "printed" PDF as the only available option. Of course, it's possible that Airship Ballet was intending to use such a system all along.