Talk:FAQ/old archived talk

NeoTA: I think this 'space before question mark' thing may be related to spanish/mexican grammar. Normally you would place the inverted-question mark before the first character of a question, with one space between. Since the inverted and normal question marks are arranged similarly to quotation marks, it is possible that rule also applies to the ending question mark.

Perhaps you should instead specify no space before '?' character.

Bob Yeah. this must have something to do with some other language's punctuation convention. wikipedia mentions it.

Oh well, it is mildly annoying, but not difficult to correct.

Mike: This may come as a shock to some people, but... this is an english language site, not Spanish or Mexican (or even Esperanto). Jeez, it's not that difficult to adjust the grammer of the language you're typing in. I mean, if I started typing in Spanish, I would not leave out the space in the first inverted question mark (if I knew and otherwise had reason to use Spanish)

And, it becomes slightly more difficult and spammy to correct if a page is subsequently created under the incorrect name.

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Mike: RE: How do I make choices using numbers in a dialogue box?

I think it's asking something like: How do you do this:

+--------------------------------+
| So, what'll it be?             |
| 1. I'd like to buy items       |
| 2. I'd like to rest at the Inn | 
| 3. I'd like to talk to you     |
| 4. Nothing, really             |
+--------------------------------+

Oh, and the expecting the user to press a number, and intercepting that number with a "keyispressed" command in a script... Okay, I see. If you want to add it back and answer it that way, I am cool with that-- although since it is just a tacky hack to work around lack of better menu support, I wouldn't worry about it. Good menu support is coming in the future.

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Mike: RE: What are the specificities of the different music programs?

"Specificities" is not a word. I refuse to accept it. Further, there must be hundreds of music programs. Even further, what are you looking for, even if we could catalogue all such programs?

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Mike: For crying out loud, those stupid database errors are hampering the use of this wiki! I'm trying to post my article (saved at [1]) into the page How does plotscripting work?, but it 'aint going. It's bombing with a database error, and not posting it regardless. Could someone else try?

Edit: It happened just now, posting this cry for help, although it did go through. I'd kill to see those queries, if only so I can find out which developer to lynch.</rant>

Edit II: It looks like Version 1.5.7 of MediaWiki is out. I have no clue what version you have here (since it doesn't show it), but perhaps upgrading it will fix the problem?

Edit the Third: Oh, I found Special:Version... bah.

Bob: yeah, I susbscribe to the mediawiki anouncements mailing list, so I usually get updates installed in less than 24 hours. As for the database errors, I am enabling verbose logging on the server, so next time we see this error we can go back and try to figure out what SQL triggered it-- which should lead us to which table is messed-up.

Bob: Aha! I copied-and-pased http://ohrdev.com/plotscripting.txt into How does plotscripting work? and I was able to reproduce the database error. I grabbed a copy of the log file so that the queries will not get burried in subsequent activity.

Where's the F in FAQ?

Mike: I've noticed a problem with our FAQ: The questions that really are Frequently Asked are burried in with the other AOOQs (Asked Only Once Question). That's ok, I suppose. But, when I was looking up how many heroes you could have (on What are the limits on various things?), it took me more than 45 seconds to find it.

So, here's what I propose: We could create a new template (say, Template:Really FAQ) with all the list of the true FAQs, and protect that (so that we control which questions truely are Frequently Asked), and include that at the top of the FAQ. That way, people can add questions as normal, AND the questions that we have to keep answering can be right at our (and other people's) finger tips.

Bob: Hmmm... Seems like it would be really hard to decide what is and is not actually frequent. But I do agree we need to do something to better organize the FAQ. The current alphabetic order of the FAQ isn't very useful, because almost everything starts with a random question prefix, "Can I" ,"How do I", "I can't", "What are"... So how about we re-organize the FAQ by category? I think deciding which category a question belongs in is a little easier than deciding how frequently people want to know it.

Mike: Well, the problem with that is that we already have such an organization system (see Special:Categories). Maybe we just need to make the Categories page more visible?

Bob: The reason I don't want to make categories the primary means of accessing the FAQ is (A) they can't be edited directly, and (B) the contain various other non-FAQ articles.

Bob's resistance to FAQ-separation crumbles

Bob the Hamster: Okay, so after removing obsolete articles from the FAQ, and seeing that it barely makes a dent in it's bloateyness, I am finally willing to admit we need to break up the FAQ a bit. Rather than organizing it in a way that is redundant to the existing category system, how about we break it up into the following sections, all in the same main FAQ page:

• Game Making
• Plotscripting
• Miscellaneous
• Development

The Game Making and Plot Scripting categories would be defined according to the question, not according to the answer. For example, How do I bump a hero's level? would belong in the Game Making section even though the answer is all plotscripting, because the asker just wants to do it, they don't know it can't be done scriptlessly. On the other hand, How do I level up my hero using plotscripting? obviously goes in the Plotscripting section, even though the answer is actually the exact same article.

Bob the Hamster: Hrmmm... actually, after starting to edit the page thusly, I immediately disliked the results. Maybe a separate AOOQ or RAQ (Rarely Asked Questions) would be a better way to pare down the list to manageable levels... I dunno. :(

Mike C. *cough*. I agree, sorting them by levels of frequency would be good.

The Mad Cacti: I have to agree that it's pretty difficult to find stuff. It's not an FAQ, its a helpme archive with FAQ questions, fabricated questions and articles thrown in: those are your 4 types. Unfortunately, most of the preemptive "fabricated" questions aren't frequent at all. As for a solution, I don't have one; do you want to group the FAQs and article-like pages? Have a seperate place for asking specific helpme questions? "Questions" and "Frequently Asked Questions"

Suggestion Box

Person: Hey, I have an idea. I can't write in code for the OHRRPGCE but alot of people can. I think that you guys should make a "Suggestion Box" where people can put in ideas for upgrades on the OHRRPGCE. You may already have one, but perhaps you can make it a web page. People can say how much they like the ideas. And you won't get lots of emails saying how you should upgrade the OHR. Also, questions like, Can you make?... or Will there ever be?... may not appear on the FAQ as often.

Mike C. I would like to propose new features for the next version of the OHRRPGCE. How should I proceed? - That page more or less tells you to go to the Buglist, a forum, or, as a last resort, email James. I don't think he gets too much suggestion related email nowadays.

On FAQ question grouping

Bob the Hamster: There are many plotscripting questions that I have chosen NOT to move into the plotscripting group. Why? Because from the perspective of the person asking the question, if they have no idea that the thing they are trying to accomplish can only be done with a script, it is not really a plotscripting question. To put that another way; just because an answer involves plotscripting does not mean that the question is about plotscripting.

Mike C. Precisely. Also just because something can be done in plotscripting doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.

Feature Requests

Bob the Hamster: I have a really strong urge to just delete the whole "Feature Request Questions" section. Somebody talk me out of it :P

Mike C.: *cricket noises*

I don't think they should all go... erm... but, don't ask me for any examples of ones that should stay.

Regarding O.H.R. Utilities

Kizul: There's a program called 2mas, which converts 16×16×24 BMP/PCX/TGA files to MAS(ter Palette) format, but will there ever be one for converting MAS to BMP/PCX/TGA? :/

Bob the Hamster: I haven't tried it myself, but I am pretty sure that PalEdit can do that.

Kizul: The directions for PalEdit are confusing. @_@ I don't understand how to use it.

old talk

I archived all the old talk from this page on a subpage, not so much because I feel it needs to be done, but to show anonymous poster 24.34.159.85 how I would prefer it be done as opposed to just deleting it all.

Scripting Error Messages

Help pages for the different error pages are spread throughout the scripting and errors and unexpected behaviour sections. They should all be in the same place, but does it make more sense to create a new section/subsection, or move them all to one of those two?

James Paige: Hmmm... I think the Error Messages category would make the most sense. Of course, they can also be in other categories too, when appropriate, but that one seems most relevant.

Suggested Standards for RAQ Rarely Asked Questions

Bob the Hamster: This is subjective. I think most of the questions in the FAQ are actually asked pretty rarely, but questions to move to the RAQ are the ones which are especially obscure, or that are highly specific to the concerns of one single game author. Feel free to move things in and out of the RAQ as you see fit. As I say, it is subjective.

Suggested Standards for removing duplicate questions

Bob the Hamster: There are a lot of duplicate questions on the FAQ. Duplicate questions can be answered with #REDIRECT [[other page name]]. AFTER a duplicate question has been answered with a suitable redirect, it is okay to delete it from the main F.A.Q. index. Please do not delete duplicate redirect articles, since even though they may not be linked to any wiki page, they will be findable via the search tool.

Colors for damage numbers?

Not sure if this really deserves a whole FAQ question or not, but... what colors are used for damage numbers? I'm working on something for the 8-bit contest--so the palette is much smaller than usual--and all my battle damage numbers are coming up as solid black instead of the usual white/green/etc. FnrrfYgmSchnish 04:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that. I have filed Bug #724 - Bob the Hamster 05:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)