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Author Topic: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.  (Read 10146 times)

Lottanubs

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #15 on: August 30, 2013, 11:54:32 am »

An interactive table for the inorganic materials, of which there is already a table in the manual, but cannot be sorted at a whim.
Also, Adamantine disappears from the table when sorting by name.

A table defining the different values of different weapons; both ranged and melee weapons need to be more clearly defined.
Right now it's pretty much guesswork as to what the difference is between a spear and a pike. And such. I also have no idea what a "giant  fork" does, or whether or not it's more or less effective than a "pointy stick," or whether I should forego both and whip out a "pair of butterfly knives."

A table pertaining to the coverage of armors.
Since you added new types of armors, it would be useful to know each pieces coverage. Is vampire slayer armor more, less, or equally protective than simple leather armor? Etc.

A list of the required materials for a workshop within the 'workshops' tab in the manual.
This would both be useful for advfort and Dwarf-mode, as a quick glance at the materials of a workshop can help us place said workshop in a tech order.

Magic spells effects and cooldowns under the "magic" tab could be better defined.
And perhaps a mention that magic spells don't seem to work in adventure mode, or at least extremely ineffectively, probably due to a plug-in not loading in Adventure mode which is critical for temperature-and-poison-based damage in DF mode.

Better, more comprehensive lists and statistics of the added races. Perhaps a link within their paragraph to a new page containing that races raws.
And it might be a good exercise in creativity to re-write their flavor texts to not rip off World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls ;)
^ But that's just insignificant bitching.

Maybe a quick, bulleted list of different types of reactions that workshops can run.
There are far, far too many reactions to list them all. And right now, there are paragraphs which describe what a workshop does, but it might be cleaner to the eye to view things as a bulleted list.
Now that I think about it, this suggestion is redundant as the workshop paragraphs work perfectly fine for their purposes. But still, perhaps including more precise information in said paragraphs would be useful.


Essentially, much, MUCH more information could to be added into the manual since Masterwork lacks the comprehensive community-supported wiki which vanilla DF benefits from.
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Quarterblue

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #16 on: August 30, 2013, 04:10:05 pm »

There is as yet no description whatsoever of the new, non-vanilla creatures.
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Foffy123

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #17 on: August 30, 2013, 04:35:14 pm »

There is as yet no description whatsoever of the new, non-vanilla creatures.
This is the thing I would like to see the most, personally.

Quarterblue

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #18 on: August 30, 2013, 09:19:59 pm »

More details on each workshop, especially the way guilds/prisons/barracks are used (UI speaking): performed reactions, materials needed (for construction and/or reactions), size.
More details on stone types (some of which are considered economic by default for no obvious reason) and plant types: for stones, what kind of reactions can be performed with them; as for plants, information on season, kinds of alcohol/cloth/food, poison, etc.
More details on the new races: ethics, crucial tokens ([EVIL]? [USE_COMMON_PACK]? [PET]?), nature of caravans, leader positions.

Animals do need a huge fuckload of information: body size (at various growth stages), egg clutch size, lifespan, time to reach adult maturity/size, grazing rate, litter size, special tokens ([MOUNT]? [HUNTS_VERMIN]? [TRAINABLE]? [EVIL]? [PET_EXOTIC]?), pet value, butcher yield, special abilities (breathe fire, web, syndromes), milking/shearing. Oh, and of course, how deadly to dwarves it is. Most of it can be found in the raws, but people actually use the wiki when they meet something new; not the raws. Besides, a creature's deadliness can not always been inferred from the raws. So it has to be documented in a format that doesn't involve a lot of []s.
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Meph

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #19 on: August 30, 2013, 11:33:53 pm »

So, what you are saying is this:

Instead of writing ~3 new updates I should spend the same amount of time and effort into more details for the manual, which is something everyone with understanding of raws can do, and should do for the wiki. There is a wiki, there are ~10000 players. Why are people not taking the info out of the raws and adding it? Lets say I work another 100 hours on the manual. If 1% of the 10000 players work 1 hour each on the wiki, it would have the same effect.

I understand that people want more info, what I dont understand is why they take if for granted that someone else has to provide it. ;)

With Roses and Maklaks scripts I can automate at least some part of the process though, so some things I can and will do. Interactive lists have to wait till somebody shows me how to do those, because I certainly cant.
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
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ElenaRoan

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #20 on: August 31, 2013, 01:53:20 am »

That's part of the reason I decided to do the research requirements table myself, help people who have the same problem as me trying to figure out what they need, learn a bit about reading raws (I sometimes feel like I'm looking at Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs *lol*), give you more time to work on the mod, and spare you from continually having to explain stuff to me when I misunderstand.
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Someone, get the bug zapper! What do you mean that won't work on a bug the size of a house which glows? No, I don't want to hear it. Just get the damn zapper.

Varyag

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #21 on: August 31, 2013, 04:40:11 am »

With Roses and Maklaks scripts I can automate at least some part of the process though, so some things I can and will do. Interactive lists have to wait till somebody shows me how to do those, because I certainly cant.

What parts can be automated?
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BoffoDorf

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #22 on: August 31, 2013, 05:19:15 am »

Stock piling chart would go a super long way to maintaining my sanity though no idea how you'd do this in a readable format with some much stuff. As it is, workflow's UI does a fantastic job of cluing me into which outputs are classified as what, so not a major deal I suppose. The manual is a pita to try and keep semi current, that's for sure.

I've gotten so used to reading the raws for answers that it's like the maintenance free version of the manual for me. As for the wiki, I find it easier to Google for masterwork pages than to use the DF wiki itself.
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Dragor

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #23 on: August 31, 2013, 05:25:46 am »

Interactive lists have to wait till somebody shows me how to do those, because I certainly cant.
If you use Google Doc for the spreadsheets, you can use a frame in you manual to display the documents. But you must be connected to see the tables.

Another method is to use http://datatables.net/download/build/jquery.dataTables.min.js with an HTLM <table id="table_id"> with the following code :
Code: [Select]
$(document).ready(function() {
    $('#table_id').dataTable();
} );
It will give you something like that.






By the way, this is the first message I write on the Masterworks forum but I follow your mod for a while, and thanks for all the amazing work you do !
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SharpKris

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #24 on: August 31, 2013, 05:29:00 am »

so how do i access the raws?
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ElenaRoan

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2013, 05:34:37 am »

MasterworkDF v3h\Dwarf Fortress\raw\objects
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Someone, get the bug zapper! What do you mean that won't work on a bug the size of a house which glows? No, I don't want to hear it. Just get the damn zapper.

Quarterblue

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2013, 07:53:06 am »

So, what you are saying is this:

Instead of writing ~3 new updates I should spend the same amount of time and effort into more details for the manual, which is something everyone with understanding of raws can do, and should do for the wiki. There is a wiki, there are ~10000 players. Why are people not taking the info out of the raws and adding it? Lets say I work another 100 hours on the manual. If 1% of the 10000 players work 1 hour each on the wiki, it would have the same effect.

I understand that people want more info, what I dont understand is why they take if for granted that someone else has to provide it. ;)

What I mean is that we need basic info on creatures with important tokens, since traditional creatures such as turkeys and cats are gone. On the embark screen, there is a huge list of new, completely unfamiliar creatures. And we can't dodge them and take creatures we usually choose, since they are removed. So the new player has to pick creatures at random but has no idea what he's doing. Which creature lays the most eggs? Which creature is shearable? Which biomes do they live in? Which raw file do they belong to? Which ones are best to pick at embark? Etc. Even the most basic info on that would be welcome.
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firefly68

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #27 on: August 31, 2013, 08:01:57 am »

What I mean is that we need basic info on creatures with important tokens, since traditional creatures such as turkeys and cats are gone. On the embark screen, there is a huge list of new, completely unfamiliar creatures. And we can't dodge them and take creatures we usually choose, since they are removed. So the new player has to pick creatures at random but has no idea what he's doing. Which creature lays the most eggs? Which creature is shearable? Which biomes do they live in? Which raw file do they belong to? Which ones are best to pick at embark? Etc. Even the most basic info on that would be welcome.

Why don't you dig through the raws and make an article on the wiki for embark creatures which will include such basic info?
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Foffy123

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #28 on: August 31, 2013, 06:39:12 pm »

So, what you are saying is this:

Instead of writing ~3 new updates I should spend the same amount of time and effort into more details for the manual, which is something everyone with understanding of raws can do, and should do for the wiki. There is a wiki, there are ~10000 players. Why are people not taking the info out of the raws and adding it? Lets say I work another 100 hours on the manual. If 1% of the 10000 players work 1 hour each on the wiki, it would have the same effect.

I understand that people want more info, what I dont understand is why they take if for granted that someone else has to provide it. ;)

With Roses and Maklaks scripts I can automate at least some part of the process though, so some things I can and will do. Interactive lists have to wait till somebody shows me how to do those, because I certainly cant.
Why don't you dig through the raws and make an article on the wiki for embark creatures which will include such basic info?

Animals at embark are an essential part of starting a fortress. Personally I think if it's not documented what any of the animals do and if the ones that are documented (vanilla) aren't even in the mod, it's difficult to start a new fortress at all.

I feel like you shouldn't have to go through the raws just to even play the mod. Still love the mod Meph, but it's like changing or taking out a feature that people rely on to play the game and not explaining anything. Extra things that aren't really essential should be looked up and added to the wiki, I agree. Even just a few lines or a simple description of each creature, not even necessarily extremely detailed info would be very helpful.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2013, 06:42:00 pm by Foffy123 »
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Meph

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Re: MANUAL - Let me know what's missing.
« Reply #29 on: August 31, 2013, 09:59:15 pm »

Domestic Creature Info: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=123155.msg4047611#msg4047611

Tutorial Fort: (I plan to show of every feature, if I dont get killed, document it, and add this tutorial fort to the manual.)

Ruthless, 3h Tutorial Fort.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2013, 11:13:34 pm by Meph »
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
::: WorldBicyclist.com - Follow my bike tours around the world - 148 countries visited :::
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