Conflux III wiki discussion

Custom dungeons for CSBWin. Includes all Confux 2 and 3 discussions.

Moderator: Zyx

Forum rules
Please read the Forum rules and policies before posting.
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

The list itself isn't really in question, it's the ordering of the list on the Places page that we're debating. Right now it's a ordered by descending level and that gets pretty murky once places start to overlap. I don't necessarily know where to add entries physically to the list under the current system. The page is a strange level map not a Places index. The page could still be alphabetical and still have the (level ##)'s.
User avatar
Zyx
DSA Master
Posts: 2592
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2000 1:53 pm
Location: in the mind
Contact:

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Zyx »

I meant, both ordered lists could coexist on the same page:
List of places, in alphabetical order.
List of places, in level depth order.
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

Sure, but its going to make the page huge and both lists will need to be synced. That's a lot of duplication of effort. You also can't really have a true level depth order since so many places overlap. That's something you'd normally do with a program like Visio.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Hi,

I'm currently unhappy with ongoing discussions about the Wiki, being especially unsure whether it is actually used, and what for, while discussions between Phoenix and me are taking place which I consider rather bad for the future progress, because that's all about opinions and not facts that can simply be proved true or false.

See this one for reference:

http://dmwiki.atomas.com/wiki/Talk:Conf ... of_Joramun

There is especially a lack of user feedback, so there is no really good basis of decision-making how the Wiki should evolve further.
Christoph
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

LOLLMAOF! I knew you would whine here after that post, so I decided to troll you good.

It's very apparent that Christoph and I have different visions of what the "wiki" should be and look like. I've looked at the wiki change logs and he's spent most of his time with "Level notes", that is, until I started adding new content and declared my intention to do away with it and it's explicit spoiler nature. Then after a six month hiatus he decides to start up again to "help" me. He took offense at my correcting his attempt at revisionist history in Joramun's strategy entry. It's one thing to correct a table, it's another to edit someones "personal" entry to "correct" it and add spoilers that reflect the current version. So, I removed his spoiler and add the note to the beginning of the entry.

Ultimately we need Zyx to tell us what *he* thinks about *his* wiki and spoilers. I've made an e-mail proposal to him for how to complete the Places entries in a manner that continues the precedent he set with the documentation enclosed with the game. This separates the wiki into two parts. A technical documentation section, and Places as story fragments from annuls of the Guild and personal journals of the Conflux champions.

Look at Parallax's entry on the wiki. It tells a story and gives hints creatively. I really liked that part of the wiki. The existing Places entries are sterile, and give away everything even with spoiler tags. I stopped work on the Quests page because I wasn't sure how to resolve this sort of conflict. I even proposed a sort of contest where you choose a Place page and choose a Champion and write the place page from their perspective

Conflux/Places/The Way of Our Ancestors

A stained and torn page the diary of Zed:
[screen shot wall text The Way of Our Ancestors]
...Our party has reached the Way of Our Ancestors. After Iaido pressed the green button, ghosts attacked us...smudged text...while old Dwarven heroes glare at us from behind their cold dusty mirrors. Iaido warns me of a false all as we proceed into the chamber. Much to my surprise, there in a dusty alcove is...smudged text...At last my legacy is restored to me and my family...smudged text...

I'm not opposed to wiki collaboration when there's actually a group to collaborate with.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Face it, the "group" currently probably consists only of us two.

And I'm not "whining" at all, I just try to get feedback from "normal users" to help to resolve our conflicts.

I know that we won't agree easily, so it's best to involve a third party to help in the upcoming decisions.

We are not only contributing for ourselves, but also for future Conflux players, so please don't blame me for an attempt to make decisions more democratic.
Christoph
User avatar
beowuuf
Archmastiff
Posts: 20687
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2000 2:00 pm
Location: Basingstoke, UK

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by beowuuf »

@Phoenix: I assume if someone in the future comes in and redoes your work on structure with a new idea, you would have the same reaction. Visibly you've kept things reasonable civil, so please keep doing so and don't tease, even in good nature (assuming it is) because it never goes over well in a text only media. And altering something someone has done in their spare time to their own ethos is also a touchy subject at the best of times.




In general I'm sure people like myself are passively watching this because a) any improvements to the wiki are welcome, and many of us don't have the time to support Zyx's work like it should be, and b) so much of the discussion has been on the dry subject of formatting. It's important to have someone or even more luckily some people who care about this, because it does need some structure.

Just as importantly though, that structure needs to be loose enough to accomodate the future - where it is more important for information to be added and reasonably easily found afterwards, rather than have such a rigid structure in place that while it is easy to find information, it is hard and intimidating to add to it or alter it.

So please remember that the more the discussion becomes about what to remove fromt he wiki and the formatting of the informastion, the more it becomes a discussion less people will want to wade in on in the firts place. I think for the wiki to remain a breathing wiki, it needs to exist in a format where both of you agree upon, not where you need someone to decisde a true path. If the restructuring is that contentious, it alreayd risks becoming something that may as well be a pdf, with a very good structure to retrieve the information, but lokced from future editing and updating by all by the editor or group of editors.


Anyway, that's my opinion. Thew wiki was created for the community to come together and share information in a slightly better format than the forum threads, since zyx has worked so hard on the game he should not have to spend time then writing up the game too (plus he's forgotten half of it, plus where's the fun).

While vonflux still grows, and the community is still small, I think ease of adding and encounraging adding trumps a perfection in structure. There is a balance to be struck here where the chaos of previous wiki additions is tightened, something Christoph started. I'm happy to see it be further tightened and imporved, but not at the expensie of the primary reasons for it.

I'd prefer a wiki help page, I'd prefer a template page based on paralax's entry, etc, that encourages quick additions rather than an imposing structure that someone who has a new tidbit can't find a place for and so posts it in the forum and runs!
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

You, Beowuuf, are a much older Conflux player than any of us two. Would you consider to contribute to the Wiki? I fear that Phoenix and me are less than "compatible", so a third party would definitely enhance overall performance.
Christoph
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

beowuuf wrote:@Phoenix: I assume if someone in the future comes in and redoes your work on structure with a new idea, you would have the same reaction. Visibly you've kept things reasonable civil, so please keep doing so and don't tease, even in good nature (assuming it is) because it never goes over well in a text only media. And altering something someone has done in their spare time to their own ethos is also a touchy subject at the best of times.
Not at all. As long as Zyx makes changes to Conflux the wiki will need to evolve. You summed up my objection to Christoph's edit of Jormun's page exactly. There was no need for him to interject himself in Joramun's personal page. The spoiler for the location of the lock picks was unnecessary as well. If Zyx decides to move that location, such edits only serve to add additional overhead in maintaining the wiki. But I will object if I add a Path of Phoenix and someone comes in and changes my personal text inline. Add a note to the bottom or top but not inline.
beowuuf wrote: In general I'm sure people like myself are passively watching this because a) any improvements to the wiki are welcome, and many of us don't have the time to support Zyx's work like it should be, and b) so much of the discussion has been on the dry subject of formatting. It's important to have someone or even more luckily some people who care about this, because it does need some structure.

Just as importantly though, that structure needs to be loose enough to accommodate the future - where it is more important for information to be added and reasonably easily found afterwards, rather than have such a rigid structure in place that while it is easy to find information, it is hard and intimidating to add to it or alter it.

So please remember that the more the discussion becomes about what to remove fromt he wiki and the formatting of the informastion, the more it becomes a discussion less people will want to wade in on in the firts place. I think for the wiki to remain a breathing wiki, it needs to exist in a format where both of you agree upon, not where you need someone to decisde a true path. If the restructuring is that contentious, it alreayd risks becoming something that may as well be a pdf, with a very good structure to retrieve the information, but lokced from future editing and updating by all by the editor or group of editors.


Anyway, that's my opinion. Thew wiki was created for the community to come together and share information in a slightly better format than the forum threads, since zyx has worked so hard on the game he should not have to spend time then writing up the game too (plus he's forgotten half of it, plus where's the fun).

While vonflux still grows, and the community is still small, I think ease of adding and encounraging adding trumps a perfection in structure. There is a balance to be struck here where the chaos of previous wiki additions is tightened, something Christoph started. I'm happy to see it be further tightened and imporved, but not at the expensie of the primary reasons for it.

I'd prefer a wiki help page, I'd prefer a template page based on paralax's entry, etc, that encourages quick additions rather than an imposing structure that someone who has a new tidbit can't find a place for and so posts it in the forum and runs!
Well that's the thing. There really is no structure in many places and I'm not really advocating a rigid structure, but there needs to be some kind template to proceed from. Any good builder/structural engineer will evangelize on the need for a good foundation. 95% of the places pages are blank. The ones that do exist aren't uniform in any way. Some of the ones that do exist don't necessarily reflect what a player would see in the game.

Now as to a true path, I claim to know nothing about one. I used the manuals for the games I own as a template for my wiki work. The Items, Spells, Unique Items, Champions and Creature pages were already set up this way. They just need sorting and differentiating based on topics brought up in the main spoiler thread, like the differences between unique and the property "unique" in items and weapons. Many of the game wikis I looked at online were all alphabetized. So now, if you want to add some thing not in the table or a page you just add it alphabetically. It only makes sense that "actions" for a game item are entered exactly as they are in the game. Other than that you really do need know how to edit wiki pages, but that's found in the Help pages.

You also raise an excellent point, even if you don't have the time to help in the wiki, you can tell us here in this thread what you want to see in the wiki that's not there right now. What should the wiki have and what should it not. What should be spoiled and what is protected by Rule #35?
User avatar
Zyx
DSA Master
Posts: 2592
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2000 1:53 pm
Location: in the mind
Contact:

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Zyx »

I'll just quote from a private reply to Phoenix:
I think you are both making valuable contributions, and Christoph is
really trying, in good faith, to reach a fair consensus.
Wikis are designed to work through consensus, that's why I recommend you
to adopt this method to solve your conflicts with this project. It will
be sometimes hard and almost unbearable, but that's because of the
challenge: to make a collaborative project. This peculiar way of working
allows contributors to make mistakes, to differ, to edit, and maintains
the project alive. Life itself experiments and adapts, it is not
definitively set in cold stone.
Wikis are not perfect and require talks and debates to progress because
of their horizontality. But that's not a waste of time either, it's a
source of teaching. Learn from it until you're capable of cooperating
without building heat, and you'll manage your energies much better
(putting them into anger is destructive: a big loss of potential).
Phoenix wrote:Now, for moving forward on Places, I have a really neat idea that needs
a little input on your part. Instead of the old sterile format that
exists right now, I'd like to make it so that Places pages have limited
screen shots and hide spoilers in associated parts of the Fragments of
the annuls of the Guild or other texts.

For example, the existing Guilds page would be replaced with a virtual
tour of the Guild area. First shot entrance from the well with minor
commentary. Second shot, black flame in front of Maleficient mirror,
captioned: ...the Council placed a guardian here in response to the vile
acts perpetrated by this guild. Third shot wall with the elevator
button captioned: The elevator is currently out of service. Two guild
engineers were dispatched down the stair to the Sewers but never
returned (This gives the bones found in the pits there a back story).
I agree entirely with what you said except for the word "replaced". Your
project has an incredible value, it adds a narrative, creativity... very
good! But I don't see the point in replacing the current layout which
seems useful in its standardized way. Just create a page "tour of the
Guilds area" or something, link it from the places/guilds page, and voilà!
> This splits the wiki in to a manual with tech info and make the Places
> the story of Conflux. We'd want to discourage more than one screen shot
> per place in most cases, but we could also make it into a contest to
> generate the content. Each place would have a fragment referencing a
> specific champion and their observations about that place would be the
> description. Instead of obvious spoilers, we'd have hint text.
Again, that's very interesting! But it's not the description of a place,
it's a story about it. As such, it should go into a Conflux/stories
section, with links to and from the places section, imho.

The final tagline is "go ahead as long as your creativity is not expressed
territorially."

Another note: I am not the owner of the wiki. I suppose I have some kind of veto on ethical grounds, fair use of my work, etc., but that's all. I find the collaborative project of the players very interesting, and I read the entries from time to time. If I suggest something, it's just a voice, not a diktat. There should be debate for progress.
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

I've re-read the commentary by Gambit and Zyx about the wiki and I've come to the conclusion that I made a number of erroneous mistakes. I looked at the wiki as a task to be completed and be done with. I also looked at the wiki and saw that nothing had been done by anyone in over six months, so to my point of view, I wasn't working with anyone on it. In the absence of any true feedback, I looked at other game wiki's online and consulted several wiki style guides for how to proceed. Before I started, the wiki had little organization and was confusing to my point of view. The style guides I read suggested that wiki entries should be third person references and that redundancies should be limited to simplify maintenance. My first efforts were to sort all tables alphabetically. I then sorted and bulletized table entries to create uniformity. I added information that I gathered through my eight journeys through the dungeon using existing entries as my template. The newly bulletized entries looked funny format wise next to non-bulletized entries, so I bulletized all table entries. I was eventually able to get the sck(I hate Java) to extract the missing monsters and add them to the Creatures page. There, it became apparent that "monster drops" weren't consistent for certain monsters, so I split them off to their own page. This also helped to reduce the lag I was seeing from all the new graphics.

Around this time Christoph reappears and starts to change things without the so call "talk" that he desires. We are *both* guilty of this. I clobbered many of his changes because I started editing the pages off line due to the lack of spell checking(my spelling can be bad). You guys look at the wiki as essentially an extension of the forums. I don't. I wanted to make the wiki look like a professional game manual and that was the rational behind my efforts. Yes, wiki's are designed with the idea that anyone can make edits, but I as I stated before, from viewing the change log, there wasn't anyone actively working on the wiki when I started. I'm not looking to debate content and format. I'm used to development in ClearCase environments and in drafting IT Polices and Procedures. I might make some future edits if I learn anymore alchemy, but for now I've decided to end my active efforts with the wiki. It's all yours Christoph. I had fun and I'm happy with the changes I've made, but from my point of view, it's time for me to move on to other creative endeavors. I'll still be sending bug reports to the main thread and I'll answer any questions that I know the answers to there, but this will probably be my last post in this thread.

My final thoughts on the wiki:
Zyx, you may say that the wiki is not yours, but that's not really true. Conflux is your creation and only you can set cannon, even if someone else writes it and you agree to it. The back story is now the biggest missing piece. There's something else you should consider, as the wiki gets completed the need for the Hint Oracle is going to drop. I only started using it for wiki work. The spoiler threads on the forums were of more use to me. Finally the FAQ is very out of date and many of the questions are now answered by the wiki. So, maybe the answers should link to the fleshed out wiki content.

Christoph, I've corrected the obvious errors in Level notes. Zyx has indicated to me in e-mail that all instances of "The Moria" are now just "Moria", so you'll need to fix those yourself.
User avatar
Gambit37
Should eat more pies
Posts: 13714
Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
Location: Location, Location
Contact:

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Gambit37 »

I think you mean Beowuuf, not Gambit?

I've not been involved in the Conflux Wiki at all, neither in terms of hands-on editing nor as part of this discussion. I have read the discussion with interest however. Thanks for all your work on it Phoenix, you've clearly invested a lot of time and energy into it, which we all appreciate.

The forums can be slow at times as most of the regulars here don't have a lot of free time, but that doesn't mean that contributions go unnoticed. Big "thank yous" from me :-)
User avatar
beowuuf
Archmastiff
Posts: 20687
Joined: Sat Sep 16, 2000 2:00 pm
Location: Basingstoke, UK

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by beowuuf »

Indeed, thank you for all your efforts.
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

It was I who started the wiki. Believe it or not.
But I was unable to maintain it and gave it up
to much more capable hands. Nevertheless, for
what it is worth......my view.

I started the wiki to attract information. I
did not care what information so long as it
was about Conflux and more-or-less true.
You got spoilers? Add them. You got first
person experience in Moria? Add it. You
found a useful bug? Add it. You found an
error in the wiki? Add a note.

But the content and format are now the
responsibility only of one person: the person
who owns the wiki. Zyx made the decision
to open the source to the world and now,
like anyone else, can add information and
make comments about how the wiki is
maintained. The maintainer is free to
give his opinions more weight. But the
maintainer has the final word on everything.
I think that if someone wants to do it
differently, he can offer to take over the
maintenance and, if refused, can copy
the wiki into his own space and do with
it what he pleases.

I am very pleased with the current state
of the wiki. Very, very pleased. People
have done what I wanted them to do....add
information. Conflux needs this because
nobody knows everything about it. And
never will.
User avatar
ian_scho
High Lord
Posts: 2806
Joined: Fri Apr 07, 2006 8:30 am
Location: Zaragoza, Spain

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by ian_scho »

On a side note - the wiki is essential for DSB development, in my opinion.
User avatar
Zyx
DSA Master
Posts: 2592
Joined: Mon Jun 05, 2000 1:53 pm
Location: in the mind
Contact:

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Zyx »

I appreciate what you've done, Phoenix. Really! Thank you for your dedication!
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

Oops, Sorry about that Gambit, I did indeed mean Beowuff. Anyway, Thanks everyone! I also wanted to add that I'm not angry or harbor any ill will towards Christoph, He's been a good sport...well...except that he really doesn't appreciate Bender of Futurama. I just can't forgive him for that. :P
User avatar
megar
Journeyman
Posts: 65
Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:15 am
Location: France

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by megar »

I am very pleased by the recent additions to the Wiki. When I took over the work of Paul Stevens to offer it a new host, I also choose to convert it to another Wiki engine: MediaWiki. This engine was chosen because it was feature rich and stable (think wikipedia). I then added some new features, like <spoiler> and <dmrune>, and began writing into it. I created the "Places" and "Connections" pages, because that's the way I saw Conflux. I was also pleased by the map viewer and I dreamed of having it linked to the wiki.

The wiki never was only focused on Conflux : it always has sections for DSB or RTC "technical" pages. But never about other dungeons. Actually, once I began documenting Conflux, I feel the urge to document it, and it definitely made into the pleasure to play the game. I loved to play conflux, so I can document it, and I loved to read the wiki so I can play it.

Ultimately, I rewrote the map application to be fast, interactive and to highlight the places from the wiki. At that time, this was also my personnal view of wiki, and for me, I looked at it as a cartographer. I was eager to have all that knowledge about conflux into the map, being able to hover on the map and get information about wiki. Unfortunately, Conflux is not that simple. The map yields to be level centric, instead of "places" centric. Worst, it is even actually cell-centric ! It also uncover all spoilers, but that was also the aim of the wiki : document Conflux.

But you see, Conflux is not big. It is incredibly huge ! You can't know everything about it. Think about it : even his creator doesn't grok it in is fullness. Conflux never be completely documented, so even if many spoilers are uncovered, there exist many more.

The wiki exists for YEARS. Sometimes, months passed without even a single edit. (except for spammers, I though them for quite a few hours...). And then, out of nowhere someone gains interest into it, and I was again eager to read all the additions, and experiment again with Conflux. But recently, the talks and the edit you guys made, there are incredible, and I am very pleased that those informations you added made to the wiki. There are even Talks ! For a fistful of editors !

The way Paul, (then, I) organised the sections where only the view of a single man. Probably "connections" was a bad idea after all (I think so). I still see the "places" page as central, but I don't know how to present the ordering of the different places, the connections between them. That will be an open debate, if the page should be deleted or not. As long as the players still can get informations from the wiki, it will be okay.

Contrary to what Paul lastly said, I don't think any wiki maintainer should have a stronger opinion about the content. Wiki pages are the property of the people who participate. The maintainer shouldn't have a greater decision power, he should only do his best to keep the software running, and backup it. I am really proud of the talk you had here, there isn't probably a best way to order information. The game is so huge, I guess you can probably continue to add pages for years without even thinking about organisation. That's the way it should be seen : Conflux / ConfluxWiki is a game, and we should have fun playing, writing, and having arguments about the way to write about it. As long as everybody (writers and passive readers) have fun, that the way to go. We can change things. I also can help to reformat some sections if you think it should be done.

Really thank to both of you, and to all contributors, you rock !
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

It has been three years since anyone posted here. And it has
been three years since the last backup of the wiki was posted
to my site (dianneandpaul.net/wikiBackup).

Have changes been made to the wiki? Should it be backed up
again? If we lost the information in that wiki, it would be a
disaster.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

I hadn't found time for a long while, so almost forgot about Conflux… I've seen some recent changes in the Wiki, however, when I looked into it again a few days ago, so I think it should be backed up again.

I also noticed that there is no recent Linux version available any more. I packed Conflux WIP004 and CSBwin 12.3v1.1 for Linux (and with Linux install scripts), but lost the download location (the free Wuala service where I used to host this has been canceled by LaCie), so I would appreciate to make those files available along with the well-known Windows downloads. While it is possible to use the existing downloads and the source code to get the game running on Linux, this is very inconvenient, and actually gets more difficult over time because of outdated dependencies.

I can also create a new generic Linux installer package for the current Conflux WIP version. (This is only a ZIP file with a script putting the files in the correct locations according to the "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" in order to avoid conflicts with existing software, and without any of the Windows specific files to avoid user confusion as well as waste of disk space.)
Christoph
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Oh. I've just seen that you've been working on Linux recently, Paul, I'll have a look at this.
Christoph
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

I have twelve packages almost ready.
All combinations of

DM
CSB
Conflux

with

Windows x86-32
linux x86-32 SDL1.2
linux x86-32 SDL 2.0
Raspbian ARM-32(Raspberry Pi)

I am working today to get the Conflux hint
oracle working properly. Conflux has had
at least one additional bug-fix....a bug that
caused a crash. The engine has been modified
to be more lenient of long and involved DSAs
(In particualar, the flood).

All twelve packages will be available within
a day or so. Also, the source code, which is
common for all twelve packages, will be available
at the same time.

Each package is complete and can be put into
a single folder/directory. Each comes with a
walkthrough movie (just a demo for Conflux).

The linux packages have had a lot of work. The
sound works well. They can be run in full-screen
or windowed mode at many resolutions. And they
work on older machines with SDL1.2 or on newer
machines with SDL 2.0. Moreover, they have had
some testing by real users so at least the basics
are in place.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Thank you very much! Sounds (almost) good so far; I tried replacing my binary with your 15.6v0 SDL 2.0 one: core functions work well, but:
1) No GTK menus and windowed mode (how do I switch this on?)
2) "--gamsav" has been removed, which is bad, because it prevents you from making somewhat standard conformant packages

The approach of having everything in one directory allows users to have the game in their "$home", but no FHS conformant installations to be able to centrally manage the engine and game data installations for all users while having individual configurations ("config.linux" and a set of saved games) per user.

This means you cannot make proper packages for your Linux distribution, and also no "generic" package for shared installation.

Normally you use the following paths on Linux:

"/usr/local" for non distribution specific packages
"/opt/$PACKAGE" for larger non distribution specific software packages

For a small game like this, this would be:
Executable binaries and (wrapper) scripts: /usr/local/games
Platform independent game engine data files: /usr/local/share/games/$GAMEENGINE
Game engine documentation/licence/information: /usr/local/share/doc/games/$GAMEENGINE
Platform independent game files: /usr/local/share/games/$GAME
The game's documentation and informational files: /usr/local/share/doc/games/$GAME
The user specific files: /home/$USERNAME = ~ = $home
On old Linux installations there would have been hidden directories ".$GAME" and ".$GAMEENGINE" below the users' home directories, nowadays local configuration and data files belonging to the individual users get stored in "~/.config/$GAME", "~/.config/$GAMEENGINE", and "~/.local/share/$GAME", "~/.local/share/$GAMEENGINE".

Example:
GAMEENGINE=CSBwin
GAME=conflux

There is no game specific configuration in our case, so the following user files could actually exist:
~/.config/CSBwin/config.linux
~/.local/share/conflux/CSBGAME.DAT
~/.local/share/conflux/CSBGAME2.DAT
~/.local/share/conflux/CSBGAME3.DAT
~/.local/share/conflux/CSBGAME4.DAT
~/.local/share/conflux/logs/Record00000.log

~/.local/share/conflux/logs/Record99999.log
All (quasi-)static user independent files would reside elsewhere, as described above.

Normally, when starting a shell or other programme, the current directory is "$home", so looking (only) there for files requires to have everything in one place, and changeing the working directory to this place before starting CSBwin.

The sound, having been a major problem for many people, seems to work much better now, as far as I could test it.
Christoph
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

1) No GTK menus and windowed mode (how do I switch this on?)
You don't. Sorry. GTK is more than I want to learn.
I said to myself, I said: (a couple of times):

"Self, rather than all that menu (expletive deleted), what
I will do if someone complains is that I will add 'hot-keys' for
all menu items."

But the source will be available and anyone who wants to
make a GTK-version available will be welcome to do it.
2) "--gamsav" has been removed
Yes it has. I could probably add it back if someone were
to sweet-talk me and tell me exactly what it should do.
everything in one directory allows users to have the game in their "$home", but no FHS conformant installations to be able to centrally manage the engine and game data installations for all users while having individual configurations ("config.linux" and a set of saved games) per user.
Yes, indeed. Moreover, I don't even know what that means.
I very much like the "all-in-one-place". After attempting to
coach several people through the steps necessary to:
1) download the file
2) Dis-en-tar it
3) run the executable
I am in no mood for anything more complicated.

Also, keep in mind that each game a person plays may
require a different executable. (The Record/Playback
business, you know.)

But I have absolutely no objection to your doing it right
and presenting a more finished package. We could go
into competition. Christophe (of dmweb fame) could
take his pick for the Encyclopaedia.
"/usr/local" for non distribution specific packages
etc., etc., etc., and so on.....
All of this is over my head. I was rather proud of myself
for getting the (more expletive) thing to work at all.
It was a major fight for a very old man foreign to linux.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Well, I didn't want to complain or make you doing things differently, I'm just unhappy with the removal of functions which might still be useable without any change. Would it be a great effort to restore the "--gamsav" switch, for example? It should do exactly what it has done before: define the place where data is written to, and where saved games are read from. With "--gamsav=$home/.conflux/saves" the 4 save files went into the specified directory, and the recorded logs into "$home/.conflux/saves/logs".

It is of course NOT bad in my opinion to use the "flat directory" approach, I just think it's not so good to alter the programme in a way that removes functions not needed for this approach, but absolutely necessary for the other way.

The alternative packaging for shared installation is impossible, if the application has no notion at all of different types of places rather than only "my place".

The "unix way" of directory structuring has evolved over time, the goal is to order files not mostly on the criterion "belonging to the same application", but sort them according to "shareability", "volatility", and "origin/management" instead.

Examples:
  • "/usr" can theoretically be mounted read-only over the network from a shared location, because everything needed to boot the machine is elsewhere.
  • Anything under the control of "user" is normally stored in "/home/user".
I don't explain this to make you, Paul, to learn all this and then package your applications according to this approach, I only want to explain how a typical Linux is structured and why many people expect it to be like this, because there are only a few things to be changed in a programme to allow both at the same time: you can have your flat file and unzip it into a directory and call CSBwin from there: works out of the box. If the programme can be directed to search for different types of files in different places (with the current directory being the default), you can include a(n) (de)installation along with a wrapper script moving things to those places where the average Linux application would have them. There can be a sophisticated internal search hierarchy (look there first, if not found, look elsewhere,…), which requires the programmer to know about the standard locations, as well as simple start parameters, which are sufficient in this case. So you can achieve both with the same flat ZIP file: unzip it to "/any/place" and use it from there, or call an additional script "install.me" from there to have it installed "properly", and use "start-gamename" afterwards which then calls "CSBwin" with the necessary parameters to find everything.

The old handling of direcotries and paths was already almost perfect for the "typical unix approach" regarding file ordering – with one exception: the configuration file "config.linux" had to be where the game's static data files were.

About GTK: the old application used GTK 1.2, which is very old. If it is possible to keep/install the old libraries on a modern distribution, this isn't much of a problem. If you cannot successfully build it, it IS of course a problem, and not necessarily worth solving it. I also had this problem (didn't want to learn GTK just to port this to a recent version), but I succeeded in building the unchanged menu/window stuff – and it still runs on this box. In fact it would be bad to keep this unchanged, if people with modern Linux installations had problems to install a working GTK 1.2 because of lack of packages or compatibility issues. Having hotkeys is equally fine in my opinion, most Linux users aren't nearly as mouse-click-centered as the avereage Windows user. However, that shouldn't conflict with in-game functionality – there are also often compatibility issues regarding keyboard keys which are NOT useable without modifiers on a non-US keyboard (or not easily at all). German QWERTZ, for example: "/" is "SHIFT-7", and "\" is "ALT(right)-ß", "ß" being the key just right of "0". So it is essential to choose "good" keys.

One remaining question: did you actually use windowed mode on Linux? I always get full screen mode here with your version.

So there is no need for a competition between us two, we can work together: you can make applications and package them as you like, and I can contribute 2 or 3 scripts to install, deinstall and call them "the Linux way". The user then decides which way to go. Unfortunately, this only works IF there is a set of parameters to specify places other than the current directory on startup or – either alternatively or "overrideable" by said command line parameters – a set of hardcoded search paths for each type of file.

I think I will have a look at the current source code next year or so… not much time now.

That said – you should be VERY proud to have achieved this as a "man foreign to linux"! Compiling this stuff successfully is not trivial at all, I think (remembering my difficulties on my way towards a working version 12.3). I've seen Windows/Linux programmes failing due to the case sensitivity of filenames on Linux (having been tested only on Windows) and so on…
Christoph
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

I didn't want to complain or make you doing things differently
Right.
Would it be a great effort to restore the "--gamsav" switch
Not too terrible. I'll see. It will perhaps delay the release for
several days. Four different platforms. Re-testing and re-packaging.
Updating the little documentation that exists. The help text. Quite
tedious.

In fact, after reading what I just wrote, I ain't gonna do this for
the current releases. Maybe a later update can add this and some
hot-keys for the menu. That will allow you to take part in the
design and testing. In particular, I would like to remove the
hexadecimal notation for key-codes in the config file.
The "unix way" of directory structuring has evolved over time
And it has gotten to the point where the only people who
understand it are people who study linux for itself. It has
left people who simply want to _use_ linux (who dislike Micro$oft)
in the dust. If you use a package _exactly_ as delivered, all
is well; if you want to adjust it...God help you. You are lucky
to even _find_ the file you need to edit. Or even its name.

That is why I like the 'flat' installation. The seven files you need
are right there in front of you.
So it is essential to choose "good" keys.
The config file allows you to choose the keys you like best.
And the config file is where you can find it!
User avatar
Paul Stevens
CSBwin Guru
Posts: 4318
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2001 6:00 pm
Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Paul Stevens »

One remaining question: did you actually use windowed mode on Linux?
I always get full screen mode here with your version.
Yes. If I ever manage to release the packages I am currently putting
together, then you will be able to use Windowed mode, too.
Phoenix
Expert
Posts: 347
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:32 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Phoenix »

I don't understand the need for this change. It seems to me that this could all be handled by a simple wrapper script around CSBwin.exe.

#!/bin/sh
#Conflux.sh
#
CONFLUX_HOME="/usr/local"


if [ -d "${CONFLUX_HOME}/Conflux" ]; then
if [ -d "~/.conflux" ] then
echo "launching from ~/.conflux"
else
mkdir -p ~/.conflux ~/.conflux/Logs
ln -s ${CONFLUX_HOME}/Config ~/.conflux/.
ln -s ${CONFLUX_HOME}/docs ~/.conflux/.
for i in ${CONFLUX_HOME}/Files/* ; do
if [ "${i}" = "${CONFLUX_HOME}/config.txt" ]; then
cp $i ~/.conflux/.
else
ln -s $i ~/.conflux/.
fi
done

fi
if [ -f "~/.conflux/config.txt" ] then
echo "Found config.txt"
else
cp ${CONFLUX_HOME}/Files/Config/1280-800.txt ~/.conflux/config.txt
fi
~/.conflux/CSBwin.exe -dir ~/.conflux
else
# Assume launching from writable Files directory
./CSBwin.exe -dir .
fi

So where it's installed really doesn't matter as long it can read and write to wherever -dir points to. or if multiple people are going to be playing at the same time.
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Phoenix wrote:I don't understand the need for this change. It seems to me that this could all be handled by a simple wrapper script around CSBwin.exe.
Which change exactly? What you suggest was essentially what I've been doing when I made "packages" for Linux.
Phoenix wrote:I don't understand the need for this change. It seems to me that this could all be handled by a simple wrapper script around CSBwin.exe.

Code: Select all

     # Assume launching from writable Files directory
      ./CSBwin.exe -dir .
So where it's installed really doesn't matter as long it can read and write to wherever -dir points to. or if multiple people are going to be playing at the same time.
I think the game also looks for its data files there, and it seems that the Windows executable has different switches and file/path handling:

Code: Select all

CSBwin 15.6v0
Help message:
  Possible arguements are:
  --directory
        Usage: --directory /tmp/
        The directory which holds any game file
  --module
        Usage: --module /tmp/
        The directory which holds any other game file
  --root-path
        Usage: --root-path /tmp/
        The fall-back directory if the above pathways failed
It might be possible to set "--root-path" to the static data directory and "--directory" to the local configuration/savegame folder (~/.local/share/$GAME) in order to avoid the "resurrection" of "--gamsav". It will not be possible, however, to have "config.linux" elsewhere (~/.config/CSBwin) then. "--module" can be used to specify different main "dungeon.dat" files named differently, provided they do not load game other files with equal names but different content, they can coexist, for example several versions of Conflux or DM and CSB in the same folder.

I will test with the 15.0v6 binary, so please don't waste any effort in changes yet, Paul.
Christoph
Christoph
Craftsman
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:04 am

Re: Conflux III wiki discussion

Post by Christoph »

Paul Stevens wrote:
Christoph wrote: So it is essential to choose "good" keys.
The config file allows you to choose the keys you like best.
And the config file is where you can find it!
I know, I changed that once, I thougt of having reasonable defaults for "worldwide" usabilty without a need to change something first to make it work correctly. As you mentioned above: editing those hex codes isn't easy for a non-programmer. The average user won't know the correct numbers (not in hex, decimal or in any other system). I intended to have a default configuration file using only keys available on (almost) all keyboards.
Christoph
Post Reply