Dungeon Master Forum

Overall, I think having a standalone website for the whole game is a good idea -- does anyone else? If so and if you can wait TWO to THREE WEEKS, I am prepeared to do the following:

1) Register www.conflux3.com
2) Set up a new basic site for it
3) Install a wiki and assign some usernames to whoever will be managing it.
4) Transfer the maps over (leaving a redirect from my old site)
5) Let it loose

If we're going to go through the trouble of setting up a wiki, perhaps it could be more general-purpose. There was some talk in the "DM geek code" thread of a post editable by everyone (which a wiki is perfect for) and I think that some sort of a group-authored editing guides for those interested in creating their own dungeons but don't really know where to start might be fun too. (It'd help me personally, that's for sure: a wiki form might be a better place for the increasing amount of DSB Lua documentation!)

As for the topic of wikis, I've actually set up one or two in the past, so maybe I can help, though I'm a bit busy nowadays (seems to be a common affliction, sadly!) So here's my two cents on wiki software:

MediaWiki is big and bloated. It's not bad software, but it's big software, designed for big wikis. It might be overkill for us. I've set up TWiki in the past, and I liked it, though it's also big and was also a bit slow-- perhaps partially because it doesn't need/use a database. Of course, if we're going to be on a server that doesn't have that stuff available, that becomes a plus. The simplest wiki around, I think, is Oddmuse. It's really fast and easy to set up, but will probably require some CSS in order to not look completely ugly.

I think it needs:

• 1) Page-level access control so private information can be kept private.
  2) Ability to limit modifications to select people. Fighting strangers intent on messing things up is not my cup of tea.
  3) Simple to maintain and back up.
  4) Standard kinds of requirements (mySQL, php, ... )
  5) nice-looking (this comes last)

Sophia wrote: MediaWiki is big and bloated.
Oddmuse. It's really fast and easy to set up,

I agree about MediaWiki. Moreover, they
say that if you want access control then
you probably want something else. That
their goal was easy access.

Oddmuse is SIMPLE. A Perl script and flat
files. It can limit editing to 'editors' and
'administrators'. It says that if you want to
limit read access then you should have
two wikis (shouldn't it be wikus and wiki?)
with local links. That might be good or bad.
Good because it draws a very distinct line
between the two parts. It need not be ugly.
See their homepage:
http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse

I compared some engines (as if I knew something
about these things). These three seem to do the
right things. Access control. Simple requirements
(PHP and SQL). Standard HTML 1.0 output.
Mature (stable). Simple editing.

phpWiki (looks very good)
WackoWiki
bitweaver (offshoot of TikiWiki)

Sophia wrote:If we're going to go through the trouble of setting up a wiki, perhaps it could be more general-purpose.

That's a good idea -- but I think Conflux 3 is large enough to warrant it's own, which is why I also thought a whole conflux website would be a nice idea. The wiki would be the main part of it, but it could also hold the maps, have a few background pages and generally be made a nice conflux 'portal'. In fact, it could also include conflux 1 & 2 (unless Zyx considers these obsolete and not necessary to document) -- maybe www.confluxdungeon.com would be better?

I've been thinking about how to develop dungeon-master.com (yet another project!!). Your wiki suggestion is a good one for extending the site and making it a lot more useful than just a homepage and a forum.

It might be large enough, but I wonder if it might not be a very good idea for other reasons.

I am not trying to diminish Conflux's place of importance, or the amount of hard work that's gone into it. However, it's far from the only custom dungeon out there. Right now, having it sitting prominently in the Custom Dungeons forum gets people in there, and when someone gets bored of it, they might look for something else in there to play. Conversely, someone looking for a custom dungeon, generically, will see Conflux right there. I see it as a net positive for the community as a whole. If it's off on its own site, it loses some sense of being "linked" to the community as a whole. In a wiki format, there could be links to various dungeons that provided inspiration for Conflux, Zyx's early dungeons (if he feels like linking them), and so on... basically, integrating it into the overall realm of custom dungeons, like it is now. Granted, if it's a conflux-only wiki, they could still be offsite links, but it's not nearly as elegant that way. My basic point is that this community is not large, so anything that might be seen as "fragmenting" should be seen as a bad thing.

And, of course, that'd mean two projects instead of one, and that's more time and effort for all involved. Since we all seem to be a bit busy anyway, why push ourselves?

The Wiki could certainly include anything
we please.......other dungeons are a fine
example. The Conflux portions of the
Wiki will probably contain dozens (hundreds)
of links to places like the Encyclopaedia and
to these forums and to the documentation
contained on
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/documentation
and to many other places.

The Wiki is dedicated to walkthrough/hint/
documentation of the games. It just so happens
that Conflux is the game that MOST needs a
place where MANY people can contribute their
findings. I am quite positive that NOBODY has
conquered Conflux in the way that MANY of
us, as individuals, have conquered CSB. I doubt
very much that Zyx has done this!!!!

So we now want a wiki for all custom dungeons? Is that what you're saying?

If that's the case, we might as well make a wiki the 'engine' of dungeon-master.com, as the site is nothing more than a homepage at present.

This will require some proper planning, not just a 'set up a wiki and let's see what happens'.

I disagree. A forum and a wiki are very
different animals in my view. The wiki is
very much more structured and the 'pages'
or articles are expected to be freely
edited by authorized people (Most of us).
The 'entries' in a forum are very much the
work of a single person. For example, one
does not ask questions or express opinions
in the wiki. One publishes facts. At least
that is how I see it.

Most of what is said in the forum goes
out-of-date quickly. The wiki will contain
information that will be of interest for
a very long time. I think.

I think what Gambit meant is that the forum can still exist, but if you go to the main page "dungeon-master.com" rather than just finding a static web page like now, you'd go to the wiki instead.

Anyway, I'm not sure what can go in the wiki-- we'll have to plan this out, you're right about that-- but my point was that it might be nice to have all of the material that we create/collect in one place.

Sophia wrote:I think what Gambit meant is that the forum can still exist, but if you go to the main page "dungeon-master.com" rather than just finding a static web page like now, you'd go to the wiki instead.

Yup, exactly.

why not just use this page and if any one asks a question just tell them. It seems like we all go here, we all check it out I love this site. can't we all just get along.

??? We all get along just fine (more or less). We're talking about making something that's far more useful than a bunch of random comments spread across many different threads in the forum...

I think you have misunderstood what we're talking about.

Gambit37 wrote:I think you have misunderstood what we're talking about.

As I misunderstood.

well just have one thread just for hints(ones you can really use)
Most of the hints I got were helpful
To me a walkthrough is cheeting, but from time to time a good hint when you are stuck make the game

Is there confusion over this? To recap the various discussions, I think we're aiming to:

1) Create a Wiki for Conflux that allows EVERYTHING about the game to be documented by the people who know it best: the players. It could have two distinct parts: a players part (walkthrough, hints, etc.) and a developer's part (how the DSAs work, how certain effects were achieved, etc.).

2) Further discussion suggested that instead of having a Conflux only wiki, we have a wiki for ALL the custom dungeons. This could be the core part of this website (dungeon-master.com) which at the moment is nothing more than a homepage and forum.

Stewy, the problem with the help thread for Conflux is that it's very long, it's difficult to find specific stuff and some of it is not longer accurate due to newer versions. Having a wiki that's kept up-to-date would make it much easier for people to find what they're looking for.

Cheating....that is the big question. I have
maintained that players working together
to understand ConfluxIII are not engaged
in cheating. I cannot conceive of a single
person being able to conquer this dungeon.
Nor can I conceive of the group conquering
the dungeon without an organized way of
recording their individual findings.

I am cheating......I have deciphered the
dungeon and am using an editor to help
me. The longer I do this, the more I am
convinced that I will fail to finish. Every day
I become more amazed by the thing.
How Zyx managed to put so much together
in a way that is self-consistent is beyond me.
It is like a fractal - with details at every
scale. But the discoveries gained by cheating
in this way should be recorded in the
"developer's" part of the wiki. That is mostly
why I suggested having two parts, one of
which has restricted viewing access.

Well, believe it or not, I have created a
Conflux IIII wiki.

http://www.dianneandpaul.net/ConfluxIII

The database has not been defined so all changes
will be in a temporary file and will be lost occasionally.
Look in the 'Sandbox'. You will find a Conflux III
reference.

Feel free to fiddle with all of this as much as
you please to get a feel for the interface. Try
putting a few sentences and new pages into the
wiki. There are no restrictions yet and you cannot
break anything because it will only require
10 minutes of my time to delete the whole thing
and recreate it.

I have NO idea how to get this right (access limits,
prettier pages, how to organize our contributions,
etc), but I hope you will try it and together we can
build something useful.

YAY! tried it..
it seems all written stuff gets in same line.
so there is no line break?
apart from that it is nice

A blank line (two linefeeds) creates
a new paragraph.

Also you could have used '%%%'.
See:

http://www.dianneandpaul.net/ConfluxIII ... ttingRules

ah, Thanks. easy as cake
all we need now is good ingredients

I moved things to:

http://dianneandpaul.net/DMwiki

WARNING!!!!!
This is more like the final version.
It is in a 'protected' MySQL
database instead of in a temproary
flat database. But it is still TEMPORARY!
I may clear the database occasionally.
And there are no access controls.

The template is supposed to look like
Wikipedia. That makes sense to me
since people are probably familiar
with that. If you write up any pages,
please keep a local copy so you can
do it again easily.

Give me a week or so. And please
make any suggestions that come to
mind.

I couldn't login, but I could successfully change the Sandbox page.

That is strange. I clicked the 'Login' button,
typed in a userid and apassword, and created
a homepage successfully. What happened when you
tried to login?

I now go to Sign in (http://www.dianneandpaul.net/DMwiki/ind ... h[login]=1) and try with both an old and new user/password combination and it comes up with "Invalid Password". Just to let you know.

I see your attempts. I just changed the way
passwords are kept and had it screwed up.
Try again.

FYI: I changed it so passwords are encrypted.

Do you sort of have to register for this ?