Storylines Forum Under Renovation

[Lyanna]

Hello all! I’m back to work in Storylines again. This is just a notice to inform you all that I’ll be pretty busy trying to form a coherent account of History from the stories here, so expect a lot of changes in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, in order to save time, I’m going to have to run a little roughshod over some of the work here – which basically means things like merging/cutting/moving threads or posts, editing without the author’s explicit permission (I’ll check with them later to see if they approve), and make quick and snap (though hopefully well-informed) decisions about major aspects of the EL world, like the gods, timeline, etc. Apologies in advance.

 

So, while Quinticus is running the Storylines Short Story Contest, I will be working quietly in the background to brush up some of the older stories and pull them together. In the meantime, Roja will also be working on defining certain aspects of the lands (like magic, essences, etc.) Once I finish pulling a rough version of history together, we can sit down and discuss any issue you may have with regards to specific portions of the storylines, okay? At that time, I’ll still be open to changes before we finalise everything.

 

I’ll try to keep a running log of what I did on this thread, so you guys can track the changes. You can also see what I'm currently working on by looking for the [under Renovation by Lyanna] message in the thread sub-title. At the end of the time period, I’ll unpin this thread.

 

-Lyn-

 

Lyanna's Log

 

4th May:

- Drafted a Vision Statement for the Storylines Forum. Under review.

- Started work on designing a flowchart/questmap system for quest documentation.

 

5th May:

- Sent messages to Saii and Tumaros about their stories.

- Offered freeone3000 a job as proofreader.

- Sent message to Chariste and Quinticus about changes.

- Contacted crusadingknight and Placid about procedures for publishing in-game books and fan fiction.

- Rewrote the descriptions for the 9 Greater Gods to allow for more 3D personalities. Shadow Deities still under review. Found here: http://www.eternal-lands.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10975

 

6th May:

- More work on designing a questmap system.

- Revised the Eternal Lands Storylines POD and posted it.

- Got Saii to come back to work.

- Asked programmers about available quest flags

 

8th May:

- Wrote and posted the Main EL story.

- Put Tumaros' story onto the Forums.

- Gave Saii his list of plot points.

 

9th May:

- Finished off most of the Gods, and added Overdeity.

- Drafted out a plan to rewrite the current Past Quest.

 

10th May:

- Recruited Brom and pennifuin to help with proofreading.

- Got the format and access to publish books.

 

11th May:

- Rewrote The Mercenary Armies for the_antiroot's bots

 

12th May:

- Talked with Roja about Main EL story

- Started discussion about NPC scripting for quests

- Began compiling Storylines Status

 

13th May:

- Finished compiling Storylines Status

- Merged various posts into Tips and Tools for Story-Writers thread.

 

14th-15th May:

- Talking with devs about changing certain messages, #date, and some quests.

 

16th May:

- Compiled rough draft of Historical Timeline.

 

17th May:

- Cleaned up a bit of the forum

 

To-Do List (in order)

- Edit Great War for errors. [given away]

- Re-do Timeline and Story Stats. [almost done]

- Re-cast Tutorial NPC quest into tentative QuestMap format, for testing design purposes.

- Work on Nordcarn quest.

- Work on Past Quest.

- Wait for Tumaros to get back to me about finishing The Great War.

Edited May 16, 2005 by Lyanna

[Lyanna]

All right, I need to do some other things urgently, so I'll have to skip editing the Great War for now and move directly onto compiling the Timelines and Story stats. Therefore, I'll try to hand off the job to someone else.

 

All proofreaders: Freeone3000, Brom, pennifuin... could you please concentrate your efforts on The Great War, and post all errors that need to be corrected at the end of that thread please? Quint, if you have the time, try to do some error-correction. If not, then I'll get around to editing the posts with the proofreaders' corrections after I'm done with Story Stats and Timeline. Most of it should be fine, but I'm nitpicking for the few errors that got overlooked.

 

Thanks a bundle!

 

-Lyn-

Edited May 10, 2005 by Lyanna

[Quinticus]

Error correction i can do. On which things do you want me to correct? The things the others are proofreading?

[Lyanna]

Yup. And if you spot any mistakes as well, feel free to correct them.

 

-Lyn-

[Lyanna]

Book format:

https://freepository.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi...kcfUqGlukel-enc

 

-Lyn-

[ttlanhil]

Book format:

https://freepository.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi...kcfUqGlukel-enc

 

-Lyn-

161932[/snapback]

 

<update>

I now have a working draft copy, on my tripod site.

tripod means it won't be as fast as it should be, and I had to disable a bit of the checking (so now an angle bracket will mess up your XML, the copy I have on computer works better though)

 

it only deals with a document data area, and a series of chapters that may have sections. there's a lot of restrictions and error-checking that can be done, but the first sraft is up and ready for people to test.

 

speaking of which, is there a way to test that it does perform as desired without plugging it into the server? (yes, you can validate XML, but you can still have logic errors, computer reads it different to how a human does)

 

 

<edit>

 

it definantly needs better documentation/help, too

 

Oh yes, it displays it for the browser to show, if your browser shows it the same with either button(you'll see what I mean), then your browser is too old. Won't cause much harm, just doesn't look as nice :lol:

 

ta

Edited May 14, 2005 by ttlanhil

[ttlanhil]

Okay, I have a couple of examples to show.

 

It's basic, but works.

the XML output does document, chapter, and section stuff, does not do images(yet), or more complex things that the encyclopedia does (especially entries like how to make things)

if the document title is blank, grabbs the one from chapter1

if the version is blank, puts in "0.0.1"

any entry that has no title is not output

because of space issues, only two examples used. You can do as many chapters and sections per chapter as you like, but there's no need for in these examples.

 

1 chapter, 0 sections, title entered for chapter 1:

Copied from browser view:

<document version="0.0.1">
<title>Title</title>
<chapter>
 <title>Title</title>
</chapter>
</document>

Copied from plain text view:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<document xmlns="http://www.eternal-lands.com/xmlns/encyclopedia/semantic"
xmlns:m="http://www.eternal-lands.com/xmlns/encyclopedia/messages" version="0.0.1">
<title>Title</title>
<chapter><title>Title</title>
</chapter></document>

(No, it doesn't format the source very well (yet))

 

1 chap, 1 section;

chapter 1 data filled in:

title, two authors, a translator, abstract, and body

 

browser viewing mode:

<document version="0.0.1">
<title>Title</title>
<author>Auth1</author>
<author>Auth2</author>
<translator>Trans2</translator>
<abstract>This is my abstract</abstract>
<chapter>
 <title>Title</title>
 <author>Auth1</author>
 <author>Auth2</author>
 <translator>Trans2</translator>
 <abstract>This is my abstract</abstract>
 <text>
  <para>this is where the main part goes</para>
  <para>new line</para>
 </text>
 <text>
  <para>new paragraph</para>
 </text>
</chapter>
</document>

[Lyanna]

Okay, I've tried to clean up some of the Pinned threads we've had. Here are the changes:

 

- The Contest List thread has been merged into the Storylines Contest thread.

- Everything important has been put into the Storylines POD thread. This includes Storylines Status and Author's Rights. The Storylines POD is the absolutely most important thread to read on this forum. Compulsory. (That convo between Quint, myself and Roja has been split away from topic, since it was dealt with).

- Gods and Religions was unpinned, but a link has been provided under the new "Resources" index in the Storylines Status (merged into POD).

- This thread is also unpinned from now on.

 

-Lyn-

[Quinticus]

You are absolutely tireless, Lyanna. Thanks a bunch!

 

I'm also going to link this under the resources section as well due to the XML data.

[ttlanhil]

I'd like to propose a new tag for the XML source, 'Publisher', so that you can have any name you want as a historian as the author, and your own name as publisher/collator.

this could be document/chapter/section available as well

[Lachesis]

Seems I missed to explain the version attribute. It holds the version of the format, not the document and is used to be able to automatically update XML files if the format definition gets changed. So please just copy the version from the example file you were using as a reference when creating your document. The most recent version at the time of this post is 0.9.3

 

With regards

Lachesis