[Dev Thread] Enhanced Thief Fan Missions Archive (Last update: 2017/12/24) - by EnYB0La
Yandros on 17/12/2017 at 03:19
A new feature you might consider doing, which should be easy, is to list all languages supported. You can just look at about any resource folder and enumerate the subfolders and compare them to a known list of languages; I would recommend looking in the /books folder since it pretty much always has language subfolders whenever multiple languages are supported.
FenPhoenix on 17/12/2017 at 03:38
It's on the list. Thanks for the tips. :)
john9818a on 17/12/2017 at 04:39
I did get the script references backwards. :o I also forgot that NewDark missions can have both scripts even for T1/G missions. I wonder if NewDark writes anything to the mis header that is different than OldDark.
Yandros on 17/12/2017 at 05:16
Fen, I mean instead of just Yes or No for Multilanguage support, you try to actually enumerate the languages. Just an idea.
FenPhoenix on 17/12/2017 at 05:27
I know, I am enumerating the languages (they go into an array in the YAML there). Just added it in.
Oh, by "it's on the list" I mean it was on the list of things to do.
EnYB0La on 17/12/2017 at 05:34
Quote Posted by Yandros
Fen, I mean instead of just Yes or No for Multilanguage support, you try to actually enumerate the languages. Just an idea.
Just like here... :D
Inline Image:
https://image.ibb.co/dabhAR/ETFMA_20171216_1722.jpgI was also thinking about the Fan Mission Single Page Template... For example, Yandros, your Death's Cold Embrace FM has 10 fan missions. This is categorised as a campaign. So, should we refer this FM as a single "FM" which has 10 Fan Missions or should we refer each of the Death's Cold Embrace FMs as unique?
Does "Murder Most Foul" should be considered as a single Fan Mission, part of a campaign cold Death's Cold Embrace, or should Death's Cold Embrace should be considered as a Fan Mission which includes 10 Fan Missions?
I'm not sure you'll understand what I'm trying to say..
(
https://image.ibb.co/mGR9kR/1.png)
Inline Image:
https://preview.ibb.co/dYTN5R/1.pngVS(
https://image.ibb.co/icsDH6/1.png)
Inline Image:
https://preview.ibb.co/bwd9qR/1.pngWizd3m on 17/12/2017 at 13:59
This is super cool, and looks very well organized! I'm wondering if you'll be including links to various written reviews for FMs/Campaigns found on the web. I needed a good reason to get back into writing, and would love to support the project the best way I know how. No worries if that's not in the plan, I'm mostly just curious and excited that this is happening :D
Yandros on 17/12/2017 at 20:45
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
question
IMHO, the first option is better. A campaign is a release which happens to contain multiple missions, but is still one unit. Having separate pages for each of the 10 missions seems like overkill, especially when a few of those missions are just a series of in-game cutscenes. And also, the missions aren't in most cases available for individual download.
So I would say that one campaign page which lists the missions in the description is better.
EnYB0La on 18/12/2017 at 03:32
Quote Posted by Yandros
IMHO, the first option is better. A campaign is a release which happens to contain multiple missions, but is still one unit. Having separate pages for each of the 10 missions seems like overkill, especially when a few of those missions are just a series of in-game cutscenes. And also, the missions aren't in most cases available for individual download.
So I would say that one campaign page which lists the missions in the description is better.
Thanks Yandros. I was thinking the same...
Quote Posted by FenPhoenix
I'm currently only parsing .txt readmes, not .rtf ones, and
currently treating every FM as a single mission even if it's a campaign. I'll get that stuff in later.
So Fen, are you considering retrieving each campaign's Fan Mission as single ones? You could just create a counter that retrieve the number of FMs that contains a campaign. The description of each of them should be done manually. Or maybe is it possible to retrieve this information form the README file?
FenPhoenix on 18/12/2017 at 04:13
Quote Posted by EnYB0La
So Fen, are you considering retrieving each campaign's Fan Mission as single ones? You could just create a counter that retrieve the number of FMs that contains a campaign. The description of each of them should be done manually. Or maybe is it possible to retrieve this information form the README file?
Actually I was kind of waiting to see what you decided to do with campaigns before starting with detecting them. Detecting a campaign shouldn't be too hard, I can just see if there are multiple .mis files and then check titles.str to see if there are multiple non-stock mission names in there to be sure. Pulling individual descriptions from the readme is an iffier proposition, but I'll still give it a shot cause I'm game.
Even if I can't do it fully automatically, I may be able to make it quicker to copy-paste manually with maybe some auto-formatting help or something (cause a lot of descriptions have slightly wacky formatting that looks fine when displayed in DarkLoader but needs finagling when you want to paste it elsewhere, I know from pasting a lot of readme text into YouTube video descriptions :p)
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EDIT:
Inline Image:
http://fenphoenix.com/pics/2017-12-18-1.pngAll auto-detected. Never mind the NewDark column, it's not implemented yet. :p
For the game type, I'm detecting whether the .mis file was last modified
before September 25, 2012 (NewDark's release date), and if so, I detect using DarkLoader's method. If it's newer than that date, then I detect from the readme. Pretty accurate. Version is also detected from the readme, and the results are not bad considering. Blank languages are if there's no explicit language folders. I haven't got around to looking at that yet. Last Updated is currently only being pulled from the fm.ini file which precious few missions have, hence the mostly blank column.
