Help Files/Documentation

Lerad

Let the guildmaster edit their own Guildhelp files. That'll solve things on that front.

Rialorm

Lerad said:

Let the guildmaster edit their own Guildhelp files. That'll solve things on that front.

I think they should need admin approval before they go live though, before people go edit whatever they want into the help files and drag the standard down set by the other help files.

Enyalida

The HELP <guild> scrolls are pretty bland on the whole. Administrators can freely change the HELP GUILDNOVICES <guild> scrolls, and (for instance) some unknown previous administrator wrote one for the Hartstone that is amazing leaps and bounds past our HELP HARTSTONE file.

Llandros

I tried to get the help cacophony file changed some time ago. The list of instruments that bards can use isn't the most helpful use of space there. I assure you it requires admin approval and was quite the ordeal. Eventually it just fell by the wayside and never happened. 

Just request to have the new spec's added. Anything else will draw a whole host of complications.

Everiine

The Serenguard got theirs changed, but yes, it was a big long process.

Annick

HELP SKILLWEB DIAGRAM

Janalon

Overall, there is a lack of documentation on Demigod Powers-- especially Supernumerary and Ephemeral. Other than typing POWERS and the general HELP DEMIGOD, there is a real lack of any information whatsoever. I would love to know exactly how much XP you need to reactivate an Ephemeral power back into Supernumerary. Also consider that "HELP Ephemeral" brings you to the following information:

11.23 EPHEMERALS

Ephemerals are immortal servants of the Gods, charged with helping to assist the Elder Gods in maintaining and creating reality, as well as performing other functions, such as chronicling history in Lusternia.

Ieptix

Regarding the Enchantment stuff, I've put together a first draft of a help file for the different (base skill) enchantments under HELP ENCHANTMENT ITEMS (7.21.1). My plan right now is to do something similar for all of the trade skills over the next week or so.

Does the enchantment one that's up now have about the right level of detail for an overview of the different enchantments?

Xenthos

Janalon said:

Overall, there is a lack of documentation on Demigod Powers-- especially Supernumerary and Ephemeral. Other than typing POWERS and the general HELP DEMIGOD, there is a real lack of any information whatsoever. I would love to know exactly how much XP you need to reactivate an Ephemeral power back into Supernumerary. Also consider that "HELP Ephemeral" brings you to the following information:

11.23 EPHEMERALS

Ephemerals are immortal servants of the Gods, charged with helping to assist the Elder Gods in maintaining and creating reality, as well as performing other functions, such as chronicling history in Lusternia.

Activating an ephemeral power (making it supernumerary) is 10% of the "purchase price"; if a power costs 1,000,000 to buy, it will cost 100,000 to activate.  I actually like this, but yes, if it is not documented it definitely should be!

Neos

Think Eye sigil on the enchantment list should have the part about delaying Dreambody movement.

Ieptix

Neos said:

Think Eye sigil on the enchantment list should have the part about delaying Dreambody movement.

Fixed. Ab file updated as well, since I was pulling my info from there!

Shaddus

Some enchantments like Mercy can also be pointed.

Lavinya

Add in to help avatar somewhere somehow what commands you actually get! I had no idea some existed until someone told me to exalt aura one day. Not all things are inherently known.

Elanorwen

Lavinya said:

Add in to help avatar somewhere somehow what commands you actually get! I had no idea some existed until someone told me to exalt aura one day. Not all things are inherently known.

Interestingly, those show up on ORDER PRIVS. Not sure why, but eh... they do. I still say Avatar resurrect shouldn't be a demi power, but an order priv, too.

Vetala

Two things!

With access to the archives, can we maybe have more complete information with AB? For example..

Something like that?

It would be really helpful for telling newbies how to get the skills they need! Also, AB working for skills you don't currently have would be nice.

Reyl

I agree. Regarding showing the full list, I feel that we could maintain the RP of higher skills being secret the same way we pretend not to know everything else we shouldn't know - and that having that info OOC would probably help with player retention? While having to ask other players this kind of thing is good for interaction, people are using the wiki anyway... why not bring the wiki's utility to the game's ab files, and give us all one less reason to alt tab and break immersion/afk?

Lavinya

Not to mention, the wiki is terribly out of date, missing skills and skills are listed at the wrong learning level. Having this would mean one less thing to maintain, one less place for people to have to look for information (why should we ever have to look outside for any information relating to the game??), and it will always be up to date. So much win!

Everiine

It doesn't help that the wiki can't be edited by the public, meaning updates can be slow in coming.

Rivius

One thing I was thinking, in regards to the AB discussion, is letting guild tutors also give AB information on skills you haven't selected yet. It is very, very common for novices to ask me "Which should I choose? Moon, Stag or Tracking?" and ultimately, as much as you can try to talk about it, you'll never really be able to give them as clear a picture of a skillset as the ABs can. We tried to get around that by continuously copying ABs into library books, but as ABs are updated or new skills are added, it can become extra work for us to do.

Perhaps overhaul the ASK TUTOR SKILLSET command to show ABs in this manner for skillsets you do not have, and have AB SKILLSET display as Vetala said. 

I think it's a highly worthwhile investment.

Rialorm

Could we just have the ability to consult the AB files for everything regardless of skills? Or if that is too much, at least all the trade ABs? I'm learning about all the poisons and it would for example be handy to be able to quickly do AB <poison> when I forget what one does again.

Xenthos

Rialorm said:

Could we just have the ability to consult the AB files for everything regardless of skills? Or if that is too much, at least all the trade ABs? I'm learning about all the poisons and it would for example be handy to be able to quickly do AB <poison> when I forget what one does again.

While in general this is a good idea, specifically Glomdoring (and the Ebonguard) have poison help scrolls for easy consultation. It is how we got around that issue.

Glomdoring also has a similar one for enchantments, because it is pretty essential for novices (and laid out in a better fashion than ABs too). That one in particular might actually be beneficial for everyone to have access to, if it was made an official help file. Enchantments can be quite complicated with Elemental / Cosmic / Tinkering breakdowns.

Rialorm

Xenthos said:

Could we just have the ability to consult the AB files for everything regardless of skills? Or if that is too much, at least all the trade ABs? I'm learning about all the poisons and it would for example be handy to be able to quickly do AB <poison> when I forget what one does again.

While in general this is a good idea, specifically Glomdoring (and the Ebonguard) have poison help scrolls for easy consultation. It is how we got around that issue. Glomdoring also has a similar one for enchantments, because it is pretty essential for novices (and laid out in a better fashion than ABs too). That one in particular might actually be beneficial for everyone to have access to, if it was made an official help file. Enchantments can be quite complicated with Elemental / Cosmic / Tinkering breakdowns.

Oh, we also have those in the Nekotai, it was just an example. Thing is again that if these are player-made helpfiles, they have to be kept up to date. And while that is kinda my job, I'd rather maintain other guild help files :P

Neos

We just need to steal how Aetolia does skillset displaying.

Enyalida

Speaking of the wiki, there is an upgrade to wiki software and a possible move towards more of a true wiki. 

Reyl

Ssaliss said:

Not sure if it's in the scope of this, but an update/rewrite of the documentations for the IRE API and GMCP would be nice for us coder folks.

Seconding this so hard. All I have to go by is the documentation at http://www.ironrealms.com/gmcp-doc which is outdated/incomplete. Specifically, there are attributes that aren't mentioned that I'm desperately trying to figure out, namely 't', 'e'. Also looking up gmcp.Char.Skills.List isn't working properly anymore and I have no idea why - has the format of the table changed? I know a few things have been added/removed/changes, but I can only even begin to work out what by going through forum posts and change logs. This is why we need help files ;-;

Elanorwen

Reyl said:

Ssaliss said:

Not sure if it's in the scope of this, but an update/rewrite of the documentations for the IRE API and GMCP would be nice for us coder folks.

Seconding this so hard. All I have to go by is the documentation at http://www.ironrealms.com/gmcp-doc which is outdated/incomplete. Specifically, there are attributes that aren't mentioned that I'm desperately trying to figure out, namely 't', 'e'. Also looking up gmcp.Char.Skills.List isn't working properly anymore and I have no idea why - has the format of the table changed? I know a few things have been added/removed/changes, but I can only even begin to work out what by going through forum posts and change logs. This is why we need help files ;-;

People use gmcp.Char.Skills? Not sure what for. I mean, sure... if you have a system that goes off it to pick up if you're low/high magic and find out available uses of green/tipheret/etc, that's all fine and dandy... but beyond that, I see no use for it. That said.... run a simple alias in mudlet to display(gmcp.Char.Skills) and you can quite easily find out if there have been any changes to it. I have written several scripts that use gmcp info without even once looking at the documentation, as I find it much easier to just look at display(gmcp.x) and get structure from there. I have no idea where these 't' and 'e' variables are, personally. If you can point where you're seeing those, perhaps we can try and brainstorm it ourselves.

Rialorm

@Elanorwen: Influence skill detection, to see what attacks are available per character. I actually want to put that into the basher at some point.

Ssaliss

When it comes to the skills, if the package is activated, the groups are automatically fetched on login and comes like this: Char.Skills.Groups [ { "name": "Combat", "rank": "Expert" }, { "name": "Lorecraft", "rank": "Transcendent" } ]

You can then get a specific list of skills by using

Char.Skills.Get { "group": "Lorecraft" }

The list received by that looks like this:

Char.Skills.List { "group": "lorecraft", "list": [ "Fire", "Jasmine", "Frost", "Invisibility", "Vanilla", "Galvanism", "Sanguine", "DragonsBlood", "Preservation", "Choleric", "Sandalwood", "Phlegmatic", "Melancholic", "Musk", "Sharpness", "Constructs", "Vitae", "PhilosopherStone" ] }

I think you can get an even more detailed list by some method, but I've never really played around with that.

As for the flags, "t" likely means "takeable", i.e. you can pick it up during normal circumstances (obviously, some things might still prevent you from picking it up, like flame sigils etc.) I can't recall having seen "e", but I'm sure we could figure it out if we put our heads together.

Neos

I use gmcp.Char.Skills to determine what bashing/combat skill for my attack alias to use and along with a few other stuff. Iosai or Ieptix or maybe Roark once outlined what all the various item flags were, but I didn't save and forgot them and my memory is failing me.

Elanorwen

Ssaliss said:

As for the flags, "t" likely means "takeable", i.e. you can pick it up during normal circumstances (obviously, some things might still prevent you from picking it up, like flame sigils etc.) I can't recall having seen "e", but I'm sure we could figure it out if we put our heads together.

Oh, it's on items? Well, where I've seen the e flag has been on herbs and such on the ground. That might certainly mean... edible. I could, of course, be wrong.

@Rialorm - How many times are you going to set that? Isn't it easier to have a variable holding the highest skill and a list that contains all the skills to cycle through and decides what to use based on highest? I mean if you're loading the influence skillset every time you are loading your script, that's already overdoing it when it can be 'cached' in that fashion.

EDIT: Yeap, e seems to definitely stand for edible.

 Remove = {
        location = "inv",
        item = {
          id = "157840",
          name = "a platter of chicken, rice and salad",
          attrib = "et"
        }
      },
      Update = {
        location = "inv",
        item = {
          id = "158429",
          name = "kombu seaweed",
          attrib = "egt"
        }
      },
Remove = {
        location = "inv",
        item = {
          id = "censored",
          name = "a moldy length of a tibia",
          attrib = "t"
        }
      },