[projectaon] Re: Flowcharts

  • From: David Kubečka <kubecka.dav@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:53:40 +0100

And here is the promised flowchart...


2012/11/23 David Kubečka <kubecka.dav@xxxxxxxxx>

> Hello to all after a longer break...
>
>
> 2012/11/17 David Davis <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>>   On a more general note to all the specifics below -
>> would it be possible to add a Key to the flowcharts, just to explain the
>> colour coding and abbreviations?
>> I admit in only took my brain about 25 seconds to work out that, for
>> instance, a green "AnK" meant "Animal Kinship required for this choice" ...
>> but it is good practice to not even make me have to think for 25 seconds ;)
>>
>>
> I have responded to Simon's similar note in my previous email but
> apparently it got overlooked because of bad formatting done by my email
> client. So once again: "Yeah, I definitely plan to make a legend somewhere.
> I still don't know where to put it exactly. Separate legend for each book
> or single centralized one? Any thoughts?
> Also the abbreviations are not settled yet.."
> For now I recognize three types of conditions in my flowchart: green ones
> which mean some discpline is required, brown indicating you have to reach
> certain level of Kai ranking and blue meaning some Special item is
> required.
> If some discpline is required as well as Kai rank it is printed in gree.
> So "Div and 7+" in green means "If you have the Magnakai Discipline of
> Divination and have reached the rank of Primate or higher...". Also there
> is whole name of an item printed in blue in a node where you get this item.
>
> A now to what others said before... I am quite amazed how quickly Simon
> and Jon responded to my issues and added proposed xml tags. That will
> enable me to finally solve those sections with riddles. Just a small note
> here:
> if in "puzzle" element we have to have "idrefs" attribute for sections
> linked to more answers I would use it even in the case of one answer
> instead of "idref". That's just cleaner design which will simplify my code
> little bit as well as make others much happier :-)
>
> I agree to all but one Simon's suggested changes concerning issues I
> originally reported. In partcilular I would pick
> > (er) 14tcok 276: mark it on your Action Chart as a Special Item which you
> > carry in your tunic pocket -> mark it on your Action Chart as a Backpack
> > Item [so: Keys are always Backpack Items. Credit David Kubečka [DK] ]
> instead of what Jon later suggested because, as I said before, the problem
> with this is that you can take Green key once as Special item and once as
> Backpack item. Moreover it isn't specified in the list of Special item's
> you can bring to the next adventure so Simon's solution is really only
> possible one.
>
> The issue I have changed my mind about is that concerning Sabito (or Vial
> of Blue Pills). I quote here my original post which was quite hard to look
> at :-)
> "I think things are more complicated here. You can get some Sabito under
> the
> name 'Vial of Blue Pills' also in book no.7 section 227. In fact
> situations
> in 7/227 and 9/155 are almost the same: you find some items one of which
> is
> mysterious Vial of Blue Pills. If you have Healing you can 'identify the
> nature of the Blue Pills', but even if you don't you can still take it and
> later use it without knowing exactly about its effects. That is quite
> strange and moreover inconsistent with one similar situation I can think
> of,
> namely in 3/10 when you can examine several liquids but you cannot take
> them
> unless you identify their effects.
> Therefore I think it should be the same case here. You find Vial of Blue
> Pills but only when you have Healing you can take it as a dose of Sabito.
> By
> that name it should also be referred in choices, i.e. 'If you have a Vial
> of
> Blue Pills' -> 'If you have some Sabito'. That would also be consistent
> with
> later books which speak exclusively about Sabito."
>
> So that's all I have to say about what happened here previously (unless I
> have forgotten something :-) ). Meanwhile I have finally added combat nodes
> to my flowcharts. I have tried to handle nodes with more enemies nicely.
> You can see the result in an attachment, this time of book no.2 where there
> are up to 6 enemies in one section.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
>   *From:* David Kubečka <davidkubecka@xxxxxxxxx>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:15 PM
>> *To:* projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> *Subject:* [projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> thanks for your reactions. I am sending another picture, this time from
>> book no.3, where you can see more clearly how the sections where certain
>> items are obtained are highlighted. Also, where the choice is dependent on
>> possesion of an item it is there attached in an abbreviated form to the
>> corresponding edge.
>> I have of course seen your own flowcharts but I think the method you use
>> to generate them (XSLT) doesn't scale. For instance what you can see on the
>> attached picture would be quite difficult to do with XSLT, at least I don't
>> know how to do it (but then I am no expert in that matter). Also any book
>> which has riddles in it leads into disconnected components (as you can see
>> with book no.5) because there is no choice explicitly mentioned in the
>> section with riddle.
>>
>> This leads me to the first issue out of several which I have found when
>> digging the information out of the XML source files.
>> 1) There is some inconsistency about what XML tag is used for 'death
>> paragraphs' - places in sections where Lone Wolf dies. Sometimes it is tag
>> <p> and sometimes <choice>. Morever above mentioned sections with riddles
>> usually (but not always) also use <choice> tag. That makes handling these
>> exceptional sections quite hard to handle authomatically. I therefore
>> suggest that there would be separate tag for each of these cases and its
>> usage would be consistent throughout all books. Namely: <p> for normal
>> text, <choice> only for text which references another section, <death> only
>> for LW's deaths and <riddle> for various riddles, locks etc. The HTML form
>> of the last three tags could be the same as it is now. That would make the
>> whole design slightly cleaner as well as help me (or anyone else) parsing
>> the source files.
>>
>> That was the issue which causes me most problems during my work. Others
>> are not so serious and some of them can be solved quite easily.
>> 2) In book 9 you can find Vial of Blue Pills and if you examine it
>> closely the text on section 29 tells you "Record both doses of Sabito on
>> your <a idref="action">Action Chart</a> as a single Backpack Item." But
>> later on you are asked "If you have a Vial of Blue Pills, ...". I think
>> this could be unified to mention Vial of Blue Pills on sect.29 as well.
>> 3) On 11/146 LW can take Baylon<ch.apos/>s Bough Fungi but on 13/16 he is
>> asked if he possesses Baylon<ch.apos/>s Fungi. Could that be unified as
>> well?
>> 4) 14/329 mentions Statue of Sl<ch.ucirc/>tar wheras evrywhere else it is
>> referred to as Statuette of Sl<ch.ucirc/>tar.
>> 5) Choice on 15/109 is conditioned by having a Green Key and only Green
>> Key which LW can ever get is in two places in book 14. On sect.76 it is a
>> backpack item and on sect.276 it is a special item. Moreover on 15/304 you
>> are told "Quickly you take it [the key] from your Backpack,...". I doubt
>> that those two keys in book 14 aren't the same items. Moreover I suspect
>> the author have forgotten to let LW obtain the Green Key somewhere in book
>> 15 because it seems highly improbable that one key could be used on so much
>> geographically distant places.
>> 6) On 18/277 LW finds "Pouch containing 2 Potions of Laumspur" but it is
>> not mentioned what are its effects on Endurance Points which is otherwise
>> always the case.
>>
>> I hope someone will go through these issues and assist me with their
>> solution.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> ---------- Původní zpráva ----------
>> Od: Jonathan Blake <jonathan.blake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Datum: 1. 11. 2012
>> Předmět: [projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 11:54 AM, David Kubečka <davidkubecka@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > few years ago I have sent to a Project Aon mailing list (not this one)
>> few
>> > examples of my work on graphs showing possible paths through a Lone Wolf
>> > gamebook (flowcharts). I have abandoned this project at that time but
>> now I
>> > have returned to it and rewritten it in (I hope) a more readable and
>> > scalable way. You can find an example of current state of art graph in
>> the
>> > attachment. It currently shows which disciplines and/or items you must
>> have
>> > in order to take particular choice. It is by no means definitive version
>> > (missing 'combat nodes') and I have a few more ideas what else to
>> include in
>> > the graph (shortest path through a book, more items etc.).
>> >
>> > If you like my work I would be happy if you could some day publish it on
>> > Project Aon website. I would also like if you suggested to me any
>> > improvements or corrections. For those interested in the source code
>> you can
>> > find it on Github https://github.com/kejv/lw_flowchart.
>> >
>> > I'm looking forward to your repli es.
>>
>> Hey David. Great work! I'm assuming you've already seen our official
>> versions.
>>
>> http://www.projectaon.org/en/svg/lw/01fftd.svgz
>>
>> I'd love to see these improved with some of your ideas like shortest
>> path and required items.
>>
>> --
>> Jon
>>
>> ~~~~~~
>> Manage your subscription at http://www.freelists.org/list/projectaon
>>
>> =
>>
>
>

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