[projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
- From: "David Davis" <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:44:28 -0000
I would say â put the legend on each flowchart (at the top) â thereâs plenty of
space, and it saves people having to go looking for it.
From: David KubeÄka
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2012 8:52 AM
To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
I have by mistake used my adress not subscribed to this mailing list. You
should still get my email because it appeared on a list archive.
Sorry for confusion (if any)...
David
2012/11/23 David KubeÄka <kubecka.dav@xxxxxxxxx>
And here is the promised flowchart...
2012/11/23 David KubeÄka <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 âAnKâ meant âAnimal Kinship required for this choiceâ ... 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 KubeÄka [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 KubeÄka
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
---------- PÅvodnà zprÃva ----------
Od: Jonathan Blake <jonathan.blake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Datum: 1. 11. 2012
PÅedmÄt: [projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 11:54 AM, David KubeÄka
<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
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