[projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
- From: David Kubečka <davidkubecka@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:11:09 +0100
2012/11/24 David Davis <feline1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> the combat sections are nice, but I would suggest a slight formatting
> change, as currently the font and size of the numbers for the enemies' CS
> and EP stats is the same as that for the section number.
> I would suggest maybe 2 point sizes down for the stats, and prefix them
> with "CS " and "EP " in each case. Just makes it immediately obvious what
> they mean.
>
Current implementation doesn't enable to have different font sizes inside
one node. Maybe in the future - for now there are more important things to
do like utilizing those new tags Simon and Jon added, and also visualizing
some interesting stats like shortest and longest path etc. Moreover, maybe
the smaller font would require zooming too much...
At one time I also considered printing CS and EP prefixes but eventually
decided that once you know that left number is always CS and right one is
always EP this information would be superfluous and would only take
additional space.
> (You will have fun indicating sections where stats change according to
> disciplines and items etc [image: Winking smile] )
>
I honestly don't know even how to extract this information from text (there
are no hints such as xml tags), let alone drawing it tidily around the
graph node.
>
> *From:* David Kubečka <kubecka.dav@xxxxxxxxx>
> *Sent:* Friday, November 23, 2012 7:53 PM
> *To:* projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* [projectaon] Re: Flowcharts
>
> 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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