WML Guide: feedback requested

[beetlenaut]

I made this campaign to teach WML to some students, so it's very simple. There are also lots of comments to explain the WML. In fact, there are more lines of comments than actual code! Apparently, "A Simple Campaign" is not being maintained any more, so this can serve as a replacement.

I bet some comments could be stated better, and there may be an inaccuracy or two, though I hope not. Anyway, I expect to upload it a few more times soon based on feedback. (I'm open to suggestions of a better name, too.) Look for "WML Guide" on the add-ons server.

[gfgtdf]

I'm not really able to see this from a newcomers perspective anymore, so i cannot give you specific feedback but i somehow remember 'A Simple Campaign' and i remember that my first impression i got when downloading that one was that it was not easy at all since it tried to explain too much, in particular its directory structure (which is the first thing you see when trying to inspect it) was quite scary since it contained like 10 subfolders, more than any other campaign i downloaded at that point. Hope this post was somehow helpful.

[beetlenaut]

Hope this post was somehow helpful.

Sure! I did two things: cut the number of folders in half, and put a note at the top of each .cfg file saying that you don't have to read the comments unless you run into problems. Hopefully that makes it less scary.

[enclave]

Ok... the only thing I wanted to mention is that I downloaded it, I played it, I won it.. was expecting some popup messages along game of how something is created.. but they never appeared

1) People will download it without reading the title or without proper understanding of the title of the campaign.. then after 2 simple scenarios they will be like: "what?"
2) People who download it and understand the title will be waiting for popup messages like me, or not like me.. but at least one popup message in the beginning like "where the hell can I find that explanation of every line of code for this campaign??" it seems that currently you expect a total newbie to easily figure out where the explanation is (where this WML code is written/stored, what folder??), but it's either I'm stupid and I didn't find it among popup messages as I'm a bit sleepy after working 12 hrs night shift and I could just miss it.. or you never thought of creating a popup message with folder location of code for linux, mac, windows etc.. (yes i think it's necessary because otherwise it's not a WML guide.. it's something else, because as a total newbie I would not get any guide at all as I would never find it).
3) For newbies you could even specify in the comment to the add-on where to look for this campaign.. (like.. "open wesnoth, click "Campaigns" scroll to the end of them and there you will find it after you installed it"). As a person who does not play single player it might not been so straightforward as it seems.
4) I can't comment more on this currently.. as for 2 reasons:
a) it's time for me to do something else..
b) as a person who never developed any single player campaign I don't have idea if it's located in same folder with multiplayer add-ons or somewhere else.. if it's somewhere else then I'm too lazy to look for it.. will be waiting for author to specify it somewhere... some day.
I didn't try to sound harsh or anything.. I was really trying to help.

[beetlenaut]

This is not intended for total newbies to Wesnoth where I have to explain how to download an add-on, etc. I don't think people generally try to code their own campaigns until they have downloaded a couple already, and they don't usually do that until they have played at least a couple mainline campaigns. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like a safe assumption.

This is the kind of feedback I needed though, because it didn't occur to me that people would play the campaign looking for the explanation of the code. I guess I thought that it was obvious that the explanation of the code was in the code. Apparently not! I suppose a message about how to find your add-on folder (on every system) would be appropriate.

The problem I have now is that I was trying to keep the code very simple. Coding a popup about where the code is and then explaining that popup about the code in the code is a little unwieldy. Maybe unavoidable though. I'll have to think a little about exactly how to do it.

EDIT: I changed the add-on and campaign descriptions a lot. Maybe that will be enough. You can tell me what you think.

[enclave]

I think advanced description of add-on should be enough too, I will have a closer look later and report

[ghype]

So I just download it since I am currently working on campaigns myself and are pretty much new to most intermediate and advanced WML stuff.
I had not time looking at it, but will do so soon enough.

A question ahead though. How much different to "A Simple Campaign" could your WML Guide be?

[beetlenaut]

Two things: It's smaller and less complicated than ASC was, and there are more lines of explanatory notes than actual code. I don't know how much you will get out of it since it's geared more for beginners, but thanks in advance for taking a look!

[EarthCake]

Great guide!

I would only suggest that you add a server.txt file in which you would explain the players / coders how to publish their work.

[beetlenaut]

I would only suggest that you add a server.txt file in which you would explain the players / coders how to publish their work.

The _server.pbl file is not included in a downloaded add-on, so I included a file I called _server_copy.pbl. Is that not what you are talking about? Or are you suggesting that I change its name?

[EarthCake]

It somehow seems to not show. Here is how my WML Guide folder looks:

[josteph]

There's no _server_copy.pbl file in the addon:

Code: Select all

WML_Guide/
WML_Guide/COPYING.txt
WML_Guide/maps/
WML_Guide/maps/01_Darth_Syntax.map
WML_Guide/maps/02_Big_Bug.map
WML_Guide/_info.cfg
WML_Guide/scenarios/
WML_Guide/scenarios/01_Darth_Syntax.cfg
WML_Guide/scenarios/02_Big_Bug.cfg
WML_Guide/units/
WML_Guide/units/Ant.cfg
WML_Guide/_main.cfg
WML_Guide/images/
WML_Guide/images/fangs-ant.png
WML_Guide/images/map.png
WML_Guide/images/campaign_image.png
WML_Guide/images/ant.png
WML_Guide/images/ant-attack.png
WML_Guide/images/ant-defend.png
WML_Guide/images/giant_ant.png

[gnombat]

According to https://wiki.wesnoth.org/IGNFileFormat#Default_values any file matching the pattern *.pbl will be ignored.

[beetlenaut]

any file matching the pattern *.pbl will be ignored.

I didn't know about that. I renamed the example .pbl file to _server.pbl.copy. That seems to work.

[gnombat]

I'm getting this error in the log for the second scenario:

Code: Select all

error display: could not open image 'misc/time-schedules/default/schedule-indoors.png'