Cooperative Plot Creation Project

[novacadian]

Thanks for taking things out for a test drive, derula.

Can't remove characters

It is on the TODO List.

- No option to view all characters

Its is on the TODO List

Edit 121310: The Character Full Listing menu option has been installed to logged in members.

- No option for character gender

Edit 111010 : Character Gender is now installed.

Great idea and totally overlooked in our planning thread. Also overlooked the Kran Race until Lilura tried a submission.  

Edit 102610 : Probably will get implemented with the additional fields being discussed below for the Character Types field.

- No option for "follows no god" (as has been discussed is different from atheist)

Another great idea.

- Line breaks in descriptions aren't converted to HTML linebreaks

There is an 800 character limit on that field and it is pretty much an 800 character string which is being entered raw at the moment. Another reason for keeping it key only club for the moment.  

Edit 112610: Line breaks now converted to HTML line breaks during Character Edit saves. This will be changed to adding them only temporarily during Character Display.

- Description field contains a tab character by default

In the bug/features list.  

Edit 110710: Tab removed.

- Search result are ordered by ID instead of name (an "ORDER BY `name`" or something should do)

Edit 110710: Searches now ordered by name. A choice will be given for preference of display once the list can be keyed on activity of character as well as name.

The plan is to feed a field, called "When Last Seen On PS", at 10 minute intervals; scraping the online character listing for the data. Once that field is being fed then the search will be ordered on the "When Last Seen On PS" from recent to most inactive. Full character listings should be made available at that time.

Edit 121310: The Character Full Listing menu option has been installed to logged in members.

- All "home" links lead away from the site to the main blog. In order to get back to the welcome page, you need to manually edit the address.

Interesting point. Will try to address that.

Edit : As the players of my character's guild, as have the players of our allie guilds, have been very helpful in trying things out; the home links of the main page of the project now point to my character's guild.
 
Edit : Home links throughout the site are now directed to my   character's guild

Again, thanks for your participation!

- Nova

[derula]

There is an 800 character limit on that field and it is pretty much an 800 character string which is being entered raw at the moment. Another reason for keeping it key only club for the moment.  

What about keeping that "raw" string limited to 800 characters in the database and insert line breaks on page display? Alternately, i.e. if you're lazy, simply add a style="white-space:pre-wrap" to the <p> element that contains the description...

online character listing

Thanks for linking to that. I wouldn't have found it on my own

No, seriously: thanks for considering to use it. And for your purpose it should fit well, too. Just remember (or, hear for the first time): if the server is offline, this file will say "Server unreachable." (excluding quotation marks).


Edit: ...waaait a second. Username and password is transmitted in clear text GET requests for every page? Are you serious? Inb4 someone posts a link of a db search with his user name and password appended and someone edits his characters.

[Sangwa]

Nova, we shouldn't have a registration required. I believe it should take entries from the already existing [A Post for RPers to find RPers].

The registration is there to have some control against more malicious uses of the site. The software has ip blocking as well as unique ip and email checking available. At the moment the unique ip blocking is turned off. Do not underestimate the determination of spammers and disgruntled players.

Scraping the data from the  [A Post for RPers to find RPers] thread is on the TODO List. It should be implemented during the set up of the scrape of the online character listing. The plan is to import the data; assigning it to a reserved name player like admin. Should another player, at some future date, happen along and try to submit the same named character; then the older entry would be deleted as the new entry is added to the database.

We can link the HOWTO from the opening page for public consumption. A public search has its pros and cons. Right now it seems more weighted towards the cons in my thinking.

- Nov

You see, my idea was that there would be no other way of adding characters to the list... So, you'd have to already be spamming PlaneShift's forum in order to spam the page. So in my scenario, all entries would be applied by the "scraping admin."

[novacadian]

What about keeping that "raw" string limited to 800 characters in the database and insert line breaks on page display? Alternately, i.e. if you're lazy, simply add a style="white-space:pre-wrap" to the <p> element that contains the description...

Thanks for that.

Edit: ...waaait a second. Username and password is transmitted in clear text GET requests for every page? Are you serious? Inb4 someone posts a link of a db search with his user name and password appended and someone edits his characters.

Recommend not posting links at this time.

Edit 112610: TODO - Hide url embedded variables. 

You see, my idea was that there would be no other way of adding characters to the list... So, you'd have to already be spamming PlaneShift's forum in order to spam the page. So in my scenario, all entries would be applied by the "scraping admin."

Perhaps the thread and the Project may each have their own uniqueness of browsing. Perhaps, it may be better to just wait until we see how things play out and offer players the choice of what. which, or both styles of participation that they desire?

The more thinking about the plot generator has begun to intrigued me more. Yet something that actually generates as opposed to fortune cookie message plots. Something putting dynamic descriptions together, It could be a fun project with a lot of unexpected plots that may come along. You know what they say about the room full of monkeys typing?  Maybe it took more monkeys than that.  

- Nova
 

[weltall]

changing to post is quite easy to do you just have to change get to post

[Sangwa]

Actually, if it's done the way you're thinking it will cover what I want anyway: the utilization of the already existing thread. So... That's solved, sorry for not realizing it earlier .
Still, public search should be made available. I don't think it has any cons: you can see what players are playing with the already existing tools, and it doesn't hurt anyone that their character's descriptions is shared with others (as long as you don't make a description your char's biography...)

The plot generator would have to be made with very generic stuff, and then players would have to shape things up afterwards. I didn't like the "Thief stole grimoire" thing I got on the example...

[novacadian]

It just feels comfortable, at this stage, to have validation in place. The public search is planned for the ability to list from most active to least. This cannot be accomplished until the scrape, mentioned above, is employing the online character listing.

One thing that may be nice is to expand known settings as much as possible through the eyes of the records retrieved; by linking their data to such things as the race which is returned. Could do the same with a lot of the fields.

Edit 102610 : The character display now links the race name to the PS Wiki of that race.

Edit 102610 : Religion field display is now linked to the respective god wiki page.

- Nova

Edit: Forgot to mention the idea of adding a feature whereby characters can be flagged as knowing another character. Much like the friends system of Facebook. Might that be beneficial in weaving plots?

[Ruya]

Two quick things:

1) Lemur is missing from the list of races. 
2) Can the "Character Description" field be substituted with something... well, useful?   My impression from when BoT members were talking about it in guild chat was that section would be for character information, like "So-and-so is a preachy _____" or "So-and-so is a merchant who sells _____".   Having the actual descriptions is pretty useless as a plotting tool, IMO.   Could it perhaps be substituted with "Commonly Known Information"?   

[novacadian]

1) Lemur is missing from the list of races.  

Fixed. Let me know if any other Lemur problems should appear. Thanks!

2) Can the "Character Description" field be substituted with something... well, useful?   My impression from when BoT members were talking about it in guild chat was that section would be for character information, like "So-and-so is a preachy _____" or "So-and-so is a merchant who sells _____".   Having the actual descriptions is pretty useless as a plotting tool, IMO.   Could it perhaps be substituted with "Commonly Known Information"?  

That seems like a fine distinction and shall be made so.

Edit: 102610 Users will now find Commonly Known Information where the Description field had been previously. The disclaimer [ Information on characters refers to what is generally known about them. ] has, also, been added. The same change has been made in the character display as well with the disclaimer [ When roleplaying, do not use any of this information, unless your character has acquired it itself. ].

Edit: 102610 Have been experimenting with placing HTML in the Description field. Check out Venorel's display.

Edit: 102610 So far have added links to the forum of RPs Venorel seems to be involved in. Also added her online/offline tag from psstatus.uglyhorst.de. The latter might be nice to automatically appear in the search listing results.

- Nova

Edit: 102610 Now both Edit and View option exist in the Your Character Listing. You can, now, edit and flip back to see what the record looks like displayed from a search.

[derula]

Edit: Forgot to mention the idea of adding a feature whereby characters can be flagged as knowing another character. Much like the friends system of Facebook. Might that be beneficial in weaving plots?

That's basically what I was meant when I asked if you could add "social networking like" features.

[LigH]

changing to post is quite easy to do you just have to change get to post

Basically... but please note that some browsers really require enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" when using method="post" in HTML forms (e.g. WebKit based browsers like Safari and Chrome), they don't work reliably with enctype="text/html".

[Sangwa]

Yeah, I was going to say that too LigH.

I have also some stuff to add:

 1) There should be a disclaimer when searching. This disclaimer should say something along the lines of "Information on characters refers to what is generally known about them. When roleplaying, do not use any of this information, unless your character has acquired it itself."
Why... Because it'd help with keeping people focused.

 2) Also, I'd change the "character" types to this:

• Rogue;
• Ranger;
• Fighter;
• Caster;
• Social;
• Merchant;
• Laborer;
• Crafter;
• Entertainer;
• All Around.

Why? Ranger account for sneaky, agility based characters that actually don't go around stealing, they just scout and stuff. Social type characters are characters with representation functions, like recruiters, diplomats, preachers, event planners, etc. Entertainers are an obvious call. All Around type accounts for the characters with plenty of areas, like more than 2 or 3 of the above. Dudes, it's the system we have.
 
3) I'd add a section called "Demeanor" and make it include fields along the lines of: "Passive, Aggressive, Kind, Protective, Witty, Moody, Criminal, Selfish, Undisclosed (For those who don't wish to share it / despise the utility of the function.)
Why!? Because, as far as I'm concerned at least, it would be a great help with choosing which chars to include for my plot. I may need a passive rogue, or an aggressive caster or one of those Undisclosed Rangers which act like a wildcard. It makes choosing a whole lot easier, since you don't have to read each mage's description until you find one with a mindset of your liking.

[novacadian]

@derula : Glad we are on the same page about the character social network. My bad.  

@LigH : Thanks for the heads' up. Safari has made a brief introduction with me already.  

1) There should be a disclaimer when searching. This disclaimer should say something along the lines of "Information on characters refers to what is generally known about them. When roleplaying, do not use any of this information, unless your character has acquired it itself."
Why... Because it'd help with keeping people focused.

Done with some edit trimming of the actual text. Please let me know if you think it is not enough.

2) Also, I'd change the "character" types to this:

• Rogue;
• Ranger;
• Fighter;
• Caster;
• Social;
• Merchant;
• Laborer;
• Crafter;
• Entertainer;
• All Around.

Fine additions. Let's let this idea stew and arrive at a consensus and then make changes in one swoop. There are a couple of other fields in the line up as well.

Edit 102710: Also 'LastSeenOnPS', 'gender' (Lilura will finally have kra's dating site), all variables needed to patch into an old D&D script to pass back a battle description and any PS stats, skills or inventory which the script may require for combat decision making.

Edit 111010: The following fields have been added to the character schema:
 -  lastps   : Last Seen On Ps      
 -  gender  
 -  ranger
 -  representative
 -  entertainer
 -  strength
 -  agility
 -  hitpts : Hit Points
 -  psarmour : PS Armour Type. ie. LA, MA or HA
 -  weapon1
 -  weapon2

Edit 111110:  gender, ranger, representative and entertainer fields are now fully functional.

Edit 111110: strength, agility and hit points fields have been fully integrated.

3) I'd add a section called "Demeanor" and make it include fields along the lines of: "Passive, Aggressive, Kind, Protective, Witty, Moody, Criminal, Selfish, Undisclosed (For those who don't wish to share it / despise the utility of the function.)

Interesting idea. Name them Traits perhaps?

- Nova

Edit 102610: There has been discussion of expanding the schema to handle dice rolled RP combat by employing the /dice command of the client with modifiers for rolls supplied through a web tool. The web tool could calculate the modifiers with information given; yet not displayed in search results. Both contestants could see the modifiers. This would be only be after each user had excepted the challenge through the site; in simular fashion as would happen in the PvP steps of challenge on PS.

Edit 102610: Thiinking further this could be the beginnings of the Calendar feature discussed on channels. Could have location, preferred time and choice of weapons. We could even allow the option for an auto email notification if the user has that feature toggled ON. Also could choose to have it announced or not in the Duel Announcements; to ensure the right ears have been greased; or made to overhear it. Of course a more private setting could be chosen.

[Sangwa]

Name it whatever you like. Also, maybe Scholar would be a good class as well. I think that way we have everything (or almost everything) covered.

[Sangwa]

Double post to say that the "Black Flame" options for religion isn't a smart idea... It's better (for everyone) if we don't know who is a black flamer or not: one because they should be secret, two because they should be secret.

I'm of the opinion that it'd be best to lose the plots these Black Flame people would do if they found each other, than to lose the fun of it being ultra secret.