Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

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CoveredInFish
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by CoveredInFish »

Thanks for the notice. I wanted to change it to english but broke it instead :oops:

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wolph42
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by wolph42 »

I've added macros and form (your turorial) but it seems to be under the wrong header. As I don't know what it is you exactly want where I leave this up to you. Also the chat and dice commands were removed (or lost) which I added earlier, I re-added them, or is this somehting you don't want there??

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CoveredInFish
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by CoveredInFish »

The document outline is by gamerdude. I'm not especialy bonded with it -- some sections I dont even know whats exactly meant -- but its as good a start as anything. And he seems to have reasonable experience.

As for chat/dice command - I didnt remove anything (at least not knowingly), glad about any content :-D - dunno yet what happened.

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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by Gamerdude »

Azhrei wrote:Isn't that a Chinese curse? "May you live in interesting times..."

But congratulations on the new direction in your life -- it sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun with it!
I was always hoping you'd have some people volunteer to share the load with you. I guess that's now more of a "need" than a "want". :)
Thanks for your efforts so far! :)
Thanks Azhrei and everyone. I just skimmed through the thread and I'm very happy to see people get excited!
Just an update on me... I've already been assigned five different items, a few editing one writing and of course the OP program.

I'll keep an eye out on the forum see how things are going and when I can do some contributing.
Again thanks all and good luck!
Al B. USAF RET.
*Chief Organizer and Bottle Washer - 'User Creations' Forum*

MT Framework Directory **LISTING** (UPDT 2012-02-10)

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by jfrazierjr »

One thing that I believe should be made very clear (based on some recent posts with the issue) is that drawings, once added, are never remove from the map. It's a technical thing, but when you "erase" from the map, the original drawn image is still there, it's just a new shape is "cut" into it to allow you to view through it. This is VERY important for memory/file size issues. ie, don't just draw a bunch of crap on a map and remove it if you expect to keep using that same map.

Perhaps Azhrei or Dorpond can come up with a better way to say the above than I can think of at the moment.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by Azinctus »

jfrazierjr wrote:One thing that I believe should be made very clear (based on some recent posts with the issue) is that drawings, once added, are never remove from the map. It's a technical thing, but when you "erase" from the map, the original drawn image is still there, it's just a new shape is "cut" into it to allow you to view through it. This is VERY important for memory/file size issues. ie, don't just draw a bunch of crap on a map and remove it if you expect to keep using that same map.
Ha! Good call. That explains why my village map never gets any smaller or faster no matter how much drawing I "delete."

I was going to add that to the docs, but I find that the drawing section has no content yet. So instead I've copied the Wiki sections on creating maps into sections 4 and 4.1 of the Google doc.

I ran into a problem with the Heading style option. And I wasn't the first ;-). I have gone through the document and cleaned up the headings so that the contents can be safely updated without random text being added.

When you are adding text be sure to only use Heading 1-6 on properly numbered sections that ought to appear in the contents.

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by jfrazierjr »

Azinctus wrote:
jfrazierjr wrote:One thing that I believe should be made very clear (based on some recent posts with the issue) is that drawings, once added, are never remove from the map. It's a technical thing, but when you "erase" from the map, the original drawn image is still there, it's just a new shape is "cut" into it to allow you to view through it. This is VERY important for memory/file size issues. ie, don't just draw a bunch of crap on a map and remove it if you expect to keep using that same map.
Ha! Good call. That explains why my village map never gets any smaller or faster no matter how much drawing I "delete."
Yep... you can quickly "draw" yourself into some horrible performance issues. I wonder how hard it would be to check to see if a drawing area was empty and if so remove it from the list (which when saved will reduce the file size). This would be something for Craig or Azhrei I would guess.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

Azinctus
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by Azinctus »

Well I've started writing the drawing tools section. And I have to say I didn't realize how hard that would be. There is so much to say!

I also wonder if it wouldn't be better to put the Drawing Tools section before the Images section in Maps.

Are there proper terms for the drawing tools and what I've called the "paint box?"

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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by Azinctus »

jfrazierjr wrote:One thing that I believe should be made very clear (based on some recent posts with the issue) is that drawings, once added, are never remove from the map. It's a technical thing, but when you "erase" from the map, the original drawn image is still there, it's just a new shape is "cut" into it to allow you to view through it. This is VERY important for memory/file size issues. ie, don't just draw a bunch of crap on a map and remove it if you expect to keep using that same map.
Does undo drawing clear it completely? Can I try out a few textures, undo the ones I don't like and then carry on and use the map without having all those textures in memory?

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Azhrei
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by Azhrei »

jfrazierjr wrote:I wonder how hard it would be to check to see if a drawing area was empty and if so remove it from the list (which when saved will reduce the file size). This would be something for Craig or Azhrei I would guess.
As discussed somewhere else recently (within the last week or two), this is the purpose of the Zone.optimize() method that is called when a campaign is loaded. It's supposed to find any drawable that is completely covered by an "erasable" (is that word?) and then remove both of them.

The other thread was from a poster who was concerned this wasn't happening properly, but I'm just now catching up on 5-6 days of posts so I haven't seen that thread again yet.

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jfrazierjr
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by jfrazierjr »

Azhrei wrote:
jfrazierjr wrote:I wonder how hard it would be to check to see if a drawing area was empty and if so remove it from the list (which when saved will reduce the file size). This would be something for Craig or Azhrei I would guess.
As discussed somewhere else recently (within the last week or two), this is the purpose of the Zone.optimize() method that is called when a campaign is loaded. It's supposed to find any drawable that is completely covered by an "erasable" (is that word?) and then remove both of them.

The other thread was from a poster who was concerned this wasn't happening properly, but I'm just now catching up on 5-6 days of posts so I haven't seen that thread again yet.
Ah... I am just remembering from WAY back in 2008 when Trevor talked about it a bit. I guess he or someone else "fixed" it, or at least made an attempt at some point.
I save all my Campaign Files to DropBox. Not only can I access a campaign file from pretty much any OS that will run Maptool(Win,OSX, linux), but each file is versioned, so if something goes crazy wild, I can always roll back to a previous version of the same file.

Get your Dropbox 2GB via my referral link, and as a bonus, I get an extra 250 MB of space. Even if you don't don't use my link, I still enthusiastically recommend Dropbox..

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CoveredInFish
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by CoveredInFish »

FYI I made a bunch of screenshots to have proper image material from latest MT version. I'm open for suggestions if you find something missing. Look here


Thanks @ Azinctus for the tedious repair work :) I added your advice to the readme part.

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wolph42
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by wolph42 »

Very very nice. Some points:
- I think it would be good to 'casually' show screenshots from different OS's (I think the document already qualifies for this, but its something to keep in mind)
- Yes tables should show tables, preferably with pictures
- Different frameworks screenshots, I would use a couple of screenshots from different FW's preferably from visuably different games, as I also suggested to RPG Virtual Tabletop this gives a good feeling of the broad spectrum MT can cover.

as for the rest, nice job.

By the way, with the copy pasting from the Wiki to the Doc I noticed that the make up of the text is all in 'header 2' this screws up the doc badly if you reinitialize the content page. I redid the layout for some parts but not all and I'm wondering how necessary this is as it will be placed in TeX anyway.
What are your thoughts?

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CoveredInFish
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Re: Official(?) MT 1.3 Documentation Project

Post by CoveredInFish »

Good points. Agree.

Its probably best to "quick repair" such markup. So text should be text and headings should be headings, that way the document is better to read&edit and its easier for me to tex it up later. But we souldnt spend much affort/time into making it look nice.

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