Seafaring fantasies

[Pieter Boelen]

Personally I'd like it if the manual stuff you're adding, Thagarr, could somehow be rewritten so all information is retained,
but it is a bit more readable. And certainly the DirectSail information does need to go there at some point.
Most Build 14 features were never properly documented and the same goes for most pre-Build 14 stuff.
We just never were very big on documenting things.

 

[carmenara]

It's seriously a lot of stuff to document, but from the way Thagarr gave me the first half of this manual he's the best man for the job.

I'm not very good with archives and information mining!

 

[Thagarr]

I agree Pieter, some of it is a bit difficult to follow in places, I wish I had the kind of time it would take to do that mate! I was hoping maybe some of the original authors might see this thread and offer a bit of help in that area, as they now their code MUCH better than I do. At the same time though, there are quite a few amusing elements in the texts as they were originally entered and that ads a bit of atmosphere and a bit of each original authors character and personality to their work, again, something I could never duplicate! I'm not sure exactly how much more I will be able to add, I would like to have it as finished as possible by the end of the weekend as I am back to work next week and won't have near the amount of free time to do this for a while.

You just don't like the boring stuff SWS! :

With all the different formatting and text sizes and tables in this one, building and index with Writer is giving me all kinds of weird stuff for entries, I will probably just end up doing them by hand. Even after redoing all the rules for formatting, changing the heading rules, and redoing text sizes, the automation still picks up things it shouldn't.

 

[Thagarr]

Ok, I think this is final, I think I have pretty much done everything I can with this. If I missed anything, please let me know and I will re-edit it. I added some pics and a few graphical elements to flesh it out a bit, and added Direct sail and one or two more.



POTC New Horizons Tutorials History.pdf

 

[carmenara]

Excellent, I have something big to read.

Page 1 and 2 graphics exhibit some Openoffice allergy to .doc format - the big graphics have a page background in them. To get rid of them work in .odt format and of course, reimport the graphics. Or try removing the background from picture properties itself.

I reckon you need an entire chapter added if/when/whenever WBT passes acceptance trials but I better do "The Making Of" part myself as it involves much more than just number crunching...

 

[Thagarr]

Thanks SWS, I was wondering what was going on with that! You would thing with the transparency in the file that it wouldn't matter.

Yeah, that would be awesome, WBT definitely needs to be mentioned, who better than the author to do the write up!! Let me know when you have something and I'll do the re-edit on the graphics then and reload the file.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We're going to release Build 14 Beta 1 before the 21st of January.
Thagarr's most recent "POTC_New_Horizons_Tutorials_History.pdf" file contains all information from the various "\buildinfo" files, right?
In that case, we can remove those files and put the PDF file in there instead.

Also, I'd like to include the most recent version of the Manual in the Build 14 Beta 1 installer as well.
Any updates made in the coming week or two can also still be included.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

While we're on the subject of what to do for Beta 1, I think I should also mention filenames.
I don't want to offend anyone by renaming their original PDF files, but this is what I came up with for now:
- "Build 14 Manual.pdf"
- "Build Mod Tutorials & History.pdf"
- "Ship Recognition Guide.pdf"

I know the Manual is actually called "Embracing Adversity" and the Ship Recognition Guide is of course
the "Willemstad Builders' Trials" documentation, but random people are not going to understand those names.
If you've got any better ideas on this account, go right ahead and let us know.

Also, could we remove the "Build 14" and "Build Mod" parts from those filenames?
Maybe even rename the "\buildinfo" folder to something else?

 

[Thagarr]

It really doesn't matter to me Pieter, whatever name you feels works best. I wasn't really sure what to name them, so I just went descriptive. How about just :
"New Horizons Manual"
"New Horizons Tutorials&History"
"New Horizons Ship Recognition Guide"

Those are all fairly plain sounding, like most manual names included with box retail games, once they open them up and have a look however, they will be simply be blown away!

I will go back through and double check all the text files to make sure I got everything. Perhaps instead of deleting the folder, we should rename it to "Documentation" or "New Horizons Manual" or something and put all the manuals in there.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Good ones, Thagarr! For now, I renamed the files as per your suggestion and changed the folder name to "Documentation".

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm trying to figure out what is in Thagarr's "New Horizons Tutorials & History.pdf" file and what isn't.
This to be able to remove as many files as possible from the former "/buildinfo" subfolder.
It appears that quite a lot is not actually in the PDF though, so I'm not sure if I've actually got the most up-to-date version.

Also, there's a "Feature List" included, which seems to be solely the Build 14 Alpha 10 one.
This is actually already in "Build Info.txt", along with the feature lists of all other updates since Build 14 Alpha 8.5.
So that could be removed from the PDF, since it's already elsewhere.

I'll stop working on this now, since I'm not quite sure to what extent everything is complete and as intended in the PDF.
Instead, I'll get the rest of the Build 14 Beta 1 files ready.

 

[carmenara]

I'll need to update my manual and chop down the contents so it at least looks complete to Beta stage.

But... Ships first.

 

[Thagarr]

I'll go through them tonight Pieter, I haven't had the chance yet. I'll let you know with a past when I am done. I thought about not including that since it was already listed elsewhere, but I thought it was better just to have it all in one place for a complete reference, I can take it out if you think it's best though.

Speaking of ships SWS, have you had a chance to write up anything for the history section for WBT?

 

[carmenara]

Nothing's been done yet on documentation. I'll have to get the steamboat ready for Pieter to the best of my ability, continue playtesting WBT (having 219 children is a chore) and no showstopper bugs appear at the last minute.

There's a week to go for documentation and while I won't be able to make it as polished or detailed as I'd like it to be, we must at least get a beta-state presentation ready.

 

[Thagarr]

Since your pressed for time, if you want, I can copy your ideas from the first post in your WBT thread and update it with some of your later posts in that thread. That style would fit in with the way some of the readme's are written, so it wouldn't look out of place at all, and it would save you some time. It is of course entirely up to you, if you want to do another complete write up, that's fine, I'll wait for that.

Pieter, I have just gone through and checked the readme's, I did miss a couple and I am working on getting them in there now. The reason you probably had a hard time finding several of them is because I forgot to bold the headings on some and forgot to add the name of the text files!

I am going through and doing that now, it should be a little easier for you to see them that way. I meant to do that the first time and got distracted by formatting and forgot.

 

[carmenara]

I'll manage with WBT, not to worry. Besides I like writing about my stuff.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I thought about not including that since it was already listed elsewhere, but I thought it was better just to have it all in one place for a complete reference, I can take it out if you think it's best though.

Well, if you DO want to include that feature list, you should include the WHOLE feature list and not just the Build 14 Alpha 10 changes.
But I'd recommend leaving it out altogether, because it's something that's going to be updated quite frequently.
I would update the TXT file, but I can't update the PDF, which would mean it'd be outdated real quick.

Pieter, I have just gone through and checked the readme's, I did miss a couple and I am working on getting them in there now. The reason you probably had a hard time finding several of them is because I forgot to bold the headings on some and forgot to add the name of the text files!

I only had a quick look, but I used the "Search" feature to try to make sure it really wasn't in there.
I think I couldn't find the whole Build 11 ReadMe, which actually does contain a lot of worthwhile information.
I've been going through the files in the "\buildinfo" folder myself and removing those I think we can afford to lose altogether.
Some of the others just contain some small information that I think should go in the Manual some time.
I might be able to find some time during compares to do a li'l work on this as well.

 

[Thagarr]

Try searching for "POTC Mod Build v11", I forgot to include that in the TOC but it will be listed in the next update.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Alright then; thanks.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

How's it going with the Build 14 Beta 1 documentation?
I'll be needing some more-or-less finalized versions for inclusion in a couple of days.