Age List Project

General debates and discussion about the Guild of Writers and Age creation

Age List Project

Postby JulyForToday » Sun Sep 30, 2007 3:53 pm

Well, I may be getting ahead of myself. I should stress that anything to do with a serious comprehensive Age List project should involve the other guilds (especially because they may already be working on them).

Here is my list of what kind of information would be in each Age's Entry of info:

Age Entry

In-game Information

Basic Age Info:
-Name
-Author
-Date Written
-Pictures
-Maps (links for GoC)

Status Info
-Age number/Sequence Prefix (see background-info below)
-Date discovered (discovery by DRC, ect.)
-age availability
-number of books/ownership of books (# of books may prove impossible though)
-DRC (phase-based) Status
-Maintainer's approval/status/rating (possibly the same thing as the DRC status above) (GoMa links here)

Age Feature Info
-Age Type? Or Guild affiliated with the Age(Er'cana is a harvest Age, Minkata a GoC age..)
-Inhabitants?
-Ecosystem & Plant life? (the D'ni Zoological Society comes in here)
-Moons or important celestial occurances?
-Weather?
-Terrain
-Extreme features? (like Katran's torus age in BoA)


Age Summary
-Age History (Teledahn's history of slaves and spore production)
-Story Elements (Sharper and Shroomie stuff)
-- This is where you would talk about the age and elaborate it's features and things that happened in it. like Kadish's vaults and how it used to be a mansion, but the trees basically destroyed the architecture. Etcetera.
(If the Guild of Archivists becomes an actual guild this is where they'd come in.)


Spoilers
This part wouldn't be shown unless you wanted to access this info. But this is where the GoG's walk-throughs would probably come in.

Behind-the-scenes info

-Sequence Prefix (this is a big one for coordinating Ages -- The GoMa should issue Age numbers)
-Credits (people who worked on the age)
-Length of Age development
-Concept Art?
(This last part is of course is mostly for our purposes)

Age List Organization

Of course the list itself should be organized along certain divisions that make sense, such as these:

Authentic D'ni Ages (Ages written mostly before the fall)
Transitional/survivor Ages (Gehn, Atrus, Katran, Yeesha..)
Human Ages (stuff written by Humans of course)

And It would be great to set the list up as a database that could have a few organizational and search functions. This way, if I wanted to I could list Ages in the order of how long it took to develop them. Or if I wanted to search for, and list all of the Ages written by a particular author (Kadish or Atrus, ect) I could do that too.


I should just add that I already got the domain name http://www.agedirectory.com. But whatever everyone in the different guilds thinks we should do for a centralized Age list I'm in support of and willing to use the domain name for that project.
Last edited by JulyForToday on Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Age List Project

Postby Eschaton » Sun Sep 30, 2007 4:15 pm

Let me be the first to say: nifty.

I say we keep this format in mind, it is very detailed, and try to get it adopted by-and-large by the maintainers, cartographers, and greeters, but that's just me. It'd take some time to get all the details of it agreed upon, but it looks very sound from my monitor.

Might as well have something ready to assist in documenting ages as they start (slowly) rolling off the assembly line.
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Re: Age List Project

Postby JulyForToday » Thu Oct 04, 2007 12:55 pm

Firstly, I've just posted in the thread about the Book of Commentary on the MO:UL forum.

Something else I've been thinking about is:

Sequence Prefixes...

If you go here, you can find the already existing list of them.

But I think it should be noted that there was a major problem with the way that is was set up: it was a messy free-for-all. What I'm thinking is that it would be nice if we could setup a database driven list that would manage the list of numbers, and assign them, rather than people picking here and there, making a big mess in the process. Here's my idea on how to set it up:

The first 10,000 sequence numbers would be reserved for Cyan (you never know, they may actually use that up... lol). But it's just to err on the side of caution. You never know what may happen --keep in mind that the various D'ni age files probably use up around 10 numbers-- if any of the technology changes, who knows.

Then after that comes the user ages. But after the freeforall experience of that wiki list, I think the numbers should be assigned, imho. You could create an account with the database, and then it would assign you a block of numbers for your age (or ages).

We could split the list into blocks. So you could have blocks of 10 numbers (10,000-10,009 then 10,010-10,019, ect..). I'm actually thinking it would be cool to get your account, then you could choose how big a block you get (so you could choose just to get 1 number, or you could choose a block of 5, or 10, or 20).

And too keep things organized, you could set up every round of 100 numbers like this: (of course this depends on whichever block sizes are most popular)

20 blocks of 1
10 blocks of 5
3 blocks of 10

Or alternatively:

10 blocks of 1
4 blocks of 2
6 blocks of 4
5 blocks of 10

So when you have an account, you can register a set block of numbers, but it will only give you the lowest available number. So say the first block of 2 that is open on the list is 10,114, then you'll be assigned numbers 10,114 and 10,115. The the next person who wants just 2 numbers will get 10,116 and 10,117.

Of course all of this somewhat assumes that the original list's numbers will become invalid. It would be nice to start with a clean slate anyways. If anyone objects to that, please say so. And I'm also hoping this will work in conjunction with the rest of the age list (or the book of commentary project depending on how everything works out).


Anyone who has experience with mySQL, and PHP and wants to help, please let us know! :)
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Re: Age List Project

Postby MustardJeep » Thu Oct 04, 2007 1:34 pm

It's a good idea JulyForToday if I can I will use some of your list to give form to my BoC project.
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Re: Age List Project

Postby Trylon » Fri Oct 05, 2007 2:19 am

Hmm, interesting idea I've been thinking something would have to be re-done with the Sequence prefixex as well, and you ideas are sound..

It could be integrated within ULM, which already has a pretty extensive age database - though it'd require some changes in the current way of processing....

EDIT:
Well, that was easier as I thought

ULM does now give out sequence prefixes above 10000 in blocks of 1, 2, 5 and 10.
You can request sequence prefixes from the "My Profile" tab.

(ULM can ofcourse be found at http://ulm.hbyte.net)
One day I ran through the cleft for the fiftieth time, and found that uru held no peace for me anymore.
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