Enhancing Wiki Tutorials

[Lyrositor]

Well, I've gone ahead and deleted about 80-90 articles and redirects which served no purpose except to clutter the list of pages. Many of them were pointing to pages that I was going to delete and rearrange anyway. Now the real work can begin.

[GPNMilano]

Hey Lyrositor, since you're taking up the task of reworking the tutorials, I may jump in and do a bit of editing myself. There's a few things that the old tutorials still had in them that weren't really necessary for accomplishing the task a tutorial covered. I've pointed this out before, but some of the stuff never got changed. (My own laziness I guess. Not really good at making tutorials myself.) Since the tutorials are being enhanced again it makes sense to me that we should make sure they don't end up in the new ones again.

[Lyrositor]

Any help welcome! These are my goals:
1. Global consistency.
2. Minimized redundancy.
3. Emphasis on aesthetics.
4. Up-to-date articles.
5. Easy access to all information.
I'm currently working on condensing the sprawling Ahra Pahts tutorial into one article. I'm not going to touch the PyPRP tutorials for a while, so if you would like to work on those, you're more than welcome too.

[johnsojc]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to do this but I've been reading the new Getting Started tutorial for building the client. It seemed a little hard to find but I'm persistent .

I noticed that there are no specific instructions for getting the externalResources project (resource.dat file) to complie. It was a bit tricky for a n00b like me but I managed to puzzle out the error messages and came up with the necessary steps.

Required software: (install the following...)
Python 2.7
Python Imaging Library for Python 2.7
PyGTK (getting the bundle is easiest)
--- unzip the PyGTK installer; make sure to select the Py_Rsvg module in the Custom Setup dialog. ---

Make sure that the path to python.exe is in your path (C:\Python27\ by default)

When you run Cmake to build the solution file, look for the PY line. You should have two lines: PY_IMAGE and PY_RSVG. Something like...
PY_IMAGE C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\PIL\Image.pyc
PY_RSVG C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\rsvg.pyd

Your resource.dat should be compiled and appear in ...build\Sources\Plasma\Apps\plClient\external\ when you build the solution.

[Tsar Hoikas]

... Or you can download one that's already been built

[Lyrositor]

I updated the tutorial page with a link.

[johnsojc]

... Or you can download one that's already been built

That's no fun...

I wonder if you could just get by with the two files stuck in the devlibs zip and python....

[Lyrositor]

I've created a new, up-to-date DIRTSAND tutorial! http://guildofwriters.org/wiki/DIRTSAND:Getting_Started
I will presently be phasing out the tutorial-like information in Development:DIRTSAND to replace it with information pertaining solely to the development of DIRTSAND itself - not using DIRTSAND (like I did with CWE). Also, the Minimalistic Development Shard's conten has been spread between CWE:Getting Started and DIRTSAND:Getting Started. Unless there are any objections, I'm going to delete huge duplicate chunks of it to turn it more into a structural tutorial, with links to the various steps of the process and a bit of additional information. I might also rename it to Setting Up A Shard, with the minimalistic part being but a section. Finally, I'm going to write the DIRTSAND article, with information on the software itself. If I get something wrong, please, do correct me!

[Lyrositor]

I've also created a new to-do list directly on the wiki which anyone can edit:
http://guildofwriters.org/wiki/Guild_of_Writers_Wiki:State
I'm kind of lost though for the article that needs the most sprucing up right now. Any suggestions? My plans are to finish up a few less important articles then tackle either the remaining Max tutorials or actually go for the big ones - the PyPRP ones, starting with PyPRP:Getting Started.

[diafero]

Do you have any suggestions for http://www.guildofwriters.org/wiki/Offl ... umentation ? Somehow this is a tutorial page, but then it's actually four closely related tutorials on one page.
Also, I'm unsure what you expect from the "Using Offline KI" tutorial (which is on the "Wanted Pages" special page ). The Offline KI is a collection of a lot of stuff, much of which is described at http://www.guildofwriters.org/wiki/Offline_KI:Features (which also has tutorial character, at least partially).
Btw, parts of "Using Drizzle" are documented at http://www.guildofwriters.org/wiki/Drizzle since this did not seem to warrant a dedicated page for me. Of course Drizzle can do much more, but most of that is obsolete... I think the only remaining important feature is how to convert age you created yourself in 3ds Max using Drizzle. Isn't that documented in the 3ds Max tutorials, somewhere?

I couldn't name a single article needing most work - as you already mentioned, the PyPRP tutorials, being the "core" of the wiki, are probably also the most important pages.

Regarding merging Plasma and CWE: I don't think that's a good idea. The Plasma 101 describes the general working of all plasma engines, so it's also important for the old Uru versions once you start digging (and sometimes, during age development, that's necessary).