Guild of Writers

OK... so today I bit the bullet and downloaded the new 1.2 plugin (I've been on 0.5 until now) ... ran Roberts wizards ... and now all my alpha transparancies are screwed up, I have no footstep sounds, no ladders working, had to delete ALL my camera regions because the plugin didn't like them for some reason and wouldn't complete the export whilst they were there, no clickables journals or linking books ... (however, the majority of the age looked very much like it did "before")

Fortunately I had backed up everything (the Blender file, the old plugin files, the old texture cache) and was able to put things "back to how they were" and got my age working as before... (phew, I thought at first ... but now it's begining to eat away at my inner sole ... ... I want the new features, I WANT the sound, I WANT stencelling, I WANT the animations ...)

After much reading, hair pulling, and a certain amount of self-flaggilation... I realised that I was "over expecting" the results of Roberts wizards.
(Obviously, I have no footsteps because I have no Alcsript file, same for the cameras and clickables. Although today was the first time I tried the new plugin, I have been reading EVERYTHING that has been coming through since the GoWPrp 1.0 version came out.)

My first reaction upon seeing my 'broken' age was "ok, that's enough, I'm supposed to be doing something I enjoy ... and I'm NOT enjoying this ... I'm reading conflicting methods of how to use the new plugin (tutorials vs threads) ... people answering other people's questions with incomprehensible (= not detailed enough for non programmers to understand) answers, people putting "new plugin ages" for download with sound "hidden" so you think that you did something wrong with the instalation, the ULM not supporting the features of the new plugin's sound capabilities ... and all this after I spent MONTHS building a couple of ages that no longer work properly with the new plugin ... why the **** am I even bothering with this ? ? ? it's just NOT fun anymore"

"So," I thought, **** it, find something else to do... something where the people WANT you to succeed, something where the community you are working with will make you feel that even your small efforts are recognised in some way... and that the people really WANT you to learn... not something where you feel that you have to drag every bit of information you NEED out of the people who HAVE that information but kinda want to keep it to themselves for a bit... just so that you can feel stupid for a bit longer..."

Then (being British) I had a cup of tea ... warm, comforting, soothing, forgiving tea ... and I thought "hang on, that's not fair. It MAY be how I feel, but is it being fair to the people who are working so hard trying to create tools for us to use. Am I being over-expecting? Am I trying to walk before I can run ... am I just frustrated that others are more knowledgeable than me, am I being an ungrateful bas***d because someone isn't holding my hand and showing me what to do? Am I mistaking other people's enthusiasm to show me what they have been able to acheive with the new plugin for some kind of 'elitism' or 'showing off' ? " ... and then it hit me.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

The fault is mine, not theirs. They have had the determination, perceverence and spirit to break apart this game, spend hours, days, months writing and re-writing code, tutorials, and answering questions, setting up websites, forums, a wiki, a council, attend meetings, and for who ? .... for those of us who don't have that much resolve, but who want to just switch on our machines, read a couple of pages and then produce Cyan-type Ages. Shhheeeesh. Now I'm feeling bad, really bad. Being so ungrateful and selfish because someone didn't make me a "magic wand" that would convert my 'old' Age into a 'new' one... at the push of a few buttons.

So, I just wanted to document this ... mainly because I'm sure there must be others who may be going down the journey I just made ... but don't have any tea to hand ...

They say that the best way to resolve an issue is to talk about it ... and this is the nearest thing that we have to that ... (though it would be great to have a GOW live chat forum where people could just talk through their frustrations with others) ... but, in the meantime ... go and buy some tea.

It may just stop you from throwing in the towel, and help you to re-focus on what you're actually doing ... creating ... one of life's greatest pleasures and one of lifes greatest challanges too.

(oh, and I just got the organ to play as well ... DOH ... )

Beer.........that's what I do. And I make my own Ales and Largers, so that helps some!

I understand your frustration, I really do. I was thrown for a loop when I tired to export my Age, back when the plugin was 1.0.0, and I was like "oh my god......" as I realized I was going to have to relearn some stuff.

I was recently called "Prolific" in my questioning. I call it being stubborn. If I ask, and I don't understand the answer, I'll tell them right away: "English please"
If I still don't understand the answer, I tell them "Plugin For Dummies" Please!
Eventually someone takes pitty on me and explains it in terms I can understand.

That doesn't mean I don't try to figure it out on my own. Unfortunately, about 90% of my attempts to do just that end up either in failure, or with results that make me get up and reach for my shotgun from the closet.......

Some one said in a post on here, that people like us are "Lazy"
They didn't mean it in a bad way. But the thought seem to indicate that many of us just don't want to take the time to try and figure out things on our own.

I counter that with: "Some of us don't have the TIME to figure it out on our own. Some of us enjoy trying to create Ages, not trying to decipher code. Some of us do try to figure it out, but it becomes obvious that we don't have the experience, nor knowledge to make it work right away. Couple that with the fact that some things just don't seem to make sense, yet that's how it's done, and you have the final result: Help please!"

I've tried to pester the people with the know how with questions posted. Sometimes the posts are answered in a very logical and understandable way. Sometimes, the responses look like something that they Crypto guys in the Radio Room on my ships in the navy had to decode.

I've learned quite a bit since the release of the new plugin, but I also see I still have a lot to learn. I'm fortunate that I work out of my home, and can take a lot of time to learn this stuff.
I also get a lot of praise from my fellow Maintainers, some people here, and my Wife. That goes a LONG way in keeping me working on something.

I did want to point something out: your footstep areas. You don't have to re-do them over. And you DON'T have to add something to the Alcscript file either. The tutorial leaves something out, and was pointed out in a thread.
Simply select the footstep region, and go to the logic properties.
Get rid of what every strings you have and put these in instead:

string Name:type region
string Name:regiontype footstep
string Name:surface (put whatever is on the list in the tutorial here, like dirt, stone, hardwood, etc)

That's it. That's all you have to do.

There are many other things that are there that are different now. I learned today that I was doing my transparancies wrong, and they were not working right. I asked, and got a very good response on how to make them work.

When Nadnerb made the tutorial for putting in sounds, he kind of left off a little more detailed explination on how to put in triggered sound regions. I whined to him, and he went back and added a lot more detail in the tutorial now. I still had other problems, but there is a thread here where he explains how to do somethings that should help.

I do agree that the age that they included with the plugin to show how stuff worked, was a little bit lacking. For example, it has a swim area, but no explination on how to put it in. Yet at the same time the Wizard made my swim region work! BUT, no swimming sound. When I put the swim sound back in, now everytime you try to take a swim, you get a stack dump and Uru crashes.
Okay, I asked about that.
Responses so far were limited to:
"I'm going to make a tutorial on that." but the only thing in the tutorial so far is a nice picture of a swimming pool.........
"Try changing your sounds." Well, okay, I can change the sound from Swim to Water or something, but what's the point? I mean, if you're swimming, you should hear swimming sounds! Not just water sounds. That's a band-aid fix.
What I want to know is why it's causing a stack dump in the first place!

So, sometimes I have to wait, as others are busy. Sometimes I have to jump up and down and yell before someone explains what I need to know in English.

But there is a few things to keep in mind:
Everyone who's worked on the Plugin are overworked, underpaid, and have little time for anything......
New things always have bugs. Just look at the plugin, it's gone from version 1.0.0 to 1.2.0 in what? Just 2 weeks? So, expect further changes.

Keep this also in mind: If you feel like yer not getting the answers you need, PM me. If I've got the answers, I'll put it them in the simplest way I know how, and being and ex-instructor, I know how to teach. (might be why I'm the Guildmaster of Training.....), if I don't know the answer, I bug someone until you get one.....

Keep your chin up! Rome wasn't built in a day.......

As you say Rome wasn't built in a day. We are going through some rough times. A lot has changed, and a lot of what we had patiently learned so far we must forget and learn again almost from scratch. That's never enjoyable.
Really we all just need to give it some time. Most of us don't have the time for everything.
For instance I am currently:
1) Pumping out new content for the largest Uru Age (Ahra Pahts)
2) Updating said Age to work with the new PyPRP
3) Learning the new features of PyPRP
4) Going through pages of threads to find all the answers that are currently missing from the wiki
5) Doing my daywork

Well that's what I should do, but it's just not possible. Also I'd love to help people who have troubles, but again not enough time to do everything. And these days most of the time I don't even know the answers..

Just give it some time.. within a week or two most of the stuff will be sorted out by the people who have the time (and the motivation).
Also: there's no hurry.

I have complete admiration for the people who did all the hacking and wrote the tools.
Can you imagine what they could do if Cyan just gave them the specs?


Also I'm jealous of those who have time to try this out and work out the bugs. Real life sucks.

Chacal wrote:Can you imagine what they could do if Cyan just gave them the specs?

..sleep even less?

Now of course, the real question is why won't Cyan give those specs.. but then I'm just asking for trouble here

I had no idea my little sound region had caused so much frustration.

I've updated the footstep sound Wiki article to include the text properties which still work.

As a note about implementations, and "people withholding all their superior knowledge", it's quite possible that the person who implemented something for the plugin may still not know exactly how it will actually behave. Often the implementation is simply allowing script access to the flags in the files and hoping the names of those flags mean what they sound like. Then they can be understandably reluctant to put guesswork, or possible false information, up on the wiki. For an example, see the ongoing conversation about sounds with andylegate.

I understand your frustration, and that's why I've been trying to help as much as I can and work on the wiki.

To that end, I've started a Requested Tutorials and Articles page. It's currently adorned with pages I'd personally like to see but don't have the knowledge to create or the contiguous time to learn/write. And if you have anything you're curious about, I encourage you wholeheartedly to put it on there. It doesn't even have to be an article title, you can put in text article ideas too. And I'm sure that the people who write the tutorials will be watching it. I know I will.

So please guys--if you're having errors, post on the forums. If you want information but can't find it, post on the forums or add to the new wiki page. And keep in mind that the reason we make changes to the tools is almost always for good in the long run, in our humble opinions. We try to maintain as much compatibility as possible (well, that kinda went out the window with 1.0 ) and provide conversion wizards, but we can't account for everything.

Basically I want to thank you bob for your post--hopefully, if anyone else is having similar frustrations, it will help them through it

-Kato

You're not alone in this, I started my experimental age, the place to practice the bits in the plugin, it didn't even have much in it, and the plugin complain when I did the switch to GOW plugin 0.5.

It hurt my head too much, and I didn't want to lose my work, so this is what I did.

I created a NEW Age, with the NEW plugin, and using the "Append/link" feature I brought over, piece by piece, testing each piece before bring more stuff in, and now I am getting more confident in re-learning the new methods, though I still prefer the adding of logic properties over Alc script, but I feel that Alc Script is a good move in the long run, and can be more flexible than using logic properties.

At the moment, I havn't tried things like journals, ladders, swim regions, sound, as one of the newest features is part of my goals in conquering first, Stenciling with custom stencils.

If its too difficult, stop, maybe do as I did and create a new book, and start importing the bits from the old method, to the new method, one step at a time and testing it, before moving onto the next thing to import from the old method.