Modding Total War: The Future...

[Epistolary Richard]

It is a great resource. I will think about suggestions for additions/improvements but for now I can see that you need a section dedicated to the Tech Trees which is wholly missing from your lists:

Tech Trees - details relating to the creation or editing of each faction's building trees, unit recruitment, bonuses and on-screen building names and descriptions.

Good suggestion, the missing links from the Org are from the Scriptorium sub-fora so the unit/building side and campaign/map side are not properly developed yet. They'll be fleshed out in the next couple of days.

The TGA aspect of the buildings might come under 2D artwork, though to be consistent you do have a section on unit cards. You'll have to decide under which section to put the graphical aspect of the trees.

Unit cards are highlighted because there are simply so many questions about them - I think building cards could probably be wrapped into them as well with a small change of title.

EDIT: Also, where would research go?

At the moment, I think research is happy with the tutorials - it gets marked with a 'Research' prefix, such as here. When MTW2 comes around and research hots up again, we might well add a research category for those who want to get involved.

EDIT 2: How about a thread listing each graphical component and referencing the specific save format for each, dimensions, borders, layers, whether it is compressed or not, tga or dds extension, location in directories, where ingame they appear, will they work unpacked, etc.?

that's quite a bit of work - that information is mainly embedded within tutorials and how to's where it exists at all. Would people really use a central reference rather than referring to a tutorial?

Hopefully people visiting will check there first before asking questions that are already answered.

When it gets officially released we'll add a link to it at the top of the Scriptorium.

Looks good, I think I'll wait and see how 'the staff' place things before trying to add links.

Don't forget I also want to test out the technical and 'intuitive' side of it - so feel free to mark any test posts 'Test' and I can ensure they work and then delete them.

The ones from TWC I was looking at linking could go in a few places (guess that's the idea of cross linking) for example:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=44952
is about changing faction icons in photoshop so possibly 'factions' but it's really more to do with using photoshop so maybe 'tools' instead, then again the alpha and .dds issues are the same as with 'skins'
(now you know why I have problems with online support menus!).

That's a good example - in this instance I would say 'factions' for the reason you stated, 'user interface' because it deals with the faction buttons on the UI, maybe also 'units' because people might consider them 'unit banners'.

[wlesmana]

Looking good.

I have one dilemma from this however. So we get a written tutorial that in some occasion, is not fully understood by the new modder. So they post a question. But in many cases, the writer of the tutorial is no longer updating or even checking his tutorial thread. Either he already left the scene or he thought it's clear enough that anyone who couldn't understand just won't. Or he's trying to avoid lazy modders who wants to be guided step by step, word by word. Whichever the case, his question would've been buried in the sub-forum.

So is it better to have it as is, or lock the articles/tutorials and let the new modder ask help in the general modding forum? A lot of new modders are already doing this when they could've just take a short trip to Scriptorium to find it themselves.

[Epistolary Richard]

That's not really a new problem. Scriptorium threads are left open because a modder's subsequent clarification or explanation of a point is useful. A question relating to the tutorial would have a home in that thread - a random question in an unrelated tutorial tends to get a response to ask the question in the Modding Questions forum - should it get a response at all.

On balance, more good comes out of leaving the threads open than harm. As for getting people to visit the Scriptorium instead of asking a question - that's been an ongoing objective, you may recall the Scriptorium link that used to be on top of the Modding Questions forum. It states that the Scriptorium should be checked in the forum description at the top and equally members replying can just link to the relevant tutorial - a lot easier than retyping the explanation.

[Makanyane]

Re: scriptorium threads, I agree with leaving them open, some useful things do come up even if the original author isn't replying. However could anything be done about the very long ones?

I'm thinking for example of 'Making a new campaign map' (273 replies) and
'Sprite Generator...CA?' (136 replies), there are some useful findings after original tutorial but it takes about an hour to read through, which is obviously a bit of a deterent! Could the full thread get archived (and linked with clever new system!) so it's still accessible to those with patience to go through it all , but have a moderator summarise the findings or - delete out the irrelevant 'it doesn't work', 'oh, yes it does' 'oh, no it doesn't' 'oh, woops I spelt it wrong' sections - to give a shorter version on the scriptorium?

[Epistolary Richard]

I generally don't like deleting people's posts unless there is very good reason for it - if someone would like to summarise the valuable information from the various pages I would be happy to add it to the first post so that all the info is there.

[Duke John]

Clarity and ease of reading sounds like a very good reason to me when it comes to passing knowledge.

The links manager is looking very good!

[Makanyane]

Still trying to think of ways to make scriptorium easier to use, to keep tutorial threads clean but linked to Q & A.

Is there any structure links, sub-forum, or sub_thread (does that exist?)
that would give you scriptorium structure looking like this?:
==========================================================
Making a new Campaign map (tutorial) last post: solved landmass CTD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Making a new Campaign map (comments, questions & answers)
last post: why doesn't my...

==========================================================
Game AI stuff... (research / tutorial) last post: solved all ai problems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game AI stuff.... (comments, questions & answers)
last post: we love you nikolai 1962
==========================================================

For existing long threads whole thread could be pasted into 'comments, Q & A'
authors first post and ammendments would be copied & pasted into top level (you wouldn't be deleting posts, ER just selectively copying them!)
Author and other users could still post additional advice, summaries of old and new findings into top level, but this level would be heavily moderated. Everything else can go in lower level without clogging up tutorial. - NB: This does all depend on having mechanism to keep the two threads together.

If it's feasible but too difficult to re-arrange existing threads, would it work as structure for MTW2 ?

[Sundjata Keita]

Well I've been browsing through the various tutorials and it is on one hand a lot easier to navigate. The one problem that I've noticed is that some authors have written several tutorials in one thread, for example Alin's tutorials on 3ds Max. Now the link describes it as "various tutorials" but doesn't this vague description undermine the whole point of the tutorial organisation? This could particularly be a problem if someone was searching for a specific tutorial.

My suggestions to solving this problem are either to make a list of bullet points in the description saying exactly the tutorials in each thread (if there are more than one) or creating multiple links back to the same thread, each with their own description.

The first would be easier but if more than one tutorial has been written in a thread and the tutorials cover different sections then links to threads with only a small amount of information on one section may appear in multiple sections, clogging the system somewhat. A rare problem but I just thought I'd mention it.

I hope you understand all that, its quite complicated Overall I think its a great system though

Regards,

Sundjata

[Epistolary Richard]

Still trying to think of ways to make scriptorium easier to use, to keep tutorial threads clean but linked to Q & A.

Is there any structure links, sub-forum, or sub_thread (does that exist?)
that would give you scriptorium structure looking like this?:

Actually, I'm not at all sure if that's possible. I suppose the closest thing would be the threaded view that you can set though your UserCP.

The ideal situation is where the author goes back and edits in any more relevant info into the first post - or posts links to them there. I don't think it can be done automatically.

Well I've been browsing through the various tutorials and it is on one hand a lot easier to navigate. The one problem that I've noticed is that some authors have written several tutorials in one thread, for example Alin's tutorials on 3ds Max. Now the link describes it as "various tutorials" but doesn't this vague description undermine the whole point of the tutorial organisation? This could particularly be a problem if someone was searching for a specific tutorial.

I agree - modelling really isn't my area. The staff has just done the initial splurge of adding most of the obvious threads. But this is a community resource - and members of the community with better knowledge about an area should feel free try and make it more accessible and useful for others.