chuckv3

corrected it (thanks!) too sleepy when I wrote that

I wish I had known about the F keys, and a the rotation shifts. Now I do, so life is much easier to do creative weird things. F1 - toggle the grid SNAP (1/2x1/2 or 1/4x1/4 help make the TINY fonts not look ridiculous, whereas 2x2 or 4x4 is better for large grass tiles and such) F3 - enable/disable clipping, so you can place things sticking out of the room (in game people only see what's IN the room) F2 - toggle rotation SNAP (45, 30, 15, 10, 5, 1, none iirc). Very useful for rotating things the amount you want (without guessing) F5 - change attachment type while dragging or placing. ALT-mouse-drag, rotates items on the floor (XY axis?) CTRL-ALT-mouse drag rotates around XZ SHIFT-ALT-mouse drag rotates around YZ (i don't really know if N/S is Y or X, but you get the idea. if one doesn't work, use the other)

OKAY! Apparently there is zero interest in this topic. I will not renew my web site.

Also, glad to crank out one of these on any other server if you want a hand! It would take an hour or two. Note that entry room includes flashback pillar, tip computer, 3 tailors, 3 trainers, 3 generic vendors, 3 merit vendors, 3 inspiration dispensers, all in a 2x3 room. It *could* fit in a 2x2 but would be very cramped. I did 3s because only one player at a time can interact with those. tip computer and pillar can handle multiple players.

Feel free to check out TB-9014 on Reunion. My base is tiny, so it loads fast. Everything available for public use is in the entry room. Everything is clearly labeled, at eye level. Travel rings are located right in front of you when you zone in.

Alrighty then! I have not heard any reasons to not proceed. The web site is https://extae.com The initial page is an intro with a link to the stupid-simple demo above. A slightly more real example would be this one: https://www.extae.com/sp/play/start?code=EARSC7UENDMF Note that the missions this one asks for have not been created yet, and the secret mission completion codes for everything are "ABC123". So, please consider that only an example of what one could create.

I tried to post details and that post has been in limbo for 21 hours (pending approval). Let me make my intentions clear here: This is meant to complement, not detract from, Mission Architect. I'd really love if the homecoming team would implement something similar in game. It's all database driven, so it would also be pretty easy to just put the "play" parts in game, and leave the content creation as an external web site. I'll host it as long as somebody is actively using it. From what I can tell, every content creation part of Mission Architect could be done with what I implemented, since it's all just text with limited amounts of HTML allowed. Maybe making a 2.0 version could go in that direction? Can someone from the team call me or set up a meeting if you care? Or if you don't care (yet), then let me post the details here? Thanks team.

Maybe they don't care? I'll be trying the "easier to get forgiveness than permisison" strategy if it goes unanswered for too long.

Great idea. I think Darmian might have also mentioned cut scenes in one of our ledge conversations. I've seen people do them on youtube by doing various emotes and chats, then having someone else recording from a good camera angle (with UI hidden) With all the work i've already done on this, it would actually be pretty easy to embed a youtube video given a URL. If videos are hosted on youtube (and not my site), it's just a URL. I actually do have a "portrait_url" for the dialog contacts, but the pages do not include those (yet). I left that unfinished for exactly the reasons you mention -- stepping on intellectual property toes. I'd rather have the homecoming team on board with this. If some day they include a basic in-game web page widget that expand/collapses like zone maps, contacts, missions windows... Then this would all integrate nicely, especially if URL's pasted in the team chat automatically open there (for my follow-along idea), and better yet if cut scenes freeze the game like those in other missions. If I'm allowed to keep dreaming, how about special URLs in there to start a specific mission? I'm chomping at the bit here homecoming team! What do you think? Can I at least have text-only tie-ins at this point with "fair use" references to in-game characters and story elements?

I've got the site certificates done. All is 100% working at this point. I'm waiting for policy decision from the homecoming team about whether or not this will step on any toes. I'm hoping they actually like the idea. We'll see. One never knows. But... It works mostly like I've outlined above. I'd love to get a few folks who want to beta test the thing as-is. Please PM me here with your global (which will then become your userid, and what shows up as the byline of the stories, a.k.a. the author) and your personal email address. I'll email you instructions on how to log in to create some content. I'll be working on a small "integrated" example, where people actually have to go run AE missions to unlock codes to progress. If I get the homecoming team's blessings, or at least permission to continue, I'll be putting the URLs for the enhanced dialogs into the A/E stories too. I'm also going to write something to allow a white-listed limitation of which HTML tags are allowed in the texts. stuff like B, I, BR and FONT COLOR= will be okay, but probably not much beyond that.

So after a few version conflict headaches the web site is up and running. i'm waiting on getting a signed ssl certificate so I can turn on https-only, and also waiting on the homecoming team / GMs to give this at least some kind of blessing, then I'll unleash the hounds.

I've decide to change a couple of strategic things. First, there will be no list or search. Second, to start, you'll need a story's "code". From there it prompts for leader name, then creates a play-in-progress code, all as shown above from there. That way nobody can guess numbers to see someone else's titles, etc. I'd rather maintain a list of story codes either in the forums, sharing them in the game, or even including them in the AE missions introductory texts. I'm hoping this will be running on a public server soon! Can I get a GM or someone from the Homecoming team to verify this is not some kind of violation of TOS?

And what the follow pages look like for team members-- that thing Darmian wants! These use AJAX to check about every 2 seconds for an update, and refresh the page when there is one. This parallels the choices above (I think?) after a team members pastes in the URL that the team leader could sahre over team chat. Of course the URL would be a web site domain if my hosting company can tell me what URL is supposed to work...

That's totally not what it's for. It's meant to offer content creators the ability to create branching, looping and multiple choices. Any of these could ask you to go do a story arc in AE, which might be 1 or 2 missions, then enter codes to guide you forward on the paths, then ask you to go run something else, etc.

And then examples of me "playing" that story.

example forms to enter the data, running locally at this point, showing the basic proof-of-concept data. The "stories" page and its subordinate lists really shows the whole flow.

Well after a lot of tweaks and a little learning I have the database built and poplated, and the application installed and running on mochahost.com. Pretty neat stuff how they can build a web interface to allow you to completely manage a website. The problem at this point is they cannot tell me what URL I can use to get to it all externally. Once I figure all that out I will try to post something here. I do have a tiny bit of work left to do to keep stories created by one user from being edited by another... But I do think I want them all to be viewable by anyone who is a content creator. Would that be any kind of problem? I'm thinking of the scenario where someone says "how did they do that?" and then they can just go view it all (without being able to modify). Any opinions about that?

I'm sure Darmian already knew that . But thanks! Nice to know! I've got an idea for a second tutorial that does actually integrate with a 2-story arc (or maybe 3 if I can figure out an ending split).

I do think it would be close enough to have 3 accounts, each of whom can have 3 published stories, for 9 total stories. This could be 9 indivudal missions (each their own 1-mission story). And further, since "my creations / my local stories" are actually just text files, it should be simple enough to get multiple people to help put in the pieces, leading to as large of a progression as one could hope for. Of course there is nothing stopping folks from running any of these missions in AE at any time, but the context would be missing.

For those worried about my mental health, here's some small reassurance: I did stop long enough to eat, do a Hami Raid, and a MSR. I even slept eight hours each night. Well, slept and refined my plans, back and forth.

Well guys, I spent a hard 48 hours writing up an admin app (based on something I already had working), and then adding an anonymous-access "play" path. I just signed up for a basic virtual web server where I can put this all just to let folks test drive the idea. Regarding integrating with AE, my thought are mainly that missions can have mutliple difficult objectives, but then one easy one to complete the mission (click a blinky). The "easy completion" completes the mission as far as AE is concerned, but you have to kill the boss, release the hostage, escort the hostage, or whatever to hear the "SECRET CODE" that the web site prompts for to let you progress. I wrote up a kinda stupid tutorial that just asks for questions and answer and progresses through a simple set of dialogs. It has a loop, and several different paths to get to the end. Based on a complaint/suggestion from Darmian (? I need to check the global for sure), The person who starts the story (and is the only one who can answer the prompts), has a URL they can share with others. That way team members see the full dialog, the choices, and when the leader answers or chooses, it switches (with the choice or unlock that got them there shown at the top). I used some AJAX to tell the "follower" page when it needs to refresh. It all seems to be working as I want at this point! The real question is: can I get it hosted and up and running somewhere? I'm working on that now. And since this is an external site, it can link to many different AE stories, telling the user which ones to run and then prompting for results. That's in addition to the already unlimited dialogs and choices.

Thanksa ton for this one!

That's what put it on my radar in the first place! I was looking at badges, and the void hunter wasn't at zero anymore... I asked in game and was told there were some in Dr. Aeon and some tip mission somewhere....

BADGE HOE looking for void hunter, and I heard this existed but isn't in the Tip Computer... Does anybody know the name of this Tip MIssion? As a level 50 would I get it? Someone in game said level 40, but when I look at my Tip Computer (on a 50) I see level 40 stuff. I'm enough of a grindy person to just do a bunch and see if I can find it myself, but there are so many possibilities it might take approximately forever. But... should I be doing that on one of my level 40-something alts?

In-mission mechanics are okay as-is (IMHO). Let's talk about the outer story instead. The story progression is linear only. Player gets the next mission regardless of success or failure. There is no decision for the player, the only choice is to continue or quit. There is no ability to ask questions (beyond the pretty worthless "about this contact" choice). These could all be fixed by allowing content creators to create dialogues with zero* or more choices. Each dialogue would be either initial (players start here, so these show up in the story menu and search results) or continuation (players are taken here from clicking a choice on another dialogue, or success or failure of a mission). Those "ask a question" choices simply go to another dialogue with its own text (presumably the answer), and then its own responses (probably the same as the last one, but possibly not). A choice could also trigger a mission (as currently implemented), with mission success proceeding to a specific dialogue, and failure to a specific dialogue (possibly the same as success). So combine the existing mission mechanism with 2 data elements: dialogues and choices. Each dialogue has text, picture, and zero* or more choices. Each choice proceeds to another dialogue, or to an AE mission. When AE missions are triggered this way their success or failure proceeds to a continuation dialogue. * when there are zero choices, players get the "(leave)" choice to exit. This could be done as a new system in the game that triggers existing AE missions at the right spots. It could also be done as an external web site that asks players to go run specific AE stories at the right spots. Let me know whether an external web site violates any TOS. If not, I might put one together, since I do this stuff professionally, and the above structure would be trivial to implement as a database-backed web site. EDIT: The web site is extae.com. If you wish to try content creation, or just see mine (or anyone else's) please PM me.