User talk:TinMan
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Good work
I've seen you have been doing a great overhaul of the wiki in the past week, for which I must thank you for doing so.
However, I do have a few personal remarks. While being correct from a programmer's view, it seems some pages are getting more complex than they might have to be. Take the WaitFor (script_event) page for example:
- Currently, scripters (which includes mappers) may get confused when they read about the necessary "EV_Thread_SetCallback" event. Maybe it could be more useful to specify the C++ game classes in the parameter section itself?
- There is a section "Game class" at the top which is a nice link between the coding and scripting section, but I wonder though if scripters really need to know it. Maybe it should be moved more to the bottom, right above the "notes" section.
- Also, an attempt was in progress to list all entities and the way they inherit from base classes (e.g. Entity_Listing (Doom 3)). There is no class list yet, but if you take a look at the bottom of an entity page (like Caverns hellknight2 (entity)) you'll see we were planning to do so. As such, it might be worthwhile to link to the actual class pages from the game class section.
- It seems the script event template now contains a line
[return type] [event name]([parameter data type] [parameter name] [...])
- While this is nice the first time you visit these pages, I think it clutters the page. Maybe we should only add a tiny link to Scripting basics or make a page "New to modwiki..."?
- As my last remark, I wanted to point out that there's a certain difference in calling a scripting variable of type "entity", "object" or "[object type]" a reference or a pointer. Pointers point to a location in memory, whereas references reference something so it can be locally accessed. I don't know which one of the two is the most obvious to new scripters/programmers, but I used to prefer "references" when talking about scripting.
- I saw that you've been editing the Scripting basics pages and used the word "pointer" in most cases. It's basically a minor linguistic thing, but I believe it only confuses the reader if different pages use different names for the same thing. Seeing how I'd prefer not to start an edit war over it, I would like to hear your point of view on this matter.
Looking back, that's a whole lot of text. Should my text come off as a bit harsh, please don't take it personal, my words seem to have a tendency to do that on the Internet.
Once again, thanks for taking your time to improve this wiki. Any help is more than welcome. -Kamikazee 23:15, 16 March 2008 (CET)
Re:Good work
I've been hoping for a bit of feedback on my rampage through the wiki and you brought up excellent points.
- Re: EV_Thread_SetCallback
You're right, I agree EV_Thread_SetCallback should be removed as it's not nessesary for scripters to know, and just keep the spawnclasses it works on. See my following ramble programmers view.
- Re: Game class on script event template
It is a pretty fundamental thing, because events only work on an entity/identifier with that game class (and will issue warning if not).
As to how prominent it should be, it would depend on how the viewer got to the page, if they are browsing through the script events page which is split into sections by game/spawn class it's fine, but any direct searching (via search box or even google) won't have that context.
- Re: class list/link to game classes.
I had read through the data mining post on d3w, good stuff, but held back on making comments until I could look up the current output on the wiki (which I admit I didn't do thoroughly), my current lack of regex knowledge also (arg so much to learnnn in life, where are my memory lasers). That didn't stop me from charging through with edits to the wiki though heh.
Anyway, I'll make sure any game class links I make follow the entity pages naming nameofclass (class).
- Re: script template: usage
It was initially a reaction (overreaction), to the previous template edit which had the misleading text "in your script type..." Assume a viewer can easily get up to speed how script events should be called (which if examples get filled out won't be a problem), then the current format for the usage line should be fine on it's own, bolstered by links to data types.
- Re: Pointer
Yes, you're right, reference is a better term. Noted.
Re: harshness
No worries, I've long since realised the limitations of text communication, and take the default stance that whatever I think I understand of something someone has written is likely to be wrong, and that it's a mirracle if anyone can understand what I'm trying to communicate :)
--TinMan 05:15, 17 March 2008 (CET)
Motivation
The initial prompt for my recent efforts was a few recent help posts to the etqw commuinity forums and the etqw irc. Basically in all my help posts in the years I've found it hard to judge the skill level of who I'm replying to, by this point I've been modding the idtech4 for a few years now, I've worked with and can easily understand the 'grail' that is the game code, so when it comes to discussing this stuff I'd like to be able to just intersperse links to concepts and definintions in forum posts as I explain a specific solution. Anyway, brushing aside the fact that I should have started this years ago, I've enjoyed it. I'll have to throttle my contributions back a bit a spend some time on actually doing my stuff, but I'll try to keep at it. --TinMan 05:15, 17 March 2008 (CET)
Programmers View
As I mentioned, 'code is king' when it comes to looking up how things work, and it's awesome the amount of code id Soft put on the game side of the engine divide. A slight flaw to my style is when I'm working my way through code I'll get into programmer mindset and put down explantions as I go. It usually takes me a later look through what I've written to realise there's a lot of stuff that the audience of that section just doesn't need to know (ie scripting in the most recent binge). I still need more practice on that though heh. --TinMan 05:15, 17 March 2008 (CET)
