Mahz's Dev Journal

[HeySeuss]

Nice tags. Not entirely sure on the description for the high fantasy tag. Not all high fantasy is about defeating some great evil. Might be better to have its description be based around the magical content, which is usually fairly significant in high fantasy.

@Ellri

Haha, I couldn't even find two definitions online that agreed with each other. Even the wikipedia page meanders on and on.

@Mahz

My understanding of 'high' versus 'low' fantasy is how much a part of the mainstream world the supernatural is, though that is only part of the reckoning some others make. In a high fantasy setting, such as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, magic is an accepted and widely understood part of the world whereas in Robert Howard's Conan series (which establishes the Low Fantasy genre in a lot of ways) magic is the exception to the rule of the setting; it pops up out of nowhere, and few characters in the world actually believe in it and those that see it are traumatized by the encounter and the cognitive dissonance (or just gobsmacked before they put it to the sword in Conan's case.) George R.R. Martin straddles some of the divide in the sense that his world is a world where magic and the supernatural make a comeback from a long slumber after establishing a gritty human element. Rowling and Lewis, for example, fit into High Fantasy as it is a world within the real world, but where magic and the supernatural in general are commonplace and accepted parts of that world within a world. The reason why definitions are hard to really find is because there's still a lot of wiggle room on what constitutes high and low fantasy. I take it as 'if you opened a crypt and a spirit came howling out, how would your mates react to that story in a pub?' But that might be oversimplifying the divide.

[Ellri]

the definition for high and low fantasy as with how commonplace and/or understood magic is can be a good one. but there's no single definition that'll cover the entire genre.

[La Inquisidora]

Hm. How about the ability to delete PM conversations?

[Ellri]

@La Inquisidora Deleting PMs is actually a more complex system than one would think. They are essentially forum threads with restricted access. When deleting a PM, what you would really be doing is remove yourself from the access list to said thread. Only after all people who once had access to said thread has "deleted" it, would they truly be open for deletion. What @Mahz is planning there is to have the system check every now and then for conversations like that (once the access removal system is coded in, of course). We're fairly sure this will also be coded when he codes the stuff for adding people to a pre-existing PM thread. @Mahz Discovered something that might need fixing on the @mention buttons. No matter where you are in a prospective post, pressing the button will put the @mention text at the end of the post. Putting it where the text marker is instead would make said button even better.

[KeysOfKayes]

Can we have a menu for alternate RPGuild skins/color schemes? For, you know, an attempt at emulating individuality.

@Dinh AaronMk

I'm not really a fan of the idea of separate colour schemes, because it makes... visuals harder for people. For example (though admittedly a fairly small cross section) gifs don't support partial transparency, so the easiest work around is using the site's background. Multiple colour schemes means that would only work for those who use the same scheme. Again, that's a fairly small cross-section of the user base that would be affected. But here's a larger one: coloured text. A common practice, that I'd be flabbergasted if you hadn't seen, is people using coloured text to differentiate between different character's dialogue. Colours that are easy to read on one background would be next to invisible on another. Oh, you could figure out what colours are legible across all backgrounds and limit yourself exclusively to those, but it'd be a headache and an unnecessary extra layer of complication for something that's supposed to reduce confusion.

[Captain Jordan]

But here's a larger one: coloured text. A common practice, that I'd be flabbergasted if you hadn't seen, is people using coloured text to differentiate between different character's dialogue. Colours that are easy to read on one background would be next to invisible on another. Oh, you could figure out what colours are legible across all backgrounds and limit yourself exclusively to those, but it'd be a headache and an unnecessary extra layer of complication for something that's supposed to reduce confusion.

@KeysOfKayes

Easiest way to deal with color fonts is to simply find the troublesome fonts on lighter/darker themes, and via CSS assign backgrounds to the colors so that they're legible. Much like Mahz's styling for inline coding used to be. It still can be a bit of an eyesore, but it won't make text invisible or make someone go blind trying to read it. Besides, it depends on the color scheme, the more white you go the harder the colors become. Sticking to a lighter grey or beige helps this effect. As far as fantasy goes (too many posts to quote directly), why not simply generalize the tooltips and add a Fantasy tip? There's definite contention about what high fantasy is, as such I disagree with HeySeuss' (and Wikipedia's) inclusion of Harry Potter as high fantasy. For me, high fantasy is generally a world where humans are not the main race, so Tolkein's Middle Earth would be a perfect example. Narnia fits well, but Harry Potter still has humankind as a the main race, creatures and human-like monsters are still in the minority. But that's why I think fandom tags, once user-made tags are implemented, will be far more useful for eliminating those arguments. People who create their own fantasy worlds are entitled to their own definitions (just like how GIF is pronounced with a soft G :P).

[Mahz]

the definition for high and low fantasy as with how commonplace and/or understood magic is can be a good one. but there's no single definition that'll cover the entire genre.

@Ellri

We don't need to be all-encompassing with our one-liner definitions. Perhaps a wrong definition that everyone sees+obeys is better for a tag system than making everyone bring their own varying definition (tower-of-babel problem). I'll have to refactor some of my cringeworthy defs. Either way, I changed "High/Epic Fantasy" to just "Fantasy", and the definition to "Wizards, hobbits, axes". Maybe being prescriptive with genre cliches works — the cliches get the idea across but it's obvious not to take them too seriously? Anyways, if someone else has an opinion on some tag definitions, please take a stab at it and share your attempt.

Hm. How about the ability to delete PM conversations?

@La Inquisidora

Yeah, it's a feature I want to add but its ratio of payoff/effort is just too sad for a project that's relegated to my free-time. It's kinda like when you finally have a day off from work but you spend it going to the bank and running errands because you finally have time.

@Mahz Discovered something that might need fixing on the @mention buttons. No matter where you are in a prospective post, pressing the button will put the @mention text at the end of the post. Putting it where the text marker is instead would make said button even better.

@Ellri

Oh yeah, nice. I need to hook it into the editor's cursor location. @KeysOfKayes Good points. Another issue is that colors are hard. It took me hours to tweak the editor for very little gain.

[Ellri]

heh. That made us laugh, @Mahz. You can't satisfy everyone, so why not go for a cliché? People really shouldn't need to have every version of the term fantasy defined for them. If they need that, they can ask someone for it.

[Syben]

@Mahz A tag covering Apocalypse/post-apoc themes would be a good idea imo.

[Hank]

Minor note: usertitles do not show up in private message threads.

[Mahz]

IwakuRoleplay just inspired me with the idea of community-seeded generators for characters, cities, etc. Here's a proof-of-concept I just hacked up: http://jsfiddle.net/danneu/2fxp9gou/1/ The idea is that the generator is defined as a template: >This <CHARACTER_ADJECTIVE> <ARCHETYPE> <STRENGTH>, but <QUIRK>. And users can contribute the randomly-selected seeds that will get combined into a unique permutation that people can use for inspiration -- maybe for their own characters, villains, random NPCs, etc. Here's another example: http://nine.frenchboys.net/city.html I think it'd be fun.

[Rare]

Could we have something that's similar to Roleplayer's Resume on Iwaku?

[Mahz]

Could we have something that's similar to Roleplayer's Resume on Iwaku?

@Rare

How does it work? I see that there's a tab in the profile. This new tag system is a step towards a more general system that helps players discover roleplays, checks, and players that share their interests. It'll take a while to pick up steam, but as it matures, I'll be able to implement features like allowing players to maintain a set of tags they like and tags they dislike. I can use that kind of data to help players find each other and even build a straightforward "player match-maker" engine. The current tag set is pretty weak/broad, but we can fix that in the coming weeks as people get used to it. I think it'd also be cool to click on someone's profile and see the most common tags of the roleplays they participate in. I'll check out their system.

[Ellri]

Maybe a thread down in the bugs/suggestions section dedicated to determining tags? Oh, and will you have means for seeing level of use on various tags? If we eventually get to the point where there are dozens of tags, having them all visible at the same time might be cluttering, so it might be ideal to have them sorted by how often they are used. Or by sub-categories. Lots of tags would be grouped under say, fandom. Also, will RPs have a limit on number of tags for a single rp? And what will happen if someone abuses tags to make their rp more visible?

[UltikanaRe]

Perhaps custom tags would be ideal.

[oakman]

I was looking at Iwaku for the first time, was wondering if you could have something like their Jump-In RP section where it is basically collab writing, there is no need for character sheets or an elaborate ooc. Some may say we already have free RP, but Jump-In RPs can be detailed and have high standards as opposed to free rps' one liners to few sentences norm. Finally as the name suggests, a JUMP IN Rp section would always feature said RPs that are always open for anyone to join in.

Perhaps custom tags would be ideal.

@UltikanaRe

But that would require moderation, and would make filtering impossible. It's easier to have a broad list of tags, fit for most (if not all) circumstances while keeping the list manageable.

[Ellri]

Having a tag request thread should be sufficient. We realized one set of tags that would be very useful now... Open and closed. To say whether an rp is possible to join.

[whizzball1]

<Snipped quote by whizzball1> Yeah, I hear ya. I agree that it's a great feature. As far as GM-/co-GM-specific powers, what do you think of each tab having its own post that's shared between the GM and co-GMs? It's kind of like auto-creating the first post in each tab except that it's optional/invisible until a GM/co-GM actually puts content on it. All GMs can edit it, and the revisions are saved so that a rogue GM can't just forever delete the content. It solves some issues and can be easily built on top of the current system without touching anything. ( At the moment I'm working on the roleplay/check tagging system)

@Mahz

Oh, yes, that'd definitely work well. So even if the main GM couldn't be changed, any co-GMs added would still be able to keep the RP going.

[HeySeuss]

I was looking at Iwaku for the first time, was wondering if you could have something like their Jump-In RP section where it is basically collab writing, there is no need for character sheets or an elaborate ooc. Some may say we already have free RP, but Jump-In RPs can be detailed and have high standards as opposed to free rps' one liners to few sentences norm. Finally as the name suggests, a JUMP IN Rp section would always feature said RPs that are always open for anyone to join in.

@oakman

You can do that in any section you care to -- it doesn't just have to be in free. That's a short term answer pending any changes that may happen to the interest check system as we know it anyway.