 Claims System - Criticism Needed |
Braggi
Seigneur
Registration Date: 2006.09.23
Posts: 287
Location: B.C. Canada
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| Claims System - Criticism Needed |
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Folks, if you would be willing to go to the link below, look over the
claims system outlined and critique it, we would be grateful.
Important - How to Post and Accept Claims
Gyssar and I are trying to make the claims system as simple and
effective as possible, so your suggestions about the method would be
very valuable here. Everyone is welcome to contribute here - mod
leaders, modders, lurkers. We want this to be as clear as possible
since the idea of claims is simple but keeping track of them often is
not.
A couple of points to note:
1. We are using a different claim method from normal and this is by design. Try to criticize with that in mind.
2. We welcome questions and suggestions on this one. You can
post them here instead of in the suggestion thread, to keep things
organized.
So, please do a solid rip-and-tear here.
Thanks gang!
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2008.08.20 21:10 |
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Lady Nerevar
Marquise
Registration Date: 2006.01.04
Posts: 1,362
Location: Not in hiding anymore
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some things I think could be changed:
combine Textures and Meshes into one claim and keep Concept Art and 2D
design as another. Meshes and textures really go together better then
Meshes and concepts.
get rid of the "generic" prefix, instead something used all over HR can
use either an HR prefix or no prefix at all. saves space, and imho the
prefix is quite superfluous.
abbreviate region names. Illessan Hills can become IH and so forth. saves space and is easier on the eyes.
I'm not sure that a 6 digit claim number is all that efficient, maybe
count claims by region (+generics)? I'm not sure that there would ever
be a million claims so that many numbers are just hard to keep track
off. oh well, its up to you.
I'm kinda confused though, will all claims be lumped together in one
forum or will they have separate subforums (ints, exts. sound,
graphics, etc.)?
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2008.08.20 22:04 |
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Braggi
Seigneur
Registration Date: 2006.09.23
Posts: 287
Location: B.C. Canada
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LadyN:
I'm going to let Gyssar give the final answer on most of these
excellent criticisms, since the claiming system is his brainchild. I
can answer the point about the claim number definitively though - we
intend to automate the tracking of this stuff through an SQL database
(Gyssar has the know-how, equipment and desire) so that number is vital
for internal use.
Regarding the other items:
1. I think the texture and mesh combination you offer is very reasonable myself.
2. I suspect you are right about abbreviating the region names.
We have a lot of freedom in file name size, but it may turn out to be
simpler using your suggestion.
3. Both Gyssar and I puzzled a bit on the "Generic" issue as
well - the idea of using HR for mod-wide stuff did come up, but we
settled on "Generic" as a placeholder. If he is willing to use your
idea, again, I think it is quite reasonable.
4. Sorry for the confusion about the Claims Forum!
For the moment claims will be in one forum, to keep things simple. We
may expand the forum structure in the future, but one of the biggest
problems we want to avoid from the old project is scattering stuff far
and wide across too many sub-forums. Our plan this time around is to
ask for new subforums only when they are absolutely needed. This saves
Razorwing and Sandor work and it helps us keep our organizational
sanity intact as well.
Thank you LadyN - good solid critiquing there and all of it very practical.
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2008.08.20 22:45 |
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Gyssar
First Knight
Registration Date: 2006.09.07
Posts: 107
Location: Moscow, Russia
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
combine Textures and Meshes into one claim and keep Concept Art and 2D
design as another. Meshes and textures really go together better then
Meshes and concepts.
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Braggi was probably slightly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work
he's been doing aver the last few days that he probably missed the fact
that texture art is frequently referred to as 2d art also. So the
seperate texture category is unnecessary altogether. It'll just be one
single art category (easier to keep track that way).
| quote: |
Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
get rid of the "generic" prefix, instead something used all over HR can
use either an HR prefix or no prefix at all. saves space, and imho the
prefix is quite superfluous.
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Actually, I aggree, I think for HR-wide stuff we could drop the region
tag altogether. That idea didn't cross my mind when we were settling on
the naming convention.
| quote: |
Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
abbreviate region names. Illessan Hills can become IH and so forth. saves space and is easier on the eyes.
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This really all depends on the scope of the issue. If we're talking
bout general HR regions like the Ilessian Hills we could actually go
for abbreviations. Heck, we could even make a reference list of all the
abbreviations we're using for them. But, when it comes to smaller areas
like villages (of which there would be many), for instance, static
object claims that are specific to a certain region abbreviations might
start to overlap (which is bad). And to avoid having to make a
reference list for all the possible regions in HR (small and big), we
could go ahead and use the full name.
| quote: |
Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
I'm not sure that a 6 digit claim number is all that efficient, maybe
count claims by region (+generics)? I'm not sure that there would ever
be a million claims so that many numbers are just hard to keep track
off. oh well, its up to you.
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Actually the decision to use a general UID for all the claims that we
create did not come out of the blue. We will eventually be moving the
claims system to a browser-based online claim/submit system based on an
SQL databse. The UID will be then generated and used by SQL to keep
track of all the claims we have (complete/in progress/released). The 4
seperate tags in the name will be devided into seperate fields in the
actual database for ease of access and all the relevant info about the
claimer will be appended to the UID of the claim.
Sounds pretty complex. It is, in terms of setting it up. But that's my headache
, so you shouldn't worry about it.
| quote: |
Originally posted by Lady Nerevar
I'm kinda confused though, will all claims be lumped together in one
forum or will they have separate subforums (ints, exts. sound,
graphics, etc.)?
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Oh yes, we'll definetly seperate them. But, as I already stated: please, a little patience, we're getting there.
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This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Gyssar: 2008.08.21 07:26.
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2008.08.21 07:26 |
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