PDA

View Full Version : ADOM Wiki



seepage87
03-07-2008, 06:51 PM
We all know Andy Williams' http://www.andywlms.com/adom/ for the Adom guidebook, but I think the ADOM community would benefit greatly from an ADOM wiki similar to what Nethack has at http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page. It's an incredibly valuable resource, and a wiki is essentially ideal for Roguelikes. There exists at least one already at http://adom.wikidot.com/, but its very under developed right now. I think a community effort to port the guidebook to this wiki, or a new one at wikia would help everyone.

seepage87
03-07-2008, 07:04 PM
Also, should this maybe be in the General ADOM section instead?

Epythic
03-07-2008, 10:52 PM
RogueBasin (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/) ?? Hmm, not a good idea.

Whatever we do, it definitely has to be downloadable.

theotherhiveking
03-07-2008, 11:48 PM
I'm just thinking... Adom has that wonderful and download able Guide, we should wait for jade and then writte a guide for it.. or even a modding guide..

paan
03-08-2008, 12:05 PM
I think that it is a good idea when JADE comes.. ADOM it self is not changing anymore so a the guidebook itself is kindda sufficient.. But when JADE is release.. I bet there is a lot of information that needs to be documented that can benefit from community participation..

adom-admin
03-08-2008, 12:07 PM
We all know Andy Williams' http://www.andywlms.com/adom/ for the Adom guidebook, but I think the ADOM community would benefit greatly from an ADOM wiki similar to what Nethack has at http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page. It's an incredibly valuable resource, and a wiki is essentially ideal for Roguelikes. There exists at least one already at http://adom.wikidot.com/, but its very under developed right now. I think a community effort to port the guidebook to this wiki, or a new one at wikia would help everyone.

The ADOM & JADE Wiki is the next (and final) improvement on my list of major things to be done for the website... but this will a month or two... for now I'm happy and busy playing with the blog and the forums and the next step should happen once more JADE code is finished ;)

Travis Prue
03-08-2008, 02:18 PM
The ADOM & JADE Wiki is the next (and final) improvement on my list of major things to be done for the website... but this will a month or two...


That should be enough time for me to finish SivWiki :D

Zeno
03-08-2008, 03:41 PM
I've seen that we can already reach the wiki... if we can guess its address ;)

Grey
03-08-2008, 05:51 PM
Can we get Andy Williams' permission to port the current Guidebook to the wiki? And will there be any policing to stop code-dived information being put in? I agree a wiki would be nice, especially since certain sections of the current Guidebook are out of date or could do with expansion. I worry about some very wrong information getting in though - how do the Nethack guys take care of this?

Zeno
03-09-2008, 10:05 AM
I agree that we should port Guidebook to Wiki (of course after asking Andy for permission).

I think NetHack does not have this problem (wrong information) since it is open source. I suppose we could have a rule that whenever you enter information, you add "[unconfirmed]", unless it has been already confirmed in a discussion somewhere (then you should add a link to this discussion). You can also confirm someone else's information and remove [unconfirmed]. Some people would check the Recent Changes and verify that these rules are applied.

Epythic
03-09-2008, 04:18 PM
I agree that we should port Guidebook to Wiki (of course after asking Andy for permission).
I disagree. But we need a wiki for JADE.


I suppose we could have a rule that whenever you enter information, you add "", unless it has been already confirmed in a discussion somewhere (then you should add a link to this discussion). You can also confirm someone else's information and remove [unconfirmed]. Some people would check the Recent Changes and verify that these rules are applied.
Sounds reasonable.

The nice thing is: we have the forum to test if a user is lawful/chaotic.

We should only give wiki accounts to people who have been active in the forum for some time ([U]not a long time - two weeks without any misbehavior is enough to scare away the spammers. We really don't want to limit the use of the wiki, right?). For everyone else, we would need a request-an-edit feature (either a discussion page in the wiki or a forum section).

Edit:

since it is open source
As far as I know, JADE will be open source too :)

Macros
03-09-2008, 05:26 PM
As far as I know, JADE will be open source too

Really? Can you share with us source of that information?:) I don't remember Creator writing anything about Jade as open source(please correct me if I'm wrong).

Epythic
03-09-2008, 06:02 PM
Three things:


On the old JADE page (http://www.adom.de/jade/index.php3) there is a "Source Code" section.
In 2004, he already published the Javadocs there (http://www.adom.de/jade/javadoc-jade-005/index.html).
As he said here (http://www.adom.de/misc/news.php3?show=89&lastindex=0) (December 2007), he requested a free license of IntelliJ. It is very likely that this means he told them he is doing an open source project.


TB, please do it! We'll send you tons of postcards!

Macros
03-09-2008, 06:38 PM
Uhm, I wouldn't be sure about it. Those things you listed doesn't really forejudge about anything(especially first two things - Creator already published parts of source code on blog, so I think that "Source Code" section was designed for parts or examples of source code). I'm also not convinced if releasing JADE as open source really would be good thing.

Anyway, no matter if JADE will be open source or not, I'm going to send TB some postcards when it will be released.

Epythic
03-09-2008, 06:59 PM
Now that we have a forum, maybe we could ask the Creator himself? Its the only way to be sure...

TB? Are you here? :)

seepage87
03-13-2008, 03:05 PM
I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to port the guidebook to a wiki. As it stands now, any time you read something you have to hunt for the related information. With a wiki, everything related is a blue highlighted word away.

But since it's already confirmed there will be an ADOM wiki (as well as JADE), it's more important to discuss how it might be implemented. I think the idea above of only giving accounts to people who post here often is very bad. Not only would it require moderation to see who qualifies, it ruins the best part of wikis.

I think it's important that people can make at least minor to somewhat minor edits without logging in, since there will be maybe 10x as many people who read it and would fix minor problems or add a sentence, than would add something significant and want to take an active roll in its management. Graffiti tends to be minimal, especially in locations where fewer people are going to see it (why not deface wikipedia instead).

As far as inaccurate information goes, I don't think someone would post something as fact unless they were fairly sure it was accurate. If they aren't sure, they would likely qualify it as having been "observed, but unconfirmed" or something like that.

In general people really aren't malicious, especially in endeavors that benefit them and in projects they have some dedication to. Anyone who seriously tries to get anywhere in ADOM has that dedication, we all know that. I've never seen a "casual" rogue-like player (maybe for -bands). Casual for roguelikes takes more time, effort and dedication than your average Red Sox fan has for MLB.

Zeno
03-13-2008, 09:47 PM
I've seen that, on the newsgroup, people sometimes post YAGBUs without proper checking. Hopefully they wouldn't add such a information to Wiki as a confirmed fact (only as a hypothesis), but some rules could be useful.

Epythic
03-13-2008, 10:33 PM
I think the idea above of only giving accounts to people who post here often is very bad. Not only would it require moderation to see who qualifies, it ruins the best part of wikis.

It was more like "have been around for two weeks and made 2-3 posts". Comeon, thats thats not a barrier, is it? And its the best spam-protection we can get. You know what Admins can do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators#Administrator_tools) in the Wikipedia? Give that status to the ones that have "posted here often".


I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to port the guidebook to a wiki. As it stands now, any time you read something you have to hunt for the related information. With a wiki, everything related is a blue highlighted word away.

Because it costs time. If you want to do it, go ahead, but I dont think it is a good idea. I would try to get people to work on the JADE wiki, at least once JADE is out... oh... - ok right, we got enough time ;)

heavensblade23
03-14-2008, 01:36 PM
Make sure the wiki is spam-protected somehow. Chinese spammers like to erase whole articles and replace them with ad text.

Epythic
03-14-2008, 04:55 PM
Make sure the wiki is spam-protected somehow. Chinese spammers like to erase whole articles and replace them with ad text.

That is what we have been talking about :)

I still think it is a good idea to use the forums to sort out spammers.

adom-admin
03-14-2008, 10:05 PM
Uhm, I wouldn't be sure about it. Those things you listed doesn't really forejudge about anything(especially first two things - Creator already published parts of source code on blog, so I think that "Source Code" section was designed for parts or examples of source code). I'm also not convinced if releasing JADE as open source really would be good thing.

Anyway, no matter if JADE will be open source or not, I'm going to send TB some postcards when it will be released.

Thanks ;-)

Right now I do not think that JADE will be open source... for much the same reasons as ADOM (and BTW I by now have bought a commercial license for IntelliJ).

IMHO that's not that much of a problem with JADE as the public APIs for it will be available and it thus will be possible to program extensions (e.g. items, monsters, a new UI interface (without having to know all the sources). I polan to release limited snippets of the sources to illustrate concepts and show how some things are done.

As for JADE I'd like to keep the complete sources closed to (a) prevent stupid variants I personally do not like and (b) keep some secrets better protected. Right now I'm checking various means of code obfuscation for Java to achieve that just.

We'll see.

coppro
03-15-2008, 04:32 AM
I think that variant management is not really dependent on whether or not something is open-sourced or not. Generally, a good open-source project doesn't get a lot of variants - contributions head back into the main code tree. Doubly so for a program which can have variants written (to an extent) without needing to edit the sources.

I'm not saying that open-source is necessary - there's no particular reason why JADE would need it. But Java obfuscation seems to be relatively difficult (don't have a lot of experience in the issue, but I know how Java works well enough) - it's quite easy to see whether a particular function is called for instance. And if you try and obfuscate code via tricks like reflection, you end up sacrificing speed. And most code will eventually be cracked.

You could always do it half-and-half - make the fundamental engine OSS, but keep code to any easter eggs or storyline components or mechanics private. But that would make it easier to decompile and lead to likely more variants.

Personally, I'd like to look at the source, because I would like to see how a Roguelike is written in a language other than C, and that has more than 7D to be written in (there are a few others, but I don't trust them for some inexplicable reason. I trust The Creator though.). I'm a curious student!

Epythic
03-15-2008, 08:38 AM
I think that variant management is not really dependent on whether or not something is open-sourced or not. Generally, a good open-source project doesn't get a lot of variants - contributions head back into the main code tree. Doubly so for a program which can have variants written (to an extent) without needing to edit the sources.

I'm not saying that open-source is necessary - there's no particular reason why JADE would need it. But Java obfuscation seems to be relatively difficult (don't have a lot of experience in the issue, but I know how Java works well enough) - it's quite easy to see whether a particular function is called for instance. And if you try and obfuscate code via tricks like reflection, you end up sacrificing speed. And most code will eventually be cracked.

You could always do it half-and-half - make the fundamental engine OSS, but keep code to any easter eggs or storyline components or mechanics private. But that would make it easier to decompile and lead to likely more variants.

Trust me, Obfuscation works. If you need an example, do a google search for "wurmonline" (no i dont play it, but i once tried to get their sources ;)), download the .jar and decompile it (there are a few online decompilers). then, look at what you get.

Basically, it renames all your variables and performs some other tricks that even make it faster. If you have some hundreds of thousands of lines of code and neither comments nor names - you are out of luck.

That does *not* mean that you cant edit it. For example, cheating should be easier than if it was written in C.


I'm a curious student!

Me too.

Epythic
03-16-2008, 03:38 PM
Thanks ;-)

Right now I do not think that JADE will be open source... for much the same reasons as ADOM (and BTW I by now have bought a commercial license for IntelliJ).

IMHO that's not that much of a problem with JADE as the public APIs for it will be available and it thus will be possible to program extensions (e.g. items, monsters, a new UI interface (without having to know all the sources). I polan to release limited snippets of the sources to illustrate concepts and show how some things are done.

As for JADE I'd like to keep the complete sources closed to (a) prevent stupid variants I personally do not like and (b) keep some secrets better protected. Right now I'm checking various means of code obfuscation for Java to achieve that just.

We'll see.

For some reason I did not read that post.

While I accept your decision (your code, your choice), I again say that I dont like it, this time directly to you. Not that anyone will listen to me...

Grey
03-16-2008, 06:40 PM
I for one am quite glad JADE will be closed source. I don't want all the secrets of the game laid bare, and I don't want idiots making poor variations. Also means we won't have fools posting bug reports about variants etc.

F50
04-21-2008, 07:26 PM
while I am not really opposed to closed-source, I think the decision to close-source it is based upon misconceptions of open source software.

I don't want all the secrets of the game laid bare "laid bare" is hardly necessary. A minor attempt to obfuscate code in a separate file prevents people from casually looking in there are finding stuff out, and combined with the goodwill of a community there isn't much to worry about from regular people like you and me. I have heard that people have used code-diving to figure out some stuff pertaining to the scroll of omnipotence as well as some GB information, even though it is closed source. Naturally, few people have, but mostly out of a respect for the Creator.

...and I don't want idiots making poor variations. This is very uncommon with open source programs. Most attempts to create forks are ignored.

the four possible outcomes for a fork are:


1. The death of the fork (example: libc/glibc). This is by far the most common outcome; indeed, many forks never receive enough support to ?die?.
2. A re-merging of the fork (example: gcc/egcs); this is where the projects rejoin each other (though one or the other may be the dominant source of the combined effort).
3. The death of the original (example: XFree86/X.org).
4. Successful branching -- both succeed, typically catering to different communities (examples: GNU emacs / xemacs, OpenBSD).
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#forking

for a JADE fork, 2 is only possible of the creator agrees with the fork in which case it really isn't a fork. The creator has enough fans that I think 3 is impossible too. Which leaves 4. What is the likelihood that a rogue project would succeed?

Some things going against that possibility.

1. Any such fork would be against the wishes of the creator and would have to overcome significant animosity for doing so.
2. In order for such a fork to succeed there would have to be a dedicated and skilled developer that is willing to undermine such wishes.
3. Such a fork would both have to attempt to be better than JADE (a fork of JADE would not be called JADE) while being controversial enough

Also what would happen if the creator got hit by a bus? Despite being a somewhat ridiculous worry, this is actually a question that often crosses my mind. This question also arises with another free game I know of, Transcendence, which is a 2d (in other words, graphics, not ASCII) space-shooting roguelike. It is relatively near 1.0, and the last thing I want is for that project to die on me, for any reason.


Such a long post and I really didn't want to say much. I don't seriously think that this post would convince anyone of anything, although I hope it does. It would hardly be in the spirit of FOSS to do anything more than ask for a project to become open source, and whatever happens, I do support the creator in making JADE. If I did not, then I shouldn't be here.

Sradac
04-21-2008, 10:13 PM
.

This is very uncommon with open source programs. Most attempts to create forks are ignored...



Way untrue. Seen all the crazy and silly and sometimes just plain dumb *band variants out there? Yeah there are some good ones but there are plenty that go the munchkin route a little bit too much. And they dont do things quite right. How the heck do you expect playing as a dragon race to be able to fit into the door of the prancing pony in bree and not have everyone scream their heads off? Its bad enough I can walk around Terinyo as an orc or troll and not have everyone run as soon as they see me.

F50
04-22-2008, 12:16 AM
Angband and Nethack encouraged forks I believe. I don't think there was any community protest or disapproval. Also, most of those forks are dead. The only "successful" ones I know of are Slash'em, Zangband, Nethack itself, and ToME.

If you consider the majority of open source programs out there, especially GPLed works, I see few forks. BSD is a fork-conducive license, GPL is not fork-conducive (you have to keep it GPLed, give credit to author, not mix with proprietary code etc).

DirtyFinger
05-24-2008, 04:12 PM
New adom Wiki at wikia.com: http://adom.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Since I come from the nwn2 guys and the Epic Character Build Repository, my work there influenced the structure and visuals I use for adom.
I also focused on Classes and Races first.

I haven't figured out yet how to change the color scheme and other gui thingies, but the general framework is there.

Category:Races
|- Human, Troll, etc.

Category:Classes
|- Barbarian, Archer, etc...

Category:Skills
|- Alchemy, Alertness, etc ... all skills belong to this category.
|-Category:Skills that excel at high values
|-Alertness, Backstabbing, etc.
|-Category:Skills that need materials
|-Bridge Building, Fletchery, etc.
|-Category:Skills available to everyone
|-Climbing, First Aid, etc.

Also check out the Attributes section: http://adom.wikia.com/wiki/Attributes
There's probably more stuff you can write in it, but I'd like to brag with the attribute tables which are sortable by clicking on the respective columns.

Races are all done and each race entry contains both the description and the starting attributes ... something no one before seemed to regard as particularily useful, for some reason. Races still need more details, like the mechanics behind the slow Trollish learning ability etc.

Classes are all created although 80% are stubs, meaning that these articles have the attribute modifiers but still lack the description and the power lists.
See the Archer (http://adom.wikia.com/wiki/Archer) article for a complete example. This is just stuff from the manual. I'd like to see things like race recommendations and maybe basic tactics, playing tips, etc. for each class.

I also gathered some links and put them here: http://adom.wikia.com/wiki/Links
Feel free to add more. Even links that just mention Adom as one of many roguelikes are encouraged in the respective section.

What do you think ?