PROJECT: Red Eclipse Documentation

[ZeroKnight]

Red Eclipse Documentation Project

~ You want Docs for Red Eclipse? Well, get writing!

Contributors:
ZeroKnight --- Project start, Vars, Organization, wiki edits
arand --- Wiki edits, maintainer of data/usage.cfg, creator of documentation scripts
ecube (ClassyRain) --- Vars
wowie --- Vars
Sinma --- Maintains French Wiki translations
Evropi --- Maintenance of Official Maps page
ballist1c --- Map preview pictures and reviews for the Official Maps page


What is this project about?

The Red Eclipse Documentation Project is a project launched by myself, ZeroKnight, when the demand for Red Eclipse documentation became more and more apparent and requested as Red Eclipse started to grow. The aim of the project is to create, maintain, and update the Red Eclipse Wiki with as much information as possible that pertains to running, configuring and modifying various elements of Red Eclipse, providing instructions and tutorials, and documentation for any and all aspects of the game; ranging from game variables and settings, simple controls, Cubescript, using the Map Editor, and anything else that the community feels should belong on the wiki.
It's just like any other Wiki; a repository for information for the community, written by the community itself. :)

The Red Eclipse Wiki


What are the current goals?

Please review the second post ;)


What can I do to help?

I was hoping that you'd ask. You can help in any way you wish! If there's any bit of Red Eclipse you know fairly well, feel free to share your knowledge! Maybe you're a Mapping Master, or the Confucius of Cubescript, the Puba of Parkour, the Mancer of Controls, the Baron of Binds; whoever you are, feel absolutely free to contribute anything and everything you know about Red Eclipse!

The Wiki in it's current state is rather barren. I encourage you to look through it. Read some of the articles, analyze them, and improve them! Every page on the Wiki could stand to use more, better formatted, and better organized information. There is quite a lot of Red Eclipse that remains undocumented. If you know about something that isn't documented, I whole-heartedly encourage you to add it! Myself and any other volunteers can, and will all work together to touch up and add on to pages as they need it. Wiki editing is a group effort :)

So, if you're really interested, please post in this thread, or contact Quin by email or IRC, or however, asking for Wiki editing permissions. You will need a SourceForge.net account to edit the Wiki.
Thank you very much for your interest, and happy documenting!


Anything else I should know?

Not really. If you wish to discuss any topic related to documentation, please feel free to do so in this thread. Just please, stay on topic :)
You may discuss and inquire information about Red Eclipse, and collaborate with others to gather as much information as possible. Not sure about something? Post it here. Need a second opinion on your formatting? Drop a link here and await criticism.
My thanks again to any and all who volunteer to help. We can all make Red Eclipse better, not just the Devs :) Now, get out there, and get documenting!

[ZeroKnight]

Current Goals


Variable Documentation:

Progress:

arand has created and added data/usage.cfg to Red Eclipse. This is what gives the new on-screen help in the Red Eclipse console. Even more so, he has created a way to generate wiki pages from the vars inside data/usage.cfg!
With this, we can document the vars in multiple places with only the one effort!

A test page with Auto-generated Gameplay vars: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... _Game_Vars
A test page with Auto-generated Weapon vars: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... eapon_Vars

Added https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... eapon_Vars as well
(re-)generation scripts are located in src/scripts/ and easily availabe via:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

make -C src/ game-vars-wiki
make -C src/ weapon-vars-wiki


(which can then be pasted into wiki pages)

Pretty much Everything:

The Project is still in its infant stage. You could add pretty much anything to the Wiki at this point.
We need anything related to Mapping and CubeScript, we could use some up-to-date screenshots, a separate FAQ regarding things in gameplay, perhaps a set of pages describing each game mode and it's sub-variants, and every mutator.

The general layout of everything could use some more thought and all around better organizing.

[srbs]

Confucious of Cubescript

I've got that one covered, but that's it. I also have those IRL stuff that takes a lot of my time.
I'm also pretty sad at describing things, so someone will have to read through and fix things.

srbs

[ZeroKnight]

IRL matters take my time too, sadly :( It's why I haven't made very much progress with this.
However, any and all help is always welcome :) Just do your best on the descriptions, and put it up there. If I know what you're going for, I'll try my hand at a better description if you think it could use it :)

[arand]

I end up doccing a bit on and off as well, so I guess I'd fit in here
I tend to d a lot of low-level plaintext stuff (*roff manual pages for client, server and cube2font), also the whole copyright/trademark thingy..

I also end up vengefully purging all CamelCase and force-convrting html to mediawiki markup (don't worry, I wont touch your vars tables... yet )

Current mini-project is assembling a changelog.txt for the 1.2 release (provided it's deemed a useful thing toi have).

I'm looking around for some other doc project, but I've not really seen something which tickles my fancy, at the moment. Problem is I know too little about mapping, scripting, etc. to really dive in there.. We'll see.

[ZeroKnight]

Well, if you can write tutorials, then the wiki needs them. The wiki definitely needs vars, it needs instructions for setting up various things, etc. etc.
If you can think of anything, throw it up there.

If you want to convert my tables to MediaWiki format, go right ahead. I just like doing it in HTML because it's far easier to read, IMO. As long as the look doesn't change, I don't care. And a way to convert back for convenience would be nifty ;P

[ZeroKnight]

Could I so humbly request that this thread be stickied? The more people that see it, the more people may decide to contribute.

[qreeves]

Could I so humbly request that this thread be stickied? The more people that see it, the more people may decide to contribute.

Done.

[MG&TL]

I'm happy to help. I don't know everything, but I know enough to help, I think. I shall start immediately.

[srbs]

If anybody feels like it, they can poke around my posts on this quad node, since I describe a lot of cubescript operations.
I think that all of them apply to RE with this note:
Justice == Red Eclipse 1.0
SVN == Red Eclipse 1.1+

[ZeroKnight]

I think you're confusing Sauer and RE release names. Justice is one of the Sauer Releases. Red Eclipse 1.0 is "Ides" Edition, as it was released on the Ides of March.
And thank you quin, for the sticky.

Also, sorry for my inactivity. I was enjoying the holiday. I shall resume working on the vars page. If any of you noticed, I already had the index skeleton going. It could probably stand to be formatted better, and I still need ideas for categorization of the Vars. Game vars is one thing, that's easy. But how would we define a "server var" that's not a game var? Client vars are somewhat easy too; the ones that control visual aspects like HUD and GUI, and various settings like crosshair, volume, etc.
Ah well, that's why it's a work in progress :P

[srbs]

I think you're confusing Sauer and RE release names. Justice is one of the Sauer Releases.

I'm not, I just didn't explain myself.

I meant that when I mention Justice in the comments, they correspond to RE 1.0 Ides.
And when I mention SVN, they correspong to RE 1.1 Supernova and after.

[ZeroKnight]

Hey guys, I'm sorry but I'm going to go on a temporary hiatus because I've got finals coming up, a project, and other schoolwork I need to get done. That, and actually playing Red Eclipse is more fun. I'll set the record now, that progress on my end for this project will be slow for a while.

It would be nice to get more people into this project. Especially for the variables.

[rocknroll237]

A similar thing is happening in Xonotic at the moment. Documentation is pretty tricky and requires a lot of time ( ), but I'm sure it'll be worth it at the end and will make life easier in the long run.

[ZeroKnight]

I'm going to get back to working on it as soon as I can, but it'd be really nice if everyone could help out just a little bit. Especially with variables. That will be the single most demanding part of this documentation. Any and all help in that area would be hugely helpful.

[ClassyRain]

I'll attempt to help with the vars page (that is, I might help, if everybody lets me )
For now, I'll working on it in a word processor, to be exported. Could I have access to whatever you have on vars at the moment? thanks

[ZeroKnight]

Thank you. You have renewed my faith in doing this. I got really discouraged when no one wanted to help, on top of being busy with various other things. I honestly don't have too much, and lost some of my work a while back when my school's terminal crashed unexpectedly -_-
Regardless, I'll give you what I have. It's all tucked inside HTML, but you shouldn't have a problem finding the data you need. If you do, just ask. I'll point out where things are.

I'll give you access to the Dropbox folder, I just need your email :)

Thank you again for volunteering. Really renewed my faith in doing this.

[ClassyRain]

Thank you. You have renewed my faith in doing this. I got really discouraged when no one wanted to help, on top of being busy with various other things. I honestly don't have too much, and lost some of my work a while back when my school's terminal crashed unexpectedly -_-
Regardless, I'll give you what I have. It's all tucked inside HTML, but you shouldn't have a problem finding the data you need. If you do, just ask. I'll point out where things are.

I'll give you access to the Dropbox folder, I just need your email

Thank you again for volunteering. Really renewed my faith in doing this.

No problem
I just hope that 1.2 has all that anyone ever wants so 1.3 won't come too quickly...

[ZeroKnight]

My current progress has been going through them alphabetically. (A is starting to get huge, with the rest near empty). I decided that doing this is not only contributing to my own disinterest, so I'm going to determine which variables are the most used...the most "important" ones, if you will, and document them first, and get all the miscellaneous ones that few would probably ever see, let alone use, last.

I probably should have done that from the beginning.

[qreeves]

Yeah, never work on something that doesn't interest you. This is all for fun, remember that People will live without knowing *everything*.

[ZeroKnight]

Very true. I lost sight of that, but now I'm back on track. I've been asking around for a compilation of the most "important"/"popular" vars and I'll start with those. The really ambiguous ones people could probably figure out themselves if they even found them in the first place.

And you're very right, fun is indeed the underlying goal. Red Eclipse the first Open Source project I've ever contributed to/actively been a small part of, and I intend to keep it that way :)

[wowie]

Should that poll there have more options? It's not that I'm lazy,edit: I'm lazy lol.I just don't know how to make/edit webpages, plus, I don't even know 1/3 of all the vars in this game yet!
Shameless bump so this awesome page doesn't die! It should be stickied but it's not!

[TheLastProject]

Should that poll there have more options? It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't know how to make/edit webpages, plus, I don't even know 1/3 of all the vars in this game yet!
Shameless bump so this awesome page doesn't die! It should be stickied but it's not!

You're obviously too lazy to learn how to make/edit webpages or find out about variables. The poll is fine.

[wowie]

gah I forgot I can't delete my own posts anymore.

[wowie]

You're obviously too lazy to learn how to make/edit webpages or find out about variables. The poll is fine.

I never thought of it that way. I guess I'll have to learn some more then(don't want to be too lazy, just lazy ).
Where is a good tutorial? My novice google-fu didn't find anything useful. Also it would be helpful to others looking at this and deciding they want to help.

edit:------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents

I found it! This is a pretty complete resource on editing mediawiki pages and... I have a lot of stuff to read. Also I still haven't found anything useful on editing HTML.
I'n the meantime, what is the quickest way you have found to find and document lots of vars in a short period of time?