EZ Script Assistant (sorta)

[GogglesPizanno]

I was doodling around with this at work on Friday and had a spare few moments today to get it sorta workable. Its an online EZ Script Assistant sorta thing. It doesn't do anything fancy as I didn't have the time or energy to plan it out that much. Its mainly a fast and easy tool to spit out an ezscript skeleton so you can spend more time editing rather than typing.

I still have to add the last few remaining encounter types, and probably clean up some typos etc... but it basically works like this: On the front page, you can give your story a name, choose what kinds and how many of each type of encounter you want and hit the submit button. It will then generate a blank template for your story with the encounters you specified.

Each individual encounter is collapsible by clicking it's title - or you can collapse/expand all of them at once with the links at the top. The "Toggle Edit/Display Mode" link will toggle between editing mode and display mode so you can type in your values for the various encounters then switch back to the nice "clean" display mode. Finally clicking the export link at the top will output the whole thing to the text area on the right where you can copy and paste into the text editor of your choice for final editing.

So if anyone wants play with the current Beta-ish version, maybe you'll find it mildly useful.

http://gpwarehouse.freedomforceforever.com/ezassist/

[Epimethee]

From a quick test, this looks very nice. My 2 cents suggestions:

- Some descriptions/contextual help could be useful to reduce further the barrier of entry, especially to the first page. Maybe the labels could link to the corresponding anchors in the FFX EZ Script pages embedded in a sidebar iFrame.

- To push it further, you could even have one or more examples of pre-filled forms which people would only need to customize to get their feet wet.

- The checkboxes don't seem useful, since checking them and keeping the value to zero doesn't generate anything; removing the checkboxes altogether would make filling the form quicker.

- Since the first-page list is a bit too long to fit within our short-term memory, you could regroup elements under a few different category headers.

Great job, Goggles! :)

[lmalonsof]

Great idea, Goggles! :thumbup:
P.S.
Could you please make it accesible from the index.html of your website?
thx!

[GogglesPizanno]

OK I updated it a bit based on Epimethee's feedback

- Some descriptions/contextual help could be useful to reduce further the barrier of entry, especially to the first page. Maybe the labels could link to the corresponding anchors in the FFX EZ Script pages embedded in a sidebar iFrame.

I made a stripped down copy of the EZScript documentation page and added anchors and put it on the index page in an iframe so that when selecting your initial encounters you can click each one to see the description/documentation for it.

The same documentation is available in a popup window on the editing page by clicking on the "type" link of the encounters

- To push it further, you could even have one or more examples of pre-filled forms which people would only need to customize to get their feet wet.

On the drawing board. But given time and sloppiness of the code (do to being done at work in sporatic start/stop time)...this will probably remain on the board for a little while  :unsure:

- The checkboxes don't seem useful, since checking them and keeping the value to zero doesn't generate anything; removing the checkboxes altogether would make filling the form quicker.

I actually am using the check boxes as an array to determine what was chosen so I can quickly add new things without unique checks for each one on submittal. As a fix, when you now change a value in the number fields, it auto checks the box, additionally if you check a box, it will automatically set the value to "1" -- Back to "0" if you un-check it. That way i keep my array, and its still a bit more intuitive.

- Since the first-page list is a bit too long to fit within our short-term memory, you could regroup elements under a few different category headers.

I agree. Its now cleaned up and more organized into sections based on the type of encounter it is.

[Epimethee]

:thumbup:

[Podmark]

I'm starting to look into EZscript and this might be helpful. Thanks!

[Boalt92]

looks nice.

great idea.

B92

[BentonGrey]

Wow, a fantastic idea!  With any luck, this will help me get back into working on the DCUG this summer.

[Boalt92]

Minor Bug Report:

On the "Chat" Encounters.

Toggled to edit mode, filled in Alert and Chat cutscenes and exported.

When exported it is reproducing the info placed in the Alert and Chat cutscenes.

For example:

input:

Code Select Expand


Alert Cutscene:
red arrow on cop
cop moves to hero1
cop says, "thank goodness your here!"


output:

Code Select Expand

Alert Cutscene:
red arrow on cop
cop moves to hero1
cop says, "thank goodness your here!"red arrow on cop cop moves to hero1 cop says, "thank goodness your here!"

As you can see, the entire scene was reproduced and placed at the end of line 3 in the output.


B92

PS--this is an FYI, not a complaint.  It's easy enough for me to delete the unwanted data, so it's definately not a deal breaker

[GogglesPizanno]

Doh.. I'll try and fix that tonight