Avarthrel Blog

An Update from a Git

2008-12-01T16:20:44Z

Recently I've been kind of busy with studies, but I'm happy to say that I've lately made some actual progress with certain unfinished stories that may or may not turn out to be pretty good.

Yesterday marked a big switch from darcs2 to git, mostly because darcs2's hashed repositories are so incredibly slow at the moment. One indication of that was that darcs-to-git took several hours to process about 400 revisions I had in my repository.

Some say git is a good program for MacGyvering, so I've MacGyvered myself a "list of recent Git patches" hack for the Avarthrel home page. Hope you enjoy seeing when I've updated stuff, and also enjoy my cryptic commit messages!

Bad MSIE!

2008-10-21T11:18:24Z

Okay, within the last few weeks, I came to a conclusion: a) while dog-old Safari version at the university boxes messes up the Avarthrel site rendering pretty badly, the new versions of webkit don't mess it up at all, so I have hope. b) I was under the impression that MSIE 7 was supposed to fix all bloody awful buggy CSS rendering crap, but no, it doesn't. God. Damn. It. If the CSS validator says I'm good to go, and the site looks just fine on the browsers I use, you would expect it to work perfectly in most recent versions of all major browsers, right? RIGHT? It's 2008, Microsoft! Goddamn it.

*sigh*
Okay, I'm all better now.

So, I just decided I'll try to support those browsers I have at hand, and the easiest fix to the rendering bugs is that I'll just refuse to serve any stylesheet at all to MSIE. I could tolerate buggy rendering in past, but better to have an ugly site than badly messed up site that you can't read at all due to various funky box rendering issues. I wish I had the time, energy and resources to debug the styles, I really do...

Failures to communicate?

2008-10-09T11:40:13Z

Failure to communicate, part 1: I just re-re-re-etc-submitted The Sweet Side of Death to Elfwood - okay, so I was not reading all of the instructions regarding image credits. I hope the thing will be published there, too, one day. I really do.

Failure to communicate, part 2: Tested the Avarthrel website in Opera, seems to be fine. Tested it in Midori (webkit-based browser), seems good. Yet: Tested it in proto-ancient version of Safari and lo! it blew up. Tested it in Internet Explorer 6 and words fail me. CSS sure is hard! I have no idea how the website works in IE7, but I sure hope it does better than it does in IE6. Regrettably, I'm not able to test the site too well in IE7 and I don't have the energy or inclination to make any hacks to support the bloody thing either. I can only really test it actively on Iceweasel/Firefox anyway... so here we go, I just went and added a Firefox download button on the page. =)

Effects and tidbits

2008-09-30T09:04:30Z

I just added some jQuery-based leet graphical effects to the Avarthrel website - now you can show or hide the comment form with neat effects and all. No changes to the comment scripts themselves though.

I've come to the conclusion that for some reason, writing stuff with Emacs + LaTeX doesn't work as well as it should. I guess that my quest for ultimate word processor seems to be forever ongoing... I really hope things will change when we get more semantics in OpenDocument format (and OpenOffice.org UI) and I'll be able to find motivation to write a bit better and less hacky pieces of software to support the workflow.

I've almost made progress in trying to decipher the utter lunacy that is OpenOffice.org Basic. One day, this modify-stuff-for-draft-printouts script of mine will actually work!

Thanks to sitting by OpenOffice.org once again, I've actually written some new stuff lately. I hope it will turn out to be something. It's got to be something eventually, right?

Mapping tool for visualisation

2008-09-25T12:55:17Z

GtkRadiant could very well be the next big thing in my story development toolbox.

I had problems making the story I’m currently working on a bit more interesting. Faira and Lex are busy robbing the Blannyr manor, which, according to the story, has, er, a kitchen, a few hallways, a hall and a giant ballroom-come-treasure vault, described in the story as being 55 by 46 paces in size, which would make it a nice place to play a bit of indoor football if all the treasure would be cleared up.

But I was thinking… it’s all nice and proper to have this sort of place on paper, but what does it really look like? How does a 55-by-46-paces ballroom really look like, now that you really think of it?

The environment is boring in my mind because I’ve not put my visualisation of the story on paper. I have a vivid picture of the hall in my mind, and I wish I had the patience to draw the thing. Currently, all I can do is to give a description. It’s sad when I can only describe the actual locations where the story happens, when in an ideal world, I could describe every corner of the manor…

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Thief game series, it’s that fully-fleshed-out areas make stories engaging. If the mission involves robbing a house while the home owner is sleeping, you make a house where the guy is actually asleep. The player can fulfill the mission objectives (rob the house) and witness, first hand, that the story is actually true (the guy is sleeping).

So here I am, recreating the image I have of the Blannyr manor in my head… using GtkRadiant, and designing the manor as a level for the good old Quake. Perhaps, when the process is finished, I’ll be able to release the thing so people can play it. And, perhaps in distant future, I’ll be making The Dark Mod missions out of the stories, too, once that mod is released…

Rapid development, woohoo!

2008-09-14T12:57:37Z

Well, it seems that the impossible is possible, and I managed to finish this particular phase of updating the Avarthrel website. A new look -- and a new logo, too!

Thoughts on "The Sweet Side of Death"

2008-09-14T09:55:21Z

Okay, I think I'm finally in proper condition to write something about the latest story.

But first, a few random comments on web design. Or, even before that, a few thoughts on fantasy art. I have some personal problems creating engaging fantasy art, and that's because fantasy art requires attention to detail. So, creating an interesting-looking web site for fantasy literature would require making artwork with a bunch of details.

]]> shaping up somewhat, mostly because the "realistic-ish" part of the site is simply rendered in 3D software - I usually associate 3D with "massive big graphics", and never stop to consider using 3D for something as simple as web graphics. I got the idea from Ultima VIII, which is a sprite-based game using a very low screen resolution (320x200), but which nevertheless uses pre-rendered graphics based on 3D models.

On the story, then. The Sweet Side of Death was a very weird story to write, as I had been recently toying with images of grim beauty. It was inspired, obviously, by works of fiction that depict chaos as a benefical force; Ophidians of Ultima VII Part Two was one source, as was goddess Eris of Discordianism.

The biggest inspiration for the story, however, was obviously The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but in a way that was probably completely different from what most people would even consider. I've currently clocked some 80 hours of game time and I've been playing - surprise, surprise - a good thief lady, a fine and upstanding member of the Thieves' Guild.

Yet, despite having a stellar, good reputation, some random passer-by handed her a deed to Deepscorn Hollow.

You could say this is what inspired the story more than anything: At least as far as I know, in real life I'm a person with perfectly mundanely ordinary moral values, and I like to play good characters in games, too - and yet, here I am, a proud owner of a rather evil-looking place.

Heck, I just went and joined the Dark Brotherhood in the game and I'm still a good guy. (Well, a gal, in game world. =) This gives us interesting moral dilemmas: Can good people use pure evil as a force that can be ultimately benefical? Can good people just sit around and watch evil things unfold and just admire the beauty of it all? (Especially in a medium of fiction, like a computer game - none of this is real, after all.)

And most remarkably of all, can it be discussed without sounding like an evil person or a complete fruitcake?

This is what I was trying to ponder in this particular story through Faira's writing.

This story has been one kind of a turning point for me. It's a bit funny: I'd never thought this would even be needed, but here I am, trying to make room in my head for "not writing what I always think". I've never needed to put very big disclaimers in stories, aside of the usual, more or less implied ones - "warning: newbie writer on board", "warning: yes, I'm a computer geek and not getting any, but my characters are"... but now I need to add a specific disclaimer here: I am, for the first time, writing about potentially horrible things and I wish to say that I'm not really condoning any of bad things in real life.

But hey, this is fiction - surely you knew that already. If someone complains, by all means, copy-and-paste it to FSTDT or something. If spoofing Jack Thompson generated no response whatsoever, let's see how this one fares. =)

The Sweet Side of Death is out

2008-09-07T17:14:21Z

Sorry for not being more thorough (my eyes are kind of sore right now), but here's a quick note: the story titled The Sweet Side of Death is, like, out there. Available in Avarthrel website and deviantART so far.

An illustration for the upcoming story

2008-09-03T15:22:53Z

This is an ullustration (CC BY-ND 3.0) for the upcoming story, tentatively titled "Sweet Side of Death" - let's just quote this image's desc page in deviantART, "Faira Ativel's letter to her sister, concerning the her rediscovery of a goddess that has been completely forgotten in the whole of the continent - Carriglena, the Lady of Withering.". I somehow got the inspiration to draw this particular scene. Will probably write more about this story and how it came to be later on, but I've got to finish it first...

No forum for us!

2008-09-01T12:00:36Z

And now, I'll hijack my blog temporarily to rant about obsolete PHP solutions.

So, I tried to start up an Avarthrel forum. Good idea, right? Looks like the venerable giant of forum software, phpBB, has sqlite support in the brand-new release 3. There's a third-party widget that does OpenID. A well-known, widely supported forum software that appears to do everything I'll ever need - all good and nice, right?

Unpack, start up installation, and...

SQLite: Unavailable

Yeah. All the while my comment system runs pretty darn well on top of PHP and pdo_sqlite.

Meanwhile, phpbb3 installer does say MySQL is available, while referring to "mysqli" driver, which in this day and age should Die in a Fire Already, Dammit. Modern and Largely Rewritten (an allegation that has been flying around about phpBB 3) systems should use fascinating, new, non-headache-inducing database access layers like PDO - incidentally, this webhost doesn't support PHP sqlite module, but does support pdo_sqlite with all the proper seriousness.

$ grep -r 'PDO(' .
$

This so bodes well. NOT.

So sorry, no forums yet! As surprising as it may sound, not all webhosts throw MySQL support in for free, and I'm not paying for something that I won't find massive unprecedentedly popular use for...

Update: A little bit of research later it gets better! "sqlite" is sqlite 2.x, the ancient, the terrible! "pdo_sqlite" is sqlite 3.x, the new, the bold, the beautiful! ...please, phpBB folks, if you advertise "SQLite 2.8.2+", keep in mind that that does sort of imply on the first glance that SQLite 3.x is supported, no?

Yet another angsty update: The competition is even worse! I looked at NuclearBB, which apparently had an alpha release last year, the website doesn't seem to mention the system requirements, and the bug tracker can't accept reports from random passers-by, you've got to register and all, so I can't report the issue. I tried FluxBB, which says it supports SQLite, but the wiki page says "FluxBB 1.2.* has only been thoroughly tested on versions 2.8.11 and 2.8.14 of SQLite, but should work with basically any version." The web site, bless its heart, is a wiki, but I couldn't edit without logging in or whatever. Which is a damn shame, because I would have liked to point out that pdo_sqlite and thus sqlite3 doesn't bloody work here either.

*sigh* look, I'm generally against whining about things in blogs when I *should* be contacting people about these issues, but the thing is, it's too hard. How hard, really, it is to have an open forum or wiki for rather fundamental support issues like this? I know, I know: In closed-source world, the Big Faceless Companies answer the phone and say "we don't do that", but seriously, OSS people should do better than "we'd love to help you, just participate in this little blood pact ritual first. Open your mouth, say 'A'!"

Computer-assisted Canonicity?

2008-09-01T10:46:35Z

Here's a short note for the purpose of Wondering Aloud. I wonder how hard it would be to manage canonical facts from stories using specialised software?

What I'm envisioning is some sort of an expert system, though I'm a little bit hesitant to use the current crop of languages that seem to be cropping up in the very cursory searches. They all seem to use rather complex forms of definition - yeah, sorry, it's 2008 and artificial intelligence is still hard. What I'm looking for would be some sort of a simple language to tie up entities to each other and specific events, dates and locations.

It would be quite simple to just read stories, and collect facts together. For example, one could read "The Carnival Wolves", and come up with...

"Frevelthan Athelevathan is a male elf. Thelivna Athelevathan is a female elf. Frevelthan Athelevathan and Thelivna Athelevathan are married and live in Lethlei-Yssrai-Carghven, a village in the duchy of Nothross, which is located in the kingdom of Furinel."

or,

"An autumn festival was held celebrating the liberation of the city of Nothross in 1.IX.630 AR ('first party since reclaiming Nothross, two years ago, celebrating autumn's coming'). Thelivna Athelevathan was among the attendees."

This sort of system would rule.

Side bar, design ideas, and best synch since the feudal age

2008-08-25T14:40:44Z

Thanks to PHP & SimpleXML, the main Avarthrel site now has a side bar with a site map. I just got a massive deja vu feeling - and yes, turns out it's not the first time I've written a side bar implementation. My Neverwinter Nights site had such a sidebar too, but it wasn't XML-based - it was raw included PHP4 code from... God knows when. Well, at least it still works. It appears I have utterly destroyed (save for the copies buried deep in Subversion) the Common Lisp -based madness.

As far as the Avarthrel website redesign goes, I've got to say I have a giant job ahead, because I'm not a Visual Guy. Yesterday, I told my friend that I have something specific in mind about the site's new design: "a bastard child of Thief: The Circle, T2X site, and Elfwood story pages". How interesting and original it turns out remains to be seen, but one thing is sure - it'll probably look much better than what's out there now.

Also, I started using rsync to push changes to the Avarthrel site. Since I have different configuration files for the development box and the webhost, and there's stuff I don't want on the webhost anyway (such as .svn directories), I can't push the files right on, and I've always used scp. But now, with a little bit of --exclude and --dry-run, it turns out updating stuff with rsync is actually pretty easy!

I've got to give up...

2008-08-24T12:48:24Z

I've got a small problem in creating the website for Avarthrel, and it seems that I have to give up finding a boxed solution for it. I probably sound like a broken record when I ramble about this, but the thing is, I have to give up, admit that the quest is hopeless, and just write the whole darn thing myself when I have time. It's a lot of work, and until it's finished the site will look like junk, but there seems to be no other, elegant way.

Basically, updating the website isn't exactly easy as it stands. I have a very specific set of requirements: either use static source files (to allow Subversion revisioning) or built-in versioning, allow arbitrary HTML snippets in more or less curious places some systems just don't anticipate (for forms, random links in sidebar, etc), support metadata for source documents, etc, etc... some are so-close-yet-so-far (Apache Lenya is a good system, but making it do what I want as far as custom outlook goes needs a lot of work, and as far 2.0 goes, creating static HTML output means hand-tidying up a dump from wget, it seems), some others just sound like they'd be repeat of what I did here.

So, I'll just scrap the idea of rebuilding the site in some neat software package and do it myself. I have to focus on the content and rebuild some of the ugliest parts of this site's infrastructure... One day, we may even have subdirectories and stuff!

Wiki exporting doesn't really go as planned

2008-08-15T19:07:08Z

When I first started the internal wiki, it used Instiki, which had one good feature at the time: The whole wiki could be exported to HTML or Textile format with a few clicks. Good, because an upgrade broke the thing.

I'd definitely want to produce a static version of the wiki for the Avarthrel website one day... but right now, I'm looking at various MediaWiki dumping tools, and I seem to be - somehow - not getting anywhere. The obvious choice would be the Collection extension, but it doesn't seem to work too well for me (I'm getting some weird database errors - people, all the world isn't MySQL...)

But just how hard can it be to produce one stinking HTML dump from a website?

Okay - I seem to be making progress. I found DumpHTML. There is hope! Perhaps one day, you'll get a static copy of the site!

UPDATE:
% php5 dumpHTML.php
DB connection error: No database connection
zsh: segmentation fault php5 dumpHTML.php

Never before in my illustrious programming life have I experienced PHP interpreter segfault. Oh well, maybe there's a way to get this thing to work...

Okay, no panic.

2008-08-15T13:57:07Z

I was wondering why the hell the rebuild was so fast. Well, turns out Movable Type 4.2 upgrade (with templates reset) completely messed up my archiving. Old blog posts are still there - they just don't get linked archived. What the hell?

Trying to resolve this somehow.

UPDATE: Fixed now. For some reason, the forum had it that I needed to open entry templates and save them. The world is a weird place.