The Almighty Doer of Stuff

I think I like the scale you came up with, Stareye, except the word "mediocre" is rooted in "medium", and indeed means there's nothing really good about it, but there's nothing really bad about it either. Furthermore, calling the middle score "Average" could raise problems too, when you think about what the word really means, being a statistical mean. How about Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent? "Fair" actually means what you wanted to say with "Mediocre" in this context, and is in the same place. Also, without using the terms meaning "median" and "mean" in the scale, it's okay for there to be more Poor and Fair scenarios than Good, Very Good and Excellent scenarios, which, for BoE at least, there are. As for the "profile post", that sounds like an interesting idea, but it's not searchable at all, unfortunately. I think it would have to be a combination.

In Exile I and II, all gold and food in the area was automatically picked up all at once when you hit Get. That stopped by BoE for some reason, and maybe by E3.

A scenario's author must request that a scenario be added, according to the rules. What about scenarios whose authors are no longer in the community? This has fewer implications for BoA, but for BoE that's the vast majority of scenarios that won't be in the system. Also, will spoilers in reviews and responses be required to be in spoiler tags?

I think Jeff buys his graphics full-rights, lump sum. You'd probably only have to contact Jeff if you were to do this, but ask him about it just in case.

Is that supposed to be a POX News joke? I agree with the sentiment, but it just isn't funny. :-P

I would too if this forum was run by Kim Jong Il. This is Stareye we're talking about, though, and most of the moderators are likely to be from Shadow Vale anyway.

Salmon's idea was that certain trusted members would be given free posting access to CSR without having to go through a moderator. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure what benefit it gives anyway. The only reason I can think of that would make post-by-post moderation a significant inconvenience for the poster would be if they intended to break the rules anyway. I don't think the rules are at all unreasonable, so I don't see what the problem is. So I'm fine with Stareye's idea, with or without Salmon's idea.

I would use Stareye's system, but I would prefer it if Salmon's idea were implemented immediately. You could just say something in the rules like, "If you post X small number of consecutive, rule-adhering reviews (or have already posted such on the Lyceum/Shadow Vale CSR) without needing corrections, you are granted the privilege to post reviews freely. Be warned, however, that this privilege can be taken away if your subsequent reviews show a tendency not to adhere to the rules, and will only be regranted at moderatorial discretion." Minor corrections can be sent via PM without taking away the privilege, of course.

A lamp post on walkway might be nice, I think.

Sliths have very sibilant names, with lots of "ss", "sh", and "th" sounds. Vowels and other sounds are used as well, however. Slith names can be long or short. Slith names from the series include Sss-Thsss ("Thsss" is an honorific denoting leadership), Thissa, Arthos, Lairgath, Assotho, Pathass, Toth-Thsss, and Orho. Nephilim names I'm not as familiar with, but they are very heavy in rolling "rr", "f", "m", and "ss" sounds (cat sounds, easily enough), and usually have very few vowels, although like the sliths, all letters can be used, and can be any number of syllables. The only Nephilim names I know off-hand are Frrrrr, who is in the default party for Exile II, III, and BoE, Hfass, and Hmurr. Other names a nephil might have (which I'm making up) are Hrrrmrr, Mrrah'sss, or Kosrrr. However, the Nephilim tongue is mostly forgotten, so many nephils have human-sounding names, which indeed are often (but not always similar to the English translations of Native American names, as Dark.Fenix describes.

I think if we're going to have it off-site, we should have it at the Blades Forge.

I agree with Stareye that it's easier to grant additional privileges than to take them away. I do, however, like Salmon's idea. I say we go with Stareye's idea first and then loosen it up if the need arises. Anyway, I'm beginning to agree that having the rating system on this forum might be better, but I still like the idea of splitting the score. Perhaps we can split quality scores as I described (Overall 1.0-10.0; Creative Content, Gameplay, Aesthetics & Functionality 1-10 + N/A and Abstain/No Opinion), but replace my two-way Genre ratings with the genre tagging idea others have suggested, where the scenario author tags it, or if that's implausible, experienced community members tag it, and then if the reviews are pushing heavily in a different direction it can be modified. I think this would be simple enough not to scare anyone off, but specific enough to get more useful, more calculable ratings than a single flat score can give. It would require a bit more work on the part of the moderation to calculate these things, but I perhaps a script of some sort could work around that and make it easier. In the opening post of each scenario thread, in addition to the author and title of the scenario, we could include this: Quote: Here are the required ratings, with higher scores meaning better quality. Enter a response for each field. Overall Quality (1.0 - 10.0 to one decimal place): (All the following have these rating choices: 1 - 10 with no decimal places, Not Applicable, or Abstain.) Creative Content: The artistic merit of the scenario. This category encompasses storyline, plot, themes, dialogue, descriptions, cliché or lack thereof, etc. This does NOT include spelling and grammar. Gameplay: What the player actually does while playing the scenario. This category encompasses combat, puzzles, balance (how well the combat, treasure, EXP, etc. interact), novel gameplay elements, ease of determining where to go and what to do, etc. Aesthetics & Functionality: The presentation of the scenario, things whose primary effect is to enhance (or distract from) immersion in the scenario. This category includes graphics, spelling and grammar, town design, cutscenes, effective programming, bugginess, etc. After the above ratings, you must include a textual review of the scenario, in no less than 100 words. That way the original post can simply be quoted, and give a standard and easy-to-use template in which to post numeric ratings, with the textual review below. It might make implementing a script to lift the scores and aggregate them easier too, so we don't have to rely on BainIhrno being available whenever we need him forever. Any thoughts?

Only the graphics that were originally distributed with BoE are open source. However, we are currently in the process of bringing in graphics that were exclusive to the Exile Trilogy and the Avernum series as well, and those are NOT released under the open-source license. That's what I was referring to.

Perhaps, instead of only bringing up the GNU GPL v2.0, at the top there should be a note stating that "While this program is released under GNU General Public License 2.0, some of the graphics distributed with it, specifically , are the sole property of Spiderweb Software, Inc. Historically, people have been allowed to use these graphics in custom scenarios for Blades of Exile, and they are included here for convenience; however, they are not to be used for any other purpose. For all other files contained in this program, the following open-source license applies." I don't know how necessary this is, but I'm just suggesting it to be safe. Perhaps we wouldn't even be allowed to include them if Jeff knew about it. It's just something to think about, at least.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/575519/30730 says it's in the Tower of Magi.

Aran and Will are willing and able to make the Blades Forge system, I believe.

It's not as complicated and ruley as it seems. That post was as long as it was because I had questions and explanations mixed in that aren't in the final product. I made a quick mockup of what it might look like to the user (hopefully a bit prettier): http://ados.ermarian.net/BoX/ADoSRate.gif As you can see, I rewrote a couple things, got rid of ambiguous terms, and moved "artistic merit" to "Creative Content". Above all the stuff in that image would be the actual results, which would be very similar-looking to the submission form, only it would have averages instead of choices (perhaps also showing what percent abstained or said "N/A"), and would have the "Ratings By User" button, and would lack the category descriptions. EDIT: Oh, and I forgot, the specific ratings are integers. I don't feel like remaking the image, but you get the idea. EDIT 2: Aran suggested sliders might be better than dropdown boxes for everything. The actual tool used can be decided later, I guess, but it gives the idea that it's not too complicated, I think.

What exactly is broken about my proposal, aside from it not being possible to host it on this message board? If we want it to be visible, we could put a link in the forum description and a visible, descriptive one in the forum header. Right now, in the BoE forum, the only link to Shadow Vale simply says "Shadow Vale" in the middle of a pile of other links. If it said in big letters, "Go here to read comprehensive scenario reviews and find a scenario you would like, or post your own review!" both in the forum description and in the forum header, that would probably attract plenty of attention.

If, like Exile's Castle, the capital of the Empire is contained in one enormous building, it would be both a capital and a capitol.

I think splitting the score and not requiring people to write long reviews would produce more useful results in greater number than having a single score and requiring a long review for every review. Also, I like the idea of people being able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a scenario while reviewing it. EDIT: Also, I still like the idea of the Blades Forge being a centralized resource for Blades. If it can get fixed up, then I think it would do that well.

A stool? A bench? A seat?

The system I proposed doesn't really have a "rubric", per se. It splits up the quality ratings into three sections, but doesn't say on what you should base the number you put in each section. Also, for those scenarios that don't fit into those three sections, remember that the Overall Quality rating is independent.

me Orion Des'Xoas says, "I hate my life! I want to DIE!" He then takes a knife and slits his own throat. THE END

I agree that we should focus on Blades for now, and put aside the squabbling Originally Posted By: Master Ackrovan Quote: This category includes graphics, spelling and grammar Wouldn't Spelling and Grammar be in the Writing category? I mean, its got more to do with plot and atmosphere and such then it has to do with "Aesthetics". My rationale was that while spelling and grammar are techinically considered "Writing", they have literally nothing to do with the creative content of the scenario (which is the unifying characteristic of that rating category), but rather serve only to encourage or distract from immersion in said creative content, much like the rest of the "Aesthetics, Functionality, Etc." rating category. Perhaps the "Writing" title could be changed to "Creative Content". Of course, if the community strongly disagrees with spelling and grammar being where they are, it's not really a problem to switch it. Quote: Quote: 3. Linear<->Open-Ended (Can anyone think of a scenario where this might need an N/A? Not necessarily a BoX "scenario" but scenario in the literal sense.) I'm not sure. IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO maybe? It's not really meant to be a "real" scenario anyway. Then it should probably have a N/A option as well. I don't know what "IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO" is, but if it's anything like TM's "minimalism" for BoE, then it is indeed neither linear nor openended, but rather more like a single point. Quote: Quote: Do the majority of BOX scenarios have a sufficient number of reviews for that to work? Unfortunately not. Some scores for BoE CSR just give numbers, for instance. If this takes off, I suppose we'll have to try something, though. That might include a few reviews that just give scores we might have to knock off, and for BoE scenario's like the Little Girl we could just put all the numbers to zero, or as close as can be gauged by whoever is putting them up. As I said, under this system, no reviews or ratings from CSR need to be discarded, even if we only have a score with no review. But what does everyone think of making the three specific Rating categories and/or the three Genre ratings optional or mandatory? The Overall Rating clearly must be mandatory, but as for the rest, I think discussion is in order. If we make them mandatory, we could probably figure out a way to port CSR without having to reanalyze each review to determine what the reviewer might have rated each category (I really hope to avoid that), but it might require a bit more thinking.

Then he'd miss out on the experience that the human got, though.