New Wiki Working Group

[renau1g]

I still don't have access to the CB. Still working on getting the .net 3.5 framework. I'm thinking about taking it to a guy and pay them for it, so I get my money's worth for my DDI subsciption. It's seriously making me mad.

I had the same thing with my home 'puter. I ended up removing Vista and returning to my old copy of XP and it works fine now. Stupid Vista.

 

[elecgraystone]

I never implied it would have to be mandatory ("request" was the term I used) for just that reason: Some can't or won't. It is useful for those that can.

I was thinking you were talking about trying to get a standard way to show the math section. If that way is CB, it leaves some of us out in the cold. Better to have a standard format in place that everyone uses and tack on the CB if you can. If that was what you were talking about then I misunderstood.

 

[stonegod]

I was thinking you were talking about trying to get a standard way to show the math section. If that way is CB, it leaves some of us out in the cold. Better to have a standard format in place that everyone uses and tack on the CB if you can. If that was what you were talking about then I misunderstood.

I'm suggesting an either/or: Either attach the CB or do the standard math section. Its a bit redundant to do both.

Of course, if most of the judges feel the same way as covaithe, then it'll always be a math section.

 

[Fragsie]

I think the google docs spreadsheet is a good idea; it's a very reliable site. I'm not against CB being an option as well, but I don't think someone who doesn't use it should have to write out the entire maths section when they make a character. If Weldon doesn't have much luck, my partner and I would have a go at making one.

 

[weldon]

I've made a little progress on using Google Docs to do the math section. I'm only playing with the ability scores section right now, but there are some cool things that can be done...

• You enter the starting array and the sheet makes sure you only have five 10's and one 8.
• You enter points into the point buy column. The sheet makes sure it adds to 25 by changing the background to green when it's right. The number turns red when it's not.
• The points are evaluated to determine your initial score. Invalid point buys like 4 points and 6 points throw an error (when starting from 10).
• Everything is added up to get the final ability score
• Modifiers are calculated from the final ability score
• I'm playing with making race a pull-down menu so it will calculate racial modifiers automatically.

There's some other things that could be done too...

• add some additional math for level up checking. Just to make sure you've added the right amount of points for your level.
• The ability score modifiers could be reused for all the remaining sections
• It's pretty ugly right now. Someone could prettify it.
• I think I can make a form in google docs that would streamline data entry for creating the initial sheet. Haven't really looked into this yet.

How this would be used...

• Players would use the template, save their sheet and make it public, then post the URL in their character's wiki page
• judges would click on the link to open the Google Doc sheet and check over the math. The judge would have to flip back and forth between two web pages (the google doc and the wiki page).
• I'm not sure how to prevent someone from modifying the calculations. It's possible that someone could "cheat" on their sheet by changing the validations.

If you want to work on it with me, send me your email in a DM and I'll share it with you.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

For my 2 cents, a CB summary is pretty useless to me as well, since I don't have DDI. I would prefer to see at least the basic math for a character spelled out, especially for higher level characters - it simplifies things a lot when checking a character by hand if you only have to do the math in your head, as opposed to remember all the numbers for the math as well. Like cov said, even if it's as simple as "19 AC comes from 10 + 1 (level) + 2 (heavy shield) + 6 (chainmail)", though standard format is always good.

The google docs spreadsheet sounds good, though it would be nice if the template wasn't changeable for each character's copy. (IE - like the templates in our current wiki. Anyone can change them now, but if they do it screws up everyone's sheet, not just theirs.)

That said, I don't mind if there's no auto-calculation in the math sections, just as long as the numbers are there. If I have to spend 3 seconds adding up your AC with a calculator, so be it

As for which summary block format I prefer ... aesthetically I don't really have a preference. Though if we have to move all the sheets to a different wiki anyway, and the LEB one is more easily scalable and flexible, then I don't see any particular reason not to switch.

 

[stonegod]

So it sounds like some math section is still popular. The google sheet could be used to do the calculation, then copied into the static wiki sheet for version control. CB summaries could still be embedded as sblocks for those that want to check that way.

 

[weldon]

The google doc spreadsheet is coming along. There's a lot that can be done with the math. Here is a view-only link to the sheet...

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Avus1s5lh50BdGVka2ZHZHhTR0oxOHFOYWdGajRveHc&hl=en

Because of the way that protecting the sheet from changes works, I have been rethinking how it would be used with judges. Here's how I think it would work...

• Create a "submission" form for players to fill out with all the relevant scores. This form populates a new row in a spreadsheet with all the "raw" scores for that PC.
• This sheet and the template belongs to the l4w.judges google account so that they can be managed by any judge.
• The first judge creates a new copy of the "checker" template which does all the math and creates a sheet for judges to compare to the character sheet in the wiki. This checker sheet would be created for each level review for a character.
• The first judge then copies the raw scores from the submission form into the checker sheet, which then does all the math automagically and calculates the final scores.
• The first judge shares the "checker" sheet so that player's can view (but not edit) the sheet the judge is using to double-check math. This link can be inserted into the judge's approval comments in the wiki too.
• The second judge reviews the link to the checker sheet and also compares to the wiki page.

I think this process provides the right amount of control for judges to be certain that no one has changed the math, either by accident or design. It also gives players an easy way to fill out the basic info for judges to plug into the checker. And everything is linked to the existing gmail account that the judges use for email notices about character submissions. They can share the finished sheets view-only and provide a URL that anyone at L4W can see what is going on, so the process is still transparent.

The disadvantage over the current method is that it is external to the ENworld site. This process also relies on the judges to perform a few extra steps that will take 5-10 minutes for each character review.

What do you think?