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Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 2:01 pm
by HughB
So after mentioning it in the kickstarter thread, I thought starting a thread about it on here might be a better forum to ask the question.

Currently the index for the rulebook is a somewhat distant cousin (or ginger stepchild, whichever) of the truth. Updating the whole index would be rather a big job for one person. For twenty or thirty people however it might be a slightly more manageable task. What I was thinking is this; there are twenty columns of entries in the index. If we couid get twenty volunteers, each person could take a column of entries and check the veracity or otherwise of whats in their column. Once everybody is done checking (couple of months for the first check maybe?) we could swap answers with each other to check for errors in the update then collate information and keep it in a living document on the forum here. Does anyone have any better ideas as to how to go about the process and do I have any volunteers?

Leave a post under here if you're interested in being a part of this.

Thanks

Hugh

EDIT:
Index of volunteers for indexing:

1 - Grizzle aka Andrew
2 - Alex (EgB)
3 - Hugh
4 - V AlphaOmega V - James
5- Paul
6 - James P
7 - Byzantii V
8 - James Harding
9 - Antoine
10 - DarkGeoff

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:43 pm
by Grizzle
Hey Hugh, it's Andrew Parkinson from the recent kickstarter.

Put me down for this, see if interest picks up.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:51 pm
by HughB
Thanks very much for being first to volunteer Andrew, very much appreciated mate. If we can get twenty people interested, we'll try for that as a minimum cos otherwise its rather too onerous a task. I'll keep an eye out for further volunteers on here and see how we go.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 5:03 pm
by Grizzle
Thanks Hugh. Yeah that's a good plan.

I'm on holiday at the moment, back on Monday, but we'll see how it goes.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:12 pm
by Alex (ÉgB)
I'm up for this - count me in Hugh!

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:36 pm
by HughB
Nice one Alex. Thank you very much mate. Just another seventeen willing volunteers and we'll have the makings of a functional index. Come on you wonderful lurkers, you know you want to sign up! ;)

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:44 pm
by James Balmer
Oh go on then, I'm in as well.

James

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:25 pm
by HughB
Thank you please. 4 down, 16 to find.

Two more found - 14 left.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:29 pm
by Byzantii V
I'll sign up for one. I was hoping this index would get sorted out, so I might as well help do it.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:54 pm
by HughB
Thank you very much Byzantii V. Very much appreciated mate.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 1:08 pm
by demyse
Hi Chaps.

I didn't really mention anything here as I couldn't commit at the time, but I have just started working on a solution (hopefully).
I am working on an excel spreadsheet that covers each page, paragraph title, chapter title, section/sub section, rule type (master/apprentice etc).

once Ive don't this and applied filters I could ask the community to have a look and see if its usable. I only started last night and got to about page 14, but am hoping to get it done.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:21 am
by James Harding
Happy to help any way I can.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 2:07 pm
by antoine
I can participate, too. Let's do this index !

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 5:59 pm
by Geoff
I'm new and will be spending the next few months with the rulebook welded to me. As the Noobie, if I don't volunteer I'll get tarred and feathered. This sounds the better option. I'm in.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:41 pm
by HughB
Ok so thank you to the three new volunteers for volunteering :-)

Further to the update that Demyse/Paul has put on, we've created an Excel spreadsheet that we're putting each rules entry into. This will eventually produce a contents of the whole book that can be filtered/sorted to find what you want to look for.

Total pages of the rule book - 359

Pages done so far - 79

Total pages left to do - 280. Divide that by the ten volunteers we have and thats 28 pages each to do if you're all still interested in doing it? If you're all still interested then PM me an email address or put it on here. I'll email you a copy of the spread sheet so you can see what we've done already and how to complete further pages. If you're still up for helping out then I'll give you each a page range and we can get this book indexed!

Thanks in advance

Hugh

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 1:00 pm
by Geoff
Hugh, not got permissions to compose PM's yet so please PM me and I'll try to reply. TA

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:14 pm
by HughB
Interesting. Me neither. I'll need to message Rob and ask about that in that case. While I wait for that, would you be up for indexing 30 or so pages in the way I describe?

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:10 pm
by Geoff
I'll give it my best Hugh. First thing I'd have to do is ensure my PC can open/edit/save the spreadsheet doc.

Just a thought but if you could get hold of a PDF of the Rulebook, the wordsearch function would perhaps do this job in a tenth of a time...dunno, I've been known to have shit ideas!

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:27 pm
by Jonathon Chester
Darkgeoff wrote:I'll give it my best Hugh. First thing I'd have to do is ensure my PC can open/edit/save the spreadsheet doc.

Just a thought but if you could get hold of a PDF of the Rulebook, the wordsearch function would perhaps do this job in a tenth of a time...dunno, I've been known to have shit ideas!


Currently there is no PDF of the rulebook.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:38 pm
by Geoff
Jonathon Chester wrote:Currently there is no PDF of the rulebook.


Ok, but if there was would not the Find Text function be so useful as to prompt one being created from the original design file, if that were possible?

If not no matter, just a suggestion. :D

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:00 pm
by HughB
Its not a bad idea to be fair. I’ll ask and see

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 5:00 pm
by HughB
So I've asked around on advice about PDFs and you could find text in the PDF but to create an index in that way would be just as long winded a way of doing things. Is that the question you were asking or did I misunderstand that?

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 6:45 pm
by Geoff
I'm sorry if I am getting the wrong end of the stick here. With a PDF you can find every page a given word (or term) appears in the book in seconds.

For example, the word Tolerance appears eight times in the new muster rules, all on page 9. It took less than a minute to check that using the PDF find utility.

Wouldn't that be useful in this assignment?

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 7:06 pm
by HughB
Ah right sorry. Yes you can find that in a PDF but the current full rule book isn't available as a PDF and I'm not sure that there are any plans to release it as a PDF rather than a hard copy.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 8:12 am
by Geoff
Hi Hugh,

With a project of this size, any and all helpful methods to decrease the workload should be checked out. It IS a big effort to not only check the veracity of the current index, but ideally you'll want to add any omissions that may have occurred. So please don't take me banging on about PDF's in a negative way (not that you are but I'm covering any future frustrations here ;) - I really do want to muck in and help out as best I can.

I understand there is not a PDF of the rulebook currently available to us but one could be produced by simply saving/exporting the original file as one. It is likely that a publishing program such as QuarkXpress or InDesign has been used to create the original doc, and most if not all modern software can create a PDF version. A lot of printers only accept PDF's as a final print document.

So, may I suggest you reach out to Rob and enquire about the possibility of Mierce providing one specifically for this purpose?

If security is an issue, there are many options available when saving as/exporting the document to make it uneditable, etc., but most importantly, unprintable.

I can't stress how useful and time-saving doing this digitally as opposed to manually would be and encourage further consideration of this method.

You can test both methods using any PDF you may have, but using the Muster rules as an example, take two words/terms (say, Frenzy and Command Authority) and use the Find function to record entries for one, and do the other manually reading each page looking for said item before recording its location.

I hope this provides food for thought and in the meantime, how are we going to get that spreadsheet out to folk?

Cheers matey!

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 11:53 am
by Icchan
How about an ebook version, like they sell on amazon?

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:35 pm
by Brightblade
I've started writing a new Index, got to page 81 so far and already have over 800 entries for the Index, only another 278 pages to go..... argh... going to be well over 5000 entries at this rate....

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 4:57 pm
by Dan Pratt
Count me in!

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:09 pm
by Grizzle
I second Geoff on the PDF.

Warning: mild rant below.

On Wednesday I played with a friend of mine and it felt like we were (well my friend certainly was) at the end of our tether with the rules. The problem is not necessarily just the index, but also there are structural issues and layout flaws. A good example is putting concept art, or other pictures, over the page numbers (sometimes on both pages!) and then the way things are referenced; frenzied is on page 34 under states. (this is also one of the pages with a picture blocking the number by the way) and it has a brief description with a few specific rules that are native to just that state. But it would probably be helpful to also reference how being frenzied interacts with the different actions/reactions in that section, with a list of each one & the relevant page number. And this could be done for any number of the different states (and not just the states).

This might sound like a lot of extra effort for a bit of a redundancy, but that repetition is very helpful for the process of absorbing and learning the information at hand, particularly in the relevant contexts (which I would argue is how most people learn best). Otherwise each action/reaction becomes a long-winded back and forth between several different sections in order to resolve what might turn out the be a very simple result. Now I hope I don't come across as if I am blindly bashing the game here, I do love the complexity and crunchiness of it, it's what attracted me to this game in the first place, but that level of complexity isn't helped with this style of layout.

It may even be a good idea to have a chart similar to the existing order chart, with states, vigour, privilege & acuity being cross referenced with actions/reactions & how they interact with each other. So if, say, a warrior was being direct-engaged by a charging unit you could see what, where & when it's options were and what is allowed, whether the action/reaction is compulsory or voluntary etc... Or maybe a flow-chart could work, but that might be a bit too much on the eye.

Now to reiterate, I don't wish this to be taken personally or anything, I greatly appreciate the amount of time and effort that has been poured into this game, particularly in the areas of background & especially the models, which (I'm probably preaching to the choir here) are fantastic, beautiful & one of the main draws for this game.

I'm still going to continue playing (and painting :P) but it just needs a lot of work, which I'm sure the Mierce team are aware of.

I think a PDF would certainly help in this regard.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:45 pm
by Brightblade
I agree with Geoff and with Grizzle, on everything but the PDF..

The structure of the Rule Book isn't great, when myself and Grizzle were playing on Sunday we spent at least 10 minutes trying to find if Bulk Charging would allow the Charger to Carry On with his Charge once his Bulk Charge Dice rolls had dispatched the first encountered units, and we gave up in the end and decided it didn't..

So yes the rules should be revisited as I imagine they were published with haste to get the Rulebook out there and get people playing..

The problem with a PDF is that there is no control over it, it could be bought once and then shared and distributed countless time for free by the original purchaser, and I'm sure that there is a Cash Margin to be made by Mierce every time a Book is sold...

And myself personally, I think the game would lose a certain something by everybody just rocking up with mobile phones and tablets and searching a document stored in the ether.. Give me a Rule Book any day...

But then I'm old School, I can remember days before the Internet back in the 80's mapping out by hand on graph paper dungeons for me and my friends to play DnD on... those were the days... lol

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 9:07 am
by Brightblade
Index update:

Reached page 104 and have 1140 Index Entries, although this is not including Index duplicate references that are on more than 1 page number.

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2018 12:44 pm
by Brightblade
Now on Page 130 out of 365 and got over 1400 Index Entries....

Now taking a breather...lol

Re: Your darklands index needs you!

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:13 am
by Brightblade
UPDATE:

Now on Page 158 out of 365 with over 1600 entries...

It's getting there...