History refs in later books.

[satori]

As the books progress, there are many 'If you ever' refs put in. My question is, how many of these are simply "You finished Book X, therefore the condition MUST be true" vs. "In Book X, this condition MAY be true, based on your path through the book"?

This is sticky, because most things can be updated by the book. For items, when the +1EN damage for weapons not totally wood becomes available, I can respec the items at that time, as the master item table will be used for ALL books (not the GS books, those will need a different engine).

For history refs, I can keep a record of each page visted in each book, and whenever a book adds a history ref, track down what book and/or page within a book sets the history flag to TRUE.

If a PA member could run the flowchart parser, and search all the <choice> tags for 'If you have ever', 'If you ever', and possibly some other string (I think that covers the history refs, but I'm not 100% sure) and generate a list of current history refs, I can build the flags into the character record from the start, making things MUCH easier.

I would still have to manually track new books, but that's way in the future (where I like hard tasks to be

Jacob

[Zipp]

They are not always simply book related. There are some that require you to have stopped in certain places in a book.

[satori]

I know, I'm trying to figure out which are which

[Zipp]

I would suggest just going back and editing earlier books code as you find these sections. You'll have to go through the full text of each book as you come to it anyways, so it will be much easier for you that way.

I can tell you that book 3 asks whether you've ever been to the Graveyard of the Ancients.

[satori]

The problem is it's not the page tables that need to be updated, it's the player table

My current plan is to record every page visted. This means whenever a new history ref is added, I have to track it down, modify the player table with the new flag, and then run a script to check each player's table for the page record, and tag the flag to the correct value.

I'm just trying to save some time, as having flags upfront is easier for me.

1) Graveyard of the Ancients.
2) Get the Crytal Pendant.
3) Fought a certain monster (I forget, it's the massivle venomous one IIRC)
4) ?

What would be GREAT (*cough**cough*) is if a PA person could run a parse script on the XML for each book (that's in XML format) and pull out ONLY the page number and <choice> options, and just write them to a text file?

This would let me see EVERY 'turn to' option for every book in a single file per book. Now that I think about it, this would be useful for all kinds of things. So PLEASE PLEASE parse for me?

Thank you kind parser
Jacob

[outspaced]

No XML parsing, I'm afraid, but I did a search on my current Lone Wolf xhtml directory for the phrases 'If you have ever' and 'a previous Lone Wolf adventure'. (Footnotes helped immesurably with the Crystal Star/banedon ones.)

Book 2 Section 328: If you possess a Crystal Star Pendant, turn to 113.

Book 3 Section 128: If you have ever visited Ragadorn, you can ask him some simple questions about the city, to allay any suspicions you may have about who he claims to be, by turning to 11.
Book 3 Section 250: If you have ever visited the Graveyard of the Ancients, turn to 77.
Book 3 Section 268: If you have ever visited the Graveyard of the Ancients, turn to 177.

Book 4 Section 200: If you possess the Kai Discipline of Hunting or if you have ever visited Gorn Cove, turn to 45.

Book 5 Section 57: If you have ever fought an Elix before, add 2 to your COMBAT SKILL for the duration of this fight. You cannot evade combat and must fight it to the death.
Book 5 Section 221: If you possess a Crystal Star Pendant, turn to 336.
Book 5 Section 288: If you possess a Crystal Star Pendant, turn to 399.
Book 5 Section 382: If you possess a Crystal Star Pendant, turn to 399.

Book 6: Section 127: If you have ever visited a hut on Raider's Road in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 233.
Book 6 Section 151: If you have ever been to the buried temple of Maaken, turn to 294.

Book 9 Section 142: If you have ever visited the city of Varetta or a hut on the Ruanon Pike, in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 294.
Book 9 Section 212: If you have ever escaped from the South Gate tower, turn to 164.
Book 9 Section 323: If you have ever visited the city of Varetta or a hut on the Ruanon Pike in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 304.

Book 10 Section 6: If you have ever visited the land of Talestria in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 45.
Book 10 Section 80: If you have visited the Danarg in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 260.
Book 10 Section 142: If you have visited the Danarg in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 260.
Book 10 Section 179: If you have ever visited the land of Talestria in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 45.
Book 10 Section 200: If you have travelled the Stornlands of Central Magnamund in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 104.
Book 10 Section 219: If you have visited the Danarg in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 260.
Book 10 Section 306: If you have travelled the Stornlands of Central Magnamund in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 65.
Book 10 Section 328: If you have visited the Danarg in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 260.

Book 12 Section 145: If you have ever used Adgana in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, the risks of addiction are doubled should you decide to use this dose (you will become addicted if you pick a 0, 1, 2, or 3 on the Random Number Table).

Book 13 Section 285: If you have ever visited the town of Quarlen or the ruins of Maaken in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 109.

Book 14 Section 186: If, in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, you have ever been to Mogaruith, turn to 116.

Book 15 Section 25: If you took part in the Battle of Cetza in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 315.

Book 16 Section 12: If you have ever visited the city of Varetta, the city of Tahou, or a hut on the Ruanon Pike in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 220. [Only if you met Gwynian in Tahou]
Book 16 Section 105: If you have ever visited the city of Aarnak in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 315.
Book 16 Section 250: If you have ever been to Kaag or Mogaruith, turn to 224.
Book 16 Section 279: If you have ever visited the city of Varetta, the city of Tahou, or a hut on the Ruanon Pike in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 220. [Only if you met Gwynian in Tahou]

Book 17 Section 22: If you took part in the Battle of Cetza, or have visited the city of Darke in previous Lone Wolf adventures, turn to 305.
Book 17 Section 149: If you have ever been to the Isle of Ghosts, in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 311.
Book 17 Section 150: If you have ever been to the Plane of Darkness before, in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 205.
Book 17 Section 160: If you have ever been to the Isle of Ghosts in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 311.
Book 17 Section 349: If you have ever been to the Isle of Ghosts in a previous Lone Wolf adventure, turn to 311.

There may be acouple of unsually-worded options, but I can't think of any myself right now, and I don't have access to the text for Books 18-20. Since in the New Order series you play a different Kai Grand Master and not Lone Wolf, the 'If you have previously' options won't refer back to the first twenty books.

Perhaps you might want to add a buffer of potentially 1 new undefined option for each subsequent book (18-28) skipping Book 20 since it will not refer to the books following it. So that would be a buffer of 10 blank numbers for use as-and-when they become necessary.

[satori]

Thanks! That saves me a lot of time

I don't need to leave empty flags, the flags can be added at a later time to player records using a script to compare books, and pages within books, the player has been to.

The pain is back-tracking. Say in a later book you are asked if you ever had X item. I would have to find every page in each book where you could get X item. Then run a script to update existing character records, and add the flag to the related page tables so newer players get them recorded as they play through.

It's not hard, but takes longer to ID and update player records and pages compared to just setting an existing flag. Also, I can code the pages directly to fill the correct flags as I go (for the ones you dug up for me) which means I have no back tracking to do for quite a while.

What's sad is I didn't even think to just search the XHTML!
Yet another example of more heads being better