Just an idea -- the help system in the game "works" but takes work to use it and it can be "fun" figuring out what category a topic can be in, etc...
The suggestion... I don't know if it's possible to do fully (depends on if you can write from the UI) but here's how it would work.
The idea is pretty simple really. There are commands and formats to commands that even the most senior of players don't know and many newer players can find it daunting to try and /listcommands [category] just to see 3+ pages worth of commands that they have NO idea what they are looking at.
So, a tool that would pull the info from the game shouldn't really need much "rework" over time yet could and would add some nice value to players. A simple UI to preset it, a fairly easy way to input a little extra info (such as a /help that yields *NO* info so the user can add it and describe it once they "find out" about a command), etc...
Not someone spending weeks building an on-line help system that then has to be kept in sync by an author but a system that pulls most of the base information from the game itself thus "offloading" the requirements of "data updates" to the game and the user of the tool versus a UI developer or other such entity.
First the UI layout:
Code:
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
| Title |
|----------------|------------------------------------------|
| | |
| + Category | |
| - Tree | |
| | Format |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| |------------------------------------------|
| | Edit (format) Button/bar |
| |------------------------------------------|
| | |
| | Description |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|----------------|------------------------------------------|
| Add Category | Edit (Description) Button/bar |
|----------------|------------------------------------------|
|----------------|------------------------------------------|
| XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX |
| x Refresh Help x x Add Item x x Advanced x |
| XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX |
|-----------------------------------------------------------|
Upper border of a window would be the "title pane" -- whatever it is to be called. "Command Help" works IMO but any fitting title would work.
It would be followed by 3 panes:
Pane 1 = left most 1/3rd of the window. Tree view style control.
It would be populated with the listed categories shown via a /help listcommands Under that (+/-) tree would be the commands for that category.
Pane 2 = upper half of the rest of the window (right of the treeview control).
It would have the command format /command [options] [parameters] information.
Pane 3 = lower half of the rest of the window (right of the treeview control, directly below pane 2).
It would have descriptive text of the command, the "definition" of what that command does.
Under/base-line to each of the panes would be a button. Any edits would cause that portion of the text to be shown in a different color than "stock help" text you could get from the /help [command] systax request (so you could see what you had adjusted -- no, not mixed colors in the same text box, simply: if a user edits the text, that format or description becomes "changed" so all that text is "green" or whatever color to show it isn't "stock").
Below the 3 panes would be a set of buttons.
Button #1 -- Refresh Help
This would load any "new" help information into the list without disrupting the list itself -- just add the new info (problem: If a "collision" occurred where the game added a category a user had already created for their own use or what not...)
Button #2 -- Add Item
Allows adding an item to a category. Needed for "new" items the user wants to add and potentially for copying items to another category (such as "My Stuff" where I want /who or /nickname in there vs "buried" in a stock category).
Don't move it from where it's at and even see about adding the original category name to the description so a user can see where they got it from. (handy if a new person asks a quest, a person could answer "check /listcommands misc -- you'll find the info on /nickname there or just type /help nickname"
Button #3 -- advanced which would bring up a help screen with 2 buttons of its own on it.
Button #1 -- About About button to give credit where credit is due to the developer and explain about the color coding and how the thing works. (pretty basic really)
Button #2 -- Reset Help This would purge all user info and execute a series of queries -- /help listcommands --> /listcommands [category] for each category. /help [line_item] for each of the items in each of the categories. Thus clearing all the data back to an initial state with just the basics there -- handy for big updates that may trash the tool or for minor corruption of user data, etc... The "reset button".
Command Help
Hybrid Mode
