I finally implemented unified news generation for the game and the front page.
From now on, to news entry, copy the template in world/map/news.d to a filed named ##-shortdescription.txt, then run 'make news'. The ## should increment; it will be automatically displayed in reverse order. I started the in-game news about news entry as 10, so that the 00-old-news.txt can be expanded into multiple entries properly (currently it's all dumped in one file as if it's a single entry); future news should start at 11.
I also edited news.php to change the minimum client version and reject all TMW-based clients, I've also set up a can't-happen-yet infrastructure for rejecting less than Mana/0.5.0 - which we can easily change once we decided to drop support for 0.5. Note that 0.5.1 is the one that will finally allow us to use CSV maps ... Since ManaPlus sends a more complicated version string, I haven't implemented any out-of-date checking for it.
Note that:
I can't actually pull this onto the web server account until the next game data update.
The HTML file actually served from updates.themanaworld.org/news.html does not include <html> or <body> tags.
This requires a request via http to the same physical machine. This could probably be improved by using a cron cache.
The ManaPlus client is still buggy and refuses to display a blank line in news.txt, so I have to put trailing whitespace. I put a .gitattributes file to silence the warning, but it should still be fixed.
Some of the old news entries display suboptimally in html mode because they don't put a blank line between paragraphs.
o11c wrote:I also edited news.php to change the minimum client version and reject all TMW-based clients, I've also set up a can't-happen-yet infrastructure for rejecting less than Mana/0.5.0
Wouldn't it be nice to direct older client users to download a more recent version of the client and help them to come back?
"The language of everyday life is clogged with sentiment, and the science of human nature has not advanced so far that we can describe individual sentiment in a clear way." Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million.
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness.
"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy." Donald Knuth.
I hope the frontpage won't stay that way for long:
tmw_frontpage.png (102.67 KiB) Viewed 4529 times
former Manasource Programmer
former TMW Pixel artist
NOT a game master
Please do not send me any inquiries regarding player accounts on TMW.
You might have heard a certain rumor about me. This rumor is completely false. You might also have heard the other rumor about me. This rumor is 100% accurate.
I can't actually pull this onto the web server account until the next game data update.
@Crush: I've heard somewhere that the next content release will be in the next few days. I can't verify that though.
This will be only bugfixes afaik.
Yeah, Jenalya plans to do the next content release sometime this weekend, with no new in-game features. It has this and the global variable thing, as well as some minor things.
cody wrote:What does "rejecting" exactly mean? I use Mana 0.5 and it still works very well (except for magic). Of course it won't get supported for ever. But there should at least be a good reason for rejecting it. CSV is not a good reason, because it makes no difference neither for players nor artists.
I mean, it displays a nagging message about having an old client, like was previously done for less than TMW/0.0.29.1
And you seriously underestimate the benefit of having CSV maps, from a developer's point of view. The benefit to have human-readable wdiffs is incalculable.
