Tarquin
Hallo. This is tarquin, also called tarq for short. I tend to prefer lowercase. I'm sure there's a reason for it. Aparently there's a UT player who goes by TarQuin. That's not me.
Ponderings
Seems more and more interesting ideas and info is gathering on personal pages or diary pages. The problem with this is that these pages are considered private property, so there's not much interaction going on. Any that does happen is stuck in Thread Mode and doesn't convert to Document Mode.
This wiki is starting to feel like lots of people working in their own corners. I can appreciate that people feel more comfortable working in their own space, as you can treat it like "work in progress". But come on... it's not like the "public" areas of the wiki are these pristine things that can't be touched (or maybe it's because they're a mess in places that puts people off. hmm, complicated).
I appreciate the irony of me making a point about Walled Gardens on my own personal page .... 
but I couln't think of where else to put it (yeah, so call me a n00b 
).
In brief, this is me with my 
WikiMaster hat on saying: erm. what I said up there. Don't be too shy to ramble in public places. Remember that rambling and lengthy discussions can be refactored into Document mode text.
Plan
I've not been greeting newcomers here recently. I'm not ignoring you, folks, I'd like to get some mapping done! (plus I've run out of variations on "hi and welcome to the site" )
- get screenies of the major parts of the UEd 3 interface made & uploaded
- before that, work out a quick standard form for such image filenames, so I don't get confused later
- get some maps made!
- work out how to make the Moz sidebar work on type 1
- deal with http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1803048#post1803048
Empty_page_text
Contact
Before you email me questions, please read the section below: I DON'T KNOW. I AM NOT AN EXPERT. ASK AT BU'S EDITING OR CODING FORUMS
Triage
I don't know the answers to most of the questions I'm asked by email. So, to save yourself time:
- Questions about coding & editing: ask on the BeyondUnreal.com forums or on a wiki page. I usually read those & will answer there if I can help
- Questions about brushbuilders: read the Tarquin Brushbuilders FAQ. I don't know when I'll finish the next version, or if ever.
I'm reachable via tarquin@planetunreal.com, or sometimes in #beyondunreal, #unrealwiki or #utjb on irc.enterthegame.com.
Mychaeel: Interesting. What have you been asked?
Tarquin: *breathing deeply* ... usually stuff I don't know about & I keep having to type emails saying "sorry, I don't know, go ask at the forums". I'm happy to asnwer questions I *know* about on the wiki or the forums. 
OK, I've taken the plunge. I now have a standard response to n00b questions:
Hi.
I don't know the answer to your question.
Emailing me questions about mapping or coding is generally a bad idea.
I am not an expert, and what I do know is already written up on the Wiki site.
I recommend you post at the BeyondUnreal forums, the people there are very knowledgeable, and if I can help I will reply to threads there.
Editing: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=9
Coding: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=101
I hope that's not too rude — I'm just fed up typing the same thing out several times a week, and since UT2003 is out, daily.
Ramblings
Quick Biog
Bought Unreal when it first came out. The signle-player was far less replayable than Quake, but I never tired of Botmatch on DM-Loxi. UnrealEd used to crash at the drop of a hat, so it wasn't until version 2 that I really started messing around with it. My delvings into the class tree got me as far the the class BrushBuilder, which I discovered could be cusomized. I released my pack of brushbuilders around February 2001. You can read about them on Russian sites, which I think is pretty cool. But then again, small things amuse me, like talking to SpoonDog on IRC when it's morning here and, like, whoa dude, night-time there.
It always bugged me that it was so hard to find stuff on UnrealEd. I personally hate tutorials. Hmm... so why do I appear to be half-running a site of them? Well, more specifically, I hate being confronted with a page of headings that go "Basic / Intermediate / Advanced". How am I supposed to know what the site author judges to be "intermediate"? I don't need to read the basics of subtracting a room to put stuff in for the 19th time. And I don't want to swim through an interminable paragraph to find what I'm looking for. I prefer a reference page from which I can quickly extract the information I need.
That said, there's a n00b born every minute, or so they say, and tutorials are addressed to them, not me. Between the dozen or so major tutorial sites, I really didn't think there was much point in starting a new one: it would only confuse, I didn't have the time to commit to it, and it would end up as just one more site for the tutorial links in forum stickies.
What changed? The url http://www.wikipedia.com came up in a Google search one day in January 2002. I had a look around, read up on how it worked, and why it worked (WhyWikiWorks...), and talked to Mychaeel about it who agreed that the idea of running a wiki for Unreal documentation had potential. I didn't know at the time that the UDN also runs on a wiki. The other catalyst was a member of the BuF Editing forum who had recently announced his intention to compile (yet another) help file of tutorials. The sleepy editing community woke up a little bit for this one, and it seemed a good time to harness this to more productive ends. Yes, I'm ranting. It's my page. If you don't like it, go read Actor or something. What's the problem with a huge helpfile, or a list of links? Two things: organization and obsolecence. Just the other day I saw a thread on the InA editing forum: someone was following a tute and had come a cropper: where was the toolbox on the right-hand side of the screen? "That's in UnrealEd 1," we all cried. Great, problem solved. But isn't it just silly that so many tutorials on the web are still confusing people because they refer to the old version? Isn't it silly that it's all scattered all over? Oh dear I'm ranting again. Time for more coffee.
- Other rants can be found on /Rants if you're really interested.
...and he ought to write something about himself here.
bah... why bother, when I can find such LMAO-worthy gems of comedy on the Wiki such as this... – Tarquin
Actually, an incredibly sophisticated intergalactic Arftificial Intelligence (AI) Implementation and associated server-farm (hidden in an abandoned mine complex, miles deep in Canada somewhere) that monitors and administers the local franchise of the Unreal Empire. Light-years more advanced than anything ever developed locally. Rapidly evolving and omniscient, this AI has "Intel" tentacles extended globally. Renders text to Earthlings. Has numerous "Aliases".
Guestbook
ARG! it's like when you're at university and EVERYONE crowds into your room for drinks & stuff!!!!!!!! hey... I don't mind really
I can't decide whether to:
- remove a lot of the obsolete discussion
- shunt it to a subpage for posterity
- just leave it here for the same reason.
TechnoJF: Tarquin, I sent an e-mail to Tim Sweeney asking him for permission to port content written by Epic over to this site. He wrote back saying to go ahead, and to copy and reformat as much as we like. I'm going to do a few such pages in just a bit. I just figured that this was something I should inform you of.
Tarquin: That's great!
TechnoJF: I'm still trying to put Tim Sweeney's UnrealScript Language Reference in an acceptable format. Let me tell you now that this thing is a monster to try to work with!
Tarquin: Indeed. The CGI seems to choke on it a bit & MacIE crashed halfway through loading it... I've split it into subpages.
TechnoJF: I'm having a slight problem with the markup language. In UScript code, you know that sometimes it is organized and divided with commented lines with Hyphens. Well, even when I tell the Wiki that I want that code written as is (by beginning the line with a whitespace), Wiki still parses it as a whitespace, two slashes, and a horizontal rule on the next line. Could you make a hack or something so that Wiki will ignore a group of hyphens longer than 10? It would really help me out with this page.
Mychaeel: Or maybe just such lines that actually solely consist of a line of hyphens. Should be reasonably easy to patch by replacing
s/-----+/.../g
by
s/^\s*-----+\s*$/.../gm.
Alternatively (as I just found out while typing these lines), you can enclose lines of hyphens by <code>...</code>.
TechnoJF: Eh, thanks, but the code tags took out all the line breaks in that section. However, I finally managed to get it right with pre and /pre tags.
Mychaeel: I was talking about "enclosing lines of hyphens" (and not "enclosing the whole script") for a reason... 
TechnoJF:Oops! At least I'll remember that for next time. I used PRE tags because I had already seen them at work in the source text for the page.
Tarquin Would the < nowiki > tag do the job?
TechnoJF: Just a quick question, but let me preclude it by saying that the em-dash parsing was an excellent idea. However, I just want to be sure about something. It will only be parsed if there is a space on each side of it, right? After all, the double-hyphen is also used as an operator in UnrealScript to decrement a variable, and I don't think we need those instances of it to be parsed into em-dashes.
Tarquin yes. It only replaces "space hyphen hyphen space". Actually, I hadn't considered the decrement operator. oops.
Note from Nuclear Fuzz Grunge: Tarquin, I've had time to explore the Wiki in greater depth. I'm really impressed. You have put an enormous amount of time into this Project. Very professional and comprehensive.
Tarquin: thank. but the wiki is the product of everyone who works on it. I just set it up, with a lot of help & advice from Mychaeel.
TechnoJF: Tarquin, I'm thinking of working on the ScriptedPawn section of the class tree a bit. I figure I'm going to need to get a few screenshots of the creatures as well. Should I just send them to you?
Tarquin: yup. you can then embed them with "@i@filename"
TechnoJF: Thanks. I'm still taking screenshots. I think I have 18 of a total of 20 that I'll need. I set up a room with no lights and then have been using Pawns and Carcasses with bUnlit set to True. The effect is quite good! I just need shots for the fish and squid before I'm finished, and I'll be setting up a NitrogenZone in the room to accomplish this. After that, I can just clip the shots, erase the crosshairs, save as .jpg (unless you'd prefer masked .gif's), and e-mail them to you.
Thanks for deleting OshadowO. That idiot was getting on my nerves;) -shad
EntropicLqd - Tarquin m8 - Any chance of changing that "Wiki Markup" link in the top left hand part of the page so that it opens a new window. I keep forgetting that it doesn't while I'm editing text and losing the text (senility approaches). I'd have e-mailed you but I wanted an entry on this page
...and while you're on it: the [Wiki special characters]? link isn't created yet – Wormbo I've got to remember to set my name in the preferences
erm, right-click & select "open in new window" maybe?EntropicLqd - That works fine - I just keep forgetting If you hist the browser's Back button the text should still be in the form. How about I add it as a new-window link at the bottom of the Edit form. Wormbo, check the Category Personal Page page for info on logging on from different machines. As for Special characters page.... arrrg.... I still need to rewrite the main markup page. – Tarquin
EntropicLqd - Words eaten. It's shape dependant - Gnaarrrrr.
UT/UT2003/Unreal2 discussion moved to Project Discussion/Versions
As for Special characters page.... arrrg.... I still need to rewrite the main markup page. – Tarquin
i worked a bit (hehe, a while) to clean some of the garbled mess up, missed alot but i fixed some of the confusion with the wookee format regarding the "<table>" and "<pre>" tags (used <nowiki></nowiki> for <pre>), so it should at least be readable now. updated the [Font Colors]? page as well. Hope that helps. whew! – Simianangel
enourmously. I've been avoiding that page for weeks now, it's the Demon Page of Wiki, much like the Demon TrashCan that no-one wants to empty for fear it's evolved into a lifeform. I'll talk to Mych about maybe formatting tables with a border (Wookee/Suggestions), as I can't see one in Textbook style. – Tarquin
I worked a bit on it, too. (and changed a lot of <nowiki> into <wiki> with following space) – Wormbo
ZxAnPhOrIaN: Could you please update the page that has information that lets you customize skins on the Wiki?
Tarquin: I've updated Project Skins/Styles Testbed a bit. Probably still some styles missing. If you want a CSS template to get you started, you can grab the stylesheet off the server (look in the source for any page for the URL) or I can email it to you. (I thought "great... 
I'm being hassled to update that dratted page..." then I read the page and I'd written "hassle tarquin if this isn't updated"... sigh. I only have myself to blame. )
Mychaeel: I still think it'd be a very convenient thing to allow people to enter a CSS URL in their preferences.
Tarquin: Agreed. It's on my todo list. ... ... done. It's uploaded to the cvs & BU. It doesn't handle File:/// urls though, and relative urls are tripped up by the directory structure that the browser perceives.
Tarquin: "?! How did the logos get there?" <- ?
Mychaeel: See revision 79.
C0ry: Whats new?
Mychaeel: See 
1310231.
C0ry: I don't have access to post new threads or replies....
C0ry: Got it now
sleepite: 20020820 Hello! I'm new! Prolly the wrong place but how where the UnrealEd console commands discovered, was it just through trial and error? I'm trying to get new polysFactory to work!
Tarquin: Hello. Welcome to the site. I expect the list of console commands was released by Epic at some point. It's been posted all over the web in different formats. The one we have here has been reorganized a bit. I still mean to go through and put in interface command equivalents... one day! PolyFactory... that sounds like heavy stuff! (BTW, I've returned the visit at Sleepite )
Kerlin: Thanks for the pointer to MyLevel. Sometimes finding the right words for what you're looking for is the key. "And knowing is half the battle."
But the open source movement is energized by the other sort of joiner. This sort of person joins many tribes. These are the people who inhabit the intersections of the Venn diagrams. They believe in ANDs rather than ORs. They're a member of more than one subset, more than one tribe. The reason these people are important is, just like merchants who go between real tribes, they carry ideas from one intellectual tribe to another. I call these people "glue people", because they not only join themselves to a tribe, they join tribes together. Twenty years ago, you couldn't easily be a glue person, because our culture was not yet sufficiently accepting of diversity.
Larry Wall, Perl, the first postmodern computer language http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/03/pm.html
Antispam: http://members.hostedscripts.com/antispam.html
Trystan: Tarquin encouraged walled gardens!
Tarquin: lol... you can make yourself a hideout on Developer Journals. I agree with you, there are too many tip sections. Design is an important aspect of mapping, so it definitely belongs on the site. We're slowly growing the Map Design Concepts page...
Tarquin: You don't ACTUALLY listen to a word THAT idiot says, do you? 
Trystan: Heh, yes! I'm now on a mission to spur community involvement with the Wiki outside of the walled gardens. I still cringe when I do a recent changes and see my name like twelve times though. Let me know if I'm screwing stuff up. hehe.
ZxAnPhOrIaN: Ohhhhhhh!!! mych, kick his butt!
Mosquito: I'm new, I'm guessing Tarquin, you run the show!
Tarquin: Hmmmmmmmmm sort of, but not really.
Wormbo: Yes, tarquin and Mychaeel are the godkings here. We bow before them and worship them and we do all the work for them.
EntropicLqd: I can't resist adding to this one. Mychaeel is like a big scary alien with the brain the size of a planet and Tarquin behaves like a flustered and occasionally agressive cockerel. I'll get me coat. :snigger:
Tarquin: ermmmmm........ 
EntropicLqd: Sorry Tarquin (and Mychaeel). I don't know where that last comment came from – I appear to have become a little random. Normal service will be resumed after a re-boot.
ZxAnPhOrIaN: Errr... everybody went INSANE, i tell you!!!!!!!!!!!!! INSANE!!!!!!!!!!
Tarquin: I think what you're seeing, Ent, is a conflict between my fundamental nature as a control freak, and my desire to run this wiki in a laid-back manner, and let people try whatever they want to. So yup, I'm going loopy like 
HAL 9000.
CH3Z: tarquin, you are one patient man. I'm sorry for getting psycho on ya (I Need to sleep more). Maybe i need to get back up to that lake for a bit.
The more i look around here the more impressed i am and the more i appreciate you. I'll learn my way around here and make it up to ya. Don't know what else i can do. I'm sorry. You deserve a lot more respect.
I still think yu might have hounded me a bit, (no biggie) but i believe the rest was not any kind of deliberate act against me, and what's more, was totally your call to make. Thank you for your patience. (even if you just dropped it to go to bed ) You didn't deserve any of that.
Tarquin: If you'd arrived on a day other than the Night of A Dozen Vandal Edits I probably would have been a bit less stressed... no worries, we're cool
GRAF!K: I was wondering... why was my auto-refresh edit on RC undone? 
Mychaeel: Because it doesn't work (you should have noticed that the <meta> tag had been escaped and was just displayed as text in the browser) and because it's not desirable (just press Ctrl+R if you want to refresh the page; and who'd leave Recent Changes open that long in a browser window anyway?). – Plus, it was done without any explanation by somebody anonymous.
Wormbo: You should log in with your user ID and password or at least set your username on the preferences page so others can see that you edited a page.
Mychaeel: ...not that it would have changed anything in this case, as explained earlier.
GRAF1K: tarquin, any idea why GRAF1K is displaying the Unreal Wiki logo instead of my screenshot I uploaded? It only does that on my computer apparently, because Foxpaw and Wormbo can see it perfectly.
Tarquin: Weird. Try clearing your cache.
GRAF1K: I did a full reboot and removed Mozilla from my system tray. Still no pic. Also, why is my name listed 3x under Users Online?
Tarquin: I'm baffled. You get the UW logo instead of a graphic if the server thinks you are reading the image embedded in another site. Could it be a firewall thing?
GRAF1K: I am going through a firewall, as well as some other hefty security junk. My network is run by a web security pro for a bank.
When I Copy Image Location and stick that in the address bar, the picture loads fine. I go back to my page, the pic displays properly. But then if I reload the page, the pic is gone and there's the stinkin' UW logo again. All other pictures do the same, but only on Unreal Wiki.
Wormbo: Sounds like at some point the referrer gets modified. Is that a Mozilla option?
GRAF1K: Actually... I think it happened when I upgraded to 1.4.1! That ought to be the problem, anyway.
GRAF1K: I reinstalled Moz. Same problem. 
GRAF1K: Went back to 1.3. Fixed.
GRAF1K: There are a LOT of dead personal pages. Should we get rid of them? I was thinking of an "if not online in 90 days, delete" script like for MSN accounts. Look at Category Personal Page
Wormbo: Only those that only contain a welcome and no reply from the "owner" should be deleted, if any at all.
GRAF1K: Why do you think that?
Mychaeel: Unreal Wiki's embedded images are only meant to be displayed in pages on wiki.beyondunreal.com. Any other refer[r]rers (like www.unrealwiki.com, with the exception of referrers which are left entirely blank) return only the Unreal Wiki logo. – I'll look into adding www.unrealwiki.com to the list of allowed referrers. (Why is this discussion here and not on Project Discussion?)
GRAF1K: Wow... thanks tarquin! That -nogamma trick will help everyone. 
