Course Reports - Structure

[aneeshm]

Can you have AAR and DAR combined ? In this scheme , you have two types of thread - the individual ( this is not an AAR - I'll expand later ) , and the comparative ( the DAR ) .

The game is broken up into chunks in both cases ( or rather , threads ) . A player , after writing up one chunk of the game , posts it simultaneously in both , his individual thread , and in the appropriate DAR thread . The "chunks" can be of arbitrary size in the individual thread , but any post in the DAR thread must follow the given timeframe .

This way , an individual player can play the game in smaller pieces , and can get feedback which is more fine-grained , but still be able to compare himself with other players .

Readibility is also vastly increased - whenever you want to read about a person't game in more detail , you have his thread to refer to , and you don't have to mentally collate anything .




How does this sound to the veterans of the AU ?

[ducki]

You know, this sounds like a job for perl. It should be possible to (assuming there's a naming convention for the DAR threadnames) ask folks to set the subject of their actual DAR post(as opposed to discussion within the DAR thread) to something special. Then, you just need a list of each DAR thread in order, retrieve the pages, do some screenscraping to grab the desired student's DAR post from each thread, in order, then spit it out as HTML.

What'd be _really_ cool is if this was running on the 'poly server, so any time you look at a student's DAR, there would be an automagically added link to view the whole set of DARs as one big AAR in a popup.

Shouldn't be difficult, just need someone with some minor coding skills(perl, PHP maybe, asp.net, whatever) to hack something out, then determine how to differentiate between actual DAR posts and posts discussing the DARs in any given DAR thread.

I think it'll be easier to find one codemonkey that wants to hack something together than to get each and every student to post their DAR twice. Also, we might need an AAR sub-forum, as we already have enough folks that one course would eat the entire first page of the forum, I think.

[Jawa Jocky]

Brief Synapses

Command Reports And Procedures

Frequently Updated Command Knowledge

[Arrian]

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by Jawa Jocky
Brief Synapses
Command Reports And Procedures
Frequently Updated Command Knowledge

Took me a while to figure out what Arrian was laughing at!

Any of those suggestions work for me!

[V3nom]

LOL, yeah ok it took me a moment as well.

[Tall Stranger]

I reluctantly voted for DARs. While I share the concerns about painfully long DARs (and I really don't care what they're called), I think they're the best way to learn and teach. Perhaps we could create some general guidelines for what a DAR should say. Off the top of my head, they should:

1. NOT, NOT, NOT be a turn-by-turn summary of what you built, researched, moved, fought. I'd sooner watch paint dry.
2. Focus on the major strategic decisions you made and why.
3. Discuss any mistakes you made and how you attempted to overcome them.
4. If there is a specific issue that a given course is intended to explore, THAT should be the focus of your DARs. That means you should publish "conclusions" or "important lessons" from the game.

I'm sure there are more, but these strike me as the biggies.

[Kidinnu]

Several people have referred to forgetting to save/write/screenshot DARs at their correct times - isn't this what modability is all about? From playing Desert War and American Revolution, it should be easy to drop a small python file in Custom Assets that pops up reminders at standard times in your SP games.

I'll try testing something tonight or tomorrow, but the code looks like this:

# copied shamelessly from American Revolution mod by Jon 'Trip' Shafer
Class AUEvents(CvEventManager.CvEventManager):

  def turnChecker(self, iTurn):

    if (iTurn == 25):
      self.RemindAU()
    elif (iTurn == 75):
      self.RemindAU()
    # and more reminders at appropriate turn numbers

  def remindAU(self):

    popup = PyPopup.PyPopup(-1)
    popup.setHeaderString("Write your DAR!")
    popup.setBodyString("If this is an AU game, it's time to write your DAR.")
    popup.launch(true, PopupStates.POPUPSTATE_QUEUED)

[Kidinnu]

OK, it's a hair more difficult than that. Takes two files:

CvEventInterface.py goes in CustomAssets/Python/EntryPoints. This just tells Civ4 to use the AU override file for an event handler.

CvAUEvents.py goes in CustomAssets/Python. This only changes one behavior from the standard event handler: at the beginning of each turn, it checks the current turn number. On certain turns (currently just 25 and 75, but it should be obvious how to add more), it pops up a reminder that it's time to write your DAR (and gives you the turn number so you can keep track). This popup comes *before* any new events (religious foundings, first contacts) for the turn.

Apparently I can only attach one file per message, so I've just put them up on my web site.

CvEventInterface.py
CvAuEvents.py

[ducki]

Well done, Kidinnu! I'll try to remember to download this and use it tonight, see if any "oddness" results, though it shouldn't.

Next up, how about an in-game "notepad"? :P

[polarnomad]

@Kidinnu

Liked your idea for the in-game popup, so I downloaded the files you provided and placed them where you suggested, and started a new game. Nothing popped up though... Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Can you explain in layman terms what the problem might be?

[Stuie]

Originally posted by ducki
Next up, how about an in-game "notepad"? :P

Ha! My thoughts exactly. That would be the ultimate in coolness.

[Kidinnu]

Sorry about that. Fixed a bug. Download a new copy of CvAUEvents.py.

(I tested it, then thought "Wouldn't it be more useful if it printed out what the current turn number was?", and added that feature without testing it, since after all it was a trivial one-line change. Heh. Bad programmer, no donut.)

CvAUEvents.py
CvEventInterface.py

Since polarnomad was afraid he was doing something wrong, let me try to be explicit:

In your Sid Meier's Civilization 4 folder, follow the shortcut named "_Civ4CustomAssets". That should have a folder named "Python"; inside it put CvAUEvents.py. Inside Python should be a folder named "EntryPoints"; put CvEventInterface.py there.

Putting things in CustomAssets means that they apply to all your (Single-Player, and I think non-Mod) games, but don't overwrite any of the original Civ4 files, so if you decide you don't like them, you can just delete them; if you don't want them around for a few games, you can just rename them.

[polarnomad]

Nice, thx. Will try it out again once I start a new single player game.

[Kidinnu]

Actually, since this isn't a modification to the XML files, you can add it into an already-running game just by exiting & restarting Civ4.