Ela

[Ela]

Okay lets do this! =P (third attempt at posting here, this time i wont get sidetracked!)

Interests:Wow,reading,seeing new things aka traveling and community projects.

I have a love of classic wow,the best wow in my opinion!

My first entry into the foray of mangos was way back on the old zero forum,where a friend and i made a thankyou for all those that contributed and made mangoszero what it had become. (youtube vid is long gone but heres a screenie,albeit missing the npcs and such it had)

http://imageshack.us/a/img854/5117/9929.jpg

Uhm, then i learnt more, delving into all aspects which led to such things as (in wotlk)

^ A fun project =) (dont mind the green epl midway =P)

If your new to mangos and overwhelmed,maybe thinking since you cant script or do sql, that you cannot help, you would be wrong. =)

In many cases its the research involved that takes the time. All it needs is what you already have to have gotten here! A browser and a brain.

Playing mangos and found a npc not doing what it should? Missing emotes/text etc?

Thats right, in most cases a simple fix, and again...researching for proof is the time killer.

You really can help!

-Ela

[TheLuda]

Welcome, and good to have you here. You mean you've been on the old forums on altervista already when it still was UDW? That's already been some long time ago!

[Ela]

I joined around zero revision 1600ish =P

I wasnt armed with the knowledge i have now though, I however did do a full alliance questing writing a huge list of bugs out which i kept, and have found many are still relevant.

This is something i plan on doing again, i have friends who will be doing it with me =)

After or during which we will also test 5mans.

-Ela

[TheLuda]

Since you like mangos-zero so much, what do you say about knowledge sharing?

If you have not read yet, we're working on a complete documentation for the zero databases including tutorials, etc. Done now 55% and it's really very extensive.

Since you had zero that long around, would you like to share some of the bad and good things you encountered? We want to include as many examples and howto's as possible, and perhaps you have a different perspective on what should be told than we do

[lfxgroove]

Glad to have you here Ela! Hope you will enjoy your stay

[Ela]

Most definitely! Mangos already is alot more user friendly than back then, especially in installation

Not only have i had it around, i have played it, raided on mangos servers and even developed on a few and got dozens of user opinions, as well as community interaction. =)

A well written wiki with examples is ideal for sure. Things like conditions, and having a condition with conditions within etc as a written example, would explain alot more than 'this is where we set conditions'. And things such as 'race' is always nice when complimented with the actual id/name, rather than having to open dbc, more efficient and helpfull. I think most of it is fairly straight forward, and whatever you do shall be fine. (btw one of my crew whose fairly new added this ''i am a look and see learner, if theres an example then it makes it easy for me)

This is where i hijack the thread.

My angle is this: Surprisingly most who play on servers dont even know what mangos is. And even some that do, would draw a blank when reading, 'dont have any dev skills, you can still help by testing!'

Well by then we assume they have taken the time to compile their own server and such, or we assume that they want to grind at 1x rates on covenant to test.

Why dont we have a dev server with some cmds low ranked such as teleport/gm on/off/damage/lookup-additem. /whatever =P

This i think would help new people alot also to get involved, to get them posting bugs, the bug list on git is tiny, when it should resemble 200+ bugs, easily.

I shall give two examples of player interactivity in the above cases.

1:a bug report on a server i was developing with at the time was ''we are missing some gromsblood in blasted lands'' So i approached the player, asked if they wished to help with it, they didnt think they could. Solution was easy, gave them gatherer, they logged to dev server, ran around at great speed herbing, gave me their gatherer back. Voila. Not only did i end up with someone who felt great as they indeed helped greatly, i ended up with the knowledge of some herbs to high..some were below the ground totally. (again another tiny easy fixed bug but EG guid 32304 gromsblood blasted lands) but also a great map visual to compare against old gatherer info and such, and undoubtedly an awesome visual reference for pooling the nodes.

2:Another guy was a walking compendium of dungeon bugs, he took great delight in going to a dungeon, and writing up bug lists for them, even sourcing links.

Again..not everyone wants to grind from level 1 to 60 to enter brd solo and get squished as theres no one else on realm to run it with. And we all lose out on valuable testing and others memorys which can further on ignite interest to take the great plunge into mangos. =)

[Ela]

To finish, as you havent surely read enough encyclopedia ela yet =P

Something to add that would be handy, as many are unsure i have no doubt. Would be 'when all avenues of acceptable sources are exhausted, what then is acceptable?

Especially for zero where the chances of sniffs have fallen off the face of the earth in most cases. And i dont mean..well hey we checked wiki and its not there...time to improvise!

I dont know about you guys, but i check tdb tbc udb and older mangos rev, along with what ghurok (such a gentleman) sent me as well. What more can you check? Theres no more options. If we have footage of npcs pathing in youtube vids and such, is that then acceptable as a resource?

And this will apply in many pathing cases.

Gossip menu id's. What here also? We will run into a few cases that we just do not have the id's. Again omarion naxx, all rigged and ready to teach..no id's.

Spirit of azuregcos, no udb 406 data, no zero data, tdb has used a workaround. Will aq sceptre chain be forever uncompletable etc. When there is many ids not used, and it could be fixed in minutes.

Also some resource links would be a great addition. =) Not everyone knows about wiki history tab etc. And I assume we all have precious sources that would be nice to share, like using the wayback machine, or going back in history on alakazham (goes back to beta wow lol). Sites some use may not be in a language we understand, so we may miss some valuable sites, when google translate will be our friend in such case. (at one point i had a chinese site dated 2006 and they hadnt messed it up with tbc info/hp, wish i had it now =p)

While i do like what your doing, maybe what i have also posted would be food for thought.

Maybe point new users who are in the beginner stages to a realistic buglist with 'footage wanted' or similar, im sure some who use youtube and such would no doubt post and be glad to help, definetly a valid part of developing,i can only imagine what mangos would turn out like if we went by memory alone! =P

Could even leave some of the really easy bugs in buglist for beginners to handle so they get used to how things are done?

Similar to 'beginners bug of the day'

'Stormwind has an orphan from the orphan week event, his quest is available though without the event'

-check if he should be there even without event, if so, solution?

pt2:now that thats fixed, there is more, locate them (duskwood etc)

(simple yes, but its how most of us began)

Armed with this incoming user knowledge, this would be easily achievable for any beginner =)

Regards Encyclopedia writer ela =P

(going to think twice now before asking my opinion again arent you ;D)

[TheLuda]

Nope, will surely ask again. We want to hear community input, and this one was pretty good!

[lfxgroove]

It's a nice idea to have a common resource list which everyone can contribute to!