As some players noticed, help screen has changed.
Old overlay text has been replaced with screen where you can change which part of informations you want to read. That gives an opportunity to include more informations inside of game itself - instead of relaying on wiki and forum - for both, developers and players.
Help screen is divided into sections, which contain one or more categories. Sections can be switched by using buttons on upper-left side of the screen; if given section includes more than one category, list of them will become visible as well.
Content is loaded from .fohelp files inside client's data/help/ directory, and all subdirectories. For maximum portability, everything is stored in
JSON format which, beside of game itself, can be easily used in other places as well.
As multiple sections/categories can be stored in single file, it allows players to create complex tutorials/help translations/notes/etc and distribute them with minimal installation instructions.
Creating .fohelp files is simpler than bursting level one noob with a minigun:
- create one or more .txt files which contain some interesting informations about a game
- add as first line: FOHELP:Section name:Category name
- run included .fohelp generator (see below)
- copy .fohelp file to [client directory]/data/help/
- (re)start a game
FOHelp generator is prepared to be usable as server module and a standalone tool. ASCompiler, one of SDK tools (included in package), is used to execute a scripts and generate .fohelp file.
Usage: ASCompiler fohelp.fos -run fohelp [options]
--dir <directory> | input directory default: text/ |
--fohelp <filename> | output filename default: user.fohelp |
--subdirs | check subdirectories when building files list default: off |
--pretty | .fohelp file format will be more friendly to human eyes default: off |
--test | generated content will be printed on screen without saving to file default: off |
Package contains ready-to-use example, text/example.fohelp, as well as .txt files used to create it.
FOHelp support is already included in test client, so it can be tested right away. Be warned that "reloaded.fohelp" name is reserved for base help, and will be overwritten in future; use a different name for custom content.
At this moment feature is exclusive to FOnline: Reloaded.
After initial tests/fixes scripts source is going to be open, so (hopefully) it will be easy to implement in other FOnline games around.
Currently known issues:
- Initial text isn't scrolled properly; it fixes itself after first section/category change.
FOHelp is using (slightly modified)
JSON module by JovankaB.
Thanks to Henry for
inspiration.
Locked, feature put on hold.