The Crowdsourced Game

[bluemonkmn]

I think I should re-do the video anyway. This one was kind of rough and in the wrong aspect ratio. I should do one that gets everything in the right order and fixes numerous other small things. So did you have to use your SourceForge email address; do you know if simply your SourceForge username alone works?

Maybe I should start a list:
1. Tell user to set up SourceForge user name in Mercurial before doing Clone
2. Set correct aspect ratio for video: 1280x720 (720p)
3. Use Read-Only http link instead of trying read-write ssh link first when requesting hosting
4. Clarify the meaning of each column in the "Reviews" page, and get the links right on the first try
5. Provide a better list of links to useful pages, and use it during the tutorial
6. Remark on making branches from other existing forks
7. Any other suggestions?

[tprime]

7. Any other suggestions?

Perhaps a quick introduction of what iotaBuildIt is, specifically a few quotes taken from the philosophy section of the site.
It'll give roaming developers an auditory sense of what it is before they actually decide to jump into the project through the video tutorial.

[bluemonkmn]

And do you think it should all be in one video? Introduction, setup and walkthrough of submitting updates?

[durnurd]

I am not sure if the following is the best option here, but I thought I'd suggest it in case it is.  When I've made tutorial videos in the past, there was one overview that showed off the overall process and everything major that could be done. Then more detailed videos to go in depth for those sections in which depth may be a useful place to go. You could use annotations during the overview to link to the more detailed videos for that specific part. Of course, this would mean even more videos, but would let people skim through the overall process without necessarily being turned off by the nitty gritty bits until they're committed (i.e. after they "get" your vision from the rest of the overview)

[bluemonkmn]

I made a more useful homepage for frequent visitors and people using the tutorial video at http://iotabuildit.sourceforge.net/. I figured I should have a better page to refer to while creating the new video. I think this will be it.

Anybody know why the embedded video is disabled and can't be enabled in IE. I assume it's a security restriction. But do other sites have similar problems in IE, or do they have ways around it?

Can anyone tell me if it looks OK in FireFox?

[Vincent]

Looks good in Firefox 12.
I hope I'll have time to setup my system next weekend.

[bluemonkmn]

Looks like the reason I couldn't view the embedded video in IE was because I didn't have Flash updated in my 64-bit version of IE. It works fine in the 32-bit version of IE.

[durnurd]

A couple of points on the tutorial

You say that you should be able to just double click on the SGDK 2 project file to open it. But if you just downloaded it and extracted the ZIP file, the file association would not be set up yet. I didn't see anywhere you actually set it up beforehand.

You might want to consider (if it's possible) to run through this setup in a more sterile environment, for example on a Virtual PC instance.

The steps to take to get it set up are hard to find and to get through. Placing links in the middle of sentences is not the best option. The Participate link shouldn't be below the fold hidden in a bunch of text people won't read.  You need a nice big button right at the top.


The same is true of the tutorial links. The links should all be right at the front, before the sentence, as nice, obvious things to click.  They could also link more directly to the download pages.

I still think the run button (or a separate button) in the IDE should allowo for running as HTML5, rather than requiring the user export it and then find the file to run. It should also be simple enough to not require the setup dialog that appears when going through the export process.

[bluemonkmn]

1. I think I did demonstrate running the SGDK2 IDE before double-clicking on an SGDK2 file, and running it is what sets up the file association. But I should remark that double-clicking the SGDK2 file only works if you ran SGDK2 first, as I demonstrated.
2. I agree with you 110% about the links, which is why I already did make a new tutorial video based on the new homepage at iotabuildit.sf.net where the links are more handily available. I haven't posted that video yet, though, and will probably re-do it again before I do post it. I need to speak better than I did.

What's the quickest easiest virtual environment, VirtualPC? I haven't used that lately -- can you remind me where to set that up from? Is it still free?

I will have to think more about easier ways to run HTML5 content. I still like having the user review the settings every time they output to HTML5 format because of my desire to confirm where the files are going, and how many there will be. But having it easier to run afterward would be good, like opening the folder where the HTML file was generated or optionally starting that HTML file in the default browser after the export. One of those could be an option on the export dialog.

[durnurd]

I'm not suggesting getting rid of the Export to HTML option, but not having to use it while testing would be much simpler.  It would just always export each js file separately and the images embedded.  It could go into a temporary location. Then when you're ready to distribute it, you could use the export option.

As for a virtual, I have recently used Virtual Box.  I think the part you may have to deal with though, is installing an OS.  It may not be worth the effort...

[bluemonkmn]

Guess what I just discovered. It appears we don't need to deal with the whole hassle of a hosting request! Because there's no server scripting and it's all just client script, it seems to work to link directly to the file within the mercurial source control app provided by SourceForge! This is an amazing and great simplification. I'm very excited. Take a look at this link from my own repository: http://hg.code.sf.net/u/bluemonkmn/myiota/raw-file/bd99939d2275/HTML/iotaBuildIt.html or this one from the base repository: http://hg.code.sf.net/p/iotabuildit/code/raw-file/408d42e6cd90/HTML/iotaBuildIt.html. And it hosts all versions... if you go to this address also in the base repository, you will see the older version of the world map if you go down when you get to the world map.  I didn't think this would ever work because I assumed that a PHP file (that retrieves the requested file from source control)) would always have to be part of the URL, but somehow Mercurial has integrated with the SourceForge web server to such an extent that all files can simply appear as hosted files on the web, which is exactly what iotaBuildIt needed. Such luck!

[Vincent]

That's great news!

[bluemonkmn]

OK, I finally finished the updated tutorial video and posted it on the new iotaBuildIt homepage at http://iotabuildit.sourceforge.net/. I included a full transcript. I haven't had time to watch the whole thing yet, though. 

[bluemonkmn]

I think I'm ready to start publicizing the iotaBuildIt project and tutorial video after one more confirmation. Just want to make sure all the steps in the tutorial work for someone besides myself without any complications.  In particular I want to make sure you're able to edit the review page of the Wiki, and define your own page for your modification using the current security settings. So if anyone could confirm that, I can start publicizing.  No rush, but that's the next step I think.

[v6v]

I'll definitely try now. I'm free of school..... oh my gosh, like a giant stone, removed from my back..... So much spare time to be left to my thoughts.... (and IotaBuildIt)

Scratch that- sourceforge isn't allowing me to register, as it needs a domain name for my username, and I don't have one moins que 15 characters long.

It may be the wrong place to ask for help, but does anyone have any ideas? Tinyurl is still too long apparently for registration.