New Tutorial system/page

[Sandcrawler]

Part of Merging these two sites together is making improvements to the existing parts and pieces. One of their parts is the tutorial System.

Up until now the tutorials have always been a page that I had to edit to create the menu for the next tutorial and previous buttons. Now I am going to create a dynamic script that will generate the menus on the fly, as well as allow users to submit tutorials.

My current thought is to redo all of the basic tutorials for Republic Commando, and Killing Floor. But instead of using the RC or KF specific Unreal Editors they would be done using Unreal Tournament 2004 (the same engine and editor). They would only cover the basics, they'd also have tips that would be just for Killing Floor, or Republic Commando.

There are some subjects for both Republic Commando, and Killing Floor that only apply to them, these would be in their own category. Think of a Tutorial for building a working Trading in Killing Floor, it wouldn't make since to show it in the UT04 tutorials seeing as there isn't a Trader Volume, but on the Volumes tutorial we would have a link to the KF Trader tutorial.

Users will be able to submit their own Tutorials, I'm working on a way to make the submission process as easy as possible. Currently I am leaning towards having multiple Steps that you go threw to submit your tutorial.

Step 1:
Name and Notes to Admin

Step 2:
Uploading Images used in the tutorial

Step 3 (final Step):
Tutorial Body and submission

The Notes to Admin in the first step would be what the Admin will see when they go to view and possibly approve the tutorial. I don't want to lose the Quality control that we have currently, and Admins approving the tutorials is the best way to do it. An admin will also be able to leave a review to just the user that would be shown on a "My Tutorials" page, that would state the problems and what needs to be fixed.

Uploading the Images would be a looped Upload, it has to come after Step 1 because that is when I would create the folder to hold the images. The upload would be just like the one used in the Download section of the KFMod Site (I think RCMod has the same one now as well) It uses Ajax and an Iframe to allow multiple uploads and has a pretend progress bar (a progress bar that is just a looping .gif animation)

The final step would just include pasting your tutorial body into the text box. I'm thinking that the images that you upload will be available one of two ways, and I need your help deciding.

1. A box on the site with the image names inside, and a button that will move the image into your text. The problem with this is I am unsure if I can get it to insert into the middle of your text, or if it will only work at the end of the text.

2. Add a custom [BB] code that will allow you to put the name of your image inside and it will then grab the correct path from the folder when you submit. Something like [tut]firstbox[/tut]


Thats all I can think of right now, this is the system that I am currently working with, and will most likely be done first.

[TimBob12]

Sounds great,

Will you be using PHP and MySQL?

For the image adding into text.  If you had a list of the uploaded images then when they clicked on them it added the code to the clip board nad they could paste it where they want with a button.  Just an idea.

I will post if I get any more ideas :-)

TimBob12

[Sandcrawler]

Yea it'll be php and Mysql, all stored nice and neat in a table row.

I've been digging for a javascript that will work the way I want, but right now I'm undecided.

The last time I did a box that listed all the images the user uploaded and had a buttons to move it into the Text area people seemed to be confused by it. and it wasn't used much.

But maybe it would be useful here, I'm play around with  Javascript and the caretpos variable and see if it will work in the common browsers. If it does I will probably include a script that will insert the BB code for you at the position you leave your mouse cursor (caret) at.

That way if a user what to just write in the BB code when they are creating the tutorial they are still able too. When I write a tutorial I always have some sort of marker fore where the images go.

[Danny]

This would be nice. I could finally get my importing custom sounds tutorial up on the site

[frazscotland]

ooo id like dat v mucho . maybe makin nu dloadabl sandcrawler mod voicepak or even as part of the next sandcrawler mod nu voicepak. v kool.  ive delved into it a bit and its v slo goin . been wurkin mi way thru the voicepaks codes to see thesayings so wen i finish i could post a list of all the campaign sayings for any1 to make up custom mp voicepaks themselves  :geek:  :ugeek: as far as nu stuff even better  :D

[Slaughter]

I got a bunch of custom textures, u should make it so i can upload em to sandcrawler.

[leeroy]

hmm id act like i know what your talking about but then it would be a lie

[Slaughter]

i tried to upload it, and let it go for like 6 hours, and it still didn't finish  :-\

[Sandcrawler]

How big is it? there is a 35mb max filesize, and it has to be a compressed file format... zip, 7z, rar ect.

It'll also timeout after some amount of time (I don't remember how long)

[Slaughter]

it's like 90 mb, even when compresed