Posted by Kim on May 29, 2017, 7:21pm
If you missed this month's office hours, never fear! Here's all the Q&A that went down:I was wondering, did you come up with all of the battle damage and initiative blurbs by yourself or did someone else chip in and help write them with you? I can only imagine all of the ideas that must've been swirling for that kind of thing and how difficult it might have been to put it all to code.
That is a fabulous question! This year, I wrote probably 50% of the flavor text for Epic Week combat, and I would guess that Ben was responsible for about 40% of it.
Some of the rest came from friends IRL, and even a bit was added during the actual event due to comments that people made about the critters that I thought were very "on brand" for those beasties.What, if any, significance is there in the gryphon in the RPR shield? As opposed to a dragon, unicorn, or some other traditional being?
We liked the gryphon because it is more gender neutral than a unicorn, and could be either good or evil depending on what legend/period of history you're sampling from. It seemed like it was open to more possible interpretations than a lot of other mythical creatures, while still being extremely recognizable without explanation. Plus, very shield appropriate.
My brother and I were trying to log in on his new Kindle Fire tablet using the Silk browser, but it kept bringing us to an error page, telling us the login handler has been permanently moved or is temporarily down. Do you have any idea why?
Well, I can definitely say that the login page is neither moved or down! However, I do know that late last year we moved to a much higher form of security for password handling, and that some older/out of date browsers don't know how to use the more modern security methods and throw random errors as a result. Sometimes updating your browser is the solution (and can make your browsing of the interwebs safer all over!)
Would there be any chance at making some of the templates open source for people that might like the overall template, but would like to tweak a few things to better fit the character they want to use it for?
Epic Members are more than welcome to copy/paste the CSS for any of the official templates and make whatever tweaks they would like.
This is a pretty common practice!I absolutely encourage copying the official templates and changing them in ways that best suit you. It's a great starting place for beginners, and a fabulous time saver for advanced template artists.
Ah, alrighty! I just wasn't aware if perhaps there were things like pastebin resources for people that are legitimately just starting off and would like a link, or if we should do a view source on a page. o:
Unfortunately, no, they're not uploaded anywhere outside of the RPR like that. View source and then looking for the style.css file is usually the best way to get your hands on it.
Do you have any plans on making detailed statistics available to template creators? For example, seeing how many characters use a custom template!
Yes, this was suggested to me a little while back and I love the idea. I'd also like to offer some more, easier options for epic members to customize a character template without knowing any CSS -- clearly it wouldn't allow for as much customization as writing/altering CSS, but maybe it would allow for choosing colors and picking a background much like one does when customizing a group layout.
So until those new things are implemented, all you have to do is view source and pull the code from the style.css part of the template you'd like to tweak? I think that should be listed somewhere on the CSS help PAGE for future reference to newbies.
Yes, and great idea!
Sanne also pointed out that she has done the necessary edits to get an official template working in the custom environment to several templates and published them here for everyone to take and tweak: http://www.rprepository.com/community/forumthread.php?t=27871
Is the office hours like an annual thing or something?
I try to do two office hours per month, on a Friday and a Saturday, though some months just get so crazy I don't manage it.
How are your pigs doing, Kim?
Their relations are... contentious. The baby is now a very hormonal teenager and Mr. Truffle is suffering his way through being a big brother/surrogate parent to a wild thing
KIM, SINCE I'VE MANAGED TO CONVERT SOME ALIEN SPRITES DOWN TO SNES STYLE, WOULD YOU MIND IF I AT ONE POINT DID VIDEO VERSIONS OF THE ALIEN BOSSES? like if i could whip up some little minigame versions of the bosses in, say, rpg maker or somesuch
So long as you aren't selling it and give appropriate credit to the RPR I say go for it
would love to see your fan art!When it comes to the battle system for epic week, do you plan to implement that elsewhere one day in the future, or make it available to those who want to use it for their own RPs and stories?
Back after the very first time I did Epic Week with combat, I considered creating a separate website where a similar game could be played year-round. I eventually decided that coming up with plot and content for a whole other website would compromise what time I have for developing and managing the RPR.
Since you've done belly dancing in your spare time, has it ever crossed your mind to make a belly dancer character before, or a character that does it as a hobby?
I can't recall that I've ever created a text-based character that did bellydancing. I have had several LARP characters that were performers of either real bellydancing of some fictional equivalent. This was me being clever wanting to not have to split my costume budget between LARP and dancing, and also wanting to be able to do IRL IC performances -- a great way to combine two loves into one!
My last dancer character was a Tremere (a vampire family originally founded by a group of warlocks, so the whole family is into magic and magical research) who did all of her casting through ritual dance. I would get invited to perform at various vampire courts around the region (IRL) and no one would know if I was just performing or casting a spell right under their noses, possibly on them!
It was a blast.would you ever consider a user made epic Week? Like perhaps for RPR's 10th birthday? let's say a bunch of members come together and make art, riddles, storyline, comics and contests for it.
I think there would be a lot of logistical challenges to overcome with that, but I'd be curious about exploring the idea more.
Very soon from now, I'm going to be making a podcast for an organization/community I'm making that is going to be based around acceptance and relative work and whatnot. RPing is something I'd like to advocate a lot through my podcasts, and I would very much like to mention Repo as a go-to spot for everyone who is looking for a healthy RPing community.
I would be honored if you did that. Please let me know when the feed goes up so I can add it to my podcatcher!