Silver Blades

[Uatu]

Ah - well, I will surely take a look at the guides myself before writing my own, too

[manikus]

I'm looking forward to doing a mini-monster guide that only highlights some of the monsters, unlike the SotSB which acually shows you all of the monsters that appear in the mod.

[Uatu]

Yeah, it kind of ruins it to show EVERY monster... Although you can maybe hint at some of the ones not detailed.

[manikus]

I've been thinking about this today while trying to get some drawings done for a big project. (drawings equal building plans, both physical and logical and big project equals setting up a 3-story building with a network that will allow it to run 5 other offices as well).
Anyways, my thoughts are to scrap the Goldbox style guide. I will keep the Player's Journal for now, but the guide will be of a more "how-to-play-DC-if-you've-never-seen-a-Goldbox-game-before" kind of thing.
I still plan on working on the Clue Book at this point. I can stick info about all the monsters in there.

[Uatu]

Wow - bit-networking-type-job? I wish I knew something about networking... Any good source to start someone with 0 knowledge on the Net?

Anyway, your guide - I see, I guess we do need to let those who have never played a Gold Box game be able to play DC, too... (I will probably make mine Gold Box-style, anyway... well, whenever I start making it, that is )

[manikus]

The nice thing about creating a guide like this will be that I can use it for other mods with just a slight bit of re-branding and it will be the closest thing DC will have to a Player's Handbook. But, for that last step I'll want lots of input and other folks ideas too.

So, what do you mean when you say networking? Putting together something for your home? Or, something for business? Or, something more generic?

[Uatu]

Er... having 0 knowledge at all, I guess... anything? Or all?

[manikus]

Well...I guess the best place to start about networking (like most subjects) is the beginning.
A network is two or more devices acting together in such a way so that at least one of them is getting something from the other that it couldn't get on it's own. (Note, that I did not say two or more computers hooked together. )
There are basically two types of networks- peer-to-peer (sometimes referred to as ad-hoc or workgroup) and server client. To be able to read this response, you will be experiencing both kinds of networks (and you didn't even know it until now). We are sharing information through our networks in a peer-to-peer fashion- I am posting this at my leisure and you will read it at your leisure. But, we are getting to it through a server client network. Our computers are requesting a service that they cannot perform themselves in order to do something, in this case, access the world wide web.

I mostly never deal with the first type of network. Microsoft support are the people that do most of it, with an occasional repair person to let somebody that they need to replace some hardware. Workgroups or really only feasible for 5 or less computers and cannot function with more than 10 due to limitations of computer hardware. You will see them used most commonly in small office situations, or in someone's residence.

Okay, that's lesson 1. I wish I could point you to a good book that provided an overview, or an online course, but there really aren't any. There are lots of resources on the web, but they are aimed for people who already know something about networking. (There's a similar phenomenon with Linux - a ton of stuff available, and almost all of it assumes that you already know how to use Linux, but at least there are some good books.) When I was starting in networking, the best book I could find (and sadly it wasn't one of my textbooks) was "Networking for Dummies"

[Uatu]

Thanks for the lesson!

Yeah, most of what I found on the web seems for people who already know a lot about networking... Arrgh!

(I may have to buy Networking for Dummies, although I will cross out "Dummies" and write "Watchers"...)

[manikus]

I like to think of myself as a fairly computer savvy person. I can do some programming, I do all of my web pages with a text editor, etc. and by far the best resource I've found are the "Dummies" books. On my bookshelves close at hand to the computer are "Creating Web Pages for Dummies" and "Excel 2000 for Dummies", two great books that have made my life a lot easier. I also have a lot of non-"Dummies" books, including "Spells of Fury" which was one of the two books CocoaSpud used to start Dungeon Craft.