Video #1 Install and Intro

[hallsofvallhalla]

[youtubehd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVC6cyKCCM[/youtubehd]

[KyleMassacre]

Awesome tutorial. You covered a lot of features and stuff right off the bat. I thought of doing a couple tuts on vids but I'm a bit shy but kudos for you taking the time and showing people the ease of the engine and what it can really do.

[a_bertrand]

Nice tutorial! Nicely explained and shows indeed the basis. Can I suggest a couple of things?

- The engine can upload itself all alone via the uploader tool: http://nw-engine.com/index.php?c=ftp_upload
- Or you can download the single PHP auto-installer file: http://nw-engine.com/depack.zip

Anyhow, at the end you will have exactly the same installation as presented in this tutorial.

For the difference between public and in game:
The public menu is the menu available while you are not yet inside the game (not logged in), while the in game menu is what you see once you are inside the game after the login.

Texts can be modified without editing the code and if you modify them and upgrade to a new version of the module your changes will survive. To do so you can use the ""Enable Text Editor" (the last option on the left menu as admin)

Inside the admin menu, you will find on the right a list of tables you can edit like with phpMyAdmin, yet this tool offers an easier interface to your content, and let you even create logic (PHP code) without writing it. How? Basically a set of conditions and actions are known to the engine (and you can actually extend them), and the "wizard" will let you compose the logic via it and produce the PHP code for you. You can enable or disable this feature as well You can check the Arenas table as example.

Still on the right side of the admin menu, you will find the "Configuration keys" which are settings of the different modules. Each module can define any number of settings and then let admins tweak them via those configuration keys. Settings survive the module upgrade as well.

That should give enough info for a next tutorial

[hallsofvallhalla]

awesome it definitely does. I will cover these in the second tut

[KyleMassacre]

I would also like to add something about the module creator.if you notice the big text area there was a thing for user variables and what that does is it stops you from adding stuff to the users table and makes it super easy to retrieve the information that is stored with that variable. it basically just helps reduce overhead to a table that is easily overloaded

[hallsofvallhalla]

I was going to ask about that. Where does one add variables to the DB. So lets say I build a module around psionics. I would normally create a new table in the DB called psionics or whatever that i could list all the psionics powers and then add a new attribute called mind points or whatever. Where would I actually create the new table and such?

[a_bertrand]

Stats and let's say "variables" for a given modules don't require addition tables, however if you want to have data lists like the NPC for the combats, then yes you need a table.

[hallsofvallhalla]

so adding a table is done through phpmyadmin or am I missing something? And where is the table create code placed for the module so you can export it?

I guess I need to tear apart another module and learn it I will jump on that today.

[a_bertrand]

Modules requiring tables or other should have an "install.sql" file within the directory. If you install then the module, this file will be run the first time. Then for each upgrade which require a modification of the structure or run other SQL statements you can have an upgrade-xxxxx.sql where xxxx is the version number.

As you develop the module, you will need to run your query via phpmyadmin or others. Why? Because for security reasons I don't give full SQL access... even if we are not far

Check how some modules are structured and what they contain. BTW it is important to understand the goal and the strength of the config.xml file.

[hallsofvallhalla]

awesome thanks for the answer. Makes perfect sense.