General Rules

Before the situation continues, I'd like to remind everyone that this forum is for 'writings in progress' or 'completed scripts', not for scripting requests; I let it slide the first couple times, but now it seems it might be a growing problem. *Rather than banning such behavior, I will simply make it so that you can only post a scripting request if you're serious about it.

The idea behind this is not to encourage people to buy/sell scripts -- the idea is to encourage people to do more of the legwork themselves by assigning an often unthinkable price tag to scripts which run on a free engine to a free game, and if they're unwilling to do any legwork, they will have to place substantial material value on the time that others invest in writing scripts they were too lazy to write themselves.

The philosophy behind these guidelines is simple: do not, under any circumstances, attempt to take advantage of the generosity of the members here. I will not tolerate it.

These are the guidelines:

- Describe, in excrutiating detail, what it is you want it to do
- Name a reasonable price for your script, based on difficulty and time expected to complete

For "reasonable price," use the Mr. Accessory as a baseline. *For every hour (rounded up) you think a script might take to write for a scripting newbie, a reasonable price might be anywhere between one and ten Mr. Accessories. *(In other words, the minimum price for any script request is 1 Mr. Accessory.)

If you think that's too expensive, either find someone else who's also interested in your idea and wishes to pool resources, or transform your idea into a real work in progress by doing most of the legwork yourself to make it a legitimate post in this forum.

Re: *** ABOUT THIS BOARD ***

Because Veracity and I do stop in from time to time, I'd appreciate it if people observed the following guidelines to make things easier for everyone involved:


Operating system can matter. If you're running Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows changes the way a problem is approached, as different operating systems have different quirks related to handling Java. Therefore, if you provide absolutely no other information, provide the name and version of your operating system, your version of Java, and the version of KoLmafia you are running.

• Try to pinpoint the exact problem.
  • Because we have finite time, we are inclined to make assumptions about the amount of effort you put into figuring out the problem.
  • If nothing else, try to identify relevant settings (if KoLmafia's display doesn't load, for example, tell us what displays you have switched on).
• Use a one sentence overview of your problem as a thread title.
  It's polite to use a full sentence rather than a couple words because it focuses the issue from the beginning.
  
  
• Do not try to be funny when describing your problem.
  • While Veracity and I both certainly have senses of humor, we don't have it running all the time.
  • In this forum, it has a fairly low probability of running.
  • This is a side-effect of the fact that when we do drop by, we had plans to take your concerns seriously.
• Provide the exact applicable script.
  • Do not run a modified version of it, run the version you post.
  • If you add stuff to your script to make the problem easier to see, make sure that this modified version is run.
  • It's rather insulting to see output from a different script, because it makes us wonder, "Are you really running that script, or are you wasting our time?"
  
  
• Provide a full textual description of your problem.
  • My first reaction to gCLI output is to compare it to the source code and think to myself whether the output looks like what I'd expect, not necessarily what YOU would expect.
  • Make sure you clarify, via textual description, what you expected to see.
  
  
• Provide any gCLI output related to your problem.
  • Yes, we know about the error where you can't copy from KoLmafia and paste into Notepad.
  • However, you can paste into Microsoft Word, and you can paste into Mac's TextEdit, and we'd appreciate it if you took some time to make sure gCLI output is readable.
  
  
• Break up your thoughts into paragraphs, and make sure such paragraphs have more than ten words each.
  • If you post things that only have a couple words on a line, chances are good that these lines will be overlooked.
  • For example, a stand-alone paragraph which reads "It aborts unexpectedly" is likely to be skipped entirely, even though it's probably important.
  
  
• I'm a creative writer, not a technical writer, so I read in chronological order, not problem-solution order.
  • If you are posting behavior from two different revisions, the description and output of the earlier revision should come first.
  • If you post in reverse order, chances are I won't catch it and think that the first thing you post is the earlier revision.