Nova Tutorial
| Nova Tutorial | |||
| Written by: |
Unknown | ||
| Edited by: |
Rear Admiral Gates | ||
| Recommended for: |
Anodyne Nova | ||
| [ Source ] | |||
The Nova simming website script by Anodyne Productions is one of the newest and more popular ways to role play. It has many features that are valuable to players and game masters alike. At the same time, it has its downfalls.
This tutorial was designed by request for a new player on a simulation that uses Nova. Specific directions are difficult to create as the skins and coding can vary drastically with how the creator rewrites the CSS code for how the website is displayed.
It should be noted that the user should have updated browsers to be able to view and open pages of a Nova website. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are two optimal browsers for suggested use.
The majority of skins and displays show a main menu that is traditionally horizontal along the top. This menu features links to the site's main page, the crew manifest, information about the sim such as specifications and mission details, and a database or wiki that holds even more information. The text on the menu may vary based on what changes the game master might do but the content is essentially the same.
Like the main menu, the sub-menu may be either horizontal or vertical. Whichever it may be, there are key features that should be accessible. Depending on the page that you select, the menu would look different. The control panel options will be described in its own area.
The Manifest page's sub-menu generally contains links for the following information: crew listing and open positions, chain of command of the simulation for official purposes, crew award descriptions and winners, and of course the link to join the community to submit your application.
The Sim page is where the game master would put sort of a back-story or explanation about the simulation for potential players. Sub navigation contains much more information than the manifest. You can find information about the sim and their missions, personal logs, archives, simulation statistics such as monthly post counts and averages, and the crew awards again. This all in addition to the simulation's tour that provides crew a visual experience of the sim. The specifications of the simulation such as dimensions, ideal person capacity, and technology. Deck listing would display what is located on what level of a ship. This area may be modified with other details for that of a colony or other base style simulation. Departments contains a description of each department featured on the manifest.
The Wiki is what replaced the database from Anodyne's retired script that was SMS. Where in SMS, the pages would be either global or in department sub-sections, the wiki doesn't display in such a same way. Generally the wiki will display the pages in a straight list, but they can be assigned to custom made categories.
Nova: The Control Panel
This link on the main menu is where you the player will spend the majority of your time when playing. Pay attention! This section will contain a lot of important information!
When you enter your control panel, there is a display right up front that contains the following details: my nova, notifications, activity, and milestones. These sections have their individual purpose. 'My Nova' displays your personal statistics such as mission posts, personal logs, and comments. 'Notifications' lets you know if you have any posts saved that are in progress. 'Activity' is board wide. It shows users that have not either logged in for a period of time or submitted a post for a certain amount of days. As long as players are active, they shouldn't show up on this alert. 'Milestones' is just that. It displays when a player reaches a certain milestone like serving three months, six months, or even a year's time with the simulation.
The Writer's Control Panel shows your saved entries (mission logs, personal logs, and news items) and links to begin writing a new entry. If you are touring your simulation while reading this, click on 'write mission post'. When it opens you see a number of drop downs and fill in entry boxes. The 'authors' area when opened shows your characters first followed by other playing characters. Closer to the bottom of the drop down may show NPC (non playing characters) that are linked to other accounts that players have claimed. You need to manually add authors to each mission post that you make, including solo ones by yourself. You do this by selecting the author name and clicking the 'add author' link. Linked NPCs do not need their primary owner's account character to be added (just the NPC is fine) and it will display in their control panel like your would if someone selected one of your NPCs.
The next drop down is to select the mission your entry would be included in. Many simulations tend to have one active mission at a time. Sometimes they may have more than one. It is important that you know what each one is about. You can read more by visiting 'The Sim' page through the main menu as described earlier in this tutorial.
The following are writing text boxes where you would type in the information. The title is pretty self explanatory. It is the title of your post. Location would be generally where the bulk of your entry would be located. This can be the ship's mess hall or a colony's command center for example. Timeline. Hmm, this can be tricky. Every commanding officer tends to have a different method of managing timelines. Many use a 'mission date' format. That would be written like 'MD: 01', meaning the post is on 'mission day 01'.
The content is where the details and meat of your post is written. People do this in a number of ways. Some write out their entries in a word processing program like MS Word, Notepad, or other equivalents. Something to keep in mind is that html tags would need to be included if you write something that would have italics. HTML tags for italics would appear like this: <i> text </i>. You need to be sure that every time you 'open' an html tag, that you close it. Closing it would be the same as you would have put to open the tag, but includes a / (slash) as displayed.
When you are done writing or if you want to save it to return to later to work on before posting, you must, must, MUST, take care to click SAVE at the bottom. SAVE does not send the post out to everyone. If you have other people in your post (referred to as a joint post when multiple people are included), it would be forwarded to only those to notify them of changes. You would only click POST when the post is completed for final distribution to everyone.
Private messages work in much the same manner where you need to add the authors of who you intend to send the message to.
Depending on your level of access, you may see a number of options further down the sub-menu. The typical user or department head would have the ability to create NPC characters for their department. These however would not be linked automatically. You would need to contact someone with administrator access to link an NPC to your account for you.
The user sub-menu is standard for all user levels. This is where you would need to make any updates to your account like changing your email or password, update your biography, change your site options like the skin that is viewable to you, and submit a leave of absence request.
Another feature on the user sub-menu is the award nominations. Each month or less often sometimes, you would go here as informed by your GM to submit nominations for player awards.