[Ar-list] Successful Migration

[Carter T Butts]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Lizard wrote:

> Has any work been done on AR in the last, oh, two years?

Well, _Chameleon_ was released about a year and a half ago; as Karim has
mentioned (and as periodic announcements to the list have indicated) work
on various other projects has proceeded, although none of them are
entirely complete at this time.  As it happens, it takes a long time to
write books, even short ones, particularly when you're also trying to keep
up with a RL schedule....it took a couple of years to get _Chameleon_ from
concept to publication, and _A New Religion_ is taking a similar amount of
time (the current manuscript is ~80 pages, with an estimated 10-20 to go).

Now this isn't a particularly rapid schedule, but those who would like to
see things move faster should be aware that they have the power to make
that happen.  There are lots of things which need to be written for the
system...so why not start writing?  The project is always in need of more
playtests, characters, game material, etc., and there's no reason why
anyone needs to wait for the core team to get to these things; if you want
to help speed things up, then this isn't a bad place to start.  I've
made numerous "list-only" pre-releases of reality guides and rule sets
over the years, with explicit invitation for comments, suggestions, and in
some cases contributions...each of those is a concrete opportunity to do
something which will help move the process along.  <shrug>  Of course,
there's no arm-twisting here.  This is a volunteer effort, and everyone is
invited to do as much or as little as they wish.  It should be realized,
however, that there is an inevitable relationship between manpower and
productivity....

     So, anyway, enough about that: though Karim has already given a
synopsis of some of the things which have been going on "behind the
scenes", let me spend a moment to give an update on the _ANR_ reality
guide.  As Karim noted, it's getting pretty close to completion...in fact,
it's probably playable as-is, though some chunks of background material
are missing.  One of the big changes from the last draft (in addition to
some new material) is one of formatting; the whole has been migrated
(finally) from Word to a DTP environment.  Unfortunately, this process has
not been without snags...right now, Karim and I are playing around with
different tools, and haven't been overjoyed with anything thusfar.  (One
lister a while back did a very interesting conversion of an _ANR_ draft
into TeX, but so far I've not been able to figure out how to get enough
leeway with formatting, fonts, &c. to make that a viable platform.  If
there are any hard-core TeX fanatics present who want to try their hand at
writing LaTeX macros for AR documents, I'd love to see what they can come
up with....)  The latest draft is in MS Publisher, which is lacking in
numerous respects, but which at least fixes the number one complaint about
the previous draft, which was the spontaneous rearranging of tables by
Word.  We may wind up migrating yet again to something else, though; I'd
be very interested in hearing people's DTP experiences in this regard....
     In any event, I had hoped to get a first public release out before
New Year's, but this plan was rather soundly thwarted by various exogenous
personal complications which essentially zeroed my personal and
professional productivity for several months.  :-(  I was also going to
make a pre-release of the current draft to the list prior to that, but
this was complicated by the fact that I've not found a way to get either
postscript or PDF versions of the document which are not in the 70-150MB
range.  (It should be possible - the pub file is only 1.5MB.)  Given the
spontaneous resurgence of the list, however, I'll go ahead and point you
to the location of the latest draft, for those who can read Publisher
files:

http://sds-grad.hss.cmu.edu/~eagle/AR/prerel/anr002a.pub

If someone can make a reasonably-sized conversion to ps and/or PDF, this
would be quite helpful...Distiller (operating on the probably brain-dead
postscript output of Publisher 97) didn't do very well when I tried it.
The fonts used, BTW, are in an older zip archive, for those who need them:
     
http://sds-grad.hss.cmu.edu/~eagle/AR/prerel/anr001a.zip

Note that this is currently extant only on the mirror site, and not on the
(reconstituted, thanks to Nassib and Karim) main site.  

     In terms of the current draft, I'd particularly welcome play-tests,
contributions of characters, adventure ideas, etc., and art, in addition
to the usual comments and overall feedback.  As always, any contributions
used would be credited.  Karim and Isaac have also been playing around
with an idea for an RS (Reality Supplement) which provides a particular
interpretation of the _ANR_ world...I'll let them talk about that, but
there's definately some interesting work to be done there for anyone who's
interested.  Those who missed the last draft may be particularly
interested in the character creation heuristics....though written
specifically for this RG, the general approach can be fairly easily
deployed in other contexts.  (For instance, Karim and I have been working
on using a similar system for the new _Takaietei_.)  

     So, there's a concrete example of progress which is being made, and
of work which remains to be done.  I look forward to getting feedback on
the new draft.

     -Carter