=/\= 0.3.1 Nova User Guide

Created by on Tue Oct 6th, 2015 @ 3:51pm

Nova 2.4.4 Quick User Guide

The Basics

First up, Nova is a PBEM (or play-by-email) as well as play-by-web simming, or roleplaying software. This means that you must have a viable email address in order to get the full experience. It can be adapted to support our style of RP, however.

Nova has three basic posting types: news items, mission posts, and personal logs.

The majority of all roleplaying will take place in STO, thus for some people the system will likely only ever be used for biographical data. However, mission posts are there to submit official reports of events. While there is no need to do so, it would greatly enhance the RP, and allow people to catch up if they had missed a session for some reason.

Conversely, you can choose to use a personal log instead. These are great for backposts, or posts set from your character's life prior to the ships that are a part of Star Trek Resurgency. To use a personal log, just click 'write personal log' and choose the character from the dropdown list.

News items are generally sent out by the captain, the XO, or any player who wishes to directly speak to the crew without using personal messaging (or the PM inbox on the top grey bar). These are generally for weekly or monthly updates, etc, and can be sent from an IC or OOC perspective. Keep an eye on your email for these!

HTML and Fancy Coding

Throughout the Nova system, posts and wiki entries can be stylized using HTML. It isn't necessary to use, but it makes things look a little brighter.

For this next section I'm going to detail HTML codes. Unfortunately, the coding layout of this website makes it a little difficult to translate these codes into the Wiki. So, I have to put a space between the opening and closing tags (><) in order for them to work. To get the code to function properly, just remove these two spaces! Any other spaces in the code are there because they should be.

HTML is basically a way of making your text, writing, or your logs look a bit more spiced up. It can help differentiate between bits of real-world writing or poetry, pieces spoken in an alien language, thoughts, communication by telepathy, readings on a PADD, talking through a communicator, etc.

HTML generally makes things more fun, and it's relatively simple to learn. This includes italicized, bolded, and underlined text as well as span titles (for language translations or notes), hyperlinks, images, header titles, and other goodies to make your posts look neat!

Rather than go into extensive detail about all of this, I'll just show you some examples;
I would also highly recommend you check out W3 Schools HTML Section as there is a lot of useful code and tips to get the most out of HTML!

Text Modifiers

BOLD: BOLD or BOLD
ITALIC: ITALIC or ITALIC
UNDERLINE: UNDERLINE
~~STRIKETHROUGH~~: < s >STRIKETHROUGH< /s > or < del >STRIKETHROUGH< /del>
Commanding Officer: Commanding Officer
Click here for a full list of colour names

You can use any combination of the above to make something more unique, there are also many other HTML tags supported by the system not listed above. Keep in mind, however, e-mails sent by the system are formatted in rich text, so more complex logs might not display correctly, if at all. They will still look fine on the website, however.

Complex HTML

HORIZONTAL LINE: (< hr >HORIZONTAL LINE < hr >)

Images: < img src="IMAGE URL" > The URL I used was "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7022505/STORP/Resurgency/Resurgency.jpg", though you can replace that with anything. An image URL will usually end in .png, .jpg, or .gif.

Link Text: < a href="LINK URL!" >Link Text< /a > - I used the Resurgency website link, you can substitute anything. The space between 'a href' is intended.

Jolan Tru
Span Titles: Span titles are a little more complex. You can't use speech marks or embed code in them, but they're useful to provide translations. A span title looks like this: Jolan Tru

You can also
Use Bullet Points

Or numbered lists
Like these.

Code:
< ul >
< li >You can also< /li >
< li >Use Bullet Points< /li >
< /ul >
< ol >
< li >Or numbered lists< /li >
< li >Like these.< /li >
< /ol >

And last, but not least

Generally, this won't be a problem in personal logs or mission logs, however on the wiki, this one is vital.
 - The Line Break
It's a simple tag that places a single line break. There is also and which places a paragraph marker. Paragraph markers will leave a space, line breaks will just go to the next line. Use each as appropriate.

Other Buttons and Menu Options

Dashboard

The Dashboard allows you to see every character you own, quick-edit their biography, as well as see your current Mission or Personal Logs and Personal Messages. The left side also holds the buttons for editing your site preferences (site skin, the way the little uniform ranks look, and what personal links you'd prefer to set). You should also use the Dashboard to inform us of your planned absence.

Control Panel

The control panel is effectively an extended Dashboard and allows access to the majority of the site functions. It will give you a quick at-a-glance view of any pending/saved mission or personal logs, it will also inform you of your current posting statistics.

Writing Control Panel

This link lets you view your logs as they are being written, in real time. Clicking on 'saved' and then clicking on the magnifying glass will let you make sure you haven't made any glaring HTML errors such as forgetting to close an italics tag and turning your beautiful post into an all-out italicized disaster. This is useful to check on your posts before you post them up. (You may sometimes need to use the Mission Posts/Personal Logs options under Management to see all functionality.)

Award Nominations

As it says on the page itself, you can use this to nominate other characters for awards. Awards are almost always purely IC based. You can also use this to nominate yourself for an award if it is part of your backstory.

My Account

Typically speaking, you won't need to visit this area very often, however please ensure that your account follows this criteria;

"Name" field is your STO @handle
Your e-mail address is correct and valid
Other fields are optional
You do not need to put anything under "My Bio"
"My Bio" in this section is purely OOC and visible to other logged in users.

Common Errors with the System

When using more than one HTML tag per post, make sure to check all of the opening and closing tags. Accidentally missing one can ruin the effect on your post. Go to the magnifying glass in 'manage saved posts' to make sure this isn't happening to you.

Ensure you add yourself as an author to your Mission Logs and save them before doing anything else, failure to do so may lead to you being locked out of your own post (in this case an admin can force them to be assigned to yourself).

Nova has a timeout period, which seems to range anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour. Take this into consideration when writing a particularly long or biography entry. It may be worth writing these out first in a program such as Notepad.

Categories: [Main Category] Gameplay Manual

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