Sofia | IMPORTANT POST

http://www.sonicringnetwork.co.uk/sofia/

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(If this needs to be moved, please do so.)


It's finally ready! For those who have seen my signature, this explains the logo. Sofia stands for the Sonic Online Free Information Archive. I decided to create it when I noticed that I couldn't find any guides easily. Sofia was born to organize everything easily, in one place. I'd like to explain some finer points of what Sofia is about.

Spoiler

For those who want to skip, it's basically "Sonic Pastebin".

1. Sofia is free to use, for anyone.


The "F" in the acronym clearly explains this. Any guide you want to share, or any existing guide that was allowed to be posted anywhere. You can access this information any time, easily, with no charge involved. You also keep any ownership of your guides. However, if you do post a guide on Sofia, you are implying it is allowed anywhere. If a guide (whether you wrote it or not) is for a specific site, please do not post it here as it goes against the site philosophy.


2. Sofia gets you the best code based on public opinion


With everyone being able to post code, there's bound to be duplicates? How are you supposed to know which is the best? How are you supposed to know it even works? Sofia covers this with promotion points. When you view a piece a code on the site, there a two options on the bottom. One you can select if the code is bug-free and one if the code does what it says. There is also a third option when coming from the search that adds another point if it is the best code from your search. These opinions can add or subtract promotion points from a piece of code. The search and code browser organize code by promotion points, so the better the opinion, the more likely that code is to get to you. This helps you get the best code faster.


3. You can edit code on the site


Found a bug in someone's code? Think you can do it better? Then fix it! Anyone has the ability to edit a guide that is already on the site. This also allows you to collaborate on personal projects, or just make good code better. Editing broken code will also improve the chances of it getting more promotion points and improving the overall serving of code.


4. ASM and plain text guides in one post.


When I was writing the code for this site, I had initially planned for only ASM to be posted. Then I realized that there are more than just ASM guides to be posted. Thanks to Qjimbo, it was possible for use to put in tags to highlight the code and have normal text be unchanged.


Well, those are pretty much the major features of the site. I hope this becomes pretty useful. If you find any bugs, please PM me or post them in this topic until I get a bug report system running. Thanks for reading.

 

Nice concept, but judging from threads like this, you've got a lot of anti-sourcesharing culture to stand up against. Good luck on your project though

 

All I can say is: =P (to Armanda)

 

That's quite a good idea. Could be useful to people new to Sonic hacking.


One question though, would it be possible to rollback a guide on the site, (in case one was vandalized or something)?

 

At this time, there is no rollback function. I plan to implement it along with the code tags if vandalism becomes a problem. I even have a basic plan to lay out the code (although it only supports 1 rollback).


@Q, and Selbi: If they don't like the site, they don't have to use it. Even if they cry about it, I refuse to take it down. Thanks for the support too.

 

I like the site/idea. I only wanted to say "=P" after Qjimbo's statement.

 

I finished work on the site early (scheduled, of course), after taking the site down for pretty much a day. There is now a revert function. After many tries, I was unable to come up with a reasonable method for code tags. The two text modes still remain. I changed the navigation menu a bit graphical-wise. The function is the same. On a more minor note, text now overflows into a scrollable area. It was the least cumbersome solution I could come up with during the update. Finally, other features behind the scenes have been tuned up as well.


Enjoy the site.

 

Looks like a pretty cool concept to me, even though I don't hack or anything like that. Also, what do you mean by unreasonable methods for code tags? PHP-wise?

 

So I posted my first stuff. But there is still a problem:

My ASM is highlighted, but the other stuff as well. So how about just highlighting stuff in ASM boxes? (like here on SSRG) This would help a lot!

 

It uses the syntax highlighter GeSHi as of now. I know how to replace tags with other sorts of text to be displayed, but creating a GeSHi object with the right text is rather tough. I was gonna' ask Jim what highlighter he uses, as it could help me make it possible with some BBCode style tags.

Answered above. It's not possible right now, but it's definitely a priority when it becomes so.


Anyway, Sephy will help administer the site with me. There will be a few changes behinds the scenes made to help accommodate this addition. Thanks for using Sofia!

 

Well, I'd like to see the name of the guide somewhere on the page, and a place where you can post what it does, and some step by step. I.E., maybe I want to know what the end product of Simple GHZ Boss, the author could write or post/link pictures of the end product. But, so far, this is looking pretty good!

 

1. I thought I put that in. Perhaps inconsistent uploading by me and SOTI changed it. :\ I'll change that right away.


2. Is the title not self-explanatory? Secondly, comments also describe what the code does.


3. That can be added in the text, it is not required by anyone to do that. As for images, that's optional only in plain text mode. We'll have BBCode style tags ready by the next update.


Thanks for the feedback.

 

By the way expect Sofia to have better ASM highlighting soon thanks to Qjimbo (when he emails me the stuff).

 

After closing yesterday, we are once again open. And we've got a big change! There are now code tags.


They are used just like BBCode tags. So:

Code:

[asm]loc_13336:

	move.w	($FFFFF72E).w,d0

	addi.w	#$E0,d0

	cmp.w	$C(a0),d0; has Sonic touched the	bottom boundary?

	blt.s	Boundary_Bottom; if yes, branch

[/asm]

Would result as (barring the colors):



loc_13336:
move.w ($FFFFF72E).w,d0


addi.w #$E0,d0


cmp.w $C(a0),d0 ; has Sonic touched the bottom boundary?


blt.s Boundary_Bottom ; if yes, branch



All old ASM posts have been changed to this new standard. Now you can mix plain text and have syntax highlighted in the same post. Also, major thanks to Qjimbo for handing us a better highlighter than we had and making the tags possible. You will notice a message stating this on the site for a few days.


Keep on posting!

 

Finally! But there is a problem with the RAM adresses: They are nearly white, and since the background is white as well, you can't really see it, without highlighting.


EDIT: Same thing for the comments.

 

No problem, glad I could help.

 

Done and done. Should be more visible now.

 

IMPORTANT POST

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Sofia is down. There is some sort of malicious script no one coded that is causing undesired effects. Sofia, and Sonic Ring Network will be down for an undetermined amount of time. We will keep you posted on any news. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Code that no one wrote? :S


Hope the site comes back, really wanna check it out.


One thing that bugged me, how is this different from retro's wiki? Their guides and hacking info?

 

The problem has been resolved swiftly. If you have any issues with Sofia, or see an object loading below the footer, please let me know immediately. Thank you.


The malicious code was some JavaScript tacked onto the end of our index, as well as the SRN one. We don't know how it happened, or who did it. As for the difference, think of Sofia as "Sonic pastebin".