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Related topics: Recent Changes, Template:Post

The Forum is a central location for discussions that would be of general interest to other contributors. This also includes putting a link here to very specific discussions that are carried out on the talk pages of articles. The general idea is having one place to check for recent contributor discussions. The wiki is growing and there are now many contributors helping cover more topics than ever. The forum should help avoid missing reading and participating in discussions about standards and practices as the wiki continues to evolve.

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Feb 2009

"Introduced in" standard

I think we should make a standard for the "Introduced in" text that is displayed at the top of most pages. I think "Introduced in: [[??]]" used on creatures and possibly other page types should be phased out in favor of the "From the [[??]] quest introduced in the [[??]] event." standard used on items. Like items, if the creature is not from a quest, the first section is deleted and it just states "Introduced in the [[??]] event." Which brings up a request for Tlosk or anyone else that knows about templates: Can we make a template for this, that is able to display either the quest + patch or just the patch? For example: {{Intro|Frore|Sudden Season}} Would display as: From the Frore quest introduced in the Sudden Season event. and {{Intro|N/A|Sudden Season}} Would display as: Introduced in the Sudden Season event. Would that be possible? --An Adventurer 20:20, 1 February 2009 (CST) edit: I forgot about "updated in". Maybe the template would look more like {{Intro | Quest = | Patch = | Update = Patch1, Patch2 }} And perhaps it would be easier to create a template if it was displayed like this: From: [[Quest]]. Introduced in: [[Patch]]. Updated in: [[Patch]], [[Patch]]. --An Adventurer 20:36, 1 February 2009 (CST)

Jan 2009

Housing Settlement Standardization

We need to come up with a standard way to handle housing settlements. There are two ways to do it. Either create a page for each settlement, or do it like we did with spells, and simple redirect the settlement name to the appropriate Housing Settlements page (which needs a drastic face lift, lol). I'm thinking the redirects is the way to go. Any suggestions? --Atarax 16:34, 31 January 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax I like the idea of each settlement having its own page. I actually created cottage, villa, and mansion icons for the mapping templates with this in mind. I do agree though it will be a lot of work. I don't see much benefit in the settlement index, or having settlements redirect there. There is some vital information about settlements - type(s), exact number or housing, purchase items, drop coords, town hub - and I think this would be better displayed on a unique page. Also, using the Map Point template to display where the settlement is will be useful for people who choose their house by environment. A possible problem with redirecting everything to an index is unnamed single housing and settlements. How would we deal with those? Ideally, I would want every settlement to have a unique page, and have the coordinates displayed with the /hslist command redirect to the correct settlement - that way someone can just type in the coords and know exactly how to get there and what item they need. --An Adventurer 17:26, 31 January 2009 (CST)

To: An Adventurer Interesting thoughts. My only concern is that there are so many. If we can come up with a system for it, then I'd be all for it, but personally I think I'd want to look a a list of settlements in alpha order. That way I can just click "WhatLinksHere" and see all the quests and routes that go through the settlements. Granted, you could do this on each "individual page" as well, but it will take a lot of work. I'm down with it though, lets just come up with a solid template before we start, so we don't have to go back and re-do anything. --Atarax 13:12, 1 February 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax Well your whatlinkshere function would probably work better with the portals to the the settlements, rather than settlements themselves. That's one thing I forgot to mention - settlements and their portals should be separate entries. --An Adventurer 13:28, 1 February 2009 (CST)

Quest Transclusion Page

I have created a transclusion page for the quest by letter pages, Quests - Development. It mirrors the current contents of all the individual pages in one place to make it easier for those of us working on old quest writeups to search for aliases or see tables that need updating without having to click through all the letters. Use the links to go to the original pages if you will be editing something. --Tlosk 11:03, 29 January 2009 (CST)

Live Image Placement and Size

In working on the templates for a couple of things that use live shots at the top right, I've found a way of anchoring the image so that it will always appear just to the right of the summary table. This allows you to use larger images if desired without worrying about breaking the page for people using a small browser window (where the image overlaps and hides part of the summary table). However it may not look as good when using a larger browser window (large white space in the right corner). I wanted to get a consensus on what the preference would be? I've temporarily edited Eldrytch Web Stronghold and Radiant Blood Stronghold for comparison.--Tlosk 09:08, 28 January 2009 (CST)

I figured out a sneaky way of forcing the image to justify right regardless of how large the browser window is while never overlapping the text if the browser window is small. I'll be integrating this feature into the other templates. Also it will no longer display an image if there is either no image specified or if Live.jpg is specified. --Tlosk 09:03, 30 January 2009 (CST)

Chests and Packs

Category talk:Container - --Tlosk 08:52, 28 January 2009 (CST)

Creature Stats Page

I've made a few changes to the Creature Entry Template, adding a Quests section with links to quests that are centered around that particular creature type and renaming the bestiary description section to simply Lore so I can include tidbits of fiction from the teasers and rollouts that I can find. I also changed the table appearance slightly and put the formatting information into a template so all 70+ creature pages can be manipulated at once if it needs to be changed. I finished adding all of the spawn maps and am now going through the creature pages one by one to update them. Also if you can look through your old images to see if you have any creature related artwork, especially player made from the early days of AC that would be great. --Tlosk 17:36, 27 January 2009 (CST)

Titles in Patch Page

I noticed all the Future Titles in the Current_Patch#New_Titles section. I guess this is from the hacked client data, but do you think we should include this in the Current Patch? I think it will become confusing because people will think that's when those titles were actually available. --Atarax 01:51, 24 January 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax Personally I think they should go there as long as they are labeled as such, it helps a lot in trying to discover new content (although in this particular case we know it won't be for a while until some of them are actually available in game). Also it is useful historically in knowing when something was actually added. So as long as the labeling is clear, I think it's more helpful than not. --Tlosk 08:35, 24 January 2009 (CST)

Page Template Updates

All Page Templates are currently under review/construction in preparation for the next release of the Wiki Swiss Tool.--Tlosk 08:26, 24 January 2009 (CST)

Spells

I've started a cantrip template here. We'll use the talk page there to discuss improvements. --An Adventurer 13:10, 23 January 2009 (CST)

Individual Creature Template

To: Tlosk I was thinking the that you could use the Class Variable to dynamically build the [[Category:Creature Class]] portion. That would eliminate any edits required at the bottom of the page for a typical creature. --Atarax 13:21, 23 January 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax I've added that feature to the template, it can have it twice (at the bottom too), but it now automatically adds the Creature Category, the Class Category, and if there is a Subclass, that too. So you can just normally leave the bottom blank now when using the Creature page template and it will categorize itself according to what is put into the Class and Subclass fields.

The Individual Creature Template has been significantly changed in form though not in substance. It now uses a template for the table that lets you fill out the data in line rather than amongst tons of formatting info. The notes section has been kept out of the wiki template because there's a lot of variability there and also for a technical reason (you can't have actual page sections like == Notes == within a wiki template because when you click on edit it will take you to the template page and not stay on the page where the template is being used. Also just to clarify, a Page Template is what we use as a skeleton for an entire page, a Wiki Template is a smaller section of formatting code that is used within a page. So a page template can contain several wiki templates as part of it.

I made two more tweaks, now any stat left blank will automatically show as ?? so when go back to fill them in don't have to erase and for the xp just put the number. --Tlosk 06:37, 23 January 2009 (CST)

To: Tlosk Nice, those changes will work. Question... Can you use the variables in more than one page on the page? Like Class? Or is it a 1 to 1 relationship? The other suggestion I have is to change some of the wording at the bottom to make the What Links Here line be automated instead of relying on someone to properly pluralize it. So, by default even the Class, Maybe something like this: * [[:Special:Whatlinkshere/{{PAGENAME}}|Locations]] where a {{PAGENAME}} can be found. --Atarax 16:35, 23 January 2009 (CST)

To: Atarax That's a good idea, to avoid agreement issues (a/an etc) I made it so it just says "* <Name> Locations." and added it the creature template. As I'm going through the old creature entries and changing them I've come across quite a few that were either missing the plural name all together or weren't pluralized so this will make it a lot better. For example: {{Locations|{{PAGENAME}}}} displays as: Forum Locations. (Dungeons | Landscape Spawns | Points of Interest) --Tlosk 13:08, 23 January 2009 (CST)

Point Maps

See Template talk:Map Point Plus and Template talk:Map Point.

Wiki Templates

I've created a new help page, Wiki Templates that references several new formatting templates with more to come soon. The general idea of a template is it takes formatting code that is complicated and/or used in many articles and lets you refer to it rather than use it on every page. There are two benefits to this, one it makes posting simpler and second, it makes it possible to change the formatting for all those pages with a single edit to the template page rather than to all the individual pages. These are different from Page Templates because they are used within a page for a part of it, rather a layout for an entire page. There's no obligation to use them, and they aren't universally good, what you gain in ease of use, you give up in terms of being able to customize or stray from the format when you need to add things unique to that page. But overall templates help give the wiki a uniform feel, allow neophyte users to make complicated constructions, and minimize errors. --Tlosk 06:38, 24 January 2009 (CST)

Creature Template

To: Tlosk I think I found a bug with the creature template, see Coral Tower for an example. If you try to show a creature class like Misc. Creature Class it will not work. Also, if you want to mask that link, like Wall, it will not show the label, only Misc. Creature Class

To: Atarax Misc is an exception, you put just Misc. Creature Class for the Class, then put what is displayed under the Subclass and it will show correctly. However if a case comes up where you need to have an alias for a parameter for a template, you can use {{!}} instead of a pipe. For example: {{Related|:Category:Maps{{!}}ALL MAPS|Unmapped Dungeons}} displays as: Related topics: ALL MAPS, Unmapped Dungeons --Tlosk 13:20, 22 January 2009 (CST)

Dec 2008

Spells

To: An Adventurer I added the spell Mucor Jolt as a redirect for Drain_Health_(Spell), but as it is not "castable" (only found on a weapon), would this properly classify itself as Spell? It's not really a cantrip either, so where do you think it should be redirected to? Maybe Drain Health (Cantrip) ?

To: Atarax Unique spells like that can have their own page, marked as Category:Unlearnable Castable Spell. The only time that a unique quest only spell should redirect to a standard spell page is when it has an effect that can be seen to stack with or surpass regular spells. For example, there are many quest only cantrips (like on the living weapons, or the spear of purity) but these can be proven to stack or override standard spells and cantrips. So in short, most unique quest/item spells that mimic a life, creature, or item spell/cantrip will redirect to the appropriate page. Unique war and offensive life spells will have an individual page. And I think, for now at least, most of those special boss only debuffs should have unique pages, since many of them do not have a standard spell counterpart, and it is also rather difficult to find what standard debuffs they do stack with. --An Adventurer 18:30, 19 December 2008 (CST)