GamerWiki:Village Pub (proposals)

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Village Pub – Proposals
The proposals section of the village Pub is used to discuss new ideas and proposal that are not policy related (see GamerWiki:Village Pub (policy) for that).

Recurring policy proposals are discussed at GamerWiki:Village Pub (perennial proposals). If you have a proposal for something that sounds overwhelmingly obvious and are amazed that GamerWiki doesn't have it, please check there first before posting it, as someone else might have found it obvious, too.

Please sign and date your post (by typing "~~~~" or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar).

Please add new topics at the bottom of the page.

Village Pub

Main page · News (post) · Policy (post) · Technical (post) · Proposals (post) · Assistance (post) · Miscellaneous (post)

Contents

Categorising Categories

I've made a first attempt at categorising our categories, i.e. putting "scrolling fighter" under the "fighter" category, "vertical shooter" under the "shooter" category etc. This seems to make sense and I think I've got most of it right. If anyone wants to look over it, it'd be appreciated. I also deleted some unused categories. There were one or two which didn't seem to fit, e.g. "platform" when others are called "platformer". -- tyagi 00:26, 16 Aug 2005 (UTC)

There are a few rogue genres too - check the list against the one at the genre page. Survival Horror springs to mind. Xevious 07:54, 16 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Categorising Media

Currently the GameInfobox template sets no store by the value used for the media parameter. Would there be any mileage in categorising the media? Initially it would serve as a grouping for those without a given category (rather than using a "What links here"). --Barthax 13:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Games to be Added

This page is to be updated each week (by Xevious) with the new releases out that week. If we can add each of these to the database, even in basic form, then we'll at least prevent the backlog from getting any bigger! Coments on the placing of this page welcome. Xevious 12:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Main Platform "Portals"

At some point, it would be good to think about developing a set of portals, one for each main platform. This page would be the page linked to for a summary of each platform. It probably would not be the complete system information page, but a summary, and a set of the "top games" (whatever they are...). Itk would just be a better place to link to than an entry on "list of systems".

Lists of games could be included, but there's another proposal for that which we could look at at some point. I'm thinking how we could add year/month release information in a category to software releases. So, if you wanted to know everything that was released in "January 2003", you could do so. I'm not sure how to retro-fit this to the Wiki. It's probably the job for an automated bot rather than human effort. The information could be extracted from the release date information and added as a category tag to the article.

Then, on the platform summary page, a list of the current month's/last month's/current year's games could easily be added.

  • Retro-fitting isn't a problem if you have shell access to the back end. In the maintenance sub-directory of the wiki's main directory is a refreshLinks.php command-line script. That will go through the table & as it's called: refresh the links. --Barthax 09:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • You'd basically have to do a find and replace in the database on, say, "January/2004" to change it to "[[:Category:January/2004|January/2004]]" (I think) ... That would automatically add the games to the correct category. It would be a useful addition, I think. As for the portals, wouldn't it be better just to rearrange the systems pages so that there was a summary and list of top games first on the page, with other details buried lower down? Once we've lost the big long lists of games from these pages, they'r much more manageable. Xevious 11:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I hadn't correctly taken on board that we were using whole dates in the template. We could change the template to have naday, jpday, etc. & then set the nadate, jpdate, etc to be the necessary category duplications. Example: User:Barthax/GameInfoBoxExample. This would obviously require some substantial work to be done on the DB to remove legacy template usage as Xevious indicates (or a lot of manual edits!).--Barthax 14:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Why don't ideas come in fluid form? :D Splitting the date down even further would allow for combinations & seperations of category date releases: all releases in January, all releases in 1985 as well as all releases in Januar 1985... --Barthax 14:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • There are definitely some nice possibilities with the date categorisation. I think it's another thing for the To Do list, so let's get some stuff on there, then we can prioritise what is actually important for making GamerWiki work properly and what are nice to have items. -- tyagi 14:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I think we're always going to be slightly constrained by the Wiki format. For example, we'll never be able to list FPS game released on the Saturn in 1997. Coupled to this, if we were to split the date down further we'd be able to look at a list of what was released in March, in 2000, but not in March 2000. Furthermore, my idea above wouldn't really work going forward, thinking about it, since it requires the date to be input into the page in an odd way for future games. Xevious 14:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I think we're always going to be slightly constrained by the Wiki format. - Very definitely. One of the wiki's strengths is also it's weakness: simplicity. In terms of date categories, however, I've reworked my example to what I believe is a workable solution: User:Barthax/GameInfoBoxExample uses Template:User:Barthax/GameInfoBoxExample. Comments welcome. :D --Barthax 16:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, but I don't think we really particularly nead the months by themselves - only years and month+year! Now, how are we going to convert the 700+ games we've already got ... Xevious 17:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, that's where shell access & rebuildLinks.php comes into it. Alternatively, if shell access isn't available on this host, there remains the unlikely process:
  1. Export the entire DB can be exported using the likes of PHPMyAdmin.
  2. Import into a seperate wiki with shell access.
  3. Run rebuildLinks.php run on the data.
  4. Export the data out of that DB.
  5. Import data back in.
The former is far more preferable. :D --Barthax 18:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
Hehe, as a third option, I could probably process around 15 per minute with the mouse gestures I have installed on Firefox!! --Barthax 18:27, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
You know what? I've just realised how stupid my above statement is... What's actually going to change the pages to the new layout is missing. D'oh! Sorry 'bout that: I now understand your puzzlement, Xevious. --Barthax 21:27, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
    • OK, done some distinct tests on dates & the options available to a basic Wiki implementation & there's almost none. As a result I've created a hack of the base code on a private wiki (for a similar reason) and come up with the following: metawikipedia:User:Barthax/DateTime_Template_Function. This modification would allow for the template's variables to remain as is. :D The template can then be modified to include the necessary Category specifics, detailing the date as however necessary & then a rebuildLinks.php run server side & all is well. ;) (P.S. I don't expect this to be implemented, but it's an option.) --Barthax 15:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Impressive stuff. I will read all this portals stuff carefully at the weekend and see what we can do. -- tyagi 20:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Right, read over it *phew*. I can see that splitting the month and year in to separate fields in a game's entry could be very useful. This would allow categorisation based on month and year. Nice for viewing sets of games in a given period. It'd also allow people to generate some nice graphs related to game release schedules all being centered around the December period ;-) In answer to the script notes, yes, we do have sufficient access to the backend in order to perform whatever low-level processing we want to. Running custom PHP scripts (or prefereably something in a 'proper' programming language ;) is fine. I can take a backup of the database before we run anything too risky. As far as the evolution of GamerWiki is concerned, I'm happier investing time in stuff to automate the more mundane tasks, rather than working hard on manual processes which are just time-consuming. I remember that you (Barthax) did post some stuff regarding a custom PHP script, which I haven't acted on yet. It is on my ToDo list. -- tyagi 21:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Vanishing placeholder text

A potentially good idea from rllumk - can we make the standard placeholder text not appear unless it's being edited? No idea how that would work though ... Xevious 17:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Would putting it in comments hide the info from the page? eg <! -- Page content here --> without space after the ! ... Jonster 17:14, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but you'd then have to explain to people to take that out when they added stuff ... Xevious 17:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Have something like:
<! -- Please remove this line when you've finished editting
Content
And this line -->
If they're at the top and bottom of the article they would be noticed ... Jonster 17:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Probably would work fine. Tyagi, would you be able to modify the bot to do this? Xevious 17:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


Eliminating the "The" from game titles

I don't mean to make more busy work than is necessary but it's a small detail I noticed. In game lists titles like "The Legend of Zelda" are automatically put under "T" when most people would expect it under "L". It's only a problem if you're seeking a game by looking through the lists. Games that start with "The" could either be listed like "Legend of Zelda" or "Legend of Zelda, The".

  • It's something I was considering when listing them all, but I think it's more important to have the full correct title at the top of the page. I wonder if there's some sort of add-on to the Wiki software that can reorder the alphabetic list ignoring "The"s and "A"s? Xevious 09:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Don't know if you ever found a solution to this, but you can change what heading a page is listed under in a category by using the pipe character. For instance, if I have a page "The Shiznit", in the category "Category:Slang", and I want the article to appear under "S" rather than "T", then in the category tag, I would have 
[[Category:Slang|Shiznit]]
or, possibly, 
[[Category:Slang|Shiznit, The]]
or some other form thereof. Hope it helps! --Dinoguy1000 Talk 11:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Cunning. Once Tyagi's a little less busy this could be a job for Tyagibot! Xevious 13:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. You can find full details at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Category#Sort_order . --Dinoguy1000 Talk 19:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Game Series Template

  • As may have been noticed, I've just been messing around with the old Template:Chronology and the Burnout series. I think I've hit a good medium between linking a series' games into the GameSeries template and have I've added the functionality into the GameSeries template. The additional is retro-happy as it only appears if the parameter seriesgroup is given (any value can be given - it just has to be represented). You can see the change on the Burnout pages. Naturally, it's easily removed if deemed unsuitable. :) The modification works by including (yet another) template based on the game name (in this case I've defaulted to ''gamename''chronology . The template's name is based on the unaltered game name and thus requires spaces. Thankfully, creating the Template is very simple: give the seriesgroup parameter and the Template is readily available (and an edit link is available at the right once it's live). --Barthax 20:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
This looks really good. Nice and neat. -- tyagi 19:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I like it lots too. I didn't lkike the old chronology thing, but this looks great. Xevious 12:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I've done OutRun and Call of Duty now; I think it's very stylish. One extra thing - originally I didn't realise that you could have spaces in template names. Since you can, I think that from now on we should call the templates Game Name, Game Name formats and Game Name chronology including the spaces, since it's neater. No need to change all the existing formats templates (I've changed the three series we've got so far) but from now on ... I'll change the help file ... Xevious 13:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Cool stuff. I'm sure there used to be a reason for not using spaces in Template names. Perhaps it's just a legacy thing for older versions of MediaWiki. --Barthax 13:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

"Hide" change

I've taken a leaf out of Wikipedia and implemented the hide/show feature from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NavFrame - it utilises a combination of CSS & Javascript using the Mediawiki:Monobook.css and Mediawiki:Monobook.js pages (which are implemented in every page when using the Monobook (default) style. If you don't see any noticeable difference initially, then go to the following two links & force-refresh (SHIFT+F5 in most browsers) after the pages are loaded. Page one, CSS. Page two, Javascript. There is a down-side. There's no longer an easy way to force the hiding of those GameSeries with no associated chronology template... Comments welcome. :D --Barthax 21:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that matters as such. One thing to note is that currently if you have seriesinclude=1 set in the GameSeries template link, the default is to not show the chronology. This is sort of good! Would it be possible to either set it so it's shown by default if it's set and not shown if it's not, or, failing that, just remove the need for the seriesinclude flag at all so all the boxes default to not showing it? Xevious 08:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Just in case you hadn't noticed: the seriesinclude parameter is no longer required. :D Additionally, if the seriesname= parameter is not explicitly given, the first parameter is taken as the name (so we can be a little lazy: {{GameSeries|Batman}}). --Barthax 08:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Duplication on SeriesDisambig

It seems a bit obvious to get rid of one set of entries on SeriesDisambig pages such as Classic Compendium. Which one should be favoured though, or even should both be kept? --Barthax 20:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I think we should keep both. It might look slightly odd on some pages but on others it will make sense. Xevious 11:26, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Multiple Publishers/Saves in Info Box

Working on the N64 section I'm noticing a good number of games have different publishers for different regions. Body Harvest (Nintendo 64), for example, is published by Gremlin Interactive in Europe and by Midway in the US. Right now the publisher line only allows one line of text (best I know, I admit I'm still new to how wikis work). The publisher line should be changed to allow multiply entries somehow.

Another entry in the info box that's not really important but I think would be a nice touch is information on how much memory it takes to save. Just a blank field to enter the number of blocks or kilobytes required. For older cartridge games one could enter the text Password Save, Internal Save, or No Save.--DWhitney 13:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Oops, missed all this. Good point about the publishers - currently we're generally using the European publisher, so maybe other publshers could be listed under the 'Trivia' section? I like the idea about saves as well, I'll try to implement something like that in the near future. Xevious 18:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

We will need to figure out something in the long term for multiple entries in any single line: many PC games and some non-PC games are available on more than one media (some Speccy & C64 games available on disc or audio tape for example). I think I have a solution to that particular quandry, but certainly in the mean time the trivia section will do. :D --Barthax 09:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Rescuing articles from Wikipedia

Well, perhaps rescuing is the wrong term, but there are various articles proposed for deletion over at Wikipedia, with Hell Rising having been one of them. Any thoughts on the practice (obviously keeping only relevant information for this wiki)? Seems a waste of information should they all just go by the way-side at Wikipedia. --Barthax 14:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Sounds like a great idea. I'll take a scan through, but please, anyone and everyone is encouraged to rescue good articles from the deletion bin on Wikipedia. -- tyagi 22:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Further Multi-Platform Enhancements

It has been a little while since a brain-wave hit me, so bear with me as this one is somewhat sweeping (affects all GameInfobox-based pages). As they stand, the changes implemented have no visual impact unless an additional parameter (multiplatform=) is entered onto each page. Therefore retro-fitting is taken care of & removal of the changes will affect only those pages which I have altered today. :) If the multiplatform= parameter is given and has a value (at this stage anything other than a blank) then the feature is enabled for the page using the GameInfobox template. Two alterations take effect when this parameter is added. The first alteration changes the GameInfobox itself by extending it by one cell to include the Formats ({{GameFormats/<game>}} style template) of the multi-platform game. The second alteration is to automatically include the Games template ({{Games/<game>}}) and pass-on the platform parameter to that template for inclusion. The games pages for three multi-platform games have been altered by way of example: FIFA Street, FlatOut and Lotus Challenge. For FIFA Street & FlatOut I have altered the Games/<game> template to auto-include another page based on the platform parameter producing, for example, Template:Games/FlatOut/Microsoft Xbox for platform-specific inclusion. Two reasons came to mind for the change: the creation of a suite of pages for a multi-platform game is quite long-winded considering what is required where; the manner multi-platform pages have been done in the past leaves something to be desired by the layout of the resulting page. Hydro Thunder, for example, looks good on its Arcade version, but the other pages with platform-specific content suffer by having that content down at the bottom of the page. Another page which would suffer this in the end is Wizard of Wor - the main descriptive comments are applicable to each of the platforms, but there is some content which is arcade-specific (images for example) and could be replaced with system-specific images via a simply inclusion of the platform. Comments welcome, as always. :) --Barthax 20:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Generally, I like. My only concern is user-friendliness - it might be worth considering how we can offer users an easy button to edit the template that's applicable to all formats? There is such a button for each section other than the general description, however. Xevious 12:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The [edit] section options do go to the relevant article they are pulled in from, but I can see your point about the description. I've added a link to the template into the GameInfobox - it isn't pretty but automates the link generation. Further comments welcome. :D --Barthax 10:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
    • You're right, it's not very pretty! Maybe we ought to have a box across the top of the article (above the description) providing people with two links - to edit information about this platform only, click [here], to edit information about the game generally, click [here]. The first goes to the screenshots etc template; the second to the general template. And we could add an edit link to the infobox too. Xevious 12:40, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Just wondering why dont you guys merge the game with mulitple platforms onto one page and just present the info on the different consoles on sections? It will be less repetitave --Cs california 05:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Basically, there can be large differences between different versions of games. It's not so evident nowadays, but think back to, say, Robocop. The Amiga version of the game was massively different to the Spectrum version. By having different pages, we can specify the media used, show different screenshots, different review listings, and so on. At the same time, a lot is shared between the games, which is why we have a common template for those details, which automatically flows information onto all game pages. Xevious 16:03, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
  • some further thoughts:
  • it now seems pointless having both "platform" and "platforms" in the infobox. Can we automate it so if "multiplatform" is set to "no", it has a single platform listed at the end instead? For multiformat games, the format you're looking at is emboldened anyway.
  • We might as well have the templates set up for single-format games anyway. It makes everything consistent.
  • As a result, we'll need to change the instructions and the templates to be used. This will help with the automation of adding new games through the bot as well. I'll add a flag to the bot strings I give to Tyagi, to say whether a game is multi- or single-format at that point in time. For each game, the bot will create a page with just the infobox stuff on it, and will also create a page in the Games/ space with the body text on. We could also have it automatically create the Games/<gamename>/<format> subtemplate. Of course, if it encountered a page already there it wouldn't need to create a new one. The only bit that wouldn't be automated then would be the creation of the GameFormats/ template.
Thoughts? Xevious 11:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Now with single-format functioning

  • OK, I've altered the GameInfobox template so that it differentiates between the multiplatform=no and multiplatform=yes - each then force the Single- or Multi-format categorisation, so that can be removed from the bottom of the template also (when it gets updated to reflect the end design). For retro-fitting, if the multiplatform parameter is missing, the game will eventually get added to the Category:Maintenance/Multi-platform Parameter Missing category. --Barthax 22:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Platform vs. Platforms

:* it now seems pointless having both "platform" and "platforms" in the infobox. Can we automate it so if "multiplatform" is set to "no", it has a single platform listed at the end instead? For multiformat games, the format you're looking at is emboldened anyway.

  • Take a look at Panzer Dragoon Zwei (Saturn) - I purposely haven't touched the Platform: portion so the two can be evaluated... Is it worth replacing the Platform: section with the Platforms: content? Note that the word for the column could be designated plural for multiplatform=yes. Also, if the ASIN digits for Amazon eventually come into wide-spread use, the move of the Platforms: to where Platform: currently exists would be better layout, IMO. --Barthax 22:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I think it's definitely worth losing the "platform" bit - we'll lost the little icon there, but it's at the top of the page anyway. Having the list of formats there works well too, and we can take it out of the main body text. Xevious 10:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Cool. This is done for pages specifying the multiplatform parameter. I'll take a stab at completing those not using the parameter in a mo' (they look quite ugly with the missing templates). The logo can be brought back (HT) - but the use is now in the GameFormats/x page and exists prior to the link. I'm fairly sure that using them there would have no knock-on effects, but that's a lot of work. :( --Barthax 23:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Some more improvements (IMO):
  • The Content links are now on a separate row of the GameInfobox, but still with the Platforms: background colour & therefore appears to be a part of the same row. I've shortened the links down to F's (Format links), Gen (Generic page) and Spe (Specific page). I figure that these particular links are essential to editting the wiki, but not browsing it - they should not therefore carry the same visual weight as the informational links surrounding them.
  • The {{{gametitle}}} parameter is now transferred through to the generic page (which could, in turn, pass it onto the specific page). This allows for a Help: template to be created with static text which will work for all pages - newcomers, old hats & bots alike can then just dump the template in without having to make any changes for a default page setup: <includeonly>{{#ifexist:Template:Games/{{{gametitle}}}/{{{platform}}}|{{Games/{{{gametitle}}}/{{{platform}}}}}|}}</includeonly>
  • Various default texts for when some parameters are missing (release dates & rating/certificates).
  • A new logo template for use on Formats pages: {{FormatLogo|gamepage=x|platform=y}} - this can be used in place of the previous behaviour of [[x|y]] & reintroduces the logo for the platform lost from removal of the old Platform: syntax. Example: Template:GameFormats/Hydro Thunder.
All-in-all, I think the GameInfobox is stabilising again. :) --Barthax 01:12, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Template boxes

Why are the infoboxes so empty on the site? out of 10 clicks of random pages half of them have very few information just a picture of the box. --Cs california 05:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

They should all have at least the publisher, one release date, and the format. We're still building up the catalogue at the moment, and then are filling in additional details (such as genre, and so on) bit by bit. Xevious 16:04, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Moving the edit boxes

In the new multiformat world, the "edit" buttons next to the headings don't work. Is there any way of removing these? In the meantime, I've moved the editing functions to the top of the page, outside the infobox. They could equally go at the very bottom. Any comments? Xevious 15:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Having the edit options at the top makes sense, but looks a little ugly due to the banner... The [Edit] sections are a PITA. Should be able to remove them via some JS on the framework page (similar to the way the hide/show stuff works). --Barthax 16:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

YouTube links

I've created a YouTube template based on StrategyWiki's template. This wiki isn't set up for embedding external images in pages (requires $wgAllowExternalImages = true; in the LocalSettings.php - it is off by default), so the template is altered slightly. Worthwhile? It is currently used on the V2000 page, for an example. --Barthax 23:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

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