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Hellgatewiki.com talk:Community Portal/Archive 1

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Archive 1, 2
Community talk from Autumn 2007

Contents

Starting Up!

Ok, as the NDA has lifted, there is a lot of available new pieces of information that we can make Wiki articles about, and as this wiki might be absolutely packed with information, inter-linkage and structure is needed, as well as updates. Now, don't be afraid to change anything, because it is very likely that you will add something good, and whatever is not good, we can fix! ;) Rather do one small change than none at all, and same goes for bigger changes: Rather one big, than one small. Visit this page if you have any questions, or go to my (Leord's) message board if you want to ask me something "privately" (everyone can read it ofcourse). Don't forget to klick the signature button though, so we know who said what.

If anyone have anything they want to ask in private, drop me a PM on the forums.--Leord 03:56, 28 October 2007 (CET)

Signatures can be created by typing 4 tildes ~~~~ which results in Dark Matter 14:27, 28 October 2007 (CET)

Armor

Check out Talk:Armor for a dilemma on Armor Type Names. --Leord 15:11, 1 November 2007 (CET)

Weapons: Listing, types, ranks etc.

It seems to me that it would be a good idea to address listing of weapons sooner rather than later. I already started a related topic with Leord. See Legendary Weapons Here.

Flux's input from alpha/beta and planning

Here's what I noted during alpha/beta and how I figured we'd set up the weapons section once we had no nda and more info and time to do it. (We have the first 2 now, but I'm so busy with school until December that I really can't get involved yet. =(

  • 5 star uniques. Yellow letters. Special names, semi-random stats. Should have their own pages, and I'm assuming the names are particular to base weapon types.
  • 3 star legendary; Orange letters. These are basically the same as Rares in D2. They should not get their own pages since the names and properties are random. What we can do with them is have a sort of "best legendary" items listing where players would add the ones that they found with the juiciest stats. Or we could put a few sample legendary on the base weapons page for each weapon type, just as additional info.
  • 4 star items? Unknown. None in alpha/beta. Speculation was that they would be Item sets or some other type of item to be added in ongoing content.
  • blue and green named weapons are basically magical/enhanced. These may be more useful than legendary or unique, depending on stats. They do not get special names, and are just called by their properties. I haven't really noticed if blue or green is better. I think green can have more potential stats.
  • base weapons. These all should have their own pages, as has been started pre-beta. stats, mods allowed, requirements, etc. These pages will need player comments to be useful, since the weapons in HGL all work so differently, and not always as you'd expect from the name/look/first impression. Some weapons are great but only on certain monster types, or only from very short or rather long range, etc.
    • Existing items pages are largely useless, or at least need to be overhauled, since they're pre-alpha and the names, stats, etc are all changed.
  • Player modified weapons, via the town machine that adds stats. (How this machine worked changed constantly during the alpha/beta, so more balance tweaks are probably in order.) These don't get their own pages either, unless it's something like the Legendary Weapon Hall of Fame.
  • Magical Modifiers. These should be on big tables, with values and item types possible on, but we don't know enough details yet to really do much with it. Will require tons of playing time to learn what all the stats do, or else once some people have successfully cracked the game code we can see the actual spreadsheet values and copy from those.
  • Mods. Mods should get tables too, with their possible magical modifiers and item types they'll fit into. Again, we'll need a ton of play time or cracked spreadsheets to know all these values and figures.
Dark Matter has started a page for magical modifiers from some of the beta screenshots. I've started taking the time to make note of the various modifiers and I have a big txt file with some ranges atm, but still very very barebones (and also limited to low level stuff). They don't seem to be as neat as in D2, there's a lot of overlapping in both stats and quality rating. There are also some modifiers that can mean multiple things (usually skill related, ie Skillful can result in a handful of different skill bonuses). Mods seem to use the same modifiers as everything else, and nothing unique, but the range of modifiers they have access to are definitely limited.

I've started a txt for base items as well, but it's pretty slow going, and...tedious. There's actually 2 base types, as well. In most cases it appears that the second base type largely refers to the graphical designation for the item, and the first name to the actual item itself. There are quite a few of clone base types as well, where there are 2-3 names for an item with the exact same graphic and stats, at least in the early levels. I think Arreat's Summit style of displaying base items won't work very well here. It may be better to separate the graphics (and organize them by the second base type), and have it entirely separate from the actual base item types (since there is a lot of sharing of graphics). Then if people want to see what a particular item looks like, they can click a link to the item models page and see. Hopefully things will start making more sense as the data pool grows larger though. Tenera 01:05, 1 November 2007 (CET)

Types and Ranking

From my limited experience of Beta, I get the impression that there are base types of weapons (Broadsword, Corrupt Blade etc.,) which are then modified. Modifications come in two flavours; game applied and user applied (which we can put aside for the purposes of item listing). Game applied modifications will then affect the rank of weapon, enhanced (green), rare (blue), legendary (orange) and unique (yellow).
How many game applied mods are needed per rank? Is it 2 for green, 3 for blue etc.? Dark Matter

I am pretty sure I have read that the total amount of max enhancements on an item (or do you actually mean Mods?) is always 5, but that might be something I mix up with the nerf to upgrading damage, and that was max 5... Hard to figure out with forums down. Leord
I think you're right Leord. The unique rifle [1] has 5 inherent modifiers; Crusher, disrupting, spectral lasher's, spectral hunter's and able. The legendary's have 4, the rares have 3. Good. I can make pages to explain the differences. Dark Matter 09:24, 29 October 2007 (CET)

Naming and listing

Leord has indicated that only Unique Weapons have unique names like the Incessant Barrage. That being the case, it will be pointless to list every legendary weapon as I have started to do ie Zealous Shatterscythe or Radiant Phantasmic Reaper. These are obviously modded versions of the base weapon.
However, checking the specifications shows that Radiant "increases spectral damage by 20%" and that Zealous "increases the use rate of Swordsmanship skills by 16%". You'll also note that some mods appear blue (Sharper increases damage of Swordsmanship skills by 15%) and some orange (said Zealous skill). It seems to me that we are probably going to have to have a prefix/suffix listing, rather like D2.
For the moment I have started to edit the base weapon types, and am using a <blockquote> to list the stats. See Cricket Bat. My wiki skills are limited, but of someone could create a boilerplate version of that, or something similar, it would be a boon. Dark Matter 14:09, 28 October 2007 (CET)

As soon as we have finished of the Skill Pages for all the classes (just 2 left, and Engineer is started on already), I will devote all my time to integrate stuff like #if commands, so that we can make a template for Weapon stats. It might sound complicated, but in fact, it will be less troublesome, as you won't have to format or anything, just fill in the stuff that applies to the weapon within "{{" and "}}" when making an item. You are right about the prefix/suffix of Hellgate. Fortunately, none have done a great deal of work on that yet. There is also the different quality types, of which I don't have the names for at the moment, but it works in the same way as Diablo2 as well. I am sure the suffixes are the same for Mods as well, or do you think they are "mod only" suffixes?--Leord 21:39, 28 October 2007 (CET)
Regarding item names, I suggest we use a root page and then branch off with the prefix/suffix. For example, create a Shatterscythe page, then branch off with Shatterscythe/Zealous and Shatterscythe/Vanquisher, to keep everything more organised. It would take a bit of work/time to migrate the pages though. What do you guys think? Good idea? Bad idea? Unnecessary?
Also, regarding item page templates, perhaps we should set up an infobox to list the items stats etc.? An infobox is the box on the right hand side of a page, like the one here that shows Developers, Publishers etc. --Carlin 07:22, 29 October 2007 (CET)
I don't think the branch off idea is workable. The problem being the sheer number of possibilities. The names seem to be randomly created, but loosely based on the modifiers randomly put on the weapon (and also armour and shields) by the game. There could be 1000's of branches, which I don't think we need to list.
These modifiers seem similar to the prefixes and suffix modifiers randomly rolled on items in D2 - cruel ?? of alacrity for example.
A few examples would be useful - say 5 or so of green, blue and orange - to show how the modifiers affect the weapons/armour/shields. However, my gut feeling is that we should create a page for all the base weapon types; pages to explain green, blue, orange and yellow; and a page(s) listing all the modifiers. Dark Matter 09:18, 29 October 2007 (CET)
It needs to be kept as simple as possible at this stage until we can get a better idea of the full extent of the modifiers.
It could be that we end up having a Shatterscythe page and at the bottom a list of applicable modifiers and we call in the details. So, for example, we write
<mod>Zealous</mod>
<mod>Vanquisher</mod>
<mod>Radiant</mod>
And that brings in
Zealous - increases the use rate of Swordsmanship skills by 16%
Vanquisher - does something cool
Radiant - increases spectral damage by 20%
Then we'd only need to change the Zealous details in one place if they ever alter the details in patches.
Elly 12:02, 29 October 2007 (CET)
As Dark Matter says, it is way to much work to make sub articles for all the mods. Unless you have a couple of extra lifetimes to spare, I would suggest to do it as both DM and Elly says; to have the item, and a list of all the suffixes/prefixes that will end up on it. As you mentioned, we will make an info box on the right side, a bit like I did on the quests, but as a template. I will have to find out what we need to do to the Wiki to get the #if statements to work though. --Leord 13:14, 29 October 2007 (CET)

Modifiers

I started listing them - there are definitely ranks of the same modifiers. Dark Matter 21:06, 30 October 2007 (CET)

Ok. Don't forget to check out the Talk page on modifiers, and a potential move to Affixes instead.

Searching help page + search plugins

When you search for anything on the Wiki, the page states: "For more information about searching Hellgatewiki.com, see Searching Hellgatewiki.com". The Searching Hellgatewiki.com page didn't exist, but I have created it and made a start on it. Does it need to be any more indepth or include anything else? Maybe a quick piece about searching tips or something? Wikipedia's search page has a bit of content that could be included.

I made the search plugins mostly for my own convenience but decided to upload them and make them publicly available. Unfortunately I can't integrate the code into a Wiki page so they have to be offsite; do admins have the ability to integrate javascript into the HEAD of a page, or make links with an onClick variable?

Also, if there's someone who could make a 16x16 .PNG image to use as the icon on the Firefox search plugin that would be great :D -- Carlin 01:25, 5 November 2007 (CET)

check here This is the best I could find Carlin Dark Matter 09:30, 6 November 2007 (CET)
Thanks anyway Dark Matter, but I just created one by cropping the "H" out of the HellgateWiki logo. If anyone had already added the search plugin, removing it and re-adding it will make the icon display.

Skills

I have idea, can we create one article for each skills? Actual articles like [Evoker_Skills] can work as quick skill reference. Detail articles makes more place to write about each skill specifications and make searching faster and more comfortable. --GoodWill 10:11, 5 November 2007 (CET)


That is a good idea, one that I had in mind as well. I was thinking of making each skill into a template, so that if the skill page was updated, it updated on both the big and the small skill pages. The thing is that we need to figure out how the stats increases by level.
Exactly, on quick reference can be simple info -> tables like now. In detail article we can try display skillpower for each skill level and player level... but its pretty hard when weapons change skill strength. Too many questions are not answered yet :( --GoodWill 14:13, 6 November 2007 (CET)


Sorry, that unsigned post was me. Anyway, Is tarted in Skill Groups, and I just want to have it documented that I was thinking of having a Skill Group info section on each of those linked pages. If they have double meanings, they can go under their own headlines. I doubt many of those will have enough info in them to require a unique article, such as "Aura_Skill_Group" or the like., I think combining is fine. I will also make a Category for each of those down the line (or you can help) where we will be putting all the individual skill pages that GoodWill mentions. Ok, continuing on the Factions/Class pages now. --Leord 14:37, 6 November 2007 (CET)


I started completing skill effect tables and I realized that there's no way to see at which slvl a skill caps out at. Perhaps we can display the slvl cap where you can't put more points into a skill in bold and then have as many levels as there are +skill items for beyond that for each skill. I'm not sure how high these bonuses can go or if they stack. What do you guys think? --Pixelz 02:11, 7 November 2007 (CET)

Strike that, I just noticed that you can tell by there not being a "min lvl" for lvls beyond the cap. Still, it could be made more clear. Another thing, the mana cost seem to be way off for most skills. Does that increase by level? --Pixelz 03:02, 7 November 2007 (CET)
Yes, actually, the screen says "1/7" skills, so the max slvl is that "7" or "10" or whatever. I am pretty sure I added N/A for all skill lvels that doesn't exist. Power cost is increasing by skill lvl. For now we should just have the base stat, and have some other tables for increases. As it seems at the moment, the skill increase is +2% of base spell cost per level. It COULD be +2% of the previous cost, making things more complicated (and hard to see, as they round all numbers), but I am hoping it is base cost. If that holds true, we could just have one table per base cost instead of one individual page for each skill, so a skill that costs 40.0 Power base cost will be linked to the 40.0 Power table instead of a power/skill/lvl table. --Leord 11:24, 7 November 2007 (CET)

Page Heading Styles (wrong?)

(edit: this issue has been resolved and as such I have commented out the heading examples to fix navigation on this page --Pixelz 20:24, 10 December 2007 (CET))

Is it just me, or do the recommended headings to be used look too similar? I think they look too alike, especially in size, and it makes the Wiki more difficult to read. It doesn't give the impression that it's a "nested" header type affair.

Sorry if this page becomes a bit of a mess for a second while I show you what I just noticed:

Look at the heading above. That is 1 equals sign. Looks right. ====H4 Example====
This is 4 equals sign. Looks more appropriately sized than the current 2 equals signs. Should this be the real 2?

Yes --Cydira 16:53, 14 November 2007 (CET)

==H2 Example==
This is 2 equals signs ===H3 Example===
This is 3 equals signs. Looks too similar to 2? Would not be used as often if the current H4 was the real H2? Sathanas 05:27, 8 November 2007 (CET)

This is a very good point. I have thought about it before, but not made up my mind about it. I assume that when the HellgatwWiki was started, they just used the =Headline= for all main headlines, and then just double and triple. Not often used more. I am also actually a bit uncertain about Wiki traditions and headlines of single and double equal signs... --Leord 12:30, 8 November 2007 (CET)
I like the way the level 2 heading has the dots across the page, it acts as a clear separation between distinct sections. However, I do agree it's strange that the font size for level 4 is bigger than levels 2 and 3! I would like to see a better font size progression from larger to smaller. The page title is inherent in the page, so I see no need to reserve single = for the title as per the current recommendations, but I'm no Wiki expert and as long as it's consistent I guess it doesn't matter much. Golduch 18:22, 8 November 2007 (CET)
I read somewhere on wikipedia or wikimedia (?) that single equals (h1) are only for headlines, it also says it on the community portal page, too. "Don't use single equaled titles (=Your title=), its top level title reserved for article name!" I do like the look of the current h4 as the h2, but maybe they need other things swapping around too, so that everyone is happy with the way they look. Also, I think there's something about not using a H1 more than once on a page due to accessibility reasons (page readers)? I might have made that up. Sathanas 01:57, 9 November 2007 (CET)
If that's true, Sathanas, then the H2 title should be bigger and lighter in color, like the H4 title. I've been using the H1 because H2 is too teeny-tiny. --Cydira 23:02, 12 November 2007 (CET)

New words on this! We will be changing those to something a bit more fitting as soon as possible. At least now we have knowledge of it ;) --Leord 19:17, 13 November 2007 (CET)

Ok, we made a small update on the style sheet that should work better. What is your opinions on the size, colours etc? --Leord 17:22, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Looks good now but, tbh, I can't remember what it was before haha! Dark Matter 13:12, 17 November 2007 (CET)

Edit Link

The [edit] link that appears next to headings seems way too big to me. It almost takes over the entire heading. Could this be made smaller? --Pixelz 21:41, 30 November 2007 (CET)

Skill pages

Here is first design (later will be turned to boilerplate). Any ideas how to make it better? There will be sure at least 2 screenshots (one with player casting this skill, second with units affected). But any other ideas are welcome. --GoodWill 08:42, 8 November 2007 (CET)

IMO most important information is missing: What does this skill do, and how do I use it effectively. Also maybe, is there any tips using this skill? Or common problems about the skill (i.e. "This doesn't work on Necros"/"Takes too long to cast, don't cast it when swarmed" kind of information). --BSTL 09:08, 8 November 2007 (CET)
Sure, tips, problems (maybe bugs) can be explayned there (good idea;) . But basic skill description (what that skill do) from game is there. Feel free to make changis directly to User:GoodWill/Brom's Curse --GoodWill 09:41, 8 November 2007 (CET)
This is really nicely done! I have been doing some changes to it. Does anyone else have any opinions on this? This will probably be the new skill standard. (Leord)
I like it too. Dark Matter 16:23, 8 November 2007 (CET)

Skill Page Overview

I have been talking to GoodWill on ICQ some today, and we have discussed his proposal of the Skill Boilerplate basically. The only thing is that after having had plenty of experience from Diabloii.net in it's time, we have noticed that it is of great use to have everything summarised as well as its good with individual pages. My initial plan was to have one Big skill page, like each class has now, and links to individual pages for ease of search and for even more details on a skill, as well as one big table with just all the stats.

Now, there will be at least one skill page with summary, the individual pages in about the way GoodWill suggested, and a table. The question is whether or not it will be plausible to have three info places, or if we should try to combine these with the use of templates. The obvious drawback of using templates is that the Wiki newbies won't understand how to update it. I remember when I started Wiking myself, templates seems so damn complicated (even though they are not). Any thoughts on this? --Leord 17:35, 8 November 2007 (CET)

I do think that this wiki has 3 kinds of audiences: Newbies, Casual Players, Advanced Players. Newbies would want to see the information in a single place to easily compare it with other skills. And I would think they would be interested in the information that "This skill does this (i.e. instant direct lightning damage)" (this should be plain English, not fancy in-game description), "This skill is used like this (target single enemy)", "This skill has following limitations (5 second cooldown)". Casual players would be interested in more information "How much energy does it cost per level?", "How is the effectiveness increase by slvl? How about clvl?", "What are the builds that I can try using this skill", "Which other skills would be useful when I get this one?". I'd guess they would be ok with clicking a link to see most of this information. And advanced players are interested in the gruesome details, which should be on skills own page, like "How much DPS can I maintain with slvl 4, and clvl 16, using equipment that reduces casting cost by a total of 30% and increases power by 45%? And how does this value compare to that other skill?".
So I'd say newbies shouldn't need to click another link, while it's ok for casual players and advance players to click an extra link to get to another page. Casual player information should be very obvious and shouldn't be cluttered on this skill page (i.e. no scrolling necessary). BSTL 17:57, 8 November 2007 (CET)
I think each skill needs to be made into a single template that in turn generates different table/summary styles depending on the situation. This makes maintaining and updating the wiki easier. I agree that wiki newbies might not see it this way but on the other hand are they likely to update a skill in three different places? --Pixelz 18:32, 8 November 2007 (CET)
This is a tradeoff between maintainability and usability. We should find the best of both worlds. BSTL 18:46, 8 November 2007 (CET)
How had you imagined that to work then? I mean "generates" sounds awfully "bot-related", I am unsure of what you can do with the wiki to accomplish that. Do you mean to have templates for the skill stat tables, and then just combine them to one page, like my original plan? Don't underestimate the single user's capability to fill in missing numbers, or numbers when things change. Perhaps we could make a brief info page on how to update it, with links directly to templates? Regardless of what we choose in the end, I am not planning to have mroe than max 2 sources of information that could need updating. Preferably just one. Making the main page into a "newbie page" with minimal info isn't a bad idea, but do you think that might be too newbish? Will anyone use it beyond first visit? It surely needs some stats? --Leord 19:01, 8 November 2007 (CET)
Say you have one main template page for each skill. Ie [[Template:Brom's Curse]] This template in turn makes use of other templates depending on how you call it. So if you just call it with {{Brom's Curse}} it would display the information it does now. Skill box, description and skill details table. If you instead called it with {{Brom's Curse|quick}} it would use another template and display a condensed version with perhaps just the skill box and the description. Just imagine the "main template" passing along the information to other templates depending on how you call it. If you want an example on what I mean, take a look at the skills in Guild Wars Wiki --Pixelz 19:12, 8 November 2007 (CET)
I think, 2 sources will be enought. First will be something like "Quick skill reference" (all skills for one class in one table -> only basic informations). Second will be single article for each skill. --GoodWill 23:45, 8 November 2007 (CET)
We should have more opinions on this. If we do it all by templates, so the source info is in the templates, we can do it any way we want. At the moment, the things we are thinking about is having a Evoker Skills article (much like it is now), a Brom's Curse article, a Evoker Skills Quick Reference and a big table like this: User:Leord/Skills (but with more templates).
Me and GoodWill have been chatting on ICQ, and have decided the ground work at least. It will be lots of minor templates for skills, and easy to cross link or display elsewhere. At the moment, the 4 pages mentioned above will be used, and having a non-template table on each skill article with power cost and damage/healing increase per clvl. --Leord 14:56, 13 November 2007 (CET)

Quests

Categorizing the story quests also with their act may be overkill, but overkill can be good. We should also have a category for special quests, maybe "Subscriber Quests"? It would also help to mark the givers of those quests as special NPCs, too, with their own category. NPC: Subscriber Quest Giver? I dunno about the wording on that one, but I think it would help. Nemo in Templar Base only seems to have the subscriber quests, so he should be treated as special.

Also, once we have more quests entered and we've figured out which are parts of arcs, we can make nav-boxes for the quest progressions. That would fit in well under the quest summary box (or as part of that box). I'm not a wiki-maven, so I don't know how it would be best to do it so there's the least repeated work and so it looks the sleekest. I'm just worried about getting the info in. We can make it look nicer later. (Though I do think the current quest template works pretty well.) --Cydira 17:52, 9 November 2007 (CET)

Quests Infobox

I've made a Template:Quests Infobox as per request. You can see it in action at Give 110. I'm not perfectly happy with the layout but I'm not sure what needs changing. --Pixelz 20:44, 9 November 2007 (CET)

You're right that it's not quite right, but I don't know what it needs, and I don't want to include it until we've all reviewed it and make it the best it can be. Anyone? --Cydira 18:31, 13 November 2007 (CET)
Well, those ugly exclamation marks I made should only be place holders for some hallmark picture of the quest. Possibly adding some snazzy icon for "quests" like GoodWill did with Template:Delete among others. I really would like to get most standards up and running asap, so most of this template will be used regardless. Anyone having specific suggestions to it? I think the input fields are basically done anyway, which makes any graphical changes to the Quests Infobox cosmetic. Oh, and change it to "Quest Infobox" for cohesive naming. --Leord 19:29, 13 November 2007 (CET)
I've moved it to Template:Quest Infobox --Pixelz 19:43, 13 November 2007 (CET)
I agree that we need a "Quest" icon, so we can have the same icon at the top of all the infoboxes. There's not really much in the way of pictures to add for individual quests, so an icon would solve our problems rather well. --Cydira 19:56, 13 November 2007 (CET)

I changed "Prerequisites" to "Previous". I think it's clearer, since the previous quest might not be in the same quest line (or a strict prerequisite). It also looks nicer in the box, I think. You? --Cydira 19:53, 13 November 2007 (CET)

The reason I picked that word is because sometimes you need to have done X quests to do the current one. Just like you have to start talk to Murmur and do "Broken" before "Break on Through" and the Joey/George quests lit up. Unsure if we should go with prerequisites or "previous". The Quest line itself should be visible in the article. I am two minds about this still, so I am happy to debate this for a while longer. --Leord 20:04, 13 November 2007 (CET)
checking your example Give 110 I notice that the sections are using the single = H1 header rather than the double == H2 header. Is that created by the infobax? and if so can it be changed? Dark Matter 15:21, 16 November 2007 (CET)
Nope. Unfortunately, many pages uses the single = H1. This needs to be changed to double ++ H2 manually. --Leord 20:03, 16 November 2007 (CET)
OK,that one done, will do others as I happen across them Dark Matter 13:09, 17 November 2007 (CET)

Can someone point me to a tutorial on parser functions? Or a list of their syntax? I'd like to get the quest infobox ready to go. --Cydira 19:36, 30 November 2007 (CET)

I remember seeing this replied elsewhere. Could you just re-link it here, so we have the info here as well? --Leord 11:58, 4 December 2007 (CET)

Quests Subsections

I think the "Easter Eggs" section in the current Quest template is misused. A better label would be "Trivia", as Pixelz seems to agree. I started using "Trivia" in my new Quest articles. Also, I've added a "Hints & Tips" section after "Rewards" in some quests, like A Luring. I'll change the old ones when we have a stable Quest infobox, too, to reduce the duplicated effort. --Cydira 00:15, 10 November 2007 (CET)

I agree and that is awesome. Don't forget to change Boilerplate:Quests. --Leord 19:30, 13 November 2007 (CET)
I changed the boilerplate a while ago to reflect the above. I just wanted to say so here. --Cydira 15:56, 29 November 2007 (CET)

Other Quest Infoboxes

Looking at our working quest template, I think that some of the other sections would do well as infoboxes, too, especially the quest rewards. It would be nice if that were standardized. Also, if quest objectives were standardized somehow, it would mean that people adding quests wouldn't have to make sure that the right number of apostrophes got added to the beginning and end. Also, the quest lines need their own infoboxes, so that they can be used in larger pages (for instance, the Act I - Act V quest line boxes all on a page for "Storyline" or something. Is it boxes for that? Or some sort of repeatable navigation. Well, you all still know more than I do about such things. I'm just here to get the info onto the wiki. --Cydira 19:47, 13 November 2007 (CET)

You are right that we could do with templates to standardise the layout, so people won't have to format etc. But that doesn't have to be an actual "info box", but can be "just" a template with those headlines. I don't think we should have more than one info box, and possibly a nav box on the bottom. The rest can be made into a template though for all I am concerned. --Leord 20:07, 13 November 2007 (CET)
That's fine, but I still think the quest lines (especially Act I-Act V) should have nav boxes for their quests, but I'm not going to sweat it. --Cydira 16:55, 14 November 2007 (CET)


Quest Types

We need to come up with quest types to put into the infobox. So far, we have Story. The wikipedia article divides them thus: collect, explore, escort, infestation, hunt, travel/talk-and-do, use item, and operate object, but this could be old information. I haven't seen any "escort" missions, that I remember. I suggest keeping the terms from Wikipedia in mind, but doing our category/type names based on the quests we've seen. One-word (or as short as possible) names would be best.

Story Storyline quest, no matter what its contents. A Luring
Bounty Kill <Named Monster> in <Location> Target Practice, Wanted: Saran
Infestation Kill # <Monster> in <Location> Another's Work
Collection Take # <Items> from <Monsters> in <Location> Deinde
Use Item Use <Item> on <Named Monster> (in <Location>) I Like Your Outfit
Operate Object (Re)Activate # <Objects> in <Location> Fruitless
Exploration Explore <Location> Passing Presence
Messenger (Go to <Location>) and speak with(/give <item> to) <NPC> That Includes Blasphemy

The "Wanted: Someone" missions from the Wanted Pillar usually require you to bring back a kill trophy, but I think classifying them as "Collect" would be wrong. They should go under "Hunt".

So, what do you all think of the type names? I don't really like them all. Do you have better suggestions? --Cydira 23:38, 14 November 2007 (CET)

Maybe "Bounty" as a type, instead of "Hunt"? --Cydira 02:50, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Perhaps have both sorts for quests involving killing and collecting. Considering many quests have several objectives before the quest is completed, this is more than viable. Perhaps change "Operate Object" to "Use Object", just for shortening it. We should add "Travel" as well, as it explains better than just "Talk". Don't forget that the first mission, Forage is an escort mission! I know I came across a random Templar once out in the streets as well, who needed a lift home (I failed him miserably, though).. I started to make a suggestion on wording, but after some thought I actually find the rest very good. --Leord 13:27, 15 November 2007 (CET)
I'm not sure what the beginning of your post means. I think "Bounty" works better than "Hunt", since it indicates that there's one target. I also like "Operate Object" to differentiate it from "Use Item". I guess it's not too long. We don't want to sacrifice clarity. "Forage" is a story quest, is it not? I've noticed that it's only story quests which have multiple objectives (go here, talk to him, get that, bring it back to him, talk to some other guy in another place), and we're giving story quests their own category. Also, it makes sense for "Talk" quests to include travel. "Expoloration" quests include travel, but we're not breaking the travel out into its own category. After sleeping on it, I think I can live with the above categories. --Cydira 14:07, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Should there be a "Messenger" or "FedEx" quest type for the few "Bring this to <Guy> in <Place>" quests, or would they go under "Talk". Also, I wish we could come up for a more inclusive category name than "Talk", so it fits all of these types. --Cydira 14:11, 15 November 2007 (CET)
You are right. It does look better. I think we can combine "talk" and "messenger" though. Its good because you either bring word to/from the person, or you bring "encrypted message disc" to or from person. "Messenger" type quest would involve both just bringing an oral as well as a physical message. Point being, the player is an errand boy. --Leord 17:35, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Perhaps we can call these types of quests "Travel" as they usually involve moving from one place to another --Pixelz 17:47, 15 November 2007 (CET)
"Messenger" works for me. I don't think we should call them "Travel" since almost every quest involves going somewhere else. For most, you return to the starting point, but almost every quest would end up in "Travel". "Messenger" fits in with the other names, too, I think, and it's clear from the name that you'll be bringing something to someone (even if it's just yourself). --Cydira 18:38, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Ok. It is decided then. Any other things that needs adding? --Leord 12:08, 16 November 2007 (CET)
I think we're good. I added the table to the Boilerplate:Quests Talk page and will start updating infoboxes as I come across them. --Cydira 23:52, 27 November 2007 (CET)

Quest Categories

With the understanding that more categorization for articles in better than less, what do you think of adding categories to the quest articles for the quest-giver and the quest location(s)? Non-story quests almost always involve, at most, two people and two places. Most are only one person, a station, and a non-station place. It might be nice to click on a "Gunny" category and see all the quests he gives. It would also make updating the "Gunny" page easier, since you'd only need to look at his category page to see his quests. His page would be in his category, too. Thoughts? --Cydira 23:46, 27 November 2007 (CET)

Sounds like a lot of work, but I have no objections. There might be other "Gunny"-related articles to be added as well. We might make a point only to create categories where it is needed... --Leord 15:40, 28 November 2007 (CET)
It is a lot of work, but I think that until we have ways to change a section in one place and have it update in all the paces that use the section, categories will help us keep track of pages. One of the reasons I didn't use the NPC template on the NPC stubs I made is because I didn't want to update the quests in so many places. It was already a lot (quest line in all of the related quest articles, on the NPC's page, and on the station's page), but adding more sections to the NPC's page was the breaking point for me. I'd rather add an NPC and station category to the quest page and then when we have everything sorted out, use the categories to put the information in the single place where it needs to go to propagate to the places where it's needed. Also, who knows, someone could really want to see every article which deals with Gunny.  ;) --Cydira 15:53, 28 November 2007 (CET)
Who doesn't love gunny? ;) --Leord 13:38, 3 December 2007 (CET)

NPCs

I've created a Boilerplate for NPCs. However it seems as though Parser Functions doesn't work so it's lacking some features in the infobox at the moment. I'm sure there are things that needs to be added to the boilerplate that I haven't thought of yet. --Pixelz 19:55, 9 November 2007 (CET)

This is very nice actually. I think I made some suggestions in the talk page for it. --Leord 17:39, 13 November 2007 (CET)
I really like it, too. But what goes into "background" if not the stuff before the ToC box? Also, it would be nice to have a space for "Title", maybe on the top of the other information in the infobox, before the "Type". I think that NPC articles should be named how the character appears in-game, ie without titles (Commander, Lord, High Lord, etc), but there should be room in the article for the titles, and the infobox is as good a place as any. --Cydira 18:35, 13 November 2007 (CET)
Good call! I am a bit uncertain on how to do the "Background" actually. We could have NPC info on the top, and "Background" or "Description" under the ToC for actual personal background story of the NPC, and/or the official ingame description. --Leord 19:33, 13 November 2007 (CET)
The "Background" could be the game's output when you click on a character with quotation marks over his/her head. It's a summary of the character, but I'm not sure if all characters ever get that, and I have no intention of being the one to scrape up that text. I don't do text-scraping. There has to be an easier way, getting it directly from the game's files or something. I'm sure someone has more experience in this area than I. --Cydira 19:41, 13 November 2007 (CET)
Perhaps leave it with a standard text then. For now, scrape-scrape... We have been trying to hack the databases without much luck. Continously trying, but seems very hard. As someone said: "Man hours mean nothing in a Wiki", so even if you don't scrape, others can. The main thing is it looks good, and is easy to understand on the whole. The top text could be 1-2 lines, and the "background" be the full thing. At least for Murmur, I want to add the info of the demon Murmur from wikipedia. --Leord 12:55, 14 November 2007 (CET)

Parser Functions

Parser functions such as if statements doesn't work properly. They sort of work but it's so incredibly obscure nobody with a sane mind would understand how. Please pretty please upgrade to a modern version of MediaWiki. Some quick research on this shows that the latest version is 1.11.0 and the one running here is 1.6.6. Other benefits of upgrading would be sortable tables would work along with a long list of stuff. --Pixelz 05:27, 10 November 2007 (CET)

Admins are working on that ;) For now u can use only that temporary if function. My Skill template have automatic categorization, mayb ei can help u fix your template. Try to find me on icq or so, or use my talk page to explain me what categories u want add. --GoodWill 09:30, 10 November 2007 (CET)
I'll get back to everyone on this as soon as I can. I need to poke people to make upgrade. --Leord 17:39, 13 November 2007 (CET)
How is the poking going ? We need the new Media wiki for the parsing sooner rather than later. -- Dark Matter 20:16, 21 November 2007 (CET)
I have brought out the bull whip and looking for Rush. =) --Leord 14:28, 22 November 2007 (CET)
Ka-tish! Woho! --Leord 17:22, 22 November 2007 (CET)
Cool. Thanks. Now, can we change the settings/css so that the edit link for sections appear less ugly? (Like before) :) --BSTL 19:49, 22 November 2007 (CET)


Parser Function Problems

As great as this update is, things still doesn't work right. this page for example produces 0 errors on mediawiki.org but a whole bunch here. Also, sortable tables, made with putting class="wikitable sortable" at the top of the table doesn't work either. --Pixelz 09:15, 24 November 2007 (CET)

I don't get any error message on that page. what browser are you using? Using the CSS call probably doesn't work as we don't have the "wikitable sortable" in the CSS page. Do you know the code for it, I can add it. --Leord 13:11, 26 November 2007 (CET)
The errors I refer to are the random bits of "code" such as if statements you can see displayed on the page. These will show up in an article that uses the template as well. I'm not all that familiar with the inner workings of mediawiki javascripts, but I found some info on it here. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in this area can comment on this. --Pixelz 19:43, 26 November 2007 (CET)
The thing is, I can't see ANY problems with the page. Can you copy/paste some "code" so I can see what you mean, or take a screen dump and post it? As long as I don't know what the problem is, I can't fix it. I thought class="wikitable sortable" was a CSS usage? --Leord 12:01, 27 November 2007 (CET)
I've taken a screenshot of it. I asked a friend to look at the page and she gets the same error so I'm pretty sure it's not me. I'm not sure why you don't get it. --Pixelz 18:15, 27 November 2007 (CET)
Oh, it looks like that for me too. I thought it was supposed to look thus. I will bring it to the devs immediately. --Leord 15:58, 28 November 2007 (CET)
BTW, could you tell me what is actually wrong there. I don't know coding worth anything, so I am unsure on how to explain it to the devs. --Leord 11:59, 4 December 2007 (CET)
Just show them the screenshot and I'm sure they'll be able to figure it out. There shouldn't be any error text like that. My personal theory is that there's some internal mediawiki files/stuff missing but I don't know enough about the internals to really be sure. --Pixelz 17:42, 7 December 2007 (CET)

Monsters & Monster statistics

Does anyone else think that we should start creating pages about monsters and their collected statistics? Most categories are already there, with some monster information, which usually is awfully outdated or outright inaccurate, besides being useless (mostly historical/legend talk or pre-release assumptions etc.). I've made changes to the Zombie page as an example of data we should include. BTW, I know of three ways to obtain that kind of information: 1 Rigorous testing/experimentation (very time consuming/inaccurate), 2 cracking open game data files (perfectly accurate and manageable timewise), 3 asking/tricking/forcing Flagship to talk about these (from what I've been reading, ain't gonna happen). Comments? --BSTL 07:34, 14 November 2007 (CET)

As I said to Cydira, the cracking isn't exactly like doing an egg. Consider all fansites are probably trying as well. It will be cracked, everything can be cracked, but perhaps not the next 2-3 months... So, we are basically left with the hard work of doing it manually. Me likey your stat table though! We need a new Mob boilerplate in either case. That stat table is needed, and some info box to the right. If you want to play with it, go right ahead. I am knee-deep in skills and weapons mainly still. Boilerplate:Quests as an example. That one isn't licked either yet though. --Leord 13:01, 14 November 2007 (CET)

Ads & Analytics = Slow Slow Slow

If the site is going to be as slow as it is today, with lengthy loading times while the adserver and google-analytics do their business, I don't think I can continue adding to this wiki, let alone using it. I don't mind looking at ads (I tend to mentally screen them anyway), but they'd better load FAST. --Cydira 22:10, 14 November 2007 (CET)

You are right, it was horrible yesterday afternoon. This is of course a high priority, and I'll bring it up ASAP. It can't be like that. --Leord 13:09, 15 November 2007 (CET)

Areas

So, I'm working on areas. The in-game world map shows four types of place: station/town (hexagon), aboveground (square), special (red square), and everything else (circle). I suggest that we use these four as the main categories under "area". We can use the icons from the map in an infobox for each of them, so you know at a glance which major type it is.

Refining further, in the circle areas, we have tubes ("approaches"), tunnels ("steam tunnels" and "access shafts" included), sewers, and building-looking areas (though they still have the circle marking on the map.

In the square areas, we have "London Streets" and the wide open areas in the canyons (are these all Thames riverbed?).

As for stations, how should we handle the ones overrun by demons (like Mark Lane Station) which show on the map as circles, not hexagons? Put them in both categories?

When we decide on everything, we'll need to update the area navbox (and make article templates), but that's no big. Deciding on how to break up the areas is. --Cydira 16:32, 15 November 2007 (CET)

Ok, I was going to link an image with a legend made by Flagship, but it is gone for now. I am poking Flux about it. Anyway, we have three types of areas (roughly): Random Level, Fixed Level (FSS terms according to the mentioned map) and Town. Green Park is actually a Fixed Level rather than anything else, with NPCs and a travel station. It is a slight hybrid. On the ingame world map, Fixed Levels are of a Square shape, Towns (or hybrids of towns) are Hexagons and all random maps are round. In many cases, a specific random map will only use a specific tileset, or a specific few tilesets. An odd set is the exospecter ones, they are described as "blobs". In the beta, many maps displayed what tileset was going to come, such as "Dank Sewers", "Demon Streets", "Blight Boulevard" etc, but for now, I am uncertain on how to decide what tileset a specific area is.
In many "random" cases, a random map could be streets, backalleys, boulevard (broad streets), sewers, access shafts, tube rails or Thames riverbed (all canyons are Thames, yes), while in others it is always a single tileset (I have never seen "caverns" used as a normal map though). In my opinion, it would be odd to try and sort this into categories, but we could list "tileset" as a list of all the tilesets (and articles for the tilesets, for further info). At the moment, the wiki calls all Fixed Levels "Locations", as in actual locations. I am unsure if they should stay like that. Any opinions? --Leord 17:54, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Gotcha on the types of areas. So we're not going to try to classify the fixed areas by their tilesets? (Park, alleys, etc?) What do you think of using the map legend from the game as icons for the types of area? I've been calling all non-station places "Locations". If that shouldn't be used for random areas, what should? Also, it seems to me that grouping the areas by name (tunnels, etc) makes a lot of sense, since they're likely to use the same tileset. Can you propose a naming solution, since you seem unhappy with mine? I don't really care what we use, as long as it makes good sense and is reasonable if you're new to the game. --Cydira 18:36, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Here is the old map I was talking about. I also found one that was made in late September, which is near identical to the new Map. That one includes space for Elite content as well. On top of that it also has the recommended char level for areas. This might have changed in in 2 months, but not too much I think.
As I have a hard time to find all the tileset names now, it will be hard to name things by them. Hopefully we can find them all and use, but unsure. I know that "London Streets" is a good name for a general term, but there are different types of London Streets: Back alleys (narrow pathways), Demon Streets (regular streets) and Blight Boulevard (broad streets). On top of that I think I recall the ash rain ones having their own tileset, but I am unsure.
When it comes to individual areas, they can't easily be classified by type, unless they are Fixed Levels or constantly of a specific tileset. Most areas in HGL has a wide range of tilesets that can be used for it, and Whitehall, for instance can be Access Shafts, Demon Streets (etc), Dank Sewers or Thames Riverbank (come to think of it, only areas near Thames ever becomes riverbanks). I might just sound negative, but I want to explain the problem through and through before we make plans =) --Leord 12:29, 16 November 2007 (CET)
One of the things I've noticed between my characters is that, for the most part, the "Fixed Areas" - ie Piccadilly Circus, British Museum, etc - are probably 95% the same between characters, relogs, reboots, etc. There might be a tiny bit of differentiation in non-critical areas. For example, in Piccadilly Circus, the Bookstore isn't always in the same place. Also, the ends of the five road points have been a bit different each time. Further, the entry point always differs. Similarly, the British Museum always has that quotation at the bottom of the central rounded staircase, but some of the staircases at the back of the "exhibit halls" have shown up in different locations.
Further, as was indirectly mentioned, the non-fixed tilesets are random and can be mixed. I've entered areas like Savile Row and it has been all squared sewer rooms; other times it's steam tunnels. --Mileron 19:20, 21 November 2007 (CET)
Yes, this is my experience as well. Almost ALL maps have some sort of random element. Definitely so with mobs in many cases at least. I have recently noticed the multiple tilesets in a single map as well. I like it. While this is great for the game, it makes it much harder to make a detailed categorization of maps... --Leord 12:36, 23 November 2007 (CET)
The main Levels page still says there are 3 Acts instead of 5, and there doesn't appear to be a way to edit it. --Arlinora 19:53, 22 December 2007 (CET)

Map

BTW, check "Map for a comprehensive map. --Leord 17:54, 15 November 2007 (CET)

Nice. Is that current? --Cydira 18:36, 15 November 2007 (CET)
Yes, it is the one in the game. --Leord 12:29, 16 November 2007 (CET)
did you search for map before you uploaded? London Map uploaded Oct 29 as we will have Stonehenge Map and others I expect. -- Dark Matter 20:19, 21 November 2007 (CET)
I added it to have a good place to start the maps section. The /map will be used one way or another, and i put the pic there just so I knew where it is. If it is a duplicate, we should delete it, and put the pic you have on /London Map there instead. At least until we start on the map section, I think that the London map should be there. --Leord 14:11, 22 November 2007 (CET)

Area Infobox

What do you think of an infobox that spans all area types? I'm thinking an icon from the in-game world map, the name of the area, the type (static, random, station/town), maybe the tileset, and anything else? See Charing Cross Station for the kind of icon I'm talking about. You'll have to imagine the rest of the infobox for now. --Cydira 18:50, 15 November 2007 (CET)

I like it. We should remove the "lines" to other areas though, and make rather generic Icons. If you look at the other maps I linked above, what do you think of using that little "tilted square" to show a habituated area? One station is overrun, but habituated (Green Park Station) while another is a overrun station, but not habituated (Mark Lane Station). So we'd end up with: Random Level, Fixed Level and Town Level as main types, and Station Level, Rift Level, Layered Level and Exospecter Level as subtypes. Finally "Habituated" or "Hostile" status? Or can we simplify it more without loosing information? --Leord 12:29, 16 November 2007 (CET)
I left the "lines" in on purpose, so you could see at a glance that that the place (eventually, through other areas) links to other stations, as well as to non-station places. --Cydira 20:27, 16 November 2007 (CET)
Ok, I was more thinking of having it like an standard icon that only needed to be 3-4 in total. We should have maps for the area around the station easily available in either case. --Leord 18:25, 19 November 2007 (CET)
Perhaps use a picture of the station logo? I was kind of liking the idea of using ingame logos for maps, but i would be nice to use them without line connects then, to make it standardised. What do you think? --Leord 12:36, 23 November 2007 (CET)
No one liked my station logo and someone uploaded Act maps to use in the Area infobox, so it's all good. I'm focusing on the quests and quest organization now. Areas are in others' good hands. --Cydira 15:57, 29 November 2007 (CET)

Boilerplate:Areas

I've tried to create a suggestion for a common boilerplate for areas - both instances and towns. To demonstrate how I intended it be used I have created a test page which uses content from both an instance and a town: Test:Boilerplate:Areas.

To go along with it I've created a Template:Area_Infobox, shamelessly stolen from the NPC template. For this template I've assumed at the moment that there are three different kinds of areas: Random Level, Fixed Level and Town. I guess this awaits a final decision.

Also I've added the term "Region" which could come in handy at a later time as Flagship has mentioned that they intent to add more cities (not just London) later on. Acts could be a sub category to that. Following this idea, perhaps the above mentioned division of areas should be linked to "London". --TheEnemy 23:10, 28 November 2007 (CET)

As I mentioned before, "Region" or a similar headline is good. I like that. When the Stonehenge comes out, should we treat that as a region on its own, or as a "London" region? Perhaps have it as its own region, and add a headline for expansions on its own, and let "region" be actual IRL regions.
I was also thinking that we could, at least for towns, make a map of the town layout, and point out the locations of all NPCs. Someone suggested using a smaller icon for the city, and to use the passageways reaching from that town to show what town it is. I am not all for that, a lot of work, and not sure what it would accomplish. To have icons such as these (just cut away the pathways), to show what type of area it is, and what it contains. Perhaps use ingame graphics instead though. We should add more stuffin the info box. Perhaps have "Exits" there, so people can navigate through the entire world with just the navbox? In another project I am working on, the areas have "Related Town", "Previous Town" and "Next Town" attributes, so you can jump between quest hubs as well. Becomes a bit of a crux around Green park and Templar Base, but works really good over all. There was another thing I thought to add there, but it has slipped my mind. --Leord 12:59, 29 November 2007 (CET)

Cross-boilerplate quest listings

(Edit: Moved from above section Boilerplate:Areas)
And then there's the related cross-boilerplate issue of quests listings. Quests should be listed on both the area page and on the page of the NPC involved. At first I thought it might be a good idea to put the quests of a given NPC in a septate template to be included where applicable but now I've realised that if we list all quests together like in my boilerplate we can't list them alphabetical when we include them from separate templates. For all I can see we'll have to add quests separately to area and NPC pages. Alternatively we should list the quests by each NPC (like on the current Temple Station) but IMHO that's adding a lot of needless redundant information to the pages. --TheEnemy 23:10, 28 November 2007 (CET)

Alphabetically listing quests is, to me, less important than grouping them by quest line, be it Act or quest-giver. It's less pretty when you just look at a page, but it makes a lot more sense. Besides, if you want an alphabetical listing of quests, it's in the category pages. I'd rather we make quest line templates and include them in the areas, NPC, and individual quest articles, so we only have to update them in one place, than group them by location. The grouping by location is covered by tagging every quest with the proper categories, so if you want to know what quests happen in Mark Square, you can look at its category page, linked from its article. While I'm doing a lot of updating in a lot of places now, while I'm adding quest articles, you can bet I won't be maintaining them if it's not streamlined. --Cydira 23:33, 28 November 2007 (CET)
So you want to list every quest in a quest line on each area article involved even if only one of the quests have a reference to a particular area? That'll be a very long list indeed. --TheEnemy 23:54, 28 November 2007 (CET)
Most areas, besides Towns, which is ok if they are big articles, will only have 1-2 quests associated with them, which means at most 1-2 (or possibly 3) quest line templates. Most quest lines are just 1-3 quests long anyway, so won't be that "spacey". We need to cut the Story Line quest line into pieces though... --Leord 12:59, 29 November 2007 (CET)
I'm thinking that the optional quest lines should be horizontal. They'll take up less room and they'll stack well. Most of the optional quest lines (all of them so far, in my experience) are all assigned by a single NPC in a single town, so really, the towns will have the quest lines assigned by their quest-giving NPCs and also the Acts navbox at the bottom. We can write a little in the town's article about what part of the story happens there/is assigned from there, and let people click to the quest articles if they want to learn more. I'll do it for Broker in Mark Lane Station and we can see from there if it works. --Cydira 16:46, 3 December 2007 (CET)
If you could show me an example, that would be great, not sure I follow. Did you envision having ALL optional quests per station in nav boxes? Hm, come to think of it, there isn't a "wall of text" worth of quest lines, so that might be a good idea! --Leord 12:03, 4 December 2007 (CET)

Optional Quest Navbox Examples

Small Horizontal Test

Okay, for the optional quests, I'm thinking that we should make them horizontal, for instance:

Crowe's Optional Quest Line, Assigned in Liverpool Street Station
Fruitless . Dubious Doctoring . Crybaby . Sulk, Shirk . Snooty Witch . Late Harvest
Lyra Darius's Optional Quest Line, Assigned in Liverpool Street Station
Passing Presence . History Lessons . Priority Parts . Old Path . The Day I Died . Remembrance

See how they stack? They can be used all together on the station's page, and one-by-one on the quest-giver's pages. Some quest-givers have optional quest lines in more than one station. I'm sure that if some don't already give more than one line in a single station, they will with content expansions. Then we can change the original heading to "First Optional Quest Line" and make a new box and they'll still stack nicely.

Do you like the center align or the left align better? --Cydira 17:42, 4 December 2007 (CET)

I like centered, and I like the idea a lot! There usually isn't enough NPCs with quests so this system could be a problem. At least not before expansions... --Leord 16:26, 5 December 2007 (CET)
It'll be fine in the later stations, where the quest lines tend to be 5 or 6 quests long. In the early stations, they're 2-3 or so. Once we have the text for the optional quests, we can give the quest lines names, so it's nicer to look at in the navbox. Like the one with Jons and his woman, we can call Something like "Jons's Loverboy Quest Line, Assigned in ...". It'll be clear that it's optional. Or we can stick with "First Optional Quest Line", "Second Optional Quest Line", etc. I still think the vertical way is the way to go, though, for the quest articles. Maybe we'll have to bite the bullet and do it both ways. Once the quest line is done, it's done (I hope). I don't think the devs will add to an existing quest line, but add new quest lines. I hope, because it makes our lives easier. --Cydira 17:15, 5 December 2007 (CET)
(Sorry for being away) Seems logical enough. I doubt they will add to quest lines at this point, and if they do it will be rare enough for us to fix. I think we should come up with name. It is more "wikish" to use some formal name, but this is just as much a fan info page site as a wiki... --Leord 13:08, 10 December 2007 (CET)

Regular Horizontal Test

Okay, for the optional quests, I'm thinking that we should make them horizontal, for instance:

Crowe's Optional Quest Line, Assigned in Liverpool Street Station
Fruitless . Dubious Doctoring . Crybaby . Sulk, Shirk . Snooty Witch . Late Harvest
Lyra Darius's Optional Quest Line, Assigned in Liverpool Street Station
Passing Presence . History Lessons . Priority Parts . Old Path . The Day I Died . Remembrance

In this example, they're more prominent. The most quests in an optional line I've come across is ten. They should fit in the box even with normal-sized letters. I usually think navboxes should be small, but it seems that the quest lines (and where you are in the line for each quest article) are more important that that. Why else would Leord put the "Quest Line" section so nigh on the Boilerplate? As well as have "previous'and "Follow-up" quests in the infobox?

So, I think they should be more prominent, but I'm not sure the best way to go about doing that. I had hoped to have these boxes be vertical and included at the bottom the quest infobox with a variable, so at a glance, you can see the whole line and the one you're on now is automatically bolded, but that's seming to be difficult. I, at least, am not sure how to make that happen. Here's what I wanted it to look like:

Vertical in Infobox Test

Fruitless
Giver: Crowe
Location: Liverpool Street Station
Type: Operate Object
Prerequisites: None.

Okay, I can't get it to work. I'd like the quest line navbox to go immediately below the right-floating quest infobox. Pixelz? Anyone? Is there a way to do that, short of just adding it later in the page and hoping to floats directly below the other one?

I hope you can see what I'm getting at, at least. Then the vertical box can be used in the station page and also the NPC's page and all of the information only had to be entered once. They'll line up next to each other, so there's no wasted space on the station pages, and all of the information is in a neat block. Now, with the separate headings, there's a lot of dead space.

I like this last option the best. If you're hung up on "navobxes should be small", think of them as a different sort of infobox. A "quest line format" box. Or something. --Cydira 17:42, 4 December 2007 (CET)

I hope it is ok to put my reply here withput screwing up the appearences =P Anyway, I agree. I think the horizontal one is definitely OK, but having it on the right, preferably INSIDE the quest info box, is even better. Isn't it possible to use templates like a staring template of the box/table, upper part in one table, and the lower part in another one, and then an ending template to close the table.
Crowe's
Optional Quest Line
Liverpool Street Station
Fruitless
Dubious Doctoring
Crybaby
Sulk, Shirk
Snooty Witch
Late Harvest
Another idea is, like I said, to keep this quest line info in pure text in a template, and just pull in the text into a part of the Quest Infobox as well as anywhere else it is needed. Is the problem with template tables inside templates something I should make my devs fix? --Leord 16:32, 5 December 2007 (CET)


Quest Line Boxes for NPCs and Stations

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think we need to make something work for the quest articles, where I think we all agree that having the quest line in the infobox would be best. I think I can do it in a sub-optimal, but entirely workable way. Once the quests in a certain quest line are entered, they won't change, so it's no less work than we're already doing when we add quest articles.

We need to keep thinking about the best way to show quests in the station and NPC articles. If those two could use the same box, that would be great. Maybe something like:

Gunny's Templar Base Optional Quest Line
Quest Name Quest Type Quest Area Prerequisites
Gold-Digger Collection Fleet Street Accept Tripping the Rift
Fight Night Bounty Tudor Street None.
The Bone Hunters Collection Kingsway None.
Kill 'em Rotten Bounty Old Bailey None.

The "Prerequisites" is where we'd put quests in other lines that you first have to accept or complete, or that you need a subscription, or a certain standing, etc. This block would make it clear how the quests relate in a single station and could be reused on the NPC's page. What do you all think? --Cydira 18:43, 7 December 2007 (CET)

That is a really good idea. I see only one major flaw: Why didn't I think of that first? As far as I gather, there probably won't be enough NPCs in any "Town" to screw up the system's aesthetics. Even if they have a massive amount of NPCs in Stonehenge and beyond, it is good to have all quests being easily displayed anyway. I like the table a lot! --Leord 13:12, 10 December 2007 (CET)

Quest Line Boxes for NPCs and Stations (Final?)

Gunny's Templar Base Optional Quest Line
Quest Name Quest Type Quest Area Prerequisites
Gold-Digger Collection Fleet Street Accept Tripping the Rift
Fight Night Bounty Tudor Street None.
The Bone Hunters Collection Kingsway None.
Kill 'em Rotten Bounty Old Bailey None.

I'm going to start doing it with the title in bold, but not bigger, like the table above. If we need to change them later, at least we'll only have to do it in one place instead of two. I made the width 80% to conform with other types of tables, but since it's a special type of table (not a navigation table), if we have more information to put in, we can make it 100% like the individual skills' tables. I'll also have the headings link to something useful, as above. Comments? --Cydira 21:33, 19 December 2007 (CET)

I agree. Not bigger. And also good to not feel restricted to use 80% if it isn't a navigation bar. --Leord 22:27, 19 December 2007 (CET)
I'll see how it looks with some of the long quest names and long area names. It might need to be the full width. --Cydira 23:53, 19 December 2007 (CET)

Also, if we had a little green dollar sign icon, we could use that when a quest is subscription-only, and have it link to subscriptions. It would convey information in a smaller space, especially when there are standing-based subscription quests, etc. Of course, we'd also need a little pound sterling sign and a little euro sign, so I guess using words isn't terrible.  :P --Cydira 21:38, 19 December 2007 (CET)

I think we should use a Pound icon if anything. Obviously, there might be a good reason not too, seeing as the vendor icon is that as well, but seems like a minor thing. Could make a small icon with all three symbols in it... --Leord 22:27, 19 December 2007 (CET)
Never mind. Writing out "subscription" is fine, where it's needed, especially if the box needs to be the whole width of the page, then we can have a list and not take up too much space. --Cydira 23:53, 19 December 2007 (CET)

I changed the widths of the columns because the Quest Types are all relatively short, but the area name can be long: Covent Garden Steam Tunnels, for example. --Cydira 22:09, 19 December 2007 (CET)

Yes, it looks a bit odd with no name sin, but it is logical! --Leord 22:27, 19 December 2007 (CET)

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Some different issues

I first started this as a support forum posting but I guess it actually belongs here. I just didn't know where to post it before but I learn more about the wiki as I work with it obviously. My reason for this posting is in short that I as a newcomer to the wiki have had some trouble finding out how exactly I could help and a bit of worrying about how things should be added because I couldn't really find any standard for how the things I wanted to add should be done on this wiki. In short - I need more standards to better add more content :)

I know that you're working on making templates but I have trouble finding out how far exactly this work is. I could probably spent some time and learn how to make templates myself but since I'm new here I don't know how you agree on how the templates should look like and work and if you need more help for templates at all.

Introduction aside here's some different issues I've been battling with as I've added content. Some of these should probably be added to respective sections / talk pages but for now I'll just list them as it also give you an idea of what a newcomer sees as an issue. In any way, feel free to move the following to other sections if you want.

1) In dialogue, is there a standard way of writing the character name? Like <character name>, [name], etc.?

2) What's the difference between an area and a location (and the categories)? If there's no difference now, would it be an idea to call areas modelled around real life places (British Museum, etc.) for location and the rest for areas? Or just only use one of the words?

3) It seems you're working on the template for Town / Station pages. Most look more or less alike and the others probably just need to be updated to this but some pages list a lot of things in the description which I think should be moved into a heading. For example exits, NPCs, machines, etc.

The "Quest associated with..." feature is nice but I think the quest list should to moved to a separate page to be included in the town page and the NPC quest giver page. There's no reason to update more than one page, it's prone for errors. I know it can be done - I just don't know how.

4) An agreement on whether "Station" or "Town" or both should be used would not be bad.

5) A standard is needed for instance (that is, out of town) pages. I didn't really find anything useful so I've made my own suggestion with New Bridge. It should however be linked to Area Navigation navbar somehow. That is, not onto the bar itself but by category of whatever title set it belongs to.

6) Is there a list of all title sets somewhere?

7) I've read the talk about the quest template and the types. It should probably be listed somewhere what all the quest types are so people can add the correct type right away. Also I don't think that the objectives should be listed in the quest template box. They're on the page itself, why list it twice - it looks odd too with too much text on too little space.

8) A standard for demon pages is needed too. It seems like there's different kinds of categories of demons in the game, with a lot of subspecies (same monster, different name). I could imaging that a page for each subspecie would come in handy if people want to search for it.

9) It seems that a lot of content on the wiki is from before launch and while it's good to keep for historical reasons I think it somehow clutters up the pages people need now but I guess that will even out as we get the templates done.
--TheEnemy 01:09, 23 November 2007 (CET)

Welcome to the HellgateWiki TheEnemy! I will try to answer your questions. No problems with all at once. Might add it to the different discussions as we go along, but it is actually easier to reply this way :)
  • 0)"Templates" in a Wiki is kind of odd. They are like a small article, that you can pull in to other articles with this command: {{Template Name}}. It could contain a table, a single word, a category or whatever. You should be able to find those a bit of everywhere. More advanced templates can be variables in appearance depending on attributes you put in it: {{Template Name|Attribute=1}}. You can edit a template by going to an adress that looks like this Template:Template Name. Instead wiki has "Boilerplates", like Boilerplate:Quests. The point is, they are not "templates" as you would normally explain the meaning of the word. Boilerplates are made to dictate standard of a certain type of article, category or template. Boilerplates are what we are working at, and the area page you did, is a suggestion for new boilerplate.
  • 1) Check Boilerplate:Quests. It isn't very polished, but a first draft. How the dialogue looks there is how it is supposed to look in the Wiki. The reason is that different people can talk in a quest dialogue. I haven't been chasing people adding stuff to the wiki with this, as content in this matter is more important than format, and I have been busy with other stuff.
  • 2) "Area" is the new way of saying "location", and "location" was the term Flux used to describe Fixed Levels. We could continue to use locations as a name, but "Random Level" and "Fixed Level" are real game terms, and should really bve used. IF we want real articles about the actual London locations, we might use "Location". I just haven't had time to set new standards on that area.
  • 3) I am more than happy to change standards on things like areas/towns at this point! Can you make a test page (just write down the link, so you don't loose the page) and show me what you had in mind? Can you explain further with quests? Do you mean using a "wiki template" that can pull in the same info to both the town and npc?
  • 4) "Towns" are used in conjunctions with all areas that are full of friendly npcs and services. A "Station" is a place that is/has been used as a Underground Station before the cataclysm - a generic term. You are right, this needs to be clarified further.
  • 5) Boilerplates for towns and other areas are on the "to-do" list. Feel free to make a suggestion for one! Take some inspiration from the Boilerplate:Quests, and create the first suggestion in your user pages, so we can discuss it before putting it "live". You can change the area navbar here: Template:Area navbox. Also check the discussion on areas (can't remember if it is under areas or here under community portal discussion). I would like areas and towns to be quite similar, as towns merely are a type of area.
  • 6) Unfortunately not. I have a list of tilesets written down, but it isn't complete. Hellgate stopped displaying the names of the tilesets in loading screen before beta was over. Decision on how to deal with this is yet to be made.
  • 7) The Quest boilerplate is being updated. Among other things, quest types will show there, and also in the quest template help page. Feel free to add your opinions to the talk page of Boilerplate:Quests.
  • 8) Yes. Not had time for it yet. any concrete suggestions? =)
  • 9) Feel free to use the "Move" command on old pages with little new info to Pre_Launch:Article Name, add the {{Pre Launch}} template at the top, and put "<nowiki></nowiki>" tags around the old categories (to keep the articles out of the old categories). All data that needs updating shall be updated. You might want to check with me if it is ok to move it before you do it the first few times. also, sometimes you shouldn't move the latest version, but rather an older version, which is slightly more complicated (butt not horribly so).
If you have any other questions, just ask! Also, try to add questions to the respective parts of the wiki, so more people than me will see and reply ;) People are more likely to answer a short, simple question than 10 big one in a bunch. --Leord 12:36, 23 November 2007 (CET)
Thanks for taking the time to answer all of it. And first of all thanks for the explanation of templates vs. boilerplates - I had what an old high school teacher called an "aha"-experience :-)
  • 1) Ok, so I guess player names in dialouge should be written as [Name].
  • 2) So we could try and change the categories from Area to Fixed and Random level instead. Or at least change everything to just belong to the Area category instead of both Area and Location.
  • 3+5+8) Ok, I'll have a look at it after the weekend. No promises, though.
Hehe, I know it's not good to write lots and lots on the internet but I was at a loss so this was just a general cry for help. I'll behave in the future ;) --TheEnemy 16:09, 23 November 2007 (CET)
NP mate =) Might be able to re-use some of that info on some help page. Anyway, you are right with names, and categories needs fixing. This is closely linked to the Area infobox discussion though, so please look above here and read the "Areas" topic on this discussion page. --Leord 13:15, 26 November 2007 (CET)
I agree that we shouldn't enter things twice on different pages. I was hoping one of the wiki-masters would suggest a way to have some information (ie, the list of quests in a given Act or quest line) appear on more than one page (ie, all of the quest articles in a given Act or quest line), while only having to type it in once, with only one place to update. I also agree that we should drop the quest objectives from the infobox. It's too cluttered. Instead, I'd like to add a "Town" line to the infobox. Right now, they'd all be "London", but it'll help us in the future. --Cydira 00:14, 28 November 2007 (CET)
Consider "Town" is how we say "Friendly station" at the moment. Perhaps re-using "Location", and stop using that name for "Fixed Levels" as the old Wiki did. I have been trying to get a way of calling in quests though, and besides using categories, it can't be done, as far as I know. If anyone can shed some light on this, it would be most helpful! --Leord 13:44, 3 December 2007 (CET)
How about just "City: London" in the infobox and a "London Quest" category? (Cydira)
Sounds good. Both suggestions. London Quests will be located in "Quests" then. --Leord 12:05, 4 December 2007 (CET)

Spoilers

Should we add a warning for spoilers on articles with important story information? --TheEnemy 23:59, 28 November 2007 (CET)

YES! Please. Also it would be neat if we can make the text invisible/hidden, and can be read by clicking something or selecting the text. I don't know how this can be done through wiki means. -- BSTL 02:34, 29 November 2007 (CET)
Sounds like a very good idea. I am not aware of any function to make text invisible in wikis before clicking, short of using the same color on teh text as the background... Just having a spoilers section on the bottom is a good start though. --Leord 11:56, 29 Novemb