User talk:Procyon

I welcome any and all feedback here, so please post your thoughts. Thank you.

Archived discussions:
 * 2nd half of 2006
 * 1st half of 2007
 * 3rd quarter of 2007
 * 4th quarter of 2007

Name
As in the star, the raccoon genus, or the release group? -- Prod 23:51, 10 October 2006 (CDT)
 * lol, the raccoon genus. If I can't use Procyon, I sometimes use Lotor, or Plotor. ^_^  Procyon 07:58, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

Mighty Bomb Jack guide
I came across your guide by accident, and just want to throw you a quick comment to show my appreciation. I acquired my NES in 1987 at the age of 6, and with it, Mighty Bomb Jack. Since the game was my first real experience with console gaming, it holds a special place in my heart. I had never completed the game, and really never knew how close i'd come in my best attempts (only one room away from the king, it turns out!). I grabbed the rom today, and along with your guide had a good time turning the game inside out for old times sake. Nacht 17:40, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Woohoo!
You've just gained muchos respect from me for using the correct ellipsis entity in the last announcement. :-D --DrBob (talk) 20:23, 11 January 2008 (CST)
 * Excellent; at least somebody's paying attention to my public pedanticism. I did see what Nacht wrote, and I think it's great he took the time to tell you. Good job! --DrBob (talk) 08:16, 12 January 2008 (CST)

Alright, alright
I admit I was on a bit of a roll with the whole thing and maybe I went a little overboard, particularly on yours. I was mainly referring to paragraphing, actually. They seem kinda large and can be split into multiple smaller paragraphs rather than one big one.

I'm not sure if it was very "flame-y", considering how I mentioned how to improve and also how to get further assistance, but I'll edit it anyway. Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 13:01, 12 January 2008 (CST)

Pokémon guide
Just wanted to make sure you saw this. --DrBob (talk) 00:58, 14 January 2008 (CST)

Your baby needs some improvement
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is missing its Story time. xD -- 01:39, 14 January 2008 (CST)

Small Game ToC cleanup
Hey Proc: check out this diff I made to Beraboh Man:. I was thinking that maybe we should try and do the same for all of the guides you've pushed to stage 4 (an easy list to start off of). Getting Started can be static text when there's smaller sections, and walkthrough I think should be enlarged just because it's so important. I bet you'll say that it just confuses things, and I dunno, I need to think more on it... -- 04:58, 14 January 2008 (CST)

im thinking...(Pokemon RSE)
hey, you know how in Pokemon RBY you had boxes with the info on new Pokemon that you found on a new route you entered? Did you get the info from any particular area? i want to do something like that for RSE. if you came up with the info, can you look at what i write and edit it to suit? Plz Msg back. Peace out, God Bless. Halosonic 14:06, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Fractions
Yeah I can see the difference, but like I said, the difference is actually 3 pixels (at least on my PC) and so scanning it can be a pain, but ok. -- 18:14, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Samurai Shodown and series revision
After looking at Samurai Shodown V, I think some things really need to be changed, and I know you're the guy to help me out. First of all, I think rather than "Walkthrough" being the repository for game controls, "Getting Started" or "Controls" would be more appropriate, since the Walkthrough section needs to exist for guide standardization and explanation of how the info in the guide is contained.

Secondly, I think the characters section should be under so that it can be easily imported into each Nav, and I think it should have its own row where all three columns of characters are spread out, with a "Characters" title centered above.

Thirdly, the "Moves" section on the main page of Samurai Shodown V should be subpaged to its own movelist page, which should also appear on the SSV ToC. I can't think of anything else right now, except that it's ugly =P -- 19:35, 18 January 2008 (CST)


 * Notmyhandle's criticisms are mostly valid, but ppl need to be clear that these are problems with all of the fighting game guides and not just Samurai Shodown V.


 * Firstly, the Samurai Shodown V page is on par with the other articles in the fighting games category. Look at Street Fighter III, Mortal Kombat II, The King of Fighters '95, Samurai Shodown, etc. for reference. The problem with controls, universal moves, rules, etc. ending up in the walkthrough is endemic throughout virtually all of the fighting game guides. I would guess this is mainly because it's impossible to make a page without a walkthrough section (technically it is possible, but it breaks the "show" button and if you do it in a multi-page guide it will probably be reverted within 60 minutes) and there's typically no reason to have a walkthrough for a fighting game, or a puzzle game, or a sports game. So, in an effort to avoid having an article full of links to a nonexistent walkthrough page, authors of fighting game guides end up dumping what should go under Getting Started and/or Controls into the walkthrough page and then renaming the walkthrough link in the TOC to "How to Play". I would assume that when ppl create new fighting game articles they typically just copy the layout from the existing, less than stellar, guides thus helping spread the plague. When I made the samsho5 page I was copying the layouts of Samurai Shodown, the Street Fighter series, and the Marvel vs. Capcom series and yes, I would agree that all of these pages "really need to be changed."


 * The current help section doesn't cover what should be done when dealing with a game for which the purpose of the walkthrough isn't very obvious. In fact, the help section on organization doesn't even list walkthrough in its sample layouts for both fighting games and racing games. There also seems to be a dearth of good examples for modeling a fighting game guide after, as in they don't actually exist.


 * Secondly,the characters section is under . I just embedded it in so that the page would have the samsho5 header instead of the samsho header. I'm not a big fan of the current TOC/Header setup as it applies to games in a series. For example, if a user is looking at the Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike page and they click the Characters link in the TOC, they suddenly find themselves in the Street Fighter III section with no obvious route back to their starting point save using the back button in their web browser. I find it inefficient and unintuitive to have to click "show" on the header and then find and click "Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike" as a means of returning to the page I was just at. This was part of my attempt to kinda, sorta deal with this problem. Now if a user clicks the Characters link and then decides they don't actually want to read the character bios they have an obvious route back to their starting point.


 * Thirdly, in regards to your comment: "Are you aware of the purpose of the [hide]/[show] button on the left of the Nav? It opens up the Table of Contents, so really, all of the links that you're adding are already in the Nav if you click [show]." I'd just like to point out that the Table of Contents and Walkthrough links in the header are also redundant as you can access them by clicking [hide]/[show]. I am of the opinion that if there's going to be redundancy it should at least be semi-consistent. Besides, using the whole [hide]/[show] is kind of a pain. It's a lot easier if all of the major links (TOC, Walkthrough, Characters, Appendix) are right there in the header. Just my 2¢. But I don't want to do it if it's going to irritate folks or just keep getting reverted. --WretchedSpawn 19:20, 19 January 2008 (CST)


 * Sorry. The "less than stellar" bit was referring exclusively to the guide layouts, and mostly just the walkthrough issue. The guides themselves are typically excellent. I should have made that clearer and it was still an exaggeration on my part.
 * I had hoped my suggestions for improvement were implied but those could certainly be made a lot clearer:
 * Remove walkthrough from the standard header template or at least provide an alternative template for games that don't require a walkthrough. And for the love of god don't have the template automatically turn the game variable into a link (see Sandbox/SNK Playmore/Characters/Ryo Sakazaki for one of the reasons why). The headers are extremely limiting and I understand why they were created that way, but they're a square peg and some of these holes are round.
 * Add information to the help section on what is expected of guides covering specific genres (i.e. fighting games) and/or pick specific articles that ppl agree are the way all future articles in that particular genre should be structured and then put links to them in the help section.
 * Get people to start adding all of the major TOC sections to the header, i.e. Getting Started, Characters, Appendices. I don't really understand why this isn't already being done more often as the header template seems to encourage this and the results are both attractive and useful. I've been experimenting with using custom headers to improve navigation, as has Bmuig, so maybe something will come of it yet.
 * It would be cool if the headers were able to keep track of the root page when a user dives into a guide's subsections so that the user can always link back to their starting point. For example, when a user is on the Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike page and they click the link to Alex's character profile, they get the Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike header instead of Street Fighter III. The header wouldn't change until they explicitly clicked the links to SFIII or SFIII:SI. Though I don't know how feasible this actually is.
 * Bmuig referred me to the StrategyWiki talk:Move lists project where it seems that folks are already aware of these issues and working to rectify most of them. Something I was not previously aware of. --WretchedSpawn 18:07, 20 January 2008 (CST)

Question about game maps
I like the maps you included in the Mighty Bomb Jack guide, and I'm working on incorporating similar maps for The Lost Vikings but I need some advice. I can make the maps I need, but they end up being quite large. For example, the map for the second level of The Lost Vikings ended up being 1024 x 783 pixels, and approx 207KB. Some maps later in the game would be even larger. I think it's a good size to indicate everything needed for a player, but it's obviously too large to include on a webpage. I know I have the option of using the scrolling map template, but would it be better to use that or to scale down the image? Or are there other options I'm not aware of? I'm afraid that if I scale down the image then detail will be lost, making it potentially less useful. It would be like the difference in the Actraiser maps on snesmaps.com and the version of those maps used in the ActRaiser guide on StrategyWiki. Clearly, the SW version is so small it's hard to make some things out. Any ideas? --New User 21:43, 18 January 2008 (CST)
 * Thanks for the advice. Since seeing the path to the the exit (and the exit itself) is the main focus, I see how the smaller map will work.  Still, I never heard of "cubic interpolation" before, but after playing around with GIMP I think I've figured it out so I'll give it a shot.  Oh and about the name New User, I started that when I would use public computers to access websites, because some sites save the user name in the login screen even after the session has ended.  There's no chance of someone getting my password or anything, but if I use a computer at a library or internet cafe and sign in to StrategyWiki or Wikipedia, then sign out, when the next person goes to the sign in screen the name New User (which doesn't appear to be a user name at all) appears in the username field, so it's really just for increased anonymity.  --New User 22:44, 18 January 2008 (CST)
 * Sounds like the origin of my alias... -- 01:33, 19 January 2008 (CST)

character pages
Hi

if you find some time, please check out StrategyWiki talk:Move lists project.

--Bmuig 06:07, 20 January 2008 (CST)