User talk:Prod

Please add comments at the bottom, much easier to find that way (or just press the '+' at the top of the screen).
 * Archive 1 - October 16, 2006
 * Archive 2 - December 19, 2006
 * Archive 3 - January 20, 2007
 * Archive 4 - February 7, 2007
 * Archive 5 - April 13, 2007
 * Archive 6 - June 29, 2007
 * Archive 7 - November 21, 2007

Showing my gratitude
Thank you very much for your help. Since of your help, I have been able to revise it with ease. However, I been reading the guide and it seems such a bumper that I don't understand half of it. By the way how did you do it with the link? You told me earlier not to use the categories, but how did the new page appear all of a sudden. This is really confusing for me so if you can help please. Thanks once again.

subpaging details
Thank you for letting me know, I'm still learning so mistakes are bound to happen. I do admit sometimes I'm uncertain if some sections should remain on their front pages or not. For the sake of making sure we all have proper records of what came from where here is a list of anything that has been vague recently: I'm also planning on slowly chipping away at proof reading and subpaging the rest of Radiata Stories and Anachronox. They both seem to have complete walkthroughs but desperately need to be sorted out. --Zaiqukaj 03:01, 18 November 2007 (CST)
 * These were all subpaged from their front pages: Metal Storm, The Immortal, Radiata Stories/Easter Eggs, Radiata Stories/skills, Snowboard Kids Plus, SBK: Snowboard Kids/Modes, Snowboard Kids 2, Sonic R, Mach Rider
 * These were subpaged from thier walkthrough pages: Turok 3, and Anachronox
 * The information on the Fable/Spells came from the attributes page
 * The controls now in Super Mario 64/Controls came from getting started
 * Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets/Getting Started had a duplicate of info found in the characters and spells/potions sections. I read both versions to scan for any diffirences. What little was diffirent was added to their proper pages and the duplicates on Getting started were taken out.
 * Let me know if you want me to do this for anything older than these. It is pretty easy for me to see where the subpaging comes from since the page everything comes from is edited last as the now duplicate info is taken out. I stuck to pretty safe decisions this batch of subpaging so there are only 2 things I think may be wrong.
 * There is a chance the info in Sonic R/Walkthrough should have simply been an items page. The walkthrough pages seem to assume the player already understands what the items are there for. Kind of a prerequisite for understanding.
 * In the Radiata stories guide I just stuck with the term "Easter Eggs" for the list of odd lil things you can find. There are a ton of strange little details and quirks hidden in the game so giving it a page seemed ok. I'm just curious if we have a standard term for that.
 * Here are a few questions as well. Should I also be stating my source when working on the infoboxes? I always use wikipedia for this. I just noticed the new way ToCs are being formatted. It is pretty snazy. Would it be helpful for the cleanup project if I went through the guides updating them to use the the col and h2 templates in the ToCs? --Zaiqukaj 02:10, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Zero Hour Index
Each Row is the General that you would want to play. Each General has 7 missions. They are not all the same or the same order. You cannot play General Leang so the bottom row needs to be deleted. There is no China Infantry Map and no GLA Infantry Map. Those columns need to be deleted. Almost all of the Generals play on the "General Leang" Map, so a column needs to be added for General Leang.

I feel all of this should be added to the actual index page -- plus the walkthrough page so people don't get lost...but let's not get started on that. When my son went to the Index Page, he assumed there were NO Challenge Missions because they were not individually on the index page. This should all be moved to the index page. Hopefully when you add the General Leang column, my Superweapon General walkthrough will appear there.
 * Maybe this will help. I know you are not as familiar with the game as I am.
 * On the column headings, delete all of the "USA, China, GLA" headings and just put "Opponent." This way they don't get confused which way to read the columns and rows.  Otherwise, if I am playing Superpower general, I don't start looking down the Superpower General column, when I should be looking at the Superpower General row.
 * So delete USA, China, GLA and maybe center "Opponent" (or nothing at all) with the subheadings for the columns "Laser, Superpower, Airforce, Tank, Nuke, Stealth, Toxin, Superboss or General Leang"
 * Okay...it's looking pretty good...I got lucky and was basically able to figure out how to manipulate the table....
 * Yes...there is an order to the missions...not always in the same order...sorry if you went to all of that work for nought...however you spell that... And I might have mispoke. There is no GLA or China Infantry "opponent" (as opposed to a General that you can play).  So the Infantry Column was deleted.  I have it the right way...however I did it.How do I prefer?  Hmmmm....a chronological list might be best...although the table is pretty....
 * again...sorry if you went to all that trouble for nada...but there is a definite chronology and it's different for each General (row)

If you really like the table, I guess it could be nine rows for the nine generals and then there would be no column heading (except for opponent) then it would be: OPPONENTS Air Force General v. || Laser    Superpower Tank   Laser Stealth Toxin Gen.Lng Laser General    v. ||Superpower  Laser     Toxin  stealth, etc.

if you get the drift...but the columns might get too fat. Uh...looking at it again...chronological would probably be best...Yes...I was referring to the Table of contents...


 * Looks good, but I have a couple of suggestions...I think it would much less "crowded" if we took out the "edit" tabs on each of the nine generals. I did one example, but I don't know how to make it larger case for the heading...Also, I may play with in the future how it would look taking away the numbers (1-7) and/or the vs. to, again, make it less crowded. Thanks for all of your work on this... Also...I recently did a Stealth General Mission that would be on the bottom, and it is missing...I am sure I can figure out how to put it back in eventually

Much better. Can you add the same format for the GLA missions? Plus I should know this, but I already wrote the first GLA Stealth mission vs. Air Force and it is not showing up. and this time I will remember to put Karlcsr 17:57, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Prod, I type in key words on Yahoo to see what else is out there and strategy wiki comes out on top, and it sends you to the walkthrough page. People see it is a "stub" and they will leave.

I know this is not what you want in there forever, but until then you are sending away business. I will never to my dying day understand your form over substance or substance over form attitude. You are making this wiki less successful. And you are pissing me off. I am ready to blow off this whole site and send my selections elsewhere because anyone who comes here, there is a high chance they will get lost and leave and never find my work anyway.

I have worked months and months on this and you want to "hide" my work. it is totally ridiculous.Karlcsr 00:27, 27 November 2007 (CST)

I figured you would just delete it.Karlcsr 09:54, 27 November 2007 (CST) I will eventually, try in the near future, to pretty up the walkthrough page, but I figured even if I did that, you would still delete the links to the walkthroughs, so I wasn't motivated to do this before. Just leave the links alone and I will try to get to putting nice intro paragraphs and maybe a pic or two to the intro.

I want the links to the walkthroughs...............................................................................................................................................................on the walkthrough page. I know that is a completely absurd proposition. There are lots of "deadends" on the internet and I have had people tell me when they see just "Generals Challenge" with no individual listings, they think they haven't been done yet and leave the page. It does not look cluttered. It looks beautiful. It is a work of art. I am willing to put more artwork, the pics of the Generals or whatever, with these links if that would somehow satisfy you.

I am not asking for the moon and stars. I want the walkthroughs on the walkthrough page. @#$%@&*@#$

I don't want the "link" to the walkthroughs on the walkthrough page. There is a big difference. Karlcsr 15:37, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Have you read Baejung's suggestion? I was thinking about that yesterday... to just have some intro...maybe a pic referring to the challenge missions and a "click below for a full listing of missions." But more eloquently put, perhaps. If that would make you happy. I think it looks fine the way it is.. with maybe a few more pics in the future...Karlcsr 18:30, 28 November 2007 (CST)

No, I don't like that at all. We are going back to day 1 which started this all up. I was compromising on the General's Challenge part, because you would go to a whole page of just "general challenge missions" and then pick and choose.

The beginning missions are the easiest and the only reason they are there is for completeness. That's why my first guide for one of the first missions was originally, "Go north and blow up the dam." It was that simple. To force people to go through five links to get to the one they want is abusive. Hopefully we can get that changed back to the original format. I thought it looked absolutely great.Karlcsr 07:50, 29 November 2007 (CST)
 * I haven't followed the entire discussion (so if I'm barking up the wrong tree just disregard what I say), but I think what Karlcsr is suggesting is perfectly reasonable, and I would have no quibbles with listing the entire walkthrough ToC there. People often want to jump straight into the middle of the walkthrough, and they can't be expected to all know about the ToC in the HN/FN. --DrBob (talk) 11:25, 29 November 2007 (CST)

Well, if that makes you happy, I don't have a major complaint, since once they follow the link, there is a complete listing of the missions and folks won't get lost. I think it is making them go one more link than necessary, but that's not a big deal.

I thought you didn't like clutter, and after the General's Challenge link you have an entire copy of the index page. I thought you didn't like that??? no biggie to me...my main point has always been people not getting lost.

If eventually I set it up with a pretty pic and the same format as above, do you mind if I put similar listings as above (USA China GLA) for the General's Challenge? I may not get to that for a while. I have been trying for 3 days just to beat General Leang for the Nuke General.

More potential MapleStory sockpuppets
User:MapleCreater and his sockpuppet User:MapleMaker. --DrBob (talk) 09:09, 24 November 2007 (CST)

Have begun discussion at community focal points about Lunar Boom Town
Prod, I have begun trying to understand how this site is intended to be used and what it can usually deliver to the Lunar Boom Town player(learners) and developers(engineers artists designers). Can you point me at any process assistance information for newcomers to help me get started effectively? Hope to hear from you either on my talk page here at strategywiki or at Lunar Boom Town Thanks! Mirwin 07:54, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Re: Licences
CC-by is simply a "say I wrote it" license. It doesn't have the "share alike" requirement, so as long as attribution is maintained it can be used with any license. GarrettTalk 18:08, 27 November 2007 (CST)

Battlestations Midway
How would you recommend splitting it? Arrow 13:02, 30 November 2007 (CST)


 * I think I'm pretty much done, so do you think it can stay as-is? If I figure there's more to edit (I'm mainly clarifying what it says in the game's tutorials) I'll make the pages.


 * And what would you suggest I put for the "Walkthrough" page? Arrow 13:42, 30 November 2007 (CST)


 * Alright, I have too much stuff now for the Getting Started page. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but...my beloved banner's going to go off the screen. ;-; And I'll be left with a giant white space in the middle of everything!! ;-; --Arrow 10:44, 1 December 2007 (CST)


 * I thought up a possible solution to the above issue. The banner shows the BSM logo as well as displaying the three vehicle types in-game (planes, ships, and subs). I was thinking - is it possible so that, when one clicks on an image of the section in the banner, that they'll get redirected to that section of "Getting Started"?

Additionally I could use some help splitting the image itself, but...looking at your talk page I just realized you're a sysop now, so would you be able to direct me to someone who could assist?
 * i.e clicking on the "Rule the Skies" section of the banner will redirect to the Getting Started/Planes page
 * --Arrow 22:50, 2 December 2007 (CST)


 * I guess that works. It seems far more powerful on the other side, and it's a little long by a few pixels, but it's much better than having it stretch so far out into nothingness. --Arrow 08:11, 3 December 2007 (CST)


 * Crap. I screwed up on one of my pages. The last revisions is what it should be. I accidentally overwrote the whole article in a move, and I tried to revert it with no effect...think you could help out somehow? --Arrow 15:30, 6 December 2007 (CST)

hmmm
/prods -- 21:14, 30 November 2007 (CST)

When did you become a sysop?
October 3rd, 2006? -- 21:26, 30 November 2007 (CST)

Cave Story/Enemies
While I understand the deletion of the table element (an artifact of copying and pasting the gallery thing from another wiki), I think the restoration of the data on the enemies is largely unneeded. Any important information is handled in the guide itself, and in due time I was going to grab all that from the history and add some of it back in anyways. The only important info, as I see it, is the boss stuff. Right?

I have to admit I am largely concerned with making it attractive at the same rate I make it informative, though, and right now it isn't. What I was thinking was that I'd get the gallery bit organized, then revamp the bottom portion of the guide now--the bit with enemies--so that it is more straightforward, with less useless information; the gallery part would link to the specific enemy when the image or name is clicked. What do you think? Too much for SW, or just moving in the wrong direction? Speaking for SW as a whole, do you think it'd be better simply to leave it as it was and clean it up as best as I can? -- towers  http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a8/Towers_trex.gif 13:33, 5 December 2007 (CST)


 * I suppose you're right, now that I think about it. As for linking from images, I'd forgotten that it is so hard. I'll probably skip it entirely. Your suggestion of a--table, I guess it'd be?--with enemies, stats, and notes in separate columns is probably the best way to go about it the page, anyways. As for bosses, I am keeping them there only because sticking a boss strategy into a guide disrupts the flow and potentially spoils the fight for the reader. It's my opinion that a guide should be as vague as possible, except when you need it to be detailed--hence a boss strategy area. (I'm also sort of just working with what I found there before I started.) Anyways, thanks for the input; I'll keep it in mind. -- towers  http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a8/Towers_trex.gif 15:45, 5 December 2007 (CST)

WatchSubpages
Have you seen this bug? If you have, I think it would be great if you could finish that extension up and make it stable, etc. (I'll help if you want me to). -- 16:00, 18 December 2007 (CST)

Mudman
Hey Prod. Yeah, I suppose you could copy over the current contents of it. It doesn't exactly conform to our character page standards, but it could be useful. The corresponding link would be World Heroes/Characters/Mudman, but I don't believe any of his move lists are available for transclusion yet. Procyon (Talk) 09:07, 20 December 2007 (CST)

come onto IRC
Can you come onto IRC right now? I'd like to get some of that anon-editing stuff from the staff meeting decided and implemented soon-ish :) -- 20:32, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Unlimited SaGa
Feel free to rename the Characters section as you see fit. Basically, I intended the section to hold other characters as well, but I haven't played the game in so long that I can't really come up with more than what's in the manual. I'll have to get around to replaying the game and fleshing out the guide, but other character types can be placed in new sections.

I went through a slight kick when I first started contributing to the site and dug out a pile of games, which resulted in minor updates to a lot of guides and a couple of new guides that haven't really gone anywhere since. Unlimited SaGa falls under one of those categories. I'm actively working on the Total Annihilation expansions (and a bit on OTA), the DS Mana games (Heroes of Mana and Children of Mana), and Amplitude (when I can wrestle the TV away from my wife and daughter). Once in a while I get a bug and hit a couple of other guides, but at best Unlimited SaGa is one that might be fun as my next PS2 project. --Vizeroth 17:14, 7 February 2008 (CST)


 * "Characters" seems pretty standardized by now - considering its a generic term we use for a subpage holding the names of every important "character" in the game. Renaming it to something specific would only work if the term is used within the game - however Vizeroth stated that he got the info from the manual - which from my past experiences disproves the theory that manuals are flawless (they often go off on a tangent for making the manuals' prose better).  Of course, this is a case by case issue - and if Viz thinks the game references the characters that way, then by all means we can rename it as such - the problem though is if we want to include other characters from the game (like villains).  Again though, I believe "characters" to be the standard simply because it is unambiguous.  Perhaps we should have a page under Guide that talks about such standardizations? --User:Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 19:09, 7 February 2008 (CST)
 * Who left this message??? -- Prod (Talk) 10:28, 12 February 2008 (CST)
 * Lol that was me. XD -- 16:38, 12 February 2008 (CST)

Re: Tests
Regarding the tests on the Super Smash Bros. Brawl/Move Lists/Link page; I was doing that because I was trying to debug Template:SSBB Move, and for some reason using the "Show preview" button didn't work. The glitch didn't occur in the preview, but did when the page was saved. I later realized this might be because I was only editing and previewing a section, and the glitch only seems to appear when the complete page is shown. I'm still not sure how to fix it. Wanderer 00:32, 10 February 2008 (CST)

Naming
Alright. I dunno why I've been convinced "title case" was allowed (I guess I just love it ='. -- 14:43, 10 February 2008 (CST)


 * Prod, WretchedSpawn hasn't been back in since he finished his SSV guide. Dunno if he plans on coming back, but I think it's safe for you to make whatever changes you want to make to the Samurai Shodown template.  (Sorry, didn't want to start a whole new section just for that.) Procyon (Talk) 00:07, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Filling names
Sorry..! Actually I find very little time every day - just about one hour.

RE: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
Thanks. I've made a saved a copy of the page so I'll be able to still use the information from it. --Firenova 07:40, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Rename
Yeah, I'm doing it now.-- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 13:55, 21 February 2008 (CST)
 * I may not have chance to check all the sub-pages (I'm just using replace) so they may need checking over. I'll try and do it afterwards but i may not have time-- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 14:17, 21 February 2008 (CST)
 * Done, Do you think I should revert the edit to the title here or not?-- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 14:53, 21 February 2008 (CST)

RE: Advance Wars Days of Ruin Regional Differences
True. I will start standardize the guide to UN version (with the exception of the unit page and CO page as they'll be fine with all the versions). After I've standardized the guide and finished the 'Getting Started' page and story mode characters and possibly add something to the tips section: I will most likely stop helping with Advance Wars Days Of Ruin guide as I have the EU version.

Since I have the EU version, I won't feel comfortable editing or adding to it anymore. The basic storyline, gameplay and missions are the same in all versions but everything else may be different - which I don't know of course in the US version.

--Firenova 05:04, 22 February 2008 (CST)


 * That's the thing, I don't know how much the US version storyline is different from the EU. I guessing all the major points are the same. By the way, what does sidebar do? O_o --Firenova 08:12, 23 February 2008 (CST)

hey
A friend of mine is working on the MapleStory .wz file extractor (reworking it for the new encryption on the KMST files) and he wanted to talk to you about it. He goes to the Xentax forums, so I think you've met him before. Is there a simpler way he could contact you about it? At the moment the only thing I could think of was the IRC for strategywiki, but I'm not sure that's totally appropriate. Thanks in advance.--IsaacGS 14:04, 22 February 2008 (CST)
 * Can you come onto IRC right now? The guy that Isaac is referring to is on there atm. -- 20:08, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance/Table of Contents
The Getting Started heading is set up in sequential order so that readers aren't confused when reading through. I introduce topics in earlier sections and build upon them in later ones, and as such I need the ToC to be ordered correctly. Jobs needs to go below Races. If it pushes it too far down, perhaps adding the listing of jobs to the ToC was not a wise choice. Please discuss things with me before reordering them again, as I initially set up that ToC with flow of content and sequential order in mind. -- 15:45, 28 February 2008 (CST)

Template Categories
I know how much you hate the includeonly tags, but why do you think it matters for the /doc page of a template where it's only going to be included one time? -- 15:59, 28 February 2008 (CST)

Template creation
Thanks for the tip on the Battlefront guide! The template you showed me looks really neat, and would definitely clean up the guide. The only problem is, I can't figure out how to creat a new template. I tried creating a redlink, but that didn't work. And so far I haven't found anything that will just let you create a new page. Thanks for the help! --MaestroFergus 16:49, 1 March 2008 (CST)


 * OK, I want it pretty much like the Starcraft template, layout-wise. Columned parameters that I'll need are:
 * World
 * Environment
 * Hero
 * Difficulty


 * And, of course, I'll need the "objectives" box in the same place. --MaestroFergus 16:58, 1 March 2008 (CST)

Calendar
Thanks for that. Anyway, you may want to check out User:Ryan Schmidt/Calendar for a prototype of something we can embed on pages (I was thinking of putting it in Community Portal or something). Lemme know what you think :) -- 20:52, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Re: Sortkeys
Such sorting is normal practise (and not just on StrategyWiki). Moving the grammatical article to the end isn't just done with the part before the colon. GarrettTalk 17:00, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Strategy Wiki IRC question
I tried going to it, and I was the only one there. I thought it was just strategywiki as the room name? I don't use IRC through the link you provided on my talk page, does that matter? RobJ1981 14:59, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Castlevania II guide
Wow, it feels TOTALLY weird leaving a message for you on your talk page! :P Anyway, I noticed the notes that you left on the CV2 guide, and it's funny because they sort of contradicted the intentions I had when I broke up Koweja's initial edits to the guide. I thought I was making the guide more uniform to our current standard, but it looks like you disagree. I was surprised by that though, since we're usually on the same page in terms of layout. But I guess part of the problem is, after all of this time, I still don't understand the purpose of a page entitled "Getting started". It seemed to me that that's where all the initial information about controls and starting a new game should go. I moved the subsequent information about the game's engine into "How to play" since that content was more general knowledge, and was less specific to actually starting a game. Anyway, I'd love to understand you're thoughts on this better. Perhaps we can discuss it before the meeting. Thanks man. Procyon (Talk) 23:50, 7 March 2008 (CST)
 * I'm not so sure site-wide uniformity is a good idea in the case of the GS pages. Games vary too much to try and force all of them into one mold. As for the page names, "Getting Started" and "How to Play" sound like they refer to the same thing. Procyon's reorganization would probably be more intuitive to readers if we renamed HTP something like "Game Basics". That way it would be clear that GS is for starting a new game while HTP/GB/Whatever is all of the background information that doesn't fit elsewhere - more of an instruction manual than a walkthrough/guide. - Koweja (Talk | Contributions) 09:42, 8 March 2008 (CST)
 * Getting Started was agreed upon because it is all encompassing for "basics" - for it can include non-game information as well such as installation info or things beyond "elements" of the game. Basically everything in the getting started column of a ToC should be able to fit in the GS page itself - we subpage mostly for easy navigation and to separate large chunks of info.  -- 18:06, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Deletion of the Help page
I don't think merging the help page into SW:GUIDE is the best method, for a couple of reasons. First, the IRC and SL aren't subsections of the guide, so from an organizational perspective it makes more sense to have an index page to sort users to the right place. Second of all, the links to the SL and IRC are pretty far down on the page. Even with a fairly wide browser window, you have to scroll a bit to see the links. On a narrower window, like 800px, you have to scroll half the page to see it. A person coming for help is likely to read the text on the screen, decide that this isn't the page they need and leave without scrolling at all. It's one more click for users looking for the guide, but I think the pros of having SW:HELP outweigh the cons.

You mentioned upgrading that page to a full portal. What would that entail? - Koweja (Talk | Contributions) 20:28, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Sandbox/AOFTest and other requested deletions
I found the article when I was hitting random article. I noticed the tag was placed in January. As I looked through Category:Requests for deletion, several others have had deletion requests for a bit. I wanted to give a heads up, in case admins don't check the category much. RobJ1981 14:02, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Master of Orion II/Table of Contents
Thanks for re-arranging this. Philcha 02:24, 11 March 2008 (CDT)
 * You're welcome ;) -- 04:35, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Re your message of 11:36, 14 March 2008 (CDT):
 * I'd noticed the broken TOC and was about to ask your advice. Thanks for keeping an eye on it.
 * For MOO II I'd be happy to see the parts about Economy, Technology, and Diplomacy put on an equal level with "Getting started"; and I suppose "Game overview" could become the first part of "Getting started". But "Walkthrough" is the wrong term for the military stuff, as other guides reserve that term for instructions on how to complete specific pre-defined missions / levels, and MOO II does not have these. I also plan to add separate sections on "Small galaxies", and "Average and Advanced Tech Starts", as these play totally differently from the Medium & larger galaxies and Pre-warp starts for which the stuff I've written so far is designed (like all the online guides I've seen for MOO II; if I can pull the additional content together, this guide will be the only one AFAIK that gives significant help with "Small galaxies", and "Average and Advanced Tech Starts"). These will need to be additional sections at the same level as "Getting started", with sub-pages on race design and balance, economic development and research paths, because: the near-certainty of early contact and therefore of spy blitzes or military blitzes changes the early game; and many of the techs that players rely on in Medium galaxies will never be reached because populations and therefore research rates remain so small.
 * I know the argument that "Walkthrough" is StrategyWiki's standard term, but I think imposing that on all games will make it difficult for StrategyWiki to cover some very popular games. The most difficult cases include the many popular RTS games that have both pre-defined missions and skirmish games. In some, e.g. StarCraft, Total Annihilation and the whole Command & Conquer series, skirmishes are played on pre-defined maps and "Walkthrough" might be appropriate for these maps; but even in these cases skirmishes on the same map can play out very differently because the players start equal and AI players are not following a fairly fixed script (in pre-defined missions the AI starts with a much better developed base and larger forces; and its moves are scripted, e.g. "attack after X minutes"; so most of the human player's moves are forced). The most difficult cases include RTS games such as the Age of Empires series and offshoots such as the Empire Earth series, where the skirmishes are played on randomly-generated maps, so no straightforward set of instructions will help a player to win. And in all these RTS games there are economic, strategic and combat techniques that apply both to skirmishes and to missions. So the general framework for such games needs to have as main sections at least: "Getting started" (including overview); "Managing your economy"; "Strategic techniques" (e.g. scouting / information gathering, and how to respond to what you find), "Tactical Techniques" and "Mission walkthroughs". It gets even worse in the case of the Age of Empires series and Empire Earth series, because they allow players to specify both the starting tech level and the highest allowed tech level, which produces large differences in gameplay (starting with race design in the Empire Earth series). Philcha 12:50, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for fixing the TOC, again! Philcha 05:26, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

MapleStory TOC
MapleStory/Towns/Amoria Take a look at the ToC there... There's like, a blank line which looks to me to be caused by the "show" link, then another one with no apparent cause separating the different lines. I think it shows up in one of the other sub-ToCs as well. I looked at it and can't really find any reason why it should look that way, can you possibly take a look at it? I suppose it's also possible that it's just my screen, but that seems unlikely seeing as it's been normal for so long.--IsaacGS 01:57, 13 March 2008 (CDT)
 * Done. -- 03:00, 13 March 2008 (CDT)
 * I think it looks kind of... odd. Would splitting it into smaller continent templates be better? IE Maple Island, Victoria Island, Ossyria, Masteria, World Tour...--IsaacGS 23:10, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

I mean like literally break them up into separate pages like Template:MapleStory/Versions/Areas/Masteria but leave it as it is.--IsaacGS 23:28, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

If you put the icons in a separate column and remove the float, you can minimize it even more like so (note that the location of the icon column has no effect, this was the final product of testing and doesn't reflect customization options): -- 01:13, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
 * They could go in different places on the MapleStory/Towns page.--IsaacGS 03:07, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

I think it is, it's relevant to keep the original creator on there somewhere at least. If you can think of a better way to denote it then you're welcome to try that, but I can't think of one.--IsaacGS 23:17, 10 May 2008 (CDT)
 * wouldn't it look odd if it's only on that one though? The leaf marker seems to be the best option for all other towns, so i don't think that one should be treated differently because it's in all versions. Then again, the world tour chart would be treated differently than the other charts in that case.--IsaacGS 01:09, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

Dead Rising CC A-SA
The link they provide to the license on their copyright page is for CC A-SA 3.0; I'm not really read up totally with my Creative Commons licenses, so I was assuming they'd linked to the correct one. -aniki21 11:51, 17 March 2008 (CDT)
 * If you think it'd be best to delete that addition to the page until the compatibility issue is clarified, then by all means do. I seem to be bringing up quite a lot of licensing issues lately... --aniki21 12:18, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

Wikibooks
Do you folks still want this or this? 142.167.208.113 13:44, 19 March 2008 (CDT)
 * We only provide guides for video games, so yes to #1. -- 19:41, 19 March 2008 (CDT)
 * Yes to Medieval, no to D&D (video games only, like NMH said). Haven't had the chance to get around to it unfortunately.  I'll see if I can get around to it this weekend (*adds to todo list) -- Prod (Talk) 19:51, 19 March 2008 (CDT)
 * OK, well #2 is VFDed; can you speedy #1 when you're done? - no need for discussion on that one. 142.167.200.107 21:52, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Reconsidering Fighting Game layouts
I'm starting to see that the whole grouping fighting games by series and forcing the movelists on the front page isn't working out too well. Honestly, I think I was adhering to an idea that I had in my head a little too strongly and not thinking about the ease of navigation enough. Upon further consideration, I think it would be best to break the guides up a little bit. What I mean by a little bit is that the characters section still needs to be common across the entire group of games which is where the problem lies.

The whole point of the current arrangement is so that you can look at, say the SFA2 page, and then visit the SFA Ryu Character page, and still see a link back to SFA2 in the TOC. Under my new proposal, that wouldn't happen. And whether my new proposal is accepted or not hinges on this problem.

My new proposal would be for each game to have a) their own front page (with a series nav template obviously), b) their complete move lists on a separate page, c) a transcluded How to Play page (since it rarely changes, although new details specific to each version can be appended below the transclusion), d) their own secrets page, and then the rest of the TOC is a transcluded Characters section. However, like I said, if the reader is browsing SFA2, and they click on the Ryu link in the TOC, they're going to end up inside the SFA TOC, not the SFA2 TOC. That's the only problem I can't get around. We don't want to transclude every single character... that would suck, and I know how you feel about noincludes. Anyway, think this over and let me know how you feel about it. Thanks. Procyon (Talk) 16:46, 3 April 2008 (CDT)


 * Actually, I just thought of another problem. The only reason it makes sense to list all of the characters from a series is because all of the games from a series are in the TOC.  If I were to break the games apart, then we wouldn't necessarily want characters who first appear in, say, the third version of the game to appear in the TOC with the first two version of the game, so there goes my transcluded character TOC idea.  The other option is that we start moving towards a Capcom/Character/Ryu type of page... I dunno if I like that idea though.  Argh, this is so frustrating because there's no reason to have a separate page for SFA1 Ryu, SFA2 Ryu, SFA3 Ryu, etc., but yet we need separate guides for each of those games...  Procyon (Talk) 16:53, 3 April 2008 (CDT)

SFA3
Well, things started off pretty good, but SFA3 is just a mess. I had to split the moves up across two pages just to get each page to load. It kept timing out on me when I tried to keep it as one list. There's no good way to clean those lists, as the information there is pretty much trimmed of all excess. The only thing that I was wondering is would it help if I did away with the SFA3 template; the one that adds the X, A, and V to the move names. I was wondering if I could do a subst and just bake those letters into place, so that the processor wouldn't have to generate those dynamically. I have to figure it's easier to render the tables if those letters were hardcoded into the table than to rely on the template, which was only made to make it easier to edit... and having just typed that I realize that ease of editing may be an argument to keep them. But to be honest with you, they're never going to change, I know those letters are in the right place. What do you think? Procyon (Talk)

Separate ToCs?
Why not use separate ToCs for these differences? Versions that have identical character rosters (I'm assuming some do) would share ToCs under the name of whichever release came first, and the rest would have specific ToCs just like for any other game. Since these guides are finished anyway the ToC duplication shouldn't result in anything getting out of synch, and this would mean all the other advantages of the shared ToC would remain. GarrettTalk 04:40, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

The King of Fighters '98
Hmmmm ... I don't think I quite understand what you mean: which other games do you mean by "Shouldn't all of the games be subpages of that"? But you are right about the movesets and the links on the character pages, I will change that asap...--Bmuig 10:24, 4 April 2008 (CDT)(talk)

Cleaner method
Just saw your HTML comment trick for Eternal Sonata/Party - I always wondered what that was for on some of the other templates. Thanks! --aniki21 11:39, 9 April 2008 (CDT)

Re: C&C3
I plan to merge the new units in with the GDI and Nod units, rather than give them a whole article on their own. --Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 09:56, 10 April 2008 (CDT)


 * What about for things that exist in the expansion, yet are so minor they can be described with a single sentence? i.e One of the new expansion units is an engineer which has all the capabilities of an ordinary engineer, except it has a handgun. --Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 12:18, 10 April 2008 (CDT)


 * Well, that'll work. I still intend to split them up though, probably by faction.


 * Which one do I change, the documentation or...the...other one? --Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2008 (CDT)

Re: Nintendo EAD
Thanks for the help. Can the bot do everything that's needed? Infoboxes need fixing, a new category needs to be added, plus categories might need changing in some cases. The main EAD list is on Wikipedia here:. The Strategy Wiki category is this: Category:Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development. The infobox needs Nintendo EAD in the developer section. Also note: Nintendo Research & Development Team 4 was the previous name of the development team, so some articles might have that (or a shortened version). As of now: there is 50 something to do. I'm going to try to do as much as I can this week if possible, since next week will be busy with Mario Kart. RobJ1981 00:06, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Templates - little link back
Well, they only appear if the base page exists - for instances like Mythos/Uniques and Mythos/Uniques/Documentation the links do not appear. -- 04:58, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Contributor lists
Sorry about that. Figuring out what information to keep intact and what's too much is confusing at times. I guess I'm still getting the hang of it. Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it! Are there any other merging/history things I should know about or do differently? --Zaiqukaj 13:34, 14 April 2008 (CDT)
 * Thanks for pointing those out. 2 of them were missing on my to merge list. O_O


 * Hey, could you take a look at RuneScape/Monsters/Greater demon. In the very middle is some remaining navigation from where the information was taken. It's a really bad copy paste by the person that did most of the monster stuff and I have no idea if the source is ok. --Zaiqukaj 02:16, 20 April 2008 (CDT)
 * Cool. Once I'm done merging all the monsters onto one page I'm going to look for some popular looking guide sites to compare the information they have to what we have. If one copyvio popped up there could be others. --Zaiqukaj 09:46, 20 April 2008 (CDT)
 * A lot of the quest pages are very large so merging them all into one page is not a logical solution. I'm at a loss for how to represent them on the ToC (there are so many).If you could help with that it would be very helpful. Everything else sounds like a cakewalk and I will get right to it. :3 --Zaiqukaj 02:47, 21 April 2008 (CDT)
 * I swear this game wants the biggest ToC ever. I just noticed that the RuneScape/Places page is all links. It looks like there are more locations than we thought. Should the links just be moved to the ToC and the page deleted? Beyond that things are really coming along. Taking a break from merging by cleaning up/proof reading right now. --Zaiqukaj 07:06, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

SSBB
So, Stadium -> Stadium Temp, delete Stadium, subpage stadium temp, then delete stadium temp? -- 02:26, 16 April 2008 (CDT)
 * And the reason you want me to do this is so the history stays active and accessible, and not on a deleted page, right? Done.  -- 13:38, 16 April 2008 (CDT)

Fatal Fury: King of Fighters/Table of Contents
Hi

I tried to clean up the pages linking to Fatal Fury/ Table of Contents but I ran into a problem: since all the character pages are at Series Name/Character name the system autmaticly assumes that there is a page called Series Name/Table of Contents. So those links don't appear anywhere on the character pages, but the system insists that there is a link to it at the used templates section (which is red now since I deleted Fatal Fury/Table of Contents). So there's really nothing I can cleanup since there is no real link to that ToC ... :(

--Bmuig 09:33, 20 April 2008 (CDT)(talk)

Hi again, I saw that you found out that the problem with the ToC laid within the Footer Nav and that you changed it (which is very good). Unfortunately now all the FF Footer Navs don't work anymore (which is not so good^^). The problem is that the footer now tries to link to Fatal Fury: King of Fighters/Characters/Charactername (which doesn't exist) when all the characters are at Fatal Fury/Characters/Charactername (under the name of the series, as it should be). For an example check out Fatal Fury/Characters/Ryuji. I think the easiest solution to this problem would be if we could add an additional parameter to Template:Footer Nav, so that it is possible to give the complete path of the next and previous page, something like prevpagecomplete, that could be used optional to prevpage. I think that should be possible, hope you think so, too... :)

--Bmuig 09:45, 21 April 2008 (CDT) (talk)

Incorrectly Named Images
Hi there. I tried using the multiple image upload form but unfortunately it kinda messed up the filenames. Is there any way to rename them, or to they have to be deleted and re-uploaded? Thanks. Shadowtrooper 17:32, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

Image size issue
 look at it... it's huge. Enormous. So big that strategywiki can't make a proper thumbnail of it. What should I do about this? There's a second form which looks basically the same, but I don't want to upload that until we figure out what to do with this.--IsaacGS 01:22, 4 May 2008 (CDT)
 * Is there a way to do a "Wildcard" in the IP banning? a dozen different edits, all the same "quality", all IP addresses started with "165.21.155.*". It'd be a lot easier to just do them all...--IsaacGS 11:59, 6 May 2008 (CDT)

Re: Wii VC
I agree with getting rid of those lists. However, some of the summary information may be useful, such as the prices per console and things like that. -- Prod (Talk) 21:45, 10 May 2008 (CDT)
 * Most or all of that info is on Wii/Wii Channels. GarrettTalk 21:49, 10 May 2008 (CDT)

Re: WatchSubpages extension
A user came onto #mediawiki on freenode's IRC earlier today asking what license your WatchSubpages extension is under, saying that he needed some sort of written note by you specifying exactly what license it is under (I have no idea why). I'm guessing it's GPL, but I'm not sure, so if you could reply with the answer, I'm sure he would appreciate it. Also, archive your talk page, it's getting quite large :) -- 17:31, 21 May 2008 (CDT)
 * Er, I've been meaning to talk to you about that too... since I kinda already did a month or so ago:  :) -- 18:27, 21 May 2008 (CDT)
 * Nope, nothing else needs to be said. Anyway, there are about 30+ people who work exclusively on translating stuff into other languages, so I'm not all that surprised that it's been so widely translated. -- 19:31, 21 May 2008 (CDT)

Thoughts on Ryan's deletions?
See:, I think he's being a bit too harsh. Why exactly should we do this to newcomers? I didn't go through all the deleted pages, but the table of contents would've been fine (once a little cleanup happened). The deletions appear to be counter-productive to me, and I'm just frustrated with this deletion rampage by Ryan. We probably would have more members, if things were just cleaned up instead of outright deleted. Also see: User talk:Anthony1. I gave Anthony a welcome message, while Ryan did tell Anthony to see the guide. However, just deleting things shouldn't be the route to go. Especially when the game is real, and Anthony's intentions seem to be fine. He needs help, that's all. If you look through many stub articles here, most could be just deleted for the same reason Ryan posted in the template note on Anthony's page. But they don't need to be, as people will expand them. Things take time. It's not like the site is out of space or anything. RobJ1981 20:49, 21 May 2008 (CDT)
 * RobJ: Be bold, if you don't agree with something I'm doing, then revert it and clean it up; I won't re-revert you without a discussion about it first. Special:Undelete is there for your use if you really want to bring pages back, but I am vehemently opposed to basic skeleton pages and/or scarcely-populated pages that don't have valid, helpful content, no matter who makes them. I undeleted the ToC and populated it a bit, since that was probably the only semi-valid page I deleted, the other two were, in my opinion, nothing but cruft. -- 21:03, 21 May 2008 (CDT)
 * I think the merge of the /Walkthrough to /Table of Contents is fine. We should try to promote new users to contribute, irrespective of quality, but if deletion is part of cleanup, that's good too.  I'd say leave a message on his page about it and the rest is in the histories :) (he might be interested in improving those separate pages).  -- Prod (Talk) 23:59, 21 May 2008 (CDT)

Images
Sorry, I just have an obsession with images :-) (and I made a habit of using unnecessary images back when I worked on Call of Duty 2.) After cutting out the superfluous, the page should have about half the current number. Baejung92 20:50, 25 May 2008 (CDT)