StrategyWiki talk:Achievements project

Achievement progress
I recently created the "Portal cameras" template for Portal, as you work towards the achievement in quantifiable steps throughout the game. I just thought; is this applicable to other games, and if so, why isn't it a standard template? I propose we create a "Achievement progress" template based off it, and use that instead. -- 08:39, 14 October 2007 (CDT)
 * I've gone ahead and made changes, but I decided to just add parameters to achievement instead of creating a new template. The changes are on its documentation page. -- 12:22, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Template without gamerscore
Some steam games (audiosurf, PAA) have achievements without gamerscore and 1 steam game (TF2) has some XBLA achievements and some plain ones. Could we get an achievement template without the gamerscore column? Kadir 03:20, 23 June 2008 (CDT)
 * What's PAA? If they don't give points, what do they give? I don't think the  symbol is that specific that it can't be used for other systems, but we could potentially create our own "achievement score" image (anyone feel like taking that one?) -- Prod (Talk) 00:48, 24 June 2008 (CDT)
 * I've added a nog parameter to Achievements Header, which (when passed a non-empty value such as "1") will remove the column. --DrBob (talk) 16:05, 25 June 2008 (CDT)
 * Can't actually remember what PAA was, but it's probably a game. Steam achievements don't give anything, they're just there. Thanks for the nog parameter! Kadir 20:46, 25 June 2008 (CDT)
 * PAA = Penny Arcade Adventures. GarrettTalk 21:01, 25 June 2008 (CDT)

Achievements table, image categorization
Hi, I changed the image and description columns on the achievement tables to unsortable, since pictures don't sort and sorting by description probably won't do anything helpful. I just saw on the main page that achievement images are to only get the Achievement images category, but why is this? If they're associated with a specific game, why wouldn't they be in that game's image category as well? I think I've actually added guide-specific categories to achievement images before, so I'll have to dig around and find them if they need to be changed back. - najzere T 08:17, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Guide-specific sounds reasonable to me. -- Prod (Talk) 20:44, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Trophy images category
Should the project page be updated to include the Trophy images category? Currently it says only Achievement images category should be used, and I'm unclear on whether that's just because it was written without trophy images in mind, or if trophy images were intended to be included in the broader Achievement images category. — najzere T 18:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Trophy's are exclusive to the PS3 right? I think a separate category is better, because it's more specific. Or rather, it's more exclusive. I know this article was written prior to or during the release of trophies. Most likely details were excluded because not enough information was known at the time. Wikipedia lists that trophies were released in July 2008, so perhaps there was a huge time lapse (the project was started in April 2007). -- 23:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

ToC naming
Are PlayStation trophies titled "Trophy" or "trophy" in games? On ToCs right now the standard is to name pages with achievements and trophies as "Achievements and Trophies", but if trophy isn't capitalized, then it's against our page naming conventions ("Achievements and trophies" would be more appropriate). — najzere T 05:53, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like you are correct; The official documentation always refers to it in lowercase unless it is part of the name of a trademark or menu option. Unless someone comes along with a counter-argument I guess I will get onto renaming these at some point. GarrettTalk 20:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Achievement template lite
Apprentice Fortune Hunter Apprentice Fortune Hunter I'd like to use the achievement progress function of the achievement template, but the sidebars are too big. Does anyone know if a lot of games could use a pared down version of the template? The page in question was Uncharted 2 - A Rock and a Hard Place. The three templates were already causing whitespace on my screen (1440px), and I still had to add two more. It's made even harder that the template only floats right, so you can't move it around at all if it would look better on the left. On the right is a mock up of a "progress achievement" template, or at least the parts of the normal template that I want to use. Could more games use a similar, smaller style template? I don't want to make a whole other template for just one game, but if this is common, it might make sense to. Or make the existing template more customizable. — najzere T 06:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I've updated the main template to allow float/width parameters (after testing it on my wiki.) I still think the template is on the large side, since it tries fitting a rounded rectangle around a rectangle, as in Portal/Chamber 04.  For the game in question, I don't recommend placing all three achievements in separate boxes, but rather show all three treasures in a single box; it's compact and probably would have the same effect.
 * I actually prefer it without the option to float. Images go left/right just for the sake of layout.  I think having it always show up on one side in a consistent location across guides is helpful.  What is the purpose of the width parameter?  If this is just to save whitespace on some pages, I don't think it's worth breaking from current ad-hoc sizing standards. -- Prod (Talk) 05:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, let's standardize it to the right. If actual issues arise with its placement we can change it later. The optional width parameter helps standardize the placement of the achievement image to the left side of the title/words, like the default image shown in the example at the start of this discussion, it could also be useful for adjusting white space. I have never seen the achievement template used next to itself multiple times (see the addition above), but I like how it looks. I don't think we need to modify the template to allow for multiple achievements within one box. Also, if there is a width parameter, there should also be a font size parameter to help scale things. -- 06:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Just realized that this has come up before. As far as the specific guide goes, I like Sigma's idea to consolidate all the treasures from one page into a single achievement template (not multiple achievements in one template mind you, just all the treasures on the page building up to the achievement), and I think I'll start incorporating that. The template is distinctive enough as it is that consistent placement on the right doesn't seem very important to me. I already have enough of a struggle with control selector only being on the right; I'm afraid the whole site's becoming lopsided. :P The template is unnecessarily large due to the rounded edges, so maybe we could scale back the radius a bit. The biggest offender to my mind is the huge "Achievement" title, which seems redundant and takes up a lot of room. Also, it has nothing to do with PS3-only games (I believe an option to switch to PlayStation black has come up before as well). — najzere T 10:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * So add a ps3 parameter that when filled changed the color scheme and make the font size adjustable (see the simple change I made to the 2nd use of Achievement above). The rounded edges only add about 60 pixels. I don't have a problem with it being able to float left, but we can get around that. By "consolidate all the treasures from one page into a single achievement template" do you mean just use the progress bar but with a number instead of a percent? -- 03:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Naw, I think the terminology is getting mixed up. In Uncharted 2 you earn a trophy (PS3 object) after collecting so many treasures (in-game object). I was just saying that instead of making separate achievement templates each time you find a treasure, you could use just one that increments the progress bar by all treasures on the page. I've since scrapped this idea, as they're still too big for the times when two templates will be on the page. If I include any indicator (barring a slimmer template), I'll just come up with a guide-specific one. As far as the ps3 parameter, it would be nice, although I'm not sure what the font size would be for. If it was meant for the "Achievement" title, I would rather get rid of it all together as it's redundant. – najzere T 06:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's a mockup for switching out system-specific colors: http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/3523/templatewj.png. Obviously the colors aren't exact, but you get the idea. The only changes to the layout I made were to get rid of the "Achievement" title and move the achievement name to the top of the template. In this example, it's using everything but the progress bar, but if you omitted things like the achievement image or gamerscore/trophy, it would become pretty thin. I still don't see why we'd want to limit our layout options by not including float parameters. — najzere T 20:43, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Achievement/trophy page standardization
Is it better to have a standard way to present achievement/trophy info on these pages, or just leave it up to individual editors as long as they're using the correct templates? I like to split secret and DLC achievements/trophies from the main list and put them under separate headings, but I've also seen them mixed in with the "normal" ones in a single table. We don't currently do this, but as seen on other sites (example; click "Show secret details" link), there is sometimes special display considerations for secret/hidden achievements/trophies. If they were in a separate table we might have some options in that regard. On the project page it says to split the table to different categories, but it isn't very specific.

Another part of the pages that doesn't have a consistent representation is the intro line about how many achievements/trophies there are and what they're worth. That sort of thing might be able to be templated as it's always the same (X achievements worth ), though a simple guideline might be more appropriate. The project page gives a general guideline now, but it doesn't give any formatting rules and I've seen the number of achievements bolded, the system name linked, etc. Anyway, if anyone thinks the uniformity should be nailed down a little tighter, these are the major areas of concern that I've come across. — najzere T 23:20, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In the vein of doing something special for secret achievements/trophies, I made a mockup of a possible hide/unhide toggle for them: test.html (mediafire d/l). It works by putting a class on the row with the secret achievement. The JavaScript goes through the page and turns the first three cells in rows with this class into hide mode. The user clicks the row to show the actual achievement/trophy image, name and description. It needs error-trapping for a row with no image and changes to direct clicks on the image to the image page, but it seems to work all right besides that. Anyway, it's just an example of how we could do something special for hidden ones, to keep in line with how various other sites do it and how it's displayed on the actual system before you've gotten the achievement/trophy. — najzere T 00:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that normal, secret, and DLC should be split into separate sections. People shouldn't be wondering why they don't see certain achievements in their game when they see it on the page.  They can also jump to the specific section for the DLC they may have newly downloaded.  I don't think there's any real benefit of templating/standardizing the intro line.  As long as it makes mention of the most important information (# of achievements/trophies, total G, etc.), I don't think there's much benefit.  Also, if we split the secret achievements off into a separate section, people can easily avoid reading it.  I don't feel the hiding functionality is necessary. -- Prod (Talk) 04:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. A remaining problem with secret achievements/trophies is when they are secret on one system and not on another. Using control selector would work, although it would be ugly with table code. I can see editors moving an entry from one section to another according to their system, but duplicating it in both sections would be confusing too. I haven't seen other sites dealing with this, since all the sites are specific to either achievements or trophies, or at least have them in separate sections. Maybe some games' wikias have had some ideas. — najzere T 07:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Achievement solutions layout
Recently Najzere has been adding achievement solutions. He has handled this by putting the solutions at the very bottom and linking to them. The Godfather's guide once took a very different approach, putting the achievement solutions in the description column (a side-effect of migrating from a very different format). This has got me thinking about the best way to handle solutions. The way I see it there are a few possibilities: It would be nice to have an official standard layout decided on since this sort of content will inevitably become more common. Anyway, I am curious to know what the rest of you think. --Garrett (talk) 08:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Simply linking to an explanation below (Najzere's solution). This keeps solutions hidden from those who don't want it spoiled, but the downside is that those who do want spoilers have to go back and forth between the lists.
 * Integrating the solution with the table (probably in some different format). This puts the solutions close to hand but spoils it for those who don't want it spoiled and will make lists noticeably longer.
 * Having the solution hidden in the achievement row using a modified version of the nav box script, maybe with the whole row being clickable (sort of like this) and ideally with some sort of "expand/collapse all" link. This has the advantage of putting all the information in one place without actually spoiling anything but could feel a bit awkward and might make editing more complicated (it would probably mean using templates rather than raw table code).
 * I've been thinking about this for a while now as well. I actually think the guide is more important than the list, as you can already see the list if you own the game (except for hidden ones) and we're a game strategy site. I would be in favor of replacing the description with the strategy in these tables and just using the official description as a placeholder for achievements that don't yet have a strategy or don't need one. The only reason I've taken the strategy out of an achievements table is because the project page is explicit that only the official description goes there. Some problems I see with the solutions above are:
 * Putting the guide at the bottom is complicated (maybe less so if links and anchors aren't used) and you have to go back and forth between the list and the guide.
 * Colspans are more complicated and make the table unsortable.
 * Expanding/collapsing the strategy is more complicated (although maybe not too much with the use of templates) and may be unintuitive to readers or inaccessible to people with JavaScript turned off (past discussions have shown that this is a minor issue though).
 * Another solution might be to put the guide on a completely separate page, but this introduces redundancy into the guide and is once again two places to go for all the information. It's a really tough call, as the strategy and an easy way to find/sort the achievements (by gamerscore/trophy, name, etc.) is very helpful. All points considered, if simply replacing the description with the strategy is not an option, I prefer the third choice of clicking to reveal the strategy, although the implementation needs to be easy for both readers to understand and editors to produce. Also, I think a hidden colspan row would still muck up the sortability of the table.


 * I think something that might come up is a suggestion to just put the strategy in the walkthrough, so I'll say now that it's important for a separate achievement guide to exist for a couple reasons. First, many achievements are based on a cumulative process that may be spread over multiple guide pages with no single place to define a strategy. Second, it's extremely unlikely (and in some cases impossible) to get all achievements in a single play of the game. Achievements were introduced to increase the replayability of games, and I have to think most readers looking for how to obtain an achievement have already beaten the game, so a consolidated list would be much more useful (this is how I personally do it, although I've only platinum'ed one game so far :D). The above argument for a separate guide actually applies to most side-missions/collecting in games, but I'll leave that for another day. — najzere T 16:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Procyon suggested another possibility: a pop-up overlay containing the solution. This would look smoother than the expansion method and wouldn't interfere with sorting. --Garrett (talk) 03:09, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds pretty slick. It should be persistent enough to click links inside it and copy/paste from it though. I wonder if we're not overthinking this whole thing. People who have put extra information in about achievements (The Godfather, Dead Rising, Ghostbusters) have all put the information below the description. It seems to be a natural place for it. — najzere T 17:12, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a few classes of achievements: One is performing a task until it's complete (e.g. minigun 1000+ enemies), one involves story game progression, and one involves uncovering a specific secret. Just checking the list of achievements can give away the secrets themselves.  Progress based achievements can be handled in-guide (such as with Portal and Half-Life 2: Episode 2); secret based achievements can appear in both places.
 * If I'm at the stage of the game where I'm looking at the achievements listing, most likely I wouldn't be spoiled by any information that appears. In either case, information on how to obtain the achievement can be either done as a popup or just below the decription. --Sigma 7 18:01, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * How will this degrade for non-js users? -- Prod (Talk) 19:22, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Overlays can be easily implemented with CSS alone. The JS-enhanced version would be persistent and have a close button so that it doesn't just vanish when the reader moves the mouse out of the way to read the text properly. --Garrett (talk) 20:01, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) Another compromise would be to have hidden content below the official description with a show/hide link. NavFrames currently uses display:none with the "collapsed" class, and it takes JavaScript to show it. An alternative is to use JavaScript to hide "collapsed" content on page load so it's still visible for non-JS users. Changing NavFrames probably isn't what we want though, as all the spoiler tags on the site would be unhidden for non-JS users. At any rate, that would keep the strategy with the achievement and give a way to hide it if wanted. Only non-JS users who also don't want to be spoiled (incredibly small minority?) would be adversely affected. If a whole new template/JS implementation is made for this, I think a show all/hide all link, as Garrett suggested in his first post, would be very nice as well. Alternatively, maybe we should rethink hiding the strategy... that's what we do here after all. — najzere T 20:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘

Well, after having played around with the CSS popup a little, I can say that it is very cool. It seems extremely backwards to me that we would treat strategy on this site as a spoiler however, so I don't think it should be used here. Instead, this would be great as a replacement for NavFrames in the actual spoiler template. — najzere T 18:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Avatar Awards
With more games beginning to adopt Xbox 360 avatar awards (e.g., L4D2), I'm wondering if anyone's got ideas for how to include this in our guides here (since awards are just wearable achievements). A new section on the achievement page? A separate awards page? Just asking before I go and do something rash. :P — TheTwantalk 02:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd put them in another section with their own table on the achievements pages. If the L4D2 ones are anything to go by, they don't necessarily tie in with a specific achievement, so they can't just be added to an existing description cell. Also, no gamerscore is attached, so a naked Achievements Header would probably suffice (Image, Name and Description). We'll probably want to also add an "Xbox 360 awards" category to the pages as well. My 2¢. — najzere T 07:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, so I tried out the awards thing on L4D2. It looks all right to me, but I'd still like input.  Instead of using images of an avatar wearing the award, I used the icons you'd see in the Avatar Editor for visual consistency.  This should also keep things consistent if one were to use the Achievement template to show when an award is unlocked. — TheTwantalk 01:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Look good! The only change I would make is to categorize the images as "Xbox 360 avatar award images" so they're not lumped in with achievement images. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. If you have any advice on where to find info on avatar awards or where to get the images, feel free to add that info to the project page. — najzere T 02:31, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Current progress
I think all achievement pages and images have been added for all games that have them. So if we stay on top of any new guides that are set up, it should be a breeze to quickly add their achievement/trophy page. I have a script to make them rather quickly, so if you see one that's missing, you can let me know on my talk page. One issue that may still remain are Windows and Steam achievements for games that also have Xbox 360/XBLA achievements. I went through the latter two categories adding achievement pages, but I'm not sure whether some of them should also be categorized as Games for Windows achievements or Steam achievements. So someone knowledgeable in that area who could double check those would be a big help. — najzere T 01:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * All Steam games with achievements are listed on this page. All GFWL achievements are covered here on Xbox360Achievements.org. Note that the achievements included and their points values won't always be the same as the console versions. --Garrett (talk) 04:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I went through everything again and checked GFWL and Steam this time. I'm now keeping track of what needs to be done with achievements and trophies, so I'll try and stay on top of it. Thanks for the links! — najzere T 19:17, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

New trophy template
I made a new template for trophies at trophy. Kept everything I could the same as achievement for consistency. Changes include new trophy/Sony-ish colors, changing the title from "Achievement" to "Trophy", making Image:Trophy locked.png the default image icon and taking out functionality for both trophies and achievements. I know this template was created and deleted in the past, but the achievement template's supposed trophy support only extends to adding the trophy unlocked icon on the side. I considered modifying achievement with more parameters and switches to change classes, titles, images etc., but in the end decided it was simpler to just have two templates. So if there are any major problems with having this template, speak up, and also let me know if you think the colors can be improved. Update – Here's what it looks like in action: Heavy Rain/Prologue. — najzere T 23:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I would suggest the opposite, in fact: overhaul the original template to meet changing needs. I went with the green theme because it complemented sidebar, and at the time the only achievement system was the 360's; in fact the 360 itself actually uses a grey pop-up, as do the PS3, GFWL and Steam. I think it's time to pursue a design that fits all achievement systems. You can see my early attempt at User:Garrett/Achievement. Among other things I have eliminated the redundant "Achievement" text, reduced the image size, and migrated the gamerscore/trophy to a div; the achievement name will flow around it rather than them being stuck on the end of it. The overall template size is much smaller--especially its width--which means achievements won't gobble up so much precious space on a page. --Garrett (talk) 05:00, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * One template to rule them all! :D That's great, especially ones shared for multi-platform games. Regarding your user page mock-up, what will the default image be if one isn't given (or will there be none) and can you bring the gamerscore/trophy down off the top right corner a little? Other than that, it looks really good. Nice work as always, Garrett. :) — najzere T 16:56, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Something I just thought of: let's make the background color the same as the background of all the Xbox 360 achievements so they appear to be transparent when shown in the template. — najzere T 19:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I have changed the background and added a potential place holder image (score/trophy position tweaking still to come). See what you think. Regardless of what the place holder image ends up being it won't be displayed for long before achievement project people jump in and upload the appropriate images. --Garrett (talk) 20:49, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, true. The placeholder image is probably only needed in the cases where we don't have the actual image on the wiki yet. It looks good to me, so I think you should update achievement and the necessary classes if no one has any objections. — najzere T 20:54, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

The proposed overhaul has reached a mature state; since this is a significant change to the template I want to get some additional feedback from other editors before implementing it. I have posted a mention of this on the noticeboard. --Garrett (talk) 03:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've made one minor optimization to how the image is displayed and the optional description (will have to confirm that looks OK). Why is there both points and g as parameters, or is one going to be deprecated? Same for name/achievement? — Prod (Talk) 07:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the idea is to deprecate those parameters current ones since the new ones more closely match the usage of other achievement-related templates. --Garrett (talk) 08:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * So which will be the final ones? -- Prod (Talk) 13:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I know "g" is the final one from the first pair and I assume "name" is final as well, since it's not platform-specific. — najzere T 16:54, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it looks all right, although it seems very complicated for what we're getting. There is a lot of whitespace if the name and description are short and both the image and trophy images might as well not be included they're so small. I don't know how much more work you want to put into this thing, but I don't think the extremely rounded corners are helping and the description text seems to be awkwardly placed since it protrudes much farther left than everything else. I still think it should replace the existing one right now, as it can be fiddled with later if anyone else agrees it should be.


 * Of more importance to me is why the float parameter was removed. With all the floating elements we use I don't know why we'd ever want to limit our options and make things harder on ourselves by taking out or not including positioning customization. A single thumbnailed image could make it worth having the template float left, and suppressing floating all together would be better for including the template in columns. Having no float option is essentially saying the template will always look best floated to the right, and I don't think we can make that prediction. — najzere T 16:54, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Prod removed the float parameter to match the current template; I have restored it. As you have recognised this is very much an interim overhaul; while it shares some layout problems with the original they are now less pronounced. I will be experimenting with a more major in the future. --Garrett (talk) 23:53, 5 April 2010 (UTC)