User talk:Akumaxx

Welcome to StrategyWiki!
Hello Akumaxx! Welcome to StrategyWiki. Thank you for your contributions. If you have any questions, just contact a sysop through their talk page or post on the staff lounge, and they'd be happy to help. If you need help editing, check the StrategyWiki Guide or ask a sysop, we're usually around. On the other hand, if you have ideas for StrategyWiki, bring them up on the forums. To keep up-to-date with the goings on of the wiki, consider adding the noticeboard to your watchlist.

Please remember to sign your name when leaving comments on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (    ); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to delete this message from your talk page if you like, or keep it for reference. Happy editing! — 16:58, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

W&W
Hi Akumaxx, I went ahead and added Wizards & to the Wizards & Warriors table of contents. Go ahead and add what you like in there. Don't forget to choose the right preset button ("Guide page") before you start editing. Also, it's not a huge deal, but try to watch your grammar. Sometimes you write sentences that are overly complicated, or sentences that confuse the meaning of what you're trying to say. (In all fairness, I'm guilty of it too sometimes.) Thanks for your contributions.  Pro cyon  02:48, 29 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I am not an English speaker so that it may go wrong sometimes. Akumaxx (talk) 05:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for trying. I will revise all of your work where English is concerned. Great job on the regional differences page! -- 17:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Saiyuuki World
If Saiyuuki World is vastly different from Wonder Boy, it may be best to create a second guide. However, if they share all of the same elements, we can figure out a different way to do it (like a separate section in the table of contents). For now, can you add notes to a section at the bottom of each Round and title it like ==Famicom walkthrough== ?? -- 18:37, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As I can see, it does not differ too much. I may add something like Famicom difference, but I cannot provide graphics other than direct screenshots. Akumaxx (talk) 01:31, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If you take many screenshots and upload them online (imageshack.us, dropbox, etc., or even here), I can put together a full map from them. -- 17:40, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Adventure Island 1
I am glad to see you uploading images! That is a great first step. I revised the enemies page. However, I cannot extract the white flower. Why? Because the image you uploaded is a compressed .jpg file (this means it has "artifacts", or blurry and bad looking parts to the image that can only be seen when zoomed in). Try saving your images as .png and uploading. This should help to retain the pixel-perfect data of the image. What OS are you on? Windows? What program did you use? Microsoft Paint? I recommend getting GIMP. I think there are language packs for it, too. Is Japanese your native language? -- 18:56, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I will try to get a PNG later. And Japanese is *not* my native language either. Akumaxx (talk) 23:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I took care of it.  Pro  cyon  02:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Guide completeness
Hi Akumaxx. When it comes to whether a guide is "complete," we largely leave it up to the judgement of the users. Take a look at Guide/Adding more information. If you have added enough content to the guide and you feel that it fits the criteria for complete status (all pages complete, plenty of illustrations, can walk the player through the whole game) than you are welcome to upgrade the status of the guide on your own. An admin will notice the upgrade and verify whether the upgrade is valid or not, but I think in your case, it's safe to say that your judgment will be accepted, you're a very good contributor.  Pro cyon  02:00, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Bionic Commando (NES) nominated for featured guide
Please add your support/comments to Featured guides/Current requests. Thank you. -- 17:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Maps
Please add to any map you upload. Thanks! -- 16:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Image categorisation
When uploading images, please make sure to categorise them using the correct image categories and the guide-specific category, i.e.  Category:Game Name images. Please see our image policy for more details. Thanks for helping to keep our images neat! — 18:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This was in regards to the maps added to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night/Walkthrough. I corrected the categories on those images. Please take a look so you know what correct categories look like. Thanks for all your help on this guide (it's one of my favorite games)! -- 18:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

CSotN Richter alt costume
Hey I saw your note on /Walkthrough about holding up to get Richter's alternate costume. I was wondering if you could screenshot that costume for us, like a standing position. I think it would look great under the secrets section. Also, /Walkthrough should be spoiler-free, so we will probably want to sub-page that info or something. -- 01:20, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * These days we can't add images to wiki. Maybe I can make one later, or fetch from vgmuseum. Akumaxx (talk) 02:41, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Image uploads were re-enabled on Friday.  Pro  cyon  03:01, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * @Procyon:Thanks. @Notmyhandle:If you feel something shall use another page, please just go ahead. Akumaxx (talk) 04:58, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Just a heads-up; try to avoid uploading GIFs for anything other than animated images. For some reason, GIFs have given us a huge headache whenever it comes to resizing them in thumbnails or galleries.  PNGs are the preferred image type for still images.  I'm not saying you have to re-upload anything.  Just going forward in the future.   Pro  cyon  05:08, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Upscaled images
Hi Akumaxx. This is just a personal nitpick, and in no way reflects site policy. You are not obligated to follow this request, only consider it. I noticed in the images that you've uploaded, that it looks like you're using a high scale image filter like scale2x, eagle or hq2x. Am I correct? It is preferable if captured screenshots are uploaded in their native format instead of upscaled. This is simply because not every player has access to upscaling, while every player has access to the native presentation. And upscaling is a matter of personal taste as well, i.e. some people prefer one over another, some prefer none at all, etc. So if you don't mind, please upload native format screenshots going forward. Again, this is simply a personal request, not a site policy issue.  Pro cyon  15:40, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no idea about "upscaled". Specifically, the screenshots are taken in BMP and then converted to PNG, while the "area map" is made of Excel form and screenshot tools. I know that I can't make it as good as in Circle of the Moon, but if anything I can improve, please note that. Akumaxx (talk) 02:04, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm assuming you're using an emulator, correct? Which emulator are you using?  If I had to guess, I'd say ePSXe?  ePSXe does a lot of image filtering on 2D games.  There's a way to turn that off, but it's been a while since I used it, so I'd have to check.  Which plugins (again, assuming I'm right about ePSXe) are you using?  By comparison, the emulator pSX puts an emphasis on rendering the screen as accurately to the original hardware as possible.  Pro  cyon  02:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You hit the pot. It's ePSXe 1.70 with Pete's OpenGL 1.75. I need either a help on this, or solve the issue of pSX 1.8 "auto" button mapping. Akumaxx (talk) 12:47, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Please check this page to see if the image passes. Akumaxx (talk) 04:09, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that image looks much better, there's clearly no filter on the sprites or any dithering between the background and the foreground. In and of itself, this is enough to close the conversation.  What follows is if you really want to get extra nitpicky about being efficient, which you are not required to do.


 * There's still some room for improvement. You're uploading 800x600 pngs at close to 100KB per file, and that's not really bad.  But the thing is you're including them as thumbnails, which reduces the size to something like 25% of the original image.  I'm not completely certain what the native resolution of SotN is on the PSX, but I believe it's in the ballpark of 256x240, which is much closer to the size of those thumbnails.  Uploading a 256x240 png should be between 10 and 30KB.  You're probably actually playing the game at an 800x640 resolution, and I don't blame you, playing native resolution on a computer monitor sucks, you'd need a magnifying glass.  However, I'm wondering if ePSXe has the option to publish snapshots at a native resolution instead of at the rendered resolution.  According to the ReadMe, it's F8 to take snapshots.  Is that how you're taking them?  Or are you screen capturing some other way?  Let me know, thanks.   Pro  cyon  01:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't find an option of changing default screenshot options, so that F8 always takes 800x640 BMP. But I can scale it to 256x240 PNG if needed. Akumaxx (talk) 01:57, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's interesting. A lot of the emulators that I use (e.g. MAME, FCEUX) take snapshots at the native resolution regardless of how much I've stretched out the image while I play.  So even if I'm playing a NES game at 1024x768 resolution, the resulting snapshot is always 256x240.  It's strange that ePSXe chooses not to do that.  Although it could be a function of the plugin as opposed to the emulator itself, I'm not entirely sure.  Anyway, is it required?  No.  We already appreciate how hard you've been working on the SotN guide (and that game is still on my Top 5 list of all time greats after all these years) so I don't want to add an additional burden to your list.  You might as well continue in the style that you've been doing, and worry about changing when you start a new guide.  It's a shame that you're using thumbs to display the images, you lose a lot of the beauty in those captures.  Have you considered using the size parameter?  So for example:


 * Ordinarily, we don't advise overriding the thumbnail size since that's something that's actually user definable (you can set the default thumbnail size to anything you like for your own profile.) But in this case, since the image is so detailed, and you're trying to provide the player with a reference that they will recognize, it might not be a bad idea to try.   Pro  cyon  02:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. I would like to know the actual scale ratio of PSX so that I can control the image size.  For a 800x600 it will become 320x240, instead of 256x240.  Actually I have used resized thumbnail before, but I didn't realize that here, and may try in next page. Akumaxx (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Dragon Buster
Hi Akumaxx. Don't feel like you have to do this, but I wanted to welcome you to expand the Dragon Buster guide by a page or two if you want to write up a walkthrough that was specific to the Famicom version. I felt that the two versions were similar enough that it didn't necessarily warrant a separate page, but if you want to go for it, don't feel limited by the current guide's structure.  Pro cyon  13:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually the famicom has a different set of round maps and dungeon maps, but I feel that it's not necessary, since the randomness makes it hard to fit a few pages. By the way, Castlevania SotN may be upgraded to "Guides at completion stage 2-3", while I need time to complete the remaining pages. Akumaxx (talk) 14:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)


 * If you believe a guide is ready to be upgraded, feel free to do it! I will review the change and if it looks good that's totally fine. -- 15:14, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know how to edit the category... Akumaxx (talk) 03:00, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
 * On a guide's main page, look at the Header Nav. There is a "num" parameter that coincides with the completion stages. 0 is for stubs, 1-2 is incomplete, 3 is walkthrough complete, 4 is finished with images, and 5 is highly polished. -- 05:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)