StrategyWiki talk:Move lists project

New proposed plan
The Move lists project is a project to collect and display all of the special moves from every available fighting game. The idea was to contain a characters moves in two locations: the game in which contained the character, and a seperate character specific page that listed all of the character's moves from every game that he/she was in.

Originally when I kicked off the Move lists project, I thought having one contained location for all of the moves was a good thing. It had one flaw that I knew of, and another flaw that Prod pointed out to me. They were:


 * 1) The two lists with the same information can become out of sync is a user updates a character on the game page but not the character's page, or vice versa.  Plus, this method was redundant.
 * 2) The organization of a game's information was now split into two different places, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just generally confusing.

So we wanted to organize the information a little better to solve both problems. Through the use of transclusion, we can eliminate the redundancy/out-of-sync problem by putting one characters moves from one game on an individual page, and transcluding it as many times as necessary wherever we want. And by moving that information to the game's or (series') specific guide, there is no question where the information belongs.

So the plan is as follows. Using Street Fighter II as an example, every game from the SF2 series is collected together under one Table of Contents. Specific character are placed in the directory structure of Game Name/Character Name. So for example, Ryu's moves from Street Fighter II Turbo are found at Street Fighter II Turbo/Ryu, whereas Ken's moves from Super Street Fighter II are found at Super Street Fighter II/Ken. This way, if a move list needs to be updated, it only needs to be updated once, in this location. The updates will automatically appear wherever the list is transcluded.

All of a specific games moves are transcluded from those individual pages. So Street Fighter II transcludes all of the moves from the SF2 pages. Additionally, to accomplish nearly the same task as the old specific character pages (without quite as much information), we place all of the series information for that character (including biography and storyline information) under Series Name/Characters/Character Name. So all of Ryu's moves through the Street Fighter II series can be found at Street Fighter II/Characters/Ryu. The move lists are transcluded from all of the games that Ryu appears in.

Although this arrangement is not perfect either, it is still better than some of the problem we faced with the original arrangement. Please feel free to discuss this matter here, or directly with myself or Prod. Thanks very much for you help and understanding. Procyon (Talk) 15:21, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Now, you're right about The King of Fighters, that's going to have to be handled carefully. I propose the following: Break it up by saga. So KOF '95, '96, '97, and '98 would all #redirect to The King of Fighters: Orochi Saga, and KOF '99, 2k, 2k1, and 2k2 would all #redirect to The King of Fighters: Nests Saga. Likewise, Maximum Impact would have it's own series page as well. I'm not sure where KOF '94 should go. Either under the Orochi Saga or remain by itself (where information about the PS2 remake can be added.) Thoughts? Procyon (Talk) 16:29, 7 October 2007 (CDT)
 * I do think it's a very good idea to keep the game-specific character and move information at the game that it belongs to (as in Street Fighter II Turbo/Ryu), but I do not think it's a good idea to have Series-specific Character pages (as in Street Fighter II/Characters/Ryu). I can see that this concept works well at SF2 (since every SF2 is just an update rather than a new game), but it really doesn't work that well at other games. For example on one hand, there are KOF Characters that have a completely new outfit and a completely different moveset from one KOF-installment to the next and on the other hand if you take a most characters from SvCC, they are the exact same characters as in the corresponding KOF game (I'm not quite sure which year it was). Additionally, I think its really nice to have one spot that collects all the movelists from all the games the character has appeared in at Capcom/Ryu ... and if one feels that it is important to have different subpages I think they should be created at Capcom/Ryu/SF2 and Capcom/Ryu/MvC etc., so that Capcom/Ryu still is the on place where you can reach all Ryu centric stuff...  --Bmuig 16:01, 7 October 2007 (CDT)(Talk)
 * I'm not opposed to having a Capcom/Ryu in the future. I would just like to see how this works out first.  The nice thing about the transclusions is that we can easily move the lists anywhere we want.  The thing is, at this point, there will be a Street Fighter II/Ryu, Street Fighter Alpha/Ryu, Street Fighter III/Ryu, Street Fighter EX/Ryu, Marvel vs. Capcom/Ryu, and Capcom vs. SNK/Ryu... that's a lot of information for one page, and I'm not sure how useful it would be all on one page.
 * I noticed that when I click on the character name in any SF2 game that is not Street Figther II (for example, Super Street Fighter II Turbo), the header nav at the character page leads back to Street Fighter II, since that page is a sub-page of Street Fighter II. New User 16:40, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Categorization
The next worry is categorization. Here is the initial proposal: -- Prod (Talk) 21:17, 7 October 2007 (CDT)
 * Street Fighter II goes in Category:Move lists/Games
 * Street Fighter II/Characters/Ryu goes in Category:Move lists/Characters
 * Very good proposal, I agree --Bmuig 02:20, 8 October 2007 (CDT)(Talk)
 * I implemented it, but changed some of the details. The categories are: Category:Game move lists, Category:Character move lists, and Category:Company move lists.  The Game category should be for the aggregated list of moves for a game.  Character should be for the /Character/ pages. Finally, the company one is already populated, but those pages need to be updated since the links are all wrong. The other two I've put some example pages in. If you can email me the list of pages you need added to each category, I can easily bot that and get it done quickly. -- Prod (Talk) 12:21, 19 October 2007 (CDT)

Edit Movelist
One of the best things about the Wiki-format is (in my oppinion) that more ore less anybody can find and correct mistakes if the find them. But the way the movelists are set up right now it's really hard for somebody who doesn't know the system to change those movelists. I know that there's usually a hidden "each character move for every game" tap at the toc, but that is pretty hard to find and (as I said allready earlier) in my oppinion more confusing and redundant than helping. I set up the new Fatal Fury: King of Fighters page with some small "edit movelist" links under each movelist and I think it would work very well for somebody who wants to correct or improve something. Please tell me what you think... --Bmuig 03:30, 8 October 2007 (CDT)(Talk)
 * I think the move list project is complex enough that if someone can't figure out the basic transclusion, it might be hard for them to figure out how all the templates work. Either way, an "experienced" person is going to have to help the newbies by telling them how to set up the pages, so I don't think it's necessary.  Actually, some of this should be described on the Move lists project main page. -- Prod (Talk) 10:37, 8 October 2007 (CDT)
 * I dunno, personally, I thought it was a neat feature to add on Bmuig's part. You both make good points.  Procyon (Talk) 10:53, 8 October 2007 (CDT)
 * Having discussed this extensively with Procyon, we've figured out a way to do this "cleanly". It will involve a modification to the Moves header and will add a "edit" link similar to what can be found on todo.  I will be taking care of all the required changes (and updates to all the move lists pages) so please do not change the current usage of the headers.  Depending on the difficulty, I may remove all your (Bmuig's) manual edit links.  If you want a demo, let me know and I'll set that up, but if there are no complaints I'll just finish this off whenever my bot is available. -- Prod (Talk) 13:33, 12 October 2007 (CDT)
 * I'm really looking forward to that ... thank you very much in advance and no complaints from me :) --Bmuig 14:07, 12 October 2007 (CDT)(talk)
 * Before I start, everything will need to be updated to the new page styles. Essentially, Special:Prefixindex/Move and Category:Move lists should come out empty. I'll also do all the page categorization stuff at the same time.  If you guys can look through the pages that are still left there, and make sure all the information has been transitioned to the new guides that would be great :).  Just list whichever pages can be deleted and me or Procyon can get rid of them. -- Prod (Talk) 21:57, 14 October 2007 (CDT)
 * I looked through all my pages, I hope everything is in the new style now... the fallowing pages can be deleted: Move Lists/SNK/ AOF, AOF2, AOF3, Jack, John, Karman, Lee, Lenny, Micky, MrBig, Rody, Temjin, Todo, Wang, Wyler. --Bmuig 11:02, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

There are three pages left to split up Move Lists/Capcom/CVS2, Move Lists/SNK/Haohmaru, and Move Lists/SNK/Nakoruru. After that I should be able to start on adding the edit links. At the same time, the move lists rearrangement is almost finished as well. The character links on Move Lists/Capcom and Move Lists/SNK need to be updated and the pages renamed (I suggest Capcom/Move lists and SNK Playmore/Move lists). Finally, Category:Move Lists will need to be disassembled/rearranged/deleted. -- Prod (Talk) 22:54, 15 October 2007 (CDT)
 * Ok, Moves Header and Moves Header AOF have been updated and all the uses updated to match. cade has been updated to be much cleaner so be careful in your uses.  Last order of business is categorization. -- Prod (Talk) 22:00, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

Unplayable Characters
I've run into a problem and would like to hear your oppinions...

I am working on the AOF character pages right now and there is one Character (Geese Howard) that appears as an opponent in AOF2 but is not playable in the whole series. And theres Freia in AOF3 who doesn't appear in any fights at all but is still a very important character in the game's story. So the question is: do they still get character pages or not? And also: do they just fall into the normal characters section at the ToC or should there be a seperate Unplayable Characters section?

Please add your thoughts... --Bmuig 09:39, 11 October 2007 (CDT)(talk)


 * That is a tough one, but it's an excellent point. How about adding Background Characters under the appendix? Procyon (Talk) 11:10, 11 October 2007 (CDT)


 * I think Backround Characters is a very good way to include story characters like Freia, but I don't think it will work very will with Geese, since he is more of a boss character than a backround character...
 * So how about this: characters that you can fight against (but that are still unplayable) go into the normal characters section and story characters go into appendix/Backround Characters? --Bmuig 14:13, 12 October 2007 (CDT) (talk)

King of Fighters organization
To resurrect a point I mentioned above:


 * Now, you're right about The King of Fighters, that's going to have to be handled carefully. I propose the following: Break it up by saga.  So KOF '95, '96, '97, and '98 would all #redirect to The King of Fighters: Orochi Saga, and KOF '99, 2k, 2k1, and 2k2 would all #redirect to The King of Fighters: Nests Saga.  Likewise, Maximum Impact would have it's own series page as well.  I'm not sure where KOF '94 should go.  Either under the Orochi Saga or remain by itself (where information about the PS2 remake can be added.)  Thoughts?  Procyon (Talk) 10:32, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

I'm not quite sure if I missunderstood you, I thought this whole splitting thing was about the character pages, was it not?

If that is what you mean, then: I agree, but I think it's way to early to start characterising the character pages like this, since there really isn't anything else there than the pure movelists, yet. So when (lets say) all the information needed for Orochi is completet, I could start setting up the first character pages the way you proposed. So for now I personally think it's OK to leave them simply at King of Figters/Characters.

If you mean redirecting visitors who want to view the KOF96 page to a special KOF - Orochi Sage page I don't quite see the benefits. I think it's OK to make an extra page that contains the stroy information for the current story arc, but I really don't think its necesarry to redirect (since I suppose most viewers come to a KOF site for the movelists anyway and that would mean that they have to klick on an extra button that takes them back to the game that they wanted to view in the first place) --(talk)Bmuig 11:17, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

Character pages (again)
Hi y'all...

I think we all agree that the current character page layout is not perfect. I admit that it is a lot better than the previous one, but I still think it could be better. Since there's been a little discussion over the last days I've tried to come up with a compromise to adress the topices that came up.

If you have some time please check out Sandbox/AOFTest. So far, only the Ryo character page is active (and on that page only the AOF game specific page works), but I think you'll get the idea.

With this system, we could link all characters on every appearances to Companyname/Characters/Charactername. This page has all the games that character appeared in as a header, so that you can easily jump back to the game where you came from. If the user is (for example) only interested in Ryo's AOF storyline, there's a direct link to the series specific sub-page, where we keep all the moves and Fight order and Costumes and so on (those are basicly the sub pages that exist at gamename/characters/Charactername right now). This System allows us to create our own subpage system (as we need them), so that (for example) a character that appears in KOF98,KOF99 and KOF 2003 doesn't need three separate pages anymore with very little information on each page (as it is right now); but characters such as Kyo, that appear in every KOF game and have 3 very different storylines or movesets throughout the series, can get devided pages for Orochi, NESTS and Ash saga. It would also help in that we only have to write the basic data once at one single place (since the basic Character Information usually stays the same for all appearances).

I know that I'm completely mis-using Header Nav, but as I said it's just an example, the real pages should get their own header nav type.

keep up the great work :) --Bmuig 06:01, 20 January 2008 (CST)(talk)

Improvements to the Fighting Game Guide Layout
Original post updated by WretchedSpawn 19:23, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Hi all. I've been working to improve the organization and navigation for fighting game guides and I've created a sample page for Street Fighter II at Sandbox/SF2Test.

Some of the problems with the current organization of the fighting game guides as I see it are:
 * 1) Content that the StrategyWiki Guide tells us should go in the Getting Started section is instead getting dumped on the Walkthrough page and the walkthrough links in the TOC and continue box are simply being renamed to How to Play. I'm assuming that this first came into practice because the Walkthrough section is a mandatory part of the header, there's usually no reason to have a walkthrough in a fighting game, and authors didn't want the dead Walkthrough links showing up in their headers so they started using Walkthrough like a Getting Started page. Not only is this inconsistent with guides in other genres, but the Walkthrough still shows up in the header except that now it has 2 different names on the same page, both Walkthrough and How to Play.
 * 2) Custom headers aren't being utilized enough throughout StrategyWiki. Using the custom header field to add links to the key sections of a guide makes navigation a lot easier and it's also more aesthetically pleasing (at least to my eyes) since there's less white space in the header.
 * 3) The current method of putting links to all the games in a series underneath the How to Play heading implies that they are links to How to Play pages for those specific games and not links to the game's main pages.

I've made the following deviations from the current standard fighting game layout:
 * Moved the contents of the Walkthrough page to the Getting Started page where they should be.
 * Changed the How to Play links into Getting Started links which is more inline with the rest of SW.
 * Added links to the Getting Started, Characters, and Secrets and Codes sections to the page headers.
 * Added Controls, How to Play, and Walkthrough underneath the Getting Started section in the TOC.
 * Moved the list of different games in the series out from under How to Play and instead put them under the heading Games in this Series in the TOC.

All of the major sections exist and I've added Chun-Li's page so you can get a feel for navigating all sections of the guide using the updated header and TOC. The views expressed in this post are entirely my own so please let me know what your thoughts are on this issue. --WretchedSpawn 23:50, 20 January 2008 (CST)
 * Firstly, I'll give a disclaimer that I haven't been following this conversation closely, and I'm not really a fighting game guide person, so I apologise if I'm wildly incorrect here. My first thought is that you're using the |num parameter of Header Nav on pages which shouldn't have it (such as Chun-Li's character page) — it's for the main page of a guide only, as it includes the guide in the correct guide completion category. Secondly, why can't you use the normal HN, have all the contents of the Walkthrough in the Getting Started section where they should be, and then write a little walkthrough on how to start a game for the Walkthrough section, similarly to what's proposed here. Such a section could cover any options there are for new games, as well as perhaps advising on some good opening moves, or character combinations. (It's here that my lack of knowledge of fighting games lets me down; I apologise if this is completely wrong.) The bottom line is that I'd really rather the Walkthrough page is kept for a guide, due to standardisation concerns, as well as the fact that in future external sites like abxy may depend on each game guide having a "Walkthrough" page in a pre-determined location. If there really isn't any content that could go on a walkthrough page, then it could exist but redirect to something like the characters page. --DrBob (talk) 00:55, 21 January 2008 (CST)


 * The num thing was a typo. I was copying and pasting headers and not paying attention to what I was doing. It has been fixed. All the more reason to "replace all such usages of |custom with functionality in to transclude a standard page per-guide (if it exists) which would provide the custom links."
 * By exist do you mean that there could just be a walkthrough page that wasn't linked to anywhere in the guide and just said "Hello World" on it? Or does the walkthrough actually need to be in the header? If there absolutely has to be a link to it is there anyway we could hide that link? Having two names for links to the same page is messy and confusing and not a good solution. Having a link named Walkthrough that points to something which definitely is not a walkthrough is messy and confusing. Broadening the definition of a "walkthrough" beyond what is reasonable is inconsistent and confusing and also not a good solution. Though I realize this is a very hotly contested issue that's not going to be decided here, and nor should it be. --WretchedSpawn 01:31, 21 January 2008 (CST)
 * Preferably, we'd continue using the current Header Nav (although possibly with some modifications) for all guides, and it would continue to have the Walkthrough link. I realise that having the walkthrough redirect to something else and then having another link to that page is horrible, and that's why I want to explore every possible bit of content which could be put on the walkthrough page. Obviously, you can't walk someone through a complete fight, but perhaps (if my previous suggestions are rubbish), a short walkthrough could be written to introduce them to the basics of fighting, and some simple tactics/responses to the opposition's tactics? Such a page could be used in multiple guides, and I think would qualify as a walkthrough. As you say, broadening the "definition" of a walkthrough isn't good, but since we don't have a proper definition of one yet (for any genre), I think we could at least think about it. :-) (It really is time someone wrote some guide layout guidelines for the different genres, as well as definitions of what a walkthrough actually is. Probably going to be me later on.) --DrBob (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2008 (CST)
 * Ok. The page is back to using the standard header as it seems that using an alternate isn't really feasible. I've created a Sandbox/SF2Test/Header page that contains the default header for all of the pages except main (main's excluded due to its use of the num field). It then just gets transcluded on the pages that need it. This makes using and modifying a custom header very simple and seems a fairly elegant solution.
 * Since it seems that the walkthrough section is here to stay maybe it's about time we decided just what exactly should go in a walkthrough for a fighting game guide? Tips and tricks? General strategies? Strategies for defeating the game's bosses? These might be better served by having their own Tips and Tricks and Strategies sections but maybe putting this info in the walkthrough is an acceptable solution? --WretchedSpawn 14:09, 21 January 2008 (CST)

WS, you've illuminated to me the fact that this problem is systemic throughout the site, with regards to a couple of genres of games, not just Fighting. So I added my thoughts on the Community Issues page about some alternate header navs that might be more suitable for a minority of games that belong to a genre that isn't compatible with the notion of a Walkthrough. I think if we manage to settle this issue somewhat, than the discussion of what the contents of a fighting game should contain might be more easily discussed afterwards. Just my thoughts. Feel free to weigh in on the CI page. Procyon (Talk) 14:33, 21 January 2008 (CST)