User:RAP

This is User:RAP; I originated from NIWA and my NintendoWiki: Gonna drop some work here.

= The to-do list of potentially extreme proportions = (always nice to keep track of the stuff you wanted to do when time is at my side)

General

 * Add Achievement pages in game articles (2013 July 21) – Do game pages need to be created in order for the Achievement pages to be created?

Games

 * Boulder Dash (2013 July 20) – A game that I loved playing (even if I never finished it, it's fascinating for countless people creating custom-made levelsets), along with other countless Boulder Dash clones; want to show my love by contributing to the pages. Due to the company releasing the game in other formats, I'm going to focus on the original C64 version for the time being.


 * Getting Started
 * Objects
 * That's done; maybe more game details. All it needs are the images, in a separate section of the table.


 * Emerald Mine (2013 July 20) – One of the first Boulder Dash clones to stand out especially on the Amiga. I played the original along with countless Emerald Mine Club levelsets in a game called Rocks'n'Diamonds that 99.99% accurately replicates the engine.


 * Getting Started – Because I only played the original in Rocks'n'Diamonds, I do not have any knowledge of how the interface, controls, etc work on the original Amiga.
 * Walkthrough
 * Levels
 * This is a unique situation because there are two modes: Singleplayer mode and Teamwork mode.
 * Every teamwork only level appears every 4 levels (like 4, 8, 12, and so on), every singleplayer only level appears every four levels, and the rest of the levels can be played alone or as a team.
 * All-in-one package for neatness! Similar to how Super Mario 64 ' s Walkthrough pages work with Super Mario 64 DS info incorporated.
 * Appendices
 * Scoring
 * Believe it or not, but I took a lot of time gathering info on scores from all the levels; singleplayer and teamwork mode.
 * I went the extra mile and determined the highest score values per object (the top 3), the lowest score (the bottom 3), and determining there's an object that gives 0 points, or whether it's impossible to do so.
 * Such a seemingly useless feature, maybe it's because there are multiple profiles so that other people can get a higher score per level?


 * Sub Terra (2013 July 21) – Another Boulder Dash clone, it's more of a puzzle game in general. Does this count as worth covering? It used to be sold commercially, but it's now released as freeware. Does the sequel count as well?

Investigate

 * Acno ' s Energizer ' s Level Codes section page: Numbered bullets that continue on instead of restarting – That's a new thing I never seen. I tried making the numbers update work when splitting up into sections, and it didn't work. This could be very useful.

= Ideas, ideals, and mindsets worth implementing for the wiki to improve content quality and presentation = (it's more like a reminder of ideas I like from browsing the StrategyWiki pages or stuff I came up my own; some of them are my opinions that I wanted guides to be like, some of them are something that should be enforced in StrategyWiki; will probably move this into a separate page?)

General

 * Avoid writing anything having to do with "you", and use "players" sparingly as much as possible (2007) – this is because 1) Using "You" feels like the article or guide is focused on a single player as opposed to multiple players who will read the same content, and 2) Even though this is a walkthrough website, personally, using "you" feels unprofessional; while this is much more harder to do, the payoff is worth it because of gaining more experience from writing and improving language.
 * Had this mindset from writing Mario Party series minigame articles on MarioWiki due to their "You"s policy


 * Avoid personalizing the writing [or have an informative tone] (2007) – it's similar to the " No 'you' " entry. Again, much harder, but the payoff is great on improving and practicing language.
 * Had this mindset on reading and writing content on MarioWiki; then again, it applies anywhere else most of the time


 * Compress PNG image files to the max (2009-2010) – since PNGs are lossless, compressing them will not lose any image quality; not only the compressed PNGs will retain the image quality, it will load faster! Good for lowering bandwidth usage from the servers' end and users' end.
 * Inspired from checking out this page, and thus created User:RAP/PNG


 * Use bulletpoints and tables to make info easier and faster to read (2013 July) – this is due to the amount of info people read everyday, especially online; cut the fat as much as possible and get to the point so that users can get the info easier and faster; it doesn't mean that everything should be done in that format though.
 * Inspired from reading a bunch of articles on the topic of bulletpoints and the average lifespan of how many books are read per user
 * First implemented in Temple Run ' s Obstacles section, and Boulder Dash ' s Objects page


 * MINOR THINGS: Make the tables position center, reduce as much empty space as possible (2013 July 20) – this is about having small improvements that make a lot of difference to how the info is presented and read; these are usually self-explanatory.

Codes and Passwords

 * Add quick article links from the Passwords pages (2013 July 20) – this is so that users that need help can jump into the specific parts of the walkthrough pages if they are having trouble advancing through after entering a password.
 * Inspired from Super Bomberman ' s passwords page
 * First implemented in Chip ' s Challenge passwords page


 * Make the passwords or codes look nice in a new font type (2013 July 20) – this is done so by adding   in-between, an example resulting from "1N09aaW" to "1N09aaW"; I'm not sure why it renders like that, but it beats stuffing "  " repeatedly. UPDATE (2013 JULY 21) : It seems that  does the same thing as well. Changed it to   because it's has less characters. Change before and after my edit. I wonder if there are more of these things...
 * Inspired probably from Contra III: The Alien Wars ' Codes and passwords page
 * First implemented in Chip ' s Challenge passwords page


 * Entries should consist of the effect before the password or code (2013 July 21) – When reading from left to right, seeing the password or code first in the table doesn't tell any info unless one looks at the right and is informed of the effect by entering the password or code. Swap both of those places instead to make more easier to read. From an educated guess, the reason passwords or codes were placed before the effects is the old mentality of organization when it comes to editing plain text files. There weren't tables or wikis back then to make it look neat effortlessly.
 * Inspired from Chip ' s Challenge passwords page
 * First implemented in The Guardian Legend ' s Passwords page, and Spider-Man 2: The Sinister Six ' s Passwords page.

= What could've been the final result = (When you're getting experience, and wanted to tackle an issue; you are bound to think up some good ideas worth implementing, but a fallback makes things complicated, forcing you to tackle it a different way)

Tables
There are two things prevented me from doing this: 1) It's too tedious to insert the desired info into the tables properly, and 2) I realized that after watching a YouTube video of a playthrough, they're not how many tanks and what types are there, but sending out number of tanks by type and in groups linearly. Additionally, I spent too much time preplanning and trying to make it work when it was simply overcomplicating things.
 * The proposed map and info table for Battle City ' s Stages section from the Walkthrough page (2013 July 22) – The table must consist of the image of the map, the stage number (with a name that describes how the map looks), difficulty, and the number and type of tanks they'll appear in the map. After some planning, and a lot of size tweaking, this was the intended result:

Because of these unfortunate consequences, this is the final result. It's much more simpler to handle. Even though the text info and images are completely separated, it makes the info simpler to read and more focused. Alternatively, users won't spoil themselves if they only wanted to read the text info, and not look at the image maps. Unfortunately, for image-only users, they might run out of luck as they may accidentally see image maps that they didn't see before (maybe an extension that covers the whole sections blank unless clicked?).

= '''Notable contributions worth pointing out = (I usually do maintenance and repetitive work before, but I've been experiencing fresh opportunities on tackling a variety of problems worth resolving due to the wiki's wider focus on helping users get the most out of the game, or complete it; this is dedicated to the best entries that stand out)

General

 * Revamped the Metroid ' s Passwords page with a new table (2013 July 21). Could've been a bit better because the table was designed only for a short list, not a long one. If there is a long list, the "Items" section of the table needs to be repeated every 10-15 entries, or there should be a redesign that will still keep the checkmarks.