Talk:Aquaria

Notes on some external links
I sent a private message on the Bit Blot forums to the apparent author of the full map luinked in external links to see if it could be included directly here. He hasn't been on that forum since Jan 17, '08 so I'm doubtful of a response.

There is also a good set of maps in PDF form in the Bit Blot forum, but it's much larger. The owner hasn't been active on the forum since Aug 9, '08. http://www.bit-blot.com/forum/index.php?topic=972.0 Delve 14:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Reorganizing the recipes
I'm working on reorganizing the recipes into subpages, or whatever it's called, so they're set up like a move list. Partly because I want to be able to easily reference the info in other locations, partly because it lends itself to that format well, and partly because I can and it was fun figuring out that part of how wikis work.

So far, I've only done the soups. Delve 02:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The reason it was done for the move lists is because simply linking to each character was not sufficient, and treating them as full pages was unwieldy. I don't really see the same benefits here, and it just adds a lot of extra pages to manage.  -- Prod (Talk) 02:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The primary benefit of using this sort of format, as I see it, would be the ability to display the complete recipe data in various lists without needing to maintain them separately. Cooking is a significant part of the game, and being able to find a particular recipe for any occasion is handy. As an example, this recipe list (http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Aquaria/Recipes&oldid=229615) is crippled by a lack of information. Nevermind that it's organized poorly, it dosn't tell you everything you need to know. It would be much more useful if it gave the complete recipe data for each recipe. It would also be useful to list out all recipes in both alpha order and in-game list order so that you can easily pick out which recipes you haven't discovered yet. Creating these lists by manually entering each recipe several times would counter productive. --Delve 02:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Where all would you be displaying them? Within the walkthrough as well, or just on the recipe pages (sorted in multiple ways)?  You could make a table out of all the recipes, which can be sorted (see Kingdom Hearts II/Weapons for an example).  You can add a "number" column so that people can sort by in game order.  -- Prod (Talk) 04:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Displaying the full recipe info within the walkthrough would probably be disruptive so likely only in the recipe pages. However I don't think a table would work for a few reasons.
 * 1) Too much data, I think the table would be too wide to display well. I can test this and see.
 * 2) Uncertain number and type of effect. In order to be sure sorting will work properly each effect type would need a separate and unique column, which brings us back to #1.
 * 3) Wouldn't that eliminate the ability to link directly to a recipe like so? A direct link (rather than displaying the entire recipe info) is prefered within the walkthrough.

I agree that one dynamic resortable table is better than many static lists, but I'm not sure it's feasible. What are your thoughts? Is there a particular reason to prioritize against extra pages? The individual recipes are not likely to change much over time. --Delve 04:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * For the first two, we'll have to see how it looks. For the 3rd, you can add anchors within the page to allow linking, though it's more through html use than pure wiki markup.  -- Prod (Talk) 04:43, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

How well would an achor work from within a sortable table? --Delve 04:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so take a look at these http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:Delve/Testing&oldid=353192. In the first table you can see what I mean by each effect type having a column. The table is monstrous. The second table I've replaced the unique columns with generic 'effect' columns, but as you can see that has its own difficulties. Trying to find the food with the best speed bonus becomes a nightmare because all the speed bonuses aren't in the same column. Thoughts? --Delve 05:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you planning on merging all the recipes to one page, or are you going to keep them all separated like they are now? If they're kept separate (like now), sorting for the effects wouldn't really be necessary (not many to look through).  Another option is to have the recipes and the effects in separate tables. Perhaps even create specialized lists for each effect that link back to the table of recipes. -- Prod (Talk) 06:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I was going to leave the lists by type, but add listings of all recipes by alpha, by ingame order, and by effect. I can take the alpha and game order lists as a single sortable table and just leave the effects out or hide them in alt text on the images, but then it still feels like excessive manual data entry and another point of maintenance of the same data.

For by effect lists I'd want to display the full recipe for every food that has that effect. For example many food types have healing effects. Taking a look here again, I've copied some of the data into a listing by healing value. Many of those are going to show up in other lists as well, defense for instance which would require manually copying things to multiple locations unless they can be transcluded. --Delve 12:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * How about a 2nd table with only effects and name? It would link to the relevant recipe in the first table. -- Prod (Talk) 17:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you think of this, based on making these changes to the existing pages? -- Delve 20:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How about this? With a little work, and keeping the types of foods in separate tables, it shouldn't be too bad (I realize the recipes don't sort properly on that table, but there's not much work needed to sort the ingredients that don't work between the 3 columns). Of course, if you want a table of every recipe with all of the data, it's just not going to sort cleanly for everything. The cleanest sortable lists would have to keep recipes and effects separate, since each causes its own problems, and the images just bloat the tables (though they're almost workable at 32px). Sorry to but in, I just keep seeing the Recipe pages show up in one of the cleanup lists--~ Viz eroth  ( contr  ibs )~-- 04:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

From what I'm reading, users are going to want to find either recipes they don't have or recipes to give them a desired effect. I think Prod's notion of splitting them up between these two ideas is the best way to do it. I would make a big table of recipes: Then some  for each effect with either a list of recipes linking back to the table, or another table with the recipe link and then its main effect and any other sub effects. That way a user can find whichever they're looking for and you can link to the recipes in the table from the walkthrough. - naj zere 09:43, 7 February 2009 (UTC)