User talk:Rocky

Welcome to StrategyWiki!
Hello Rocky! 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 editing article. If you have a question about the content on this wiki, you can check out our staff lounge page. If you want to ask questions or hang out in IRC, we're usually around. On the other hand, if you have ideas for StrategyWiki, bring them up in community issues. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes ; this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field as this helps to document all of your hard work. Feel free to delete this message from your talk page if you like, or keep it for reference. Happy editing!--Dan 12:01, 4 February 2007 (CST)

Very nice job
Hi Rocky. I noticed the change you made from the dollar sign to the pokebuck sign, and it actually made me chuckle. But attention to little details like that is what can set your work apart from being plain and ordinary to being something special. I just wanted to applaud your efforts, I think you're going to be a very valuable contributor to StrategyWiki. I also encourage you to consider fleshing out some of the other Pokemon guides that are in dire need of attention. Good luck, and let us know if you need any more help. Procyon 10:39, 8 February 2007 (CST)


 * Thanks for the suggestion, I have started Pokémon Silver, Gold and Crystal Rocky 11:39, 8 February 2007 (CST)


 * Hi again Rocky. I got your note.  I took a look at what you've started with, and with all due respect, it's a good start, but it's still pretty much a skeleton of a guide.  The truth is that I am giving strong consideration to working on the Red/Blue/Yellow guides.  If I get started on that, you'll have an idea of what to do with G/S/C.  The fact is, we really want these guides to look like professional publications, like the kind you could buy in a store if we printed it on paper.  That may be more work than a lot of people are willing to do, and I understand that.  But if you want a great example of what a good guide looks like, look no further than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time guide.  It has a really nice layout, plenty of informative tables, and nice screenshots to illustrate each step of the walkthrough.  The truth is, that really took a lot of hard work (I didn't personally contribute to that guide, but I really enjoy it's approach, and model a lot of my own work after it.)  But hopefully if you look at it, it will inspire you.  If I start on the R/B/Y guide, I may have some edits in by the end of this evening.  I'll keep you informed.  Procyon 13:43, 8 February 2007 (CST)


 * Very nice job indeed! 0-172 Talk to me 00:32, 9 February 2007 (CST)

Screenshots
Hi Rocky. My best recommendation to you is to actually use a Game Boy emulator. Emulators are far and away the tool of choice for screenshots. If you're not familiar with how to use an emulator, or how to get the ROM for the game in question, or just how to take screenshots with them, let me know. For Game Boy, I recommend that you use VisualBoyAdvance or KiGB. Just Google those and you'll find them. Procyon 10:48, 9 February 2007 (CST)

P.S. Give me some time to develop the R/B/Y guide and then you'll understand why I laid it out the way that I did. We have a spoiler template that allows you to keep spoiler information hidden in case you don't want to read it. Trust me, the R/B/Y guide won't really look like anything that has currently existed on this site so far.


 * Thanks for asking me about Route #1. In all honesty, I would prefer if you wait.  I've got a whole plan for this guide, and I know I shouldn't commandeer the guide like I'm doing, but I would really like to present the guide as an evolution in format.  However, I greatly appreciate any follow-up edits that you may have to the content that I've already added.  Generally speaking, once I hammer out a page, I rarely revisit it, so I'm alway greatful to people who edit or add to what I laid out.  I should have quite a bit of the beginning of the guide done tonight. Procyon 12:35, 9 February 2007 (CST)


 * Hi Rocky. Just a quick note.  Watch the "I"s in your guides.  We have a policy of maintaining a Neutral Point of View (NPOV), which means no 1st person in your writing.  Instead of saying "I suggest that you..." you could say something along the lines of "It is recommended that you..." or "Be sure to..." Procyon 14:30, 9 February 2007 (CST)


 * Well, Pallet Town and Route #1 are done. Feel free to give me your feedback. Procyon 22:25, 9 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon S/G/C
Hi Rocky. I would be more than happy to help make the S/G/C guide look like the R/B/G guide, but I can only handle one at a time, so you'll have to wait until I'm finished with R/B/G first. As for the pictures, we're slowly importing them as necessary from Bulbapedia. I'm getting the encounter rates from strategy guides, who have disassembled to ROM to determine the proper rates. When I start helping you on S/G/C, I should be able to provide that information. Procyon 11:52, 10 February 2007 (CST)


 * If you'd like to help bring the images over, you're more than welcome to do so. We have decided (for the most part) to leave the accent off of the image names, because it's a pain for editors to find the accented e and copy/paste it over and over again.  The rule is if it's something that a reader see, it should have the accent, and if it's something for an editor, it shouldn't have an accent.  Image names are mostly just for editors.  Be sure to follow that exact same naming convention: Pokemon_xxxName where xxx is the three digit index of that Pokemon and Name is the name (obviously).  Procyon 13:14, 10 February 2007 (CST)


 * Re: Ruby images, I know they are named differently, but they are also a different kind of image. Those images are sprites.  The ones that we are importing are artwork.  So technically, there's no conflict... yet.  What happens to those PD&P images remains to be seen, but for now, they're OK.  The problem with sprites, is that they change from version to version, while the artwork, theoretically, never really changes.  So for the sake of the entire series, we're switching to artwork.  Procyon 13:26, 10 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon Images
Hi Rocky. Hold up on those uploads. Your png files are not preserving transparency and they should be. (Also, Charmelon isn't 004, it's 005.) Procyon 14:48, 10 February 2007 (CST)


 * Rocky, relax. If you check the recent changes log, you will see that I deleted your images (and then I uploaded a bunch with the wrong name, deleted them, deleted one too many, put them all back... *sigh*)  Here's what you need to do to make sure that you preserve the transparency:
 * When you go here, and you click on one of the images, don't just save that file. Go one step further and click on the link to the actual file underneath the picture.  When you see just the image and no other text, you're on the right page.  Right click that image and choose "Save Image As..." and save it to your hard drive.
 * Then rename it so that "Pokemon_" goes in front, and upload it to StrategyWiki. When it uploads and you see the result, there should be a faint checker pattern behind the image instead of any solid color.  That check pattern means the background is transparent.  If you don't see that, start over and try again. Procyon 15:10, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * .BMP should not be your only option. Which browser are you using?  When you look at, for example, Bulbasaur, that file is in PNG format.  So when you go to save it, it should naturally want to save as a PNG, since that's what it was to begin with.  P.S. small nit picky pet peeve of mine, but please place your signature on the same line as your comments, like so: Procyon 15:27, 10 February 2007 (CST)

I was afraid that would be the case with IE (stupid Microsoft). See this. I use Firefox so I don't have that problem. If you're game for downloading Firefox and switching to a much better browser, I highly recommend it. You can find it here. It even spell checks as you type in the edit window. ^_^ Procyon 15:41, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Don't forget to add the Category:Artwork when uploading images. -- Prod (Talk) 14:37, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Actually, for now don't worry about it. It's supposed to go in one of the image categories (pokemon images isn't one of them), but I'm not too sure which one. -- Prod (Talk) 14:40, 11 February 2007 (CST)

Another small improvement task
Hi again. I'd like to make it standard that " |custom=Pokédex " be added to each All_Game_Nav for Pokemon games. So everywhere where you have: you would change it to: and that way, our Pokedex would automatically appear in the All_Game_Nav. It's not a high priority, but if you wouldn't mind doing that for me, that would be wonderful. Thanks! Procyon 16:12, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * Thank you so much! Procyon 17:07, 10 February 2007 (CST)

Got your note
Hi Rocky. I'm not sure if you're in the habit of checking the recent changes log, and seeing that I responded to your message, but I left the response on my talk page. I was just wondering if you noticed. One thing that I would encourage you to do (if you would like) is to take a look at some of the pages that I've created for Red and Blue and look at them in Edit mode. Try to learn a little bit about the techniques I'm using the build tables, display images, and link to Bulbapedia. There's a Bulbapedia template that I haven't yet made use of, but plan to. For Pikachu, it would just be, which would show up on the page as. But every Pokemon that you mention could be linked this way to Bulbapedia's exceptional Pokedex (we have a loose partnership with them.) Anyway, the best way to become a better editor is to always take a look at how other people are doing things that you like. I do it all the time, and I'm constantly learning new tricks for arranging things like tables, text, and images. I'm glad that you like Firefox ^_^ Procyon 13:09, 12 February 2007 (CST)


 * I'll check it out when I have some time to really examine it. But I would trust your judgement at this point.  The guideline for stage completion is generally:


 * 1) The basic skeleton is in place and the bare minimum amount of information is present.
 * 2) The guide is starting to get fleshed out and features a lot of extra information.
 * 3) The guide is nearly complete and is really just missing a few bits of information or it could use some more images to spruce it up.
 * 4) Just about all of the text and every image is in place.
 * Of course as a wiki guide, it's never truly complete, since people will continue to contribute new information to it all of the time, but you'll know when it's at 4. Based on what I've seen, you're at about 1.5 right now, but you can bump it up to 2 if it would make you feel better ^_^ Procyon 07:56, 13 February 2007 (CST)
 * Hi Rocky. The tables are coming along well.  Take a note of the changes that DrBob and I have made.  It can be difficult to do with big tables, but you want to make sure that you have every row and every column well defined.  That is, every row should have the same number of columns, even if the last ones are empty.  That way you don't end up with trailing table lines.  Also, I proposed alternate colors for the table header.  You can change them back if you don't like them.  And finally, because Weedle and Kakuna are thinner than most Pokemon (Kakuna especially) you have to resize them to a size less then 40 pixels wide so that they match the other Pokemon sizes.  I think 35px works for Weedle and 25px works for Kakuna.  I've seen it go the other way too.  Mankey is especially wide, so 40px makes him look to small, so I usually size him up to 50px.  Just eyeball it and play with the numbers until it looks right to you.  Great job!  Procyon 12:12, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Guide writing
For now, it's easier to just start guides where they will end up. Just start the page and use the new guide button that shows up. As for infoboxes, if you are using an infobox for planning your guide, then might as well use a proper infobox, as long as it doesn't stay in the games cat for too long. If you want to have an infobox for your user (which is what I thought you meant) then use tables. Check out StrategyWiki:Guide/Tables for some alternate table syntax (cleaner). -- Prod (Talk) 12:50, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Importing images
Hi Rocky. We never link to another site for images, we only ever link to our own images unless it absolutely can not be helped. So all you have to do is go to a commercial site that sells games like amazon.com, look up the game, find a good image of the box art, and upload it to StrategyWiki. I would recommend that the image not be too big. Something in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 pixels wide should be just right. If you know how to use image editing tools like Photoshop or GIMP, then you can resize any image you want to 320 pixels wide, which is ideal. Even Paint is capable of resizing images with the Scale Tool. Good luck! Procyon 18:47, 17 February 2007 (CST)

Thanks for the tip!
It took me a while to figure out what on earth you were talking about in your P.S. I would simple hold down Alt and type 1-3-0 on the numpad and it would work just fine. At first I was like, "what the hell is Alt Gr?" and I thought maybe you just made a typo or something, but I googled it and found out about it, so I was like, "wow, lemme try that," but for the life of me, I couldn't get Alt + Ctrl + e to work. So I looked in to it some more, and the wikipedia article said it specifically had to be a US International keyboard for it to work. So then I was like, "OK, how do I set my keyboard to US International?" and found out how. So once I had the settings correct, I could hold down Alt + Ctrl + e and get an é, and then I found out that I could just hold the Alt key to the right of the space bar without pressing Ctrl and it would work just as well. I also found out that I could simply press ` once and then press e, and it would show up as one è. So all in all, it's pretty cool, but the problem is, now everytime I want to use " or ` or ', I have to press it and hit space so it shows up because after the first key press, it waits to see what you will hit next in case you want an accented character. So... I'll have to see how used to that I can become.  Thanks though! Procyon 12:54, 21 February 2007 (CST)

Signature
You know you can just use User:Rocky for your sign right? Instead of the full url "external" link. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 09:58, 22 February 2007 (CST)

Why don't you make the rock image link to your talk page (and eliminate the current talk page link. Use this syntax for it: --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 15:10, 22 February 2007 (CST)
 * Sorry, thought that would work. I got the idea from echelon's ocarina but on further inspection found that it just linked to the image page as well. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 15:58, 22 February 2007 (CST)

File type uploads
You know, to be honest Rocky, I'm not actually sure. People who would know about those things are Dan, Echelon, and possibly DrBob. I would check with Dan first. He maintains the database, so he should have a great idea of what files are supported. P.S. Don't forget to sign your posts ^_^; Procyon 12:43, 23 February 2007 (CST)

Bully
I don't actually play the game. I'm just looking into what the effects of having them on the front page would be (Collaboration/Promising guides of the month). -- Prod (Talk) 00:06, 24 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon template
What you can do, is put all the info in a subpage for your userpage (something like User:Rocky/Pokemon template]], and just substitute that into the new pages you start (using the code. -- Prod (Talk) 10:27, 24 February 2007 (CST)
 * You could make more than one template page, or you could just include everything on one page, and delete the stuff you don't need. -- Prod (Talk) 10:32, 24 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just try it out for the next page you make (as everything is on your user page right now, just use ) ;). -- Prod (Talk) 10:40, 24 February 2007 (CST)

Separate IE/Firefox pages
Why do you have separate pages? What's the rendering difference? I've got a wide screen, so it looks somewhat messy. -- Prod (Talk) 17:08, 24 February 2007 (CST)

Pokemon and Mew
Hi Rocky, I got your message. I'll try to fix Route 11 up again. And I will get around to explaining how to get Mew. You should feel free to make your own edits to the guide, no one person owns or is in charge of a guide, so you don't need my permission to edit Red/Blue. If you see something that needs correcting or expanding, go ahead. But I will take care of the Mew information. As for stopping Silver and Gold, I would suggest to you that you don't consider it stopping, but more like taking a break. If anyone knows how working on a guide can burn you out a little, it's me. So take a break from it when you reach the halfway point, and come back to finish it when you're ready. Work on a few other guides and eventually you will feel like returning to it. Procyon 20:10, 24 February 2007 (CST)

Sword of Mana
Hey, thanks for the offer! I haven't played SoM for a yonk, but I wanted to restart it up again, just that after I created the mainpage I realised that I can't find my copy of it. I'll do the Heroine's path (because that's the only path I took on my first go through, so it shouldn't be that hard doing it again) if you don't mind when I dig up my copy, but I'll be slow in contributing for a while yet because I've got school etc to go to - but no worries, I'll get it there!--Froglet 04:04, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * Hey, when you make a page, can you add the link to the page to the ToC on the Sword of Mana article? Should we just create a single walkthrough for the game, and create 'Hero' and 'Heroine' sections as we come across them?  I was just wondering what you think (I'm all for a single guide with deviations as it goes along to accommodate the Hero and Heroine sides of the story, but for now I've just left a 'hero's adventure' and 'heroine's adventure' sides to the walkthrough).--Froglet 05:34, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not sure it should work like that. I was thinking something like this.--Froglet 05:49, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * And I'll start on the Heroine parts when I've done my homework. By the way, can we go with British spelling the whole way?  I'm not that much of a fan of spelling 'amour' as 'armor' and so on, but I do so with other games because it keeps getting reverted otherwise :-P  Doesn't really matter, though--Froglet 05:59, 25 February 2007 (CST)

When only one of the characters visits a place, we could just put Hero Only: XYZ and Heroine: XYZ. I suspect that there's something tricky we could do with the footer nav, where we put 'hero's path click here' or whatever and 'heroines path click here' but I'm not sure how to go about it - maybe the people at the staff lounge would know??--Froglet 06:04, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * How about just having two footer navs? When they don't diverge, we could just have the one, and when they do we can just put two in.  Sure, it doesn't look that great but it's the best I can come up with rather than having two separate guides of the same thing.
 * Nicely done!! :-D--Froglet 07:15, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * It might be a good idea if you moved (or copied) this conversation to the SoM talk page so it will be easier for contributing authors to follow. Just a suggestion.  Keep up the great work.  Procyon 09:32, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Done. Check out SoM's talk page. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 10:22, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Check out wikipedia for more info. -- Prod (Talk) 12:19, 25 February 2007 (CST)

PS's
Instead of leaving about ten PS's that have nothing to do with the original topic on my talk page, why don't you just use my other talk page (click the hyphen in my sig)? I still get notified when it changes, and it prevents topics from going off in wild directions. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 13:31, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Watchlists
I noticed your comment on the Layout suggestion page. I don't think it's possible to do without modifying the mediawiki software. The only thing I can suggest is your watchlist, or making bookmarks. -- Prod (Talk) 14:51, 26 February 2007 (CST)
 * If you didn't know, there is something in preferences which adds every article you edit/create to your watchlist, it's quite useful. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 15:07, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Sword of Mana
Thanks for the heads up about the classes etc. So, does that mean that I can still get the Archmage thing, even though some of my points have been allocated to other classes? Just so long as that I get the 5 points onto the Magician class before I get 5 points on any other class, right? I didn't really notice about those class things, I threw the manual and stuff away when I moved house. Anyways, cya!--Froglet 02:24, 28 February 2007 (CST)
 * Minor thing, but for future reference, it is Duck GI, not Duck G1. Also, for the bosses (like Hydra), use the Som boss template. --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 08:34, 3 March 2007 (CST)

Userbox
Check out Userbox. -- Prod (Talk) 19:12, 5 March 2007 (CST)
 * I created the Wikipedia userbox template. It is at Wpuserbox (I took out the divs though, because the original userbox didn't have them). --Ryan SchmidtTalk - Contribs 19:35, 5 March 2007 (CST)