StrategyWiki:Staff lounge/2008/October

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September 2008 | October 2008 | November 2008

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2006

need for speed most wanted for psp

i have a ps and have just got the game need for speed most wanted for it. i would like to kno if there is any way u could let me know how to put the bounse parts on my car in the game? i just started playing the psp so im very new at this if u mite not be able to help can u seggest some one that can? i called the game stop and they dont know how to niether.

thank you for your time. chris whore_man420@yahoo.com

I don't think any of the admins have this game. It looks like there are no real active authors for that game, so I'm guessing that no one can help you at this time. Also, if you want a response, come back here; there's no need to email you. Did you mean bonus parts of your car? Or bounce parts? bounse isn't a word... --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 06:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Toolbox

How can I edit the Toolbox on my user page? I'm trying to add a "Najzere's Pages" section. Thanks, - najzere 13:42, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how NMH or Skizzerz does it, but you can check out my page for how to hardcode it.--DukeRuckleyTalk | Contribs 16:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I copied Ryan's templates; I think he made them so that the code on his actual user page would be minimized. Plus, it looks kinda cool as an extension of the Toolbox. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 17:35, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
For mine, use {{User:Ryan Schmidt/Toolbox Header}} and {{User:Ryan Schmidt/Toolbox}} to build each of the respective items. Check the docs on each page for syntax, etc. if you want to use that. For an example, see User:Ryan Schmidt/UserNav (that's the one that I use and transclude onto each of my user pages). --Skizzerz 21:24, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks all! - najzere 06:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Whoops, need some more help. I used the two templates in my UserNav page, now I just need to know what transcluding is and how it's done. Thanks, - najzere 06:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Transclusion is the process of showing or using the content of one page on another page, without having the data saved to the page itself. It's how templates work; except transclusion can be used on any page (templates just have a special namespace for organization). You would thus put the following on the pages that you want your custom nav to appear: {{User:Najzere/UserNav}} --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 08:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks again, - najzere 16:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

--how to get army base to grow in sim city 2000-

question ... how do i get army base to grow in simcity 2000 ? user name borntobroil reply at borntobroil@hotmail.com 10/10/08

You'd be better off asking on our forums. --DrBob (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Verbose SNK names

I think the folder names for many SNK fighters are too exact. Instead of Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, it should be moved to Fatal Fury or Fatal Fury 1 and only have the subtitles in the pages themselves . Other examples include:

Fatal Fury: King of Fighters Fatal Fury finished
Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory Fatal Fury 3 finished
Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior Art of Fighting 3 finished
The King of Fighter 'year King of Fighters year disagree, "The" is part of the title, and can be removed from alphabetized category listing with DEFAULTSORT.
SVC Chaos: SNK vs. Capcom SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos
SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium SNK vs. Capcom disagree, as expressed below for the sake of disambiguation.
SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash Card Fighters disagree, as expressed below for the sake of disambiguation.

Blue Phoenix 23:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

For what benefit? Our policy is to go by the official names of the games, and redirect the alternative names and misspellings to the proper page. -- Prod (Talk) 00:19, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Prod. This policy is in place to ensure the accuracy of information. The last two games in your list of examples speaks directly to that point. I personally know why you chose the fighting game to be called SNK vs. Capcom and the card game to be called something else, but someone else may disagree with you. With such a policy, there can be no argument what the guide should be called. At the same time, Blue Phoenix, I highly encourage you to create as many appropriate redirects as you feel necessary. Fatal Fury should redirect to Category:Fatal Fury (which I just fixed), but Fatal Fury 3 should (and better) redirect to Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory, likewise with Art of Fighting 3 and Art of Fighting 3: The Path of the Warrior. Your concern speaks to the accessibility of the guides, and the redirects serve that purpose, while allowing the policy of appropriate guide names to remain in tact. Procyon (Talk) 03:00, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
If that is the case then shouldn't the Capcom pages be named similarly.
Street Fighter II Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Street Fighter II Champion Edition Street Fighter II' Champion Edition
Street Fighter II Turbo Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting
Super Street Fighter II Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Street Fighter Alpha Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams
Street Fighter III Street Fighter III: New Generation
Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact: Giant Attack
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future
and that just the Street Fighter Games--Blue Phoenix 13:28, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Ouch... I feel like I just got punched in the nuts... OK, we need to review this matter more closely. Good call BP. Procyon (Talk) 17:14, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
Just redirect the unspecific titles to the category page or an alternate disambiguation page (I think the category is sufficient). --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 19:44, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I aggree with Prod that we should allways stay with th correct title of the game (and that all the incorrect titles should be simple redirects) but I strongly suggest that we keep the character pages where they are at [Series Name/characters/character name] and do not move them to [first game in the series name/characters/character name]. The reason for that is simply that it is very confusing for the user if he/she is at [Super Street Fighter II Turbo], clicks at a link labeled Ryu and is suddenly at [Street fighter II: The World Warriors/Character/Ryu] with no obvious way to return to the game where he/she came from. --Bmuig 20:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC) (talk)
I've been discussing these game names with Procyon, and this is quite the mess of inconsistent naming and excessive ports/re-releases. The general policy is to go with the official name as given by the company. This is decided on a game by game basis and doesn't need to be consistent between series' (or even within). So, some games can go with the full titles and others don't need to, all depending on what the companies officially say the name is. Any other names should be set up as redirects -- Prod (Talk) 20:25, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
This whole situation has gotten way out of hand, and has created an extreme mess of problems, and spaghetti links. Therefore, in order to simplify the matter, I would like to propose what Blue Phoenix proposed at the start of this thread, and that we go with the simplest form of the official title, and leave the subtitles for redirects. The bottom line is what's best for the reader, and it's doubtful that the reader will ever search entirely on the title "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior" or "Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters." They're just going to search for "Street Fighter II" (or 2, or just SF2, or whatever) and "Fatal Fury". So let's try and simplify this once and for all. Subtitles should only be used when they can be used to distinguish between two games that are similarly named, such as SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium, a fighting game, and SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash, a card game. Procyon (Talk) 00:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It looks like this is the best way. Use the simplified version, redirect the long version(s), and make it well known whats going on on the main page of each guide. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 21:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
OK, it looks like Bmuig and I have managed to nick the subtitles off of some of the SNK games. As I mentioned in the table above, there are still certain games that have legitimate and necessary reasons for containing the subtitle. Further cases can be brought forth for discussion, but would probably be best taken care of in the forums than here. Thanks for your help Bmuig! Procyon (Talk) 22:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
There's still KOF'98 to take care of, but I'll do that sometime later this week (I'm really tired now) ... and thank you for your help, too, Procyon, that went a lot faster than I expected :) --Bmuig 22:21, 10 November 2008 (UTC) (talk)
I think the disambiguation title reason is flimsy, and if the official names are the same, should use something else for disambiguation. If my box says SNK vs. Capcom, how would you know which title to go to (even if you knew which ones existed). From what I can tell, I don't think it's an issue in this case, since those seem to be the official names anywayz. -- Prod (Talk) 06:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Song lyrics in various articles

I recall asking about this a while ago, and I'm still wondering: why are they still in articles such as Donkey Kong? It became a featured guide: but the lyrics are still there. They don't serve much purpose, and it doesn't help in understanding how to play or beat the game. Perhaps all the lyrics should just be moved to a subpage? This might be a minor thing, but I don't see why the Wiki should be a lyrics database for some games. RobJ1981 00:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It's a bizarre experiment that you need to know the lyrics in order to sing a song. I even doubt theirs a musical wiki version where you get to edit music but that's just me. All I'm wondering is how many wiki's like this is out there. There's Wikipedia and Strategy Wiki and I'm certain there could be more. Anyway, this is an editable site for games and lyrics should be a minor thing unless it's needed for games that has music which plays a major role like High School Musical for example. Johnnyauau2000 06:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It's just nostalgia. If you would check the history, you'd see it was Procyon who has added most, if not all, of the lyrics (if I recall correctly). And you are correct Rob. I don't care, but if you'd like to remove them, you have SW's scope to back you up. Also, we're still discussing a second wiki for stuff like that, so the future may hold a better home for things like that. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 03:51, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
They will be removed eventually. The plan is to move them to the second video game non-walkthrough wiki that we plan to create. If it really bothers you, you can remove them today. As long as they are in the history, I can retrieve the text when the other wiki becomes available. The scope for the second wiki still needs to be defined, but right now it is essentially anything that is expressly video game related that falls outside of SW's scope, including characters, items, locations, history, merchandise, etc. Contributions that I plan to submit are primarily retro in nature, but they include Pac-Man Fever lyrics, scans of the old Fleer Pac-Man cards and the Topps Donkey Kong cards, scans of vintage retro magazine covers and Atari Force comic books (and possibly other Atari comic books), and descriptions of all the Nintendo Game & Watch series and video game watches that Nelsonic used to make. Procyon (Talk) 04:27, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

GTA: SA mission problems

I have got the key card from Millie( I think that is how her name is spelled) but the mission for that is called Key to her heart, i have done all the other onesunder that except breaking the bank at C(i dont know how to spell it) but i am sure you know what I mean. I cant find where to go to get to that mission, could you please tell me where to go. thank you....alishia please email me at purple22_07@yahoo.com

Hi. You'd be better off asking on our forums. --DrBob (talk) 16:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Image storage

Hi, is there a page where we can browse the images uploaded to the wiki? I'm looking at the Entropia Universe/Skills page, and all the image links are broken. How can I research uploaded images to see if anything like the references links are in there? Thanks, - najzere 06:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Special:ImageList. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 07:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. - najzere 08:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Image-related question: Is there a way to make images not automatically link to their information page? I'd like to use an image as a link. Specifically, I'd like to mirror a 10x5 table from a game menu, filled with pictures of different items, and have a click on an item result in page navigation to a corresponding anchor. This might confuse users who are used to images directing to information, so I would add instructions to click an item for more information. Is this doable? Thanks, - najzere 15:55, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I just thought of using <imagemap></imagemap> with a rectangle of the same dimensions as the image. Is there a problem with this or a better way? - najzere 16:52, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
That should work. It's supported natively in MW as of 1.9. See this and this. Procyon (Talk) 16:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Check the bottom of The King of Fighters '98: The Slugfest. -- Prod (Talk) 18:24, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for the links. That King of Fighters table is exactly what I'm after. Would it be less resource-intensive to upload one large screenshot of the table and imagemap each item, or upload 50 little images each with their own imagemaps and table them? The individual images would most likely be uploaded anyway for displaying in their respective sections. - najzere 18:45, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
It depends. The KOF '98 page is a copy of what I did for NeoGeo Battle Coliseum (totally forgot about it too). I did it that way because I needed those images independently anyway for the character pages. If you can repurpose the individual images, then do it that way. If you can't, than use just one large image. Procyon (Talk) 20:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Another image question for you. I just uploaded a bunch of images and catagorized them as Sprites and Castle of the Winds images. How do I create the Castle of the Winds images page, or how do I get it in the Guide-specific images category list? Thanks. - najzere 21:17, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Go to Category:Castle of the Winds images and put Category:Guide-specific images in the contents. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 00:35, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Would it be worth creating Category:Spells? I've got 34 spell images to upload for Castle of the Winds and I know lots of games have spells with representative images. I was trying to figure out which category besides Guide-specific to put them into, since they're not exactly Items and Sprites is kinda vague. - najzere 23:18, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

If they're images from the game, then use Sprites. Otherwise, use Artwork. Feel free to make a Castle of the Winds spells category, though. I just don't see a need for a global one yet. --Skizzerz 02:20, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
If you're thinking of what I think you're thinking of... then take a look at Category:Icons. --Notmyhandle (talk contribs) 04:49, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Scripting and Templates

I have a couple questions about the back-end of the wiki.

  1. Is is possible to incorporate JavaScript into the pages?
  2. Can I make a parser function?

For the JavaScript, I'm planning on adding some maps with icons marking specific locations. It would be helpful to imagemap the icons and use a mouseover event to describe mini-terrain at the location in a floating textbox, or a div at the top of the image. I want to direct the imagemap to a list of what can be found there, which could also be looked at without coming from the map, so I don't want a bunch of information a reader may not be looking for to confuse them.

I got an idea for a parser function while cleaning up the Castle of the Winds page. We use the {{kbd}} template for the buttons, but there is no similar template for menu tabs like File or Edit. Using the same idea as the keyboard template, it would be easy to use something like {{menubar|File}} and return File. What I was thinking of is including the shortcut letter within the template like {{menu|File|1}} with the last parameter being the index of the word that is the shortcut, and returning File. I couldn't think of a way to produce this with normal template and wiki markup, but with a couple string functions I think it would be doable. Something like:

<?php
function menuTab($tabName, $underlineIndex)
{
  return substr_replace($tabName, "<span style='text-decoration: underline'>" . substr($tabName,$underlineIndex - 1,1) . "</span>", $underlineIndex - 1, 1);
}
?>

to return the word with a letter underlined if there was anything in the index parameter. I'm excluding the parts for adding a hook for a magic word and setting the noparse or isHTML return flags, because I'm not too familiar with how that works. At any rate this might be a little too much work for something that won't be used that often, but thought I'd ask anyway. Thanks as always, - najzere 19:49, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Unless the JS is gonna be widely used, and won't slow down other pages, it might be possible. The underlining one is very easy to make a template for and I'll see about setting that up this weekend sometime. -- Prod (Talk) 20:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good, thanks. By the way, any idea why the <font color="green"></font> tags aren't working in my signature anymore? - najzere 20:28, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Probably because <font> is a deprecated tag. Use <span style="color:green"> instead. As for making custom PHP parser functions, try to find an alternative by using what we already have installed/enabled, since there are ways to already accomplish this that involve the same amount of user input (hint: use the <u> tag, and/or the #switch parser function). --Skizzerz 21:59, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Why not accomplish the underline simply by calling {{menu|<span style="text-decoration:underline">F</span>ile}}? If you really want to go with the complex parser function method, a better syntax would be {{menu|_File}}, which is the canonical ASCII representation of such mnemonics (at least on Linux). The parser function would then just underline the letter after the underscore. --DrBob (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, whatever's easier. If you wanted to handle all the menu options, you'd have to be able to output something like History too. I wouldn't know how to get a template to underscore just the first letter of a string without using some string functions anyway. Putting the underscore before the letter would also have the benefit that you wouldn't have to error trap for numbers greater than the length of the string or non-numeric input, and you wouldn't have to figure out which parameter was which either. - najzere 22:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
File, History. -- Prod (Talk) 16:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Hey looks good, way to go figuring out how to avoid the parser! - najzere 19:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
You can't avoid the parser :) --Skizzerz 20:20, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Game updates

It's been like weeks since I manage to deal with "The Godfather". So far, I don't know any new games coming in from the Wii and the Virtual Console. Would anyone at least update me on any games coming in from the Nintendo Wii console (and maybe other consoles) because I feel like I'm in a low. At least it should help keep me interested. Johnnyauau2000 08:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Johnny, what exactly are you asking for here? You want the staff to alert you as to when guides for Wii games need to be updated? Because I can assure you we're all way too busy to keep track of that kind of information. If that is an interest of yours, I recommend that you track changes and updates from your favorite Wii news website. There are tons of new games being released on disc and for download for the Wii, especially around this time of year. Procyon (Talk) 14:35, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
It would be nice if we could easily have a "new releases" section on each console page, but unfortunately I can't think of any way to do that without a project or specific person to keep it up. Is there enough interest in that? I wouldn't mind updating a list for some time to see if the idea is feasible.--DukeRuckleyTalk | Contribs 17:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
It would be interesting to see if we could parse the RSS feed from game-releases.net and feed that into our wiki format. We should take this discussion to the forums. Procyon (Talk) 17:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
That's a start. I haven't seen anymore "new" games coming out. Even compare to PS3, Xbox360, PS2, PSP, DS and PC, the Wii side is the least update section than any other section I know. No offence but that's my feeling. I understand what you're saying but it would be nice to have a "new releases" section. There's no downside to it since the Strategy Wiki hardly updates their main site. I hope it will work out soon. Johnnyauau2000 00:20, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
The down side is that it takes a lot of work to keep updated. It will not work itself out, someone needs to start it. If adding a list like that interests you, do feel free to start it. For the moment, there are better sources of this information, and it isn't completely within our scope just yet. -- Prod (Talk) 03:39, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Use Wikipedia if you want to know all the upcoming games. For the most part, they are pretty accurate. RobJ1981 05:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)