New Contributors!
Welcome to the Strategy Wiki Earthbound guide! Please don't mess with the structure of the guide or any thing big like that before disscussing it here. Feel free to contribute to the text fix errors at will though. Here I will describe all the setups we have here for keeping things organized. Also, I will describe how to use the Templates in this guide, like the boss template, the nav template, and any other template I feel like making. --blendmaster 14:41, 15 June 2006 (PDT)
Images
The images in this guide are mostly going to be sprites. I would prefer you to get them from videogamesprites.net just because all images would be to scale. I may at some point, do a bot upload of all the images there, so stay tuned. If you upload any yourself, please don't change the title of the image. And remember to add [[Category:Earthbound Images]] to the description of the images you upload. Then they'll all appear here so anyone needing an image for Earthbound can check there first. Any non sprite images, I don't care as much about the naming, as long as theyre in [[Category:Earthbound Images]].
- In accordance with naming schemes on StrategyWiki, all Earthbound images should actually go into Category:Earthbound images (note the lowercase "i" on the second word). --DrBob (Talk) 06:33, 17 June 2006 (PDT)
Text
When writing the indepth walkthrough parts, don't use lists or stuff like that. Lists of things to do can go in the Spoiler Free Walkthrough. Items should be inbold. Use sidebars if you want to give a hint or tip, don't just put paragraphs in the middle of the rest of the text. Use == == headers for big sections, but don't go deeper than that. For now, its undecided, but keep enemy tables and statistics and stuff out of the main walkthrough and put a link to a separate page(in wiki or otherwise) instead.
Templates
This guides relies kind of heavily on templates to create a consistent look and feel. If you create a good template, please put usage instructions on this talk page so other people can use it properly.
This one's pretty straight forward. template syntax goes:
{{Earthbound/Nav|<page before>|<This Page>|<Page after>|}}
Just stick this template at the bottom of all the walkthrough main pages.
The Boss Template
The boss template is for, well, bosses. Stick it at the bottom of the section where the boss appears. The syntax goes:
{{Earthbound/boss|name=
|hp=
|pp=
|offense=
|defense=
|speed=
|guts=
|text=
|image=
|exp=
|money=
|item=
}}
for the HP/PP/speed and other attributes, go to the starmen.net walkthrough. The image should be in Earthbound Images. If not, upload it from videogamesprites.net. For the text, describe how to beat, what attacks it has, stuff like that. the text should flow with the rest of the walkthrough.
The Map Template
OK, this one's kind of confusing. The syntax goes like this:
{{All Game Nav|game=Earthbound}}
{{Earthbound/Map
|title=
|image=
|text=
|enemies={{Earthbound/Map/Enemy}}
{{Earthbound/Map/Enemy}} *Repeat as Neccesary*
|enemies2=
|enemies3=
|items=
}}
The title, image, and text should be self explanatory. The items part is just like the text part, although you should define all the items you can get in the area, with an icon of what it's in before it. If the item is important, put it in bold. If you get the item from an NPC, just put the name of the npc in parenthesis instead of an item, until someone thinks of a better way to do this. The enemies part is where its confusing. To make it slightly easier to modify, I put a template within a template. the enemy template syntax is:
{{Earthbound/Map/Enemy
|image=
|name=
|hp=|pp=|xp=|money=
|item=|chance=}}
The image, and attributes can all be gotten from the the starmen.net usual locations. the chance attribute doesn't need the parenthesis around it.
To make this template work, just define the enemy template within the map template's enemies attribute. To put more than one enemy in, just define more than one enemy template. I wouldn't define more than 4 though. Thats where the tags enemies2 and enimies3 come in. If you have more than 4 enemies in an area, the template kinda breaks with more than 4 in a row. If you define more enemies in the other rows, it should work. I don't think any area in the game has more than 12 enemies, so it should work. As an example to the above, the syntax for the example template is:
{{Earthbound/Map
|title=The Beginning
|image=[[Image:Earthbound-thebeginning.gif]]
|text=the area you cover in The Beginning. The line is the main path you take. Presents and other items are highlighted in a blue circle. The numbers don't mean anything quite yet.
|enemies={{Earthbound/Map/Enemy
|image=[[Image:Coil Snake.gif|left|Coil Snake]]
|name=Coil Snake
|hp=18|pp=0|xp=1|money=4
|item=cookie|chance=1/32}}
{{Earthbound/Map/Enemy
|image=[[Image:Runaway Dog.gif|left|Runaway Dog]]
|name=Runaway Dog
|hp=18|pp=0|xp=1|money=4
|item=cookie|chance=1/32}}
{{Earthbound/Map/Enemy
|image=[[Image:Spiteful Crow.gif|left|Spiteful Crow]]
|name=Spiteful Crow
|hp=18|pp=0|xp=1|money=4
|item=cookie|chance=1/32}}
|items=[[Image:Container-Present.gif]] Bread Roll, [[Image:Container-Present.gif]] '''Cracked Bat''', ''(Your Sister)'' Cookie
}}
Well, thats all the crazy stuff there is now, but expect more awsome templates and formatting stuff, so check back here often.
- I can't contribute much at all, I haven't played the game in years alas but I love the new layout. I saw the old one and wasn't much impressed but what you guys have done with Earthbound now is truly wonderful. The guide is very through but some maps would really make it stand out from the rest of the pack. Keep up the good work. --Chrono Warrior 3 14:33, 24 June 2006 (PDT)
Talk page stuff
Can anybody help me on this? --blendmaster 19:25, 28 January 2006 (PST)
- Not much surprise, but if one is looking for resources on information about EarthBound, Starmen.net (the biggest Earthbound fansite around) has its own. http://walkthrough.starmen.net/earthbound/ Of use are the enemey stats, battle techniques, item info, and their "technical" guides. --Maddie 12:14, 22 April 2006 (CST)
- I'll help out as much as I can. I don't have much time right now, but I'll do whatever I can little by little.--Dukeruckley 10:37, 6 June 2006 (PDT)
sweet --blendmaster 16:25, 6 June 2006 (PDT)
Table of Contents
The Table of Contents for the walkthrough for Earthbound already has pages laid out on them (most of which are still dead links). This order is not necessarily the best order. I have personally been adding new pages and redoing others add a little more sense to the order (as well as dropping areas that are just too short for their own page). For anyone else who changes the Table of Contents, please make sure to update the Nav template as well for consistency.--Dukeruckley 08:04, 16 June 2006 (PDT)
- I just copied the page layout from an existing guide from gamefaqs. Go ahead and change it.--blendmaster 09:20, 16 June 2006 (PDT)
Bestiary
Should we add a bestiary section similar to Secret of Mana's? How could we do this with a better layout (perhaps having all the info on one page as opposed to seperate pages for each monster)?--Dukeruckley 12:45, 28 June 2006 (PDT)
- I would lean against separate pages for each monster if there's not enough information to fill in a page. If there are as many monsters as in Secret of Mana, though, you might want to not put them all on one page: find some way to categorise them into groups, and then put them on the relevant group page. --DrBob (Talk) 12:56, 28 June 2006 (PDT)