All Things Shining: Shining Wiki needs you

[BoneIdol]

Gah, apologies for the delay in sorting these out. Had real problems with snow for the past few days and its caused all kinds of problems with my interwebs and power.

Just so you know Martin, you're currently a normal user so I don't think you can install extensions. So don't worry; I'll install the parser functions this afternoon. I'd do it now, but I've gotta spend the next 2-3 hours trudging through more than a foot of snow so I can eat and t'ings.

As for the faces problem, unlike on wikia, I have FTP and database access. I can write scripts to do things like replace images with png versions (technically I could on wikia, but it's an absolute pain). I'll send an email off to wolfgang asking for permission to use his character portraits. I'll get a script sorted out if it's ok with him.

[Moogie]

Wolfgang will be fine with it - he and I go back years He was always okay with me using his stuff as long as it is credited accordingly. Since the Wiki is now sort of part of SFC, by extension we have permission

[BoneIdol]

Right, the ParserFunctions extension is now installed.

Wolfgang will be fine with it - he and I go back years He was always okay with me using his stuff as long as it is credited accordingly. Since the Wiki is now sort of part of SFC, by extension we have permission

He seemed like a really nice bloke when I had a chat with him regarding using some of his stuff in the SF3 save editor. I'm still going to ask him out of courtesy, and wait to hear what he says before I do anything.

One question to everyone; assuming he does say yes, are we going to keep them as the animated gifs he uses or should we strip them of the animation and save them as pngs?

[Christine]

Right, the ParserFunctions extension is now installed.


He seemed like a really nice bloke when I had a chat with him regarding using some of his stuff in the SF3 save editor. I'm still going to ask him out of courtesy, and wait to hear what he says before I do anything.

One question to everyone; assuming he does say yes, are we going to keep them as the animated gifs he uses or should we strip them of the animation and save them as pngs?

Really nice templates coming up. What about the other extensions? Some of them are pretty nice as well. Especially the Replace Text one.

I think we could keep both, animated and static (though the border is a bit annoying. I've meaning to ask this as well, which image should be on the articles? Portrait or artwork? I vote portrait, because you'll see the face and that is more to the point and bigger, while the artwork is so shrunk the point of the image doesn't fit so well.

Also, shouldn't Martin be more than a regular user? If it wasn't for him, this project wouldn't be happening.

[BoneIdol]

Really nice templates coming up. What about the other extensions? Some of them are pretty nice as well. Especially the Replace Text one.

I think we could keep both, animated and static (though the border is a bit annoying. I've meaning to ask this as well, which image should be on the articles? Portrait or artwork? I vote portrait, because you'll see the face and that is more to the point and bigger, while the artwork is so shrunk the point of the image doesn't fit so well.

Ok, I'm installing reCAPTCHA and Replacetext now. I've had a look at the multi upload one and I'm giving that a miss; I'll probably install it as and when it is needed and then remove it when a job is finished. There's a lot of potential for that extension to be misused.

As for borders on the portraits, I've got a PHP script handy that'll remove them (I wrote it for SF3Edit to remove the borders from Wolfgang's pictures), but it won't work with the animated versions. There's probably a way to do this via Photoshop scripting though, I could look into it.

Also, shouldn't Martin be more than a regular user? If it wasn't for him, this project wouldn't be happening.

I promoted him and Moogie to Admin/Beaurocrats this morning. I meant to say "since you don't have FTP access".

--EDIT--

Actually, gonna leave recaptcha 'till tomorrow. Something came up and I gotta sign up at google for it an' stuff. Oh, and btw, promoted you to beaurocrat so you have access to ReplaceText.

[Christine]

As for borders on the portraits, I've got a PHP script handy that'll remove them (I wrote it for SF3Edit to remove the borders from Wolfgang's pictures), but it won't work with the animated versions. There's probably a way to do this via Photoshop scripting though, I could look into it.

Ok, I'm installing reCAPTCHA and Replacetext now. I've had a look at the multi upload one and I'm giving that a miss; I'll probably install it as and when it is needed and then remove it when a job is finished. There's a lot of potential for that extension to be misused.

Indeed those two are the best and I agree that upload via ZIP can be misused. However, it was for the regular users of the wiki to upload massively while we set (and correct) things up from the import.

I promoted him and Moogie to Admin/Beaurocrats this morning. I meant to say "since you don't have FTP access".

--EDIT--

Actually, gonna leave recaptcha 'till tomorrow. Something came up and I gotta sign up at google for it an' stuff. Oh, and btw, promoted you to beaurocrat so you have access to ReplaceText.

Yes, I like that Martim is high in the hierarchy. And thank you fopr the promotion as well. If it's fine with Moogie and Martim, I'll use it soon to upgrade the templates, once they're settled into something eveyrone likes.

Templates
I need opinions, what to sort out and what not:

InfoboxVideogame - for every videogame:
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Tem ... xVideogame" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Every single row is optional but two:
*The first is the image (but even that can be optional if you guys want, I don't see the point though). For what this image is... there are several options. The most known are logo (french wikipedia) and cover (english wikipedia). There are others such as screenshot of title, cart/CD... I vote for the game logo. I think it looks great.
*The second is the Release Date. I'm a bit appalled at the left column colour not streching to match the right one anymore (damn you div tag). Sorting height didn't work, so I'll tweak it a bit more, maybe resort to nested tables (oh dear). It will eventually be sorted.
I've not included automatic categories, because a) I can't use string comparision and extraction (I love you C) to sort out when a game has two developers. Publisher is always Sega. The only one I see that could have an automatic category would be the genre.

Disregarding all of that, they look like this for now:
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Shining_Wind" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Shining_Soul_II" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Shining_Force_EXA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Image
For now just the artwork.
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Template:Artwork" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It always automatically categorises from where the artwork comes from (game). However it only sorts what the image depicts if the caption is included. Two examples are below:
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Fil ... _image.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/File:Gaiden_I.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (should be categorised individually)
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Fil ... A_Logo.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (no category)
The problem with images with several characters being sorted automatically is that there is no way to break a string in several parts (at least, not that I'm aware of), like in other languages.
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Fil ... narcha.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
As such, the automatic category for this is -- Max, Jogurt and Narcha --, which is useless. It's possible to make a switch and if (always possible) for these cases, but it's easier to understand for all users that if a image has more than one character, it must be left with no caption and the missing categories inserted manually.

Sprite
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Template:Sprite" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
These images have no several character problems. It sorts items, weapons and things that can be sorted. If caption=item/weapon, it sorts the item as sprites of item from game (this can be furter extended to weapon class such as swords, polearms, staves, etc). If it's something that can be sorted (such as characters, spell), it links to the category of it (example, every blaze sprite from all games will be sorted together). If it's something that doesn't need to be sorted (like a landscape), it only sorts it as a sprite for the game, nothing more.
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Fil ... g_icon.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (character)
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Fil ... _image.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (item)

So? What do you guys think?

[BoneIdol]

I like them all so far, although I gotta say, I do think the game infobox template looks particularly spiffy.

Thanks a lot for pressing ahead and getting everything organised. This is a task that I would never be able to do in a million years. I am quite possibly the most chaotic person in the world and actively repel any form of order.

Wish I could offer some more input regarding the auto-categorising issues with the templates, but I'm pretty much a wiki noob. I'm also being pretty damn slow on the uptake today, which isn't helping. I'm completely failing to grasp the issues here.

I've not included automatic categories, because a) I can't use string comparision and extraction (I love you C) to sort out when a game has two developers. Publisher is always Sega. The only one I see that could have an automatic category would be the genre.

Wonder if it's possible to hack something into the PHP code to deal with this? You have an utter CRAP-LOAD of string functions in PHP, if it can be written it in C it can certainly write it in PHP.

[Christine]

I like them all so far, although I gotta say, I do think the game infobox template looks particularly spiffy.

I actually managed to do what I wanted:
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Shining_Force_EXA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Shining_Soul_II" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Release Date is now centred and takes the span of the release cell to the right. But I cheated, like a horny 40 year old. I'm not sure if my teacher would award me a kick in the rear for the unclassy solution or would kiss my forehead. Probably maim me until it drew blood. Looks cute though, what do you think?

Thanks a lot for pressing ahead and getting everything organised. This is a task that I would never be able to do in a million years. I am quite possibly the most chaotic person in the world and actively repel any form of order.

I'm doing it while I watch my beloved TV series, so it's no big hassle. And I'm chaotic too! How many times have I edited things? It's unbelievable! However, I have some experience on these things so it's all good.

Wish I could offer some more input regarding the auto-categorising issues with the templates, but I'm pretty much a wiki noob. I'm also being pretty damn slow on the uptake today, which isn't helping. I'm completely failing to grasp the issues here.

You see, when you do a page, you can tag it. In fact you should. What the templates can do, is automatically tag. I do that for most of the simple images, but composite images (such as those with lots of characters in it) becomes complicated, because the only way to cover all of them is to write a huge list of conditionals with tag 1=, tag 2= ... tag n.

Wonder if it's possible to hack something into the PHP code to deal with this? You have an utter CRAP-LOAD of string functions in PHP, if it can be written it in C it can certainly write it in PHP.

I see string compare there. Probably, if there's #while...
Yes, there is:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Loops" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Righteous Force]

Man, am I glad the Shining series has you two as fans (Christine & BoneIdol).

[Martin III]

Ah, I forgot to add it. It's there now, as origin. I think it fits more, because sometimes there are places which we don't know which country they come from (Village of the Far East). What do you think?

Sorry for the late response. Yes, that makes more sense. I would have suggested that very thing had I thought of it before.

I think we could keep both, animated and static (though the border is a bit annoying. I've meaning to ask this as well, which image should be on the articles? Portrait or artwork? I vote portrait, because you'll see the face and that is more to the point and bigger, while the artwork is so shrunk the point of the image doesn't fit so well.

I'm strongly in favor of using the artwork for several reasons. First is that since official artwork doesn't have the technical limitations of in-game renderings, it's essentially a more accurate portrayal of the characters. Second is that I suspect a lot of the articles' readers are people who have already played the games, and it gives an article a lot more "bang" if the first image they see is one they're not already familiar with. Third, every similar Wikia I've seen uses artwork rather than in-game portrait. For instance, the Golden Sun and Fire Emblem Wikias both use the artwork.

[Christine]

So everyone agree on those templates? Any additional fields that should be added? If everyone agrees, I'll mod the rest (class, item, weapon, spell) to fit with it.

Uhm I see that point about the artwork. However, the artowrk must be refined, no? For example SF3 images are the encyclopedia pages with lots of text and and it should be clean images, no?

I've wondered about another thing. Moogie, don't you have access to the Sega Press Vault? They have the HD artwork for most of the modern games. I had access to it at one time, but they've changed the system now and I haven't re-applied. You however, are the owner of the major shining site of the net. You could get access easily? Wouldn't Camelot help on the older ones as well? They did give HD SF3 artwork for the games TM magazine for the 100 issue thing, didn't they?

[Moogie]

I'll have to hunt out the details and see if they still work - if so will pick up the artwork for you (though it will also be included in SFC's artwork section of course ).

As for Camelot, I may ask them about artwork a bit nearer to the SFC redesign lauch - am hoping they'll be able to help, but it's possible that Sega need to consent too.

[Martin III]

So everyone agree on those templates? Any additional fields that should be added? If everyone agrees, I'll mod the rest (class, item, weapon, spell) to fit with it.

Yeah, it looks good to me right now.

Uhm I see that point about the artwork. However, the artowrk must be refined, no? For example SF3 images are the encyclopedia pages with lots of text and and it should be clean images, no?

Yeah, but the vast majority of them are essentially clean already, aren't they? The SF3 and Shining Tears ones are the only ones I can think of that have clutter.

[Cullsoft]

Images should always be in .png so it won't lose quality ever. I have backups of every portrait for Shining Force III, so I propose to delete the ones on the wiki and upload the proper ones instead.

In regards to the SHF3 portraits, and for that matter pretty much any in-game sprites or screenshots, yes - a lossless format like PNG-8 or -24 (depending on the sprite) would be the most ideal.

However, when speaking of things like artwork scans (i.e. character concept art, trading card scans, etc.), JPEG is still the way to go - just need to make sure the compression ratio is something that's both web friendly (i.e. a reasonable file size) and doesn't lose too much quality (i.e. using a decent JPEG compression engine and ratio).

[Moogie]

How's this project coming along out of interest? The main page makes it look as if there's nothing to see

Will try to sort you out a logo in a bit.

I've been having people email me about the Shining Wikia and it would be nice to be able to redirect them to the ad-free version on SFC (is there any way to shut down the one on Wikia once the one hosted at SFC is done?)

[Martin III]

I have been meaning to get back to work on the Wiki; the Christmas season threw my schedule off. Hopefully I'll get back to the grind soon.

One thing I can do right now is update the main page of the old Wiki to direct people to the new one. Not sure how many people will see that, but it's better than nothing.

The main page is something I haven't been able to make up my mind on. Should we just import most of the stuff from the main page on the old Wiki, or restyle the whole thing? I'm not great on website design...

[Moogie]

I'm not very familiar with Wikis so I'm not sure how they would generally look on the front page. I'll have a look at the old one for you though and will do the logo right now, as I didn't get around to it yesterday!

[Moogie]

How about something like this for the logo?

http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Main_Page

I took a look at the Wikia front page, and I like the fact that it displays a good selection of information, but I think the layout could be better.

Definately news/updates is a good idea and some random features. The list of all the games is handy too.

I just made a quick tweak to the main page so it doesn't just show the "successfully installed" message, which was probably a bit offputting. By all means change what I've written, I just thought the other message needed to go

[Cullsoft]

"Recently updated pages" would be handy to have on the homepage too (or at least an obvious link) - whenever I visit the Wiki this is the page I usually want to look up first, but end up having to dig through a few pages before I can stumble upon a link to it.

[Christine]

I'll keep working on this in February, because now I'm swamped with exams. However most of the templates are already done.

http://wiki.shiningforcecentral.com/Cat ... _templates

There're still a few problems to iron out, but mostly, these are the way the templates are going to be shown. If anyone wants to see how they will fit, refer to the "What Links Here" link on that page. It will list the pages that have that template and you can see examples. They might look odd to those who have small screen resolution, which was something I forgot when doing them, but they'll be sorted out quickly once I have the time (or anyone else has the time). If anyone objects or has any ideas, please go ahead. I've tried to keep the colours like the site, because eventually there can be a skin that will match the site, making the transition much more smooth.

Eventually the articles will be better too, but since I've devoted the little time to fixing the logistics, I haven't had the time to sort out the articles. So it might look a bit stall for now, but it will eventually change. The problem is that when the original wiki was done, someone mass edited it and made stock pages for everything. So there're a lot of articles, but they're mostly stubs. It might look helpful, but is not. There are a lot of articles but just a few are complete and it's almost impossible to pinpoint them. Also overhauling the templates with conditionals is a bit harder. It's okay though, it would eventually fall into its place.