User talk:Ngng: Difference between revisions

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==Some partially hidden text experiments==
==Some partially hidden text experiments==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test <div class="mw-collapsible-content">This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test End of this test</div></div>
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test <div class="mw-collapsible-content">This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test End of this test</div></div>

Revision as of 15:39, 2 November 2014

Welcome!

Hi Ngng -- we're excited to have PCSX2 Wiki as part of the Wikia community!

Now you've got a whole website to fill up with information, pictures and videos about your favorite topic. But right now, it's just blank pages staring at you... Scary, right? Here are some ways to get started.

  • Introduce your topic on the front page. This is your opportunity to explain to your readers what your topic is all about. Write as much as you want! Your description can link off to all the important pages on your site.
  • Start some new pages -- just a sentence or two is fine to get started. Don't let the blank page stare you down! A wiki is all about adding and changing things as you go along. You can also add pictures and videos, to fill out the page and make it more interesting.

And then just keep going! People like visiting wikis when there's lots of stuff to read and look at, so keep adding stuff, and you'll attract readers and editors. There's a lot to do, but don't worry -- today's your first day, and you've got plenty of time. Every wiki starts the same way -- a little bit at a time, starting with the first few pages, until it grows into a huge, busy site.

If you've got questions, you can e-mail us through our contact form. Have fun!

-- Catherine Munro <staff />

Hi, How do you add images to the bottom of the game's page ?

I have put up Scooby-Doo! Night of a 100 Frights, but it's not showing up in the "Playable" list. Just wondering if, where it shows "Status" when editing a page, I put Playable instead of a number, which I see you used a number when I viewed your Drakan page.

Cheers, DKTronics 11:55, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Yep! Put '2' there to make it playable (maybe I should mention it somewhere?). To put (screenshot?) pictures to the bottom you'll have to add this codes:
<gallery>
Image:<Put you image name here>|<any comment (may be ommited)>
</gallery>

Try it out! :) --Ngng 12:05, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I think you should put up a list of what each number means. Are they on a sort of sliding scale ? 1-3/4/5 ?

Cheers for the image links, I'll give that a try, hopefully not breaking anything ;)

DKTronics 12:47, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Noone can break wiki, it's just impossible :). The numbers are: 0 -- broken, 1 -- in game, 2 -- playable. --Ngng 12:52, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Cheers for the reply on adding a new game.

I already tried, earlier on, to add a page from a game already up. I simply highlighted everything and done the usual ctrl+c ctrl+v, clicked preview but instead of showing a similar page to the ones up, it simply showed a page of the text I'd pasted in, although I never committed the saved page.

I'll give another try, cheers.

PS, I know this is easy stuff for you, but remember I've never done anything like this before, ever. I'm more into building hardware, keeping up a Youtube page, video work with avisynth, heck I can write my own complex scripts for avisynth, and playing games across many platforms. But I learn quickly, and pick up on stuff I enjoy doing.

Well I've learned this all myself in last 2 month + the wiki markup in last four days. You're not alone here :)

Ah, I see that wikimedia is a bit over it's head with the new 'rich' editor... You'll need to switch to the ordinary (not reach version) in your preferences. It's on the page editing. Check out the box 'Enable rich text editing'. I'll not alter this new page you've created so you'll have a place to try... --Ngng 18:06, September 21, 2009 (UTC)


hi, have a look at Final_Fantasy_X_zero29 for my attempt at a game page design, it uses two infobox templates Template:Infobox_game_zero29 and Template:Infobox_region_zero29. i am aware of the fact that it still needs quite some fine-tuning, but it's enough to get a general idea about its final look. I tried to avoid those big infoboxes with all the info in them, because i think that my (or better the original wikipedia) attempt is way more flexible. i know that it requires the editor to have a bit more wiki knowledge than in your approach, but everything i used is explained in the little infobox "Editing Tips" on the left of the screen when editing, so it should be ok, i think. It's mostly simple formatting stuff, after all ;) zero29 19:38, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

Yep I've already seen your page and I'd say it looks most beautiful! As you've mentioned this way the users must know what they're doing and... Well, lets talk about it just after I'll finish my fighting with that categories adding stuff (it's geting out of hand). I'll tell you what I think and what would I propose to change. We'll to come to the consensus. Just give me a minute, ok? --Ngng 19:50, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

New Game pages design...

Ok, I'm done with these categories. Sometimes wikimedia frustrates me so much I wanna scream. And it still has a looong way ahead of it to become a comfortable tool. Lets now talk about your new design.
I like your page to say at least. It's a good work and invested time. These are my thoughts however:

  • Now users have to edit two templates instead of one. It maybe a bit confusing.
    • It can be addressed if we use one template but add variables like status1, status2, etc... Though it's not the best idea either.
  • Sadly only few games may receive this kind of attention so most of the time we will look at much less described pages
  • The main issue with this I think as it is not templated text. It is an article like articles in Wikipedia, but in Wikipedia mostly every article is different in contents and purpose and we're dealing here with many-many-many typical articles. The contents of this article can be copied and then modified by users but in this case it will defy all the benefits come with templates. It's structure cannot be changed quickly on every page, we cannot add some features in it, we cannot change designs everywhere at once, we cannot say add some logo pictures or cannot color this text. This approach is more than welcome with articles about Lilypad, GSDX, Jake Stine, the timeline of PCSX2 (granted they will be created) but with mostly identical games it is too expensive to edit!
  • The untemplated text is a chaos when it comes to the look of it. Not given the significant supervising most of the pages will eventually look different. Some will have deformed placement, some will differ only in punctuation, but they'll be different and thus will look like a chaos.


I propose that we template your currently untemplated page. It does not matter that it would (or would not) increase the number of mini-templates. And it's not necessarily will look different. After all the plain article of yours is that same 'candy' structure of mine WITH the difference that you have actually added some good and useful comments to it. Dont like my candyfloss, it's ok with me, I dont really care how these pages will look if only they will have that good info on them.
What do you think?
I have to say I'm going to sleep now and will see your answer only tomorrow. --Ngng 21:07, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

sorry, but that's exactly my point. you have no idea how much attention every article receives, that's why an open structure is way better. more popular games like ffx will of course draw more interest than less known games, but your template tries to "hardcode" a minimum page size for those lesser known games by including a huge table with few or rather useless info in it. if noone provided info like recommended specs/plugins/etc. for a game, yet, there's no reason to clutter the page with a template to pretend something different. and don't underestimate your visitors, if the wiki works the info will come, i for myself plan to include a similar amount of info for all the games that i own, and even in my ffx article there are still sections that would need to be more thoroughly explained ;)
just to make this absolutely clear: i am not an enemy of infoboxes, there is clearly a use for them in a wiki, but i tried to include them ONLY for short and static facts like the game ids. plugin recommendations e.g. might change with every revision, and you often need to state a reason for your choice, so you will need quite some commentary space for all the sections.
just try to include all the info on my page into your template and you'll see the limitations of it ;)
well, let's see if we're able to create a "more" templated version of it, but without at least the option to extend it at will it won't be feasible for the topic of your wiki, i fear. The "Performace comments and warnings:" section of your template will start to look overcrowded quite fast and still cover only a tiny fraction of the useful additional info about a game. zero29 22:33, September 21, 2009 (UTC)
It's a bit narrow view when you're saying that the former template will look bad after expanding, I disagree here. Well, actually I will include all your info to the current FFX page to show you that this approach is livable. Yes, we're yet to see the detailed article on any game. And yes, it doesn't mean such the articles aren't coming, but I'm having a hard time to believe there will be so many of them even with the good attention from the public. This information about the games is too statical and too scarce to be expanded into free paper view. This is a table info we're talking about and you propose that we're to write the entire poem again and again for every row of this table.
And please address also my last two agruments.--Ngng 05:12, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i added responses to these arguments in the next section -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

While that FFX page looks good, it resembles Wikipedia too much, and to be honest, if you want to go down that road then you might as well just stick to Wikipedia itself.

I like things simple, too much info and things start to take too much time. I have nearly 50 original games here with me, some are borrowed but most (85%) are mine, and theres no way I'm going to do complex pages like that for that amount of games, I just don't have the time.

If you want to go down that road, then best of luck to you, but I'll not bother as I've got too much going on right now. DKTronics 21:20, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to fill up all info about the game. His page is not really that different apart from the look. We're not talking here about forcing anyone to do anything like adding too much info on every game. Every bit of information is appreciated. --Ngng 10:05, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i made the template especially with the "original" in mind, as it makes it easier for visitors to orient themselves. that does not mean we have to copy wikipedia, but you will need better arguments than "it resembles wikipedia too much" to justify a change. remember, you don't have to fill out all sections of my page layout, if you don't feel like providing any info about specs or plugins or speed hacks, just leave it empty. someone else might take her/his time to add that later. if you only want to add the most basic info about a game, then my template requires exactly the same amount of work as the current one. one copy & paste and filling out the sections. that's it ;) zero29 22:33, September 21, 2009 (UTC)

This is my first time using any wiki, so what I really, really like about Zero29's page is it's direct edit mode. I prefer his version just for this mode alone, but I also find it easier to browse the page and find my info. Not rama 11:20, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

And what do think about housekeeping the pages that have no common structure? Sigh... This is a matter of taste I think. And now I come to think of it, I'd table even those issues down (and I will try to in my version) so the whole page would look like a table because it's a game card and not a free article, one of the 1500 similar game cards (do you really think there will EVER be 1500 articles about games here?). If you're talking about Table Of Contents mentioning browse, I think it's more than useless on such a small page. I even forced it to disappear in my version. Anyways, the sooner we'll come to a decision the better because I'm feeling that I'll be quite busy with something else soon. --Ngng 15:38, September 22, 2009 (UTC)


I doubt I'll be adding much if anything, but here's my $0.02. I came here because I googled up a problem I was having with a game and when I saw the wikia link I thought what they hey, and presto, it turned out it had a solution. As far as I'm concerned this is the kind of info this wikia should provide. If I wanted game-only information I'd go to GameFAQs, Wikipedia, or the official game forums. Information on this wikia on the other hand should be about stuff related to the emu. Not that I'm against people writing up whatever, but it shouldn't be the focus.

Plus, as has been mentioned (I think), people may be put off adding in stuff if they think they need to write up full length articles. If some kind soul simply writes like, this game runs at full 60fps with X hardware and Y version plugins with observation Z explaining a specific issue at a certain point in the game, that would be perfect. (Especially if they timestamped it; I absolutely love version info and timestamps because what is broken then might already have been fixed now since a new version of the emu or plugins may be available.) Or, I find out the game is only ingame status with perhaps a short paragraph showing at which point the game got stuck for that person. Or people simply state they encountered X problem and Y config change fixed it. That'd be awesome and totally the kind of thing I'd be looking for when I think of this particular wikia. - Trucidation 07:37, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

And of course you are right, I do agree with you fully. BTW, do you understand that this is part of the text was written more than a year ago? Unfortunately it was only partly successful idea to create a wiki here, I guess if the official PCSX2 stuff would have done it on their servers it would be a full success. It doesn't matter that much though because the wiki is here and it's helped at least one person (you). That's what it is for! :) --Ngng 20:08, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Fusing a bit ...

Take a look at this page. It's not yet perfect but you'll see some benefits of this approach when you look in source code. It's the same old box after all. I've not modified anything and just copied all your text inside suppressing Table Of Contents which IMO looks ugly there. I'm not discussing here the need of "issue types" (it is not so clear to me) and some additional trivial details.
I can also say it for myself I would not even consider to write this for Drakan. Yes, there are small glitches in GFX: weird texturing, sun through the walls, some trees look awful, in some places the ground shows through the floor. It's not that important for the user. It can be mentioned like say "as of r14xx GSDX shows some minor GFX glitches". --Ngng 06:55, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

ok, one final attempt ;)
• i like your merged infobox on the right, would have don't it almost exactly the same, if i knew how (i'm currently not in the mood to dive into the conditionals of wiki markup), a splitted version was just faster for my draft ;)
• first: you completely left out my "plugin recommendations" and "performance tips" info :(
• second: the example page contains only an infobox for one single region currently, imagine the page with all three region boxes in it. it will instantly be longer and harder to read than my version, without even providing more info.
• third: i had a look at the page code and wow, your template is getting more and more complex with every revision. perhaps you think a bit different about that, but you are the author of it, try to see it from my, the editor's/reader's perspective. you will need quite some comment lines to explain all the fields that can be filled out, and it would take considerably less time and code lines to just explain basic wiki to the editors instead. and i guarantee you, that will not be the last revision of it ;) is it extensible, btw, e.g. would issue10/11/12/n work, too?
• fourth: you currently focus too much on the needs of your editors by trying to template the whole game page, but more important is the perspective of the visitor, your wiki audience. formatting is very subjective, i don't want to argue on that, but i think you are disregarding the need for a readable page layout too much at the moment. the infobox tables in their current state "break" the whole layout of the text body of a page: first the introduction in usual wiki style, then the infobox tables for all the regions of the game and then back to the common wiki style for the "known issues". i know that this is not a question of hard facts, but my eyes surely don't like these breaks.
• fifth: probably the most principle and most important aspect, you're currently trying to create a "template to cover them all" (shameless "lord of the rings" reference :D ), but you cannot succeed in that. because if you would, then you would have created a whole wiki inside a wiki, just with unnecessary limitations. and then you could just use the original wiki instead of your templated one. what you don't seem to see is, that the template you're craving for is already there: it's called the wiki ;) the wiki we are all currently editing already is the template, the toolbox, that enables us to easily gather, sort, connect and present the info. which doesn't mean, that you shouldn't extend it with your own templates, but only for those cases where such a template is a useful addition to the already exisiting tools, like with the infoboxes on the right. i'm absolutely on your side when you think that my page needs quite some work to be a useful template, but i think that your template is an unnecessary attempt to kind of "reinvent" the wiki itself, and your recent extension to your template made me even more convinced of that ;)
• sixth: on your centralized "housekeeping", that is a nice feature for you the owner alone, but as long as it limits the editing possibilities and makes the info harder to find, it's not a nice feature for your editors and readers. and please, don't always assume that the amount of attention for many game articles will be that low, how can you know that before even trying? it will grow with time just like any wiki, if you are forcing it to be finished in some weeks by limiting all game pages to a game card, then it's no wiki, period. organic, or as you might say "chaotic", growth is not only unavoidable, it's the soul of a wiki. of course there will be differences between the articles, noone is forced to use your current template either and would still be able to create a useful game page from scratch, right? would you just delete or completely overwrite her/his submission then?
• as i already said, if we're able to create a fully templated version of the game page without limiting it's extensibility, i'm in. if not, well, then we'll just continue to use your template ;)
• btw, i like the TOC, as it allows one to directly link to subsections of the page, like http://pcsx2.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_zero29#Known_Issues e.g.
• damn, almost forgot: the issues i included for ffx are just the most popular thread topics for this game, they are posted several times a week. i think that the ability to link to this wiki for those "more than only known issues" would be a nice feature over repeating the same solutions again and again. i would really like to see at least some of the game pages here as game specific faqs, that was my aim with the ffx page. not all games need this amount of info, right, but games like gt4, persona or gears of war e.g. do, imo. if we all take our time to create high-quality pages with all the available info in them, i'm quite sure that referring to this wiki could become almost semi-official. -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you seem to want YOUR way or no way, and as far as I'm concerned, I don't like it and never will, period. This isn't an argument, this is MY opinion. If you want to go down this road then why not go and create your own wiki ?

To me, all this completely unnecessary information will go wasted on idiots who won't bother reading them.

As far as I'm concerned, thats enough for me. I'm out, and you 2 can carry on squabbling until you both either sort it out or let it die.

DKTronics 19:26, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Come on, I'm still to change a thing and you're already thinking about leaving. A bit too hostile. Please believe me, I'll resolve this matter in the most smooth manner possible! :) --Ngng 19:52, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

Keeping up and finishing...

• first: you completely left out my "plugin recommendations" and "performance tips" info :(

They're still in the box.

• second: the example page contains only an infobox for one single region currently, imagine the page with all three region boxes in it. it will instantly be longer and harder to read than my version, without even providing more info.

I'm balancing now on the verge of leaving only one infobox per game, so the comment field will provide any necessary info (if it's necessary).
hm, might be a bit tricky with games that have serious differences in emulation compatibility between regions, like the dbz game iirc. but there's always the known issues section for that ;)

• third: i had a look at the page code and wow, your template is getting more and more complex with every revision. perhaps you think a bit different about that, but you are the author of it, try to see it from my, the editor's/reader's perspective. you will need quite some comment lines to explain all the fields that can be filled out, and it would take considerably less time and code lines to just explain basic wiki to the editors instead. and i guarantee you, that will not be the last revision of it ;) is it extensible, btw, e.g. would issue10/11/12/n work, too?

Yes, but I'm having some second thoughts about issues at all. Do we really need them? The prefered way for me is to set up the comment (it can be long and can contain any kind of formatted text like yours) as it was done earlier. So IF the author WANT to set some extensive comments he or she will write them to the field provided formatting them anyhow they want.
well, it is at least an option to extend the page with custom content. let's see if it works.

• fourth: you currently focus too much on the needs of your editors by trying to template the whole game page, but more important is the perspective of the visitor, your wiki audience. formatting is very subjective, i don't want to argue on that, but i think you are disregarding the need for a readable page layout too much at the moment. the infobox tables in their current state "break" the whole layout of the text body of a page: first the introduction in usual wiki style, then the infobox tables for all the regions of the game and then back to the common wiki style for the "known issues". i know that this is not a question of hard facts, but my eyes surely don't like these breaks.

Yes, that's why I'll remove them completely. As I said before these are not the articles we're talking about here. These are the static tables. Articles about PCSX2 should be of the ordinary text. And that will be much more appropriate both for visitor whose seeking to find info on various games in the same places and for editors.
ok, fine.

• fifth: probably the most principle and most important aspect, you're currently trying to create a "template to cover them all" (shameless "lord of the rings" reference :D ), but you cannot succeed in that. because if you would, then you would have created a whole wiki inside a wiki, just with unnecessary limitations. and then you could just use the original wiki instead of your templated one. what you don't seem to see is, that the template you're craving for is already there: it's called the wiki ;) the wiki we are all currently editing already is the template, the toolbox, that enables us to easily gather, sort, connect and present the info. which doesn't mean, that you shouldn't extend it with your own templates, but only for those cases where such a template is a useful addition to the already exisiting tools, like with the infoboxes on the right. i'm absolutely on your side when you think that my page needs quite some work to be a useful template, but i think that your template is an unnecessary attempt to kind of "reinvent" the wiki itself, and your recent extension to your template made me even more convinced of that ;)

I disagree here. I'm not inventing anything, I'm presenting the static tables somehow.
ok, this is where we completely disagree with each other. let's just leave it at that and go on.

• sixth: on your centralized "housekeeping", that is a nice feature for you the owner alone, but as long as it limits the editing possibilities and makes the info harder to find, it's not a nice feature for your editors and readers. and please, don't always assume that the amount of attention for many game articles will be that low, how can you know that before even trying? it will grow with time just like any wiki, if you are forcing it to be finished in some weeks by limiting all game pages to a game card, then it's no wiki, period. organic, or as you might say "chaotic", growth is not only unavoidable, it's the soul of a wiki. of course there will be differences between the articles, noone is forced to use your current template either and would still be able to create a useful game page from scratch, right? would you just delete or completely overwrite her/his submission then?

No, I will not do that, if the submission will be of a good value (not vandalism), I'll convert it and the user will understand how it should be done here. You must understand that every house has some rules/restrictions. Try to reedit a popular article in Wikipedia on your taste, deleting some parts changing the others -> breaking the style of the beast. Either you will be marked as a vandal or will be told to cease and your changes will be reverted in a second. I'm trying to keep this house as smooth for everyone as possible, you must understand me and accept it. Please.
yes, no freedom without any rules, i know that ;) but i still fear that your rather static game cards will discourage users to include more info than for the provided standard fields. because if already some random specs, plugin version and a little comment makes the page look as full as all the other pages, why adding more info? but again, that seems to be the main difference between our preferences.

• btw, i like the TOC, as it allows one to directly link to subsections of the page, like http://pcsx2.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_zero29#Known_Issues e.g.

You can still link without the TOC. It's linked to headers not the TOC itself.
oh well, i had tried it on your page and it didn't seem to work, but the header is called "Known_Issues" and not "Known_issues", disregard that complaint... :D

• damn, almost forgot: the issues i included for ffx are just the most popular thread topics for this game, they are posted several times a week. i think that the ability to link to this wiki for those "more than only known issues" would be a nice feature over repeating the same solutions again and again. i would really like to see at least some of the game pages here as game specific faqs, that was my aim with the ffx page. not all games need this amount of info, right, but games like gt4, persona or gears of war e.g. do, imo. if we all take our time to create high-quality pages with all the available info in them, i'm quite sure that referring to this wiki could become almost semi-official. -- zero29 19:14, September 22, 2009 (UTC)

You can create any FAQ for your taste, it is always a good idea. And those issues can still be placed in comment section of infobox in full. But the only thing I'm really asking of you is that you have to accept my vision. Not on tables and such but a vision about housekeeping. There's a host and there're guests. Guests can do anything they like apart from breaking the windows and burning the house down. I have some hosting experience, I'm happy to have a guest that want to make the house better. The thing is: I've made my house painted in blue with the golded doors and the big brown roof, it's looking quite beautiful in the morning from the seaside. I've choosen the acute triangle for the shape of the attic and have made some additional changes to its design. Lets just keep it that way, ok? And I'll go make some good tea... --Ngng 20:45, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
i understand your approach and i absolutely respect your opinion, otherwise i wouldn't take my time to argue about it ;)
btw, what about a category like "low specs" to gather all games that should run on less powerful systems? there are already 2 or 3 threads with recommendations that we could include in this category. and in addition to that categories of all games with unknown status for a specific os? so that a user could easily find games that she/he could provide a status update for (win: unknown, linux: unknown, mac: unknown)? -- zero29 23:09, September 22, 2009 (UTC)
Low specs is a good idea but categories should be added by hands. Try it. About unknown status -- that's a bit different story it shouldn't be good to add them by hands (too much work), I can autoassign them but unfortunately the article has to be saved to update these categories. So either we'd need to save all 1500 articles only to have those 3 new cats or I'd need to export all pages into xml, update them and import again. The former seems too hard for a case the latter is also a kind of overkill (some new changes could be lost in a way and I've never tried that before). I guess it can be done when it's really needed. We'll see. --Ngng 05:06, September 23, 2009 (UTC)


Redirects

Just asking how do I make redirects Oo? like you with enix and square KabooZ 18:11, September 28, 2009 (UTC)

Quite easy. Create a page with the content:
#REDIRECT [[Needed page]]
Try it out! But you cannot erase the pages. If you've mistaken in a title better "move" it thus changing it name (and suppress proposed auto redirect). --Ngng 20:39, September 28, 2009 (UTC)

Ad free

Hi! Would you like this wiki to be ad-free? I'm looking for wikis to be part of a new program which would remove all ads from the wiki for $19.95/month.

If you are interested, please be visit here to sign up. Let me know if you have any questions! - sannse 20:21, June 2, 2010 (UTC)

Ignore; this was an old post by Sannse, a Wikia staffer, not Shoutwiki. Personally, I wouldn't mind unobtrusive banner ads (read: no popups, no columns in the middle of the wiki content - just banners). - Trucidation 13:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Hacks and FPS

Seems like in the past few weeks FPS Info and Hacks sections broke. FPS Info doesn't show no matter what and Hacks shows up below comments. Is there anyway to fix this? Sev7en77 01:42, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, they didn't break they were intentionally removed (FPS that is, and the hacks were added to the comment section). It wasn't mine idea to do this but CKL (here) and Rama (here) like it this way. I like it much less but I was a minority so it's been done. We can try to discuss it with them if you like, as things in here can be easily undone. --Ngng 11:00, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

I was just wondering since it seemed to happen out of no where, at first I thought something broke or I was doing something wrong :S. I'll just put FPS/Hacks info in comments from now on, if needed. Sev7en77 11:43, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

A sound plan. :) --Ngng 18:21, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

Actually it was me who made the changes because those two options are not really necessary due to the fact that they vary over different pc(high end, low end, ect). I think The FPS option really has no meaning because when one makes a change and say for a given game he can get 30 fps while everyone else has it run at full speed, it does not mean much other than showing others than the guy's machine being not able to run the game at full speed. What I am trying to say is the FPS option confuses others and has high potential to give faulty information.

Regarding to the FPS options, It was removed because the less the speed hacks one use the better gaming experience he will likely to get, so hacks that listed on the wiki may confuse some individuals the necessility of having speed hacks( if you have a high end pc, you don't really need to use speedhacks). CKL 03:29, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion it's not a problem if we remove or add something. It's not a big deal (for me it was better with them, but it's still quite ok without them). There aren't so many users editing here so just go ahead with what you want to do (we can always discuss everything later). --Ngng 04:38, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Just my $0.02, but I think people who want to post hacks should also post their machine specs - that way others can gauge whether they need them as well or not. And I agree that this info can best be compiled in each game's talk page. That way we don't clutter the game's main page and we make the talk pages more useful (as it is, only a handful of us seem to be using them). - Trucidation 09:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


New pages

Hi Ngng, good to see you here. Just one question, how do people go about creating new pages? I was trying to think like someone who just discovered the wiki and found out that the game he's playing doesn't exist. So... he goes to check the main page, then the "how to contribute" guide, but there's nothing on that page which tells him exactly to create a new page. Personally I just manually enter into the browser URL:

http://pcsx2.shoutwiki.com/w/index.php?title=This_Game_Does_Not_Exist_Yet&action=edit

That seems a bit clumsy to me though, especially because it will create 100% fully blank pages - no templates, nothing. I'm working on a new page template right now, I'll check back with you in an hour or so okay. Brb. - Trucidation 00:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, that sucks. The templates I added to the create button aren't being added; the user gets sent to a blank page. Can you help fix this? Thanks. I got the createbox code from wikia but shoutwiki appears to be using a different method. - Trucidation 01:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Crap, shoutwiki doesn't appear to have any help for preloading templates, and it's not mentioned in the new page creation page help either. Looks like I'll have to upload the template text and make sure users who want to create new pages copy-paste it, then edit in their information. Let me know if you can get templates to preload okay? That will help a lot. - 218.208.223.130 02:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Oops, that was me, I accidentally logged out -__- Stupid Chrome text search results, right over the logout button. Anyway, I did what I could. - Trucidation 02:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Heh! You're kinda funny (no offence)! :) It's not a big problem to create a new page by copying the contents of existing one in my opinion, but... I guess it's possible to set up some script for a new page to do that easier. I'll try to do it (I'm always as busy as you've mentioned before... Ah, aren't we all? :-\ ). Anyways, I'd give you adm rights here if you like to experiment further (although I've not protected any page yet but it would put my mind at rest to know that someone can be watching whenever I'm out). What do you think? --Ngng 18:08, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but before you do that, what does being an admin entail? I probably can't make it here every day either, but at least a few times a week. I won't disappear though, especially since this is a rather wide-ranging wiki instead of just focusing on a particular game (it's easy to lose interest otherwise). - Trucidation 23:54, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There are no obligations whatsoever for any admin other than 1. have fun, 2. don't ruin someone else's fun (i.e. be understandable and resonable to users), 3. if you happen to drop by you may find some time to sort out the mess the site accumulated while all admins were absent. It would never require you to see to the site on a regular basis. You'll have additional rights like: ban, delete, protect and promote. These are all intended as a last resort. This is a slo-o-ow place, I kind like it that way. Whenever I'll find a time to play another PS2 game, I'll update it's page. It doesn't require a lot of attention. --Ngng 09:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Developers / publishers

Yo, I just took a look at some of the dev pages; I think the "PCSX2 compatibility" section isn't necessary. There's already a list of games they developed/published, people can go check the games they want to look up. Otherwise we'll have to update the compatibility list for that company every time someone updates one of their game's pages. What do you think? (By the way, wiki's showing a reminder to split your talk page into sections. I think it's the "==" stuff which makes separate Edit links appear.) - Trucidation 11:58, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

They were intended for a particular cases, you can remove then if you like (I was just being a copy-paste robot). As for my talk page... Meh... It doesn't matter that much. If it'll ever grow too large I'll just archive it and begin anew. --Ngng 09:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Multiple developers

Heya Ngng, I was editing a bunch of pages for different games and noticed that when a game has multiple developers, the links on the wikipedia page for that game will not link to the individual developers, even when seperated by commas. For example, putting "developer 1, developer 3, developer 5" in the developer field of the game template will link to a page called "developer 1, developer 3, developer 5". Is there any way to seperate the developer names so that they all link to a seperate page, or is this an oversight? --MyDreamName 00:37, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi there! Thank you for taking your time to do this! I've thought about this before just haven't got a chance to fix it. Wiki template markup language is kind of unforgiving (you can see for yourself in Template:Infobox game). I made it possible to use up to three developers divided by commas but it shouldn't be a problem to add more if it will be needed! --Ngng 04:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Hey Ngng, I was just wondering this will only happen on newly created pages, as I just checked a page (http://pcsx2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Spy_Hunter), and it doesn't seem to be seperating the developers. MyDreamName 05:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and sorry for the quick double point, but I just noticed the "Point of View, Inc." in the developers list. Perhaps if possible in cases of more than one developer, the names of the developers can be encased in quotes, and then separated by commas? MyDreamName 05:08, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
The page cache will be renewed by simply saving the page without any edits or preview it, otherwise it will not change, that's how it works unfortunaly. As for "Point of View, Inc.", I guess if we cannot bend the markup rules (I think it's not possible to use quotes here, at least I don't know how) we just can use the name without a comma ("Point of View Inc."). Alternatively we can separate developers by semicolons or any other sign but I think it wouldn't be a natural way to do it. --Ngng 05:59, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Would it be at all possible to keep the companies separated by commas, but just exclude strings like ", Ltd." and ", Inc." from that rule? MyDreamName 18:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
You've got a point here I'll try to do it. The only downside I see is that all those wiki string functions are case sensitive. So even if I make a check for some terms like ", Ltd.", ", ltd.", ", ltd" someone will still call it ", LTD" :( Although I can always correct the spelling afterwards. --Ngng 04:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Well it's kind of working!.. But the part ", Inc." is lost in the process (not a big deal, though it can be redirected) --Ngng 04:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Hey again, I just re-saved a page (http://pcsx2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Spy_Hunter) and the list of developers doesn't seem to be working as intended still unfortunately. MyDreamName 14:47, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Hm... Weird, it looks alright to me. All three developers are intact: Category:Games by Paradigm Entertainment, Category:Games by Point of View (no Inc. as described) and Category:Games by Sidhe Interactive. Could it be it's your browser cache to blame? Try Ctrl-F5. --Ngng 18:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, when I click on any place in the developer's links on the Spy Hunter page, I get directed to http://pcsx2.shoutwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Paradigm_Entertainment,_Point_of_View,_Inc.,_Sidhe_Interactive&action=edit&redlink=1. It could just be me, though. I had tried Ctrl+F5. MyDreamName 20:52, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Ah, sorry, my bad! :( You're talking about the direct link from the page and I was referring to the categories at the bottom of the page. Too much information on my mind these days :( I'll try to fix it. --Ngng 04:46, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
It seems to be working now, although it introduced an small extra effort for the contributors. We can use square brackets in the developers' field now (without them the whole field will be treated as one developer as it used to be). --Ngng 06:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Classifying Something as an FPS

I noticed that any game page that has the word "Shooter" under its genre gets placed into the "FPS" genre. Can that please be changed so that only terms such as "FPS" or "First Person Shooter" are recognized? There is a difference between a regular "shooter" and a "FPS". For example, Ratchet and Clank is a shooter, but not a FPS. Same with the GTA series (which is listed under FPS currently). I tried changing this myself, but I could not figure out how. Thanks. MyDreamName 22:54, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
Edit: I also noticed that the "Shoot 'em up" genre shares all games from the FPS genre, save Gradius V, which is defined as a "Shmup". MyDreamName 22:55, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
This whole categories thing is very subjective and I tend to agree with anyone who asks for changes just to stay away from it. You can correct the thing yourself here (at the bottom of the page in edit mode) but it will require some accuracy. Alternatively I can do it myself if you tell me what do you want to change. To rename FPS into Shooter genre we would need to resave all the pages currently filed under FPS. --Ngng 06:02, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I took a look at that, and I know how to edit it, but I do not know a way that an average person would correctly classify something as an FPS and not a Shooter. For now, I'm going to just remove "shooter" from the FPS category and fix all of the FPS games and the Shooter games. It would be awesome if "First Person Shooter" would just go into the FPS category, but it also triggers "Shoot 'Em Up" because it has "shoot" in that string. MyDreamName 15:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
In fact I can just rename FPS into Shooter. It's will still be related to FPS and will be general enough to contain other shooter game. What do you think? --Ngng 05:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
I have no strong preference. Perhaps if you feel they should, "Shoot 'em up" and "First-person shooter" should be merged into "Shooter" as you suggested? MyDreamName 20:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
I just wanted to renamed FPS into shooter leaving shoot'em up as it is. Although now I can't think of any games that will belong to this category besides obvious FPS so lets leave it at that. --Ngng 04:48, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

How to set up PCSX2 on Windows

Heya. I noticed that after I edited and added a small bit of information on the article "How to set up PCSX2 on Windows" (http://pcsx2.shoutwiki.com/wiki/How_to_set_up_PCSX2_on_Windows) that there is already a similar article. Since this is redundant, can it be deleted? MyDreamName 00:48, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Here you go. If only I had some free time I would do some additional damage to the existing page, it's now really out of date. Ah, maybe in July I'll have a vacation, that would be nice... --Ngng 05:19, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Most viewed articles

Hey if you noticed I have been editing a bunch of articles and finishing them recently, the reason I'm asking you this is because your the only person who has been on here that looks like they actually know what their doing. Anyway I noticed that on the bottom of every article page there is a most viewed count, and I was wondering if there is a page to find out a list of most viewed pages from most viewed to least, to figure out which articles are important enough. Of course, all of them are important but the one's receiving actual foot traffic and have no actual info on them should be edited first, at least in my book. SO does such a page exist? If so, can I have the link? Thanks. --Bot2345 03:02, 3 May 2012 (BST)

Hi! Thank you for editing and contributing! Although this counter can be deceiving (afaik it does not count unique visitors, you can increase it on any page to any number by just continually refreshing this page in your browser), such a page in fact does exist, here's the [link]. Btw, ask me anything you want it's always too quiet around here so I'm happy to at least help someone. --Ngng 06:15, 3 May 2012 (BST)

Anti-spam

I think you guys need to install the CheckSpambots extension as well. The Q&A CAPTCHA works, but nowadays spammers have gotten past the cracks and are able to creep in. Blakegripling ph (talk) 05:02, 3 July 2012 (BST)

Hi! Welcome! I'd say right now it's quite bearable. They still have to register by hands (otherwise it would've been way more of them as it was before) and it's a hard work for a spammer so I'd wait a bit. I'd bother Bositman only if their activity will keep on growing, otherwise I kinda like to show them that we're able to deal with their little efforts personally. :-) But thanks anyway, I'll keep your advice in mind! --Ngng (talk) 07:43, 3 July 2012 (BST)

Tests

The main reason I removed it was the complexity of HTML code. It's hard to use for casual users, and it's hard to maintain even for a professional programmer. Imagine if someone add a column; the whole table needs to be edited. It is better for us to have a function or a temple which receives data as arguments. If other users add their testing results into my table using the current HTML code, it would be a nightmare when we have to maintain them. I'm neither good at nor fond of learning Wikicode, so I think I just save it until somebody does. -- Livy (talk) 12:42, 28 July 2012 (BST)

Yeah, it's a bit messy but acceptable. I'll convert your table to natural wiki markup style. Here you go (look in edit mode):
Region Country Catalogue CPU GPU PCSX2 Non-default settings Result Tester
NTSC-J Japan SLPS-25088 AMD Phenom II X4 N930 @ 2.0 Ghz ATI Mobility Radeon HD 545v (Radeon HD 4570 rebranded) SVN r5326
  • EE/IOP Clamping Mode: Full
  • Speedhacks: all recommended speedhacks & MTVU
  • GSDX resolution: 2x
  • GSDX SkipDraw: 1
Full speed 99% of the time. 50 FPS in some scenes of Mi'ihen Highroad. Briefly drops to 50FPS when casting Demi and 25FPS when summoning Shiva (full sequence). There is a glitch in a variety of FMVs, fix it by pressing F9 to toggle to software mode, but feel free to toggle back to hardware mode immediately.

To prevent FMV glitches at the first place, either turn off all speedhacks or using native resolution.
Livy
NTSC-U US SLUS-20312 Intel Core i3 2120 @ 3.3 Ghz Nvidia GeForce GT 440 SVN r5102
  • EE/IOP Clamping Mode: Full
  • VUs Clamping Mode: Extra + Preserve Sign
  • Speedhacks: all recommended speedhacks & MTVU
  • GSDX resolution: 3x
  • GSDX SkipDraw: 1
Constant 60 FPS. Using 4x resolution causes the framerate to drop slightly when summoning Shiva. There is a FMV glitch after Yunalesca battle, when Tidus watches Sin. To fix it, do as the above mentioned. Livy
PAL UK SCED-50642 Intel Celeron 560 @ 2.13 Ghz SiS 672 (integrated) 0.9.6
  • Speedhacks: all recommended speedhacks
  • GSDX: DirectX9 (software)
Never passes 15 FPS during intro scene. GSDX hardware mode causes a garbage screen and crashes Windows, probably because the GPU does not fully support Direct3D 9. Livy


I can make template for it but the final result will look something like this:
{{Test_header

{{Test_line|NTSC-J|Japan|SLPS-25088|AMD Phenom II X4 N930 @ 2.0 Ghz|ATI Mobility Radeon HD 545v (Radeon HD 4570 rebranded)|SVN r5326
|
*EE/IOP Clamping Mode: '''Full'''
*VUs Clamping Mode: '''Extra + Preserve Sign'''
*Speedhacks: all recommended speedhacks & MTVU
*GSDX resolution: '''3x'''
*GSDX SkipDraw: '''1'''
|Constant 60 FPS. Using 4x resolution causes the framerate to drop slightly when summoning Shiva. There is a FMV glitch after Yunalesca battle, when Tidus watches Sin. To fix it, do as the above mentioned.
|[[User:Livy|Livy]]}}

{{Test_line ...
}}

{{Test_line ...
}}

{{Test_line ...
}}

}}



I'm not sure if it's better than just this plane table above (it imposes even more punctuation by removing only header text). --Ngng (talk) 06:08, 29 July 2012 (BST)

Incredibly Annoying Chaptas

Could the chapta be possibly disabled once you have like, five edits or so? --RaTcHeT302 talk contribs 23:50, 5 September 2013 (BST)

I don't see any captchas (if that's what you mean) from my side (guess it's because of my rights). I'll register another account to see how it looks and pass the request to Bositman. --Ngng (talk) 06:33, 6 September 2013 (BST)
I agree that those captchas are really annoying and very hard to solve (I've never seen such hard captchas before). I cannot imagine myself solving these after each tiny edit. Thanks for info I'll talk to Bosiman. --Ngng (talk) 06:46, 6 September 2013 (BST)

New Template

I have put up some updates about the plan for a new template on my user page. Please give it a look. Tonygiang (talk) 05:47, 21 July 2014 (BST)

This is not the first attempt to update the template (as you can also see on my page here). When it was created I was torn between "the last tested configuration" template and "the table of all tested configurations" template. It just happened that "the last tested configuration" template was implemented before and was never changed afterwards. The idea was that there aren't so many users to contribute so the one configuration is enough in most cases (especially for some forgotten and rare games) plus the table template would be way more complex for an ordinary user to work with. And finally I've run into the serious lack of time IRL (the state I'm currently in btw).
It's not that easy to update the current template correctly as you can see here it's rather a complex thing. If you're serious about changing it you should make a working test page beforehand (you can use your own user page for that or even create a new test page). Finally I can find some time and help you turn your test page into the new template (if you want my help). And only when we will have the new beautiful working page we can update every game page in existence (and this would also be a hard work because there are so many pages to update).
By the way do you really think that "the table of all tested configurations" template will improve the data collection on the wiki? It will be more readable no doubt about it but I haven't witnessed that many cases of updating or replacing the outdated info. There were some but not so many. And many of those just updated the version to the latest available. The useful thing about this table template is when there is a regression in development leads to broken games you would be able to see it and choose not to use that "bad" version to play the game. But other than that the older entries in this table are for historical or sentimental reasons, IMO. What's your take on this? --Ngng (talk) 07:38, 21 July 2014 (BST)
I could see that was the problem early on, and unfortunately, the single-test case format just creates a mentality of hesitation for newer testers. I used to be one, wondering whether or not I should overwrite the test result of another user when I didn't reproduce the same issue(s) on a different hardware configuration, different OS and different plugins. You know, it's not just replacing outdated testing results (in which case, 1 test case would be enough indeed), but providing various results on varying testing environments as well. I do think rearranging the template to allow multiple test cases will not only improve data collection, but encourage contribution as well.
I have looked into how the Dolphin guys made the testing table for their wiki, which seems adaptable if there's no quirk in either wiki. You can see here that they actually used a combination of 3 separate templates to build the table:
{{testing/start}}
<!--Use this template for test entries: {{testing/entry|revision=|OS=|CPU=|GPU=|result=|tester=}}-->
{{testing/end}}
The documentation can explain itself well enough. It's actually a very ad-hoc method considering their testing/end template simply contains a markup wrap. Their testing/entry template is the glue (and the most intimidating part) of this format, but I'm sure we can adapt this eventually. Tonygiang (talk) 13:02, 21 July 2014 (BST)
Well, lets try to do it then! We can remove some parts from the old template and use the new one alongside with it. This approach from Dolphin guys seems reasonable and easy enough to use so we can adopt it without copying their actual template (it's not so complex anyway). First of all we need to agree on the table columns. A you can see here there was an attempt to do it about two years ago so we can at least take this into consideration. Try creating your own table (without using any templates for the time being) and I'll convert it to templates when we're agreed on its contents. By the way I'll be out of town for 3 days until the end of the week (starting tomorrow) so I won't be able to answer you for some time. --Ngng (talk) 06:06, 22 July 2014 (BST)
A sample table is up on my user page. Tonygiang (talk) 10:23, 22 July 2014 (BST)
I made my own sample on my user page. I used a different table style so it's more compact and has "wiki" colors. I changed the "Sound" row to "CDVD" because I thought knowing what CDVD plugin someone used would be more helpful. I also changed "Comments" to "Speedhacks", because otherwise every test result would just be repeating each other saying things like "audio is desynched".
IMO any comments about issues with the game or comments about what gamefixes to use shouldn't be stated in the table. That way it is more convenient for people that look for these 2 things in the wiki:
  • Whether a game is playable or not.
  • What settings should I use to fix specific issues.
Other people interested in performance of the game will look at the table to see if they can run the game at full speed.
Also more info about "wiki tables" can be found here and here.
--Shunter (talk) 12:43, 22 July 2014 (GMT-5)
The style looks nicer, although it could use a border-collapse style to save some screen space real estate. The sample comment about the issues of the games are just examples of what the testers would have a say on, not what they are obligated to repeat in every entry. They could have some comment about the performance of particular hardware, how far they could push the game above standard testing condition (which is always native resolution and no graphical enhancement), etc... Like you said, it's a performance reference table, but we can only make it so with some space for the testers to tell us about the performance they got, don't we?
I don't think speedhacks need a separate column since as the devs said, test results are assumed to have no kind of hacks enabled (because technically, they are hack-ey by default and could mangle test results, hence not very useful for the devs to look at). Mentioning of speedhacks is only necessary if they generate different results. My terrible example entry did not reflect those things very well and might have given you an impression that speedhacks need to be explicit for every entry. That one example alone should in no way be the guideline to make test entries.
I have no clue about a CDVD plugin column. Are CDVD plugins really complicated to configure or lacking in compatibility that users would find it helpful to have it explicit? Tonygiang (talk) 10:20, 24 July 2014 (BST)
Some games run worse when you try to run them using the disc, so it might be helpful to know whether the tester used an ISO or ran the game through the DVD drive. Although I now think that instead of a CDVD column, that space could be used for something else.

--Shunter (talk) 7:14, 24 July 2014 (GMT-5)


I'm also in favor of having the comments (or result) column because otherwise there are no means of telling whether the game is working or not using this config (we can even color the table cell or the whole line in some light green/red/blue to reflect the result). Any relevant info (like bios, hacks, fps etc.) can also be stored in it. But what about regions (PAL/NTSC(-J))? The games from the different regions may have considerable difference in performance and behavior. --Ngng (talk) 08:08, 25 July 2014 (BST)

Can't we make separate pages for each regional version of the same game, then? That was how the public compatbility list is organized. Several games even have different names in each regions. If not, then the CPU/GPU info could go into the same column, so that there would be 3 factors in environment: os, hardware and region. Tonygiang (talk) 07:45, 26 July 2014 (BST)
Having a number of pages for one game is really not a wise thing to do. We won't even be able to name the pages right (this is ugly: "Fatal Frame NTSC-U", "Fatal Frame PAL", "Fatal Frame NTSC-J") and this will spawn so many duplicates. Besides we'd have to copy most of the issues to all the pages and maintain these pages simultaneously. I can think of a number of additional problems we would face if we'll adopt this approach... --Ngng (talk) 06:32, 27 July 2014 (BST)
I updated my sample table. To match what you guys wanted.

--Shunter (talk) 2:03, 26 July 2014 (GMT-5)

Okay now your tables look very much alike (except for minor differences). I'll dust off my wiki markup knowledge then and make the sample template. --Ngng (talk) 06:32, 27 July 2014 (BST)

I've made three templates: Template:TestingHeader, Template:TestingFooter and Template:TestingEntry (the later has some info about its usage). If you have any ideas just go ahead and edit the templates (we can always revert to any version). --Ngng (talk) 09:18, 27 July 2014 (BST)

I'm really clueless when it comes to wiki templates, but is it possible to have 2 parameters in the same cell? So that the CPU/GPU column can automatically sort them into list? Tonygiang (talk) 13:52, 28 July 2014 (BST)
I think this is the way it's done right now (if I understand you correctly). What really concerns me is how this will look on the games' pages because without any other info and only two tables on the page (game card table on the right pane and this testing table in the middle) it may really look ugly :-\.
What do you think, should we proceed now or should we wait for any other opinions on the testing table (because it will be harder to change it later)? --Ngng (talk) 06:28, 29 July 2014 (BST)
This is what a game page looks like now: http://i.imgur.com/CNov8Qt.jpg
This is what a game page can look like with a table: http://i.imgur.com/YfICe8v.jpg
I used an image editor to make the second image but if you can make the new template look like that, it won't look as ugly. Maybe we should make a post on the PCSX2 forums to get more opinions?

--Shunter (talk) 1:43, 29 July 2014 (GMT-5)

Impressive work, thank you! But I was more concerned about really empty pages save for the test info (without issues and reviews and anything at all). Btw, do you think we should separate test tables on the OS basis?
I'll make the post on the forums and then proceed to apply changes to the old template in a couple of days. --Ngng (talk) 10:41, 30 July 2014 (BST)

New Template (cont.)

What you guys have got so far looks good to me. The only thing I would mention is the lack of a section for input plugins, as I know at least a handful of games require a special configuration of lilypad or a different plugin altogether. I suppose that could go in the comments column though. Good work! --Blyss Sarania

@Ngng I think we should make a separate table for different OSs; I made a separate table for both OSs because it ended up looking better.

--Shunter (talk) 12:27, 30 July 2014 (GMT-5)

Finally managed to get back. Anyway, I don't see why we would need separate table for each OS. Didn't we have a dedicated column for OS already? --Tonygiang (talk) 10:03, 31 July 2014 (BST)
The only thing I would suggest would be a way for someone to add their own comments for unreproducible issues and the like instead of editing the main article, I'm not saying it is needed, but it would be nice. Clank (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2014 (BST)

Sorry, guys, it's been a horribly busy and generally horrible week for me...
On the topic of separate tables: I'd say lets try and separate them (we can always go back to one table it's not that hard). This way it will look a bit better IMO with the OS icons and big headers and the dedicated column will still be used to show OS version.
@Clank: If I understand you correctly you want a special place (column or such) for encountered issues in the test table... I think we have no place left. You can always use comments for anything issue related or you may add them to the main article (to be honest there is a way -- we can use an extra line with merged columns solely for the purpose of registering issues, but it may look pretty bad, idk)
@Blyss Sarania: I think comments will do for the time being, although the time will tell.
I'm gonna make a long time overdue "issue template" today. Should we wait a bit more or should I proceed with the test table? --Ngng (talk) 10:13, 2 August 2014 (BST)

I really like the idea of the new issue template, but I have a question. Is the issue "Fixed" if there's a workaround for it, or can we only mark as "Fixed" if the PCSX2 team makes a fix for the game?
I think we should proceed with the test table, since no one is objecting.

--Shunter (talk) 7:27, 2 August 2014 (GMT-5)

IMO I it should be marked as fixed when it's no longer manifesting itself under the given conditions (for example the minor GFX glitch is gone in GDSX HW because devs fixed it). Otherwise most of the issues will be marked as fixed because they have workarounds. And with all that said I'll proceed with the test table (although I'll better do it tomorrow in the morning when there's a certain itch to do things ;-) ). --Ngng (talk) 14:11, 2 August 2014 (BST)

Update: I've altered issue type so we can add "notes". When the game does not run smoothly without some option activated it's still worth noting somewhere but it's not an issue (if the option is not a hack of course). It least this system is more flexible now.
I can't start working on test tables until I'm finished with updating issues on all game pages. I only hope there aren't so many left... --Ngng (talk) 09:58, 3 August 2014 (BST)

There was a way to apply a category to the whole game list, wasn't there? You could do that right now and roll out the new stub template so that we can gradually convert the pages later. It gives something to generate new stubs from the forum's compatibility list, too.
I'm not keen on the whole separate table for each OS thing. Pcsx2 might be ported to other platforms other than Windows and Linux in the future, then we'd have to make another tweak to the stub template for each new platform. One-size-fits-all table is future-proof, but if i'm out-voted in the matter, got to roll along, I guess. --Tonygiang (talk) 08:59, 5 August 2014 (BST)
I'm almost done with the issues, just a couple of pages of indexed games left. I just don't want to mix these two problems. I understand your concern about table separation. It will be really easy to go back to one table if it will turn out not be as good I promise. --Ngng (talk) 09:41, 5 August 2014 (BST)

New Template (cont.2)

So it's been done. See this page for reference. I don't know what to think about it atm because I need a fresh look (tomorrow), but the first impression is so-so... Maybe it will change tomorrow idk. Please comment and try to convert other pages to see the difference. To convert the page you have to:

  • remove the word game in the line {{infobox game
  • remove the lines starting with <!-- Windows specs --> until the end of template. The last removed line must start with pccomment=
  • add testing tables in a form (using the removed values):
{{TestingHeader|OS=Windows}}
{{TestingEntry
|Status=?
|Region=?
|OS=?
|CPU=?
|GPU=?
|Revision=?
|Graphics=?
|Sound=?
|Comments=?
|Tester=?
}}
...
{{TestingFooter}}

I'm done for today, see you tomorrow... --Ngng (talk) 20:38, 6 August 2014 (BST)

I just updated this page to the new template. IMO it looks alright but the template could use some tweaks. For example, the text in the boxes should be centered. Also the table needs more room width-wise. Is it possible to decrease the width of the "infobox" to increase the width of the tables?
--Shunter (talk) 5:42, 6 August 2014 (GMT-5)
I have a really simple resolution for that: put the testing table at the bottom, below the Known Issues section. That way, it doesn't share page width with the infobox. I've edited the Drakan page as an example. Seems ok for now. --Tonygiang (talk) 06:42, 8 August 2014 (BST)

Sorry guys, I've been swamped again (as always)...
@SHunter: At my 1920x1080 resolution the problem with space deficit is non-existent. :) The table scales automatically right now, but some columns (in fact all but the last one) have fixed width so it may look pretty ugly for some resolutions. I'll try to tune it somehow so to beautify it for smaller monitors... Try to play with column align yourself (IMO this one is alright, but why not try to center to see the difference?). Fiddle with the right panel also. It's mostly defined in the same template.
@Tonygiang: Putting the table after all the info will only work in case we have this info. See for example this page. The table looks fine if it's not swarmed with info like it was with Drakan in my case. --Ngng (talk) 19:03, 8 August 2014 (BST)

I'd say I like it now... Maybe I like it even better than the plain info. I hope it's not too late for that anyway (PCSX2 development is kind of slow for the last 3-4 years, will there be enough "versions" to make use of our new test table)...
To the matter at hand: we can "easily" convert all the empty pages ("easily" being overstatement here) but I believe the amount of work to convert the filled pages is monstrous. To convert the page we have to open its history first and get the tester name. In case there was a previous test info we should go back in time to find it and add this old info to the table as well. Some pages will require a lot of time to transfer and it cannot be done automatically. :(
Old template pages category will show all the pages with the old template (right now it's empty but it should update itself (I hope) if some kind of scheduler runs on PCSX2 server. If it will stay empty it's not a big deal. As a last resort I can ask Bositman to run some wiki related scripts, idk).
I can try to speed up the whole thing by making use of these buttons


I think I'll try it tomorrow, at least we can do it in semi-automatic fashion. --Ngng (talk) 19:51, 8 August 2014 (BST)

http://wiki.pcsx2.net/index.php?action=edit&preload=TempPageForTemplateTransfer&section=new&title=Sega+Superstars+Tennis: this URL will do the same with Sega Superstars Tennis as the button above. I'll exploit PUT method by creating batch file to open edit and history pages for multiple games at once. This method will allow us to speed up edits without wasting time on searching pages... --Ngng (talk) 20:09, 8 August 2014 (BST)


New Template (cont.3)

I've decided to create more universal solution and to write an external utility to convert the old template into the new one (to an extent of course) using clipboard. Basically you have to start the program leave it running while working on pages conversion. Press Alt-Shift-E on a chosen page (it's a shortcut for editing), use Ctrl-A to select all text and Ctrl-C to put it into clipboard. After that you just have to press Shift-Shift (left shift and right shift concurrently) and the program will convert (or try to convert) the text automatically. Get the text from clipboard again (Ctrl-V) and check the result, correct it, add needed info and the tester name (from page history). I've spent the whole day doing some automation stuff for the wiki (and I'm not done yet) and this utility, although may feel like magic to me, could still use some improvement and may also contain a number of bugs. Please test it and leave some feedback. Thanks.
I cannot upload binary files on the wiki pages so I'll do it in this thread. --Ngng (talk) 19:52, 9 August 2014 (BST)

I'm preparing to convert most of the empty pages (and only empty pages) automatically but they would look really empty without any info. What do you think is better to leave them bare like this or put a placeholder table like this? --Ngng (talk) 11:21, 10 August 2014 (BST)

Leave a table, it gives potential testers an idea what goes where. --Tonygiang (talk) 10:11, 11 August 2014 (BST)


Correcting and completing the machine conversions (COMPLETED, no longer needed)

This is a small note on how to correct the auto-converted pages into their finished state (in case you have some time and want to help):

  1. First of all you need to choose a page to correct from this category.
  2. Start editing the page and open the page history simultaneously.
  3. Search through the history (using prev links) and find the author of the last configuration change.
  4. Copy authors name into Tester field
  5. Fill OS field if possible (some comments may contain it)
  6. Fill Status field (0,1 or 2)
  7. Fill Region field if possible (some comments may contain it)
  8. If the older records in history contain previous test information (which was exchanged for the current by the mentioned author), you should add another test case and fill it as well.
  9. If all goes well, remove [[Category:Temp - unverified automatically converted pages]] line from the article and save it
  10. Minus one unfinished article, thank you!


This is a slow process so it will take some time until all these articles are corrected. --Ngng (talk) 10:37, 14 August 2014 (BST)

Congrats on converting every page to the new template. I just wish I could've helped out more but I didn't have the time. -Shunter 12:02, 20 October 2014 (GMT-5)

You still helped a lot with the conversion (and with the template itself) so thank you! And I'm also grateful for putting in a word for me to Bositman! I guess I'd make that blog post about wiki in general and maybe to call out for someone who could re-design the main page and improve the overall look of game articles a little. We'll see what he thinks about it. --Ngng (talk) 07:03, 21 October 2014 (BST)

What is Pokopom?

http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Pokopom-KrossX-s-Pad-Plugin Not sure if it should be added to the wiki but it's an "open source XInput input plugin for PSX emulators, PCSX2, nullDC 1.0.4, Chankast 0.25 and many N64 emulators."

A great alternative to other input plugins, I never used it much though.

And now you know :D

Thanks for the info. :) Now I know... --Ngng (talk) 07:33, 24 August 2014 (BST)

Navbox

Just a test for navbox from Wikipedia...


If anyone has any ideas about this template, please drop a message here. The bottom part of the template is possibly broken right now (Wikipedia uses LUA-driven templates now and we do not have LUA (and honestly we don't need it) so the thing I've stolen from them was not up-to-date). I'll correct it later.

Some partially hidden text experiments

Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test
This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test Just a test This is a test Still a simple test End of this test