Wikihack:Community Portal/Archive1

This page contains old sections from Wikihack:Community Portal. If you want to carry on talking about these topics, post a new section on the current Community Portal page. This page is intended to be a static archive.

Inactivity
This wiki was inactive recently. I have recently joined and will probably work in the project namespace before I start working in the main namespace. You can look at NetHack, where I havee previously contributed. --Kernigh 00:21, 10 Dec 2005 (UTC)

50 articles --Kernigh 06:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * 400 articles! The 400th article was *. --ZeroOne 23:00, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

How to write a great article
There are many many aspects to cover in Wikihack. At the ground level we have the items and monsters in the game. Each article about these should have the following sections: Facts, Commentary, and Strategy. Firstly, we list the facts about the relevant item. Then in Commentary, we draw attention to the implications of these facts. Finally in Strategy, we give useful advice on how to use with or deal with this thing! 80.4.224.5 17:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The above advice is old. Consider reading the Wikihack:Style guide. --Jayt 12:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

New sysops
In order to help maintain the wiki, since it seems the founder is inactive, I've made Kernigh and ZeroOne sysops, and Kernigh a bureaucrat. Happy editing, Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Nethack-l Mailing List
Each Wikia has a mailing list: ours is nethack-l-at-wikia.com. I made the first post, so it works. For more information, read Mailing lists. "Posts from non-subscribers may be delayed or accidentally discarded, as they need to be approved by a list administrator to prevent spam."

So if someone emails the list (instead of posting to this Community Portal), I am suscribed so I will eventually read it. --Kernigh 01:48, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikihack logo
I, Kernigh, noticed in Special:Recentchanges that ZeroOne recently updated the "wiki@" logo proposal. There was supposed to be a Wikihack:Logo contest, but we never found enough users to vote. There are only two proposals, both shown above.

My logo idea (actually a screenshot when I made the font big) does not work because I could not use mimics. So I propose putting ZeroOne's Image:Wikihack logo.png as the logo. (A sysop would upload the logo to Image:Wiki.png, a protected page.) Comments? --Kernigh 04:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It looks like no one objects so I just took my logo in use. It is also a screenshot taken in wizard mode, I just added that border with Photoshop. You can guess it took some time to get those monsters arrange themselves to form the word "wiki"! --ZeroOne 11:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Images from the Windows version?
Anyone know if there's any copyright on images from the Windows tile version? If not, it might be a good idea to upload them to the articles. Lotte 20:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The tile files are from the vanilla 3.4.3 sources. Because they are part of vanilla NetHack, they should be copyrighted but licensed under the NetHack General Public License dat/license, which should make them okay to upload here.


 * [[Image:Vanilla tiles.png|thumb|right|These are the tiles after conversion to PNG.]] The tiles live in win/share, but during the build, X11 and Qt builds convert the tiles to .xpm format and put them dat/x11tiles. (Windows builds apparently use .bmp files.) So I told the image view KView to convert the file from .xpm to .png format, and uploaded that here.


 * The problem now is that to use the tiles in articles, we would need to put them into separate files. --Kernigh 03:46, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm working on it, I have a few up already. Lotte 16:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

re: Kernigh - Chopping Tiles into small files

What I plan on doing is chopping both the 16x16 (vanilla) tiles and the 32x32 tiles into a series of images with names that can be referenced using row, col index. For example the very first tile (ant) is in row 01 and col 01. Its name would be - ie: img01-01. The 7th tile across is an acid blob img01-07, soldier img08-01, etc.

Please tell me if this what you want (good idea/bad idea)?

If yes, then ideas/suggestions on image format. I see two options for image format.
 * 1) The x16 and x32 tiles in their own files
 * Pro
 * Allows for lot more control when using in page layout.
 * x16 and x32 tiles can be used seperatly. For instance, the x32 tiles on the monsters list page, and both tiles in the page about a specific monster.
 * Con
 * A lot of small files ~ 2400. (note: many images are duplicates and estimate includes blank, wall, and effect tiles)
 * 1) The x16 and x32 tiles merged into one image, ie: [[Image:ch-01-01.png]].
 * Pro
 * Fewer files ~ 1200, less files to edit if anyone wants to change border, background, etc.
 * Con
 * Merged image looks slightly tacky.

ideas/suggestions on naming. I am going to call the images (16t-.png, 32t-.png) or img-.png depending on image format.

ideas/suggestions on cataloguing. I am planning on making a page with a row, col style grid table displaying all images along with name.

ideas on how to bulk upload.

-- PraetorFenix 00:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we only need the larger versions. They can be reduced, but enlarging small images is problematic. Also, naming the images just by coordinates is, in my opinion, not a good idea. It becomes hard to find the correct image if they ever need to be changed or something. It would be better if the images were properly named, such as soldierant.png or hellhoundpup.png. I understand it would be easy to create a script to chop the large file and name the files by the coordinates, but still. Many images are also messy (at least to my eye that is used to the ASCII graphics) and you just cannot recognize what is in it. The row-col -scheme wouldn't help in that case. --ZeroOne 23:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the larger tiles consist of entirely different images. They are not larger versions of the x16 tiles. [[Image:Tiles32.png|thumb|right|x32 tiles after conversion to PNG]] I've uploaded the x32 tiles for reference. I understand your point about naming. In keeping with Lotte's effort I think we should stick with the x16 vanilla tiles. After all they are the standard that ships w/ NetHack.


 * I'm personally in favor of using the vanilla tiles, but in any case we should figure out which we're doing now before we add many more images. Lotte 23:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

ASCII templates

 * Good work :) I think we should also have a colour ASCII representation of the item/monster on each page, with a black background, preferably in a large font like on the wikihack logo. It would be nice to do this in HTML; what's the best way? --Jayt 19:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


 * In my opinion the best way would be to create a template with two parameters: the character and the color. Then we'd just have to decide where to put it. As a large image to the right or somewhere in the text like so far? --ZeroOne 22:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I made some function templates, though the mechanism for making the font big is a bit clunky. Example elf-lord, leocrotta, Arch-Lich and door: . --Jayt 15:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe a second parameter, small or large could be added?  </tt> would then render like <big style="font-size: 350%;"> a and   </tt> would render like a . This shouldn't be too difficult to do. --ZeroOne 19:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I now made the letters larger as I finally found that they were unreadable. No one plays NetHack with that tiny font anyway. It was also hard to see the characters in the dark background when they were small and had no padding around them. I also changed the font to monospaced. The only downside is that making the letters large with [template here] doesn't work anymore. Do we need it? --ZeroOne 23:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of showing the ASCII chars that represent game objects. Unfortunately it turns out that the same object is represented by different chars on different systems, see Talk:Fountain. In addition not all characters can be represented in html, and the colors won't render on a browser that overrides display defaults.


 * I suggest we decide on a standard set of characters for the game objects and then display them using embedded images Like so... [[Image:ch-01-01.png]]


 * -- PraetorFenix 23:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I mentioned on Talk:Fountain that we should use the ASCII default characters by default, with a brief mention of alternatives used. Granted, HTML is not perfect, but realistically 99% of browsers respect stylesheets, and people who override them expect to lose colouring info anyway. --Jayt 21:04, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

A model article
I've made an extensive article about the potion of object detection. Any suggestions or improvements? I think we should make a model article for each "type" of object or monster, and I think this one is pretty much what we want it to look like. --Jayt 16:47, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to get rid of the "spoiler-look" (xyz-343.txt) in all articles and replace those parts with running prose text. Otherwise this wiki becomes just a YASMS (Yet Another Spoiler Mirror Site, an acronym I just made up). Also listing the symbol and weight for each potion is rather needless, because they are the same for each one. After all, there is a general article about potions and another on weight. --ZeroOne 19:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, needs more prose. I'd actually prefer depending as little as possible on already public spoilers - after all, they all come from the same source: the source code. Lotte 21:33, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I rearranged the table to put the symbol at the top. I envisage a similar table for every item in the game, and weight is a standard property of every item, so in the interest of consistency between item articles, I think both symbol and weight deserve a place.


 * I too am keen to develop a wiki-look instead of falling back on the Hugo spoilers, but as it stands the xxxx-343.txt text is brilliantly designed; it's clear, concise and comprehensive. I am struggling to create anything better, but I would welcome any attempt to do so. --Jayt 21:16, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It bothers me that some of those files are divided into two, like wan1-343.txt and wan2-343.txt. The information can be presented in one wikipage nicely. Listing all possible given messages ("You sense the presence of objects." (not hallucinating); "You sense the presence of something."  (hallucinating); "You sense the absence of objects."  (not hallucinating); "You sense the absence of something."  (hallucinating)) also seems unnecessary. Who identifies stuff while confused, anyway? If someone really needs all those messages, they can go check the spoiler. Then there are lists like

hits monster No effect. vapors No effect.
 * which could be replaced by a single sentence "The potion has no effect when it vapors or hits a monster."
 * --ZeroOne 23:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Check out potion of object detection now. What do you think? I've separated effects and messages, since people usually want to either (a) find out what a potion does, or (b) find out what a message meant. This is also why the message table is now arranged in reverse-lookup fashion. --Jayt 21:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it sure is better, but actually I think a separate page with all messages from all potions ordered in that manner, reverse-lookup fashion, would be even better. People of part (b), who want to find out what a message meant, would not need to find out what the message meant if they had already identified the potion. Having not identified the potion, they will not find the potion page to see the messages there. Thus, having all messages alphabetically ordered and possible potions given next to them would be great. An example:


 * I second this idea. Also it would be nice to have a single page about identifying potions (linked from potions and also identifying items ). The potion of object detection page should include strategy on using the potion. ie: using the potion to find vaults, to detect monsters with inventory, using when confused to generate alternate effects (none for this potion), etc. Also mentioned should be likely places to find this potion (independant of identification) and associated probabilities, ie Mines End (10% chance), nymphs (50% chance), etc -- PraetorFenix 23:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The page does indeed have a strategy section :) --Jayt 10:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I like this idea too, as an extension of the pages dealing with object identification. There's no reason to include messages like "You sense the presence of objects" as it should be perfectly obvious what potion generates that. Messages like "You feel a lack of something" are distinctly ambiguous and would be very useful arranged in a table as you describe. However! If we are going to leave messages out of the identification-helper table, then they need to be included in the potion page, for the sake of completeness. So I think the easiest way to accomplish this would be to fill out the potion pages will all messages, like for potion of object detection, then pick and choose the ones useful for identification. --Jayt 10:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Source files and annotation
I've created potion.c using a script on my user page, with the intention of it being a convenient reference to link to from other articles. Since the source should be authoritative, this page should be protected from further edits. I hope to eventually upload the rest, so I'd find admin power rather useful. I hope my edit history demonstrates trustworthiness :)

(Regarding potion.c, I know it conflicts with the names used for the existing annotated files, but I'm going to move those to something like potion.c annotations.) --Jayt 18:49, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This source code thingie should be discussed separately from your adminship request. I think Obj.h could be used as a model article. If I understood you correctly, you want two pages for each source file: the file itself, protected, and another, a copy of the file but with comments, such as Obj.h now? I personally think that only one article per each source file is enough. They shouldn't be protected so that everyone can comment them. If they are vandalized a lot, then we might consider some restrictions, but I think it's better to keep them open for now. There are many skilled source divers out there who don't have an account in this wiki.


 * Oh by the way, see how I changed potion.c? It has still got the same features you implemented but I added a space in front of each row and removed all css-declarations, effectively saving some 60 kilobytes of space. :) Can you edit your script to generate output like that from now on? --ZeroOne 21:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Good change! I was sure I'd tried that combination of wikisyntax, but hey :) The simpler code makes it easier to add annotations inline, so I'm more inclined to agree with you that only one page per source file is necessary, and of course, therefore, that it should remain unprotected.


 * The xxxx-343.txt spoilers should be protected though. --Jayt 22:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Adminship request
As per the above, I no longer have a specific need for admin powers, but if you, the powers that be (Kernigh, I believe?), want another admin I'd be happy to do the job. --Jayt 22:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * No one has commented? If there are no comments then I expect to flag Jayt as a sysop later today. --Kernigh 04:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Community Projects Page
It would be nice to have a list of current Community Projects that would act as an addendum to the Articles Wanted page. For instance Jayt is working on the standardization of objects, Lotte is working on the upload nethack graphics. It would be nice to have a list of these projects and their end goals.

On a related note we should also create a reference page, or Style Guide, that discusses the format the articles should be in and acts as a guide to beginners (like me) who need a handy place to view a list of available templates and such. For instance, I'm having trouble finding a list of the available table formats (i.e.: wikitable, prettytable, etc).

-- PraetorFenix 03:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Good idea. I moved it to Wikihack:Current projects and will expand a bit on page standardisation. --Jayt 18:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I seem to have created a style guide in the process of writing about page standardisation. --Jayt 19:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I added Wikihack:Current projects to our navigation sidebar on the left (by editing MediaWiki:Sidebar), because I thought that it was important enough. --Kernigh 05:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The Artifact... should artifact article names start with "The "?
We now have two articles: The Tsurugi of Muramasa and Tsurugi of Muramasa. And The Eye of the Aethiopica exists, leaving the links at Special:Whatlinkshere/Eye of the Aethiopica all broken.

It is true that NetHack includes "The " in its artifact names. We at Wikihack need to decide how to name the articles in Category:Artifacts and how to handle the links. --Kernigh 04:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: My current approach is to redirect "The XXX" to "XXX". This will cause a minor improvement in categories (not everything starts with T). Then in the "XXX" article, I bold The XXX at the start. --Kernigh 16:48, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I feel somewhat responsible for the "The XXX" naming scheme -- I think this solution is fine. Eidolos 16:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It's mostly a non-issue thanks to redirects, but I would prefer the following:
 * Artifact weapons have simple nouns for names, so they don't need to be called, e.g. "The Grayswandir", but all the quest artifacts are compound (hence countable) nouns, and require "the" in ordinary speech. We don't say "I think Eyes of the Overworld are better than Orb of Fate". So I think artifact weapons should not use The, and other arifacts should. This corresponds to their names in the source (artilist.h) --Jayt 17:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I suddenly recalled that we have sortkeys (so in The Magic Mirror of Merlin one could use . I now agree with Jayt; we should follow artilist.h. I should note that some of the artifact quest weapons use "The" (The Tsurugi of Muramasa). --Kernigh 20:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)