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==2018-01-05 Preparations Complete (mostly)==
==2018-10-18 0.6.4 and More==
Twenty Eighteen...that phrase will take a while to get used to. I written a rather large news post and changelog so I'm making use of that nice expandable template I worked out. There have been a lot of organizational changes lately but no content. As far as I can tell, I've reached the end of 0.6 organization and I'm ready to move on to data exporting. Hopefully I'll be flooding the wiki with data updates soon. [[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]
*0.6.4 Update
{{Expandable
*Data Category
|title=About History and Tags
*Sourcing Information and Creating Pages Documentation
|content=
<h3>History</h3>
In the past few days I've focused a lot on history in the wiki. I realized, very slowly I know, that keeping history for an early access game will have some challenges. I had already done some research about wiki history so I knew some methods but it was only now that I rationalized those methods to our humble ME Wiki.


There are two main/popular/easy methods of history for any given article on a wiki: history references and sub-page archiving. References are the easiest because you only need to link to a history state of the page and you're done. This works well for, what I call, non-functional pages. You can view them and with a little effort you can even update them (edit &rarr; save &rarr; undo &rarr; save &rarr; new history created). This doesn't work well for functional pages, things like categories and templates. A good example that we have is ''Category:Schematics''. Schematics have changed completely from 0.5 to 0.6 and they cannot be updated. The old schematics no longer exist and a bunch of new ones are in their place with new rules. This is where archiving comes in. Move the category to ''Category:Schematics/0.5'', re-link all of the schematic pages, create a new ''Category:Schematics'' and add new schematics pages to it. This gives us separate content, separate histories, and easy updates. It's also a lot more work.


With all of this history activity going on I realized that a lot of pages were acquiring links to the past. I started making a history template when I realized that our two kinds of history keeping (references and archiving) called for two kinds of template (it's technical :P). So I made ''Template:HistoryId'', which uses reference ID's, and ''Template:HistorySub'', which uses archived sub-pages. They have identical formatting to each other and the Version template. Place just after the version on pages.
Updates have been slow on the wiki while we worked on the combat update. We've also been working on engine changes for 0.7 since February so we were all pretty loaded down for a while. With the release of 0.6.4: Major Combat Overhaul I was able to export changes. I had hoped to be able to export the new effects that are used by nearly every item in the game to support the combat system. After spending far more time on it than I should have I came to the conclusion that the effect system is potentially infinite. This is great for the game but incredibly bad for the wiki. I gave up trying to export them and instead wrote the effects by hand. I didn't write every detail of the effects but rather the ones that have a noticeable effect on the character or gameplay in some way. With that out of the way, I finished updating all of the blocks and items for 0.6.4.  


<h3>Tags</h3>
[[:Category:Data]] is the new place where I'm keeping tables that have to be manually updated. This is working well as it makes a single place that has to be checked after pasting in the exported game data. Each page there has notes on where to find the information.
Do you look at the Recent changes page? As an admin I'm on that page all the time. Like right now I'm looking up my own recent changes to write this news. With so many changes happening it's not always clear why a change was made. Sure, I could go back to adding messages every time I save a page but that takes time and I can't always remember how I worded something before...so I don't do it. I know, lazy editor. Those messages are still an option for something truly out of the ordinary. For the most part, I tend to do mass updates for simple things like template changes and re-linking. Having a way to quickly identify those common action in the recent changes is really attractive to me. It turns out that the MediaWiki software has my back! I've added some basic tags for template updates, linking, categorization, pasting game data, and importing pages (yes, I have an offline test wiki I can export things from). So far I've only found one thing confusing. When I change a template or category and I need to touch all of the linked pages, should I use ''Tag:Template'' and ''Tag:Categorization'' or ''Tag:Links''? What I decided is that I will use ''Tag:Links'' anytime I'm just changing the target of something. If I move/rename a category - links. If I rename a template or image - links. If I move pages from one category to another (reorganization) - categorization. If I update a template with different attributes - template.
}}


===Change Log===
The last changes I've made are two new pages for wiki editors to help ease the learning curve. The first page is [[Finding Source Information]] which explains how to search through definitions. I answer a lot of questions about this and even modders constantly say that finding where things are defined is the hardest task. Certainly it's not easy to search through so much data but actually searching it is incredibly easy if you know what object builder to search for and how to search files for content. This page explains all of that in detail. The second page is something that grew out of that and turned into more of a guide. It kept growing more than I thought it would and I had to force myself to remove large portions of text multiple times to keep the size down. Anyway, that's how I ended up writing [[How To Create Pages]] which describes the basics for creating a page, laying out the sections, the process of writing (from draft, to stub, to finished page), a quick and easy guide to linking, a quick explanation of templates, and a few useful things at the end. When I first started outlining the page it was mostly a primer on how templates are used here. I still feel that's the most relevant section of the page but hopefully, everything that I included explains the basics of the entire process. It should answer the questions that I get most often.
*Created [[Template:HistorySub]] to link archived sub-pages.<br/>
*Created [[Template:HistoryId]] to link history ID's.<br/>
*Created [[Template:Anchor]] because it seemed like a good idea at the time.<br/>
*Created [[Template:TransclusionNotice]], used on [[Taxation]] which is transcluded into [[Claim Block]] and [[Wooden Claim Block]].<br/>
*Created [[Template:Quest]] prototype. It has some cool categorization behavior but, I had to guess at the information I would export from quests so, it may not be complete.<br/><br/>
*Updated [[Template:Crafting Blueprint]] with more concise labels.<br/>
*Documented [[Template:Fullurl]], which is actually broken but does exactly what it needs to do so don't judge the source.<br/>
*Fixed [[Template:Infobox/End]] by adding more robust linking to work properly with categories.<br/>
*Fixed [[Template:Version]] to have consistent padding.<br/><br/>
*Archived [[:Category:Research and Quests/Schematics]].<br/>
*Archived [[Template:Resource]].<br/>
*Archived [[Template:Crafting Schematic]].


==2018-01-03 Happy New Year!==
Progress continues on the 0.6 preparations!
*I updated the wiki style a little bit for the default theme and the templates. It's a collection of subtle changes but I like it.
*[[Template:Draft]] was added because it finally seems like we're at a point where many articles are incomplete but others are functionally complete. That seems a good fit for the standard wiki use of draft and stub.
*I'm working on a guide in my free time that gives some documentation to the game saves. I'm working on annotating save files for those who are interested.
*There is the new [[Template:Key|Key]] template which provides key graphics. You can use that when you're talking about shortcut keys.
*The [[Template:Tag|Tag]] template got a 0.6 update and new categories for the new tags.
*[[Template:Expandable]] created. This basically lets you add forum style spoiler sections that can be expanded or collapsed.


My next task is to come up with some organization for the new research system. I'll probably be adding templates for quests and updating the schematics template. Hopefully I'll complete that by the end of the week and then I'll only have a few minor tasks to finish up before I can begin working on exporting data. I have to do a little bit of code research before I get started but hopefully I'll be able to export a lot more than in 0.5.
All the Best,


The things I know for certain I won't be exporting are planet and environment data. This means all information about kingdoms, biomes, wonders and flora will be manual entry. If anyone wants to lend a hand, the planets category is a good place to start. The Engineer's Book category also needs content. Get as detailed as you want there but stop short of adding actual quests/research. I'll be exporting as much of that information as possible. There will likely be a quest category with a research quests sub-category that can be linked to for that information.
[[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]


It looks like I'm going to be keeping busy for some time to come. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Happy New Year 2018! [[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]


==2017-12-21 0.6 Progress and Plan==
==2018-06-06 Extensions==
Welcome to 0.6 everyone! I'm hard at work on updates! [[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]
I've been working with some extensions to get some new functionality working on the wiki. One of the extensions has been installed since the beginning of the wiki but until now it was difficult to use. [[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]
===Progress===
 
Added templates for game versions, info boxes, kingdoms, biomes, wonders, and mechanical blocks.
{| class="wikitable"
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|-
! Template !! Progress !! Documentation
! Extension !! Notes
|-
| [[Template:Version]] || Complete || Complete
|-
| [[Template:Infobox]] || Complete || Complete
|-
| [[Template:Kingdom]] || Complete || Complete
|-
| [[Template:Biome]] || Complete || Complete
|-
| [[Template:Wonder]] || Complete || Complete
|-
|-
| [[Template:MechanicalSource]] || Complete || Complete
| MultimediaViewer || This extension provides lightbox functionality to images and galleries. There are no changes needed to articles...it just works. It can be disabled in Preferences.
|-
|-
| [[Template:MechanicalTransmission]] || Complete || Complete
| CodeMirror || This extension provides wiki code highlighting in the editor. It is off by default but can be turned on by clicking an icon in the editor.
|-
|-
| [[Template:MechanicalSink]] || Complete || Complete
| WikiSEO || This extension provides metadata for search engines and link embedding. I've created a simple template to use it called [[Template:SEO]]. '''This template should be used on ALL pages.'''
The image is optional. If you leave out the image URL entirely from the template it will use the wiki logo instead. The description is mandatory but can be left blank if there is no description available. There should be a description for every page eventually so it can be copied to the template. I tried to find an automated solution for this but there was nothing that provided quality image and text results.
|-
|-
| [[Template:MechanicalToolhead]] || Complete || Complete
| EmbedVideo || This extension has always been around but I made two templates for using it. It embeds video links directly into articles.<br/>[[Template:VideoID]] loads videos using service and id information. This method can break if the video site changes its link format.<br/>[[Template:VideoURL]] does the same using the URL of the video instead. This method is a little less reliable but is more stable over time.
|}
|}


Archived [[:Category:Planet/0.5|old planet pages]] and organized [[:Category:Biomes|biomes]], [[:Category:Kingdoms|kingdoms]], and [[:Category:Wonders|wonders]] into sub-categories of [[:Category:Planet|planet]]. It is probably worth pointing out that I plan to archive 0.5 content rather than keeping it as history. This will allow us to update or even expand the 0.5 content. This will benefit players who still want to play on the archived game branches for whatever reason. If any of you want to update a page for 0.6, move the current 0.5 page to a /0.5 sub-page and recreate the main page.


Please start updating [[:Category:Planet|planet]]. I'm pretty sure I have pages ready for everything there. They just need to be filled in.
==2018-05-22 The Long Form==
I had time over the last month to write some text and I made the most of it by working on the [[:Category:How_To_Play|How To Play]] category. I was able to get many of the pages there to a more-or-less complete state and the remainder of them are not far behind. This includes the [[:Category:Engineer%27s_Book|Engineer's Book]], [[:Category:HUD|HUD]] screens, and all other [[:Category:Non-HUD_Screens|Non-HUD]] screens. I also made some progress on the [[:Category:Flora|Flora]] category which now has some basic information available. [[Taxes]] was updated and expanded. This includes the [[Taxation Table]] which was expanded and will provide additional information on all of the pages it is used on.


Added [[:Category:Mechanical_Blocks/Power_Sinks|Power Sinks]], [[:Category:Mechanical_Blocks/Power_Sources|Power Sources]], and [[:Category:Mechanical_Blocks/Transmissions|Transmissions]] to the [[:Category:Mechanical_Blocks|Mechanical Blocks]] category.


Don't forget version numbers. If you are creating a 0.6 page, make sure there is no old information on the page and then add a version template for 0.6. This may mean that you have to remove some large portions of the page. That is ok, even if you are simply unsure of the accuracy of the information it is better to remove it. If you want to add the information later after it is checked or updated then you can wrap it in a comment tag <code>&lt;!--  --&gt;</code> so that it is not visible on the page but will still be in the source for editors.
On the more technical side of things, I moved all of the medieval theme related styles out of the templates and into the site and theme CSS files. It's not the best CSS organization (meaning it will not be convenient to reuse the selectors I created) but it means that the current templates won't have medieval formatting when used with other themes.


===Plan===
My plan is to:
#prepare and organize as much as possible for 0.6. This may take a few weeks.
#export data from the game. This is difficult to estimate because I have to pull data in a logical way from many parts of the game. This could take a few days or weeks or even more than a month. I'll try to post updates during this process.
#improve the quality and completeness of existing content and generate new content to achieve a higher level of completeness for the wiki overall. This could theoretically take months but in all honesty I will probably only work on it when I have some free time in my schedule.


====Note about biomes and flora====
I also installed the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Popups Popups] extension. It is a light-weight version of Wikipedia's Navigation popups that displays summary text (usually stopping at the first heading) and an image (usually a large one) from the beginning of articles when you hover your mouse pointer over a wiki link. The text is quite predictable in most cases but the images seem to update slowly and don't always behave as expected. Even so, it is a helpful feature on Wikipedia and I think it will be appreciated here as well. Click the cog in any popup to configure or disable it. See any page's Page information to preview the image selection for that page. Image selection is only updated when a page is saved and it may take some time (tens of minutes or hours) to show in the popups. My guess is that it's related to the slow updates in this version of the wiki that can be seen in slow category updates. I don't have a plan to update the wiki itself but we are now at the tail-end of version support for most extensions so I may have to consider it sooner than later. The slow updates seem to not be a problem on newer releases. [[User:CptTwinkie|&#126;CptTwinkie]]
Biome information will not be exported from the game. The reason is that there are not 7 biomes in the game, there are very many. There are transition biomes for each biome pair. Forest has grassy forest and deep forest sub-biomes. There are a lot of biomes defined so exporting them in a meaningful way for the wiki would be difficult in every circumstance. Instead, biome information should be interpreted from game definitions to logically fit into the 7 primary biomes. Sub-biomes should be treated as part of the primary and transitional biomes should be mostly ignored. That sounds simple but if you dig into the environment definitions you will quickly see that there is quite a lot of variety in every aspect of biomes. For an example, even simple plants have multiple sizes and growth stages. There will be quite a bit of manual information sourcing for these things.





Latest revision as of 13:00, 18 October 2018


News
View the Archive →

2018-10-18 0.6.4 and More

  • 0.6.4 Update
  • Data Category
  • Sourcing Information and Creating Pages Documentation


Updates have been slow on the wiki while we worked on the combat update. We've also been working on engine changes for 0.7 since February so we were all pretty loaded down for a while. With the release of 0.6.4: Major Combat Overhaul I was able to export changes. I had hoped to be able to export the new effects that are used by nearly every item in the game to support the combat system. After spending far more time on it than I should have I came to the conclusion that the effect system is potentially infinite. This is great for the game but incredibly bad for the wiki. I gave up trying to export them and instead wrote the effects by hand. I didn't write every detail of the effects but rather the ones that have a noticeable effect on the character or gameplay in some way. With that out of the way, I finished updating all of the blocks and items for 0.6.4.

Category:Data is the new place where I'm keeping tables that have to be manually updated. This is working well as it makes a single place that has to be checked after pasting in the exported game data. Each page there has notes on where to find the information.

The last changes I've made are two new pages for wiki editors to help ease the learning curve. The first page is Finding Source Information which explains how to search through definitions. I answer a lot of questions about this and even modders constantly say that finding where things are defined is the hardest task. Certainly it's not easy to search through so much data but actually searching it is incredibly easy if you know what object builder to search for and how to search files for content. This page explains all of that in detail. The second page is something that grew out of that and turned into more of a guide. It kept growing more than I thought it would and I had to force myself to remove large portions of text multiple times to keep the size down. Anyway, that's how I ended up writing How To Create Pages which describes the basics for creating a page, laying out the sections, the process of writing (from draft, to stub, to finished page), a quick and easy guide to linking, a quick explanation of templates, and a few useful things at the end. When I first started outlining the page it was mostly a primer on how templates are used here. I still feel that's the most relevant section of the page but hopefully, everything that I included explains the basics of the entire process. It should answer the questions that I get most often.


All the Best,

~CptTwinkie


2018-06-06 Extensions

I've been working with some extensions to get some new functionality working on the wiki. One of the extensions has been installed since the beginning of the wiki but until now it was difficult to use. ~CptTwinkie

Extension Notes
MultimediaViewer This extension provides lightbox functionality to images and galleries. There are no changes needed to articles...it just works. It can be disabled in Preferences.
CodeMirror This extension provides wiki code highlighting in the editor. It is off by default but can be turned on by clicking an icon in the editor.
WikiSEO This extension provides metadata for search engines and link embedding. I've created a simple template to use it called Template:SEO. This template should be used on ALL pages.

The image is optional. If you leave out the image URL entirely from the template it will use the wiki logo instead. The description is mandatory but can be left blank if there is no description available. There should be a description for every page eventually so it can be copied to the template. I tried to find an automated solution for this but there was nothing that provided quality image and text results.

EmbedVideo This extension has always been around but I made two templates for using it. It embeds video links directly into articles.
Template:VideoID loads videos using service and id information. This method can break if the video site changes its link format.
Template:VideoURL does the same using the URL of the video instead. This method is a little less reliable but is more stable over time.


2018-05-22 The Long Form

I had time over the last month to write some text and I made the most of it by working on the How To Play category. I was able to get many of the pages there to a more-or-less complete state and the remainder of them are not far behind. This includes the Engineer's Book, HUD screens, and all other Non-HUD screens. I also made some progress on the Flora category which now has some basic information available. Taxes was updated and expanded. This includes the Taxation Table which was expanded and will provide additional information on all of the pages it is used on.


On the more technical side of things, I moved all of the medieval theme related styles out of the templates and into the site and theme CSS files. It's not the best CSS organization (meaning it will not be convenient to reuse the selectors I created) but it means that the current templates won't have medieval formatting when used with other themes.


I also installed the Popups extension. It is a light-weight version of Wikipedia's Navigation popups that displays summary text (usually stopping at the first heading) and an image (usually a large one) from the beginning of articles when you hover your mouse pointer over a wiki link. The text is quite predictable in most cases but the images seem to update slowly and don't always behave as expected. Even so, it is a helpful feature on Wikipedia and I think it will be appreciated here as well. Click the cog in any popup to configure or disable it. See any page's Page information to preview the image selection for that page. Image selection is only updated when a page is saved and it may take some time (tens of minutes or hours) to show in the popups. My guess is that it's related to the slow updates in this version of the wiki that can be seen in slow category updates. I don't have a plan to update the wiki itself but we are now at the tail-end of version support for most extensions so I may have to consider it sooner than later. The slow updates seem to not be a problem on newer releases. ~CptTwinkie




View the Archive →