Wiki

[drone]

Due to the differences in build requirements, costs, and other stats, I think I'm going to separate the MTW and VI campaigns with a MTW and VI prefix. Since the engine is the same, the stat templates can be shared, but I think it's just going to be easier to split it up. This will lead to some duplication, but will give a cleaner page overall. Let me know if you think this is unwise.

I've got templates for units, ships, and buildings. I also have navbar templates for VI and MTW building (pseudo-tech tree style) and a combined unit navbar (which I will break out into MTW and VI). An agent template might be in the works, if I think it's worth it. I will be creating a projectile template for missile and artillery weapons, once I figure out the meaning of all the columns from ProjectileStats. Once this is done, I'll remove the missile stats from the overall unit template to clean it up some, and use the new template to display the unit's missile capability in detail. Splitting this out may also be a way around the conditionals problem.

I haven't gotten around to actually creating individual unit or building pages yet. Hunting around in the GnomeEditor to suss out any quirks I've forgotten. frogbeastegg was concerned about using her text, being credited with it, having someone change her text, and then being asked about the modified text. Completely understandable, so I'm looking for other solutions. I could write my own text, but it's just going to look like a poor imitation of her guide. I thought about putting her text in a locked page, and then including that into the modifiable unit page. Is that something that sounds doable?

[Viking]

Yeah, you can make a template in which you copy the guide and protect such that only administrators can edit it.

[drone]

Created a template for personal missile weapon stats, Template:MTW_Hand_Projectile_Stats along with templates for each individual missile type (not artillery yet). So in the unit description for kerns, for example, the template could be called like:

{{MTW_Javelin|ammo=4}}

The Template:MTW_Javelin fills in the various bits like range/lethality/etc. so each unit page only needs to worry about how much ammo is available to the unit and which weapon is used. Artillery units will be different, since each is unique there is no need for a weapon type template, although I will probably create one overall stats display template for artillery that each can use.

Also created a woefully inadequate page on ProjectileStats.txt, if anyone else wants to add some more detail go ahead. It's meant to be information for both players (to understand how missile weapons work) and modders (specifics and gotchas). I've never modded it before, so I'd love it if someone with more experience could spruce it up. I only ask that the field sections remain as they are named, I'm linking to them from the missile template column names.

With missile display in place, I'll remove that stuff from the MTW_Unit template to clean it up. Might get rid of some of the other conditionals, maybe a catchall "Notes" row for stuff like elite, AP attack, etc.

[TosaInu]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions

[drone]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions

Did you just activate something? I'm seeing a lot of:

Warning: Missing argument 2 for wfparserfunctionslanguagegetmagic() in /usr/local/etc/httpd/forums.totalwar.org/wiki/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php on line 169

lines at the top of pages.

Edit-> gone away, whatever it was.

[TosaInu]

Hello drone,

For if to work, an extension had to be installed, the parser one. It caused some bugs that had to be ironed out.

It should work now. There's just this potential problem:
If you find some template responses are being unexpectedly wrapped in <pre></pre>

I saw this problem in 1.6.10 using the workarounds here and worked around it by making sure all results from ParserFunction callbacks were trimmed. If a result had a leading space character, then that portion of the template would be wrapped in pre tags. Couldn't figure out what part of the parser was doing this. But force trimming might be a potential workaround based on your needs.


The #time function is disabled for now.

Feedback please?

[drone]

I tried the #if format during the weekend, but wasn't successful getting it to work properly. Of course, I am just looking at the template in the editor preview, not saving it and accessing the template from another page, so I don't know if this is a problem with the preview parsing. Are there any pages on the Org that use the conditionals?

Also, does anyone know of a way to force content below a floating infobox? I'm trying to lay out the unit pages, and would like to have the unit navbar at the bottom forced below the unit's stats infobox, so it centers correctly and gets out of the way. I'm using the VI Ballista for layout testing, might as well make it useful for something.

[TosaInu]

Hello drone,

I can't yet say I'm delighted about the Wiki language. Quite some work just to get an if. I'm using it in template VG infobox. I've the feeling I travel from Rome to Milan via Tokyo.

Force content? You can stack different kinds of boxes. I had the other problem: I wanted some whitespace, in the end I got it by clumsily nesting the box in another.

[drone]

Thanks, I'll take a look. I did get #expr to work, I'm now using it to convert the projectilestats.txt values to real values in the artillery template. Makes a mess of the template preview, but it works out fine in the real page, and should make the tedious process of creating unit pages a little easier without having to do the math each time.

Edit-> used the Infobox VG syntax to get #if conditionals to work right. Looks pretty much like what I was doing before, I must have been screwing something up. Looks a lot better with the extraneous fields removed, less cluttered.

[Viking]

Also, does anyone know of a way to force content below a floating infobox? I'm trying to lay out the unit pages, and would like to have the unit navbar at the bottom forced below the unit's stats infobox, so it centers correctly and gets out of the way. I'm using the VI Ballista for layout testing, might as well make it useful for something.

To me it looks like it is beneath the infobox already; do you want it on the right?

[TosaInu]

Did you mean it to be like this drone? https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind...it_Description

[drone]

Did you mean it to be like this drone? https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind...it_Description

Sort of. I will probably move the missile/artillery template to the left (instead of centered) so it doesn't overlap with the stats infobox, and not worry about putting in breaks for that. I was more worried about the Navbar at the bottom, ideally this is just an auxillary piece of the page, I don't want it "interfering" with the page's topic. One possible problem with using lots of <br> tags would be the page formatting due to window size. No big deal at the moment, aesthetics can wait, I suppose. One possible "solution" will be to just add more text and discussion topics, once there are 4+ sublevels, a table of contents is generated and that will push everything down. Unit description, ranged statistics, tactical usage, counters, modding suggestions, etc., that sort of thing.

[drone]

Figured out the formatting issue I was having. You can use the line:

<br clear=all>

to force all the wiki text below this line to be placed below all wiki text formatting above it. This can be used to force stuff beneath infoboxes, pictures, etc. that vary in size, and works regardless of window width. Works great, like so:https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind...Siege_Engineer

[TosaInu]

That's great drone, much more convenient.

[Makanyane]

*bumps* just to say - nice one Drone for keeping going on this and getting so much additional info in, including the mtw/vi provinces - that's nice idea

[drone]

Thanks! Been a bit slow lately, got a lot going on at work and home, but I'm trying to grind through the VI portion at least. My girl is out of town til Sunday night, so I'll probably be able to bang out quite a bit over the next few days.

It's hard to keep from being repetitive in the descriptions, and the unit pages are going to take a while. It would have been nice if CA had used real names instead of generic ID_LANDREG_XX for provinces in VI, makes it tougher to parse the startpos file.

This is the "main" page for the reference guide.
https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/ind...eference_Guide
Still need to make up the various sub-pages, but I have quick link reference pages at the bottom. I've also got some miscellaneous pages on morale, trade goods, kill chance, ranged attacks, etc. that I need to tie into the main pages (and fix some errors...). Hopefully I can get the framework together by this weekend, then I'll start a thread on it in the Main Hall and get the more knowledgeable crew to look over it and point out the errors. I'm fairly clueless about the multiplayer portion of the game, so I'll have to defer that part to someone else.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling it's going to take quite a while to get the unit/building/province/faction pages in place for the MTW campaign. It's not difficult work, it's just a grind. Doing the VI campaign first was smart though, I've learned what to look for and came up with a few things to make it go faster.

[TosaInu]

Hello,

The Wiki is back, sorry for it taking so long.

[drone]

Hello,

The Wiki is back, sorry for it taking so long.

No problem, I was gone on vacation for most of the downtime anyway.

Hopefully it wasn't too painful to fix. Thanks!

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Should Add some stuff to the main page to make it look pretty :-).

[Caius]

ITs a wiki. Made by all for all.

[drone]

ITs a wiki. Made by all for all.

This entry is just waiting for member contributions:
https://forums.totalwar.org/wiki/index.php/Gah%21

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Yes, I was slightly drunk and bored when I made that entry...

On the plus side, it seems like the pages load faster than before. Don't know if this is the result of overall .Org optimization, or Wiki-specific work, but much thanks!

[Caius]

I notice a lack of RTW entries. Maybe there should be an announcement in the whole org to improve our wiki.

[drone]

Feel free to add any if you want, or get together a group to put it together. I've just been working the MTW stuff, trying to get it organized around a decent main page for the game. Not too many people play the game still, and not too many of those seem to be aware of the wiki yet, so I've been pretty much winging it on my own (which means there are lots of errors in the game mechanics pages, I'm sure).

The MTW templates for units/buildings/provinces aren't really compatible with RTW or M2 due to different stats and game mechanics, but they might serve as a starting point. I can make some page templates for those games if you want, but I'm not really sure what would be good to show, so I would need some guidance. I haven't played Rome since 2005, and never really got to the point where I just had to know the actual math behind the game.

For the MTW wiki, I started out by looking through guides and game files, figuring out what important info I thought should be added to the infoboxes before actually coding them up. For units, think about melee, missile, and mounted units as a whole, non-applicable stats can be hidden in the pages. Unit, building, and province pages are fairly easy once the templates are in place, just tedious due to the large number of entries and stat verification. The game mechanics pages are tougher to put together, mainly because I have to dig through threads to get details I have forgotten or were ignorant about in the first place.

It's also important to have a consistent page naming convention, to avoid topic duplication and to make linking easier. The advantage of a wiki over a guide is the quick navigation between pages, making the relationships between topics clear and concise, so the internal links must be easy to add. The one advantage I've had doing the MTW wiki is that I have been able to make all these editorial decisions myself, so I haven't had to coordinate page creation/content/naming with anyone. If a group (or just random members) start doing the RTW/M2 wikis from scratch, someone needs to lay down the ground rules and coordinate all of that, or it will become a jumbled mess. After the main content pages are in place, this coordination won't be as important.