Utility Official release of the unofficial Dominions 3 Wiki - Page 2

Snoddasmannen · #1 November 1st, 2009, 04:09 AM

Hi lch,

Very useful wiki, great effort, great job!

Keeping up my own futile attempts at being useful to the community, I have added links from my online interface of the spell/forge database to your wiki. So a description off the spell/item is just one click away.

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/dom3/spells.html

Something which really interests me is reading what other players think of the spells/items, how they use them and so on. Would you say that this is covered by the "What this is not" section above, or are you open to having a fuzzy area where users can leave hints/use cases for the items? In the main article? The discussion page? A new cool page for each article which you can hack together in no time?

lch · #2 November 1st, 2009, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snoddasmannen

Keeping up my own futile attempts at being useful to the community, I have added links from my online interface of the spell/forge database to your wiki. So a description off the spell/item is just one click away.

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/dom3/spells.html

Thanks! Be aware that some spells have multiple versions which share the same name, but that shouldn't be much of a problem because the Wiki has disambiguation links/pages for that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snoddasmannen

Something which really interests me is reading what other players think of the spells/items, how they use them and so on. Would you say that this is covered by the "What this is not" section above, or are you open to having a fuzzy area where users can leave hints/use cases for the items?

That's what the Wiki is for, users can and are encouraged to comment on the articles for the units, spells and items. At the moment, the articles for the items and spells are among the oldest code, there is no special "Notes" section for that yet. People can always add a new section to an article on their own, however. Eventually the item and spells articles will get redone so that they have a "Notes" section like all the unit articles have now, check e.g. Assassin and Lord of the Night for that. A couple of spells already have a "Short summary" section, like Doom, where the spell's effects are being explicitly stated, and all the globals have a section titled "A dire portent" which describes the messages that are being generated when the global is successfully cast, see e.g. Gift of Health. In principle, users can leave anything on the article pages. Here are two items pages where you can see what I had in mind: The inspiration sections on The Chalice and especially on The Ark.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snoddasmannen

In the main article? The discussion page? A new cool page for each article which you can hack together in no time?

Some people already started articles named Key item and Key spell which are linked to from the Main page to highlight important items and spells in the game. Another possibility would be to link to the articles directly from a nation's strategy guide. Basically, you can do what you want. The discussion pages should only be for discussions about the article's layout, not about the item/spell itself, though. The forums are more useful for discussions like that, I think.

HoneyBadger · #3 November 3rd, 2009, 02:19 AM

I'm sure I posted in this thread, but the Forum must have eaten it... Great, great job, Ich. Very nice work, particularly the unit descriptions. It's really helpful, and obvious that you put a lot of work into it. I especially appreciate how easy it is to copy the unit sprites. Makes modding 1000% easier.

I did notice that the listed units' equipment is often inaccurate. Natural weapons often seem to be duplicated, and manufactured weapons don't always appear.

lch · #4 November 3rd, 2009, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I did notice that the listed units' equipment is often inaccurate. Natural weapons often seem to be duplicated, and manufactured weapons don't always appear.

I'm not aware of that. Can you pinpoint some examples where this bug manifests itself? Then I'll add it to the bug tracker and try to fix it when I have time for that.

Quitti · #5 November 3rd, 2009, 07:46 AM

Here. And here (should be bite+claw, not claw+claw). And so on. You should visit IRC more lch, I could point this stuff out for you

lch · #6 November 3rd, 2009, 07:51 AM

I'll just point to the bug tracker again: http://dom3.servegame.com/bugs/

Come on, hurt me.

P.S.: I can see it now, a typo on the database import. The data will be refreshed shortly.

Calahan · #7 November 3rd, 2009, 08:14 AM

Absolutely fabulous job on the Wiki lch. What more can be said other than awesome.

One potential mistake though. Are the siege mechanics in the Wiki correct? Since they appear to be following what is printed in the manual. Which I understand (and have observed) to be incorrect.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Siege

If the Wiki does have the wrong information on this, then I am surprised, since it was you who pointed out the error in the manual, and also supplied the correct siege mechanic formula

Link to a brain refresh below

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ght=post685786

lch · #8 November 3rd, 2009, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Calahan

One potential mistake though. Are the siege mechanics in the Wiki correct? Since they appear to be following what is printed in the manual. Which I understand (and have observed) to be incorrect.

Check the dates, the last time that the Wiki article was edited was half a year before I wrote that forum post. I did debug the game code prior to writing the forum post, so it's likely those are the correct formulas.

I dare you to fix the Wiki article...

There are likely more things not up to date.

zzcat · #9 November 4th, 2009, 02:14 AM

A small bug: All capital-only units and commanders are not listed in the "Units" section of nation description page...

lch · #10 November 5th, 2009, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zzcat

A small bug: All capital-only units and commanders are not listed in the "Units" section of nation description page...

Not a bug, but WAD. Those units are being granted via the national sites, they're not normal recruitables. The site data isn't in yet. DrPraetorius did start adding information about capital-only units by hand, but only for some of the nations in the Early Age, IIRC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

By any chance did you create an import from Edi's spreadsheets for up-to-date core pages on some of these areas? The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.

No, I did not use Edi's spreadsheets, in fact it was the other way around, I sent my findings to Edi so that he could update the data in those spreadsheets. Edi did help with recognizing and naming some unit abilities, though. I am reading the data from the game executable so that it will always be up-to-date with the upcoming patches. The downside is that first I have to find it and understand it, and rediscover the formulas that are being used in the game. One reason why the "real" prot and enc values aren't in there yet, they depend on the armor worn.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

The reason I ask is that if you ended up with a script to export the different sections to text files as a half-way point I could sure make use of that.

I can send you my text exports, if you want. The script that I am using is a gigantic mashup of Python code and you have to change the code by hand in order to make it generate the different text files. You'd have to learn Python in order to make use of it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sector24

I noticed that you already have the Jotunheim guide but if you'd like to use my magic path booster guide too, go for it. I'm not really sure where something like that would go though.

You can start working on it in your personal space, at User:Sector24/Magic_Path_booster_guide for example. The article can then be moved or linked to wherever it makes sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sector24

I spent a good hour or two on the site today at work. Two unit entries I noticed were all messed up.

Thanks for the work, that's encouraging. I don't have much time for working on the Wiki anymore and intend to mostly work on the technical stuff, if at all, not on the content anymore. I wish I'd have time to train more people about editing Wikitext - it's not hard to do! - or start a tutorial about it.

I'll delete the stale unit articles, they're indeed leftovers from previous patch versions.

I am indeed even visiting the SMW Camp 2009 this weekend in order to find out how to make the Wiki better in regards to the use of Semantic MediaWiki, in fact. Let's see if that leads to some nice changes.