User:Sethladan/Brainstorming

Note to other editors: Please feel free to comment on anything here right in the page, or on the discussion tab. This isn't a formal article or anything, just a space to work out thoughts. Feedback and additions welcome. :)

Further note: Just because I plan (here or elsewhere) to do something doesn't mean I'm taking ownership of it. Anyone's welcome to take or ignore my thoughts as needed to improve the wiki.

Loathe as I am to create another "sandbox" page, I decided I needed a place to just toss ideas for the future and/or plans and thoughts that wasn't an actual "sandbox" for experimenting with the other template-y things that I usually do.

Current Primary Project

Skills

First pass

Check for accuracy: Many are out of date since I converted from Infobox Skill
Add Power Cost tables: Values mostly from Lorebook, some tables will be blank, though
Update parameters: RoI required big changes to skill template, so some things need to move around.

Progress

Burglar: First pass done, excepting:
- Exposed Throat (power costs <56)
- Gambler's Strike (full update needed)
- Improved Feint Attack (id.)
- Quite a Snag (id.)
Captain: Review needed.
Champion: Started, but gave up because of complications. Will come back to this when my Champ is higher
Guardian: Updating by (forgot the name), standardization needed
Hunter: Untouched, as far as I know
Lore-master: Here be territory of Ravanel
Minstrel: A lot of work done here by Elinnea
Rune-keeper: Some work by Starbursty
Warden: Some work by Starbursty/Elinnea

I have screenshots for most of the Freep class skills, lacking some higher-level variants/combinations. Still need to consider/collect:

Session Play Skills
Monster Play Skills
Pet Skills
Lots and lots of characteristics acquired through gameplay, eg...
- Adept, Master, etc
- Mount skills
- Reputation discounts
- Keys

...and most of these characteristics need to be icon-consolidated, too.

Afterwards

Skills looks like it could use some help as well, yikes.

Would like to see all the parameters brought up to date. There are a few that can probably be deleted from everywhere, but I'll know for sure after I visit all skills. A bot could probably do that pretty handily, but I could also do it manually with if statements and hunting down the miscreants myself.

Also need to adapt the skill template for Tooltip. Shouldn't be too hard, just end the initial ul and proceed as normal.

Long Term Plans

Documentation

I have been promising people a guide-to-mediawiki-markup thing for a while, and it's definitely a major hole in our support system for new (and experienced) editors. Hate doing this kind of thing from scratch but sooner begun is sooner done. Will tackle this following skills - will be nice to do wordsmithing instead of parameter-hunting.

Manual

"How can I do it?"

This "manual" will cover several pages. Also want to write more clear guidelines and a style guide, but those are separate from markup manual - dealing exclusively with technical how-to-do-it.

100-level - foundational stuff everyone should know
- Introduction / about wiki editing: Mostly plain text, describing the layout of the wiki, namespaces, how to edit, etc
- Markup 101: Your basic formatting elements, subsections for links and basic tables probably
- ?Using templates?: This warrants discussion, but not sure if it's better for manual or guidelines. WILL NOT cover how to write/edit templates, but just to call them and things-to-know. Also cover includes?
- IRC? How to get on, how to register nick, commands for admins and all.
200-level - dealing with specific topics in depth
- Tables
- Templates: this will probably require multiple pages and will heavily reference styles and rules-for-gud-riting
- HTML? What works in MediaWiki, what doesn't. This might be a 100 level because lots of people try to use plain HTML when it just doesn't work, or they use outdated HTML that should be discouraged (that's a guideline/style issue, though.)
- JavaScript? I'm not in a position to teach much of it, but it's worth mentioning at least to some extent how it works on the wiki and what are some of the larger processes going on (coords, tooltips, collapses)
- CSS? Definitely at least need an explanation of the many classes available here, could also include editing one's own stylesheet.

Guidelines

"How must I do it?"

TBC

Manual of Style

"How should I do it?"

TBC

Next-gen Item Templates

Tooltip has been migrated in a while ago, but I'm really out of the loop as far as the intricacies of it. Amphoras is kind of the ringleader here, but has been busy and the project is somewhat stalled. There is much interest in the specialized item templates, and we won't really see benefits from Tooltip until we start using those.

...more planning to come.

If anyone's wanting to do stuff on this, you can find what I've already done here and some others among these. The proposed templates that are still to be done, and proposed parameters for all the templates can be found here. Amphoras (talk) 10:38, 8 December 2011 (EST)

Object Template

This is probably a quicker project than any of the above, although this template won't be able to use Tooltip as a back-end - objects have no icons. This will cover things like resource nodes, deed locations, quest items in the landscape, anything that's clickable/interactable In the game. More to come.

Navigation Templates

I want to rewrite a lot of these so that they can stack inside each other. This also means I need...

Collapse Coding

Because collapsing only works now inside a table, and it's awkward.

Future Research Ideas

Mob Stats/Resistances

Rav and Fin have identified a lot of potential ways to piece together/tease apart the underlying mob statistics that are summarized for the Knowledge of the Lore-master inspects:

Skirmish soldiers can be inspected in housing neighborhoods while dueling
Pets and heralds can be inspected while dueling
I know there were other points, but escaping me now.

Contemplation on how to proceed with this sort of research to follow...

Skill Damage Values

Yes, Fin says this is all but impossible and mostly pointless and I agree, but that doesn't stop me from being curious about it, heh.

For skills that have a bonus, that bonus likely changes on a per-level basis. This can be teased apart by equipping multiple weapons, comparing values, and working backwards from a formula (to follow below.
-simple formula goes here, followed by derivation and explanation-

Skirmish/Scalable Mobs

Fairly straightforward information gathering here, try to deduce a pattern for Morale/Power of these guys and then come up with a way to present them attractively in a table.

Morale Costs for Skills

Many skills have morale costs that vary by level and aren't included on Lorebook. These need to be hunted down and entered as characters level.

Burglar: None
...