User talk:Masked Turk

Hey long time no speak :). Thanks for the help with the contest system, it helped drive over 13k hits in a day, which is a new record for us. Will be using your styling for future contests.

What do you think about adding new icons like this page?

http://gamedifferences.com/civilization-revolution

It could help consolidate some sections liket his one: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/RAM_Disk#Considerations - so for example:

{{plus}} Substantially speeds up how fast a game can load.

{{minus}} Complicated to set up if entire game does not fit into a RAM disk.

{{info}} Software is limited to 4 GB RAM disk size unless bought or you find an alternative

The icons are distributed under CC: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ - they have other nice icons too: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/previews/index_abc.png

That's a groovy idea :)

{{++}}

{{--}}

{{ii}}

Here ya go :3

Gosh that was fast :D.

Is there any chance we could have the icons instead of the bullet style, I think it would look better.

Also, could we try them larger of at their native size, they look a bit distorted.

Okay I just tested it properly (not displaying correctly in the editing preview) - ignore both of my last points :).

righto :P

I had a fiddle with it on this revision of the DayZ page. It seems to be indenting because the ul tags are not opened and closed. Can you think of a good way to implement this without affecting the rest of the page?

I'm interested as to why you altered the templates in the first place? [not sure what the effect of those changes really are]

Basically it was doing an indent.. I was just playing around, you can experiment - only 2 pages I changed which are the The Longest Journey and DayZ.

In the template's original form, applying a {{++}} would indent everything below it.

Hey I messaged onto Hungry eye's discussion page about the new sandbox: Thread:User talk:Hungry eyes/Wife's suggestions.

Sorry I didn't reply to your PMs - I had accidentally left my PC logged into IRC from home whilst I was in the office. I was active on the other username Andytizer_ thought :D.

No prob.

Hi Masked_Turk,

If you are interested in working on some stuff, I have some big projects that could use some attention.

Firstly, SMW is installed, and I have no idea how to start implementing its use. My hope is eventually to be able to have more flexibility about how to create lists of games. For example, I'd like to be able to have a list of low end games (http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List:Low_End_Games) but be able to actually pull in the system requirements, release date, OS, hdd space, etc. onto the page, instead of retyping and duplicating the data. I'd also like to get more flexibility in our categories, for example, creating a list of everything with the 'Windows' AND 'Games' category.

Secondly, I would like to figure out a solution for listing series. Preferably this should be close to the top of the page, because it could act as way to disambiguate. For example, http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Tiberian_Sun is a massive problem- it's difficult to get from this page to other Command and Conquer games in this series. Maybe we could use a template which can be pulled in on every Command and Conquer page to list every title in the series.

Thirdly, I am thinking of overhauling the front page, which has become unwieldy. Part of the problem is that it serves 3 functions (traditionally separate on a wiki):

• Explanation of what the wiki is about
• News
• Community portal

However, I'd like to keep this together as much as possible since I think we have gotten so used to it :). However I'd like to make a change, and for inspiration I like the look of the http://theportalwiki.com or the UESP wiki.

What I was thinking of was reducing the text, removing some sections (our header is redundant?, add more spacing, curved borders, some images/icons.

I think it would be good to have more 'discovery'- better links directly to important articles like Steam/Origin/GOG.com, beginner's guide, maybe add a 'Did you know..' section about PC gaming. Would love to know what you think.

I noticed the SMW functionality a while ago, hehe, was waiting for you to bring it up. Give me a few weeks and I'll put a good few man-hours into thinking about it (last exams, then a holiday these next few days).

As far as the main page goes, I get what you mean. We could definitely reorientate it's role to be more of a 'portal' than a clipboard. As above, I'll dedicate some thought to this in a few weeks :)

Thanks for taking a look :). I am going to experiment a bit on my own Sandbox for a new home page layout.

Another thing I am going to try to do is rename and standardise some of the templates, which are getting a bit complicated to use/understand/modify (for me at least!) especially the StoreLink/ID one, as I need to add a bunch of new icons into it.

I've been looking at refurbing the Sandbox and this is what I've come up with: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/User:Andytizer/Sandbox

I am a bit hopeless when it comes to clean HTML and nice colours/icons. I am hoping you can help look at it before I continue?

• Do you think it's a good column layout?
  • Can it be redone using divs rather than tables?
  • Would it scale well for small/large screens?
• Any simple way of beautifying the look of the borders/spacing/headers?

Huge thanks for all your help :) Don't worry about looking at it soon, just whenever you can :). Good luck with final exams.

Hi could you take a look at the Input Settings template (may also apply to others too)- extra break here?

http://i.imgur.com/6QUgI.png

Eurgh, this again... righto, I'll see what I can do.

Sorted :)

Can you take a look at this- looks a bit bugged now: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Thief_III:_Deadly_Shadows#Input_Settings

Oh bah. I need to figure out what I did with that other template T_T

Right, sorted again. It's that stupid mediawiki newline bug... I used the same fix as with the Save Game Location template: adding   to the ends of things :P

Hiya, could you help to make the "code" tags have a darker background? Basically I'd like it to stand out slightly more than it does at the moment.

Here's the current code style:

• current <code> tag style

And here are some optional new tags:

1. new <code> tag style?
2. new <code> tag style?
3. new <code> tag style?
4. new <code> tag style?

Whatcha think?

These look really cool, I like the slight curved border.

What site are you using to do the colour matching?

1 or 2 stand out a bit more. Can we match it more with out link colour which is #0645ad

I don't use sites for colours and CSS :P

Here are some darker blueish ones. Somehow I prefe rthe minty green, but meh :P

1. new <code> tag style?
2. new <code> tag style?
3. new <code> tag style?
4. new <code> tag style?
5. new <code> tag style?

How do you remember the colour codes? 5 looks good - let's try that.

Haha, no, I use my mac's built-in colour picker ;P

Although it'd be pretty simple to learn the hex system. It's RGBA going from 00 → FF, so FFFFFF = White, 000000 = Black, And I suppose 110000 would give a really dark red :D

Righto, it's now online :)

Thanks :) new colour looks really good!

I am thinking of adding subpages to certain pages for very detailed guides on things like mods, for example Arma_2/DayZ. Is there an nice elegant way to have a template detect and display the subpages automatically? There is a method of doing it in MW, but it would display the full Arma 2/DayZ title, whereas it would look much better in a list as 'DayZ'. Can Array do this?

It's possible to display the page title without the prefix, yes. Unfortunately, using subpages for expansions will interfere with Template:Langbar :/

Option 1

I could potentially work around this by adding a switch for the Langbar template to check if the subpage is one of a number of languages, in which case I'd use:

{{#switch:{{{subpages|}}}
|polski=1 <!-- display langbar if this subpage name is present -->
|#default=0 <!-- if no languages on this list are found, don't display langbar
}}

Option 2

Alternatively, we can just have another template where we specify expansions/mods for games, and it links to them.

Thinking about it though...

Doing both Option 1 AND 2 would be the best way around it. Opt1 will stop LANGBAR from linking to non-language subpages, and Opt2 will stop the expansion template from linking to (a) translations and (b) other unwanted subpages.

I can get to work on it right away, y/n?

---

Edit: That said, what would happen with translations of mods/expansions? It'd make it a headache to fix the langbar... could we not just create new articles for them? E.g. DayZ (ArmA 2 mod) or something? We could still use an Expansions/Mods template, where you specify the article location and name.

Yep you are right, the translation of mod pages presents a headache too. Thanks for thinking about this so in-depth :).

DayZ (Arma 2 mod)

Arma 2 mod - DayZ

DayZ

The creation of mod pages will be relatively rare, and I am tempted to give DayZ its own page (as Counterstrike Source or 1.6 might get its own page).

I think that's the best thing to do, tbh. If it's notable enough to be included in the wiki as it's own article, it seems logical to have it as a full article, rather than relegating it to a subpage.

Still want some kinda Expansions/Mods template? What would you want in it? If you made a static version in your sandbox, I could template-ify it :)

Hi can you take a look at why this template is overflowing out of the box please?

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Template:Cleanup

http://i.imgur.com/B5pY2.png

Ah must be the font settings in your browser - there's too much text in it for its size. I'll have to condense it a bit.

That too. Get a mac :P

For the simple reason that the text is too long, and the height is defined not to increase. Tom and I have updated and standardised the notice styles so Template:Stub and Template:Cleanup should both display properly and uniformly. Slight tweaking ongoing, but we're on the case :)

Hi Masked Turk, do you know anything about a good link to download a mod manager for Evil Genius? Responding to a thread here: http://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/twdeq/is_there_any_good_alternative_places_to_download

Hehe, you want to advertise PCGamingWiki by directing them to it and saying 'duh, ofc there's a resource for that', right? :P

Sadly, no, I've never so much as thought about modding the game. It's pretty snazzy as vanilla, tbh.

Btw, no pressure at all, just wondering what's the state of play with Splinter Cell?

I spend a lot of time doing Q&A for games on reddit and directing people to reddit :).

I've emailed Ubisoft about the Splinter Cell key for the 5th time now, hopefully they will listen if I persevere :).

Fair enough, thanks for keeping at it :)

Consider this yours once it goes on the summer Steam sale :).

Oh hey, no worries, I don't want other people to expend monies on my gaming wishlist :) Thanks anyway!

Wouldn't a generic mod manager work?

Hi Masked Turk,

Next thing I'd like to do is to work on the Guide open/close template. It looks very cool, but I don't think it's functional for lower spec screens/mobile phones.

My opinion is that the navigation shouldn't be floating, it should be fixed in the top corner (like an infobox). The current box either obscures part of the screen, or it pushes the rest of the table inwards, resulting in less horizontal width and more squished text. This is worse on an iPhone when you try to zoom into the screen. Could you make it fixed for me please?

I'm hoping once this is done to really redo the 'Guide' box, glossary, and get much more interlinking between pages.

This what you mean? It basically now does the same as an infobox, sticks in the same relative place and pushes the text away where it wants to be, without restricting the width of the whole article.

Thanks looks great!

Cool. Use {{Guide}} now, no need for open/close :)

Hi Masked Turk, can you take a look at the Template:SysReq please. I dislike how the GPU sections seems to take up more lines than it needs to. For example, http://i.imgur.com/8KdAj.png - the Video Card (GPU) only has a single line of text, but it's occupying x3. Can you take a look at it please?

Thanks, Andytizer

I believe this should now be fixed.

Amazing thanks :), looks much nicer now.

Can we simplify the SysReq template please?

Basically I would like the OSfamily_ to dictate the top row text (which can be only Windows, Mac or Linux), later I'd like to be able to link them to the relevant OS page.

What I don't like about the current implementation is the use of the suffixes _m _l.

I agree. When I saw how you chaps set out that template, I shivered a bit :P

I'll see what I can do.

Infact, Template:SysReq is utterly unnecessary... it just adds OSFamily... :/

You can already just use Template:SysReq_BaseTemplate and use the property_ tags without the os-specific suffixes.

{{SysReq_BaseTemplate
|OSfamily_ = Windows
|minOS_ = Windows XP SP3 
|recOS_ = Windows Vista SP2/Windows 7 
|minProc_ = Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0Ghz Processor 
|recProc_ = 1.8 GHz Quad Core Processor 
|minRAM_ = 2 GB 
|recRAM_ = 4 GB
|minHD_ = 8 GB free 
|minGPU1_ = ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 
|minGPU2_ =  nVidia GeForce 7900 GS video card
|minGPU3_ = Core i3 integrated graphics 
|minVRAM_ = 256
|recGPU1_ = ATI 4800 or better video card 
|recGPU2_ = nVidia 9800 or better video card 
|recGPU3_ = 
|recVRAM_ = 512
|minAudio_ = DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
|recAudio_ = 
|minCont_ = 
|recCont_ = 
|minOther_ = 
|recOther_ = 
}}

I've taken the liberty of adding the OS link to the template :P

When I started the site I didn't know much about templates. SysReq was implemented by an enterprising individual who created it, and just stuck ever since.

This implementation looks much better, I'll look at it in more depth later.

Well, I didn't actually change anything. It's just using the BaseTemplate's variables and cutting out the middle-man template, so there's no real difference apart from the lack of 'm' or 'l' or w/e :)

Thanks for looking at it for me anyway, I am getting the hang of this :).

Made a redirect: Template:System Requirements. Bit less clunky name :P

New one looks good, but can we make it collapsible?

It seems Andy the code for that earlier.

I've added it back in as a variable: |collapsable= collapsed [or] true [or] false

Ah, can we not force it universally as the template?

Also, I noticed that the vram defaults to adding MB to the end of the numbers put in there. Any chance we could remove that? People have been putting mb on the end by default, and some new games recommend 1gb of vram. Just a suggestion.

Now that the line height of a typical System Requirements table is 4-5 lines, I'd prefer to keep the table open, I think it looks nicer. What do you guys think. Andytizer (talk) 11:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I kinda prefer the tables to be open in general, unless they're monolithic things that take up the whole page.

Newmansan - good idea, but what about people who haven't put a unit at the end? If there aren't many, fine, otherwise we'll have a bunch of articles with numbers but no units :P (you could always just specify 1000 [MB], of course)

Well, I imagine that most of the articles here still have the old system reqs template, which needed people to put in the mb/gb. And people will put in the mb/gb if the template in the sample article requires it.

I'm happy to do it. Andy?

I don't think we should suffix field with MB/GB. I think the Systems Requirements table should be as free text as possible to allow for new types of data in the future. The data is not machine interpretable so just a free text box where possible.

I'm thinking of the future when requirements go to multi-core GPUs or maybe they start measuring video cards in different ways.

Righto, sorted.