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wiki:site_discussion
Questions, comments, requests, complaints:
wiki/site_discussion.txt · Last modified: 2023/12/01 18:07 by A User Not Logged in
Questions, comments, requests, complaints:
Discussion
Just a place in case anyone has specific questions or what have you. Or would like to request a wad to be playable in browser (vanilla only and some wads won't work unfortunately, seemingly due to the nature of freedoom).
Good day, Revae. Rise of the Triangles was updated to the idgames release, you may need to correct the in-browser game frontend. As I decided against creating a new page for it, main and internal page links still say it's a release candidate 1, no idea how to edit it out. Also added Hellscape.
Would've been nice to streamline the general design of wad pages with the essential “at a glance” info: such as relevant game engine and number of maps or whatnot, instead of writing it out in the description box out of the sole discretion. That of course not at the detriment of making pages any more bulky and unreadable, given the capabilities of dokuwiki. I was also thinking of ways of separating 'author' tags from the main ones, maybe applying some sort of classifications to them. Do you have any thoughts on the foreseeable direction of wadsup, or suggestions for definite and trivial to implement improvements as a site hoster? Is the extra traffic, for example, a desirable risk from advertising the site on some kind of secluded forum?
Speaking of the first bit on page improvements, some sort of sideway label with a custom icon (clarifying the type of wad, game engine or else) with a brief text of extra info underneath would be an elegant solution in theory. What could we possibly afford in practice is a separate text box somewhere close to the wad's title. Suppose if I could manually update all currently submitted articles to reflect such new changes. Screencap of what I'm implicitly describing is taken from doomwiki.
And yeah, Port and IWAD are the most important bits on doomwiki's variant of a sidebar, nonexcluding the proposed 'number of maps'. Download link already has a designated button and author names could be put into the description as they were. Feel free to digest all this word salad at your pace, as you see I'm somewhat liberal at devising explanations.
Hello Revae, random anon here. I just added a few new wads based on stuff I've been playing and the experience gave me some ideas on how to possibly improve the site.
-First, I didn't notice there are alt-templates until it was too late. I think one of these templates should replace the current default (add_wad page) so people don't mistakenly use the old one like me… IDK if the old pages can be converted to the new format easily, but that'd be nice.
-Editing existing pages generally should have a similar GUI to adding new pages.
-Given the new templates, I don't think “map count” is really that important. The tags are for searching but I've never thought to myself “Damn, I really wanna play a wad with exactly 11 maps!”
-I also think the label “Port” should be “Compatibility” instead. Most wads are designed for multiple ports under a specific compat.
-For the creation page, certain tags should disallow others i.e. you (generally) can't have a limit-removing wad that is also vanilla, or a cacoward winner that's also a runner-up. This is especially relevant for the compat check-boxes that are right next to each other. Checking one should uncheck conflicting boxes.
-I think author tags should have a separate entry box, and that any tags added via this box should be given a distinct visual indicator on the final wad page and elsewhere. Since authors are essentially universal and very numerous.
-You could possibly extend this kind of indicator to other universal wad qualities like year and compatibility.
-Tags should automatically be converted to lower case when listed on individual wad pages for consistency.
-Automatically delete redundant tags. Currently it's possible to add the same tag multiple times to a page.
-Maybe add an option to flag pages for possible deletion.
-When typing additional tags add some auto-fill thing which pulls options from the already existing tags.
That's all I got. Whatever you end up doing, thanks.
Hey anon, hows it doin'. Thanks for adding the wads.
Changing the “port” area to “compatability” makes a lot of sense and frees up a bunch of the check-box tags further down. I could switch all of those to a drop-down like the “year” section has and avoid confliction there.
I can add radio buttons to the form to disallow conflicting tags being selected at the same time. Might make sense for a few options like partial/total conversion but most of the tags can exist simultaniously in the same wad. We'll see tho.
Separating author tags etc is technically possible, but it would require restructuring every wad page which is becoming more and more work. Requires nesting each page in a series of namespaces and it's not conveneient to move pages with their media etc as-is. I can at least separate tag lists on the sidebar a bit. There's already a year section, I could do it by iwad as well. Probably not author since there's just so many of them and it requires entering them in individually.
Map count doesn't affect the tags, it's just general info for when you click the wad.
Some of these are limitations with dokuwiki, which I'm using for the whole dealio. Converting tags to lowercase, autofill, and redundent tag deletion. Editing pages too. It's just how the wiki works. I can look into some of them though. Dokuwiki has a lot of plugins anyway.
I think that's it. Cheers m8.
Edit: oh also, the other templates are WIP and will replace the original. at least, whatever I settle on will.
That's an awesome amount of contribution anon! All submissions were neatly formatted and you even were considerate to spend time picking cool screenshots, big thanks.
Only if it won't leave out the option to access the text code directly
Generated tabulations by submission form also bother me, just a little
I'd like also to propose checkmark group separation via text headers for ease of navigating, and some new tags. Such overhaul is of lesser importance though and could be left for another day of fresh reconsideration.
Star symbol for a new addition, brackets for conflicting tags. “Episode Replacement” could be just renamed into “Single Episode” for emphasized clarity. Is there a possibility to add mouseover explanation tooltips? Some groups might greatly benefit from them I think, some less. Examples:
I can do some of that. Reformatting the layout of the form is something I should be able to do now. It has the weird staggered columns because of limitations I was hitting before, but I think I can work around those now.
I can't have mouse over tooltips but I think I can have tooltip icons next the to check boxes. We'll see.I just remembered that I could just use footnotes for that (if it plays nice with the form plugin)It didn't play nice. template8 and workspace are what i did last night. Should look the same at Template 7 in the end, just slightly different under-the-hood. I think I'll also have to add an option under the “IWAD” dropdown for “custom IWAD”. For the rare occasion that happens. I'll keep plugging away at it this weekend. I don't know anything about Regex but I'll look into that too.>Regex
It's very old and somewhat of a meme with the young geeks who consider it incomprehensible, aces who broke a leg or two in the field indicate skill-issue and laziness. Thought it might help me parsing old pages with just a little preparation, as basically every relevant software understands regex. Is there really no alternative for the Heretic in-game browser? You could've run Blasphemer with it as opposed to Freedoom, novelty feature but still. Here is a mobile device I got my hands on.
>in-game browser In-browser game? Or game-in browser? Well, whatever.
Unfortunately I'm using retroarch so I'm stuck with what's available on their web-builds. They only have PRBoom iirc (but i'll look, they might have heretic/hexen). Might be able to do JS-DOS, but I was trying to move away from that since it required me manually patching EXEs with DEH files, and half the time it would break and be wasted effort. Also setting up individual htmls for every game. With the PRBoom core I just drop them into the proper Doom 1 or Doom 2 folder and rescan for new content.
Doesn't seem like RetroArch has it, or anything out there really. I'd say don't bother, too much trouble. There's no obvious solution except for the unwieldy dos emulation.
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Libretro
Desktop view gets broken when the number of characters exceeds 22 in the info table (look authorship), on mobile (width 1080px) number is 18. For a time being I'll assume it's a limitation you have to work around with, until better times.
Seems the solution to that is to max the tablewidth at 9.5em. Hartlpool college has been updated to show that. It makes the info table a little thin, but I don't know of an alternative. I'll update the template.
Hello. You probably already noticed but the WAD submission form has some minor issues, like the first screenshot not being parsed correctly and port category of infobox being equally screwed.
Examples: Eraser, Vilecore, Riot Control
Likewise, author names consisting of two words (like name and surname) are not properly recognized and become comma-separated before being sent into tags. As users are forced to fix the resulting list of tags anyway, maybe it's worth stopping the infobox from interfering with it. I'd also like for IWAD and port selections to be formatted up to standard, i.e. capitalized and written in full.
A little extra question: is it worth renaming the Multiplayer into Cooperative, as Deathmatch already implies multiplayer mode and there is no clear distinction between the two tags?
I did notice the screenshot thing but thought it was a fluke because I couldn't see a cause. I'll see about fixing it. And I'll remove info box stuff from tags since I can't force it to handle space separations properly.
I've fixed the screenshot thing, but the solution is hacky and weird and makes no sense. I renamed multiplayer to cooperative, and capitalized the iwad/port sections. Hopefully I didn't miss anything. I spent most of the time smashing the keyboard about the screenshot bit. It really makes no sense.
We may be stuck with the current redesign, so any potential confusion such hacky solutions could bring may possibly be well out of concern. Otherwise, it's possibly worth looking for the plugin updates and reviewing the existing lists of issues for anything which rings the bell.
Great that you made through it regardless, less hassle with page fixing.
I was perusing through for any RetroArch inconsistencies and this is what I've found:
Not sure if the lack of play button was done on purpose, so I didn't meddle with these. Removed it for Ad Mortem though, it's an incompatible MBF21 wad and file was also missing.
Yeah, as retroarch doesn't support online I'm not including deatchmatch maps. I guess I could though, so people can see if they want to host it or not before DLing it. The others I can add. I don't know if there is a reason that Sucker Punch isn't in there or if I just missed it. can't recall. I try to check daily to see what new wads were uploaded to include them, but sometimes I miss things. Apparetnly missed a bunch of buttons. Thanks for the list. There were a lot of consistency updates today I see too which is cool.
Origwad is in there but doesn't actually play. No idea why. Might be freedooms fault, because iirc I couldn't get it to run under JS-DOS as well.
Also not sure why Ad Mortem got a button. I might have had the tab open alongside a bunch of other wad pages I was updating.
You need to run it in tandem with cc4-tex pack, else all textures will be blank. DoomTools is pretty nifty for the job, so I used it to package all needed textures with everything else into a single wad, it plays fine and you can get it here if RetroArch doesn't support multifile loading.
Just a play button formatting as I've seen you doing, pretty sure all JS-DOS ones were left intact. Also prettified Samsara, Sigil and Scrap.wad pages some more. Once again, thanks for all your work done.
Ah. I accidentally closed the linked page after clicking it and now it says the file is deleted. But I can do that if you re-up it.
Do you know a better hoster?
Some other time I plan on categorizing all pwads which solely stick to the iwad resources. “No custom textures/music” is laconic enough and sounds about right, unless you come up with something even snappier.
I don't. I use mediafire almost exclusively for things I don't host myself, but it's not available in all countries.
Turns out that these wads don't work in retroarch for one reason or another. All Hell is Breaking Loose (needs to be combined into a single wad I believe) Comatose Mowed (I think it's just too damn big, first map doesn't load) OrigWad (too old lol)
I'll get Suckerpunch and Bloodspeed in there, and remove those three. Might see about combining All Hell, since it's a pretty historic wad.
You may be able to run the Origwad if you give it a pass with modern nodebuilder. No idea what else could be special about it as it's basically nothing indeed.
Actually, don't. Don't give it any kind of treatment as that would be nearly sacrilegious. Preserve it at its pristine origin.
That was my reasoning for keeping it in the first place. But so long as the downloads aren't altered it might be okay. But also maybe not. Even if it did work it'd be a freedoom origwad and not a doom doom origwad. Things to ponder.