SotAwiki Update Thread

Tavern Counter (Flipped) added

Item, Recipe, Recipe location all added.

Crafted Item is named Tavern Counter B, I have no idea if this is intended or correct (i did post a bug report).

Icon for item also does not show correct (flipped) orientation. Did not add icon to wiki.

 

Thanks

They did the same thing with the Ornate Tavern Counter Flipped. It seems a lot of the deco items are just being lazily named.

I'll check if this is in the dump of images that I got from Chris. I'm still in the process of uploading better quality ones, just takes time to go through everything.

 

Hey,

I just tried to edit one of the Scene Difficulty lists and found it was another predefined query and not easily editable. (There's a lot of edits I back out of because of those queries.) In this case, may I suggest two edits? First, I think the pages would be a lot easier to find if they were just called "Tier 2 Scenes", "Tier 3 Scenes", etc. The "Scene Difficulty/" part makes the page title non-intuitive.

Second, some of the lists are rather long, and I assume will get longer when the Ep 2 lands begin appearing. Currently, the query just sorts them all alphabetically. I believe the lists would be more practically helpful if they were divided up by region. That is, within each tier, all the scenes on the Perennial Coast would be grouped together, all the scene in the Hidden Vale would be grouped together, etc. That would make it easier for players (especially new players who haven't memorized all the geography) to see what's close to them that they could do next, instead of running all over the continent in a scattershot fashion.

Beyond that... Without the query, I'd have just gone and renamed and regionalized all the lists myself this afternoon. But the queries and tables scattered throughout the wiki make a lot of my would-be edits impossible, and also imply a more formalized and structured admin system that requires more expertise and authority to mess with. But I'd gotten the impression @Browncoat Jayson was the only active admin? And with 42 pages of comments on this thread, I haven't had time to go through all of them. So how are structural decisions made?

I frequently run into organizational-type issues on the wiki that I'd like to improve, places where I think a different structure would be more user-friendly and helpful, but the queries and tables give me no choice but to either ask Jayson to do a ton of extra work or to just let go it as it is and forget about editing. So I just forget and let it go -- until the next time I get frustrated because the current structure makes it hard to find what I'm looking for.

Could I get some guidance here? How open are you (singular you Jayson? plural you whoever? I've no idea which) to structural/organizational/behind-the-scenes changes? I can only assume y'all had reasons for doing things these ways in the first place and that asking for major changes would be rude. But then I end up pulling my hair out because a search whose info I need is giving me everything except what I'm looking for. :-(

 

The reason for the use of queries IS that I'm mostly a one-man shop, and these make it much easier to maintain multiple pages. For example, as soon as a new scene is added, the "tier" tag in the Infobox Location automatically adds it to the list on these pages, as well as makes it available for queries (such as what scenes include Supply Bundles, xp awarded for resources, etc, which vary by tier). Otherwise, I'd have to edit each and every one of these manually for each scene, every time one is added, has a tier change, etc.

This should be easy enough. It was done this way so a query for scenes in all tiers could see all of these as subpages of the main list of scenes. However, I can rewrite this to use the actual tier query instead. The only ones that might take extra work then are scenes without a tier defined.

Unfortunately, this requires information that isn't completely defined yet. Most scenes are just grouped as "Novia", unless they are accessed inside of another scene. It would be easy (although time consuming) to add a "region" tag to each scene, which could then be used to sort and group like you are requesting. I'd love to do this, since it would make everything easier to find, and has actually been part of my plans since they started regionalizing recipes. Simply adding a "region" tag in the Infobox Location, and adding query code to it, will be something I do this week.

This depends on what you mean. Adding things so you can make better sorts? Absolutely. Stop using queries? No, it adds FAR more time to maintenance than we can afford.

I do apologize that the semantic queries we are using end up making it harder for potential editors. Generally, we will create templates with documentation so anyone can add anything fairly easily. It just gets a lot harder when they want to rewrite something that is already being done using a set template or query, because those will need to be rewritten and retested. For example, we added the ability to use arrays of data a few months ago, which I'd like to use to change how we query where loot comes from; however, rewriting the templates to query these is a lot of work that I havn't gotten into good enough shape to push live yet. And I'm behind in getting all of the Crown Shop items online, so I've had to prioritize that.

If you have specific things you want to do, please let me know and I'll see how easily I can fit it in. Adding new stuff, even if its just a static list now that we can swap out for queries wen the templates are done, is fine. However, replacing existing query results can throw off a lot of other things, so I'd ask you not to do that yet. I'd hate to have a "pretty" list of scenes, and then not have any loot showing in them (for example).

 

Wonderful, thank you! I'm happy to fill in region data -- one of my colleagues calls me our Mistress of Tedium because I enjoy doing detail work that others consider tedious. For me, it just satisfies my need to have everything precisely right.

And no, I wouldn't actually delete queries or template material or anything like. It just makes it harder because, for instance, if I see an error in a query result, I've no idea how to track down the original data entry so I can fix it.

The two problems I run into most often are:

(1) Searching for a generic term, looking for a list of pages related to that term, and instead being taken to a specific page about a specific item, with no clear way to broaden the search. For instance, if you want to find out what kind of basements are available, and you search on "basement", instead of getting a list of search results, you get one page telling you what basements are used for but with no links to the actual basement pages. If you search on "basements" instead, you get a list of search results -- most of which have nothing to do with basements. You can find a page for an individual basement, but only if you already know the exact name of that basement or if you've used the wiki often enough to know to look for "housing" instead and to follow the tree down from there.

This is why I created the category for beds a while back -- there was no easy way to search for different types of bed -- and that at least creates a link at the bottom of the "bed" page for people to follow. But searching on a keyword still won't get them anywhere, since the category page doesn't show up in search results.

(And 2) I'll save for later after all, since I'm braindead at the moment. Been staying up waaaaaaay too late watching Meti's stream and not getting any sleep .

 

I've added the tag and query data to the Location infobox, and updated Tenebris Harbor as an example. Once we have those populated, I'll rework the query to group results by region.

Yeah, that Basement page was kind of useless. I moved it's text to the category page (which was blank) and changed it to a redirect there. It might be better in the long run to create a query that sorts them by size, but there just are not a lot of basement options currently (and they all have the size in their name).

Most generic pages that are better off as lists should be either queries or redirects to Category pages.

 

i think all the basements are nicely listed on the housing pages by size, e.g. http://sotawiki.net/sota/Village_Level_Housing

 

Good point. Added some redirects to those pages.

 

You realize you just gave me permission to go crazy on category pages?

Yeah, but if you're trying to browse the available options, it's frustrating to have to follow a bunch of different pages instead of seeing them all together for comparison. And if you don't already know that they're at the bottom, are you going to keep scrolling over a dozen clicks through a list of houses when you're not looking for houses? Plus that was just an example; I run into the same problem with a lot of things that could be sorted into logical sets.

 

Yep. Just be aware that categories can be tricky. Anything in a lower category is also part of the higher category, so Beds are part of Decorations. However, if a bed is also able to be placed in a town, it has to have a separate category for this (POT Decorations), and if it's craftable it has to have that category applied. We can't get too crazy on categories within categories (say, crafted beds), because then the queries break.

 

The Outskirts are listed in the wiki as Tier 1; they were Tier 0 a few months ago, but right now are listed simply as "Adventuring Areas" with no number. And Brittany Graveyard is an "Exploration Area" now with no number. Didn't know how to update those.

Also, how do you want nested scenes listed? The continent and region info will be handled the same, but keep the location tag for the name of the parent scene?

 

I'm also noticing that while some scenes use the release number as the "firstseen", others simply say "Episode 1" and others have nothing. I'll add Episode 1 to the empty ones as I move along, but don't have specific release info about anything.

My thinking is that while the release number is interesting trivia and historical record, as we move into Episode 2, the episode number will probably be more important for the infobox -- users will want to know right away if they can access a scene or not.

 

That is my assumption as well. If I know what release something is added, I'll put it in the Trivia section.

This is from a long time ago, when we thought episodes would be generally annual...

 

Okay, in case I get distracted before I can finish tomorrow... I completed updating the region/location tags for the Tier 1-4 scenes, have not started later tiers yet.

Jayson, do you know that some of your user sandbox scene-links are showing up in the Tier lists? Also, could we please get North Quel Woods removed from the query? That's the second thing I referred to in my earlier comment: Historical information is important to keep, but having no-longer-accurate entries cluttering up queried lists make them a lot less helpful. (This is a big problem for the recipe lists, but one problem at a time.)

Thanks for changing the tier page titles!

 

I wasn't aware, but it makes sense. I added a code to the query to only look at the main namespace, so it will ignore items in the User and Community pages.

I've removed the tier from North Quel Woods, which should remove it from the list the next time it refreshes.

The other queries, since they use templates, will be easier to modify to exclude items in the "Removed" category. This is applied when content is marked as removed from the game. I'll try to get to this soon, but as you noted, one problem at a time.

 

Okay, worked my way through all the scenes listed on the Tier pages. For reference:

• They should now all have continent data (this does not show up in the infobox, but is useful anyway).
• Most should now have region data (see exceptions below). I did correct a few obvious errors; however, since I haven't been to most of these scenes, I mostly just used whatever was already there for the location. If what was already there was inaccurate, the inaccuracy will still be present. Also, some of the scenes in border areas could conceivably be classed in either region. I either used what was already there, or decided based on geography. If there's lore I don't know yet that should place a scene in the other region instead, please change away!
• Most of the location tags have now been removed, but I kept them for nested scenes. If there was a clear "main entrance" or one already listed, I kept that as the location. For nested scenes with multiple entrances, I made my best guess at what the main entrance ought to be, based on geography, logic, and the name of the nested scene. Again, both lore and player practice may indicate a better choice, that wasn't obvious to me as a relative newbie. This is especially the case with the underground scenes, since the connections are frequently geologically improbable and will make my Aspie brain explode if I think about them too long.
• I also filled in Episode 1 as the firstseen data for scenes that didn't already have something else. This... is fine in the interim, I think. But in the long run, I'd rather have the firstseen data and the episode data separate, since it's useful to have both specific release datasets and a broader episode dataset. Also, some of the scenes identify the novel as the firstseen, which may complicate things.

Exceptions:

• I did not yet update Blood Bay, The Fall, Spindrift Passage, or the Kobold labs because I really, really, reeaaaaaallllly want to list them in Spindrift Bay, but the wiki doesn't currently acknowledge Spindrift Bay as a region -- in fact it doesn't acknowledge it at all, redirecting instead to Spindrift Sea. This makes my head hurt (although not as badly as some of the underground passages do.)
• I didn't update Lost Vale yet. I'm thinking we need some kind of region name that is not a name -- something like "Secret Location" -- to avoid spoilers. Veteran players may already know all these things, but offline players and others trying to enjoy the adventure of the story might appreciate it. But perhaps the regions are big enough that the region name only wouldn't be a spoiler? I don't know if there's currently any scenes beyond Lost Vale that would fit this category, but it's a possibility for the future.
• I didn't update any scene that wasn't already showing up on the Tier pages. I know there's at least a couple nested scenes that were skipped, probably more. But those can be updated in bits and pieces as we run across them.

 

I think Spindrift Sea was based on the original runic, possibly as far back as the "puzzle" map. I fixed it.

Location for nested scenes is great. It's how I use that for POTs... which also need a pass now to add region. Ugh!

Lore for regions would just be the linked release notes or weekly update, unless something changed after the design phase. As noted in the other thread, towns will always have a geographic region due to recipes and such. The Fall, K'rul and K'rawl might be better as a "Subterranean" region, but not sure how we would delineate it; of course, the latter two should probably be Norgard, just by theme (kobold).

I think first seen should only note the novel if the location doesn't exist in the game. But we can note when it does appear in the novel in the Trivia section (or Lore, if we learn anything about it).

Good job so far.

 

Well, that can be done gradually too. I only did the adventure scenes in one big clump because you said it was necessary to make regional queries work for the Tier pages. I use the Tier pages regularly and consider regional sorts there important, but don't know how urgent it is to sort the town pages, although that would ideal too. But I'm happy to add region data in bits and pieces to towns, unless there's someone else calling for regional sorts there as equally critical.

I was thinking more in terms of architectural styles, hints in NPC dialogue, throwaway comments in the written pages and books, etc.

Those are valid grouping sets (theme, biome) and I'd be happy to have them too, but they're not geographic regions. I asked for regions to make it easier to find new scenes that are already close by, rather than having to (or accidentally) ending up cross-country when as a new player you're still getting the hang of the map. It would be helpful to be able to pull up a list of underground scenes, but that meets a different need.

 

True and that's already resolved using categories at the moment

 

found this on the ardoris public vendor. i had bugged that sturdy maces had not been dropping, but a heavy two-handed one was never in the list. we'll have to see if sturdies show up too or if this is it, renamed.