Category talk:Settings

This being a category is causing problems with the page width. Suggestions?
Dragoon Wraith TALK 18:28, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Methinks the problem lies not with the category, but with the wiki's sudden inability to count to 200. Take a gander at the functions category, and see this inexplicable folly of the wiki only extends to settings (wow, gander actually passed a spell check)

--Haama 02:00, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

I noticed that earlier when I was putting in settings. The problem actually lies down at the bottom of the page where all of the settings are listed. Due to the length of the names, the page is extended outwards to accomodate the names in three columns. Really the only solution for it would be to reduce the number of settings stored on the pages so that it is only two columns in width and therefore will be within the regular width of the wiki pages.

--ShadowDancer 03:21, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, haama, I noticed that too. I dunno what that's about.

ShadowDancer, there's no way to do that. Those links are automatically generated by the Wiki when people include [[Category: Settings]] tags in an article.

I think we should probably change this from a category to a normal page, and include links at the bottom of each setting page... That's an absolute nightmare to actually do, though. We need one of those Wiki bots...

Dragoon Wraith TALK 10:48, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

The wiki is counting to 200 on the page, if you add the subcategories and the articles together, which seems to be how it does the functions category.

I was kind of afraid that the wiki automatically set up the number of links in the page (but I was hoping otherwise). I don't know how you would take care of it other than making multiple [[Category:Settings]] pages like [[Category: Settings (1)]] or something similar, and adding only a certain number of pages to each one. On the other hand, they could be set up as subcategories on the [[Category: Settings]] page and make navigating a little easier if they were set like [[Category: Settings (xxx to xxx)]]. Although I would then suggest moving the current subcategories to articles at that point just to seperate them from the list of settings subcategories. Any way its done is probably going to end up being a nightmare until all of the settings pages are set up (which is something I am planning on continuing this weekend) and it is formatted.

--ShadowDancer 13:22, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Manual sub-categories are an idea, but you still have to go through every GMST and update them... that's a problem. May as well just use the list we already have and avoid using Categories altogether - has the added bonus of allowing people to Search for the Settings page (which they currently can't because the Search ignores Categories).

Also, I've figured out code that allows us to "fake" the category box. Put this code at the bottom of a page, and it will look like the Category list, but without generating the links on that category's page. May be useful for something:

<div id="catlinks"><p class='catlinks'>[[Special:Categories|Category]]: (link)</p></div>

Put the link to the appropriate category in place of the (link) in the code, and it'll work.

Example:

Looks fine to me.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 13:47, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Hmmm, how about faking the Articles and Subcategories sections? Is that possible? Then just use the other link to go back to [[Category: Settings]]. Since they won't show up on the page, you could then fake the Articles and Subcategories to your hearts content to format it as you wanted.

--ShadowDancer 15:25, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

That's very clever, I like that. We do have to update every single setting page again. By simulating the category for both pages users can search for the settings page and we won't have that uncontrollable amount of links at the bottom of the settings page. I'd go for this.

--Qazaaq 17:29, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

There ought to be a way to automate this. I know Wikipedia has bots for this kind of thing. I'll look into that when I get a chance.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 18:02, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Moving back to the left...Actually, comparatively there are few pages that need to be updated. There are far more of them that need to be set up in the first place. I was playing around to see if I could figure out how to fake the articles table, but no luck so far with making it look like the actual ones. The Subcategories are easy to do with a little manipulation.

==Subcategories==
There is one subcategory to this category.
===D===
* [[:Category:Deprecated Settings|Deprecated Settings]]

On the plus side, if there aren't Articles or Subcategories, they don't show up on the page, so there won't be confusion until someone adds with an actual Article or Subcategory link.

--ShadowDancer 22:00, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

OK. After spending about 1 & 1/2 hrs, I figured out coding for the Articles. I am afraid its a tiny bit complex but you can see it here. The first cell is necessary for the spacing or else the bullets end up right next to the wall.Additionally, cellpadding didn't look right when used to move the bullets away from the outer box around the "fake Articles". The letters for the sections are also a bit complex since they are actually in two rows. Just remember to leave that cell out on the next line or cells. But thats how it looks in the regular Articles pages for the most part.

{edit} OK, I just looked and there are edit tags as well. I don't know if there is a way to turn those off?

--ShadowDancer 00:07, 3 August 2007 (EDT)

I was thinking we'd just not do that at all, and only have the list that we have, currently above the bit about Subcategories and Articles. Seems easier to me...

Dragoon Wraith TALK 00:48, 3 August 2007 (EDT)

Ack, that got screwed up, sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm impressed. Nice work on those tables. To get rid of the Edit tag, you have to not use headers, which means no H#. I can figure out how to fake those, if you like. If you'd rather set it up that way, that's fine too. Seems like more work for little gain, though.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 00:51, 3 August 2007 (EDT)

Stickman's Comments

Updating the page now, but I notice that closing and reopening the game settings window can change the variables that are shown in it. Where do we report construction settings bugs again? --Stickman 23:57, 31 March 2006 (EST)

If I noticed anything was misspelled I put a (sic) there. Sic is an editor's term that basically means "intentionally misspelled" and is often used when quoting some written work that missues spelling or grammar. See also sic on Wikipedia. I figured it would help avoid spur-of-the-moment "oh he made a typo here" corrections.

There are also a few oddities I didn't draw notes on. For example fAItalktoNPCtimer is one of the few that only capitalizes AI and NPC instead of using title capitalization. "Standoff" also only appears as one word, as near as I can tell, so "off" is always lowercase. When they use the word "to" it may or may not be capitalized. All the rules are out the window when dealing with facegen strings.

I assume the correctness will all eventually be double checked when people made sub pages for them with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is.

Lastly, this page should be split into sections. It's 4:30am and I just spent the last few hours transcribing variable names. I'm in no mood to do that, but I did have an idea on how to play the game:

Two sections. If they know the variable name they're looking for, they can look at an alphabetical listing (divided into pages or variable type (eg, float, integer, string) and then alphabetical. Or if they know what it's related to, they can check the "subject" section and get info on things like facegen, xbox specific (a place to dump them), chargen, and until we get it all sorted, the all-inclusive "unknown" category.

I'll see about getting to the task later if no one else has. If I can figure out how to play this wiki game well enough. --Stickman 07:30, 1 April 2006 (EST)

Category size

As new articles are created for this category its going to explode in size. Can a webmaster weigh in on how we're to organize this stuff. A single massive article might be better than hundreds of small articles. MegaBurn 19:12, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

I'm of the position that settings should be split into general sections like Bribery. This page is almost entirely useless. Individual settings pages should have Redirects to their appropriate page. Daego 19:22, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

That might work for tutorials and/or general use article. This page is still necessary and its usefulness will increase as more articles are added. An alternative is splitting the category into 3 subcategories for f, i, s settings but thats still pretty ugly organization. 4 articles might be better, general article, f article, i article, and s article, then delete the setting specific articles that have already been created. Someone who's a sysop or higher needs to settle this... MegaBurn 19:36, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

This page isn't entirely useless, when categories reach 200+ they split across multiple pages and it becomes a royal PITA to swap pages when looking for related things. Go here (category:functions) and you'll see what I mean, paging between page1 and page2 to look for related functions isn't helpful. If sub categories (bribery, spellcasting) are needed, or useful for organization, then we create them as necessary and see what happens as the wiki evolves. FWIW there's nothing to "settle" at the moment, create some pages and see how they're used, if they become irrelevant then remove them, if not then expand on them. --Halo112358 20:12, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

--Kkuhlmann 16:39, 7 April 2006 (EDT): Why restrict yourselves to one solution? Script functions is organized in multiple ways: there are categories for each function type (Movement Functions, Player Functions, Crime Functions, etc.), and each command includes the Category:Functions (so it appears on the main page) as well as its particular function type (sometimes more than one). That way you get the best of both worlds -- one big category where you can see everything if you want to, plus smaller subcategories if you want to delve. It might help to put a higher level category above these pages (again, similar to the way script functions are organized) so that the massive multi-page list isn't the first thing you hit.

Monolithic list split

I chunked the monolithic list on the category page into three pieces, float, int & string settings - each of those is it's own include template. The category page still looks the same but now you can edit the sections without having to scroll through ~50Kb of text. We could also include those lists on other pages if we wanted to, though I really don't see a reason why we would. --Halo112358 19:08, 7 April 2006 (EDT)

Here's a separate page for the massive settings list: Comprehensive_Settings_List. I haven't moved the list off of the Category page because I wanted to see what people thought of the idea first. I think it's probably a good idea to make the list a "click for huge page of data" kind of thing instead of shoveling 50Kb of text at people as soon as they land in the Settings category.If no one objects I'll do it sometime next week - otherwise let's chat. --Halo112358 19:43, 7 April 2006 (EDT)

Collapsing similar pages

I've collapsed a number of similar pages into lists to reduce the number of articles appearing in the settings category. If you're adding new articles that deal with a number of similar settings, ie: iLockLevelMaxVeryEasy, iLockLevelMaxEasy, iLockLevelMaxAverage, iLockLevelMaxHard, etc.. please consider a list page instead of a number of small pages. This also makes future edits faster, instead of updating 5-10 pages you only need to update one.

Note: In some cases it would be nice to add redirect stubs into categories that aren't as full, I've tried creating redirect stub pages of this form:

#REDIRECT [[Collapsed Page XX]]
 [[Category:Foo Category]]

Unfortunately mediawiki doesn't support these sorts of stubs, everything after the #REDIRECT declaration is ignored. If this ever changes, or someone finds a workaround, please drop me a note. --Halo112358 19:26, 22 April 2006 (EDT)

--Mrflippy 16:40, 4 May 2006 (EDT): Try putting the category tag on the same line as the redirect as such:

#REDIRECT [[Collapsed Page XX]] [[Category:Foo Category]]