Help wiki plan, please review

[woodspeople]

Here is our first-draft wiki outline for new users getting help on all aspects of TS. Please review and suggest before we start fleshing this out. Each of the next-to-lowest-level items on this hierarchy will probably be a page on the wiki, and each lowest-level item will be a section on that page. Each item will be only a sentence or two, some with small screen images.

Terasology Wiki (MAIN PAGE)

About Terasology

Our goals​

Our plans​

What YOU can do to help​

How to install Terasology

On Windows​

On Mac​

On Linux​

How to play Terasology

Getting started

Starting the program

On Windows​

On Mac​

On Linux​

Creating a new world​

Loading a world you already created​

Changing view options​

Life in general

Moving around​

Going to another world​

Health and potions​

Dying and respawning​

Getting things

Getting tools and other items​

Getting blocks​

Getting help on things you can get​

Doing things

Building things​

Lighting​

Destroying things​

Keeping track of your stuff

Selecting items in your inventory​

Storing your stuff in chests​

Storing books in bookcases​

Minion management

Getting and removing minions

Entering and leaving minion mode​

Summoning a minion​

Removing minions​

Commanding your minions

Stay! Follow!​

Mine!​

Store my stuff!​

Do this! Do that!​

Changing the world

Changing the time of day​

Changing how far you can see​

Finding things out

Looking at information about your world​

Getting a bird's eye view of your spawn point​

Seeing through the world​

FAQ

How do you fly?​

How do you mine?​

How do you craft tools?​

What do the tools do?​

What blocks can you place?​

(more of these...)​

Feedback and suggestions please ​

 

[metouto]

Man-O-Man .... brain flow ..... looks cool to me and just the stuff one needs to know NOT to be looking like a noobe to a game .

 

[Cervator]

Looks great to me! Might need a top level Development thing to match the current DevSetup, ContributorGuide, etc in the old wiki

Thanks for putting that outline together!

 

[woodspeople]

Forgot there was an old wiki, can you point us to it? Will check on that.

 

[Cervator]

http://wiki.movingblocks.net
http://wiki.movingblocks.net/Main/ContributorGuide
http://wiki.movingblocks.net/Main/DevSetup

etc

 

[overdhose]

I love how my minions suddenly learned some new commands Have you secretly been slapping them behind my back?

Let me know if I can help you out by creating some templates for the wiki, the templates can provide an easy way to give each page a unified layout (title : certain font formatting, subtitle etc) Ideally it's something to discuss on irc when you have some spare time, templates require a bit of effort but usually pay of in the long run. I briefly looked at them but wanted to discuss them with you asap

 

[woodspeople]

Cervator, please forgive us (no, me) for not paying any attention to the existing wiki, which has a lot in it. Little on user-oriented gameplay however, which is something I think we can help with? Is it all right to copy stuff from old to new wiki or did you want to keep the old one going? Didn't think of stepping on toes...

 

[Cervator]

Nope, old wiki will go bu-bye if new wiki is good enough, so grab anything you like

It never had much user-directed content, mainly was a dev tool then :time: started getting in the way. GitHub front page has that decent readme, I figured rather than upkeep help type docs in multiple places we should look at coming up with a "one master location" approach and use automation to update multiple front-ends (in-game help, GitHub help, wiki help...)

 

[woodspeople]

I love how my minions suddenly learned some new commands

Nothing new, just hopefully described in fun ways:

Stay! Follow! (what it is)​

Mine! (gather)​

Store my stuff! (invent)​

Do this! Do that! (move, patrol)​

Feel free to suggest better names but do remember that not everyone reading the wiki will enjoy "cartoon evil"

I'm thinking we should have put the minion stuff into a separate section that shows it is a module, not something you have to have in the game. Minions as they are right now seem like fun little pets, but I suspect overdhose doesn't want them to stay that way ... slapping etc... I respect the cartoon-evil vibe, but making it seem it is the only way to play will send some people away (esp parents of younger kids). It's an interesting question to ponder: if the minion menu grows a "slap" command, what should the wiki say about it? What about a "torture" command? "Kill"?

By the way:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/minion

min·ion (m

n

y

n)
n.
1. An obsequious follower or dependent; a sycophant.
2. A subordinate official, especially a servile one.
3. One who is highly esteemed or favored; a darling.
[French mignon, darling, from Old French mignot, mignon.]

So in proper usage a minion can be a servant or a pampered pet. Especially with French speakers the word may not mean what you think it does.

Let me know if I can help you out by creating some templates for the wiki

Mixed feelings! On the one hand help would be very useful! On the other hand if we don't learn about how to make templates we won't be able to come up with them as we discover needs for them (and discovering needs depends in part on knowing what is possible). How about, we will try and make our own, then ask for help if we need it?

 

[overdhose]

thanks for pointing out I was raised bilingual by my Walloon grandmother. Ca me fais plésir de voir qu'il y assé de fancais sur ce project. Sinon, Il' y as toujours http://translate.google.com . Mes miniions sont minions Ca ne m'empêche pas de les claquer entre les oreilles

most of the time I spend here, I'm in character. My name Manus Lenoni, and uncle OD wants YOU to remember that name!

 

[metouto]

​

min·ion (m

n

y

n)​

n.​

1. An obsequious follower or dependent; a sycophant.​

2. A subordinate official, especially a servile one.​

3. One who is highly esteemed or favored; a darling.​

​

[French mignon, darling, from Old French mignot, mignon.]​

Alas ..... #3 .... a new name for my wife

​

 

[Cervator]

More term brainstorming

Pretty sure the core game should include management elements of creatures. Pretty sure Dungeon-Keeper like slapping with a purple cursor-hand would be more of a mod - an alternative execution of a negative reinforcement event in the core creature management system.

So 95% of the current system would probably slide right into said creature management system in core content. But what should that be called, and what are the workers termed? Would it depend on how they've been "recruited" or what they do? ... I'm asking questions, aren't I, that should be for the design thread

 

[overdhose]

yeah I don't know either... maybe I'll have to label it dungology or something by the time we ever reach that point, IF we ever reeach it, but I wouldn't worry about it to much right now. That one is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay off, and I might be hooked on a little game called Terasology by then to forget about it...

 

[woodspeople]

Grrrrrr.

Not a feature-rich, easy to use wiki.

The contents/index widget would not show the pages in the correct order, even though we followed the instructions to do so. Could not get the templates to work properly (they don't seem super powerful anyway). No manual or FAQ to speak of, just some scattered posts on forums. No easy way to connect wiki pages; had to use real URLs.

In summary: in our opinion, this is not going to be a good place for anyone to maintain regularly changing information about TS. Have used other wikis; many are much better. We suggest dropping the Xenforo wiki and instead going with something like the wiki TS was already using. Or wikispaces or something.

 

[Cervator]

Aw

Yeah it is only an addon provided by a single user, so I was worried about that. Thanks for checking though. Will have to ponder the options

 

[woodspeople]

What about adding a section to the wiki you were already using? It is pretty good already, just needs a user section (and the development parts need to be less in-your-face). Have you found it easy to use?

 

[Cervator]

I'm decent with Foswiki and can do poweruser stuff fairly easily - but am just about the only person at my company who can do that, and that's because I was the one who put it together years ago and tinkered with it now and then since...

It is decent at the basic stuff but can be a little awkward. Its true potential lies with really advanced stuff like dynamic pages, programmatic updates, super fancy templating, and so on. It isn't exactly pretty tho, and is written in Perl.

At first I suggested Foswiki for Terasology because, well, it was something I used at work, but honestly the needs are hugely different, and I'm not sure Foswiki has really been the appropriate choice for our fairly light duty needs.

What got me excited about a "native" wiki to Xenforo is that it would be totally integrated and styled to match, so it would fit in well, while currently Xenforo vs Foswiki are completely different and it would be tricky/impossible to "embed" Foswiki within the Xenforo frame or even to just try styling it similarly

We could use MediaWiki instead (Bukkit for instance just has a "Docs" link in their Xenforo header that goes to a standalone MediaWiki instance), but it would suffer some of the same integration issues. It is more apt at light-duty stuff, tho again templating starts getting hairy fast.

Also, odd observation: "Bukkit" on Google results in one of our old threads as the 9th hit, huh

Maybe we should just use the Xenforo wiki lightly for permanent documentation and keep most the design / collaborative stuff in forum threads?

 

[woodspeople]

The main issue, as we see it, is in the term "permanent documentation." The software itself is in a relatively rapid state of flux, and it will probably remain so for a while, given that the group itself is in flux. So using a difficult wiki to document it compounds development, especially in its volunteer nature. There are some basic simple things you can do in most wikis, like create a new page by simply making a link from an existing page (with a shortcut like [[page]]), ordering a list of links, you know, things like you can do on the basic MediaWiki platform. I'm not sure templating is even all that important in keeping basic documentation up to date. What is more important is that lots of people can work with it quickly and easily, and not have to jump over huge hurdles. So we'd vote for MediaWiki, because it is easy to update with minimal hurdles.

For the design wiki, keeping it in forum threads would certainly not hurt it much. That is a far less important issue.

 

[overdhose]

I ain't no expert on the subject so take these as the advice of guy with minimalistic clue about html and wiki's, but maybe if you decide to use an external wiki, we might just have a basic minimalistic wiki on the site with links to the external full fledged thing for those who wish to find more details, like how some pages just link to the old wiki now? Like I said, no idea how viable such a thing is, but maybe basic html frames might also help a little? (I know I used them to cheat in faraway days) . Maybe woods could concentrate on the external wiki and I'll put some effort into syncing the internal one as good as possible with links to the most important high level links?

 

[Cervator]

Oh, sorry, not permanent documentation, just non-collaborative documentation, is what I should've said

I looked at the wiki a little deeper right now and... I think it actually looks great? Not necessarily its feature set, but what you two have put in there already. The little sitemap in the side bar? Sweet! Really, that might be mostly all we need - just a primer with some initial topics that rarely need updates.

If we were to do something like the DF or MC wiki with all kinds of recipe listings, in-depth material analysis pages, etc, then yeah, it would be woefully inadequate. Likewise for heavy collaboration on design stuff. But if we can stick with the design forum for a while (which may very well make for more visible discussion anyway) and not worry about in-depth game info I think it'll do for now.

In the sense of "two wikis" that might work if we more or less treat the Xenforo wiki as the initial game doc and dev setup, then do a separate "community wiki" behind a whole domain akin to how DF and MC do, likely based on MediaWiki. I wouldn't recommend trying to keep them entangled on any topic - just basic "setup and run the game" in Xenforo, then full go nuts separately. And for now I'd like to go for minimal effort - I'm probably way past the effort I should be spending on the forum these days already. Not that that's necessarily a whole lot of time in the first place, but eh

So to tie this to the TOC up top - basically the first three sections down to the bottom of "Getting Started" along with a quick page on what key shortcuts do what (the GitHub readme), a blurb on minions, some debug notes, and maybe a FAQ. Some of the meat in the middle may be too subject to change and too detailed for a primer? Just a handful of pages to start, then down the road we'll review when we have enough content for a full-fledged separate wiki site and actual users happily playing to help populate it based on what content is available.

It might also be that the Xenforo wiki grows up some more. An upgrade came out just a few days ago. Looks small, but nice.