Retro Modding Wiki

2015-02-07 01:42:15 pm

Building the tables themselves isn't really going to be a pain, but setting up all the different pages for every pak would be. Especially if we want to make changes to the table layout down the road and there's no easy way to preserve work already done on the original layout.

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2015-02-07 01:43:00 pm

2015-02-07 01:42:34 pm

red chamber dream

Quote from Antidote:

We could probably setup an SQLite DB, but then that would require an external application to view it :/

yep

i figure it wouldn't be too gigantic though so you can just host a copy somewhere and send it to people

Aruki

2015-02-07 01:43:02 pm

thing is, we don't exactly have all the information on what every file is up front; that's why the "anyone can edit it" part is useful for this

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:43:17 pm

red chamber dream

ah ok that makes sense

Antidote

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-02-07 01:43:40 pm

2015-02-07 01:43:27 pm

I don't think having a page for each pak is exactly useful, especially since quite a few of the files appear in multiple paks, notating which paks they appear seems to be a simpler alternative, then you can sort by pak.

Antidote

Edit history:

Antidote: 2015-02-07 01:44:47 pm

Antidote: 2015-02-07 01:44:22 pm

2015-02-07 01:44:14 pm

On an unrelated note, DKCTF maps are downright massive XD

Aruki

2015-02-07 01:45:05 pm

Retro's games store files using hex IDs instead of names, so like the example I gave Ridley's model is called b2bwhatever.CMDL. So you'd have to actually import the file somewhere, or check what other files use that one, to find out what it actually is.

yeah Antidote, that might be an option. I'd just be worried about whether the pages would get too big that way. I think there's some value in having a page for each file as well. I dunno.

Antidote

2015-02-07 01:46:06 pm

That's true, and that's the problem, no matter which solution we come up with, there will be a downside to it.

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2015-02-07 01:49:49 pm

2015-02-07 01:47:13 pm

red chamber dream

does the wiki let you run custom javascript?

Aruki

2015-02-07 01:47:28 pm

No clue.

Antidote

2015-02-07 01:48:44 pm

IIRC, there is an extension that allows you to do that.

DJGrenola

2015-02-07 01:52:39 pm

the other thing you could do is put them in a google spreadsheet or something and invite people to fill that in, then write some script to export the spreadsheet to something you can just paste into the wiki

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:52:54 pm

red chamber dream

it seems like yall have two separate concerns, gathering information, then displaying it

the wiki is good at the former but not the latter

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:53:10 pm

red chamber dream

grenola yeah that's more or less what i was thinking

gather the data first, then figure out how to display it

Aruki

2015-02-07 01:53:22 pm

IMO it can display the information just fine, the only real problem with it is we end up wanting to change it.

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:53:37 pm

red chamber dream

that's what i mean

it's bad at displaying information because you can't change it easily

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:54:56 pm

red chamber dream

but if you had all the data in some other source you could export it into the wiki like grenola said, and just export again whenever you want to change it

Aruki

2015-02-07 01:55:36 pm

now we're getting into the territory of I-have-no-idea-how-to-implement-this though

arkarian

2015-02-07 01:57:52 pm

red chamber dream

google spreadsheet sounds pretty good to me. you could export the data to csv then write a program to turn it into wiki markup

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2015-02-07 01:59:13 pm

2015-02-07 01:58:54 pm

red chamber dream

alternatively you could call it live with javascript in the wiki and do most of the formatting within google spreadsheet, but that's more complicated

Antidote

2015-02-07 01:59:51 pm

I think there is an extension for media wiki to visualize CSVs, I'll use some googlefu to see real quick.

arkarian

2015-02-07 02:00:25 pm

red chamber dream

oh nice, yeah i'm sure there's all kinds of great wiki stuff i don't know about

maybe even an api that lets you call google's speadsheet api

Antidote

2015-02-07 02:01:03 pm

Maybe, but anyway I did find something:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TableData

Aruki

2015-02-07 02:01:07 pm

Google spreadsheets sounds like too much maintenance and kinda ruins the point of even having it on the wiki in the first place. To be the most useful it really needs to be possible for anyone to edit it and I really don't want to have to periodically re-export this stuff manually.

If we can find a way to automate it - preferably so editing can still be done in the wiki interface and then saved to a binary format maybe - that would be ideal I think.

arkarian

2015-02-07 02:01:31 pm

red chamber dream

anyone can edit a google spreadsheet, and it's easier than a wiki because you don't need to know any special markup

right?