User talk:Genesis

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Happy Editing!

P.S. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything else! -- Alan (talk) 12:59, 22 March 2021

Welcome to Echo Bazaar Wiki!

Hi, welcome to Fallen London Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the 'Do you know what an unsupervised monkey could do to our equipment?' page.

Please leave me a message if I can help with anything!
Wikia (talk) 23:29, July 17, 2015 (UTC)

Autofire card locations

Thanks for your hint about those not being recognized! I somehow forgot to update that template when introducing card locations in the main {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}} template. It should be working for {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} as well now.

(And another round of thanks for the idea of automatically adding cards to their respective "Cards - " location deck category. That actually did not happen in either template before today — but should come in handy.)
Achris (talk) 11:32, August 1, 2015 (UTC)

Glad I could help! And thank you for  implementing it all
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:08, August 1, 2015 (UTC)

Destiny sources

Hi,

Regarding the various options to get a destiny (e.g. A chilly future), do you think these 3 are all the same Action, being used by multiple storylets (one for each holiday)? Or indeed separate Actions?

For each of the destiny paths, the 3 disambiguation actions seem identical, except that the one from Christmas uses different capitalization.

Do you know?
Adnoam (talk) 13:21, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

I am pretty sure they are actually different actions. Drowning Feast ones have completely different branch text and also remove Sights of the Feast quality. Christmas and Hallowmas ones have the same text but the Hallowmas ones have the Potential Future unlock requirements which the other seasons don't use. (I am now realising that that the Drowning Feast ones also have PF unlocks listed on the wiki but that is incorrect).

I am also pretty sure that the Christmas ones use the same capitalisation as the other two, as I recall wanting to change it last year but not feeling confident using the wiki. But I figured it's not such a big deal and we can always wait till January and double check. I leave that up to you :-)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:22, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I missed on the Fruit Festival to try this with an alt for comparison purposes...
Adnoam (talk) 14:32, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, each individual destiny option (e.g. Aver it) will need updating. They are currently listed as giving a Veteran of All Hallows' Eve, which is no longer the case. And presumably each option and each destiny location (e.g. A Conversation on the Road) would need all three seasonal banners? Or not? What do you think?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:08, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Most of these pages were created in the first Hallowmas which had Destinies (2013?).

On the one hand, indeed all these options should have the 3 seasonal banners. But that's very aesthetic. I'll have to think a bit regarding what's best.
Adnoam (talk) 19:07, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Increase/Gain template use

Hi,

I saw that you've recently changed a few pages to use {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} instead of {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} - e.g. Dine with Society.

These were there for cases where the displayed text to the player is not the regular "this quality has increased..." but a specific message. (since the main different between using Increase and Gain is the message displayed.)
Adnoam (talk) 05:31, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I apologise. I hadn't realised that was intentional. I confess I wasn't clear what {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} was meant to do as it wasn't documented and I was a bit short on time to read through the source code. It does make sense and I've reverted to the original use.

Having said that, would it not make more to simply allow {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} to take a custom text parameter? Or if we are to still use {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} then allow the custom text to be part of that template (as opposed to writing out the text as a comment after the template use - that was the main factor that made me change it without double checking; I tend to assume that anything "hard"-written into the code needs to be corrected)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:04, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

It will definitely be better at some point to just have one such template (same, by the way, for {{[[Template:Drop|Drop]]}} and {{[[Template:Loss|Loss]]}}). There are several parameters and variations this will need to address though (e.g. what to show in parenthesis as to the actual quality change taking place).

If you check my profile page you can see I've listed this very thing as one of the items to improve with templates on the wiki :-)

It will probably be impossible to update all pages without a bot, though, since so many use both {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} and {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}}.
Adnoam (talk) 09:16, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Hallowmas category page(s)

Hi,

I saw that you've created the Category:Hallowmas/2016 page.

Since we're trying to move away from year-specific categories (they are not accurate to say the least), if you feel up to it I think the best way to document the past holidays is to fill up the history guide page.

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 12:47, October 17, 2017 (UTC)

Oh certainly. That was just a way for me to simplify that process. The  tag was used throughout anyway so it was a convenient way to gather the relevant links in one place to cross-refer to.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:27, October 17, 2017 (UTC)

Documenting inter-player confessions trading

Hi,

Any thoughts on how to properly document the options to trade confessions between players?

For each of the 7 confessions (e.g. Bishop's), there's a 0-action redirect to its own storlyet, in which there are 6 options for each of the target confessions you're after (e.g. Barrister's, Cheery Man's, etc.), each of which is a social action.

So we have 42 different social actions here, most of which share the exact same title and description.

(and apparently this mechanic wasn't documented at all last year)
Adnoam (talk) 07:50, October 30, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not trivial...

The best I can think of that doesn't involve 8 pages and 42 social actions is this.

Trading Confessions keeps all of its branches but all of them point to a single page called "Trading a Mysterious Confession" (or even just "Trading a Confession"). That page would have a wikinote saying that its title actually depends on which confession you are trading. It will also have all seven of "Trade the... Confession" branches (even thought in reality any given page would only have six).

We could then either have 7 different social actions with just an anonymous "Mysterious Confession" as a requirement for the sender, or possibly have one general social action with two "variable" confessions on its own placeholder page and have the branches on "Trade the... Confession" redirect to the placeholder page. Personally, I think I prefer the former approach. The second approach doesn't actually reduce the number of pages needed; only the amount of text on any given branch page.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:38, October 30, 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm... Why would the second option no reduce the number of pages? It seems that this will have exactly one page instead off 7.
Adnoam (talk) 10:46, October 30, 2017 (UTC)

With the first approach you have: "Trading a Confession" (1 page), 7 branch pages, with each page having the full social action template on it, giving a total of 8 pages.

With the second approach you have: "Trading a Confession" (1 page), 7 branch pages, with each page simply having unlock requirements and a redirect to the social action placeholder page, 1 placeholder page with a single Social Action template. This gives 9 pages.

I suppose you could also conceive of a third approach where "Trading a Confession" has only a single branch linking straight to the social action page. This would indeed give only 2 pages but then you would need to list all the different branch descriptions (which are different) on the same page.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:55, October 30, 2017 (UTC)

So what option did we go for in the end? I saw that changes have started being made but wasn't clear what path precisely we are taking
Mikey thinkin (talk) 21:10, November 1, 2017 (UTC)

Rahv7 has created one generic page for all trades. It doesn't fully document all branches, but it does clarify what the option does mechanically (with the applicable categories added manually).

To document everything will take more work, of course. Note that the description text is different based on your desired confession type, but the social action text itself is chosen based on your offered confession type.
Adnoam (talk) 22:33, November 1, 2017 (UTC)

wiki documentation of old artistic works after being Restored to Court

Hi,

I've created a wiki blog post to consult on how to best document the changes when creating artistic works at Court.

Your comments are welcome!
Adnoam (talk) 10:27, November 13, 2017 (UTC)

Look for wealthy donors

Did you happen to also notice how the unlock requirements have changed in this page (Look for wealthy donors)?
Adnoam (talk) 15:12, February 26, 2018 (UTC)

Oh yes, it's Renown. I thought I had changed that but clearly not!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:15, February 26, 2018 (UTC)

Multi-step social actions

Hi,

Does Testifying for a friend appear as a storylet for the person who was summoned via Request that a friend assassinate your spouse before the Court? Or is this launched via the message tab (like the new multi-step social actions)?

If it's the latter, then two changes are needed:

# Request that a friend assassinate your spouse before the Court should list a redirect to Testifying for a friend a one of the "friend's results".
# Testifying for a friend's "Unlocked with" field should be "a redirect from Request that a friend assassinate your spouse before the Court" instead of having "Summoned to Testify at a Friend's Divorce"



Also: Does Refuse to testify cost any actions? Options to reject an incoming request should not cost actions (and FBG have commented in the past that if they do it's likely a bug to be reported).
Adnoam (talk) 10:54, March 11, 2018 (UTC)

It’s a Gold Bordered storylet. I was mindful of our earlier discussion; FBG seems to be using both formats for very similar effect.

Refuse to testify doesn’t cost any actions. It drew my attention as well. This whole batch of content is very buggy. I’ve already filed three tickets and have another my to file. However in this specific case, previous comments notwithstanding, it feels intentional as you get some Romantic Notions. But I can throw it in with the next support ticket I file.
82.132.223.227 11:27, March 11, 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, *does* cause an action
82.132.223.227 11:28, March 11, 2018 (UTC)

Sorry - missed the fact that you've clearly labeled it as Gold-Bordered.

I'm not surprised this content has a few bugs. I doubt many have explored all the options there systematically.

Thanks again!

(FYI - you're commenting anonymously again)
Adnoam (talk) 13:25, March 11, 2018 (UTC)

Social Interactions

Hi,

Regarding the new Category:Social Interactions, how do you envision this being different than the already existing Category:Social Actions?

Is this meant for the new type of actions (where the recipient gets to "Respond" via a storylet with 3 options)? If so, this is probably better handled by Template, which will also add the category automatically (we don't add manually Category:Social Actions on each such page).
Adnoam (talk) 13:59, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Maybe that wasn't the best name? I intended it to be a category of qualities.

Literally just a bucket of qualities that only ever used to for social actions. Mainly for sorting and organisations purposes given that "Stories" is such a wide category.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:04, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Ah. In that case I recommend something like Category:Social Qualities, which will be a sub-category of Category:Qualities.
Adnoam (talk) 14:05, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, it's already a sub-category of Category:Qualities but maybe the name might need a change
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:07, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

I've braved the world of basic bottong and renamed the category to Social Qualities. Can you please delete the old category?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:26, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Done. Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 15:37, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Wait, how did you do that?
Adnoam (talk) 15:39, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

I followed the instructions on this page but obviously only the very basic usage so far as I have no prior botting experience.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:50, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

(I wasn't intending to get into using a bot; just searched for "renaming categories" and was pointed there)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:53, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Nice! Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 15:56, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Regarding this new Category:Social Qualities: do you envision it only capturing qualities which track interaction between players, or all qualities which directly relate to a social exchange?

What I mean is: look here at all the qualities which start with "Dinner" or with "Chess" or "Sparring". Should all these be in the new category? (in my opinion - yes).
Adnoam (talk) 22:27, March 14, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Although, possibly (and I haven't really thought it through), as whole Dinner/Sparring/etc subcategories? But that's more work and, in any case, can be done later once they are all in the overall Category:Social Qualities
83.216.74.148 22:33, March 14, 2018 (UTC)

You search for an acquaintance

Hi. In You search for an acquaintance, did you happen to notice if the instructions text still includes "They will receive some randomly generated Connections"? Thanks.
Adnoam (talk) 15:25, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Yep, I've updated it. I am trying to keep the formatting similar to the humble one so keep forgetting to copy some of the bits...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:27, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Although I am not getting any Bohemians so far...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:45, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it's trying to give you Connected: Bohemians :-)
Adnoam (talk) 15:46, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Social Actions Auto - Competitive

Hi, regarding your new template, I was wondering about what should be in the new Challenge Results section, and what should remain in the "traditional" "when sent"/"when received" sections.

Some examples:

* Attempt to distract your opponent: Should the increase to Chess: The Progress of your Match be in the Challenge Results section? It's not part of the challenge and both players receive this regardless of how the challenge went, so shouldn't this be a normal result for either/or sender receiver like regular social actions?
* Accept, and open the game with an intellectual gambit:
*# Shouldn't Invites to a Game of Chess drop only for the sender?
*# As far as I can see, only the (potential) gain of Chess: Skirmishes Won this Match is part of the challenge results. Everything else should be a normal result for either/or sender receiver like regular social actions.
Adnoam (talk) 15:01, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah... It's not all straightforward and I have debated with myself. We can certainly tweak. But here is what my thinking was.

There are four areas where something changes as a result of a competitive (automatically accepted) action.

1. The results displayed in the usual interface in the Story tab (like for the vast majority of storylets) of the Sender

2. The results displayed in the right hand panel (Recently...) of the Sender's Messages tab

3. The results displayed in the right hand panel (Recently...) of the Recepient's Messages tab

4. The message in the left hand panel (My Messages) of the Recepient's Messages tab

Now if you look carefully most (but not all, crucially) changes in 2 are duplicated in 1. They are not *awarded* twice but they are *displayed* twice. But sometimes there are quality changes in 1 which are not displayed in 2. For example the Scandal gain in Attempt to distract your opponent.

So my thinking went that the Scandal gain was awarded "When Sent", whereas the remaining quality changes are not awarded until the social action was actually (automatically) accepted and the challenge resolved and then displayed in the right hand messages panels of both parties. This is also in accordance with my observations of the revamped social actions (whether competitive or not) and FBG responses to my bug reports. From what I can deduce, one of the ways FBG is adding extra role-playing (for example) flavour without exploding word content is by attaching the same social action (under the hood) to different "front end" branches of the storylet. So "When Sent" of these different branches would be the different but the actual social action (Sender/Recepient for non-competitive and Winner/Loser for competitive) would be the same. This particular role-playing mechanic was mostly used in the wedding/divorce content and less here but the example with the Scandal above still maintains this distinction between qualities awarded "When Sent" and as part of the challenge.

The second reason, and this also goes to your point about "factoring out" Chess: The Progress of your Match from the challenge results, is that there is no obvious place for the receiver to see this distinction. The "In Messages Tab" for the receiver in my interpretation was specifically for 4. - the left hand panel, which contains the ability to respond. Now, you may query whether this is the correct interpretation of the "In Messages Tab" section but I do feel that what the receiver sees in the left and right hand panels is quite distinct and the former does not (should not, in my reading, but contestable) contain any quality changes.

But suppose we adopt your suggestion (which, if I understood, is that the Challenge results section should be reserved specifically for the quality changes that differentiate the winner from the loser). How do you envisage the layout and template code to look? Would the template use the "Accepted description" and "Friend Accepted description" fields as in the non-competitive version? There would be no actual text to put there, only the quality changes. Or do you envisage using the single "Success Rewards" field for all the "factored out" common quality changes? But then how do we differentiate the Scandal gain in Attempt to distract your opponent and the left panel invitation for the Recepient?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:25, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

About the Invites to a Game of Chess drop. You are right of course. That's exactly what would happen in normal circumstances.

But I tried sending mutual invites before accepting either and then one party accepting will wipe both parties' invites. (Which has now left me with a buggy hanging invite)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:30, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

Ah, there is a nuance that has possibly confused some people (including me).

The recepient receives the acceptance message *twice* (usually). Once in the left hand panel, attached to an image and a RESPOND button leadin to a social storylet. And once in the right hand panel together with all the quality changes.

So I do see why people would use "In Messages Tab" section for the latter. But given that the text is identical and the former is functionally more consequential, I feel it's that part that's of primary interest to a wiki user/reader.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 18:10, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

It's indeed a bit confusing, and some of this is from the history of the Social Action templates. You're right the some of the effects repeat themselves. The current convention on the wiki (at least for auto social actions) has been:

* For the sender:
*# List all effects in the "Success rewards" field (the sender sees these as the direct results of their action).
*# List only the specialized text of the (right-hand side) message tab in the "Accept description" field (no need to repeat the effects already shown).
* For the receiver:
*# List all effects (shown on the right-hand side message tab) on the "Friend Accept description"

Now, the new interactive type of social actions have the Respond option on the left-hand side message tab. It might be worth having a separate template for this, but for now, the convention (for readability's sake) has been:

* In addition to listing all effects on the "Friend Accept description" field, also add there a Redirect to the storylet which comes from "Respond".

So, unless (or until) we decide on a new template type for these, the above is how it's done. To incorporate the Challenge Results into this existing structure, I'd indeed suggest to keep all of the above intact, and just include in the new Challenge Results section those effects which come directly from winning/losing the challenge.

There's also (some) precedent. Look here:

* Results unique to the Sender: under "When Sent"
* The text message seen by the sender: under "In Messages Tab" / "You will receive" (not repeating the effects)
* Results unique to the Receiver: under "In Messages Tab" / "Your friend will receive"
* Redirect to the next storylet when choosing Respond: under "In Messages Tab" / "Your friend will receive"
* Results based on who has won the debate: in a separate section at the end.
Adnoam (talk) 23:01, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

So you mean like this: Attempt to distract your opponent (I've adjusted it)?

Fair enough, I guess I can live with that :) I do think we should clarify that the redirect is not the "normal" redirect but an actual way to respond to an action (possible, as you say, via a new template).

I am taking a transatlantic flight in the morning so I might not be able to revise the Chess game storylet for a few days. (I also started looking at Loitering but paused as I am pretty sure it's bugged with Airs accumulating rather than resetting which makes it very difficult to get to low-Air actions. I sent a ticket and hopefully that would get resoled but I suspect FBG is busy - I still have unanswered tickets from my wedding exploration).

On a partial tangent, I do like your new Social gain/Loss templates! But it makes me wonder whether Category:Social Qualities should actually have a sub-category of those qualities that do take another player as a parameter (currently, as per previous discussion, that is not the case for all Social Qualities).
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:17, March 19, 2018 (UTC)

I've made minor formatting tweaks to Attempt to distract your opponent. What do you think?
Adnoam (talk) 08:41, March 20, 2018 (UTC)

I actually had put redirect first intentionally to emphasise that it’s not part of the qualities changing but rather attached to the invitation text. But I don’t think it’s a big deal if you prefer it this way.

But if we did do an Invite template then the redirect would need to come “attached” to the text, I think? Also, if we did do a template I was wondering if we could automate the invite image (since it’s the same image as the I really action page, as far as I can tell). The problem with that though is that, currently, the IL module only tracks quality images and a social action is not a quality. Do you think we can add other pages to the module? It might cause issues when pages move though...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:37, March 20, 2018 (UTC)

We can create mock pages (in a sandbox) for how it might look (even if we just include the needed files manually). Templates and Modules can later be changed to encode this.

What exactly did you have in mind?
Adnoam (talk) 10:06, March 20, 2018 (UTC)

Ah I think I possibly misread your reference to a new template. You mean a new social action template, right?

I merely meant a small template (in Category:Result effects templates) to combine the invite text, invite image and the link to the social storylet with a tweaked description that emphasises that you get there by pressing a button rather than it being an automatic redirect.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 22:06, March 20, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, makes sense. I'm not sure if this should be a separate (small) result template of its own or just a new field ("Respond") in the applicable Social Action templates.

That's what I meant when I said we can encode it later in templates/modules as needed. First, let's just agree on how it should look (a mock page, written without fancy templates).
Adnoam (talk) 07:20, March 21, 2018 (UTC)

So I've had a stab at setting out how I think the different types of social actions (various combinations of whether there is a challenge, acceptance button or the new multistage response) can be documented in a way that's consistent but also doesn't require too many changes from the current use. I've included some notes to point out the elements that are highly standard/universal and so could be taken care of by the templates, potentially.

The main difference from the current use is the use of the "Response" subsection, which should take care of both the old-school Accept/Reject actions and the new multistage actions. The main point to highlight is that for Accept/Reject actions the ability to respond comes before the majority of quality changes, whereas for the modern multistage social actions the ability to respond comes after the quality changes.

(As you suggested, this is purely for visualising purposes. The current template use is minimal)

What do you think?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 01:03, March 28, 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding earlier.

The "reason" that the new "response-style" social actions have their effects before responding is that they use the "Social Actions Auto" mechanic. This is also the reason we've been using this template for such actions.

As for the different available options here, I like most of your suggestions. I'd make a few changes here an there (when I have time, I'll create a mock up of my own, or if you don't mind, modify yours to illustrate).

As a quick note: there are still auto-accept social actions which are not competitive and don't require a response, e.g. sending First City Coins, or writing another player a letter (this last one apparently uses the wrong social action template).
Adnoam (talk) 12:12, April 8, 2018 (UTC)

Yep, definitely feel free to modify mine!

There are certainly actions like Give them to someone else. My intention was that the "Automatic Standard without Multistage Response" type (as with Enjoy a coffee and lighthearted conversation in the sandbox) would cover those as well. The only difference is the "You completed Social Event:" message, as far as I can tell. But that sort of nuance can certainly be tweaked, if necessary/preferred.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:12, April 8, 2018 (UTC)

FYI - new template: Have fun :-)

{{Wiki Note|<some text>}} --> Wiki note: some text

(I want to add this as a parameter for all Action-type templates, so we can use this instead of cramming notes into the Unlock field or the Player Summary.)
Adnoam (talk) 14:32, April 8, 2018 (UTC)

Great idea!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:42, April 8, 2018 (UTC)

User_blog:Adnoam/Wiki_Notes
Adnoam (talk) 09:35, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Cheesemonger

Hi, are you sure about the two changes you've made to the following?

* [[Abandon the task, and your employer]
* Resign from the Cheesemonger's service

These both used to indicate that you're no longer An Agent of the Cheesemonger, and so you go back to the previous stage of On the Trail of the Cheesemonger.

As far as I know, you can't have both. When you complete the On the Trail of the Cheesemonger part, you lose this quality to become An Agent of the Cheesemonger.

So, resigning can't "drop" your On the Trail of the Cheesemonger quality. At most it can give it back at a specific level.
Adnoam (talk) 11:30, March 24, 2018 (UTC)

Yes of course. it should use the increase template and set it to 4. The only change that I intended to make was change from Twist (that doesn’t have any numerical information) to clarify you don’t start with a single CP/level. i used “drop” mistakenly because in my mind the branch was setting back your progress.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:13, March 24, 2018 (UTC)

Argh. Sorry :) My brain just says "Set back = drop"...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 21:07, March 27, 2018 (UTC)

Change to Volunteer for a part in his plans

Are you sure about your recent update to Volunteer for a part in his plans?

This unlocks when Intimate with a Revolutionary Firebrand is exactly 9. Before your change, the page indicated that a success increases the quality to 10, and a failure drops it to 8. Now, the failure indicates a drop of 1 CP.

So does this drop by CPs or by levels?
Adnoam (talk) 08:35, March 29, 2018 (UTC)

CPs. So it does drop to 8 but not fully and, in principle, if you keep losing on Break through the Revolutionary Firebrand's reserve you might drop all the way down to 5.

By contrast, Intimate with a Secular Missionary seems discrete, though I am trying to re-confirm.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:24, March 29, 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. And confusing. Thanks for confirming.
Adnoam (talk) 09:34, March 29, 2018 (UTC)

So (subject to confirmation on the latter) Firebrand is CP based but Missionary is discrete. However, Firebrand doesn't actually "gain" its levels. All level increases I've seen so far are *set* to the higher value whereas the missionary I think actually *gains* those levels.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:41, March 29, 2018 (UTC)

Changes to Template:Lodgings Change

Hi,

In your recent change to {{[[Template:Lodgings_Change|Lodgings Change]]}}, you've added an automatic categorization of "Category:Route: Lodgings Gain" when using the template.

However, in most cases, switching one's lodgings (e.g. by using its key in your inventory) does not mean that you've gained said Route.

There are only a handful of cases where you actually gain the Route to your lodgings (basically only when starting the game and getting your first lodgings, or during SMEN after getting rid of them all. Possibly when dealing with SNOWBOUND).
Adnoam (talk) 07:59, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

We can do it differently but the reason was because of the phrase “You’ve found a home.” (And the Lodgings image) which were already in the template code. I am pretty sure that’s the text and image for Route gain as it’s shown in the beginning of the game when you gain that quality (and you can see the quality image on your profile).

I am assuming it’s a gain in the sense of being set to 1, which doesn’t do anything if you already have the route. But not including it would then ignore the ability to regain it after SMEN
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:04, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

The "You've found a home" is shown whenever you switch lodgings. Nothing to do with gaining a Route (though it's possible that behind the scenes, the engine sets the Route: Lodgings quality to 1 regardless).

For most, categorizing under Category:Route: Lodgings Gain is incorrect. As I said, usually you'll encounter the "You've found a home" when switching from one lodging to another. For the very few cases in which you gain you lodgings after having none, we can do this manually, or via a new optional field in the template.

One of the things on the Big List is standardizing Route gains. "Route: Lodgings" is a special case.
Adnoam (talk) 09:29, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

I mean it’s definite, not possible, that you gain the Route quality at the point of getting your first lodgings. I am rerunning early content at the moment and checked.

So either the Route gain is invisible or the lodgings move is invisible (as there aren’t enough messages to account for everything that happens). To me it makes much more sense that it’s the move itself that’s invisible and the message tells you about the Route gain (it has the same icon as the Route quality, other Route gains are not invisible, and the message is identical regardless of what lodgings you move to). But since, as you say, the actual number of cases where it’s relevant is rare we can do it manually I guess...

I just don’t think it’s that special of a case. There are plenty of other qualities that are not actually “gained” because they are set to to the same value they currently have.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:38, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

I just want to avoid confusion in categorizations.

The pages categorized under Category:Route: Lodgings Gain should probably not include any lodgings switch. We can have an optional parameter to that template, which can add this category for the early game content (i.e. for the actions here), and not by default.

I can't remember how this behaves during SMEN when regaining lodgings.
Adnoam (talk) 09:47, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

Sure, makes sense :)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:52, April 2, 2018 (UTC)

Implausible Penance redirect cards

Hi,

Since you've been updating these (e.g. The Topsy King buttonholes you in the Flit), can please you check the next time regarding the game instructions? (i.e. removed or changed to reference Favours instead of Connected? Or unchanged, which would be a bug to be reported...)

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 12:10, April 9, 2018 (UTC)

Of course!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:44, April 9, 2018 (UTC)

See a change I've made here: The Topsy King buttonholes you in the Flit

Since these cards can only be "Drawn" by specific actions/redirects, their frequency field (and category) are meaningless. So I've updated {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}} to support a "None" value for the Frequency parameter, which will suppress the text and category.
Adnoam (talk) 09:31, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Switching from Stories template to the Quality template

Hi,

I don't think there's a specific need to convert all uses of {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} into {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} as this point.

There's still room for specialized templates (so we still use {{[[Template:Success|Success]]}} and {{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}}). If the defaults of {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} fit (i.e. no need to show a link to the Gain/Loss sub-categories), then I think it's probably not worth it to change to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}.

If, however, the quality is such that a link to either/or the Gain/Sources/Loss categories makes sense, then a switch to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} is required.

(Once the site redesign is finalized, some quality categories will be gone/changed anyway, and we'll need to revisit those specific qualities).
Adnoam (talk) 05:29, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

Hey,

I was going off what we discussed here (see your comments of 13 March 11:26 and 12:31 - adjusted for time zones but the minute marker should be the same, hopefully)

In particular, the point about reclaiming the Stories template for other uses?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 07:59, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I was thinking more "long term" (that's why I didn't say this is problematic, just not necessary at the moment) :-)
Adnoam (talk) 08:56, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

Dream qualities

These are a mess. Check out:

* Category:Dreaming Strange Dreams: A Game of Chess
* Category:Having Recurring Dreams: A Game of Chess
* Category:A Game of Chess

Of course, this also affects the relevant Gain/Loss sub-categories, as it depends on what exact quality name was used for the Increase/Drop template.

(and the same for all the rest)

Interestingly, check out:

{{#invoke:IL|prefix|A Game of Chess}} --> Dreaming Strange Dreams:<br>{{#invoke:IL|prefix|Death by Water}} --> Having Recurring Dreams:

Adnoam (talk) 15:01, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

Indeed! That's why I sidestepped the issue and moved onto the other Quality categories for now...

I'll be thinking about how to best address that but it might just be a matter of knuckle worlk :/ Any ideas/suggestions of your own?

(Unrelatedly, but while I am messaging you - could you please edit the locked quality templates {{[[Template:Ambition|Ambition]]}}, {{[[Template:Acquaintance|Acquaintance]]}}, {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} and {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} etc so that the body of the template is in the includeonly tags, especially the quality category, and add the actual templates to Category:Quality templates under the noinclude tags? Currently many of these templates are orphaned)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:07, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the whole prefix business in the IL module needs to be reviewed I think. It was originally meant to simpligy things but has only created confusions... (Especially with things like A Game of Chess (Social Action))

ETA: In fact, with the Renown revamp there is very little for it at all since it only ever dealt with Connections and Dreams
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:09, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

I've relaxed the permission for the above templates (I can't see why they were locked for admins only in the first place).

Have you seen a problem somewhere (you mentioned A Game of Chess (Social Action)) where the IL module's prefix causes a problem? I couldn't find places which actually invokes that module's "prefix" function.
Adnoam (talk) 19:56, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

Not now, no. But one of the reasons why this page has that name was because when it was named without the parenthetical it pointed to the Dream page.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:59, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

Ah, well that's not because of the IL module's prefix function, but because that page name was already in use. That's not too bad, since there's are lots of duplicates, which is why we add things like "(Action)" or "(Storylet)" to differentiate them.

I have a feeling that originally, the IL template was supposed to invoke the IL module's "prefix" function (if a prefix existed), the same way it's invoking it's "main" function to get the associated image name.
Adnoam (talk) 20:45, April 29, 2018 (UTC)

The idea was probably to simplify usage when there'e s recurring (and long) prefix. But since we're not doing that for other qualities (Connected, Favours, Putting the Pieces Together, etc.) I don't see why we should do it for Dream. (not to mention that it messes up the categories).
Adnoam (talk) 13:23, April 30, 2018 (UTC)

We are in agreement :-)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:38, April 30, 2018 (UTC)

Do you have any idea where the "Dreaming Strange Dreams" prefix for A Game of Chess comes from? (as opposed to "Having Recurring Dreams" used for the rest). In the Qualities list they all use "Having Recurring Dreams". Could the Game of Chess prefix be something old which has since changed?
Adnoam (talk) 14:27, April 30, 2018 (UTC)

Yes. "Having Recurring Dreams: A Game of Chess " used to be called "Dreaming Strange Dreams: A Game of Chess". It was picked upon a number of times but was assumed to be an intentional stylistic choice (to do with FBG's love of asymmetry) possibly reflecting the fact that it's the rarest of dream qualities.

But a year or two ago they standardised it.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:32, April 30, 2018 (UTC)

All done. Thanks for the help.

(Also, now that A Game of Chess was no longer used for the dream quality, I've moved A Game of Chess (Social Action) to its "normal" name)
Adnoam (talk) 13:00, May 6, 2018 (UTC)

Cool! Well done and thank you. Good idea on renaming the social action.

We are almost there with the qualities. The onyl categories that are left are all special cases: connections, attributes and menaces.

Connections are outdated and the whole concept of factions needs revising. Attributes I'll need to think about but my instinct is that much of the information there ought to be split off to decicated guide pages. Menaces uses their own special template but it's a poor fit for the less standard menaces.

Incidentally, I've cleaned up all the uses of ((t|Ventures)) and {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} (apart from uses in comments, blogs etc). So you can probably tick Ventures off your list. And later on Stories will be free for other uses.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:42, May 7, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, Connections will require some thinking. I'm leaning towards some sort of {{[[Template:Faction|Faction]]}} template, which will present different info depends if this faction uses Connected or Favours/Renown.

I'm also interested in seeing how quality categories will look after the site redesign (e.g. will we still need Accomplishments? Seasonal? etc.)
Adnoam (talk) 06:00, May 8, 2018 (UTC)

So on the subject of faction templates, two questions:

1. When we are talking about {{[[Template:Faction|Faction]]}} are we talking about a template to document each of the Contacts qualities? So it would be a wrapper of {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} with automatically pre-selected parameters. Or are we talking about a template for a page describing the faction as a whole and thus it would list its renown/favours or connected quality, its faction items, its renown items, its Closest To etc? Or maybe we want both templates?

2. Assuming we documenting renown/connected/favours using {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} (either directly or through a wrapper template) we need to indicate the Quality type parameter. So do we want it to be "Contacts" (in which case there won't be the current Category:Renown/Category:Favours/Category:Connections category tree structure)? Or do we keep the tree structure but then Quality type would need to be Renown/Favours/Connections which doesn't match any of the "official" quality types on the Myself tab?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:01, May 18, 2018 (UTC)

1. for {{[[Template:Faction|Faction]]}} I was thinkink not so much of the quality (which is covered by the various Connected/Favours/Renown quality pages), but as a replacement to {{[[Template:Connections|Connections]]}} - a template for a page explaining about a specific faction, giving in a consistent style the relevant links (Connected/Favours/Renown, faction item, etc.). Or maybe just leave {{[[Template:Connections|Connections]]}} in place and just add {{<span class="new">Factions</span>}} to the ones that have switched over.

2. For Quality Type I'm in favour of whatever the game itself uses to catalog them in the Myself tab. it's probably best to not touch this until the new design rolls out, since these are likely to change.
Adnoam (talk) 17:54, May 19, 2018 (UTC)

Yep, then we are on the same page :) So I'll start converting individual quality pages to use {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} and the "Contacts" parameter (I don't mind having to re-update this if necessary post roll-out - most of the work of converting to template use and moving content from the category page still needs to be carried out).

There is not much merit to having both {{[[Template:Connections|Connections]]}} and {{<span class="new">Factions</span>}} I don't think. Moreover, currently {{[[Template:Connections|Connections]]}} doesn't even do all that much; it's very much a quality template (much like {{[[Template:Progress|Progress]]}} or {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}}) and not the faction description thatboth of us have in mind - lots of standard text on all the old faction pages (e.g. the "Individual Opportunity Card" and "Connection Increasing Item" sections) were entered manually and not through the template. So I think a wholesale design of {{<span class="new">Factions</span>}} makes sense, to me at least.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:15, May 20, 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean by the "Contacts" parameter?

As for the suggested {{<span class="new">Factions</span>}}, let's try it and when we agree on its content and style we can add it to the relevant pages (e.g. The Docks, The Duchess, etc.)
Adnoam (talk) 12:35, May 20, 2018 (UTC)

I mean using "Contacts" for the "Quality type" field when documenting Renown/Favour/Connected qualities using {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} - that's the name under which these qualities are categorised in the Myself tab.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:46, May 20, 2018 (UTC)

Ah, yes. It makes sense. (though likely to change very soon any way)
Adnoam (talk) 15:16, May 20, 2018 (UTC)

I've finished moving things from :Category:Connections to Category:Contacts (although the Renown and Favours subcategories still need to go through the Quality page/category update processs).

With that the old Connections page and category is unneeded and misleading sitting under Qualities. I moved its content to Factions (with minor updates) and updated most links apart from user posts and the admin-locked page. So provided you have no objections to that, I think you should update the NavBar so that Connections are no longer listed in the drop down menu under qualities. They can be replaced with Category:Contacts or Factions (although the latter is probably not fit for purpose yet).
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:28, June 7, 2018 (UTC)

Also, here is a first bare bones attempt at a faction page: User:Mikey thinkin/FactionsSandbox‎. Feel free to play with it :)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:39, June 7, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work!

(trying to find time to review it all... :-) )
Adnoam (talk) 06:58, June 10, 2018 (UTC)

Category:Faction Guides

Hi,

Good work on categorizing the "Faction" stuff. In the case of this particular category (Category:Faction Guides), though, I think simply Category:Factions would be best. Not everything there is a Guide exactly. It's a way to categorize pages (and other sub-categories) which have to do with the various Factions.

In addition, we of course can have a Factions (Guide) page (not a category).

What do you think?
Adnoam (talk) 10:12, May 15, 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. That's why I marked some of these as "temp recategorisation". The reason I went for Faction Guides for now is that it wasn't immediately clear to me where Category:Factions would sit - under Category:Content? under Category:Storyline? Create a new category at the same level as Category:Storyline that would contain Category:Factions and other more... gameplay-ey baskets of content like expeditions, professions, zailing, grinding carousels that aren't as strongly tied to *lore* that Storylines might suggest? My personal intuition is the latter but i don't have a solid ctaegory tree model for that yet so I stuck it under Guides for now to avoid making these decisions just yet - but I very much agree with your overall sentiment
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:24, May 15, 2018 (UTC)

I'm OK with it being under Category:Content, similar to how we have there Category:Places, and Category:Characters.
Adnoam (talk) 11:17, May 15, 2018 (UTC)

Done. I've kept Category:Faction Guides for now but I suspect it will become redundant after we revise everything - Raising Connections and Raising Favours need merging, Faction Items is a bit of a Frankenstein monster atm so will probably need splitting and parts merged with other guides maybe. But for now I think it's convenient to have one place to look for these guides that we know will need revising.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:06, May 16, 2018 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Contacts, should all the individual Faovurs and Renown pages be categorized under it?
Adnoam (talk) 12:20, June 11, 2018 (UTC)

What do you mean, sorry? Are you saying they should be and they aren't at the moment (true, but I am in the process of moving them there - all the renown has been moved and the favours are in progress)? Or are you saying they shouldn't be? If the latter, that's what we discussed here and here, I thought?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:28, June 11, 2018 (UTC)

Sorry. I really wasn't clear.

What I meant is that I don't think they should be there. We've discussed this a bit (in the thread you've linked) but we've mostly discussed templates and page design and no enough about categories.

We now have Category:Contacts which includes a few pages and a few sub-categories. Looking at it, it seems to me that the sub-categories make sense (e.g. Category:Society, Category:Favours, etc.). But the individual pages are redundant there. We have Favours: Society there, but it's already under both Category:Society and Category:Favours, so why put it also under Category:Contacts directly?

So, I might be making a mess of things, but I'm thinking as I go so please bear with me here :-):

# Move content of Category:Society to Connected: Society (marked as retired). Keep it empty of content
# Category:Society should be under just Category:Factions
# Category:Favours: Society should be under Category:Society and Category:Favours
# Category:Renown: Society should be under Category:Society and Category:Renown
# Actually: Possibly rename Category:Factions to Category:Faction Qualities. This depends if we want the category to include (directly or indirectly) just qualities (Favours/Renown/Connected), or other faction pages (faction items, etc.) This is a key point to consider.

What do you think?
Adnoam (talk) 14:33, June 11, 2018 (UTC)

0. The reason Favours: Society is under Contacts is because that's what the "Quality type" field in {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} states. That's indeed redundant but I think is unavoidable without altering the code of the template. That's sort of what I was trying to get at in that other thread. The alternative would be to say that the "Quality type" is Favours/Renown (which I am cool with) but I thought you were against using Quality types which do not correspond to actual categories on the Myself tab?

1. Generally agreed about keeping Category:Society empty of content. This is slightly off-immediate-topic but as you've noticed it's a complicated spaghetti of issues so let me just touch on the collection of content per faction (related to your point 5 below). Currently for non-retiring Connected factions we have The Duchess (a page, currently in stub form, describing the faction), Category:The Duchess (a category of all pages and categories pertaining to the Duchess faction), Connected: The Duchess (a specific quality, which is categorised under Category:The Duchess to indicate its pertinence to that faction) and Category:Connected: The Duchess (a quality category of that quality's uses). So the first question is, do you agree with this? Do you have other suggestions or simplifications to this overall structure? If you are broadly ok, am I right that that's exactly what you are proposing here under 1.?

2-4. Agreed. Was planning to do just that after finishing with the favours. But do note that, as I mentioned under 0 above, if we also want to avoid having pages duplicated directly under Category:Contacts then Category:Favours and Category:Renown have to be under Category:Contacts (as they are now) and we have to use Favours/Renown in Quality type field of the template.

5. Well yes :) Very much a key point to consider. If we actually rename Category:Factions then where would other faction-related content live? The alternative is to simply insert Category:Faction Qualities as a new level under Category:Factions maybe?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:16, June 11, 2018 (UTC)

0. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that "Contacts" is one of the formal quality types and not just a generic word in English :-) So, how about the following: Have Category:Contacts (under Category:Qualities) include *only* the following sub-categories and nothing else: Category:Favours, Category:Renown, Category:Connected). It's either that or include all the individual Favours/Renown/Connected quality pages directly under Category:Contacts, and deleting Category:Favours and Category:Renown (move their content to a non-category page).

1. That sounds about right for the Duchess (and those like it). I'm not 100% regarding Category:The Duchess. Might not be needed if we add the right content to the The Duchess page.

5. Scratch what I've said here for now - I think I've confused here Category:Factions and Category:Contacts.
Adnoam (talk) 13:57, June 14, 2018 (UTC)

To clarify: I was not suggesting to use "Renown"/"Favours"/"Connected" as the quality type. This should probably stay "Contacts" to reflect how the game refers to them.

What I said was that either all of them should be (flatly) under Category:Contacts, or we can have a more organized structure in which Category:Contacts includes [[:Category:Favours, Category:Renown, Category:Connected etc.

The issue with the template code is easily solvable either way once we agree on the layout first!
Adnoam (talk) 15:00, June 14, 2018 (UTC)

Hm, fair enough. Well it's done now. Happy to revert but obviously we should finalise how exactly we are going to do that.

I agree that it should be one or the other. My preference would be for more structure but as you say that requires tweaking the template. If it's a matter of changing template fields it should be possible to revert in less than half an hour.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:03, June 14, 2018 (UTC)

I have no problems with tweaking the templates (there are enough other "special cases" in various other templates as needed).

But thinking on this some more I think the way you have it set up now is reasonable. Because the "Quality type" parameter is not really visible on the page (except for adding the category), it works behind the scenes - we indeed want the category to be "Favours"/"Renown"/"Connected" and not "Contacts".

It's just that if ever in the future we want to display the quality's type on the page proper we'll need to tweak the template (to show "Contacts"). But that's also fine if we ever get there.

In short - leave it as is. Your recent changes are absolutely fine.

So, we now just need to deal with the other categories, such as Category:Society, which shouldn't appear under Category:Contacts:

# Their retired/obsolete content should be moved/merged into the relevant (retired) quality page (e.g. Connected: Society).
# Their relevant content (if exists) should be moved/merged into the relevant faction page (e.g. Society).
# Open question: what should be categorized under this faction category (e.g. Category:Society)? Just the Favours/Renown/Connected/Closest-To pages? Possibly also faction items and cards...

Thoughts?
Adnoam (talk) 06:18, June 17, 2018 (UTC)

1-2: Yep, agree!

3: My personal view is that everything we would document on the faction page should be categorised under that faction's category. I think you mentioned in one of the earlier comments that that would be a duplication but I think it's important for back-navigation. It's all well and good that the Society page documents, say, the faction items but I feel you ought to be able to navigate *back* from the relevant faction item's page back to the relevant faction. And for that we'd need the category. The faction page skeleton I created a couple of weeks ago lists the pages that I think would want to be categorised with that faction - so it's the qualities, the items, the storylets (core faction card, conflict cards, calling in favours).

Btw, I think we should settle on the names for the faction-affiliated items. We currently have various item tables in Faction Items, :Category:Connection Items and Category:Renown. My personal preference is to call

* items gained as rewards for reaching high levels of Renown "Renown Items" (these are currently listed under both Faction Items and Category:Renown); and
* items that are used to gain Favours for fate and to convert favours into renown "Faction Items" (these are currently listed under Category:Connection Items).

But obviously any consistent terminology is fine. In any case Category:Renown shouldn't have much content, let alone content that's about items rather than the quality itself.

Also, the NavBar still needs to be updated. It's listing "Connections" under Qualities.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:23, June 17, 2018 (UTC)

Following our agreement that Category pages should be about categorizing other pages and not about including much content, then indeed Category:Renown shouldn't have much in it. Perhaps just a link to the general Factions page which explain it all.

I'm also fine with naming the items "Renown Items" and "Faction items". I'm not sure if these need their own page (they do deserve their own category). The content (including table of items) should probably be in the general Factions page under its own section (so other pages can translude it if needed).

As for the skeleton page for Factions: I think you include the right things but I don't really like the layout. Let me try to think of some counter proposal...
Adnoam (talk) 06:11, June 18, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree about the tables and transclusion.

I was very much hoping you miight propose a better layout :-) It really isn't a forte of mine...

Btw, something's that's just occured to me - what do you think about faction pages being called something like "Faction: Bohemians" rather than just "Bohemians"? I really don't have very strong views on it at all but it just occurred to me that I always have to mentally go through an exercise in my head where I remind myself that "Bohemians" isn't a quality.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 07:17, June 18, 2018 (UTC)

I was thinking about this very naming thing myself :-)

Mostly because it's quite likely to find storylets/actions called e.g. "Bohemians" and then we need to differentiate using "Bohemians (storlyet)"/"Bohemians (action)"/"Bohemians 2", etc.
Adnoam (talk) 07:47, June 18, 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I've done a test update of Bohemians. So we have Faction: Bohemians (currently just a redirect from Bohemian, itself a stub page), Category:Faction: Bohemians (replacing Category:Bohemian, which would need deleting if no other issues as well as the corresponding Gain and Loss categories which are unusued), Connected: Bohemian and Category:Connected: Bohemian.

Let me know if you are ok with it/have any comments/etc. If all is well then I'll update pages here [1] to use the "Faction: Bohemians" name.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:01, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

Before diving into this, note that not all pages which link to Bohemian today (in your link) should change to use "Faction: Bohemians". Some are there as shorthand for Connected: Bohemian and as such should either change to Favours/Renown (if currently available content) or to Connected (if old content).

Also, I'm working on a skeleton of my own to Faction: Bohemians. Very much still a work in progress...
Adnoam (talk) 10:26, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

Another thing before I forget:

I was looking at Category: Connection Changes and was thinking that this is a useful layout (even though it's currently deprecated).

So how about creating Category:Favours Sources? This would be a sub-category of Category:Favours, and would include as its own sub-categories things like Category:Favours: Bohemians Sources etc.

Likewise for Category:Renown Gain. Possible re-purpose Category:Connection Changes to include the still active Connected Gain/Loss sub-categories (e.g. Category:Connected: The Duchess Gain and Category:Connected: The Duchess Loss).
Adnoam (talk) 10:36, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right about link changes.

I am also sold on yuor suggestion for sources/gains categories with a caveat that if we are modelling it on Connected Changes then for favours, at least, we'd want Favours Loss as well?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:21, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's that symmetrical.

For Connected, it goes up and down organically, so it makes sense to look for "Connection Changes".

For Favours, it's more like items and their uses. So "Favours Sources" makes sense. Do we need "Favours Uses"? Maybe...
Adnoam (talk) 11:23, June 21, 2018 (UTC)

I've updated the uses of "Renown Items" and "Faction Items". All Category:Renown Items and Category:Faction Items are now categorised. All content has been moved from these category pages and Category:Renown to Factions and tables trabscluded in Renown Items (Guide) and Raising Favours. Raising Connections has been significantly trimmed and doesn't use these transclusions anymore.

I think I've tidied up all the links. Most loose ends are old comments (and your user page where you had a todo to consolidate the tables, so that might be done?)

A couple of tangential points:

1. When transcluding from Factions I'e discovered that include tags apparently don't work with partial transclusions (unless you define labels). I moved the category on that page to the top of the page to avoid the problem but if you can think of a different work round (or want to define the labels) feel free or let me know.

2. When categorising the items, I noticed that each item is categorised under Category:Items and the corresponding item category. Consistent with how we've treated the qualities, should the Item template avoid categorising things under the Item category if it's already categorising them under an item subcategory?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:38, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll go over it soon.

You're right about the Items categoriztion tree. I've updated the {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} template. Now almost nothing categorized directly under Category:Items, but only via sub-categories.

Also: notice that almost all pages should link to Faction Items, and not to Category:Faction Items (and the same for similar constructs), even if one is tight now a redirect to the other. After all, we're truing to move content away from Category pages, so the links should reflect that so we don't need to fix them manually when moving the content.
Adnoam (talk) 14:42, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

It's a fair point. I explicitly assumed there was an exception if there is no true page but only a redirect, but now that you mention it I think you are right.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:45, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

Can you give me an example of a transclusion problem you've encountered to demonstrate your 1st point above?
Adnoam (talk) 14:46, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

For example, Renown Items (Guide) was being categorised under Category:Factions which was inherited from the Factions page.

(Incidentally, should Renown Items (Guide) be categorised under Items? It's a guide, not an item. So far we've treated guides by providing a link to them rather than including them in the category that they are a guide to)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:50, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

I've moved Renown Items (Guide) to be under Renown Items, sorted under "*", so it stands apart (a bit).
Adnoam (talk) 14:59, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right about #lsth ignoring noinclude tags. Annoying, and apparently people have been complaining about this for more than 10 years.

I guess we can bypass this in some way (e.g. creating an "invisible" next section header, so the transcluded section stops before the categorization, or use explicit tags because apparently #lst works fine, just #lsth doesn't).
Adnoam (talk) 19:31, June 24, 2018 (UTC)

For Benthic/Summerset do you think we should have Faction: University or Faction:Benthic/Faction:Summerset? They share the same Closest To and the same Faction Item...

Similarly, do we put Glass/Shroud in the Faction system at all? Or just keep them as Connected qualitied outside of the Faction system?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 08:44, July 7, 2018 (UTC)

Very good questions. I'm sure FBG themselves were debating the very same thing when reviewing the left-over factions which they didn't convert to Favours/Renown.

FBG obviously don't have the answer yet. I'm not sure I do either.

Is "Closest To: The University" even a thing? I thought it's just a theoretical placeholder for flavour, like being Closest To the Masters, the Rubberies, or the Duchess.

For now (and until FBG decide themselves), I'm OK without designating those as Factions at all.
Adnoam (talk) 05:30, July 8, 2018 (UTC)

Yep, makes sense.  "Closest To: The University" is indeed only a theoretical placeholder. I guess I was distinguishing University from somelthing like The Widow which doesn't have even a theoretical closest to.

I am happy keeping University/Mahogany Hall "factions" out of the Factions system. The only (very minor) consideration is that, assuming we are still planning to categorise all the Faction Items with their corresponding faction, it would leave Endowment of a University Fellowship out
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:27, July 8, 2018 (UTC)

Hey, I kept univeristy factions in the end because it turned out I had already created faction pages for them but I removed the Mahogany Hall factions.

I've now categorised various faction-related pages and items and revised the main Factions page a bit. I've also updated most of the links apart from some very old comments and user pages.

In terms of what remains:

1. Once we have the final format for individual Faction pages then convert them. I've seen what you've done in the sandbox mode and like it! Are you still planning to tweak it or is it more or less there?

2. Finalise the Factions page

3. Update the NavBar - it still lists "Connections" under qualities

4. I've not been very consistent with redirecting from the old "Faction name" pages to the new "Faction: Faction name" ones so that would need to be standardised. Do we want to do the redirect for ease of navigation? Or do we want to avoid the redirect in order to free up the simple name for other purposes (so that we can 'differentiate using "Bohemians (storlyet)"/"Bohemians (action)"/"Bohemians 2", etc.', like you said above)?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:13, August 9, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work!

I've update the navigation menu to point to Factions.

I still don't really like the way my sample Faction page looks. You're free to play with it (or on a copy at your sandbox). I'll try to find time to improve it more.

As for changing names of redirections, I'll nee =d to look into how many of those there are.
Adnoam (talk) 07:34, August 12, 2018 (UTC)

There is no rush on the factions pages if you still want to tweak the layout :)

I myself am starting to be short on wiki-available time so I completely understand! I want to finish the quality conversions (it's almost done; only some Menace qualities remaining) and then start looking more into the "autofire" storylets with a view to eventually cleaning up Places along the lines of what we did with the Qualities.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:47, August 12, 2018 (UTC)

So speaking of the Quality overhaul, today we display a link to the quality's "Uses" category. Do you think it makes sense to also display a link the relevant Challenge category (e.g.: Category:Connected: Summerset Challenge).

It seems to be a relevant addition. The vast majority of Challenges, of course, are for the base attributes, but there are a few here and there which test other qualities. (I couldn't find a good way to search for all Category pages which end with "Challenge").

Points for thought:

# Since this isn't applicable for most qualities, we'll likely want to display this in the quality page only if such a Challenge category exists.
# However, I believe it's quite likely that, since this isn't common, such categories won't always exist. (e.g. we don't have a Category:Committed Challenge even though there's a page categorized under it.)



EDIT:

Actually, easier than expected: {{PAGESINCAT:Committed Challenge}} returns 1, even though the category page doesn't exist, so this solves point #2.
Adnoam (talk) 13:27, August 12, 2018 (UTC)

A note on template edits

Hi there,

you recently edited the Echo-template (E) by added the "Formatting templates"-category. This broke a number of tables such as the Buying/Selling-table on item-pages and the floating-tables for item categories (basically anything that included a table were the E-template was used.)

I've fixed this now, but wanted to let you know so you can check if other templates you might have edited might also cause problems. The issue in this particular case was the additional line break you implicitely added and which caused the tables to break. I fixed this by putting said line break into a comment. If you have edited other templates where this might be an issue, it'd be helpful if you could do the same there. Thank you! (And also thanks for all the work you do here :))
Rahv7 (talk) 10:52, May 25, 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! I hadn't realised there was a problem but will keep an eye out on it!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:14, May 25, 2018 (UTC)

Change Lodgings template

Hi,

Regarding your new template {{<span class="new">Change Lodgings</span>}}, have you noticed the existing {{[[Template:Lodgings_Change|Lodgings Change]]}}?

:-)
Adnoam (talk) 07:56, June 10, 2018 (UTC)

* facepalm*

And we even discussed it....
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:22, June 10, 2018 (UTC)

Orthos is Coming!

Hi,

Are you sure Orthos is Coming! should be categorized as a Menace?

Seems more like a normal progress tracker for those three island locations. Similar to how Hunter's Keep uses Time Passing in the Southern Archipelago, and how Port Carnelian uses Time Passing in Office, no?

(that is, it's not something which impedes your progress, but measures your progress).
Adnoam (talk) 11:22, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

It's a fair point but it certainly used to be a Menace. I simply updated the template and didn't change the type from what it used to be but haven't been on any of the islands recently. I'll double check next time I zail!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:37, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Please do check.

As far as I remember (and see on the wiki), it's used as a progress indicator for the islands' cycles, and not as a menace you need to be careful not to increase.
Adnoam (talk) 07:33, August 15, 2018 (UTC)

Question concerning Stub-template

Hi, I've noticed you are using the {{[[Template:Stub|Stub]]}}-template for the new faction-pages.

At the moment, that template adds the same text, the same links and the same categories as the {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}}-template. The only difference is that there's no green box around it.

I was wondering if we should replace {{[[Template:Stub|Stub]]}} with {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}} or - alternatively - make {{[[Template:Stub|Stub]]}} redirect to {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}}. It seems a little redundant to have two virtually identical templates.

If it's important to you that it looks the way it does now (i.e. like {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}} but without the green box) we can also leave it as it is, of course.
Rahv7 (talk) 12:30, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

FYI (unrelated to the Incomplete vs. Stub question), both Mikey and myself have been working on ways to design the faction pages. My current sandbox attempt is at User:Adnoam/Bohemians.

Once we agree on a design, we can put it in a template so they all look the same.
Adnoam (talk) 13:26, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

I completely agree that it's mostly redundant.

I simply assumed that since there were two templates then there must have been a good reason for that :-) I figured the main difference is in *intention* rather than a specific implementation. A stub page is a placeholder. An incomplete page is a fully functional page that is missing some core content. Or at least, that was my assumption :-) In any event what started as stub pages has definitely migrated more into an incomplete page territory!

I have no strong affinity to the Stub template and am very happy to retire or redirect it if you and Adnoam think it best.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:44, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that intention is the main thing here. And it probably makes sense to formally have a a {{[[Template:Stub|Stub]]}}-template.

I've changed it so that - for now at least - {{[[Template:Stub|Stub]]}} simply calls {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}}. Whenever anyone wants to implement a "real" template, feel free to do so.
Rahv7 (talk) 21:19, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Collect Another Mysterious Confession

Thanks for the correction in Collect Another Mysterious Confession. Apparently there are some hidden checks in play there.

The storylet shows the unlock requirements as Hallowmas: The Aftermath of an Audacious Theft 2-10 (at the moment). But when this value is 2-9, you see only the 4 basic options. When your quality grows to 10, you see the 2 "advanced" options. The game does not explicitly show you any of these requirements, so it's either a hidden check, or there's some hidden quality at play here.
Adnoam (talk) 15:13, November 4, 2018 (UTC)

Transclusions

I saw the transclusions you did between the PoSI and Paramount Presence guides, and I'm in the process of gathering a bunch of info from various articles/categories into Menaces (Guide), so I mimicked what you did with that. What do you think? My original plan was to keep the summary lists of common menace gain/loss actions on their original pages (e.g. Scandal Gain), but because of how those pages are laid out, it was grabbing the category tags too and applying them to Menaces (Guide). So instead I moved the lists to the new guide and used the tag to display them on the pages they came from. If there's a better way to do this, let me know!
Fynnkaterin (talk) 21:41, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

Hello!

Yeah, sounds like a reasonable approach!

For your information, you can avoid the issue with the categories by wrapping them in the noinclude tags (see, for example, Paramount Presence (Guide) where I did exactly that).

But in this case I reckon transcluding from a single page into multiple smaller pages probably makes more sense anyway 
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:50, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip on the categories! That helps a lot. I think you're right, it makes sense to put all the information on one page and transclude to the other pages; that might make it easier to keep the formatting consistent, for one thing.
Fynnkaterin (talk) 18:36, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Faction Templates

Hi,

I've recently created Templates for the Faction pages. As there however was some discussion about how they should look and their potential impact I've decided to put it up to the Community how they should look at User blog:Asarta/Faction Templates. Any contributions you could make would be greatly appreciated!

Asarta
Asarta (talk) 15:11, July 5, 2020 (UTC)

qualities

After looking at a couple more of the Pyramidal qualities with Sources category I kept noticing more and more qualities that are listed as Pyramidal but only ever use "occurrence" from the Increase template. There are a lot of these because historically that's where they went. So these qualities aren't in either maintenance category but they could technically go into Discrete qualities with all the gains moved over to sources. Should I do this or leave it as is? There's no sensible way to automate finding them with the current templates so there's a lot of inconsistency. However in terms of wiki usability it doesn't really present a problem because all gains are on one category page instead of split over 2, so maybe it should be left alone? It would be detectable if you really wanted to though.
Mona37 (talk) 14:56, July 14, 2020 (UTC)

The approach I've been taking with these is to move them to Discrete when I come across one but not to activdly hunt for them.

I agree that from the usability approach at the moment it doesn't make a huge amount of difference but I do think that long term it would be good to make sure that only the pyramidal qualities are marked as, well, pyramidal...

Ultimately (veery ultimately) what would be good is we have only one "gain" template (which will cover both types of qualities and items) and it would simply be able to read which categories the thing it's increasing belongs to (i.e. quality or item, pyramidal or discrete) and then apply the correct formatting automatically. That would definitely require Lua (which is why I was warming to your idea in the other thread)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:29, July 14, 2020 (UTC)

OK, in that case once I'm done moving next week I will probably do some testing to see what I can do with Lua. It'll probably take less time that way than manually fixing it all, and there will be less room for error by editors.    

It would probably also be a good idea to make the Discrete=yes/no/unknown(incomplete) parameter on the Quality template mandatory so we don't have so many qualities that erroneously go into pyramidal by default.    

I hope once people see the advantages some form of that will be accepted. 
Mona37 (talk) 12:59, July 15, 2020 (UTC)

Since y'all are messing around with the Quality template anyways, I figure this is a good place to mention:

Qualities and Items recently gained the option to have in-game help text. It can look like it's part of the description, but it only displays in certain contexts.

For an example on a Quality, take a look at Laboratory Research, or Skeleton in Progress, or Closest To:. When used as an unlock condition for an action, there's new text in italics.

For an example on an Item, take a look at your Osteology category in your inventory. Many items have a second paragraph in their mouseover text that describes where to acquire them. Notably, this second paragraph is *not* displayed in other contexts, like the Mantlepiece, so it's not just part of the Description.

The Templates should probably include a new field to stick this text. I would suggest "Game Instructions" since that's already a field on other Templates, but maybe that needs more thought than the 30 seconds I put into it.
PSGarak (talk) 14:08, July 15, 2020 (UTC)

That's interesting, I'll take that into account. 

However I can see some issues with items specifically. After checking some more items I noticed actually a very large amount of them have these short instructions that don't show up on the mantelpiece. But many of the wiki pages for these items have had this text as part of the description since at least 2015. Are you saying these got separated out recently?

In any case if we add a new field for this text on items that means all of these old item pages are now inconsistent with new ones, and I can see a lot of editors not even realizing this exists and just typing everything as the description anyway. A bunch of older items also have some instruction text about usage in square brackets stuck to the end that is part of the description (and some items even have both things), and then there are the Mr. Chimes items that have italic clarifying text, which is also just part of the normal description. So FBG isn't even consistent here. For some items it's not that obvious either, see St Cerise's Candle ("Blood must be spilt." is the in-game instructions). And it's not just always the last paragraph, see Notes on the Case of the Speculative Arachnid. So I'm not sure what to do about this, I don't want to make a change that would mean a ton of pages are now using the template incorrectly. Also as far as I know the only place the wiki shows the description is on the item page itself, so even if we seperate them it won't change the appearance of the page. So I'd probably just keep sticking this in the item description.

For qualities this isn't a problem though. The text is not already in a different field on existing pages, and it's very easy to see in game it is not a part of the normal description because it has a disctinct appearance. So I could easily add an optional field for this without breaking anything, and without anyone accidentally wrongly putting the instructions in the description.
Mona37 (talk) 21:25, July 15, 2020 (UTC)

I didn't realize the item functionality already existed. I mainly saw that a bunch of text got added to Osteology items, and assumed it was tied to underlying tech improvements. In retrospect, it's more likey part of the usability revamp of the Bone Market, which was all content-level rather than tech-level.

You're right that the Quality changes are much more distinct. I definitely don't remember seeing italic helper text in mouseovers before a month ago, and I agree that players are unlikely to mix it up with the description. Especially since it appears in a context where the description does not.
PSGarak (talk) 15:23, July 17, 2020 (UTC)

I've been trying to reduce the amount of pages in Category:Qualities with both Gain and Source Categories. If you're changing the system perhaps that was jumping the gun a little?

I ran into a problem with Lacre, since that utilises the quirk cap parameter on the Increase template.
Cactusorange (talk) 22:55, July 21, 2020 (UTC)

Well the issue is that we don't have a non-quirk cap parameter and so editors have been misusing the quirk cap parameter for a lack of alternative.

i think the answer is just to add a cap parameter to Gain. It shouldn't be too hard but I am unlikely to get round to it very soon
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:19, July 21, 2020 (UTC)

I did wonder if I should just add the cap next to it in parentheses, since afaik there's no sorting by it like there is for actual quirks. But I don't want to do a whole bunch of stuff that will have to be changed afterwards either, so I should probably pause my crusade until the new system is more defined, right?
Cactusorange (talk) 23:30, July 21, 2020 (UTC)

Hey, I think next week I'll finally have time to look into this, but the recent outfit changes and response to the feedback pretty much killed any motivation to deal with this game so I'm waiting this out. 
Mona37 (talk) 17:29, July 31, 2020 (UTC)

Account rename completed

Hi! I've finished renaming your account. Alan (talk) 21:01, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, thank you! Genesis (talk) 23:24, 22 March 2021 (UTC)