User talk:Spacemarine9

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Welcome to Echo Bazaar Wiki!

Hi, welcome to Fallen London Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the User:Spacemarine9 page.

Please leave me a message if I can help with anything!
Wikia (talk) 13:36, June 22, 2013 (UTC)

C'mere, you! *headlock*

A friendly headlock, I assure you. ;)

The wiki needs player guides. Would you be interested in sharing your guides here?

"Content needed for: Menaces, Items and Guides." on the front page has been our cry for help for ages, quite possibly a year or more. I think it'd be cool if people stopped treating the sentence as a string of decorative letters and more like a recruitment plea. What do you think? You could either do the full work of writing, coding and publishing, or you could just give us the writing and someone else would do the rest.

I can't offer you anything other than semi-warm and somewhat squishy feelings of accomplishment for assisting your fellow players. Well, I could also send you rats...but I think you've had your fill.

(*stares at Jemann & Aximillio* Sorry! I remember my promise to write a CP guide. I will try to get it done before this month is through.)
ZDee (talk) 00:30, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

In all honesty I have only the vaguest knowledge on how to operate a wiki, but I can definitely write guides on stuff if needs be. Depends what you need a guide written on, I suppose!
Spacemarine9 (talk) 00:49, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

YESSS, another ensnared for the sacrificial inferno which fuels our wiki engines... >:D

All malevolent gloating aside, a Knife-and-Candle guide would be rather valuable to a sizable portion of the player base. You already write regular updates and guides about K&C on your tumblr site; if you polish and publish them here, it'd be manageable double posting. Wouldn't want to overtax you. (A money-making guide would be good, too. We should contact Urthdigger for that; maybe you can collaborate.) Any seriously lengthy venture should get a guide (i.e. Literary Ambitions and Forgotten Quarter Expeditions). Write whatever guide you think would help people, really; set your own pace.

When I say "polish", I mean adding whatever fancy icons and photos you want. Also, many of the players don't use English as their primary language, so obscure slang should probably be changed or removed. (Don't ask me how they navigate difficult British slang and dialects in the game. I, myself, would like to know!)

Publishing Basics:

Create a new page by clicking the "Contribute" button and choosing the "Add a Page" option. (The "Contribute" button is located underneath your username in the upper right corner.) It'll prompt you for a page title.

Once you're done with the title, you'll be free to play in the editing screen. The two most important buttons are "Preview" in the upper right corner (typically allows you to view your changes with 100% accuracy) and the green "Publish" next to it (makes your editing changes semi-permanent; press when you feel you're done). If you'd like to rewind a Published page to its previous state, just "Undo" it in its history page. It's located by clicking the down arrow next to the word "Edit" of the top green "Edit" button and choosing "History". (Clicking "Edit" itself will take you to the page's editing screen.)

There are two sides -- faces -- to the editing screen, the "Visual" tab and the "Source" tab. The Visual face is straightforward and beginner-friendly; you don't need to be familiar with web code to use it, and it looks like a bare bones MS Word offshoot. (Hovering your mouse over the buttons gives you descriptions of their uses.) The "Photo" button there is quite helpful as a search tool to browse and add images from our gallery.

(Photos Note: Quicklist page has a list of icons and their related items, qualities, etc. When in doubt, right-click the game icon and learn its web address through "View" or "View Image Info". The "***.png" at the end of the address is the file name and it should be the same name used here.)

Another good thing about the Visual tab is its automatic ability to add templates:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Templates

If you click the yellow link "Add other templates", a window will pop up with a list of commonly used templates and the option to search templates. They're pre-coded skeletons to liven up a page. You add the meat and bones. (As an example, add the "Action" template to a bare page. Preview it. Then click on the green jigsaw puzzle piece -- that's the template itself! -- to edit it. Fill in some blanks. Preview your new changes. See what I mean?)

In the "Source" side, you can see most or all of a page's code. It's the more intimidating face of the editing screen, but once you're familiar with the wiki's mechanics, you'll find yourself editing in Source often rather than Visual. Many of the editors here find it faster to add templates in Visual before editing the rest in Source mode, myself included. If you're curious about how something is coded, go ahead and peek at a page's code. We won't charge you for looking. We charge for touching. ;)

This is the place to experiment with code and poke around stuff just for the heck of it:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Echo_Bazaar_Wiki:Sandbox

Editing Guidelines has more info which you might find nifty, especially how to format images in Source.

Let's talk flavors. The guides shouldn't taste plain and blunt. They should be spicy, tangy, sweet and sharp! Guides can get hella long, so hold people's interest. Less technical speak, more tasty speech. ...Are my vague demands reaching you?? XD

Thank you for agreeing to help! There is currently no "Guides" category page, but it's simple to make one. (Category pages are system-generated indexes. All pages tagged with that category will appear on the page.) If you tag each of your guide pages with "Guides" in the Categories section, their links will be automatically added alphabetically to the category page of the same name. (You can enter new categories on the Visual editing screen. Clicking the "Add category" button in the Categories section of the wiki page itself also works.)

Phew, this covers the necessities. Is there anything else you're wondering about specifically?
ZDee (talk) 04:00, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

I think that should probably be enough info for now, at least! I have guides on Literary Ambitions + Expeditions written already, so that should be simple enough to transfer. A K&C Guide should be easy enough to write, and I have a guide for making Polythreme less terrible to progress through in the works as well.

As for money-making, that's not actually something i know an awful lot about, to be honest! Hence why I've been playing for three years and still don't have an Overgoat, I suppose :v

I'll get working on those guides! At some point!?
Spacemarine9 (talk) 19:19, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

Concerning "Literary Ambitions", you might like this Potential table:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Category:The_Writer's_Desk

(A few other options need to be added? Nearly done, really.)

If you enter the Source screen, you can just copy and paste the appropriate table code over to your guide page.

If you want to try constructing your own tables, there's a "Table" option on the Visual screen. But I won't pretend to know how to use that doohickey. You should ask Delmar Tramontane, Vae Victis, or Aximillio about it. They're all listed here:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Leaderboard

Coming up empty on a proper list of active users... Does this link work for you?

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers

"Hence why I've been playing for three years and still don't have an Overgoat, I suppose :v"

*snorfle!* Not laughing at you...but with you... ;D I'll PM Urthdigger at the official forum to see if I can rope him back here.
ZDee (talk) 19:46, June 23, 2013 (UTC)

Change Points

Does it now require 60 CP to reach level 60+ for all attributes and qualities across the board, not just the main stats (Dangerous, Persuasive, Shadowy, Watchful)?

SOMEONE, QUICK, ANSWER ME OR ELSE WE'LL LOOK LIKE FOOLS TO BEGINNERS.

(I revised the Beginner's Guide earlier.)
ZDee (talk) 09:49, September 6, 2013 (UTC)

I think it's just main qualities. At the very least, Connected qualities aren't any different.

http://puu.sh/4krqk.jpg
Spacemarine9 (talk) 14:00, September 6, 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you!

I'll update the guide. Again. For the 100th time. Today. :-/
ZDee (talk) 14:06, September 6, 2013 (UTC)

Get over here, you! *headlock part deux*

Where are my savory guides, ratman?

I commend the fact that you've grasped some of the editing basics. :) I have noted your progress with glee. Unfortunately, it's become painfully clear that, outside of someone flying to your home to sit by your side to tutor you in person (FLAP?), you'll need a biiit more time to fully learn the editing process. Like maybe another year or two. (Can anyone just teach him through video chat??) :P

_\\\CLERK///_ THE SITUATION IS DIRE. GUIDES ARE REQUIRED FOR THE SUSTENANCE OF THE MASSES NOW. NOT LATER.

The winds of change are upon us.

Blah blah foreboding and foreshadowing yada yada I think I'll simply kidnap and coerce someone into coding your guides here. Basically, send your guides to another editor for page creation, linking, formatting, icon adding, and any other necessary wikia coding. Since you've got a bunch of guides up on your tumblr already, I'd like your permission to copy them here, please.
ZDee (talk) 06:28, September 8, 2013 (UTC)

Oh no! I forgot I was supposed to be soulbound to writing guides for the wiki, what with the whole "making my own videogame" thing. But I'm done with that for now anyway.





Copying my guides over from Tumblr (Maybe with a couple changes to reflect things which have changed since I wrote them) was probably all I would have done anyway! and uh it probably would have just been a big plaintext dump, formatting is a scary business.

You can feel free to mirror any past or future guides on the wiki! As long as you don't claim that you wrote them or anything :V (Not that I think you'd do that anyway, you wiki editors are an honorable sort)

Let me know if you need me to track down any guides in particular! I can trawl through all the posts and stuff more easily, after all.
Spacemarine9 (talk) 15:06, September 8, 2013 (UTC)

"You can feel free to mirror any past or future guides on the wiki!"

Thank you! :)

"As long as you don't claim that you wrote them or anything"

We haven't got claim to anything 'round here, haha. But, seriously now, are you also okay with other editors coming along to update or revise your work? For instance, the Beginner's Guide was originally written by Urthdigger and added to the wiki on May 18, 2012. Look at what's happened to it since then:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Beginner%27s_Guide?action=history

It first appeared like this: http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Beginner%27s_Guide?oldid=27690

There's always the possibility that someone may bastardize your words. Acceptable?

"(Not that I think you'd do that anyway, you wiki editors are an honorable sort)"

MWAHAHAHahahahaha...yeah. :3

"Let me know if you need me to track down any guides in particular!"

Major ones:

1) Knife-and-Candle (gaming guides and FAQ's)

2) Literary Ambitions

3) Forgotten Quarter Expeditions

4?) You mentioned a Polythreme tourist's brochure earlier. Posting works-in-progress here is fine and welcome. If you've already got some of it worked out, consider showing it now since it'll be easy to update later.
ZDee (talk) 15:34, September 8, 2013 (UTC)

A lot of stuff in certain areas has changed since I wrote those guides so I'm fine with them getting edited to be more up-to-date (and/or edited to be more legible or fit the wiki format better). Unless you manage to turn them into entirely misleading scrawls full of errors and inaccuracies, everything's good.

I can get the Literary Ambitions one easily enough; the expedition one is a little out of date because it doesn't include the Nadir, but I have a seperate guide for that. I wrote a lot of stuff on K&C, but most of it is scattered questions and changelogs. There should still be some usable stuff in there.

The Polythreme thing I meant to get finished once I actually had time to go to Polythreme myself, but new content kind of got in the way of that! I haven't even gotten it started, to be honest... it was going to be a fairly brief thing anyway, namely to address a few complaints I saw about the place being too luck-based (It is, but there's a (admittedly rather slow, sorta inefficient) method that guarantees you'll hit the target approximately 99.97% of the time, which is fine if you're just trying to get through a story and not grind for cash.)

Other guides I have, off the top of my head, include SMEN and the abovementioned Nadir one. Plus a few time-sensitive ones like Masquing at the Feast, but those are long outdated now.
Spacemarine9 (talk) 17:25, September 8, 2013 (UTC)

"Unless you manage to turn them into entirely misleading scrawls full of errors and inaccuracies, everything's good."

Hrm, that sorta sounds like fun...but it would be more work to get things wrong than to get them right. :-]

Right, #5 The Cave of the Nadir! (Totally pumped to uncover the secret nesting at its heart!) It really does deserve its own guide. Silly amnesia mechanic.

I expect the K&C guide to receive the most updates what with the league being one big beta. It might be worthwhile to add a cautionary note at the top about the possibility of the game abruptly changing overnight...several nights in a row.

I haven't visited Polythreme yet for the same reasons. I'll make a placeholder page for Polythreme so more knowledgeable folks can add pro tips for reaching 12-13 Fascinating/Investigating and story conclusions.

Oh, yeah, SMEN: a guide on how to gradually morph into an abomination without sense or redemption. I like that.

We're half a year away from another Feast, but FBG might revive the Masquing mechanic and its associated storylets/cards instead of creating completely new content; let's keep your old Masquing guide in mind.

Hold on, I'm going to make some Guide pages for you to info-dump your material.
ZDee (talk) 04:19, September 9, 2013 (UTC)

Cave of the Nadir (Guide)

Forgotten Quarter Expeditions

Knife-and-Candle (Guide)

Literary Ambitions (Guide)

Polythreme (Guide)

Seeking Mr Eaten's Name (Guide)

Added "(Guide)" to distinguish them from card and storylet pages which share the same or similar names.
ZDee (talk) 05:31, September 9, 2013 (UTC)

Okay! I'm just going to infodump straight across from tumblr for now; stuff like "formatting" and "updating" can come later!!!
Spacemarine9 (talk) 15:09, September 9, 2013 (UTC)

Sweet, thanks!

AHHHH!! MY EYES! Bleeding black, what the...hahaha...that's a new way of doing things, certainly.

When you took the text from your tumblr, the tumblr formatting code was copied along. You can see the crazy tumblr code in Source mode. LOL, gotta say, totally was not expecting that.

Next time, try this:



# Copy tumblr text into a document program like Notepad or Wordpad (it'll automatically turn it all into plain text; it should remove the tumblr code)
# Copy Note/Wordpad plain text into the wiki page
# Celebrate with a flood of rats
ZDee (talk) 21:35, September 9, 2013 (UTC)

Wowzas! You overhauled some of the guides with major formatting. :D Fantastic!

I eagerly await your efforts with the K&C guide...because I, uh, no longer recall how to play it. :) It's best left to other writers.

I linked "Guides" to the top green navigation bar. It's nice and prominent now.
ZDee (talk) 20:53, September 25, 2013 (UTC)

P.S.

I go over your diss of Fate-locked options here:

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:20490

Heheh.

P.P.S.

Do you know which icons you'd like to add to each section of Seeking Mr Eaten's Name (Guide)? Scars, Stains, Chains, Marsh-Mired and each individual candle is obvious, but I'm not sure what to do about the others.

By the way, what sort of "wrecking" are you up to with the images?

Entering [[File:FILL-IN-THE-NAME-HERE.png]] in Source loads the icon.

Adding |thumb puts it in the upper right corner with the uploader's name and a magnifying option:

Example: [[File:FILENAME.png|thumb]]

(Using |left flings the photo to the left corner and |right to the right corner.)
ZDee (talk) 21:47, September 25, 2013 (UTC)

Really any time I tried to add an image it ended up throwing all the text all over the place and ruining the formatting. I just didn't know about the |thumb, |left or |right things, to be honest.

I'll try adding some images to the SMEN guide and hopefully it won't ruin anything! Maybe!
Spacemarine9 (talk) 12:27, September 26, 2013 (UTC)

Yoo-hoo!

I think it'd be super cool if we bred our Guides and gave some of the cuddly little creatures to wikidot. How'sa 'bout you?

Theus is an active editor at wikidot FL, and he's willing to copy and code the Guides over to wikidot. (Doubt it'd be a 100% copy since the icons and links are different or missing there. Formatting might be altered, too.) The flow of information between the two wikis would be beneficial for the player base. You're the head/sole writer for half the Guides, so your input/permission is needed before we forge ahead.
ZDee (talk) 19:29, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with it! Not much else to say, really; maybe a credit link back here/the blog would be nice but I'm not overly fussed, tbh.
Spacemarine9 (talk) 19:50, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

I'll bring that up. :) Shouldn't be a problem.

Speaking of blog links, I would like to compile a directory of player sites here. Unofficial forums, the IRC chat room, roleplaying communities, character blogs -- basically any website with a large amount of FL content outside of the official FBG pages and the two major wikis. Do you have a list of such links? (Of course, some people won't want to post their private sites here, but that's a detail I'll work through later.)
ZDee (talk) 20:09, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

Here's what I can think of

http://inquisitive-friends.org/ (although it's only visible if you're registered, and registrations haven't been approved in more than a year...)

http://bit.ly/1cMzKlO IRC web widget thing; though it's not a very good client. manual connection details are irc.synirc.net channel #fallenlondon

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/fallen+london is the general FL tumblr community thing; there are a lot of character blogs and i haven't really kept track of them all, but if you scroll through the tag you should be able to pick out any choice blogs

there's the livejournal RP community but i can't find the link for it

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fallenlondon&src=typd twitter posts w/ the #fallenlondon hashtag





i'm sort of in a rush and procrastinating on some work i should really be doing so sorry for being so brief :V maybe it'll help a bit, I can't really think of much else at the minute either
Spacemarine9 (talk) 21:34, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! That does help a lot.

Is Inquisitive Friends not accepting new members because it's a close-knit forum, or are the moderators simply absent? I suppose I shouldn't list the site if it's the former.
ZDee (talk) 23:00, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I should feel lucky that my registration for inquisitive-friends only took three months...
Jemann (talk) 23:40, November 10, 2013 (UTC)

:-/

You should, punk! ;)

So this is what I'm thinking:

* Directory of unofficial websites (with subsections for groups/communities and individuals/personal blogs)
* Failbetter Games profile page (I was going to surprise you all with this... Been planning it for months. I want to use "choice" quotes from the staff twitters, mwahahaha.)
* Directory of official FBG websites (subsections for their non-FL projects and FL character twitters, those of the Masters and such)

The directories and FBG profile would be pegged in Places as...um...don't know..."Related Websites"? :P FL-Related Websites? Other Websites? More FL Sites? Stupid category names. Always tripping me up!

EDIT: "More Fallen Sites"? Suggestions welcome!
ZDee (talk) 00:10, November 11, 2013 (UTC)

"How do I change my Airs of London?"

Big question. Small answers.

A linked list of commonly accessible (low/mid to upper level) storylets and cards which can be used to modify your London Airs would be welcome.

http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Category:The_Airs_of_London

Someone? Anyone? Doesn't have to be Spacemarine9, really; this is a request to everyone. :)
ZDee (talk) 01:08, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Weeeell, the two most easily accessible ones, off the top of my head, are "Rob a Drunk" in Spite and "Time in Bed" at your Lodgings when you have Wounds 2 or more are by far the easiest to access.

Connections opp cards with options to increase your connections (like buying a round of drinks at the Medusa's Head for dockers or attending a church fete) will also modify Airs of London.

I don't really use anything but Rob a Drunk, to be honest; it's easy to reach and you generally get an echo or more's worth of Primordial Shrieks out of it to boot. If anyone else knows other easily accessible options, they can chip in, I guess!
Spacemarine9 (talk) 18:30, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

I'll have to disagree with Spacemarine9. An_anonymous_wretch from Rob a drunk is the best option for low-level characters because you get an average 100ppa out of it and it's the only fast and reliable way to change airs. Waiting for cards is frustrating and Time in bed is just too time consuming (and it's not always an option).

Every time I need to reroll my Airs I go huntin' for dem drunks. YEAAAHAH.

However, if you want to set your Airs to 0 then A cavalry officer is the only way to go.
Vae Victis (talk) 18:43, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

...but that's exactly what I said???
Spacemarine9 (talk) 19:58, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if I had overlooked anything.

I prefer the Docks and Church donations over robbery because they have additional perks: Docks connections (hard to raise elsewhere), Nightmares reduction (only from the Church party), and Making Waves (I'm often able to reach MW 5 for level 1 of Notability every week).

Let's just list the drunkards and naps for now. Others can add more links if they're inclined.
ZDee (talk) 22:05, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

"...but that's exactly what I said???"

I was totally spaced out yesterday. Thought I read something that wasn't there. Sorry man.
Vae Victis (talk) 05:03, October 17, 2013 (UTC)