This task would be large and lots of cooperation would be appreciated. I feel like formatting the costume main page, as well as the individual costume pages, should be very similar to the style of the Accessory pages, due to the pure aesthetic function of costumes.

I'd like to work with you (OP) on this after finals. I have a few pictures of rare costumes, and I very much enjoy helping the wiki.

IGN/Wiki name: Novaster

Issues:
-sets vs. individual things (like bombheads vs. Scale). Consistency in formatting.
-consistent angles with images
-portraying the outfits in a way that allows full comprehension of the pieces
-collecting together a few existing pages, such as: "Gallery of Outfits in the Overworld" page, the page OP found ("costumes"), the small section in the "list of sets page," and the "Visual Encyclopedia/Equipment/Other" page, as well as any other wayward pages.

I treat the wiki like a museum.

There would need to be a few different sections in list form on the main page. Not every costume is from an event - like bombheads, and not every costume is simply a recolor, like Thunderous Plate Mail. More frustratingly, not every costume is in a "set", again, like bombheads/thunder. things like "Hunter Scale Helm/Hunter Scale Mail" make some things easier. So, we would have a style/event list for "recolors/style," and then another list for "Event Forms" and "Other," for stuff like lovely, dangerous, and bombheads, respectively. With better names of course. These could all be in the same table (preferably), with a section of the table classifying the item as such.

I propose this descriptive table. Each ---xxx--- is a column, which has lots of space for text. The text for the "type" would link to individual pages for those items. These pages would show off aesthetics. The central organizing factor would be the type of armor/helm. The picture should be of the item itself for unique styles, and of the first recolor for everything else.

This is the best thing I could come up with, personally, to address the expanding page issue. I've attempted to rectify this in the accessories page by having "unique armor back" and such, instead of individual special accessories in the main list, as they used to be.

Down the road, if this list gets too long, we can simply compress all unique types/forms into one row, "unique" this would include the thunder plate mail, dangerous hound coat, and so on.

At the top of the list, or below it, whichever flows better, we'll list all the styles and what event had them, similar to what I've done in the "availability" section of the aura accessory page.

A set is not the same as a family/collection - thunder plate is not in a set, but it is certainly in the stormy family/collection.

------Type+picture------Available Style(s)/Form(s)------Availability (how to obtain)------In a set?------

A few Examples:

Bombheads

------Bombhead------long list of all the common/weird styles, or simply say "variable" which links to the "bombhead mask" page------no*------

Bottom of costumes page: "no*": one bombhead, the plasmatech bombhead, is in a set with the Plasmatech Demo Suit.

Another Example:

------Scale Mail------ All Event Styles and Shadow ------Event Boxes------Yes, with Scale Helm------

For this, the "event boxes" could link to the "Promotional Items" page, which I feel should be renamed/moved to "List of Events" (not every event is a promotion, not every promotion is an event - Dark Harvest vs. Solstice...are there temporary boxes? Are there temporary levels? Both?).

------Pith Helm------All Event Styles and Shadow------Event Boxes------Yes, with (I forget the nubby armor pith generally "goes with", think it's brigandine - for tailed/pith/salet, we could just say no).

Few more examples to get the feel:

------Plate Helm------ All Event Styles and Shadow ------Event Boxes------Yes, with Plate Mail------

------Fur Cap------ All Event Styles and Shadow ------Event Boxes------Yes, with Fur Coat------

------Hood------All Event Styles and Shadow ------Event Boxes------Yes, with Cloak------

------Plate Mail------All Event Styles, Shadow------Event Boxes------Yes, with Plate Helm------

------Thunderous Plate Mail ------ Unique ------ Stormy Prize Box ------ No

------Wolf Coat------Polar Twilight, Polar Day, Polar Night, Iron ------ Yes, with Wolf Hood

We could even add another column, which links to the "actual armor," lowest star available - so, wolver coat for fur coat.

All things are connected. Pages bleed into each other. Costumes are huge, and a lot of pages associate with them. I look forward to this Grand Organizing.

I have a proposal:

Sort them by method to obtain. If this doesn't include Featured Auctions, all Bombheads would go in the Bribing Krogmo table, for example. All event stuff would be acquired from their respective events. There would also need to be some common sense. For example, all Rose Regalia costumes would go together, even though they weren't all from the same event.

There could also be a misc section, for things that possibly came up in an event, but there isn't enough to go with it. A good example would be the Sonic Set, which is a very small group of gear.

I also suggest that all Costumes go on one page, and all costumes that go together would be on the same table. Right now, the armors are in a separate table; this is a bit cumbersome. If there are two costumes that very clearly go together, (I.e. Chapeau of the Coral Rose and Tabard of the Coral Rose) then they should come right after one another, to make it easier to find two things that go together. Other things, like Hallow items, would get sorted alphabetically, since not many of them really go together.

Optionally, we could also have a separate page for costumes that vanish after a set time, like the paper masks from Halloween.

LET'S ALL GO PLAY IN THE SANDBOX.
Please don't erase the work of others until the experimentation phase is over, simply stick your idea of a table in there.

Be very careful about sets - that dangerous stuff isn't officially in a two-piece set, much like the serene items are not. However, the celestial/galactic costumes are. It's all in the similar naming...I would stick to the naming 100%. Fur coat+fur cap, wolf hood+wolf coat...etc. I've met players obsessed with sets, and having things listed unofficially would drive their OCD into another dimension. This simply means gaps in the table, or adding a note "unofficial set." I agree/disagree with the above pairings, personally (I like to go off breaker series), but the wiki is our lord and must be pleased.

I'm liking the "event series" organization style more, but we should also have a column for family/species/type/whatever name, for example: Celestial/galactic costumes from...Equinox prize boxes. Serene vs...ancient prize box. Are these a series? sort of. Would help people find what they're looking for. So, Event+family. This will be redundant for many, like surge...hunter...frosty... If I'm not being too clear, I'll post up another table below Trillium's.

Since we can't have images too large for the main costume page... what should we use as pictures, anyway? Event boxes? Are pictures even needed on the main page? Only some of the promo pages uploaded from admins have pictures of the boxes. We could demand pics for all the event boxes! Yes!

Image of Serene promo icon...vs the box itself.
Image of Stormy promo icon this one's a box. okay then!

Also, I would avoid using words like "only" regarding availability as that is subject to change in the future and might be quite annoying. Ambiguity like "from this box" (vs. only from this box) is true, and doesn't need fixing later. I've had a lot of muck-cleanup in the accessory section due to this problem.

We have control of the sandbox! mwahahaha.

All rudimentary idea codes have been shoved into show/hide tabs. Modify the obvious table as needed/if something could be better. STATE WHAT YOU CHANGE IN THE HISTORY notes, please.

Got too excited, keep all work in sandbox.

added a section on the page suggesion area (below table) for costume sets. I wouldn't obsess too much over sets (especially since many costumes just don't come in a set), since the focus is on costumes. Sets also encompass armors/helms and sometimes shields, as a term "Set."

yes, images are very small. it's a WiP, so things can definitely improve. What is this, a wiki for ants?

Imo, the table as is makes my eyes hurt, and I've put suggestions in the history notes with my edits.

I firmly stand in support of keeping thunderous, galactic, and celestial apart as series, since they can be added to in the future by the devs quite easily. But we can compress them for now.

Other things that might be compressed, but lead to potential confusion:

-plumed/field/stately caps as "anniversary cap"

-regalia items

Let's try out "Series" for the first column, and Theme for the second. Though I prefer genus/species. :P

Regarding the box icons, a lot of them are missing. this is because the boxes that don't have a special shape (like blooming) use the RGB coding, so they're not in the game files, at least not in the obvious place. I'm using the blahblah...rsrc/ui/icon directory. If anyone knows of another place these icons can be found, do tell :D/upload them. Icons for a lot of things are painfully out of date.

The next step would be to bring it all together based on the finished table, whenever it gets "done" (as "done" as it can be, what with the game updating and such :P )/agreed upon. This means making pages like that draped armor page, and possibly pages that are titled things like "Frosty Costumes." The main table won't link to the form/type/model page ( like draped armor), but it will link to the Style page ("Frosty Costumes" from "Frosty" in the series column) - assuming we settle on a table pretty similar to the Working Table in the sandbox.

Wow, got way too into that. What is sunlight? Oh yeah, cancer! That's why I stay inside and edit the wiki for hours on end, I remember now.

Frosty Wiki Page

Made that page as an example of what the main table might link to.

If people like it, please make a template...(I have a secret. I cannot template very well).

Shows "Sets" without being strictly...a set, with a horizontal stacked table like that.

the item shape itself (draped armor) can be linked to in both the table on the Frosty page, as well as the list (not in a table) on the main costumes page.
I'd love to have the image itself link directly to the main page of the item...like, you click on the frosty fur cap picture, and it takes you to the "frosty fur cap" wiki page.

TO DO: we need to go through the "see also" sections of all the individual costume pages and correct those...like...you don't craft a plasmatech bombhead mask, so you shouldn't "see also: crafting." I realize that the idea is that it's Arsenal Gear, but it's really not relevant to the item itself.

I think I got possessed by a wiki demon or something, that was well over 12 hours of staring at curved brackets...(was doing some other pages too).

Sets: we'll have to move through a lot of the existent costumes pages and fix 'em up. Just search for "frosty pith helm" etc. and you'll see what I mean. Really, we should make a comprehensive "to do" list regarding the individual pages anyway, so a rapid copy/paste (with all that fancy bracket-bracket-PAGENAME-bracket-bracket action) can get the job done efficiently.

Theme links: frosty links to frosty. What should Anniversary link to? hmm. "Anniversary (Costumes and Accessories)?" This page would be sorted in part by year.

Missing images: I've sent a support request already, but it seems to be an "elephant in the room" or something, no reply yet...and I usually get a reply within ten minutes, haha. It's been well over 13 hours for this one. I tried to upload an icon image from a cropped screenshot for the um...yes, one of those gift boxes on the usables page a while time ago. NEVER AGAIN. GAME FILE PLEASE.

THE TABLE:

-should we add a column on the right that has random "examples," and should this column have pictures (like the accessories page table)? For example, for "candy mask" we could have "Paper Spookat" and "Authentic Frankenzom." Or just one example. IMO, icons would be best as an image option, as they now reveal the form of the item they represent (vs. accessories are still shaded areas of the body, regarding icons).

-Should we take out the two number columns (I think that kind of information doesn't belong in a main table, but it's close)?

-I think that the identity for the for the Rose stuff is this... Theme: Rose Regalia. Series: Cavalier. I must insist that the page for these costumes divide the colors into return/redux/FAH etc. The bulk information page for tabards/chaps should be moved from "Rose Regalia Energy Bonus." Always create pages with the future in mind...that page can stay regarding event info, or be converted to a footnote and put on the speedy deletion list.

-Icons in the main table: I went a bit overboard due to enthusiasm. My thinking is that the icons in the main table are a sort of fusion of representing the style as well as the method of acquisition, but several are "unofficial" such as the shopping cart. Thoughts? Personally, I like seeing boxes and tokens when I sort the table via Theme.

-Instead of "coliseum," let the theme for bombhead masks be "bomb." That way, we can incorporate potential future costume items, even armors. A bomber can dream of having a lovely-style fat belly, or a hunter-style "I am a grenade. Be the grenade" cosplay. Maybe one day in the future, one day...

Frosty page: weird. I shrunk the images so they'd fit exactly onto the page width, as unhappy as that made me. Well, that's browsers for ya. I'm using firefox. I'll just put them into a Bechamel-style arrangement (regarding order of slots in the column)... check the page later.

All things are wips!

I just stuck the frosty prize box on the frosty page to have something to balance it out while I worked. I like having the ToC on the upper left, and something pretty+relevant in the upper right, cause that's what the rest of the wiki looks like. Anyway, I think that just having the color codes for frosty (primary/secondary/tertiary) would be appropriate instead of the box (as the page is "frosty" not "frosty prize box rewards." ya?

Templates:

upper right module template: costumes: I'm going to poke around existing ones and see if I can't get what I'm talking about to work. You can get gifs into the working module (my guild page as well as that of EoS has that), so I'm certain it will werk. Grr. The question is, which one to use? Probably random examples, as with accessories.

@glacies: can you get the module {{costumeinfo: to have gif? Even if we don't want it to animate, gifs can come in single frames. This opens up more options, though the gif format is pretty poor compared to png, so it wouldn't be ideal unless we want animations. I love animations, as they show all the angles to a knight who doesn't have that item in their arsenal/can't find it on the AH. I don't like messing with templates, but it seems like sticking something I have in mind will work, and that's what revisions are for!

I'm thinking that this information module wouldn't be redundant, especially if we speedydelete the individual costume pages (accessories don't have their own pages), moving the costume descriptions (which I think is why they even have their own pages to begin with) into the main page for that form - for example, draped armor (main page) would have this sort of thing, so individual pages are not needed:

== Description ==
"A stylish suit of armor that adds a bunch of class to battle." - Recolors
"Loose-fitting armor worn by more experienced Recon blahblah..." - Dangerous Draped Armor
and so on if more unique draped armors show up.

That way, the accessory slots for the armor/helm can be known asap, as well as all available forms and their lore (just like the accessory pages).

-upper right module template: color style template: I'll mess around with dis (as I said, a box isn't appropriate).

-general template: actually, those tables aren't that hard to code at all. They require the same plugandchug work as a simpler template anyway. A few users looked at the page, and they really liked it, so our work is appreciated already.

TABLE: opinions? will be compressing things carefully over the next few hours.

D:

HALP (colorstyle module template for Style page(s)

oooh, wish I would have seen that

those are reasons. I never thought about what would happen to future costumes if I or other gif makers died in a car crash. I should make a video on youtube of "how to make gifs for the spiral knights wiki." Maybe. Or...I could make a gif of how to make gifs. Intrinsic!

But I still feel that gifs are useful, because they show all the angles of an item. That was my favorite part of the UI update. I would like for the wiki to have them near the top of the page somewhere (not in the module).

For the main image of costume list pages...random pictures? And can they be facing straight forward? or do we want to keep the number of images limited? I'm just going to try a straight, dead-on angle, to see how it looks. We can decide on the uniformity/method of the main costume image later. I'm going to be sticking with frosty (and for some, divine - if the divine doesn't glow, like with warden), or cool, since it's the most bland, shows up very well, and is a bit more common to find.

I will only upload 3 of these (due to experimentation phase): Frosty Draped, Divine Warden Armor, Divine Warden Helm

EDIT: whoah, that divine warden helm at that angle looks super intense.

EDIT: yeah, going to go ahead and do the south-view for the main pics. These can just be changed later, but it does provide another view for players.

I'd like to insist on the costume arsenal icon though, which was lost in the revert. Going to go stick that back in, a bit smaller this time.

Frosty, shadow, surge, hunter, hallow, lovely style pages up. They need pruning/confirmation/editing etc. to make sure copy/paste errors didn't carry over. Like I had the blooming box linking to dark harvest for a little while.

TABLE: regarding the main costume pages table, I'm taking out the two number data columns and adding a "color style" column, because linking series/theme to color styles isn't consistent (surge vs. celestial/galactic and so on). These will be simply "event color styles" "special" "Unique" "standard" and so on, same as with accessories.

Regarding speedydeleting individual costume pages, perhaps not. They need a lot of tidying up, certainly...but it's good to have those for people who use categories to search for color themes. I'm still in support of removing them, though.

EDIT: nevermind! Going to attempt category groups.

Just popping here to tell you guys are doing a wonderful job. It's looking beautiful.

@Glacies:
could you get the text in the icon/style column of the costume recolortable to be link-able to the relevant color theme pages? (see the Color Theme page to get an idea of what I mean, how shadow links from the table to the shadow page).

I'd like to make a compiled list page of Alternate Forms of costumes. pages would be named like thus:

Item (Alternate Forms)

Examples:

Crescent Helm (Alternate Forms)
-heavenly guardian
-infernal guardian
-galactic guardian

Fur Cap (Alternate Forms)
-Polar Day
-Polar Night
-Polar Twilight
-Iron Wolf Helm

Scale Helm (Alternate Forms)
-Iron Dragon Helm
-Storm Dragon Helm

These pages will emphasize alternate textures and slightly different shapes/sizes - like how the wolf helm ears are longer, or how the dragon helms are smaller and more compact than scale.

Alternatively, they could all be in one unique costume page, Costumes: Alternate Forms

Alternatively, they could be in a separate table on the main form page.

All are costumes, of course, different from functional armors/helms.

I worked a little bit more.

1) The Military Page
2) The Cool Page
3) Category: Military-Themed

1) horizontal rows. Very pretty, information is easy, but doesn't work out so well as more items in the style show up. hard to update/maintain

2) vertical columns. Very functional, and sortable alphabetically, update-able chronologically... hard to update/maintain. Bothersome: Blank tiles, especially when they mess with the alphabetical sorting.

3) extremely easy to update and maintain.
-Visually fast for files. not particularly sortable, but it is alphabetical.
-Many players don't know how to search category-style.
-Is it even allowed, to use the category tag function on images in this way?
-Would link to relevant theme category pages on individual color theme pages.
- Accessories might be able to work like this because they don't have their own individual wiki pages, just a file designation root. Items that have their pages need category on the page, not the image of course. This certainly makes for easy organization, if maintained.
-No, I didn't go through and get all the military acc files, just a few to get the idea across. don't want to do a ton of work until it's what we're gonna be doin, ya know?

So, which option is best?

Note: Costumes could remain in a horizontal table for Event color themes. If more show up, we simply make a new table with "Year 20XX Recolored Costumes" below the existing one.

This color stuff is all a tangent to costumes, haha. But it will help with the main costume table linking.
==================================================================
TABLE stuff:

I made a page: Costumes (Recolors)

the table in the sandbox links directly to the subsection/recolor itself. Quite pleasing. Bypasses form issues for people using the table to find things, as the tables in the Costumes (Recolor) page link directly to all costumes of that type anyway, as with Draped. This brings it all together I think...recolors and different, unique textures/forms.

agree? Move forward with template formation? Or modify the table a bit?
===================================================================
if the table is good, all that's left would be to move it to the main costumes page, tidy things up, and set about putting the categories on things that I mentioned in comment 41. I've done so for the anniversary things and a few dark harvest things, to see how it feels. The "theme" column in the sandbox links directly to the subcategory page for costumes or to the subsection of costume recolors so far. The "group" column links to a category page that has everything in that group, arsenal wise. If people like it, we'll push forward with the rest of the stuff.

EDIT: someone went through and deleted all that category work, sadly. Don't want that kind of work being undone in the middle of the process...just later after it no longer works. Perhaps linking to the event page itself with the link# function would work well...nevermind, tried it, doesn't work so well. Hmm. Going to be experimenting more.

Edit: check out the sandbox linking and This Page . How does this work? Well? Not very well? This might seem to be a main costumes page, but it is merely a list page. The main costumes page will have a lot more information on what costumes are, and that main table.

I have also put a picture with 4 views - 3 overworld, one inspect window, on the plumed cap page. The rotating image of these caps doesn't really get the aesthetics of the plume across. What do you guys think?

I'm really tired right now but I've made a secondary template under recolor/special.

The order is slightly mixed up but allows a bit more freedom if needed. It should be obvious how it works:

|[[Name]] | [[Image Style]] | [[Third Word for things like Obsidian Mantle of ((type)). Just leave blank if not used]] | [[Style Name]] | [[Availability]]

Now to sleep.

1) For individual costume pages, we should have a slightly modified {{costumeinfo template. This one will have the double pics (front/back views), and have a slot for an icon in the upper left corner. Basically, it's like the {{armorinfo template but for costumes, isolating costumes from other gear types in the arsenal.

here is my attempt at a template: http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Template:CostumeInfo2

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Celestial_Nav_Suit was working on that, but then I was like...huh. Icons.

I'll be messing around in the Celestial Nav suit page to get this template to work.

EDIT: well, it seems to be stable. Still trying to get double pics to show up.
EDIT: well, that was easy. Derp.
EDIT: I've gone through and done this to the plasmatech demo suit, plasmatech bombhead mask, and equinox costumes pages. . What do you guys think? Compare them to other costumes pages, such as the Hallow Fur Cap.

the current {{costumeinfo is perfectly fine for the list pages of recolored forms.

2) for non-recolor-promo costumes that are still variable in color scheme (like the stranger hat, bombhead masks) the table template should be different, which I see you are working on in comment #48, glacies. Thank you!

3) can we have a column in the recolortables that links to the individual pages for these items? At first, I wanted to speedydelete these pages (only the recolor ones, cause accessories don't have their own individual pages), but then I saw the merit of having them in Themed categories, as well as for direct searches from players. They also have more data than acc, like slots (though this information is in the table page >,..,>)