I was reading on the wiki when I realized that the pages for weapons don't follow a consistent format, so I was thinking I'd go through the weapon pages and make sure they look like these examples:
Cold Iron Vanquisher
Electron Vortex
Here are some examples of the pages in a state of disorder:
Leviathan Blade
Electron Bomb
Electron Charge
If there's a specific format for these pages I should follow, let me know. (I'm new here :P)
Just gonna bookmark the style guide...
Alright, cool. It's time to start making weapon pages follow the template.
Is there a reason why weapon reskins aren't linked on the original weapon page?
... I actually don't know. I think there isn't. It sounds like a good idea. Battle Sprites do have something like that in place.
I think the best way to do it would be adding a new section called Reskins and include the Alchemy path template for those reskins there. That way it stands out and people can move from/to the reskin page to/from the weapons page more easily. I'll give it a go on my user page
I agree that reskins should be mentioned. There seem to be two kinds of reskins.
In the Final Flourish article, the alchemy tree already contains Deadly Candy Poker. Is that what you were planning?
In the Sudaruska article, there is no mention of Mighty Great Cleaver. Perhaps it's because MGC doesn't really have an alchemy tree. You just get it at 5 stars from a prize box. In this case, it makes less sense to show an alchemy tree in Sudaruska's article.
Yes that was my plan, but then I quickly realized it is not feasible that way due to skins like Mighty Great Cleaver and others which would make the table possibly a bit confusing and definitely way too large with lots of empty space at the 1-4 star segments. I do still think it would be nice to have a separate template that looks similar to the alchemy path one, but is intended only for reskins or maybe related weapons.
Examples that I think would benefit from such a reference, even though they aren't reskins:
- Tortoguns: currently they are only mentioned in the Notes section on each of the 5 star torto guns' pages. Though I have to say that this reference is pretty useful since it shows the gifs, which is another thing I miss on many weapons pages. For these I would say make a box that integrates all the tortogun alchemy paths.
- Celestial orbitgun and Mixmaster: Their individual pages don't even reference each other. Not technically reskins but so related that they deserve to be grouped like other gun lines.
And probably many others. Some reskins do get referenced in the Notes section but usually just as plain text and it doesn't really stand out. Some reskins can only be found currently on the Reskins page, which is not easy to find as a new player or returning player who just wants to figure out what the reskins of their favourite weapons are called. And I find the reskin page is of limited usefulness because the table is a collection of unrelated items and is pretty large.
As for the gifs, I'm pretty sure those used to be there for a lot of the weapons and showed off the charge attacks. I found it very useful as a new player, but it seems not many gifs are left. Or maybe I'm just imaginging things and most weapons did not have them.
My advice is always: Get the content up there now, and worry about making it pretty later.
Make a Reskins section of the page and list them there. Or add a "reskins=" field to the WeaponInfo template and list them in the infobox.
Restrict your attention to pure reskins (meaning truly identical items). Worry about creating an overarching "gun style" for the mixmasters later.
What about instead of making a Reskins section on each page, instead calling it a Related weapons section? I think for most people who do not own the mixmaster or the orbitgun, there's the mixmaster and there's the mixmaster reskin with fire damage. If I want to look up a weapon when I don't know the name, I type in a similar weapon that I do know. For orbitgun I would type in mixmaster and expect to find a link to the orbitgun somewhere on that page.
A reskin field in the weaponinfo box could be nice too, but you are right that we can just get the info up there to start with.
I proposed sticking to pure reskins because then there is a very clear, easily implementable criterion for deciding what goes in. If you go for related weapons, then people will be tempted to include lots of stuff: every weapon of the same style (even though that's often in the alchemy tree already), every weapon of the same damage type, every weapon of the same status, perhaps some spuriously related armors, etc.
But you're the one doing this work, so pick whatever (non-insane) option you like. :)
I'd say I remember attack animations, too, but as you say, it's almost nowhere to be found. But some animations are there, just unused. Also, some animations may be APNG and look like regular PNG images from file name alone (they end with ".png", too).
I know Obsidian Edge has a gallery of nice animations showcasing its attacks, but very few pages have a gallery like that.
There is a system to find similar weapons. Sorting weapon lists by "Combat style" groups such weapons together. Though I see that it isn't very obvious and if it needs explaining, there's probably a better way to do it. Maybe the See also section could be used for this. In my opinion it's quite underutilized over the wiki. But that's just an idea.
Alright
Another thing that I don't know how to fix (and this is mostly a make things pretty problem and not a add more content problem but ok)
On the Aegis page, you can see the shield infobox includes a space for the Set it belongs to (azure guardian)
On the Leviathan blade page, the set is mentioned in Notes, so I tried adding it to the sword infobox.
Apparently that doesn't work (I can preview the page but nothing has changed)
Any ideas?
To change the parameters of the Sword infobox (or any other template), you need to be pretty good at MediaWiki syntax. You can study up online if you really want.
But actually my recommendation is that you do not try to put Leviathan Blade into a set at all. Many editors are tempted into doing a lot of organizing, and sometimes they get over-zealous in figuring out which sets are which. I can go along with Azure Guardian and Aegis being grouped together. It's more of a stretch to say that the weapons are in there. If Leviathan is in there, then is CIV too?
My answer is: Don't impose organization (such as sets) unless they are official (unequivocally defined by the game designers).
But again, you're the one doing the editing, so if you feel strongly, then go ahead.
Oh no I don't care much about the sets. But I noticed the page of Aegis included all the cobalt stuff including the levi, valiance and nitro in a set, so I assumed that was the consensus. I will leave it as it is.
I added reskin references to all the weapon pages, wiki threw all kinds of captchas at me. By the time I was done I had blurry pictures of large roads with tiny cars on them and had to click all cars.
There used to be a link to the Style guide in the menu on the left. So I checked it and from there I got to this page: https://wiki.spiralknights.com/Help:Page/Weapon. It's a template you should probably follow. It's almost identical to those two pages you wanted to go by originally.
I'm more in favour of the Leviathan Blade page format (Combat section first, Acquisition second) but that's only my personal opinion. They probably had a reason to choose that order for the template.