I'd like to see most templates to use an enforced icon size as per [[File:wiki.png|30 px]]. Right now you have 34x34, 36x36 and even a few 40x40 icons lying around and it looks really bad when you have a size mismatch going down a table. I'd really like to be able to purge all the current icons and replace them with 256x256 files made from the SK resources folder and thumbnail them with wiki markup. This also has the side effect of all the icons looking really smooth when they display.

Currently instead of cutting the icon out of a screenshot I recolour the base icon using the colour selector tool in GIMP. Then I scale it down to the desired size. It seems to create smoother edges and I can do it a lot faster than circle cuts and adding whitespace transparency. The icons in the resources folder are 8-bit colour, so the game must be putting a filter over them (or recolouring them somehow) to get the desired effect.

I think it would be best to stick the naming conventions used in the actual game. Weapons as in Swords, Handguns, and Bombs. Gear as in Helmets, Armor, Shields, (and Trinkets?). I'm pretty sure this is how it has been sorted out previously on the Wiki, and also in the actual game files:

item

• consumable
• drop
• gear
  • armor
  • helm
  • shield
• live
• pickup
• weapon
  • bomb
  • handgun
  • sword

I'm not sure where Trinkets are, but I think it would be best to throw them in the Gear category rather than having them on their own.

Aside from that, I really like the scrolling lists that maintain the headers, Shango. The other stuff is very useful as well. I actually really like the idea of separate pages for every single item, as this was one of my consistency issues... -twitch-
It's too bad there's no making variables or some sort of identifiers, otherwise we could simply stick "4_Star_NPC_Price" or something on every purchasable items page, so it could be updated via one single area instead of every single instance if need be. I think your icon convention is as close as we're going to get to that sort of thing. For the pricing issue... perhaps instead of having the price in Cowns/CE in text, throw it into an image instead and reference that same image on every page. This would act just as a "variable", because if you change the image, will it not change on every page? It's sort of weird because it's an image, and I'm not sure if that's how images work, but you tell me. For example, on a 3* Weapons recipe you could put the field Crowns in the ingredients but have the value be a file reference to an image. This image would be put on every other 3* Weapons (or Equipment) page as well, so that if it were updated, it would be updated for all of them. The image might just be a cut-out from in-game, or perhaps an image of what text might actually look like haha.

Edit: Okay I just tested this and it works. Perhaps we could add the actual XStarPrice image to the value fields instead of actual text? This way, like I said, upon a price change we would only need to change the image. This seems like a dirty hack for a variable, if you ask me, haha. Here is an example of what I mean to put replace for each consistent cost value (someone with editing skills would need to clean these up just like the icons). Yes I know it looks horrible, but it's a quick sketch for an example, and in all seriousness someone with editing skills will get nice clean "transparified" versions of them, or however those nice smooth icons are done. Do you see what I mean though? Changing the image on it's file page will update it everywhere; thus we could use this as a sort of simulation for variables regarding forging costs and NPC shop costs.

With this we would only need 18 images (15 right now), 6 for each of Alchemy Crown Cost, Alchemy Energy Cosy, and Shop Crown Cost. I'm not sure about Shop Energy Cost, as for upgrades... maybe just simply call them WpnSlotShopEnergyCost and TnkSlotShopEnergyCost?

I could have sworn someone told me it wasn't possible... Or perhaps I just didn't understand that they were saying it was unreasonable, not impossible. I think that it would be well worth displaying the price on every item page, but as a variable name so that, if the prices were to ever change, there would be no need to change every item page, but just where the value of the variable is fetched from. Even if the area where it is fetched from or whatever takes considerable Wiki knowledge, I still say it's well worth it being as this change it not likely too happen often anyways.

I vote to implement it. I am willing to help as well, if you want, even if it means the tedious copy and paste sort of clean-up work. I don't have very much Wiki experience or knowledge (yet), but I'm currently studying for my BCS so I know how to program things. It shouldn't take me long to catch on, providing someone shows me what to do. If you have a new template for, say, all Weapons (Swords, Handguns, and Bombs) I would be happy to work on updating all of the corresponding pages in a totally consistent manner, so that you guys with the real knowledge can work on the more advanced stuff, like other templates and these variables and such, rather than wasting your wisdom on grunt work.

Anyways, I was about to start working on the Trinket's, but maybe I should wait until these changes are made? Otherwise I fear I will just be going back and changing half the stuff on each page anyways. The same goes for the Item List.

Yeah, I think it's worth it is what I meant, for what it's worth. I don't totally understand how you're going to do it, but regardless, I think it's totally ridiculous to have to update a price on every page (if they ever change).

Also, like I siad before, if there are any up-to-date templates that need to be synchronized through other items of the same type, I can get to work on that.

If anyone knows how to, I'd love to be able to use the ShowHide function used in other wikis, particularly for the list of crafting materials, which is getting out of control for the shard uses.

I also had the idea of making Crafting and Crafting Materials two different sections. Crafting would still have a blurb about crafting materials and their role in crafting, with a link to the Crafting Materials page, where the full list would be. I can do that if there's support for it.

I think the prices part would be useful, as in shop price in Crowns, Alchemy prices in Crowns and CE, and that sort of thing., since they will show up on possibly hundreds of pages. Maybe for Equipment it isn't as much worth it in the long-run, but then again, what if we want to display the stats of something somewhere without having to go look it up? Or maybe there might just be another 3rd page added; who knows.

I think it should definitely be implemented for the price thing. As for Equipment (which I was unaware of until now), I'm not sure because if it is a lot of work I wouldn't want to simply say "Yes" for Shango's sake. It would be more efficient in terms of consistency and the code itself, but probably less efficient as far as human labour goes.

So Shango, aside from Equipment now, by your first point are you also proposing a separate page for each and every Material as well? To be honest, I think this would also be a good idea being as the Crafting table seems to be getting a bit cluttered now, not to mention what it could eventually look like in the future. As you stated in your previous post, perhaps just make a table similar to the Equipment ones with only the icon, name, and star-ranking of the Material showing. The more lengthy stuff, such as Description, Drops From, and most of all Recipe Uses, could be on the actual page dedicated to the Material itself. If this is something that will be done, feel free to put me to work on it once you have a template and basically just need to create a page for each Material by a copy-and-paste method. I also have most of the Materials listed, so I would be able to confirm things as I go. I'd love to help with templates and stuff but I'm not very experienced and fear I would just hinder the process. Speaking of experience... that code does not look very friendly with all those brackets haha. Where exactly does that chunk of code go? Is it where the data is actually stored and fetched from? I guess it wouldn't actually be that bad in that case, being as it's only written once. Would all of this data be thrown on to one special page or something? Or where exactly does it go?

There are a lot of item pages on the wiki, and the quality varies widely.

In an effort to bring things up to a consistently high level, I've created a set of base pages that you can use and modify. These contain the appropriate fields, descriptions, templates, and category info for your item. In most cases, I've also tried to include examples of special tweaks (like changing the color of links in the template) and complicated recipes with many ingredients and "special" requirements... this is, incidentally, using Shango's lovely new recipe template.

You can view them under my user page:
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/User:Pauling

Hopefully, this will make the task of creating new high-quality item pages easier. That said, this is a rough draft, so suggestions would definitely be welcome before we go ahead and start pushing any one standard. In particular, I hope that this will address the current hard-to-search nature of the wiki, whereby all armor/helmets/shields are lumped into one vague category of "gear", with no additional subcategories tagged on the vast majority of new item pages. If anyone wants to filter the "gear" and "weapons" categories to add the correct specific info (helmets/armor/shields or handguns/ bombs/ swords respectively) to old pages, it would be very helpful!

The huge flow of new items has made it pretty hard to fill in detailed item stats, as there are several hundred images to be uploaded (and the exact values are probably still in flux- not worth adding until balancing settles down). In the interim, I've been adding the game description for the first line, followed by a few sentences describing the stats in vague terms.

EDIT: I made some more changes to the archetype templates. There's nothing obvious facing the user- a few minor changes to wording, added links, and better use of newly discovered wiki templates behind the scenes. That should be it for tonight, so feel free to go ahead and add improvements to these pages, or start using them, as the whim strikes you.

Also, after giving it some thought, is there any special reason why we would ever want a separate page for individual recipes? Why not always link to Item#Recipe instead? Transcluding is certainly cool, but what are the benefits of doing it this way? (see Khorovod page for an example)

I like the idea of having a separate place, but on the same hand, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of extra to add on a separate page. About the only thing missing on the normal page is where to find the recipe. We already have a Vendor section on the item pages; it seems almost as effective to just split that into Item and Recipe and directing towards the Basil and other vendor page/s (or reiterating where the recipe has been seen).

Whoa, big.

I didn't know firotech alchemers could come in BIG sizes now.

(A lot of the new recipes have ridiculously engorged icon sizes for required equipment for some reason.)

I changed the template now to force 36px for equipment icons. Many icons that I've uploaded are 256x256 because I recolor the icons from the games resource folder instead of cutting out he icons from screenshots.

For wiki purposes, I actually kind of like the infobox style we use for weapons now: it's clean, simple, and conveys more information than the in-game boxes. In particular, a wiki user isn't interested in some arbitrary heat bar being shown, because the wiki isn't about a real item- but they are going to want to know what the weapon looks like when equipped (as well as the icon in the inventory), what blast radius the bomb has, and any other info that isn't necessarily displayed in game.

That said- I doubt you were talking about 100% perfect mimicry of the game anyway. I'd love to see a hybrid that incorporated the long stat bars (perhaps with an attack or defense "number" at the end, like you did in http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Template:EquipmentInfo ). Most armors don't incorporate all 11 possible types of protection, and the game's "quick look" stat bars are a good way to convey that information in a concise way, without making the user filter out extraneous information. Showing bars where appropriate- and hiding them where inapplicable- could really clean up the armorinfo template.

My ideal infobox would be something like the top half of the current weapon infobox (title, icon, picture), followed by stat bars in the bottom half, and then text descriptions of special bonuses. (text instead of icons would keep the box shorter and reduce the number of special fields required to make the icons work. It would also make it easier to incorporate new types of bonus later without updating the template)

Then again, I have pretty simple tastes where computer graphics are concerned, and you might well be imagining something way cooler than my idea. :)

Just remember that it terms of stats things are still changing. Nick gave me the nod in a thread a while back that uploading stat images isn't the best idea right now because they are still likely to change. Otherwise I would have long finished the weapon images.

I do like your work on categorizing images. It reveals the low-resolution icons that I should get around to updating.