Messages

1

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: October 13, 2015, 12:14:45 AM »

Come to think of it, we should put a text dump on Pikipedia as well. It kind of bothers me though -- how much does this lean on the "nasty hacking stuff" side that Nintendo frowns upon?

Well, the alternative would be manually writing down every line in the game, which I don't think they would mind. 

2

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: October 08, 2015, 02:34:27 AM »

Just to leave a follow up message on this:

Created three text dumps so far (for Metroid Prime NTSC, Metroid Prime PAL, and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, with Corruption on the way), thanks to the help of the very smart people at the m2k2 hacking forums. For anyone who's interested, the first step was extracting the internal folders using the Dolphin Emulator, and then decoding those folders using the tools already produced by Parax and others at m2k2. The textual data was scattered about in those folders in STRG files, which they had already documented, and though there was an STRG editor available it didn't have batch functionality. So I had a someone code up just such a batch-enabled-text-dump-spitter-outer for me.

So that's the whole story. I know, the suspense was killing you.

3

NIWA Discussion / Re: "Dead" Wikis

« on: March 11, 2015, 12:20:24 PM »

I hope some editors came to Metroid Wiki.

Not really. It's still pretty much just me. 

When starfywiki.org was started, we didn't have articles about every character/enemy, item and tune yet. Now we do, and surprisingly there are very little things we can start new articles about (which puts us in a different position to you if that isn't the case with Metroid Wiki).

Very different. Metroid Wiki still hasn't covered the basics. Lots of room articles to be written, and gobs missing from classics like Super Metroid. I suspect one of the big contributors to our lack of editors is competition from the Metroid Wikia, which is much larger and has more staff members. I did create some exclusive content that I don't think they've gotten around to yet (like text dumps from Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime Echoes). But it hasn't created much traffic. I've also been trying to be more active on our social media channels to get exposure. Buuut exposure /= editors. 

Regardless of being the only editor, I enjoy editing Starfy Wiki and have a drive to improve it when I can. It just has become more boring.

^ This exactly. It's not as fun as it used to be. But it's my wiki and I luffs it! 

4

NIWA Discussion / Re: "Dead" Wikis

« on: December 19, 2014, 04:06:44 AM »

Thanks, I'll try that.

5

Super Smash Bros / Need Help Choosing a Character

« on: December 19, 2014, 03:58:57 AM »

So I played as Wolf in Brawl and loved him despite his fast fall rate and terrible ledge grab box. But I serious feel like I just CANNOT connect with any of the Wii U characters yet! Any advice? It's killing me. T_T

SO what I liked about Wolf was: He was comparably slow and heavy but his moves had great reach, his down and up smashes dragged from both sides, and his side smash traveled (I hate sitting still while I attack. T_T). It seems like Fox has the closest moveset in this game so far but... he's so... I dunno... flighty. I wish his air moveset wasn't so all over the place. I also enjoy using Little Mac because of his great knockback but his air moveset, too, is weird to me.

I used Sheik in Melee and Samus in the original, if that gives any indication of my tastes.

Anyone else in the same boat? This is the first Smash I can't get a handle on. Also, is it just me or is side smashing especially difficult on a Wii Remote? I can't wait for a Gamecube adapter. T_T

6

NIWA Discussion / "Dead" Wikis

« on: September 16, 2014, 08:49:51 PM »

Ok, so maybe Dead is a bit dramatic, but I know that right now Metroid Wiki has pretty much no activity. There haven't been any real content edits or new articles created since... I don't even remember. And there are TONS of articles that still need creating. The first page of our "new files" gallery goes back to late 2013, and even back then it was mostly just me. I guess I'm technically still here, but it's really hard to get motivated to edit when you're by yourself. I've taken to drifting between SMWiki and ZW in the interim. I'm sure other Wikis are in the same boat.

So what I'm getting at is, do we have any kind of provision for reinvigorating dead wikis? Ok, so let me rephrase that. I'm pretty sure there's no provision, but I thought I'd post a "wanted ad" here anyways. I've been using Facebook to attract attention but it's really only attracted foot traffic, not editors. I know we've discussed "cross/inter-wiki" editors before but it's never really gotten off the ground. Any ideas? Or volunteers?

7

Wiki References / Re: Upload Wizard

« on: November 05, 2013, 06:21:59 PM »

Brilliant. Thanks! I'll have someone give it a try.

8

Wiki References / Upload Wizard

« on: November 05, 2013, 04:53:50 PM »

Metroid Wiki's Special:MultiUpload was replaced with Special:UploadWizard when we updated our MediaWiki. Unfortunately, we can't apply our current categorization/licensing template when using it, and are forced by the Wizard to select a standard (and obsolete!) copyright template. As a result, we've just reverted to using Special:Upload, which is inconvenient to say the least.

I've read that the UploadWizard can be customized. Anybody have any wisdom to share?

9

Wiki References / Re: Creating new Classes?

« on: September 03, 2013, 07:58:43 PM »

AHA! Most excellent!  Thanks so much! That should work perfectly.

... I really need to learn to start figuring out this MediaWiki stuff myself. 

10

Wiki References / Creating new Classes?

« on: September 03, 2013, 06:37:00 PM »

Hey Wiki People,

I'm trying to replace some old content on Metroid Wiki's front page and need to know how to create a new class.

If you look at the main page, you'll notice there are several "semi-transparent" images (one in the "news" box, and one in the "featured article" box). I believe these are implemented using a class="namehere", and I don't know how to reproduce it for the latest feature.

Hate to be a bother with my wiki illiteracy, but I'm impatient and my code-savvy admins are busy people. 

11

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 20, 2013, 03:58:43 PM »

Update: Notepad++ still crashes when I open the entire .html file with it (it's a 1.35 GB file). I haven't tried looking for the scan data in other encodings yet, BUT I did find something interesting.

There's a site, www.metroidconstruction.com, where they specialize in disassembling Metroid games. They came up with program (mpakdump) that takes all the files out of a .pak file and breaks it down into even smaller components. I can't make it work for some reason, though. I'm hoping I'll be able to find the scan data in there, perhaps in its own little, not-cryptically-named file, if I can make this work. Anyone else have any ideas/want to try it out, since I'm failing so epically? 

12

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 18, 2013, 11:45:26 PM »

Thanks so much, this is definitely going to help!! I'll mess around with it for a while, but in the meantime, thank you for the very informative replies.

I'll let you know when I hit my next roadblock. 

13

Wiki References / Re: Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 18, 2013, 12:58:27 AM »

You definitely got me off to a good start; thanks!

I still have a lot of questions though. Since I wasn't sure exactly how to create a table of characters (I have no idea what "checking each character by index number" meant) I went ahead and tried converting the file to .html and reading it with Chrome. There was a ton of unreadable garbage in there, but plenty of English, too (and French and German. Go figure). Anyway, I'm assuming, since a lot of in-game text showed up in English, that I don't have to create a table file for it. BUT WAIT there's more.

When I change the game file to a .html file, it's still a huge file. So huge, in fact, that Chrome crashes before it can load all the text. I opened the .html file in WindHex and it handled it, but I still couldn't find any of the Scan Data, which I found very odd. I extracted all the root files I could find using Dolphin and started doing the same with those. There was even a Logbook.pak file that contains all the logbook entries. But I still can't find a file that contains all the Scan Data - or one that contains any Scan Data. Very frustrating. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

14

Wiki References / Creating Text Dumps

« on: August 11, 2013, 05:05:32 PM »

Hello my fellow Wiki-people!

I'm already aware that this may be completely doomed, but I thought I'd post this anyway. There are no text dumps that I can find of the Metroid Prime series (I don't mean just Logbook data, I mean an entire dump, with scans and everything). I know nothing about making text dumps, but I assume that if it wasn't difficult to get a dump of this game it would've been done already by someone.

Anyway, since we have access to text dumps of all the Zelda games, I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on how to get a text dump of a Prime series game, or explain why it hasn't been done yet. (P.S. please use small words  )

Thanks!

15

Wiki References / Re: Why content people shouldn't try to be template people:

« on: November 13, 2012, 11:12:53 PM »

It seems that most, but not all, of the navigation templates pass the name parameter to {{Tab}}, and you've just been lucky enough not to have any pages with two templates that don't do this.  Any pages in particular you would expect to be broken?

Uhm, no... I guess the issue is I only have a(n extremely) rudimentary understanding of what the problem was. But that's fine, I implemented your fixes and it works so... I have no problem remaining ignorant.

16

Wiki References / Re: Why content people shouldn't try to be template people:

« on: November 12, 2012, 12:44:33 AM »

The way {{FP-Rotation}} achieves #1 is by setting a fixed height on the text body.  This is actually a bad idea, because the content is allowed to overflow this box, but elements below will not be moved down.  So if I make my browser window small enough (< 1160px), the text of article 1 flows into the 'Vote...' link.

(This can be worked around by increasing the 200px set in the template a little, since the main page has a minimum size.)

Your problem in #1 is that you want them all to have the same height.  This is easy: [[File:<filename>|x270px]], for example, will display an image at 270px high.  If you want to restrict the image's height to its natural size, so that raster images don't get scaled up and look blurry, pass frameless: [[File:<filename>|frameless|x270px]].

I don't get why {{FA-Tab}} and {{FP-Tab}} don't just use {{Tab}}, but okay.  You get #2 because these define identifiers used by the JavaScript, but they're both set to 'tab': {{#vardefine:name|{{{name|tab}}}}}.  Just change 'tab' in that to something unique for each of those templates.  Better yet, use {{Tab}} and pass the name parameter to that.

Thanks for looking this over for me!

First of all, the only reason I'm not using the preexisting {{Tab}} (and created the {{FA-Tab}})  is for aesthetic reasons. They look totally different. What I don't understand is this: You say that they're all toggling because they're both set to the following in their base code:  {{#vardefine:name|{{{name|tab}}}}}. However, when I have multiple templates using the regular {{Tab}}, from which all the code for {{FP-Tab}} and {{FA-Tab}} were copied, we don't encounter this problem (For example, pages with multiple navigation templates on the bottom).

Thanks for the info, I'll try implementing this! (Though I'm still puzzled by the JavaScript issue you described, since {{Tab}} works fine).

17

Wiki References / Why content people shouldn't try to be template people:

« on: November 09, 2012, 06:43:56 PM »

Hello all,

I'm hoping some code savvy people will be willing to offer some aid to a Metroid Wiki editor in need. I created (more like copy and pasted and then mulched) a modified version of our Template:Tab to created a Featured Article rotation for our main page (Template:FA-Tab). It ended up working pretty nicely (Template:FA-Rotation).

So I decided today, all full of confidence, that I'd try making something similar for our Feature Pictures (Template:FP-Tab and Template:FP-Rotation). This created a couple problems:

#1: I need to find some way to make the various images all resize automatically to fit within their Tabs. Obviously, setting them all to the same px doesn't help because they all have different dimensions, but I don't want to just thumbnail them all because I want them to display as large as possible in the space that is available. When I toggle between tabs, I want the appearance to be smooth and uniform, the way the Template:FA-Rotation looks on the main page. And speaking of that little monster...

#2: When I toggle between the tabs on the FP-Rotation on the main page, the FA-Rotation tabs also toggle!! That was, uhm. Unexpected, for me. That's about when my ego crumbled and I realized I was a dum-dum.

So if someone would care to glance over my little disaster of an operation and offer some friendly advice, I'd appreciate it. Even if it's not-so-friendly, I'll take it.

18

NIWA Discussion / Re: Members' Status

« on: October 26, 2012, 12:18:18 AM »

Greetings from Metroid Wiki.

I wouldn't exactly call the dry spell we're going through an "All-time low," but it's pretty far down there. Our wiki was pretty much completely run and contributed to by between only 3-5 members, and everyone seems to have gotten pretty busy with real life. I just got married last month, myself, so I'm a much busier lady.

That having been said I actually saw a couple of the other members on the RC within the last couple days, so that was a nice breath of fresh air. But for months the situation has been that we are missing MASSIVE amounts of articles from nearly all of the games and don't even have enough members to vote an image/article to featured status. So if anyone with an interest with the series has some free time on their hands... 

19

NIWA Discussion / Re: Card Translation

« on: May 11, 2011, 01:16:23 AM »

So I've found a means to translate the kanji as long as I can make out the approximate stroke count, but it's quite difficult in this image because of its low resolution. I'll keep at it, but if anyone can find a higher resolution image that would be dance worthy. 

20

NIWA Discussion / Re: F-Zero fans and fansites

« on: April 22, 2011, 04:30:36 AM »

I actually love F-Zero GX (Sonic Phantom ftw!).     Some of the challenges on this game were actually difficult.

You don't find challenging games nowadays...