Wiki

[ccexplore]

Any possibility an admin can fix the issue with my wiki account not having an email, so that I can make use of the password reset?  Adam?  I'm sure you all know the email address by now, it's ccexplore (at) yahoo (dot com).

Well, with no response whatsoever from Adam on my PM one way or another, I guess it's time to create a user account at the wiki.  How does "AdamSux" sound?

[ccexplore]

I've started creating a page for the "Maximum %" challenge.  Search on the wiki for "Maximum percentage challenges" (I'd put a URL here except I'm afraid it would invite spam just that much sooner...... )

It's far from complete but I'm hoping it gives a rough sense of how I envision the information can be organized.  The tables are also nicely reusable across all the different challenges.  A few salient points to note:

- I include both the level rating/number (eg. "Fun 1") as well as level title, to aid people looking for a particular result via searching.

- I originally envision uploading all replays and other "challenge evidence" onto the wiki as file uploads.  However, I'm currently blocked by the fact that the wiki doesn't allow .lrb or .zip file uploads.  For now I've included an example of a "replay link" (see Tricky 23), even though it's an external rather than internal link (in this case it points to the replay on the File Portal).

- For many types of challenges where solutions tend to be nonportable across different ports, I actually envision having separate result pages per port, and then the main challenge page would link to those individual per-port result pages.

For maximum % however, because many of the results are fairly trivial and therefore quite portable across versions, I experimented with reporting results for multiple ports on the same table.  My personal verdict is mixed success.  It's already apparent for example that the current set of tables do not accomodate the Genesis/Megadrive levels well, because the level ordering is a bit different, and it shares some but not all levels with the more "original" ports.  So I think I'd have to do that version as a separate page anyway.

So most likely I will wind up doing per-port result pages even for the maximum % challenge, despite my current attempt to combine a few ports (DOS, Amiga, SNES, Mac) into one table with tolerable success.

- at some point there should be links back to the pages for individual levels

- help would be appreciated creating the basic table templates for the other games (eg. ONML, Holiday, Lemmings 2, etc.).  The template would allow rapid reuse of the tables across many challenges and ports (in particular, saving you the grindy part of having to enter all the level names etc.)

Feedback welcome!

[finlay]

Are we going to bother putting in Access Codes? I haven't seen any mention of them on the site so far. I kinda think we ought to put them in, because you can only skip ahead without them on games like Lemmix or some of the versions in which you can save your game like the Playstation 1/2/3/P or Windows 95 versions.

Anyway, I started going down your Maximum % list and making all the level titles into links, but I only got to the end of Fun because it was boring.

I also made pages for the Genesis ratings and a list of levels for each, and I've updated every relevant page with a new navigation box for the Genesis version as well as all the other versions. (I made a new template "browse3" for this purpose, which links to [[RATING (Genesis)]] instead of [[RATING]], eg [[Fun (Genesis]] instead of [[Fun]], but just displays "Fun" to the user.)

[ccexplore]

Ok, the following changes have been made for max % challenge:

- I've split off results page into their own pages, one per game and port.
- I've added an "access code" column (but too lazy to fill it out for now, to be honest I may never do it myself), and removed the "port" column as we're now doing separate tables (pages actually) for each port
- I've renamed the "evidence" column into the far more natural sounding "solutions"
- I like Finlay's edits of making the level titles linking back to their respective wiki pages.  However, I think making text like "Fun 1" also links is a bit redundant so those were reverted back to plain text.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

[finlay]

Access Codes should have their own page IMO. Then you can have a column for each different version. I don't think you need to include them on the max % page. They should definitely be included in the basic level template, too.

Also, I've been consistently referring to Genesis Lemmings as Genesis rather than Megadrive, just so you know.

Definitely link to the category pages too. The category pages should probably have a similar table; at the moment they're just a list.

Also Mayhem 3 & 4 have 30 and 80 lemmings on the Mac version, which is closer to the Amiga version than the DOS version, despite it generally having reduced levels with 100 lemmings to 80 like the DOS version.

Also, generally when I've mentioned different ports on any page I've been linking back to them like [[Amiga]] or [[DOS]] in the first instance. I've made a few changes to the Mac version page as they occur to me; maybe take a quick look at the change log for that page to see what I've been going for...

[ccexplore]

Access Codes should have their own page IMO. Then you can have a column for each different version. I don't think you need to include them on the max % page.

Oh okay, I guess I misunderstood you then.  I thought you wanted them on the challenge result pages so people can more easily jump to a particular level.

I guess certainly for DOS Lemmings (which will likely be the majority of reported challenge results anyway), there's really no (major) issue since most people can use Lemmix anyway (and likely will when many of the solutions will be Lemmix replays).

I will take out that column later tonight.

Also, I've been consistently referring to Genesis Lemmings as Genesis rather than Megadrive, just so you know.

I think that's because you are Canadian, right?  When people first brought up those levels in the old forums, they refer to the game as "Megadrive" Lemmings, I guess because that's how the game console was marketed in Europe and some of the folks there were British.  In the US it's marketed as "Genesis", and I never even heard of "Megadrive" until in the forums.  I'm thinking I need to mention both names so there are no confusion from either side.

[finlay]

No, British. (although ok i am actually legally canadian too but it's irrelevant )

It's just that's how I was introduced to the Lemmings version a long time ago. I never had a Megadrive when I was younger (although I do vaguely remember primary school arguments about whether a Super Nintendo or a Sega Mega Drive was better, which I never really took part in – the first console I got was a Playstation), and it took me a year or two after finding out about the "Genesis version" of Lemmings to connect the dots and work out that Genesises (Geneses?) and Megadrives are the same thing. (On that note, it took me a similar while to work out that a SNES is what I would call a "Super Nintendo")

I don't particularly want to have to say "Genesis/Mega Drive" every time it comes up, that's all. So I picked one and went with it. It was already referred to as a "SEGA Genesis" on the main page anyway. At the very least, let's keep the version identifier used in the URLs as Genesis, just to be consistent – I guess it's up to you whether you want to write "Genesis/Mega Drive" every time. (Also, I'm not sure whether it's Mega Drive or Megadrive, and calling it Genesis eliminates that element of confusion!)


Also, I know we don't need access codes, strictly speaking, but they would be very useful for folks wanting to jump to a level on any version other than DOS, including the aforementioned Genesis/Mega Drive version. For example, I think I have a hacked version of Mac Lemmings where you only need to input the level number you want to jump to, but I don't have a hacked version of Mac ONML. And there are a million-and-one lists out there we could just copy; they're the same for Amiga/Mac/DOS, which helps. The only version I don't have recorded on my spreadsheet is the SNES version, because I didn't want to make an extra column – they're recorded for the unique levels of that version though.

[LemSteven]

I am thinking about adding a max saved entry to the LevelInfobox template so that the max-% data for DOS (since it is the most widely used version).  This would of course link to the max-% tables that ccexplore added.  I'm also thinking that the max-% tables can be merged into a single table, with the levels going down the columns and the different versions going across the rows.  Each cell in the table can have an external link to the appropriate solution.

Let me know what you think about this.

[ccexplore]

I'm also thinking that the max-% tables can be merged into a single table, with the levels going down the columns and the different versions going across the rows.  Each cell in the table can have an external link to the appropriate solution.

Well, merging tables is something I started with.  I originally stopped because I felt it really only works well when you confine yourself to the few ports that has the nearly all the same levels in same order, namely DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, SNES, Megadrive, Mac, and Windows.  Okay, so I guess that's quite a few now that I started jotting them down (and there are probably more).

My main concern was that for some other ports, the levels are different enough that their tables probably won't merge well with the main table containing the ports listed above.  Ports such as Genesis, Nintendo, Gameboy and Sega Master System comes to mind.  So it seems like you'll probably still end up with multiple tables, but I guess fewer of them.

And now going back to the "very similar" ports listed above, we have enough such ports that we'll end up with a good many number of columns.  Though this may be okay, especially if we use a single column to report the result in all 3 forms (numbers saved, % saved, and link to solution) then I guess we aren't talking about too many columns, and it would facilitate comparing results amongst the different ports when it's all in one table.

So maybe I can give that a try again.  May be too busy the next day or two to start the edits though.

[ccexplore]

Just want to mention that there are apparently tools out there for converting between formats like Excel and CSV into wiki tables.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Tables#Converting_spreadsheet_to_wikitable_format

This may be useful especially in the early stages of creating challenge result pages, when the layout of the table columns may be in flux.  Plus editing the data in a WYSIWYG tool like Excel is likely much easier than dealing with raw wiki codes.  Sadly I haven't started off with such tools, but I think I will start now to make my life easier.

(I'm not sure, but I think you can also copy a table from the wiki webpage and paste it back into Excel as well.)

[finlay]

Made the access codes page using that tool.

Just need to find a place to put it now, main page perhaps?

Edit: Also just made a page for every Tame level and the first 5 of Crazy. (The tame ones are easy: copy, paste, copy, paste) I haven't uploaded any pictures for the levels though.

[LemSteven]

I am thinking about adding a max saved entry to the LevelInfobox template so that the max-% data for DOS (since it is the most widely used version).

I changed my mind about this -- the LevelInfobox templates mainly contain the information shown on the level start-up screen when you're playing the game, and I think it should stay this way.  It would probably be better to just make a special note of the max-% solutions that aren't inherently obvious.  I've already done this in the trivia sections for The Boiler Room and Save Me.

[finlay]

Yeah, and I think I mentioned it for Cascade, partly because it's the level with the greatest difference between lowest allowable score and highest possible score.

[finlay]

What are we going to do about this spam problem 

[Clam]

I don't know, I found some information on preventing spam but I don't have anywhere near the technical know-how to actually do it