Project:General Discussions

This page is meant to be a hub for general discussions about this wiki, it's use and it's editing. Feel free to use this page to note wiki problems and leave messages for the community. Feel free to add/revise sections as necessary and move items that have been completed to the "Completed" section below.

Perfect Compatibility?
I'd like you to take a look at the SSB:M compatibility page. This game is rated 5 stars as "Perfect: No issues at all!". Yet, there seems to be one or two minor, minor errors listed on the page.

So what is the specific criteria for a perfect rating? Would no known bugs, period, be too out of the question? Or is "perfect" emulation accuracy unreasonable anyhow, considering it isn't cycle for cycle accurate and won't be anytime soon. Basically, can we define the word perfect?

Miranda (talk) 01:16, 24 October 2013 (CEST)

Perfect should mean there are no known issues/defects with the reproduction. It's unclear why Melee wasn't knocked back to 4 stars earlier, since it clearly has open issues. As you note it doesn't necessarily mean there is an exact 1:1 reproduction, as we're dealing with high-level emulation in many places. There should not be noticeable image defects/gameplay issues though. So for instance, even if a character starts to talk a tenth of second too late in some title; it could still be rated perfect, if that doesn't effect gameplay and would generally be unnoticeable without a stopwatch. Kolano (talk) 04:13, 24 October 2013 (CEST)
 * SSBM isn't the only offender. A number of games seem to be 5-star happy yet have known issues listed without fixes. These include:
 * Aggressive Inline
 * Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
 * Ikaruga
 * Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
 * Tales of Symphonia
 * Yet more are listed at 5 stars without any version compatibility reports or test. None at all. These include:
 * Donkey Konga
 * Dora the Explorer: Journey to the Purple Planet
 * Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
 * Hudson Selection Vol. 3: Bonk's Adventure
 * Mr Driller: Drill Land
 * Pac-Man World Rally
 * You'll also find some 5-star games that require DX9 backends as a fix, despite it being entirely dropped in latest revisions. These include:
 * Hot Wheels World Race
 * Sega Soccer Slam
 * While all of those are obvious fixes, others aren't so much. Many of the rest either have conflicts between the reporting graph and actual report entries, list 4 stars in the graph while reading 5 stars in the official list, are listing compatibility results without any details, or haven't had a test entry since v3.0 and previous. These would have to be looked into on a case by case basis. I'd also check and see if a specific user/IP is marking 5 stars prematurely, or if it's a collective problem. --Miranda (talk) 21:10, 30 October 2013 (CET)

- Whoa now. This is exactly the problem. ALL GAMES HAVE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM. A tiny lighting bug. Tev derp. SOMETHING. By the criteria of "no known problems" there should be no five star titles. And even if we keep the ones that have no known bugs, it is just a matter of time until someone grabs one of those tiny global problems and there we go. The "perfect" rating concept is inherently flawed.

As was discussed in the rating changes below, it is the opinion of the devs (minus skidau) that 5 stars should not mean absolute perfection. 5 stars is something we should use, and since the emulator isn't perfect then nothing would be five stars. The criteria that was discussed is below in the Rating Changes section. That criteria is "almost perfect". Very very very good, with allowances for very minor bugs. Melee is a perfect example. Everything is perfect, except for some very very tiny bugs that no one bug someone who goes back and forth from console and dolphin a lot would notice (JMC47 and the netplay people in this case). Under the "almost perfect" criteria Melee is five stars.

We need to work this out. We've been putting off this rating thing forever, and now that demotions are starting to happen based on the old ratings, it's time to get this settled. Until this rating issue is settled please do not demote any more 5 star games. Kolano, if you revert 5 star pages I won't get into an edit war with you, you pretty much handle all the boring tasks like this and I respect that. But anyone else? I'm reverting all five star demotions until the ratings issue is settled permanently.

For the record, I promoted Melee to five stars based on encouragement from the devs that it qualified for "perfect" status regardless of the little bugs (again, skidau objecting :P). - MaJoR (talk) 22:27, 30 October 2013 (CET)

Ratings Changes
As you know, our ratings are old. Very old. I'll paste them here for memory sake.


 * [[File:Stars0.png]] Unknown: Has not been tested yet
 * [[File:Stars1.png]] Broken: Crashes when booting
 * [[File:Stars2.png]] Intro/Menu: Hangs/crashes somewhere between booting and starting
 * [[File:Stars3.png]] Starts: Starts, maybe even plays well, but crashes or major graphical/audio glitches
 * [[File:Stars4.png]] Playable: Runs well, only minor graphical or audio glitches. Games can be played all the way through
 * [[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect: No issues at all!

Because of how vague that is and the need to handle more complex situations, we (or at least I) generally operated on a variant of those. Here they are.


 * [[File:Stars0.png]] Unknown: Has not been tested yet
 * [[File:Stars1.png]] Crashes when booting
 * [[File:Stars2.png]] Cannot reach gameplay but can reach menus
 * [[File:Stars3.png]] Major unsolvable issues
 * [[File:Stars4.png]] Minor unsolvable issues or fixable major issues
 * [[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect (with some tolerance for issues too minor to be user noticeable)

Now this has been the case for a long, looooong time. But there are a lot of problems with this. There are almost no 1 and 2 star pages anymore. Dolphin has evolved past the point where such a system is needed. Furthermore, the scope of each rating is vast: a game that has major graphics glitches but is completely playable: 3 stars. A game that has severe stuttering and is utterly unplayable: 3 stars. A game that crashes during the first level: 3 stars. Plus, 4 and 5 star ratings are vague and weird.

So, to solve this, we discussed it in the IRC and we hammered out a proposal that should address these issues. Most of them anyway. Here it is:


 * [[File:Stars0.png]] Untested
 * [[File:Stars1.png]] Does not pass the main menus
 * [[File:Stars2.png]] Unplayable or cannot be completed
 * [[File:Stars3.png]] Main mode can be completed, but has major glitches/crashes or missing modes
 * [[File:Stars4.png]] Minor issues
 * [[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect with the right settings

Now, obviously it's a little vague here and there. That can't be fixed; what determines minor bugs, major bugs, unplayable is a bit subjective. And there are some decisions that have to be made:


 * is it Perfect if a super tiny non-user noticeable bug remains? Example -.
 * if it requires an extreme compatibility setting (interpreter, LLE, EFB to Ram uncached, MMU) with a significant performance hit to be perfect, should it still be marked as perfect? And if so what settings count for that?
 * Is user configuration a component of this rating? If a major bug can be fixed is it still 3 stars or is it put up to 4 or 5?

And of course it could use a little polishing in phrasing and the like. Still, I think overall this is a lot better. Removing "crashes on boot" gives us more room in 3-4-5 to make the ratings more specific. Plus, most of the changes are in the 1-2 star range, so it won't require us change ratings for every single game on the entire wiki. That's definitely a benefit.

So guys, what do you think? We'll need to get as many specifics as we can hammered out before we go along with this. If things get too complicated we can use Project:Wiki Conventions for detailed information and have a trimmed down version in the ratings guide. It's work, definitely, but this is a long standing crappy system that really could use an overhaul. When it's done, this should be a nice improvement for us. - MaJoR (talk) 06:11, 23 August 2013 (CEST)


 * Well, I'm in with it. About rating 4 and 5, I think that if a game need an extreme setting (interpreter, LLE, EFB to Ram uncached, MMU), we should mark it as 4. Otherwise, mark it as 5. And for graphical related issues, if the problem is backend specific and the issue can be fixed by using OpenGL (that works Windows/Mac/Linux), we should mark as 5, otherwise mark it as 4. Despite this two notes, I agree with the rest - Jhonn (talk)
 * I agree with Jhonn on this. I'd even go further and say games that require interpreter, video software or full MMU+TLB emulation (=> no way to run even at 50% speed on any current computer) should be marked as 2 (unplayable) instead of 4. LLE, EFB to Ram uncached should be 4. Not sure about Single Core / SyncGPU. Please tell me when you reach a decision, I'll need to update the website to match that. delroth (talk) 14:14, 25 August 2013 (CEST)


 * I'm generally OK with rehashing the definitions, but it will be a big job to re-align existing rankings. It looks like anything that was a 1 or 2 becomes a 1, which we could automate and 5 would stay 5 but all the 3/4 rankings would likely need investigation. We'll need some way to flag ratings that have been checked, perhaps we can script adding a comment/category into ratings pages to indicate ratings need review.
 * I'm a bit concerned regarding the "Perfect with the right settings" description for 5 stars though. I'd prefer to keep that as "Perfect with default settings", since if special settings are needed we likely should be looking at updating game ini's to provide more appropriate defaults. Such aligns with current page handling as well since: Config entries should generally have related Problem entries explaining why a setting is needed, and games with problems aren't perfect.
 * On the topic of ratings, it might be nice if the ratings link took you to a list of titles with that rating rather than just to the rating definitions. Adding a set of categories should handle that easily enough. Kolano (talk) 21:52, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

In adding my two cents, I'd like to adress something I thought I read here, but apparently didn't (seeing as I can't find it now) where someone was against using the word "perfect"; I too am against using that word, partially on philosophical/semantic grounds, but also in a more practical sense; since most of Dolphin is HLE (as opposed to full LLE (admittedly rare, but there are projects, e.g. the "higan" emulator, who attempts to do this)), using the word "perfect" here seems out-of-place. I instead propose the use of the word "Excellent", as in "Works excellently". Another option is "Flawless", as in that it works without flaws. On the actual ratings though, I find that "Level 3" (i.e. ) for both the old (i.e. "Starts: Starts, maybe even plays well, but crashes or major graphical/audio glitches") and the IRC-born suggestion (i.e. "Main mode can be completed, but has major glitches/crashes or missing modes") are slightly misleading, and the example I use for this is Mario Power Tennis (GC) which with both definitions would probably be a 3. However, this isn't really the case for the end-user, as the "graphical glitches" in Mario Tennis makes it completely unplayable. If you're lucky, you can view enough of the screen to play a full match on the Easy difficulty, since the AI opponent won't make any difficult shots or shots that require much movement, enabling you to basically stand still in the middle and keep pressing the button for smashing the ball back. While this does technically mean that you can actually complete the entire game (at least in single-player on the easy difficulty setting), for the end-user, the game is unplayable since no-one would be capable of playing the game in that state for any reasonable amount of time or even enjoy playing the game in that state. Further, even if they would, luck would play a large role in it since depending on what court you're currently on, where you move etcetera heavily influences how little of the playing field you can see, rendering it in practice (even if not in theory) unplayable. This, to me (and I obviously admit I might be alone in thinking so) makes the game undeserving of a three-star rating (using the earlier discussed wording(s)), even if it is technically qualified for such a rating if going by wording alone. I'm not saying I have a perfect fix for this (though a quick-fix would obviously be to somehow point out/add in that a 3-star rating still doesn't mean that the game is actually enjoyable/playable), just that it is a serious problem that ought to be taken into account; perhaps the experience of the end-user should be taken into account in general somehow, e.g. in the sense that "playable" means that an end-user could reasonably be expected to play and enjoy the game and be capable of playing it to it's end, as opposed to meaning that it is technically/theoretically possible to play through the entire game without it crashing... Something along those lines? incassum (talk) 21:00, 14 January 2014 (CET)

Wii Network compatibility
Now that the wii-network was merged to master and we also have a stable release that support, it would be nice having a compatibility chart or rating somewhere. From tests I ran with the games that I own that have Nintendo WFC features, I suggest something like that: I'm not sure where we could put this, but my only suggestion for now is having a entry in the Infobox of games that have WFC capabilities. For functionalities that may need a NAND dump (like getting DLC) we could "rate" as good and then put a small note or tooltip. What about that? Jhonn (talk)
 * Broken: none of the WFC features work
 * Unsupported: titles servers down (like MH3)
 * Good: titles that have an online mode that works but some features (like Friend Codes or DLC) doesn't work or have other issues
 * Perfect: titles that works in Dolphin with all WFC features it has
 * I'm not really a fan of this idea. It's a lot of information to deal with and will be very hard to maintain. Most users won't bother with it. Will you maintain it? - MaJoR (talk) 04:37, 14 October 2013 (CEST)
 * I was also hoping to capture some further detail of titles with online features. Though many titles are covered by the "Online" modes indicator, that only covers titles supporting multiplayer online play. Some additional infobox field to show network characteristics is probably a good idea. I'd agree with major though, that we should be careful regarding the level of detail we go into. Kolano (talk) 06:05, 14 October 2013 (CEST)
 * What about something like the ratings template? You put a number in a template subpage with the name of the game and then in the infobox we display a small text (rather than stars). I'm willing to maintain games that I own (if we proceed implementing this), but if only one person is going to handle this then the amount of work needed to implement the functionality doesn't compensate. Any other idea to simplify this to an easier way of managing? Jhonn (talk)
 * The rating list you have above may be OK, though we need to differentiate between what you've listed as "Unsupported" above, and games that actually don't support online features at all, I'd lean towards a -1 "Servers offline" rating, 0 for unsupported, and 1-3 for supported titles. We likely should also include a notes field to provide details of issues for the Broken/Good categories (it would also be good to disallow "Perfect" ratings if issues were noted. (I also revised the text above to use "title" rather than "game", we need to remember that not all Wii software titles are games).
 * One other thing we may need to account for are tiles who's original servers are offline, but replacement servers are provided for. Though, unlike the many PC titles replacement servers have been provided for, GameCube/Wii titles may be too undocumented to provide separate server support for, it may be something the Dolphin team will want to support in future.Kolano (talk) 04:52, 15 October 2013 (CEST)

4.0 is released!
Alright! 4.0 has been released! Well, you know what that means: CLEAN UP. Removing all of those old crossed out problems. I have a few other things I want to bring up though. Well I've been up to my neck helping out with the 4.0 transition, from the logo and themes to testing and helping out with a video that will be released soon. I'll be resting for a few days before I help out on a large scale. So what do you think about the things I brought up? - MaJoR (talk) 17:48, 22 September 2013 (CEST)
 * New Logo - Yep, we have a new logo! Made by yours truly. It comes in blue and grey, so I feel like I need to ask... do you guys think blue is better, or do you like the grey?
 * 3.5-367 notice - We need to change that to a 4.0 announcement! Maybe I'll go ahead and do that.
 * How to update Dolphin, Installing Dolphin - Delete them, or remake them to fit the global user directory changes?
 * D3D9 is going to go away. VERY SOON. That's going to be a royal nightmare for us... I'm not sure there is any preparations we can do. How do you guys think we should handle the transition?


 * OK, a few things here...
 * The new logo seems to be less tall than the old one, resulting in an excessive gap beneath the logo and the side-navigation.
 * I'd be OK with the blue logo version here, the Wiki could use some color.
 * We also need to consider revisions to the compatibility boxes to allow them to display the recent revision history in more detail (i.e. each px of the graph now covers 3+ revisions, so tightly packed release issues can get hidden. We also need to account for converting the 4.0-xxx release indicators into the simpler release counts used.
 * I revised the notice to use a proper link rather than just text URL. Not clear if there was a reason it had been done that way, or delroth was just unfamiliar with the wiki markup.
 * Regarding DX9, we should be able to add a check into the Config template to identify pages indicating DX9 stuff. But it will be a big clean-up, and likely to lead to feuds with users on XP, that can't use newer DX's.

Kolano (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2013 (CEST) ---
 * I like more the blue version of the new logo...
 * Should we consider deleting Performance Guide too, or perhaps pointing to Dolphin manual instead? How to update Dolphin it's kinda useless now, since you just need to obtain a new copy and by default everything will work because of the global directory. Installing Dolphin could be updated with instructions for stable releases and development builds...
 * The only issue I see with DX9 removal is updating the wiki, any user running Windows XP with Dolphin probably have a GPU that meets the minimum requirements for running the emulator, so they can just use OpenGL. Also, Windows XP support from Microsoft will be ended soon (April 2014), so, Dolphin users with WinXP will have to deal with it (updating the system or using an older version -- a lot of softwares stopped being updated from WinXP already)
 * Couldn't we ask delroth to just run a bot that searches all game pages for entries with   and delete them?

I'm going to help soon, right now my highest priority is updating the (still unofficial) portable version at PortableApps.com - Jhonn (talk) --- A critical issue slipped into 4.0: Single Core crashes. So they are releasing 4.0.1 in a few hours to replace 4.0. This is certainly going to throw a wrench into the version compatibility graph...
 * Blue logo - Cool. Tomorrow I'll ask delroth to update it. As for the spacing, the logo is trimmed, so it's on mediawiki's side. Honestly, I like it. The logo has prominence that way.
 * The Dolphin Manual isn't completed yet, sadly. With 4.0 and that pesty "real life" hitting me at the same time I've been crazy busy, and so has shonumi. :( We'll need to patch the performance guide yet again, even though it's stupid. - MaJoR (talk) 04:28, 23 September 2013 (CEST)

Category Format Clean-up
Categories have been put together in a fairly ad-hoc way. That has resulted in a few issues...
 * Overlaps in categories for different usage: Arcade platform vs Arcade genre
 * Different capitalization styles (All initial caps vs just first initial cap)
 * General sloppiness across category naming

I think I'd like to clean such up, standardizing to something like ":" so we'd have categories like "Platform: Arcade", "Genre: Arcade", "Publisher: Nintendo", "Input Supported: Wii Remote", "Initial Release Year: 2011". A lot of such can be performed with changes to Infobox, but some things like the platform/image categories would require many edits. I'd probably want some automated assistance with that. Feedback would be appreciated.Kolano (talk) 08:28, 5 September 2013 (CEST)


 * I agree with this. Just the result of lots of manual editing over time. I trust you'll handle it well. If I see anything I don't like I'll whine. When you email delroth the instructions give us a headsup here please. - MaJoR (talk) 12:28, 6 September 2013 (CEST)


 * OK, initial change associated with this has been enacted. Will take a while for the initial template changes to percolate through the wiki. Should cover most of the categories outside of platforms, and any other direct in-page ones. Will likely start on the red-link elimination tomorrow (i.e. the 17th), not sure if there is any automation that could help with such. A few related issues:
 * One issue with the revised category names, is that although things still sort alphabetically. Since all categories in a group are prefixed with the same term, they no longer group together by letter. I think I may revise things to use a postfix instead to address that. Such will make the global categories listing messier (since groups won't group together), but would improve the display of individual category pages. Please let me know your thoughts.
 * When we transition the Platform categories, do we just want to move toward listing the platforms in the infobox, rather than as a separate item? Kolano (talk) 09:00, 17 September 2013 (CEST)
 * Fine with me. I don't know anything regarding the revised category names grouping though, sorry. - MaJoR (talk) 04:58, 18 September 2013 (CEST)

This is almost complete now. Unfortunately I failed to add categories to the newly created categories, so I need to do one more pass to add appropriate ones in. Kolano (talk) 04:50, 17 October 2013 (CEST)

OK, this should be done now, outside of the platform migration to the infoboxes. Kolano (talk) 07:20, 17 October 2013 (CEST)

Infobox Enlinkening
OK, I think I'm about done with my edits to how infobox generated categories are handled and the addition of linkages to those generated categories. Sorry for the recent spew of edits related to such without much discussion. Please do let me know your thoughts. Kolano (talk) 06:11, 5 September 2013 (CEST)


 * Looks good to me. I don't know about the internals of how it works, but I don't care about that :P. From an end user standpoint it looks and works great. That's what counts. - MaJoR (talk) 12:28, 6 September 2013 (CEST)

Error with slash in Search
Using a forward slash in a search term (i.e. "NA/EU") results in a set of Wiki errors... "Warning: preg_match [function.preg-match]: Unknown modifier ')' in /home/dolphin-emu/apps/wiki/includes/search/SearchEngine.php on line 1402" Kolano (talk) 22:01, 28 August 2013 (CEST)

Mass redirecting gameids
Just a quick heads up: I've been running a script to automatically add about 500 missing gameid redirects (thanks to skid_au for the data!). See https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&hidebots=0. It should be safe but if you notice anything weird, please tell me so I make it better next time.

I'll also squash some double redirects while I'm at it. delroth (talk) 14:16, 25 August 2013 (CEST)

Global Problems behavior
Ok, I worked on it today and now I have something to show to you, so we can decide if the template is going to work that way and so see if everyone agree. First of, the template is still WIP, so, the current code is messy and the documentation is missing. I'm having a lot of issues with empty space, but I'll try to fix that soon. Right now, the template are working this way:
 * Global Problems of all VC pages are shown in the Main Virtual Console page.
 * Specific problems of that platform are shown in the list of that platform.
 * In the lists, the Global Problems section is ALWAYS shown, even if no problems exist.
 * In the game pages, the "Global Problems" section are shown only if at least 1 global VC problem or 1 platform specific global problem exist. Otherwise this section is hidden.
 * The Global Problems section in a game page first list the platform specific issues and after that the global VC issues of GlobalProblems/VirtualConsole, like this:

Active platform-specific issue 2
[...]

Active global VC issue 2
[...]

Fixed platform-specific issue 2
[...]

Fixed global VC issue 2
[...]

Fixed global VC issue N
It's a little redundant but this design make sure that all Dolphin users will see these problems, even people who jumps directly in the game page through the Wiki context menu present in Dolphin itself. Furthermore, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is already using the global template and I'm going to remove that "test issue" from the VC global templates soon, I need it for testing. Before committing this to the other platforms, I'll (try to) fix all spacing problems and make the template source more readable, but I need feedback here, any objection or suggestion? Jhonn (talk)
 * Forgot something, the placement: Global Problems should be before or after the Problems section? Jhonn (talk)
 * Before. The Problems section for most VC games will be blank, and 9 times out of 10 it will just be the Global Problems. Furthermore, it mirrors how it is on the game lists. Oh, and don't forget the helpers for new users. - MaJoR (talk) 06:32, 10 August 2013 (CEST)

So Jhonn, finished? It seems like you got it; it's fully functional and very easy to use. As far as I'm concerned, add documentation and you're done. Anything else you want to do with it before we put it everywhere? - MaJoR (talk) 10:18, 12 August 2013 (CEST)
 * Yep, finished... I'll add the search-and-replace strings in Project:To Do, so you could ask delroth for the script. If the automation fails, then tell us and we go in the manual way. Jhonn (talk)
 * Done. A very small amount of pages already had GlobalProblems inclusions - these weren't modified, even when they were obsolete. I unfortunately don't have a list. delroth (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2013 (CEST)
 * Thanks delroth. Only two pages already had the GlobalProblems (I commited manually to test), so, no worry. I reverted some pages that we're using Arcade category but weren't Virtual Console Arcade games, so everything is perfect now. Thanks again... Jhonn (talk)

Global Problems Template
Splitting this to get more attention. Well, I started coding the global problems template for VC games, and before I continue the work, I need to get opinion of you guys regarding how we'll handle the universal problems in every VC game page. First off, I fell this necessary because some users just jump directly in the game page through context menu option in the emulator or by the forum thread, so, we need to add the universal problems in the game page too. Regardless of what design we choose, we'll need to add a template call in every VC game page (yes, it's a booooring job that has to be done -- at least there aren't to much VC game pages created). But before I continue working in the template, we need to decide how we'll show this, and I have two suggestions: first, calling the template without an argument (eg. in a game page) create a section named "Global Problems", and parse the problems for that system. The second one, is adding the template call after the specific problems, this way, the global problems will just appear together with the specific problems. Do you guys have any other suggestion? What you prefer? I vote for the first one... Jhonn (talk)

I could ask delroth I asked delroth about making a script for putting the global problems template into every VC game page. As soon as we get thing settled on how it should be used, he should be able to commit the global problems to every VC game page. To that end we might want to double check as make sure all the virtual console games are in Category:Virtual Console, as that's what I was going to suggest he use (unless you guys have a better idea?). As for the options, I vote for the first one. A "global problems" section in each game would be better; having the global problems inline could cause some confusion. - MaJoR (talk) 09:35, 3 August 2013 (CEST) - Ok, if we're going to use the first suggestion, we'll need to add the following in every VC game page:

This way I can code the template to only show the Global Problems section if there are global problems for that platform so I can get rid of the  -- any objections?

About the automation, I'm unsure if we can use Category:Virtual Console, because the text above changes from platform to platform... We need to replace with N64 in N64 VC game pages, SNES in SNES, etc. Do we have category based on platform for the VC titles? If this doesn't work, I'm ok in doing this manually (we haven't a lot of VC game pages created, anyway)

Furthermore, the global problems will be shown before or after the specific problems? I think before is better, so we have Global Problems section (it'll show only if there are at least one global problem for that platform), and after that, the regular Problems section like we have now. What do you guys think? Jhonn (talk)

You're right. Fortunately, every VC game has two categories: Category:Virtual Console games and the system category, say, Category:SNES games. We can use that to pick between the platforms. And I agree with you: putting global problems before the standard problems is probably the best option. Well, it seems like we agree, I don't know where Kolano is though... Well, I'd prefer to wait until Kolano chimes in. Or at least just wait a couple days then go with it.

Well, once we get everything settled, I can send delroth an email about the script. Or perhaps it's better if you do it Jhonn? You are more involved with the template. - MaJoR (talk) 04:36, 4 August 2013 (CEST)
 * Well, I'll just wait a bit more to get Kolano opinion and then finish the template. After that we see how we'll handle the migration... Jhonn (talk)


 * I'm fine with the plan here. Though having some automated way of updating the VC pages would be nice, really there are rather few VC pages in total as of yet (only ~80), so a manual update wouldn't be too hard. Kolano (talk) 08:39, 4 August 2013 (CEST)

Alright, everyone seems fine with it, so I'm going to send the email to delroth. I'll recommend he use the system categories to know what to put where, and tell him to place it above the problems section. If anyone wants to do it manually they can just do it first. - MaJoR (talk) 06:13, 6 August 2013 (CEST)

Recent Discussions
Below is listed only what was discussed last month. You can search the archive for what was discussed since General Discussions page was created.

Universal problems are buried
I know VC titles are pretty low on the totem pole, but they are pretty cool to play in Dolphin. That said, they are kind of a crapshoot. There are a lot of problems with these games. NES, SNES, Genesis, they all have universal issues spanning every game. But uh, the universal problems are only on the system pages. The virtual console page shows every title, and people just click the game in that and boom. It's convenient, but no one goes to the system pages where the universal problems are. No one ever sees the universal problems. So, I have two solutions I'd like to propose to fix this.


 * 1. A grid of buttons for systems on the Virtual Console page, sort of like the mainpage's. That way people can easily access pages for systems, and see the universal problems and stuff. Of course I'll have to dust off that gamepage project and get them up to snuff, but eh, I can do that.
 * 2. A universal issues template. Considering it would only have to copy paste text, it should be pretty simple. The only issue I can forsee is integrating it in with the layout of the pages (like how various problems have links in the nav). Might be worth ignoring that however. But yea, ideally, all we'd have to do is put onto all the SNES game pages, and bam, we have a super easy way to change the universal problems across the board.

Any thoughts on these ideas? For or against? - MaJoR (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2013 (CET)


 * Hm, I liked... I can help with the templates, and if we change the main Virtual Console page to grid of buttons (like the main page), I can delete some crappy templates we've around here (some unfinished work that I didn't touch in the last 2 years -- completely useless now). Also, since we're going to do major changes in the main Virtual Console, we could implement also an infobox with common information about the service, like the infobox we got in GameCube and Wii page. Regardless of what we do, I'm in with this whole thing - Jhonn (talk) 22:29, 5 March 2013 (CET)


 * I'd also be on board for both changes. Sub-pages for VC systems will eliminate some of the template issues there (i.e. one can't edit the lists from the main page), and generating templates will allow universal issues to be universally shown (though some special handling may be needed to get the edit links right). I'd also suggest adding sub-links below the "Virtual Console" link in the sidebar for the system pages, which would make them more quickly accessible. Kolano (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2013 (CET)

I hadn't forgotten about this, I just hadn't gotten around to implementing it. That ends now :D. First up is making the Virtual Console list use thumbnails. See Virtual Console/sandbox1. There are a couple of things I'd like you guys' input on. Random block of text so my signature isn't in the bullet points and it's easier to comment beneath me. - MaJoR (talk) 18:34, 19 July 2013 (CEST)
 * Thumbnail arrangement - I took a very different approach here than what the main page does. I really like it. It's much more flexible, able to span all of a giant widescreen monitor or compress down to be easy to use on a phone in portrait. And it matches the nature of the text. I like it so much I'd like to use it on the mainpage if possible. What do you guys think? I could always go with what the mainpage does instead (centered, 5x2 arrangement).
 * Arcade versus Virtual Console Arcade - Nintendo calls it the "Virtual Console Arcade", but here on the wiki it's always been just "Arcade". Any objections to changing it to Virtual Console Arcade? I'd rather like to do that.
 * The Platforms template lacks a lot of options that I could use. See Virtual Console. Any objections if I add a whole bunch?

The revised VC page looks nice...
 * It may be better if the images were centered rather than right aligned. I think it should be possible to set that up and still have them flow to an arbitrary width.
 * I had generally preferred to just use "Arcade" since that better aligns with our naming of the other platforms (i.e. it's not "Virtual Console Sega Master System"), but if you want to align with the Nintendo naming that's fine with me.
 * Not quite clear what other options you are after, we seem to cover most of what's used on the Wikipedia sidebar...
 * Launch date would seem to be equivalent to our "Retail availability"
 * The "platform" option seems pointless for us, since we'll only cover Wii VC titles.
 * We have a website option

Kolano (talk) 17:17, 20 July 2013 (CEST)


 * NICE! I had wanted to center it, but I didn't know how to center it while keeping the flexible width. Thanks. Any problems with applying this to the main page? - MaJoR (talk) 19:11, 20 July 2013 (CEST)


 * Done Kolano (talk) 21:52, 20 July 2013 (CEST)

- I liked the changes. For me we already can take the new page out of the sandbox and replace the older one. For the Arcade vs Virtual Console Arcade, I also prefer just "Arcade". Furthermore, the new grid we're using in Virtual Console and Main page could be tweaked a bit more so all of them use the same size.

Since we started changing the things related to virtual console pages and that I'm getting my vacation soon, the chances of starting the creation of the global problems template this week are pretty high, but I'm not sure how they'll work. Before I start, let me expose what I'll try to code (and let me know of any objection):


 * In the main page VC we'll have a simple call to . This call will show the global problems (like we have now).
 * In every subpage (N64, SNES, etc.) we'll have a simple call to . This call will show the global problems of that specific platform.
 * (Just an idea right now) In every VC game page, we'll have a call to the system, like the item above... This way we show the global problems in the game page too. Im not sure in this item, maybe we get too much redundancy?

Let'me know what you guys think, I'll do my best to make this template this week... Jhonn (talk)


 * Well, I disagree with you guys on the arcade, as "Virtual Console Arcade" is an exception to the systems rule, but alright, I won't fight on it. I have no idea what I'll do with that page though, if I can't use the virtual console arcade thumbnail and description... Anyway, as for the VC page, I'll go ahead and port it over. I don't know what to do about the grid size problem. I tried a bunch of stuff and didn't really get anywhere; it's still slightly off. Any suggestions? Lastly, the global problems template: You didn't mention where the editing of these problems takes place. I assume it would be in template:globalproblems? The template has all the systems global problems in one place, and you can edit them all there? As for having universal problems on each gamepage, we'll have to talk about that. It is reduntant, but without it users that just do a search to bring up games (a very common practice) would never see the global problems. I'm in favor of it (if we can get it to work well), so let's see what Kolano thinks and go from there. - MaJoR (talk) 05:27, 22 July 2013 (CEST)


 * Oh yea, almost forgot. I'm not going to mess with the virtual console ratings templates. I know the plan is to make it so you can just hit edit a VC system page and edit it from there, just like you can on the Wii and GC pages, but uh, I'm afraid that if I do it I'm going to break everything. And honestly, with the compatibility page on the main site linking to those templates, it probably will regardless. When changing it double check the main page's compatibility page, and if they break send a PM to delroth about it, or let me know and I'll tell him. - MaJoR (talk) 05:40, 22 July 2013 (CEST)

- The VC ratings templates can (and probably will) be deprecated as soon as we merge the new page from sandbox, because the only functionality they provided was the master list in our old VC page (that is result of unfinished work: ugly and can't be easily sorted). I can do the move, but I prefer to wait the new VC page getting out of the sandbox. After that, the lists would work the same way of GC and Wii lists.

About the global problems, yes, we add the problems one time in globalproblems and the template code does the linking. We can have sections for problems of every platform and global problems all in the main globalproblems or have subsections for every platform (globalproblems/NES, globalproblems/N64, etc -- like what we do with navigation template). Jhonn (talk) - Kolano (talk) 18:58, 22 July 2013 (CEST)
 * The VC page needs a revision to keep the centering appropriate when part of the grid overlaps the sidebar. Should be similar to changes applied for similar reasons to the Version Compatibility graphs.
 * If we reduce the padding there to 2px, we probably should do so on the home page too.

MediaWiki upgrade
Hey everyone. Working on upgrading MediaWiki in order to keep up with the latest version. I'm also going to work on a DB engine migration soonish (in the next few hours). Ignore the errors you see for the next 12h. If you notice some errors 12h from now, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix them ASAP. delroth (talk) 22:16, 18 June 2013 (CEST)
 * After 3h spent moving data from MySQL to PostgreSQL and fixing errors (seriously, that DB had so much crap in it... constraints were completely broken because MySQL did not enforce them), everything should be working again. If you notice any error, please send me an email (delroth@gmail.com), I might not look at this page. delroth (talk) 01:27, 19 June 2013 (CEST)
 * And if it's a design/visual issue, try to Ctrl+F5 and Ctrl+R before reporting the error. delroth (talk) 01:32, 19 June 2013 (CEST)

Started noticing errors when updating images on the site. Some examples: I saw some SQL related errors when I updated BillysBootCampWii.jpg, but couldn't replicate them. Kolano (talk) 10:20, 20 June 2013 (CEST)
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=File:ZumbaFitnessCoreWii.jpg
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=File:BillysBootCampWii.jpg
 * http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=File:CrashOfTheTitansWii.jpg
 * Fixed delroth (talk) 13:50, 29 June 2013 (CEST)

Also: started to move everything Dolphin related over SSL. All accesses to wiki.dolphin-emu.org should now be automatically redirected to https. If you notice any problem caused by that, please let me know (email). delroth (talk) 13:50, 29 June 2013 (CEST)

uDraw Wiimote / Inputs Handling
I read a bunch of reviews on the udraw games, and they all appear to be the same: The wiimote is not used any at all in the udraw games, it only provides power and connectivity. There is another accessory that works this way: the classic controller. Throughout the wiki, the classic controller is alone, and shown as just "Classic Controller" even though it requires a wiimote to power and provide connectivity. So, for that reason, I believe the udraw games should only have the udraw gametablet in the controller section. Any objections? - MaJoR (talk) 01:41, 21 May 2013 (CEST)

Not sure. Regarding the Classic Controller, I'd kind of want to list the Wii Remote as well as the Classic Controller. That seems to be the way it's handled now outside of a few Virtual Console titles, though that may be due those games providing Wii Remote input too. I do apologize about renaming GameTablet to just Tablet, which I did to align with the regex's in infobox that pick up on the string "uDraw Tablet". Since noticing it's official name is the uDraw GameTablet I feel it should be named that way, but didn't want to muck around with all the related pages last night (it is on my "to do" list though).

In general since, per my current understanding, even if one has a uDraw Tablet you also need a Wii Remote to play I'm disprone to not list it as well as the uDraw. Honestly, we need a better format to distinguish optional from non-optional accessories, since I think there are a number of games that have Wii Remote + Nunchuk, where the Nunchuk is actually optional. In these cases the Wii Remote isn't optional though, so I'm prone to list it. Kolano (talk) 06:44, 21 May 2013 (CEST)

Well, the way I view it is control combinations. That's what's actually useful. Wiimote + Nunchuk makes sense for games that use them both. But there is even a Wii game that uses just the nunchuk and ignores the wiimote entirely, and it lists only the nunchuk (unless you changed it and I didn't notice). The other approach is to list the devices, but that really sucks in games like smash brothers, which use a wide variety of combinations. So yea... Seems we disagree. What now? - MaJoR (talk) 09:49, 21 May 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, I'm not sure yet. Typically I've just been going by the listing on the rear of the NA/EU boxes that provides icons for each device supported. Beyond that I haven't been worrying about how the devices are used much, since it's hard to know exactly which control schemes are possible (i.e. is the nunchuk optional, can the nunchuk be used by itself, etc.) without the game. If there is a game that lists only the nunchuk now I would prefer to list it as "Wii Mote + Nunchuk", since I'd guess that's what the box would indicate. Maybe this could be resolved by providing separate input and control scheme rows, or perhaps just some clearer rules on how to indicate different control schemes (i.e. perhaps enable unbolding optional controls, though in this case the Wii Remote isn't really optional, and actually I'd guess based on how it slides into the uDraw that the buttons on the Wii Remote are used in games). These devices are different than things like the Wii Balance Board though, since they do use the Wii Remote for Bluetooth communication.

One good thing to capture, if we do try to tackle control schemes would be games that support sideways Wii Remotes vs standard use, since there are clearly Dolphin options related to such.Kolano (talk) 16:52, 21 May 2013 (CEST)

I looked up reviews on almost all of the udraw games. I couldn't find a single one that used the buttons on the Wii Remote. Reviewers even commented about this, for example asking why a platformer game was controlled with the stylus when there was a dpad right there. To my knowledge, the udraw games do not use the wii remote at all. And yea, I agree with you on the sideways wiimote bit. I never really found a way to handle it though. Well, I really like the control config setup. It's very useful. And it usually isn't that difficult to figure out "Wiimote and nuchuk" 99% of the time means "wiimote + nunchuk" for example. Well, perhaps we should move this to the general discussions page, and try to get Jhonn's opinion? - MaJoR (talk) 00:34, 22 May 2013 (CEST)

Well, I think we should list all required inputs. For example, Classic controller needs Wii Remote to function properly, so, list Classic Controller and Wiimote, the same for uDraw tablet. Also, my suggestion for required and optional inputs would be using icons for all inputs (even the optionals), something like what we have on WiiBrew wiki (here is an example -- the infobox has a lot of icons, we could get only input related ones). This "design" can also provide visual feedback about how many controllers are supported in multiplayer and if the game uses sideways wiimote, etc. This would require a major rewrite of the wiki pages, but I think it's our best bet, since we don't have a standard for input listings. Also, since we don't have a documented "standard" right now, we can create one now and list it in Project:Wiki conventions. Furthermore, the input icons used in WiiBrew are using Creative Commons license, we could use (or create our icons based on it) without copyright/licensing issues... Jhonn (talk)

I disagree on the required inputs bit. Especially for VC games and the like, it seems rather silly to list the Wii Remote when it does absolutely nothing at all ever for an entire class of games. Also, we have a standard, the combinations style is everywhere :P. Oh well, seems I'm outvoted on this. And it would be easier... Well, if we're going to have it just list the devices instead of combinations, what do we do with cases where things are complicated? The whole combinations system came about because of games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl where one device can perform multiple functions. Is there anyway to address this? - MaJoR (talk) 01:50, 25 May 2013 (CEST)

Well, in this case, List only uDraw Game Tablet and Classic Controller separated and add the combination system to all pages (to the VC games too). Whatever we do, add documentation to it somewhere to prevent future issues. Another option, if we're going to use the icons, is "merging" normal icons to represent combinations (like wiimote + nunchuck), but in this case, we leave Classic controller and uDraw as a separate icon, without combining them with wiimote... Jhonn (talk)

Forum Link Issues with Ampersand
It seems when content from the wiki is pulled into the forum ampersands in links are not escaped properly (i.e. "&" > "%26"). This causes the links to either be broken, or in some cases such as We Ski & Snowboard an entirely wrong page to be linked. Kolano (talk) 16:38, 23 April 2013 (CEST)
 * We should inform delroth, since the links works and are parsed correctly when we are in the wiki, this probably is an issue with the "wiki => forum" rendering engine. Jhonn (talk)
 * There is a bit of a bleh situation going on right now... delroth isn't available to be contacted. It will be a while. - MaJoR (talk) 22:04, 23 April 2013 (CEST)

DB Error
Getting a DB error uploading images...

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "UploadStash::stashFile". Database returned error "42703: ERROR: column "us_props" of relation "uploadstash" does not exist LINE 1: ...stash" (us_id,us_user,us_key,us_orig_path,us_path,us_props,u... ^ ".Kolano (talk) 08:42, 11 September 2013 (CEST)

This error is preventing me from adding a image to Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Might be related to the issue patched in, https://git.wikimedia.org/commit/mediawiki%2Fcore.git/8049aa338451fa96ae0ee527df15a7b1a2ca27a3, but I'm not sure. Kolano (talk) 19:27, 11 September 2013 (CEST)

Hello, I had this problem. It is a result of using Postgres. There was a bug reported, but I'm not sure that it ever got into the official bug tracker. You can read the discussion here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Thread:Project:Support_desk/postgres:_column_%22us_props%22_of_relation_%22uploadstash%22_does_not_exist I had to go into the database and run: alter table mediawiki.uploadstash add column us_props bytea null;

And then I also had to edit 'includes/upload/UploadStash.php' and change: 'us_props' => serialize( $fileProps ), to: 'us_props' => serialize( pg_unescape_bytea($fileProps) ),

And then if I wanted to upload DJVU files, I had to edit 'includes/media/DjVu.php': Change getMetaTree(...): try{ $tree = new SimpleXMLElement( $metadata );

To: try{ $tree = new SimpleXMLElement( $metadata ); } catch( Exception $e ) { $tree = new SimpleXMLElement( pg_unescape_bytea($metadata) ); }

Whoever said that Mediawiki works with PostgreSQL is wrong/lying.


 * Reproduced. Apparently it happens in any file with a space in the name. Which is weird, since that has worked for a long time, and I even did it just a little while ago. *shrug*. I notified Parlane, and he confirmed what the anonymous poster above said. As Parlane put it: "basically there is a fix in the pipeline but the pipes are moving slow as fuck ?". I guess we need to just avoid using spaces in filenames until mediawiki fixes this? - MaJoR (talk) 08:02, 7 January 2014 (CET)


 * Oh, that was awesome. Since the fix was already done and just not committed to mediawiki master, Matt_P just applied it himself. It's fixed :D. Give it a try Kolano. And thanks anonymous guy, whoever you are. - MaJoR (talk) 08:27, 7 January 2014 (CET)