Project:General Discussions

This page is meant to be a hub for general discussions about this wiki, its use and its 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.

Global Replacement Request
A spot to capture global replacement requests:
 * == Problems == > == &lt;span title="Resolved problems are listed only for one prior release version."&gt;Current Problems&lt;/span&gt; ==: Aligning with wiki policies that purge older resolved problem reports. User:Kolano

Config Template Slight Wording Tweak
After having a talk with Kolano about having my confusion cleared up what should be included in the configuration section of each disc wiki page, I think the template should read "Only configuration options for the best accuracy where they deviate from defaults are listed" instead of "Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed" (without italics). Anyone agree? --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 21:11, 24 April 2015 (CEST)
 * Compatibility = accuracy, pretty much. This wiki uses the term compatibility because the word is used alway used to describe how well a game plays in an emulator. And the language is consistent and pervasive throughout the wiki and the site: "Compatibility Wiki" with "Compatibility Lists" (see the left sidebar) and "Compatibility Ratings". Even the main page has a compatibility section with compatibility ratings from this wiki! It's all tied into larger emulation concepts of what the word compatibility means for an emulator, and I think it's still a valid term. We could change it to accuracy just there for clarity, but then it becomes out of sync with the terminology in the rest of the wiki, which imo should remain compatibility. I'm not like completely opposed or anything, but I'm not really in favor of this idea. Anyone familiar with emulation should get what compatibility is pretty quickly. - MaJoR (talk) 08:44, 29 April 2015 (CEST)
 * As defined by Google: "A state in which two things are able to exist or occur together without problems or conflict." That doesn't describe accurate emulation because there are some problems even with that like speed loss. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2015 (CEST)

Formatting Suggestion for Compilation Discs
I noticed some articles, such as Intellivision Lives!, Sonic Mega Collection, and Interactive Multi Game Demo Disc 2001-10, are hard to read what the compilation consists of. I have worked on a table consisting of MediaWiki code and no templates that addresses that issue and I think I found a clear winner, found here taking Interactive Multi Game Demo Disc 2001-10 as a base. Should I start implementing this for every article about compilation discs contents or does the table need work? --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 23:52, 23 April 2015 (CEST)


 * It's Ok for me as it is now, my only requirement is converting your table into a template before implementing it everywhere: theoretically it's something we're gonna use in various pages (assuming everyone else agrees and we actually implement it), so, making it as a template allow us doing quick edits in the future that would reflect in every page using this box. - Jhonn (talk)

Performance Addition to Game Wiki Pages
As Kolano said in his edit, performance is not the goal of this wiki. The default settings are already the best balance of speed and compatibility, the wiki exists to help people know what those settings are and what they mean and to catalog problems. Users can break things on their own juuuust fine! While I'm at it, why did you place notes throughout the page? You aren't intending to have that in the live version are you? - MaJoR (talk) 17:11, 26 April 2015 (CEST)
 * It's a WIP, or RIP really (revision in progress), that I will propose along with the other proposal I am working on. The goal is to make pages easier to read and to appeal to both audiences; people who want performance over emulation accuracy and people who want emulation accuracy over performance. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 22:14, 26 April 2015 (CEST)
 * I think you are misunderstanding the approach the wiki is taking. Our job is not to balance speed and performance, but to inform the user of accuracy issues and problems and let them make their own decision on how to balance their own needs. This is the only way the wiki can remain objective - "balance" would vary depending on the user's system, the game and problem at hand, and their own personal opinion. If you make a post saying that a certain setup is the best balance, and I disagree with that, who's right? No one is! It's impossible to resolve, since it's all subjective. But if it's accuracy related, we can test it, confirm it, and apply it. By sticking to accuracy it gives us a reasonable way to make a reliable wiki, and the users can be informed about what a problem is, how to avoid it, and the costs it will take; allowing them to make their own decisions on whether those costs are worth it to them. That said, we do try to inform them of the costs, especially if it is something nasty like Single Core. - MaJoR (talk) 08:36, 29 April 2015 (CEST)
 * I think you misunderstanding what I am proposing. I am not proposing accuracy loss. I am proposing an additional section that documents performance tweaks as well as preserve the section for accuracy. To my understanding, the current way pushes accuracy as the forefront while performance is an afterthought. The performance tweaks are there, yes, but are "camouflaged". Somewhat harder to see. Look at the sandbox again. Maybe you will understand what I am suggesting. Most people will want to play their games with minimal distractions, not see how accurately Dolphin can emulate their favorite games. Some do want an accurate emulator. I'm proposing satisfying both parties, not just one or the other. I am not suggesting a middle ground either. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 09:28, 29 April 2015 (CEST)
 * I'm somewhat supportive of adding a performance tweaks section, but there would need to be some fairly strict guidelines on the sorts of things we'd capture there. For instance it may be nice to work out games that don't use EFB, and can safely disable EFB effects (something it might be nice to be able to effect via the game ini's actually). Having some coverage of issues raised by various performance tweaks might also help avoid those getting mixed in as reported bugs. There's also the subject of visual tweaks, where we might cover things like compatibility of AA / Antis-tropic / Force Filter settings (another thing it might be nice to be able to disable via ini) and/or provide a spot for HD texture pack details.
 * Per concerns already raised, we should take this slowly though to try to avoid it becoming messy. Kolano (talk) 09:48, 29 April 2015 (CEST)
 * Honestly I don't really see much point... Games that need DSP LLE are marked as such, those that need EFB to Ram are marked as such, so saying "this game is fine with EFB to Texture" is just redundant. This is why we removed config entries that recommended EFB to Texture and created the best accuracy rule in the first place. Well, that and people filling out a page with their favorite settings irregardless of how it broke things! The accuracy rule gave us a standard of objectivity that kept favorite settings and things that can be reproduced away from the wiki, and helped it be as useful as it is. Games that are ok without EFB is a valid point... if users could disable efb copies anymore! Most of the dumb settings like that have been removed. :P And if antialiasing or AF or something breaks something or is needed, it's already mentioned (see skyward sword). "Camouflaged" it may be, but all of the information is there, so honestly I think all of this is covered already by existing conventions. If a game needs something that's intensive, it's mentioned, and if it doesn't, use what runs fastest (which is already the default...) - MaJoR (talk) 02:51, 3 May 2015 (CEST)
 * On a final note, any performance additions to this wiki should follow the objectivity rule: they would have to measurable and reproducible. Part of my resistance to this idea is just how badly things were with performance in the past, because people would put things up saying it's "faster" and then we'd kill it for being dumb and they'd put it back insisting it is better and must be on the page! We were only able to clean that up by implementing the accuracy and objectivity concepts. So I'm definitely scared by all of this performance talk, as it is trying to bring back some of the things that let crap enter this wiki. While I am not very open to it, at the very least it would need to follow objectivity standards, and have a plan prepared ahead of time for dealing with "but these are the best settings!" people. ...and there is also the fact that we can't test every game and every post that comes through, and this performance thing could let users sneak more weird settings in since it's harder to understand performance impacts since it varies so much with hardware. Ok yea I'm still against it. But my point is, objectivity rules and preparations against ignorant users must be involved in this! - MaJoR (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2015 (CEST)
 * One thing I noticed that Dolphin doesn't do is have a reset button or something to restore default settings. Sure, there is dialog for the recommended setting if the user is unsure of the default setting, but no convenient button. If a button were implemented, you could use that to further enforce the importance of first testing with default settings vs. them deviating from the default settings where the game had bugs running under Dolphin. That way real bugs are filtered away from false bugs induced by the user. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 04:40, 10 May 2015 (CEST)
 * In general and in my opinion, Dolphin and its support pages aren't the most user-friendly I have used. It seems to be geared towards enthusiasts. I can use it and understand what I need to know to make the emulator work, but I don't know if the average user will understand like we do. That is the root concern I have and I am trying to address it one problem at a time and see what you guys think of the solution I came up with. I have a lot of practice with this in general. I hope to be of good help by providing valuable feedback! --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 04:40, 10 May 2015 (CEST)
 * Well... the goal of the wiki is to educate people, and we tell them how to do things, how to fix problems, etc etc while letting them make their own decisions on techniques and performance. And the data is kept objective so it can be repeatable and sustainable long term. Not every user is going to want to know why this or that does this and why it fixes this bug, but the emulator has many support mechanisms to help those users already. The wiki serves as the last part of a chain, not the first. GameINIs catch most things, the forums/irc/reddit and other support catches the rest, and then we inform the enthusiasts that provide support as well as users who want to learn and grow on their own. There are many layers of support, and we are the most technical. And that's ok! It is what wikis are best at: education. The wiki serves as a long term database of technical information regarding the impact of features and changes in the emulator and ways to work around various issues, something that none of the other support mechanisms can do effectively. I'm totally open to improving our ability to educate, but you need to understand our resistance: what we have works, and it was the first (if not the only, I don't know of any others) emulator wiki to achieve this kind of reliability. The Dolphin wiki has succeeded because of the users willing to learn and share that knowledge, but also because of the curators who have worked hard to develop rules and structures that foster the usefulness of the wiki and encourage users to contribute. The decisions we admins have made over the years, such as the objectivity/reproducibility standard, were made to create something that is reliable and informative to end users but sustainable to wiki editors and admins. It is a very careful balancing act, but it's working! So there is going to be some resistance when a single new person comes out of the blue and proposes sweeping changes. While that may be a little frustrating for you, please understand that we're trying to listen and understand the new ideas so we can incorporate things that will improve the wiki, but also protect the systems that have worked so that the changes improve the wiki and not make it worse. To that end, you have repeatedly said that you have worked in other sites that work better, but you have never shared them. If you could show them, it would really help us understand where you are coming from, and help us pick up good ideas from them on our own. Would you mind sharing those references? - MaJoR (talk) 09:51, 10 May 2015 (CEST)
 * I never mentioned I contributed to other websites the way you are implying. I have contributed, yes, but never pushed dramatic changes or ideas to how something could work better for a website. Usually it's already good as-is. The Dolphin website is the first time I felt I could do it more confidently. As for making things more user-friendly, they are mostly related to designing interfaces for sample programs I have made that I never made the source code public. I do have them, but I haven't really bothered to go through my various projects (big or small). I don't have a website to showcase them. I find designing a website from scratch cumbersome. If I have predesigned assets to work with and an easy drop-in system, like using Visual C# 2008/2010, then I can design something rather easily. It's like building with LEGOS vs. drawing a picture for me. LEGOS come easier for me. I have the pieces here on this website, just not the ability to create them. I just find the pieces are not being used most effectively. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 10:30, 10 May 2015 (CEST)

Game .ini Documentation?
This is kind of building off of the discussion had on Talk:Metroid_Prime_(GC) a year ago about gameini and its relevance to the wiki, but since I'm not talking about Prime in particular and that discussion is so old I'm going to post this here.

Gameini definitely needs documentation. I think everyone agrees with that. To your average user, it probably seems like magic that he starts his game and Dolphin starts changing settings all on its own before the game even starts, and there's really no mention of it anywhere that I've seen. It just sort of exists, and even as an outsider I've seen tension surrounding it, just from my own limited glimpses into Dolphin's development. There's confusion for developers and end-users, and it all stems (primarily) from a lack of proper understanding of what the gameini settings even do and why they're there in the first place for each particular game.

I'm thinking we could kill two birds with one stone here. What we have with the wiki is a really accessible, easily understandable format that's perfect for documenting something like this. Any undertaking to try and make sense of gameini is going to take TONS of effort and I understand that completely, but if it's going to be done, I think the best option is to do it in a setting like what we have here with the wiki. Here's my idea:

Under configuration right now, we list non-default settings. This is good, and it does its job well enough, but why not expand configuration to include current defaults from the gameini right next to the non-default settings? In a separate section of course, so it wouldn't be confusing trying to figure out what settings you need to change for the game. I'm thinking we could have an expandable window that defaults as closed so that if you're doing a quick scan through the page you wont be bombarded with twenty settings that would be useless to the standard end-user. With this comes some major pros, and also some major cons, and I'll list the ones I've thought of.

Pros:


 * Very easy to update, moreso than anything else on the wiki pages right now. Any user could use three clicks in the latest revision to get the gameini contents from the game's properties.


 * Helpful for developers. This would keep track of current default settings in a way that's visually appealing, right next to the game's title and picture AND right next to the non-default settings to show what needs to be changed in the ini, making it much simpler to find specific games and their current settings rather than going through a giant list of game IDs and trying to find the specific ID which is for his game, probably having to use an external website like gameTDB to look up the ID, AND making it easier to understand what settings need to be changed.


 * Helpful for users. With gameini settings being listed prominently, being on the game's wiki page, it'd start to familiarize users with what the gameini actually does, and why it has different settings, removing the voodoo magic stigma that plagues gameini settings right now.

Cons:


 * This would take TONS of manhours to set up initially, creating a new template with all the potential gameini settings and applying it to each and every game's page. There's not much you can do about that, but this is a problem not so much with the implementation in the wiki so much as it is a problem with how complex and expansive gameini is, and a problem anyone trying to document this would run into, which will only get worse as time goes on.


 * Games have multiple IDs, and different IDs can have (or even need) different settings, or be missing gameini entirely. I'm thinking for this, in the expandable window we could list the different IDs for the game horizontally on the top, and then the settings vertically on the side, making it into a grid of sorts. I don't know how difficult this would be to implement though in the template, but I'm thinking it could be done with some planning. However a user might accidentally edit the wrong column if he doesn't check his ID first, and nobody would know that the settings are wrong until they looked themselves for that specific ID. We'd need to specifically mention that before editing the user should double check the ID and make sure he's making his edits to the correct version.


 * Without enough people actually updating this, it could lead to more confusion than it already does. However I don't think this is as big of a problem as it seems since once again, anyone can check their accuracy with three clicks.

Other than that, I don't know. Like I've said twice this would be a huuuge undertaking, and I'm not suggesting we do it, like, today, but I'm thinking that with the right planning and some forethought we could definitely make this work. This will need a lot of feedback though, and I get that this idea is crazy, bordering on insanity, which is why I spent a full day thinking about it before posting this. - Xerxes (talk) 04:21, 7 December 2014 (CET)

Actually, we don't just list non-default settings. I've been making sure problems are added with a "fixed by X setting. This setting is enabled in the gameini, but if you open the graphics configuration window the problem may appear." And the configuration area usually has all of the settings, defaults or no. I think that's a good way to handle this. It documents it, without being so nuts as to have a "gameini template". I agree that GameINI documentation is important, as kosta doesn't seem very inclined to share the magic of what does what, but I don't think we need a massive overhaul - most of the information is already on the wiki in some form, and it's actually explained here. And since any pulling of gameinis would be entirely one way, and there is ZERO documentation in the gameinis, I don't recommend any tie in to the gameini database. I think the most important thing is for us to just adopt the above scheme as the official convention. and let time and constant work fill in the blanks. - MaJoR (talk) 08:11, 7 December 2014 (CET)

I understand what you mean, but there seems to be a disconnect here really. The Configuration template specifically states "non-default settings" and I've done cleanup of preset gameini settings before. I could go back and revert all those edits but right now the gameini information on the wiki is inconsistent at best and nonexistent the majority of the time, there's mentions of it here or there like on the Prime page but it's very loosely organized and generally not easy to understand at a glance (like the .ini files themselves). On the one hand, keeping every setting a game needs in Configuration is the best idea just in general for keeping track of the general state of different games' compatibility, but on the other hand it's confusing and may make new users do extra unnecessary work in Dolphin's config to get their games to run when those settings get overridden by the ini anyways. The template would allow for these settings to be clearly defined, separate from the non-default configuration, without interfering with the rest of the page's contents or cluttering Configuration/Problems with settings most users won't need to change or even know needed to be changed in the first place. We don't need to start off by adding it to every page on the wiki, maybe add it here or there as a sort of trial run for mainstream games with well documented required settings currently set by the ini, and if it doesn't pan out we can ditch it.

Or we could start labelling settings inside of the current Configuration template if they're preset by the gameini or not, though this would contradict with the global explanation for Configuration on every page of the wiki. Maybe it could be done as simply as adding a checkmark/X column to the configuration on the left side, checkmark for preset, X for not preset, or something to that effect. In the end it doesn't matter what way it's decided to do this but I think there should be some common agreement (I don't want to say policy, but maybe) on how exactly to go about explaining that settings are needed but set by default, because there doesn't really seem to be any common ground from one game's page to another when it comes to this. - Xerxes (talk) 08:56, 7 December 2014 (CET)

Remember what the wiki conventions say?

"These are all "common law" concepts; no one has ever set in stone how these things work, they are simply what has grown out of the wiki over its many years of existence. And they will continue to evolve as the wiki grows, and this page will be updated periodically to reflect the changes that have occurred. These conventions are not "rules" in any sense of the word, but guidelines, instructions, and help for those new to the wiki."

The non-default standard was created before the gameini system. It was created because the wiki had tons of "use EFB to Texture for speed!" things, or people just listing every setting in their emulator on a game page because it worked for them. ICK. The rules are fluid and change as circumstances change. And the circumstances have changed since that concept was enacted. The wiki needs to change with it. And that's where the non-standardization has come from - when something is not working with the current standard, things get messier and weird. The current standard isn't working, and so other ideas come in to fit the moment, and it gets mushy. It's one of the first signs that we need to start doing some tweaks. And don't worry about global explanations in the templates, all it takes to change them is consensus.

Regarding the config area, I don't think leaving things that the gameinis override is really an issue. Most users only come to the wiki when an problem occurs, and want answers as to why that problem exists. If the user is opening the graphics configuration out of habit and needs the wiki to get them to set it in the GUI to stop the habit, I'm all for it. Still, some changes to the config template might be good. some way to show gameini and non-gameini settings would be good. Unfortunately that is difficult to track and maintain, however. Kosta just does what he does and that's it. Unfortunately, the only simple solution is to just list everything the game needs, gameini or no, which is essentially what many pages already have. I have no problem with that though, but I would prefer a more elegant solution. As for problems, just list the problem out, and then say "setting set by default in the game ini but can occur under X" seems fine to me. The problems area is the best way to document bugs that the gameini overrides, since it gives us plenty of room to explain it.

Btw, any change to the templates needs to be global. That's just how the dolphin wiki is. But we can set up test pages and test templates to work out kinks.

Oh, and I would appreciate it if you reverted those cleanups. You jumped the gun a little bit there to talk about this issue after killing a bunch of stuff.

- MaJoR (talk) 12:11, 7 December 2014 (CET)|

Fine with me. I have no problem at all reverting the edits, it'll just clutter the recent changes page a bit. One of the reasons I started this topic was because I was starting to find a lot of config stuff that was preset in the ini and I stopped purging them to get some feedback on a better way to do this, and suggest an idea (which I admit isn't perfect in the slightest). I'll try and add notes whenever possible to the Problems section explaining each issue following that format, but it'll probably take me a full day or two just to do all that writing.

I still think there's potential in a new config template or at least some kind of formalization of how this is done, whether it's through the Problems section or its own unique section, but like I said I'm not really in favor for any one plan and I was mostly throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Personally the way I've used the wiki for years is to check a new game I'm going to run in Dolphin and see what the general consensus is and what settings it needs or doesn't need before I play, I've never really been reactionary so I didn't consider that viewpoint at all. I still think this is a particularly important place that the wiki could be improved though but for right now if leaving settings in gameini and making note of them in Problems is the way it's being done, that's how I'll do it until there's some better infrastructure in place for this.

That was easier than expected. Most of my changes to configuration were outdated LLE requirements, so I only had a few pages to revert. But I'll keep to this format in the future if you think the pages I changed back look OK. - Xerxes (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2014 (CET)

Regions Consistency
I think we should shorten the region code for Australia and Russia to AU and RU. There is currently no consistency with the others(JP,NA,EU,KO) being two letter codes. Zephyrsurfer (talk) 09:48, 8 November 2014 (CET)

MD5 / GameID capture
We should probably capture/list the GameIDs and valid MD5s for games to aid in avoiding issues related to bad dumps, and providing accurate regional/version release information. There are a few things we'd need to work out for such though:
 * A source of info, Redump.org lists valid MD5's for GC discs and GameTDB provided them for GC discs and a subset of Wii discs (though it's unclear of the source of the Wii ones or if they can be confirmed as valid).
 * How to capture the data: We'll likely need some new templates / data structures to do so.

Adding this section for future discussion so we can hopefully eventually move forward with such. Kolano (talk) 07:58, 29 September 2014 (CEST)

I'm in with that. I suggest implementing this in a similar way to the Ratings, that way we can reuse the MD5 hashes across wiki templates. Something like Template:MD5/Sample_Game with the hash in plain text may do the trick. Not sure where we could get MD5 for Wii games, GameTDB has a small number of hashes for Wii games - Jhonn (talk)


 * Yeah, that came up in the discussion on IRC last night. We can get a near complete set of them for GC titles from Redump.org if needed though GameTDB likely has the same set for those, but those for Wii titles seem to be less available (and possibly unconfirmed where they do exist). Kolano (talk) 00:22, 30 September 2014 (CEST)

I'm a little worried about this, to be honest. We have no way to confirm MD5s, so essentially we'll be relying on our sources, which are incomplete and may be wrong themselves. I'm not against the idea, just, I wish there was a way to be sure. A Wii homebrew program or something to calculate MD5s to build from on our own perhaps? I don't know. Any time we put up information that can't be verified, it makes me nervous. It could be wrong and we'd neeeever know it. - MaJoR (talk) 08:05, 2 October 2014 (CEST)


 * If this gets implemented, which I'm for, could we record if it's a SL or DL disc as well? Zephyrsurfer (talk) 10:18, 12 November 2014 (CET)

OK, so I found today that although there is no dat file publicly available indexing Wii discs at this time, Redump.org does have one. Apparently the situation is that it's only being distributed to registered dumpers. I was able to find copies of it from early in 2014 via this set of archives. In any case that's probably as close as we'll come to known "valid" ids, and we probably should try to find a more up to date copy. Kolano (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2014 (CET)

Should the infobox template have a section for known good MD5 checksums for each game? Dolphin has an MD5 evaluator function built-in the properties window of the game you right-click on. Let's say for Super Mario Sunshine, the template lists each unique checksum for each region; one for NTSC-J, NTSC-U, and PAL when you dump them with CleanRip. CleanRip has gc.dat and wii.dat files that is really an XML. The Wiki redirects to the game page through game IDs so a custom script bot could easily automatically fill in the thousands of MD5 checksums using the XML attributes found in the gc.dat and wii.dat files. This would be good to ward off bug reports that rely on bad dumps of games with bug reports that rely on good dumps of games. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 08:52, 1 May 2015 (CEST)


 * So it seams we may have a source for MD5s. Kolano (talk) 17:32, 1 May 2015 (CEST)
 * Oh! Didn't see this discussion. I even searched for MD5 before posting my idea! --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 23:34, 1 May 2015 (CEST)
 * Further digging into ripping Wii discs, I found out that some games are not in the XML, like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and The Sims 3. I could not find their generated MD5 values in the XML or their titles. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) 04:45, 10 May 2015 (CEST)

3D Support
Now that Dolphin has proper 3D support, we need to figure out a way to deal with 3D related problems. Me and JMC47 have been talking about what to do for a while, and uh, well, I kind of forgot to brought it up here. So here we are. Since we are not just limited to 3D vision, yet most of our testing (what little there is) will be on 3D vision, it's a lot of limitations already. My main issue with 3D support as a whole is that we are going to have very few reports on this, just on the popular games, so putting it in it's own section on each game or just in the problems area seems weird to me. That, and if a 3D vision error comes up (see the recent edit in NSMBW), is it 3D vision, or an underlying issue that would affect all 3D? And since it only affects an enhancement that very few users can even use, does it belong in the problems area at all?

Here is my proposal - a dedicated page for 3D Support. The page would have instructions for set up (all platforms), as well as a listing of game test results and any texture hacking/cheating required and problems encountered. While I kind of wish we had a method for letting the test results just go into the source game and then collect all testing entries with a 3D field in them into this single page but uh, I don't know how to do that. Regardless, the point of having it all together is that people will actually be able to FIND it, and we don't have to worry about random outdated 3D stuff being spread all over the place. Win win.

What do you guys think? - MaJoR (talk) 08:20, 3 August 2014 (CEST)


 * I liked the concept, but I'm unsure on how to grab the testing entries... Not sure if there's a way to share testing entries between pages without needing major rewrites in testing template code. - Jhonn (talk)


 * I'd presume Major's intent was that only 3d related test results would appear there, so the need to share results between pages would be minimized. Honestly the appropriate way of handling this would be to implement something like the current rating templates to allow things to be shared between pages, but I have the feeling no one is really willing to deal with the setup/maintenance cost related to such. At the moment, as Major indicates, I think we may be best off with a separate page devoted to 3d, with a separate listing of games only when they had specific 3d problems. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but I would guess most issues would be purely game related and would still appear on the game pages. Some issues, related to the games not providing appropriate 3d information, due to them presuming they are displayed on a 2d device, would appear on the 3d description/issues page.


 * I guess my opinion here is that, if we had some buy-in enabling the sorts of mass edits needed to create/embed 3d config/issues templates across pages I'd prefer that, but outside of that a centralized page is an OK way of handling it otherwise. (p.s. looking through the rest of the discussion here we have some cleanup to do.) Kolano (talk) 08:16, 5 August 2014 (CEST)


 * Yea that's pretty much the idea. Having it all in one place. The idea of having test entries and pulling them here too was just a side idea. The main thing is to have them in ONE PLACE. I'll set up a page and start experimenting with it. JMC47 has collected a ton of information and I'll be working with him on it. If you guys have a better idea than what I'm doing as I'm doing it please jump onto the talk page and point it out. I'm kind of winging it. - MaJoR (talk) 09:59, 7 August 2014 (CEST)

Global Problems Template
Well, just a reminder: when you add/remove a problem from some Global Problem template, it will not show the recent edit. After you're done, make sure to click "Edit" and then save the page again (without doing any change) one more time to force refresh the templates. It seems that just waiting the wiki server refresh the page isn't working, maybe because the extensive use of variables... Jhonn (talk)

Influx of Bot Generated Accounts
I think we had discussed previously the accounts that seem to be generated by bots of some sort. The number of accounts registered is starting to get a bit ridiculous, even if there are no follow-up spam posts. Is the captcha/other constraints used configurable enough that they could be modified to stem the flow a bit? Kolano (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2014 (CET)

It is configurable, but what do we do? It appears as though they have figured out our captcha trick for account creation but then get hit on the post captcha, so we just get tons of random accounts. But we don't even have access to IP addresses to find similarities for banning :(. Do you have any ideas? - MaJoR (talk) 09:52, 9 March 2014 (CET)

I'd have a feeling that things aren't targeting this wiki specifically. Adding some additional custom query, even if it didn't change with each registration, in addition to the standard one provided by the captcha tool might cut things down. Kolano (talk) 17:18, 9 March 2014 (CET)

Agreed. But I still need something more specific... Are you talking about a second captcha just for signing on? Or just a new custom query for our existing captcha system? - MaJoR (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2014 (CET)

Wouldn't a simple solution do it? E.g. adding the "you need to type in the name of the emulator here" bit that we use for editing articles to the registration, and/or adding another captcha? That wouldn't be too complicated to implement, and is a good first attempt: if it doesn't succeed, ok, we'll have to look into some more "advanced" options, if it does, yay, simple solution to the problem. incassum (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2014 (CET)

"you need to type in the name of the emulator here" is already in the registration process. - MaJoR (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2014 (CET)

What about using more questions (randomly selecting one of them each time) or using a captcha method based on mouse input only, like these simple jigsaw puzzle based? Right now I remember of KeyCaptcha, but AFAIK it isn't free... Jhonn (talk)

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)

Just adding a quick note here, that we likely need to run through the process that generated the GameID redirects initially again, as well as generally identifying where they are missing, since there are likely a variety of recently added games/pages without them now. Kolano (talk) 07:14, 7 November 2014 (CET)

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)