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.

Open Discussions

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 to make a script for putting the global problems template into every VC game page. It shouldn't be too difficult, and would save us a ton of time. He's on a trip, like a conference or something, so it would be a few days. 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)

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 {{universalproblems|SNES}} 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 {{Template:Universalproblems 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.

• 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 wikipedia:Virtual Console. Any objections if I add a whole bunch?

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)

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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)

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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 {{globalproblems}}. This call will show the global problems (like we have now).
• In every subpage (N64, SNES, etc.) we'll have a simple call to {{globalproblems|<insert system here>}}. 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)

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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)

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• 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.

Kolano (talk) 18:58, 22 July 2013 (CEST)

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:

• 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

I saw some SQL related errors when I updated BillysBootCampWii.jpg, but couldn't replicate them. Kolano (talk) 10:20, 20 June 2013 (CEST)

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)

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.

TOC Issues

While working on the Dolphin Manual I've realized that it's going to have content box that will GIGANTIC. The biggest content box on the wiki ever. It will be even worse than the FAQ. I need a way to deal with this. Looking around, I found this: wikipedia:Template:TOC limit on wikipedia. It looks extremely simple, with very short code, and it would help. Honestly I'd rather have a put the TOC into the sidebar, like the mainsite's faq, but since we can't do that... this will do. Do you guys have any better ideas, or should I go on ahead and try this template? (and inevitably break something and need Jhonn to bail me out :P) - MaJoR (talk) 06:47, 18 April 2013 (CEST)

Well, this fix the issues with the big TOC, so, you should try... The template is very simple, the only possible issue would be with our custom CSS schemes, but it should work without any problem - Jhonn (talk)

Ok, implemented it. Luckily, the template didn't cause issues with our custom CSS schemes (YAY!) Jhonn (talk)

Thanks. See, now I'm so scared of templates that the time I asked you to do it, I actually could have done it *facepalm*. - MaJoR (talk) 22:04, 23 April 2013 (CEST)

Don't be scared guy, found a template, implement it. Caused issues or broke things? Don't worry, sooner or later somebody will help fixing it, after all, it's a community! It's the best way of learning, when the wiki was born (mid-2010, in Mamario's server), I spent a looong time breaking things when implementing templates, and almost all times I needed Kolano, Keller999 and ThatLuciano to fix up the mess. You'll see, soon you'll be creating/implementing very complex templates without any issues =D - Jhonn (talk)

Heads up: website guides now hosted on the wiki

Just so you know, MaJoR is probably aware of it since we already talked about it on IRC: the guides displayed on http://dolphin-emu.org/docs/guides/ are now hosted on the Dolphin Wiki. I purposely did not make it too obvious on the website (no link to the wiki page, no edit link, etc.) to avoid attracting vandals.

If you want me to add any other good quality guide to the website, ping me by email (best way to make sure I notice your ping... I tend to miss stuff happening on the wiki).

Thanks for these guides, and try to keep them up to date :) delroth (talk) 19:36, 9 April 2013 (CEST)

Really cool, but the main site is multilingual and the wiki is English only... How we'll address that? Also, maybe we can remove the wiki's FAQ now since the FAQ of the main site is multilingual and the one in the wiki is just a duplicate, and english only... What do you guys think? Jhonn (talk)

Not sure how to handle guides translations - I think in the first place we should try to get good quality english guides, then think about translating them. My current idea is to export the wiki pages as separate Transifex projects, and have a bot syncing the Transifex translations with wiki pages named like "Performance guide (fr)" or "Performance guide (de)". I don't really want to work on it atm, if I haven't done anything about it in a month just ping me. delroth (talk) 23:34, 9 April 2013 (CEST)

Don't worry. However, my only suggestion here is using subpages instead of separate ones, like what we do with the Navigation template (eg. "Performance guide/en", "Performance guide/de", "Performance guide/fr") Jhonn (talk)

Delroth just gave me access to the main site's FAQ. Well... there wasn't a lot of activity on the wiki FAQ anyway, so hopefully that will help keep everything up to date. So I guess now it's time to remove our FAQ and link to the main site's FAQ. Anyone opposed? - MaJoR (talk) 00:56, 10 April 2013 (CEST)

We should have done this a long time ago, the wiki FAQ always had duplicated content, even when the site was hosted in Mamario's servers. Delete the Wiki FAQ!!! Jhonn (talk)

OK, but seems counter to the change that started this (i.e. moving guides from site to wiki). Why is it better that only limited folks can maintain the FAQ? If it's the content duplication that's of concern we might want to get rid of the other FAQ, and preserve the editable one on the wiki.Kolano (talk) 04:06, 12 April 2013 (CEST)

The FAQ on the main website has several features that we want to preserve, most importantly internationalization. That's one of the reasons why I'm limiting who can edit the FAQ: every edit needs translators for more than 15 languages to update their versions of the FAQ. If one has to go, it won't be the one from the main website. I'm open to giving more people access to it though, it will never be completely open though. delroth (talk) 09:39, 12 April 2013 (CEST)

Deleted the wiki FAQ, and redirected to the mainsite FAQ. I have access, so if you see something just let me know. Delroth is going to be away for a while, but other devs have access to the site, so it shouldn't be too difficult to add someone if you ask. I see no reason why you guys (Jhonn and Kolano) couldn't be given access to the mainsite FAQ to help out. - MaJoR (talk) 22:51, 23 April 2013 (CEST)

AX-HLE

According to Delroth, the new AX-HLE merger should fix the vast majority of DSP HLE issues. How are we going to update this? It's a ton of games, and I doubt we'll be able to get someone to test everything... - MaJoR (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2013 (CEST)

A rough approach would be filtering games that doesn't use AX UCode (Zelda, Mario Galaxy, etc.) and then crossing out all HLE problems in all game pages... It'll be easier to filter out games that doesn't use AX UCode than filtering games that use it... -Jhonn (talk)

I asked Delroth, and unfortunately he doesn't have a list like that. One of the other devs might though. - MaJoR (talk) 21:58, 2 April 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, this is why the various developer infobox fields never got filled in properly. They would have been what we'd need to filter on something like this.Kolano (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2013 (CEST)

Unfortunately we can't rely on that entirely. Skyward Sword uses AX. - MaJoR (talk) 22:20, 2 April 2013 (CEST)

There are a lot of HLE mentions on the Wiki though it's unclear how many of those ~2132 results are from test results and the like (If we can perform a regex search we can probably whittle that down to just the pages mentioning HLE in problems/compatibility). My guess would be that the HLE update will effect a bunch of titles that we never logged problems for though, so appropriately accounting for the update will still be problematic, even if we account for reviewing all the current HLE issues. I wonder if we could work out some scanning tools, similar to the ones for the title icon uploads to get a better DB of these sorts of wide-scale software types. There are various issues related to use of certain unsupported video codecs that might also be nice to scan for, I'm guessing there are other examples.Kolano (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2013 (CEST)