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Kolano

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 This is still being implemented at [[Stereoscopic_3D_Support_and_Compatibility/Sandbox]]. Someone needs to clean such and get it out of the sandbox.[[User:Kolano|Kolano]] ([[User talk:Kolano|talk]]) 08:24, 6 October 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. - [[User:Xerxes|Xerxes]] ([[User talk: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. - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk: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. - [[User:Xerxes|Xerxes]] ([[User talk: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.
+ - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk: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. - [[User:Xerxes|Xerxes]] ([[User talk:Xerxes|talk]]) 13:55, 7 December 2014 (CET)
+This is ongoing at [[GameINI Settings/Sandbox]] and needs to be brought to completion. [[User:Kolano|Kolano]] ([[User talk:Kolano|talk]]) 08:25, 6 October 2015 (CEST)
+:Oh yea, I never did finish that... In part because Link to the past will probably never touch it. Maybe if it's an official guide (on the main page) we can tempt him to? Hmm... It might be worth sending him a PM and asking. - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk:MaJoR|talk]]) 12:34, 7 October 2015 (CEST)
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