Template talk:Gecko

Accreditation

One other thing this template may need to account for would be accreditation. In general we try to avoid such, but a few folks have thrown major fits over their codes being credited to them. Kolano (talk) 10:09, 3 January 2018 (CET)

We could just follow GeckoCodes.org's naming scheme, they have hacker's name as part of name of the code, for example, "60 FPS [Lucario]". I'd rather not to implement some kind of credit system to this template. Lucario (talk) 00:09, 4 January 2018 (CET)

Allowed Categories

There may be one other allowed classification. A small subset of codes may be used to work-around bugs or emulation issues beside problems with the widescreen, though I'm not clear if any of these sorts of codes still exists (i.e. fewer are needed with our more accurate emulation). In any case a "bugfix" category may be appropriate. Kolano (talk) 21:16, 31 December 2017 (CET)

It's going to be difficult to correctly flag cheat code as bugfix because there's arbitrary way how it's called, and anyone can flag it as bugfix with their malicious edits. Just say it's not 16:9 or 60FPS will allow us to patrol those codes.

Actually, if you mean that we can rename "Not 16:9 or 60FPS" category into "bugfix" and they work the same way, I'm up for it. Lucario (talk) 21:59, 31 December 2017 (CET)

The only pages I know of that use patches to fix bugs right now are Mario Kart Arcade GP and Mario Kart Arcade GP 2. There's handling for it in Template:Config as well, but I don't think that's ever been used. - Xerxes (talk) 04:26, 1 January 2018 (CET)

Yeah, I think it may just be the patches to bust out arcade mode from Fzero that remain, but I'm not sure. I believe in the past there were a few other cases where bugs were worked around. I understand the fear of arbitrary codes being labeled as such, but I'd like to allow the use of this template in the few alternate cases that we have. I think alternate case are handled, but get flagged with a category now. So I guess we can account for things as they crop up. Kolano (talk) 12:39, 1 January 2018 (CET)

Regions

Though the vast majority of titles can be classified with NA/JP/EU, there are other regions and sub-divisions (i.e. EU language releases, special editions, etc.). May want to handle it more generically allowing GameIDs to be fed in as identifiers (more generic region identifier names could likely be determined through the 5th character). Kolano (talk) 21:32, 31 December 2017 (CET)

I agree that users who submit new codes should be forced to specify what ID those codes are for. I think this is a healthy change. And yes, they don't always split into nice regions. There's always weird exceptions, even a high profile game like Super Mario Galaxy 2 had a Chinese language release for example. I would be in favor of this to the point of even including duplicates of the same codes on a page just to show that the codes work with each GameID for a title. The only problem with enforcing this would be that there would be some ambiguity with what ID existing codes are for, but that's not a problem with the Gecko template, that ambiguity has always existed. - Xerxes (talk) 04:22, 1 January 2018 (CET)

Actually ID isn't foolproof either. Super Smash Bros. Melee has different revisions that share IDs and need different codes... so IDs aren't a perfect solution. - Xerxes (talk) 05:39, 1 January 2018 (CET)

OK, so beyond accounting for region differences, we'll also nee to allow for exceptions. That's annoying, but likely has limited occurrences. Good to account for that now, rather than after this has been implemented. Kolano (talk) 12:27, 1 January 2018 (CET)

One thing I'm unclear of would be unnecessary classification, I'd guess in some cases memory addresses are handled similarly across regions and codes work the same way across them. The current design can handle that with duplication, but we might want to alternately handle it to avoid separate edits. Kolano (talk) 12:44, 1 January 2018 (CET)

Look's like Xerces was able to convert the set region inputs to be handled more generically, allowing for arbitrary inputs. Is that a satisfactory solution here, or does this need more discussion / review? Kolano (talk) 10:12, 3 January 2018 (CET)

Well if there's no good standard identifier that will work in all cases then it seemed like it should just take anything. From that you could still add back in checks using regex later if you wanted. Though right now it has no limit on how many codes it can take and they're ordered horizontally, so the codes may look squished if there's more than 3 or 4. - Xerxes (talk) 10:32, 3 January 2018 (CET)

Well, I'm not used to GameID as header of the code table. Maybe I'm just too used to the likes of "NTSC" and "PAL". I think those disc revision could be merged into NTSC column as part of title of the code. Lucario (talk) 00:09, 4 January 2018 (CET)

OK, how about the Korean releases then? Should we presume the can merge under NTSC-J? Pokémon Snap is probably a good example. It has 7 different releases /w 3 PAL ones and requires a 16:9 Aspect Ratio Fix. There is currently only one code for the NAKE01 GameID.

Something else positive that can likely come out of using the GameIDs would be the ability to tell when additional investigation / codes are needed (i.e. there are 6 missing codes for Pokémon Snap). Kolano (talk) 02:10, 4 January 2018 (CET)

We'll also need to have some standard method of handling generic codes, applicable across multiple regions. Unclear if we can get away with a single "generic" indicator, or would need to allow for this code for GameID 1/2 and another for GameID 3/4/5. Kolano (talk) 02:13, 4 January 2018 (CET)

We can add check that when there's nothing in 3rd parameter, it'll ignore heading codes, so there'd be code table without heading. Lucario (talk) 03:54, 4 January 2018 (CET)

There are four regions in Nintendo's regional lockout ([1]), it goes by NTSC-K, NTSC-J, NTSC-U, and lastly PAL, we can have four columns and that seems very reasonable amount. We'll need to work out how to assign multiple GameID's region code to a region column though, like NAKF01, NAKP01, etc into PAL column. I think column layout should be for region only as it's felt natural and easier to notice than looking at region code inside GameID. Lucario (talk) 03:54, 4 January 2018 (CET)

Quality Categories

If you want to turn gecko codes into a template (not a bad idea), it might be good if you're going to try and integrate quality checks to hook it into Template:Problems/GC Widescreen Auto and Template:Problems/GC Widescreen 16-9. If the game supports 16:9 already but also has widescreen codes for whatever reason, then the template should generate flags to show that the widescreen gecko codes aren't needed. That would give the template tangible benefits rather than just style compared to the current way of doing it. I don't know how to handle that with Wii though, but I don't really know how widespread the creation/desire for widescreen Wii codes is when most games already support it (I think?). - Xerxes (talk) 04:17, 30 December 2017 (CET)

Good idea, if this new template is going to make it to game pages then we can add additional qualility checks regarding games that already support widescreen. We may like another category for whether it's used in Wii game pages. Lucario (talk) 03:29, 31 December 2017 (CET)

Pagename Use

Sorry to jump on this so quickly, but we won't want to use the pagename template in this content. It will be likely to only align with the titles name in the NA region (or one other in our priority cascade). If we include titles the appropriate titles should be used. Kolano (talk) 02:35, 4 January 2018 (CET)

I understand it's terrible method when it comes to alternative titles the game has, still working on it... It's there so the GameID look good. It's inspired from GeckoCode.org Lucario (talk) 03:54, 4 January 2018 (CET)