Talk:Main Page

Note: This page is used for discussion about the wiki in general. Resolved items have been moved to the archive page.

Common discussion

I believe that removing old comments is not a good idea. Some ideas/thoughts could be said over and over, and to avoid that it's better to leave the discussion topics easily accessible. In my opinion, it would be smarter to create an archive page, say Talk:Main_Page/Archive, and eventually move the resolved items there. Or, as it is also done on Wikipedia, strike out the title of a resolved item with <s> tag (==<s>Common discussion</s>==). Seemann 18:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was under the impression that the two items in question were fully resolved and not at risk to come up again. But you're right, an archive page makes it easier to view old discussion items without having to browse the whole history. --Steve-m 20:45, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

What do you think about creating a link to Referring to GTA Versions at the headline "Version Specific"? --Aschratt 18:47, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Seemann^?! 19:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

So we're formatting our signatures now? :p But yea, link added. --Steve-m 20:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Seemann will blow up this wiki some day :D. Thank's Steve! --Aschratt 20:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hehe) Seemann^?! 20:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

1.14? Seemann^?! 08:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Game links

For the various (big) games there are a variety of dummy articles now, redirecting to the game categories:

• GTA 3, GTA III, Grand Theft Auto III
• GTA VC, GTA Vice City, Vice City
• GTA SA, GTA San Andreas, San Andreas
• GTA 4, GTA IV, Grand Theft Auto IV

The point is to avoid people having to type or copy the complicated category link and override the name every time. Also, should we decide to write proper articles for each game some day, this would make it easier to redirect them to the article instead of the category.

For that reason I started replacing category links for III and VC; SA and IV are still left to do (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:GTA SA and Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:GTA 4). All those entries that are not sub-lists of redirect pages still have direct links to game categories and need fixing.

So in case someone is bored or has to edit some of those pages anyway, please fix the game links as well. --Steve-m 16:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Btw, not all those articles have :Category:XXX links. WhatLinksHere lists all articles that directly or indirectly point to some page. Most of those articles just have a navi template and that is why they on the list as well. Seemann 23:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, ok. So I changed the navi templates... ;) --Steve-m 00:19, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Also The Lost and Damned. Seemann 06:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirecting tactic

It seems to be easy to redirect some articles to the lists or categories. But we should eventually write proper articles for these ones:

• Native function
• Opcode
• Savegame (currently SA only)
• Soundtrack (currently SA only)
• Thread (probably should be a redirect to 004F?)
• Conditional statement
• Asi Loader (currently GTA 4 only)
• List of Weapons (currently GTA 4 only) (redirecting to Weapon)
• GTA 4, The Lost and Damned and other game articles
• Replay.rep and REP (currently SA only)

Seemann 09:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, SCM/main.scm shouldn't redirect to the general scripting article, but rather a detailed file format description, like SCO (SA SCM ??).

Done with SCM and Opcode. Seemann 03:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to write an article for particles and particle effects some day... We already got Particle (SA). With rewriting the IDE article there could also be an article for 2dfx, but I do not think that it is a good idea to specify the particle effects in this article. With GTA IV there is the 2dfx IPL section. It is used pretty often so there will also be an article. Last but not least we should create a file format specification for the effects.fxp file. At the moment this redirects to Particle (SA). --Aschratt 19:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Article Layout / Guidelines

Found really great article on Wikipedia that describe how to lay out an article: Wikipedia:LAYOUT. If we are going to write the GTAModding.com Guidelines one day, that article should be taken into account as well. Seemann^?! 21:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I see a number of changes where the stub templete was moved at the top of a page (example). So, should we stick to that, or stay with old style where that template was at the bottom of the page? Seemann^?! 13:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Well the reason why I moved them up to the top is simply the new design of the template. Untill a few weeks ago the stub-template was just there to mark an article as incomplete somewhere, but therefor we also have the incomplete-template now. This allows us to only mark various parts of an article as incomplete. Also If you have got a long article like RenderWare binary stream file you do not realy see that it is an stub until you scroll down to the end. And since I start reading on the top I think the best way is to provide information (Like "this article is a stub" or "this article handles...") there. --Aschratt - oO 14:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I saw that some of us are using the Ref-Template to place jumps inside an article. I always thought references are refering to an external or internal link in a section at the bottom of an article ("See also" and "External Links"). At least this is how Wikipedia does handle it as far as I know. Should we also follow this guidline? --Aschratt - oO 08:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems that Seemann's intention is to do both that. He created that template and first used it in Saves (GTA SA). A lot of stuff we are doing and have done here are far from Wikipedia standards so I don't think we should be following that. We should create our own standards.--Spaceeinstein 19:36, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign

Well, the main page is currently non-informative and boring. It's time to change something. I made new concept of design based on 2x3 blocks arrangement. There could be more blocks for sure (3x3 is better), just have no idea what to put there yet. Well, throw your feedback there, what is good and what is not, and lets make it better. Feel free to edit that page as well.

Popular Pages and Recent Discussions need the Dynamic Articles List extension to be installed... Steve? Seemann^?! 08:30, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Bump....

I realy like the new look... it's cool! But is it possible to align the games at the right side or at least the icons verticaly centered to the text? Somehow they look a bit strange up there in my eyes... --Aschratt - oO 15:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking good, Seemann! :) A few suggestions:

• Remove the Popular Pages list. The problem with such a list is always that the already popular articles get more popular and the unpopular (new) ones don't have a chance. Also the list is unordered and thus more confusing than helpful. Makes more sense to compile lists by hand, by topic, workflow or whatever. Could rather add that link to the Wiki Tools box.
• Same with the Recent Discussions box. We don't have many (recent) talk pages, and they're not really helpful/interesting to new visitors.
• As Aschratt said, the game list would look better in its own box, with full titles. If the box isn't full enough, could always replace the top-most game (IV) with a fancy graphical button.
• What about a box with popular modding tools? One with a screenshot? One with recent GTAnet headlines? One with new/popular GTAG mods?
• Every box should have its own (distinct) icon.

--Steve-m 17:28, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

In fact I tried to make the game list in a similar way it's done on the GTAGarage now (a set of game icons at the top). I agree that it looks a bit strange, probably need to use those GTAG's icons, just not sure if it's allowed.

Point taken with the Popular Pages. But I still want a dynamic list to be there, let it be the new articles then, so they do get a chance to become more popular.

Disagree with the Recent Discussions. We have some active/interesting ones there (SCO, IPL, this page for example; these ones first came into my mind, probably there are more), but as they aren't seen anywhere (except of a short time on the recent changes list) nobody joins it. The special page serving it isn't helpful enough. Seemann^?! 08:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should rework the main page again. Tutorials and Documentation blocks weren't updated for ages, we need new categories and pages here. And appropriate icons for each block. Also I propose to change popular pages to new pages (see Main Page 2). Any thoughts? Seemann (talk) 18:22, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I like the new pages over popular pages. A large portion of the site is mainly documentation so maybe we can put more emphasis on that over tutorials. I wish there were more people contributing to tutorials. In File Formats section instead of DAT/IMG/SCO, we can replace them with audio/mapping/modeling. Saves can be under their own section since there are a lot of information on those pages. We can include SCM language under Mission Scripting section. Maybe have a section where heavily modded files are listed like main.scm/default.ide/handling.cfg/etc.--Spaceeinstein (talk) 09:08, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Do you think Category:Tutorials should be renamed to "Category:Modding" and have Category:Code Snippets, Category:Modifications, and Category:Tools be under that? That category right now is really empty. Also, is it better to move all the CSS into Common.css?--Spaceeinstein (talk) 21:06, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Modding category on GTAModding wiki? There is something odd in this idea, IMO. Code Snippets could go to Mission Scripting (as they are more tutorial-ish). I would let Modifications and Tools be top level categories (that is, let move them out of Documentation). The idea is, rather than trying to put all the categories in one or two super category, we could have a few top level ones (Tutorials, Modifications, Tools, Documentation). The Modifications category suits for Mission Scripting/Mapping/Modelling as subs very well then. Seemann (talk) 23:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

gta3vc defines

Guys, what do you think if it's worth to post Wesser's gta3/vc defines on the wiki? I see multiple links on them, and the number tends to increase. Seemann (talk) 08:48, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd like it to be posted.--Spaceeinstein (talk) 14:46, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing it up, though I have to disagree. There's nothing more to add nor improve by now, we will end up publishing codes pointlessly assuming you have already got the source files. I would rather suggest to put GTA3script language under Mission Scripting (Overview), this way we would give visibility to the article through which accessing the definitions concerned. -- Wesser (talk) 23:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

spaceeinstein is actively referring to these defines when describing hardcoded values, so my initial goal was to make access to the sources easier. By now it requires a dropbox account to download the archive, then you need to unpack it, only then you're able to see what the article is talking about. Doing so much actions is pontless, in my opinion, if we just can post them on the wiki and link articles to them. Seemann (talk) 12:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Downloading on Dropbox does not require signing up and so logging. :p Indeed, as a quick overview it would save much hassle, even though in practice one would take the definitions from the source files without copying and formatting those available on the wiki. However, I have some ideas on how to organize all that stuff, the article will be up in a few days hopefully until I prepare automatic scripts to generate it as early as possible. -- Wesser (talk) 10:52, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, you're right, you may skip the register request step and proceed to download the file. I may help you with organizing the stuff/writing scripts. Seemann (talk) 12:00, 20 March 2015 (UTC)