KeenWiki - new mod list design

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Malvineous
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KeenWiki - new mod list design

Post by Malvineous »

Hi all,

It has bugged me for a long time that there is a bit of redundancy in the way the mods are listed on the KeenWiki. Mods have their own page with all the information listed on them, and there is a category page that lists all the mods but it doesn't have much detail. Then there is a table of mods but this duplicates a lot of the data which means any changes to mods have to be updated in two places.

I've been experimenting with MediaWiki lately and I have come up with a way of pulling information out of the infoboxes of all the pages within a given category, so this has made it possible to automatically generate a list of mods without any duplication of data - everything is pulled directly from the infobox on each mod's page.

I am proposing to break up Galaxy Mods into per-episode pages, so we will have a new separate list for each episode. This will be automatically generated and will look like this.

I propose to do the same thing for Vorticons and the other mods.

Does anyone have any issues with this? Obviously it'll mean a bit of work as each mod will need its own page created in order to show up on the new lists, but that's probably a good thing. I'm also hoping including screenshots of each mod will make it easier when browsing the lists.

Let me know if you have any comments! I'm hoping nobody will mind the change, because I don't want to go ahead with it if everyone will hate it :-)
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Post by Roobar »

I have issues.

That way Ceilick's trilogy (or any other series that is/will use different keen games) is separated. For that reason I don't believe separating mods by keen 4, 5 or 6 is a good idea.

The inclusion of a screenshot per mod is a good idea, but leaves much empty space in the rest of the cells. Look!

Image

In addition, the name of the mod above the image is harder to read.

What's the meaning of the "Secret"? I know what it means, but should be more specific. The rest of the rows are also pointless to me (sfx, music, etc).

There's no direct link to download whereas in the old one there is.

As for how I think it should be, I particularly like this one:

Image
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Malvineous
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Post by Malvineous »

Oh wow that's a much better way of displaying all the mods. Yes the wasted space isn't ideal but I couldn't think of any way to avoid it while keeping the table - only because the table allows you to sort, so you can sort by mods with the most levels, for example.

It should be possible to change to a similar layout to what you suggest, but you'd lose the ability to sort then. I guess that wouldn't be a big deal? To me the best thing (after removing the duplication) is being able to see the screenshots.

I'm not sure what you mean by splitting up Ceilick's trilogy though - each episode will appear on a different page yes, but if you click into it you'll see in the infobox it's part of a trilogy and there will be links to each episode. I realise you'll lose the download links but my idea was kind of to push people onto the page itself rather than have the direct download links on the summary page, only because there tend to be multiple links for quite a few mods.
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Post by szemi »

And what about my *(Keen 1,2,3,4) hungarian translations? (Which are modded graphically + patch hungarian signs/texts.)

*5,6 and Dreams will be translated as well.
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Post by Malvineous »

@wiivn: I just changed the styling to look a bit more like the pic you posted. It still needs a bit of work (e.g. some mods are showing too much detail) but before I spend too much time on it, is that the sort of style you think is the way to go?

@szemi: There should be no problem with your translations, they can be included as graphical mods. If you don't change anything other than the language though, they might be special enough to include on the main episode page as they would then be translations rather than mods in one sense of the word.
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Post by szemi »

I only changed the texts + graphical texts, nothing more.
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Post by Roobar »

Wow! Yes, that's much better! I didn't thought you could change it that fast.
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

4D Prince of Persia? Da fucl is that?
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Post by Plasma Captain »

1) That looks cool.

2) Does anybody go searching for mods of a particular game, or do they look for mods of a particular engine?

3) It's not that hard for somebody to just load up a game and take a screenshot if the wasted space bothers them. I don't think it's a problem.

4) 4D Prince of Persia is pretty weird. The first time I played the game when I was a kid, it just rolled the credits, then refused to run afterward. I didn't try it again for about 5 years until I found it at the bottom of a stack of floppies. This time I was thrust right into the gameplay with no menu or anything. Before I knew it, I'd lost hours of time playing it. By the time I'd beat the game, it was already 5:00, five years before. Then the credits rolled. Anyway, I enjoyed the game, and I'd like to be able to play the beginning of it because the story was confusing without it, but I'm afraid of having to relive all those years again while trying to keep everything the same for fear of messing too much with the timeline or something.
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Post by troublesomekeen »

I like the look of it. Sometimes I search for mods of a specific episode to investigate their patch files to see what I can steal.
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Post by Keening_Product »

That layout is neat, and I love the preview for Zoltan's Revenge haha. That may have been there for ages, but it's the first time I've seen it.

The only issue I have with that layout so far is the font for level counts etc is too small, which affects both Chrome and Firefox on OpenSUSE - could be different on other platforms. Though yeah, I understand you're working on it still, just thought I should let you know.
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Post by tulip »

Looks great, but plasma captain brings up a valid point: do you really search for mods of a specific episode or for mods of an engine. I suspect the latter, and series are kind of broken up that way, whereas you could find all episodes of a series right next to each other in the old list.
Also episode splitting seems prone to errors: Tribulation of Yorps is found in Keen 2 mods, there might be other's I haven't spotted.
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Post by lemm »

Would it be possible to host the Dosbox emulator on the Keenwiki so that visitors could preview the game right on the site?
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Post by MoffD »

lemm wrote:Would it be possible to host the Dosbox emulator on the Keenwiki so that visitors could preview the game right on the site?
Well... that one site was doing it, so I would assume so. iirc they had several disk images for each game that they passed to the emulator, so each mod could be done exactly the same way
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Post by Grandy02 »

All existing pages should be represented in the new mod lists now. But there are still quite a few level packs missing, as well as a small number of recent mods (e.g. Commander Kylie). I'd greatly appreciate if the community could help with the completion by sighting the red links here:
Vorticons Level Packs (and Skin Mods)
Galaxy Level Packs
And, of course, add any mod/level pack not listed there that comes to your mind.

Simply copy & paste the code of one of the stubs (e.g. pLeitorian's 1st Levelpack), edit the infobox data, and, if you have the time, write a few sentences. That's enough for a stub.

Besides that, many pages for Keen 1, Keen 2 and Keen 3 mods are still in need for screenshots, as seen in the respective galleries.

Thanks in advance. :begging
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