Revamping the Wiki

Daniferrito wrote:

I'm not sure that concept of biomes is still valid anymore. I remember a post of scio saying that the concept had been scraped in exange for a much more open and simple evolution and population systems involving compounds. However, i cannot find such post anymore, so i'll have to let scio enlighten us on that.

Biomes are still valid, we just don't need to name them like we did before. The current plan is to just have certain ranges of variables across terrain tiles, and all contiguous tiles within a certain set of ranges will make up one biome. Basically, when a planet is generated, all of the tiles get height/light/heat/seasonality/moisture variables attached to them. A biome is made by selecting a tile, then selecting all of the tiles around it whose height/light/heat/seasonality/moisture variables are within a close range of the original tile's. Does that make biomes a little easier to understand?

Ahh, that makes far more sense and sounds like an excellent idea as well. I recommend someone update the wiki based off of that in order to settle such confusion in the future.

Also, scio, what was the conclusion to that discussion on the Auto-Evo thread?

Doggit's asked me to ask you to change the soundtrack page on the Wiki to mention that many of my themes were commissioned and/or edited by him. Of the current themes listed under my name on the Wiki, the Feelings Theme, Landing on a Satellite Theme and both Microbe Editor Themes were commissioned by him, while the Desert Theme, Feelings Theme and the Landing on a Satellite Theme were edited by him.

You might also want to add a link to the playlist I made containing all the themes, including some which have been composed since the Wiki page was updated (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1xZFxatUbjMTzgTTI6FRxxhnS4h7hT1x).

Sure thing, I'll update the wiki now.

hi, looking to help out. Ive been reading all over the forum so I could keep the wiki updated constantly. Should i create an account now or do I have to wait until im in that developer usergroup?

hypoxanthine wrote:

hi, looking to help out. Ive been reading all over the forum so I could keep the wiki updated constantly. Should i create an account now or do I have to wait until im in that developer usergroup?

I dont know.
But be careful, alot of stuff on forums are outdated.

hypoxanthine wrote:

hi, looking to help out. Ive been reading all over the forum so I could keep the wiki updated constantly. Should i create an account now or do I have to wait until im in that developer usergroup?

To start just apply for wiki pages here, and then if you get the job (which you most likely will) post your work here and it will be updated into the wiki. If you do a lot of work towards the wiki you will get editing rights to it.

Okay, with more time on my hands I would like to revive the efforts towards keeping the wiki as our main source of up-to-date concept, as has also been suggested by RodGame and Inca. Are there any pages anyone would like to do? I will be posting some material on the Procedural Culture Generator sometime tomorrow, as well as in its thread.

I can do god tools page.

Well I'm still playing catch up in a lot of areas. My understand of each concept is not yet full enough to work on wiki pages myself, but I will do later on.

Unless it is just a case of condensing a topic into a wiki page, I don't mind doing that?

@WilliamsTheJohn

We haven't had any discussions on the God Tools page recently. What is there to add?

@Inca

Sure. See if you can find any threads that you want to put onto the wiki, link them here, and we can tell you if it counts as current concept.

NickTheNick wrote:

@WilliamsTheJohn

We haven't had any discussions on the God Tools page recently. What is there to add?

Some overall info.

Heres my example: (Will be improved later)

God Tools
God tools are imensely powerful space stage tools. They can be used for teraforming, destruction, and other things that player can do without god tools. Diference is that god tools are imensely powerful. They are unlocked after ascension, or in sandbox mode.

Uses
God tools have same uses like normal space stage tools:
-Destruction
-Terraforming
-Communication
-Other

I'm not positive that God Tools are only magnified player abilities. Some would be powers only available as God Tools.

Well, most of them are. Update:


God Tools
God tools are imensely powerful space stage tools. They can be used for teraforming, destruction, and other things that player can do without god tools. Diference is that god tools are imensely powerful. Some powers, howewer, are avalivable only as god tools. (Example: Creating artificial black holes) They are unlocked after ascension, or in sandbox mode.

Uses
God tools have same uses like normal space stage tools:
-Destruction
-Terraforming
-Communication
-Diplomacy
-Other

It still seems like the comparison to space tools is unnecessary. Remember, God Tools are not derived from technology. They are inherently supra-technological and metaphysical. They are less tools and more just powers, like in the Black and White series, or Populous.

On the Wiki, there isn't section for biomes on the nav bar. I think this should be included, and biome information compiled into that section.

Well, from what I remember from what ~scio said, biomes won't be strictly defined, as in there will be no presets that will be shuffled and generated. Instead, the world will be covered with moisture maps, resource maps, temperature maps, etc, and then the computer will distinguish all similar areas into biomes, so they will be procedurally generated. Having said that, I think it is very important we get an update on the wiki entry for biomes explaining this, and maybe going into a bit more depth as to how this random generation would work and how the computer would identify biomes.

I agree. I think we should view the wiki as our conclusive dev spec, so basically everything when decided on is updated there.

Okay, so a new task for people who aren't writing up pages for the wiki, you can suggest new wiki pages.

I can think of some we don't have right now, and I will add them to the OP, such as a page on Agents, a page on Organelles, and an update for the new Biome concept.

Big update on the wiki. Our current wiki is hosted on Wikidot. I propose a move to Wikia. Wikia wikis are free to create and maintain, have much more streamlined layouts, are easier to edit, handle photos and videos better, and just overall seems like a better choice for our official wiki. Now I know we have a lot already on Wikidot, but the amount of work required to copy over all our work is actually not that much. It's quite easy to copy over whole wiki entries, with maybe a couple of formatting changes to make. The only issue that would take some effort is the links. All the links would have to be changed to lead to their respective pages on Wikia, not on Wikidot.

If you want to decide for yourself, here are the links to the two sites. Try checking out an example Wikia wiki, and compare it to ours.

http://www.wikia.com/Wikia

http://www.wikidot.com/

I've put up a poll to see what you guys think. I personally would support a shift to Wikia, as I think it is easier to use, has more useful features, and looks more professional.

I wholeheartedly agree. This would be a good move and speed up wiki updating considerably. I vote for a move to Wikia.

I am much in favour of doing the difficult time consuming things now if it will pay off in the future. Especially as its summer holidays from uni and I have pretty much nothing to do all day.

I'd be willing to help move the content from wikidot to wikia if that's what is decided.

Okay as long as there are no objections we will be moving our official wiki over to wikia. I'll create a page on there now.

All mods and team leads: Be sure to PM me with your usernames when you make Wikia accounts so that I can add you to the editing group for our wiki. Remember, every Team Lead ought to regularly update the wiki with concept from their field.

I have sent a message to Wikia, asking for the currently inactive wiki page on Thrive to be removed so that we can use it, and am awaiting a response. It bothers me to have to wait, since I have some free time now to copy over content from the old wiki, but ah well.