Difference between revisions of "Talk:Settings"
→Formatting observations: new section
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imported>SnakeChomp (→Formatting observations: new section) |
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:Also, you should put related settings in one page and use {{[[:Template:SettingGroup]]}} for all of them. | :Also, you should put related settings in one page and use {{[[:Template:SettingGroup]]}} for all of them. | ||
:[[User:DragoonWraith|DragoonWraith]] · [[User talk:DragoonWraith|talk]] · 05:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC) | :[[User:DragoonWraith|DragoonWraith]] · [[User talk:DragoonWraith|talk]] · 05:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC) | ||
== Formatting observations == | |||
I hope you're in a reading mood. =) | |||
I'm still not happy with the way the organization of the settings page and the pages it links to has ended up. We have pages like [[Movement Settings]] which "abuse" the [[Template:SettingGroup]] template to document a group of related settings. (This page needs to expand into a formula so we know how movement speed is calculated so it will be changed eventually.) We have pages like [[Gun Spread Formula]] which document a group of settings by providing a formula describing their use and sprinkling the setting default values in with the formula explanation. We have pages correctly using the settings group template like [[fWeaponConditionReloadJamXX]] to document settings that have 10 slightly different names. We have pages left over from Bethsoft that document settings using individual pages as well as one master page that duplicates all of the documentation for the individual settings onto one page, like the [[Sandbox Package]] page and its related settings (such as [[iSandboxDinnerMax]]). Basically, what we have ended up with is a big inconsistent mess. | |||
I don't like the current setting group template style. I much prefer the table style as used by the CS wiki, like this page: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Movement_Game_Settings. Also of interest is that this page contains the formulas in which the settings are used. It can be compared/contrasted to the style of our formula pages, like the [[Weapon Damage Formula]] page, because they contain the same information (setting names, default values, formula). Additionally, I don't think we should be using the settings group template as the page body for pages that aren't simply there to document a setting that has 10 different names. See [[Derived Skill Settings]] for another example that I don't works very well. The settings group template mangles the page name, and the presentation of the information lacks something... it doesn't really flow as normal pages using section headers do. I still believe we should document settings like these on the same page because they relate to each other so closely, but I would prefer to see conventional markup used for these pages and not this template. | |||
I also don't believe we should be creating section headers that are links on the [[Settings]] page, as they are for the Derived Skill Settings section and the Movement Settings section. It breaks away from the conventional wiki page formatting and looks a bit odd, what with the links being different sizes and all. Losing the red color also takes away from the organization that section headers provide as there is nothing immediate that jumps out at you to say "a new section is starting" when all the text uses the same black underlined style. | |||
As to addressing these concerns... I think for the settings group template, I would rather see the template change into a simple table with a header row that applies what ever formatting we deem suitable instead of being used for the entire body of the page. This way we can still use conventional wiki syntax and formatting to describe the settings generally before providing the table of the settings, their default values, and any specifics about a particular setting. The template can then also be used for pages like [[Derived Skill Settings]] without mangling the page name but keeping some of the formatting consistent. For pages like [[fWeaponConditionReloadJamXX]] that need the page name mangling, we can just rip out the syntax needed to accomplish this from the template itself and put it directly on the page. Doing that is not really a big deal and it allows the template to be used in more situations. | |||
As for section headers as links, there would need to be a sentence of lead in text in which to place the link to the section. I'm not sure its worth coming up with sentences in which the section name fits in a grammatically correct fashion. It could be as simple as saying "These settings are documented on the [[Movement Settings]] page." This technique can also be applied to the weapons section that have the settings with 10 values documented on fFooXX pages. | |||
As for individual settings pages vs pages documenting a group of settings with a single page... I wonder whether there is any value in having individual settings pages at all. All the well documented settings listed on the settings page are categorized. Perhaps it would be better to simply document all settings within the category on a single page? They are grouped into categories like this on the settings page because it is often necessary to understand what all of the settings do in order to understand the impacts of changing a single setting, so instead of having to go back and forth between a ton of individual settings pages it would be nice to see all the settings on a single page. To this end, perhaps the existing [[Template:Setting]] template could be modified so that the template could be repeated several times on the page documenting the category of settings, once for each setting? Or alternatively the [[Template:SettingGroup]] template can be modified to be used for the purpose. Either way, it should be possible to have more than one of each of these templates on the same page in order to be able to separate the page into sub sections if it aids in grouping the settings in a more logical way. | |||
<br>--[[User:SnakeChomp|SnakeChomp]] 20:49, 25 December 2008 (UTC) | |||