Glest Wiki - Full Glest documentation, modding, downloads, and more

[ultifd]

Hmm...can you create a tileset template, please.

[Omega]

Hmm...can you create a tileset template, please.

Done.

Hmm... can you create a background image, please.

[ultifd]

Thanks. That will help when I create the tons of pages for the tilesets. 

Are you slackin'?  (In all honesty just because I have a section on the glest guide doesn't justify for not having a wiki article on it. (for the record: my dream, a wiki with all the popular factions and every single unit and upgrade in them!) Besides, that elves webpage I made was totally amateurish and I'd rather forget it (it remains largely for posterity). Though, I did like the concept of drop down menus, though next time I will code said feature myself.)

I know  , but I just feel that since you already have a good guide there, then I'd kinda want to transfer the info, and then...ugh, I'll just do it in a few days. But uh, I haven't been slackin'  , the community has...it's always been me or you when we create the pages, or even add information to them...(mostly).
And that dream, well, we're slowlllly reaching it.

Hmm... can you create a background image, please.

Hmm... that's not really my expertise.  Maybe PM Modman?

[charlieg]

GlestAE isn't a mod.  It's a fork.

https://docs.megaglest.org/GAE

[ultifd]

Hmm...background looks nice. Could be better though, as the archmage is cut off and such...(First time for me to notice, because I'm trying a 19 inch monitor.)

[Omega]

Yes, it's made that way. The background cuts off for those who have too small screens (even I don't see it all). I'd like a better background, but my artistic background abilities are... lacking. Please, go ahead. Try *anything*, bearing in mind the 100kb max size, which makes tiled images the way to go. Or try and find someone who can make a half decent background... Modman, unfortunately, has appeared to left the board.

[ultifd]

Oh yeah...realized that.
Well, I might try something...

[Omega]

Quite a bit of activity on the wiki. To bring a few issues to the public to help spread the news, prevent duplicate issues, etc:

Just a notice here: Please do not make placeholder pages! This includes blank pages, pages with just text saying its a placeholder page, and pages with just empty headers, or a combination of the latter two. The former will be deleted instantly, and the latter will be given a 3 day RfD (request for deletion) in which you have 3 days to at least convert it to a stub before it would be deleted. Deleted pages may be remade whenever you have content for them. Placeholder information on pages WILL be deleted, so please either format your content correctly or wait it out. This is for a number of reasons, one of the most important being that placeholder data serves only to annoy the readers. This is a widely accepted policy for wikis and should be followed.

So what's a stub?
Stubs are incomplete pages that do not even begin to cover all the topics needed. They must contain at minimum the introductory paragraph (ALL pages should have this, this sums up the basics of the article). They should contain the stub template {{Stub}} at the bottom of the page. Stubs do NOT contain blank headers or placeholder text of any kind. Stubs should generally be expanded into full articles by editors, and once complete, remove the {{Stub}} tag at the bottom.

My Page has a tag on the top...
NPoV - The article needs to be written from a neutral viewpoint. Words like awesome, interestingly, and oddly do not give a NPoV.
Cleanup - The page is disorganized and content should be organized properly.
Wikify - The page should be wikified using encyclopedic writing, internal links, and categories.
RfD - This page has been requested for deletion. All editors can add this if they find a page they think should be deleted for sysops to take a look at. This does not mean the page is to be instantly deleted, and text in the RfD box should be read for more details.

All those tags can be removed after the conflict is removed. These can be added by anyone and should be the first thing on the page.


It is recommended that all users read the Glest:Policies and Glest:Style guide pages. Also, pages should not be named on their acronyms unless its an extra-ordinary long acronym. The acronym page can be a redirect to the properly named page. For example, Glest in Space has an acronym page that redirects to the main page.

[Omega]

Wow, I spent more time than ever recorded yet today on the wiki (just look at that Recent Changes log!). We now have full Lua documentation though, so...

I also expanded the scenarios page by moving the existing list of scenarios onto a sub page, creating a unique subpage for how to install, and linked all these pages together with the Lua pages, etc. Added GAE's full Lua command list back in (or as full as I know of. Unless something new was put in in-between 0.3 and 0.3.1 that I don't know of, it should be complete). MegaGlest was fine, though it could use a bit of tidying up.

What I did with the Scenarios page is exactly what I want to do with the mods page too... The mods page should be telling about Glests mods (that is, ALL kinds of mods, from techtrees to maps to tilesets) and linking to pages such as the current list. Anyone is willing to come and help me, of course.


As a note, if there are red links on a page that was modified or created less than two hours ago, please do not remove them, as they may be for a new page that is still being created (though red links on pages that have not been edited for, say, a day or more, can and should be removed to avoid confusing readers).


Why am I posting this here? Big changes. Could use a hand. *grabs a random hand and pulls them in*

EDIT: You know you've spent too much time at the wiki (or others, not enough) when the entire Recent Changes page has your name on it.



But, in all honesty, the reason I'm posting this is to raise awareness of the edit summary box, at the bottom of the edit screen, next to your lovely "Submit" and "Preview" buttons. First of all, please use the box. It's there for a reason: to sum up your edits so we don't have to check every edit to see "what did he do?". As well, it's a good idea to preview a page before you submit it. If you notice a red link (which means a page does not exist), poor formatting, things look odd, etc, you can fix that before you submit it (after all, submissions appear INSTANTLY for everyone to see). Thanks.

Hmm... anyone wanna at least offer an idea for a background image?

[Omega]

Ew, I've outdone myself again, flooding the last 100 edits in recent changes...

Anyway, I've been looking at a few other wikis for inspiration on the background images. These wikis have nice background images:
http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/EVA_Database
http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Wiki
http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo_Wiki
http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal%3AMain
http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_Wiki
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Wiki

One interesting thing is the dark background ones, such as the CNC wiki. That would be a major change, as the conversion from a light color to a dark color background will have to flip all the text colors, some images might look bad, etc; The partial transparencies with dark color backgrounds does look very impressive though. I've tried putting banners akin to the Glest forum header on the sides, and it looked terrible, so that's another idea down the drain.

Notice many wikis use images of characters, similar to how the Guard and Archmage look here, but the problem with ours is that they aren't very well detailed, particularly at such a size, and frankly, quite boring.

Comments?

[ultifd]

Well perhaps just ask Little Helper to do it, he seems to be on break from School.
Page Request: Glest Blog... Or maybe just add a "stub" page, and I'll add more information to it. I have trouble starting pages like that...
Can you explain why things are messed up on the Japanese Page? I don't understand why, and it's really annoying. Can it be permanently fixed?
Also should we create a section on the "Engines Page" for Comparing the Engines' Tools (G3D Editor and Map editor) Or should it be a separate page?
https://docs.megaglest.org/Special:DoubleRedirects
The DRs here don't make sense... 

[Omega]

Page Request: Glest Blog... Or maybe just add a "stub" page, and I'll add more information to it. I have trouble starting pages like that...

Sure thing.

Can you explain why things are messed up on the Japanese Page? I don't understand why, and it's really annoying. Can it be permanently fixed?

I'm not sure what you mean? What should it look like?

Also should we create a section on the "Engines Page" for Comparing the Engines' Tools (G3D Editor and Map editor) Or should it be a separate page?

I don't really consider them a part of the engine (I use MegaGlest's map editor and G3D viewer even when making a GAE mod!), so I'd go with a separate page, preferably on the existing (at least, I think existing) tools page.

https://docs.megaglest.org/Special:DoubleRedirects
The DRs here don't make sense... 

Ah, yes, I kept forgetting to mention this. I posted this on your talk page at the wiki today. It's because I requested a name change to the wiki, from "Glest" to "The Glest Wiki" (because having a page where the titlebar would read "Glest - Glest" sounded a lot worse than "Glest - The Glest Wiki". However, Wikia changed the project namespace too (that is, the namespace where we store pages related to the wiki, such as our policies (namespaces can be denoted by their prefixes, such as "Glest:Policies"). Thus, it broke all the links. I tried to manually move them back to the old positions, but didn't completely understand how namespaces are created, so those pages ended up considered mainspace (that is, pages not in a namespace, such as all the article pages). I have a pending conversation with Wikia, and have already moved them back to their old pages (noting that links are likely broken) and now we just have to wait for them to fix that. That's the reason the double redirects are WIERD. But please refrain from editing them, as I'm not entirely sure if pages with the "Glest:" prefix will be kept. Most likely they will be lost and the pages with the "The Glest Wiki:" prefix will replace them. I backed all the pages up to be safe.

Bottom line: Avoid editing any "Glest:" or "The Glest Wiki:" pages until Wikia clears this up.

[ultifd]

Ah, that's a problem. I hope Wikia fixes that sometime...

I'm not sure what you mean? What should it look like?

Well for the "Units" part of the page, the images and text looks squished almost always, and people would have to press enter 8 times or so to make them even. (But weirdly, when you preview it, it looks fine.) 

[Omega]

Ah, that's a problem. I hope Wikia fixes that sometime...

I'm not sure what you mean? What should it look like?

Well for the "Units" part of the page, the images and text looks squished almost always, and people would have to press enter 8 times or so to make them even. (But weirdly, when you preview it, it looks fine.) 

Ah, yes, that's because of Wikia's poor choice of a skin, where we not only have the content area compressed to 1000px, but we don't even get to use that much. Notice the sidebar with the recent edits, recent images, etc? That takes up a fair chunk of that 1000px, so leaves us with very little space, giving that cramped look you see. For some reason, the sidebar does not appear on the preview, so that's why it would seem to have more room then.

Instead, you must plan out page layouts according to this, as we cannot change that, thanks to the ToS (there's no easy way to do so anyway. Removing the sidebar (called the Wiki Rail in the CSS) and setting the main content area's width to 1000px appears to fix the problem until you realize that the search bar was on that rail, and search is a very important part of the wiki).

What I recommend you do for Japan is the same thing I (kinda) started doing the magic and tech. Pages for individual units (if the unit's name is kinda generic, add a space, then the faction in brackets (ie: "Swordman (Tech)"). You'll notice on the magic and tech pages that I've started it for you with unit pages for the Archmage and Swordman. Do note that there is a Unit template that should be used as well, and that I would recommend to read the documentation on that template page (Template:Unit) about how the data goes.


In other news, I regard my last reply as "lost", so sent an entirely new message to wikia. The project namespace should be renamed shortly. Response times are usually 1-2 days.


Edit: Wikia haz replied! The issue is now fixed (though the double redirects is still wierd. Might be related to the caching).

[ultifd]

I finished revamping the tilesets page. (Finally!) I suppose it could be polished a bit more, and of course be updated too. https://docs.megaglest.org/Tilesets/List

[Omega]

I finished revamping the tilesets page. (Finally!) I suppose it could be polished a bit more, and of course be updated too. https://docs.megaglest.org/Tilesets/List

Nice job Ultifd. I'd like to propose we make download links for them all though, so that players who don't have or can't download the megapack can still use them on one of the other engines. Pretty much every one of them has a link elsewhere, except maybe a couple like pine woods which we could just upload ourselves.

I did a bit of a revamp with the images, and will be uploading some new images too. I'd like to have them all of the exact same map location, if possible. Anyone know what map most of those are on?

[ultifd]

I don't know about that. I think most of the megapack tilesets will soon have cliffs textures, and I'm not sure if then the tilesets would work with GAE...

[Omega]

I don't know about that. I think most of the megapack tilesets will soon have cliffs textures, and I'm not sure if then the tilesets would work with GAE...

Never mind, found it. It's "In the Forest". And no, megapack tilesets will not break GAE or vanilla Glest. They will just ignore the 6th texture.

[ultifd]

I don't know about that. I think most of the megapack tilesets will soon have cliffs textures, and I'm not sure if then the tilesets would work with GAE...

Never mind, found it. It's "In the Forest". And no, megapack tilesets will not break GAE or vanilla Glest. They will just ignore the 6th texture.

OK, awesome. One day I'll upload them on gamefront. (Faster for people than mediafire, has public stats.)

[Omega]

I don't know about that. I think most of the megapack tilesets will soon have cliffs textures, and I'm not sure if then the tilesets would work with GAE...

Never mind, found it. It's "In the Forest". And no, megapack tilesets will not break GAE or vanilla Glest. They will just ignore the 6th texture.

OK, awesome. One day I'll upload them on gamefront. (Faster for people than mediafire, has public stats.)

Some of the existing links might be broken too. I noticed that when making the volcanic page, so had to reupload to filefront gamefront (grah!). By the way, if possible, could you please upload them in the add-on format? This ensures we have a single folder structure for ease of installation that works on ALL ENGINES. On the GAE engine, it's even easier to use, as you can skip the extraction stage and install mods without having to have the proper rights to write to the installation directory. On MG/vanilla Glest, you extract the archive directly into the installation directory, no hassling for folders, etc. In short, every one wins, and it makes explaining how to install mods far simpler too (we need to update the installing mods page, now that I think of it).

Anyway, back to the tilesets page, I added in a few missing ones, including tilesets that are default to vanilla Glest (it's not a list of downloadable tilesets, it's a list of every [half decent] tileset). I also standardized all the images, except the one for pine woods. I tried to use the one that was with the vbros pack, but it's broken (bad eliminator, bad) and too much of a mess for me to fix. If you have a working copy, think you or anyone else can take the screenshot? It's the "In the Forest" map (a default Glest map), and the screenshot location is a bit south of player one's starting location. MG or GAE will be needed to get the correct camera angle, and you'll have to increase the max rendering distance. Please use photomode to hide the GUI as well. Alternatively, upload me a working copy of pine woods and I'll get it done. Thanks.

[ultifd]

Addonwise=Compressed, right?

[Omega]

Addonwise=Compressed, right?

Non-solid 7z (or zip, but 7z beats it by far) in a folder structure relative to the installation directory of MG and Vanilla Glest, or the shared directory of GAE.

Examples:

Magitech:

Code: [Select]

7z_addon.7z/techs/magitech/factions/<...>
Volcanic Tileset:

Code: [Select]

7z_addon.7z/tilesets/volcanic/<...>
Military:

Code: [Select]

7z_addon.7z/techs/military/factions/<...>
           /tilesets/evergreen/<...>
           /data/core/menu/<...>
           /maps/<...>
The archives name can be anything, and doesn't impact it at all, though it's best to give it a unique name related to what the addon actually is. In order for scenarios to be done like this though, you must have both the MG/Glest and GAE method of storing scenarios. In MG, scenarios are stored as simply "scenarios/", whereas in GAE, it's "gae/scenarios/category/". It's possible to have both of these, though, as the engines will just ignore the scenarios that aren't meant for it. This is useful, though, as scenarios are something that have vastly different Lua codes between the two engines, and if a scenario uses MG only code, it can be secluded from GAE.

[ultifd]

OK, I will do that when I think it's the right time...

Can we try to put a policy or encourage one where modders (Creators of tilesets, factions, scenarios, maps, and etc) would update their own specific page or create their own page themselves? I mean, this would require just minutes of that person's time. This would be very helpful and it would expand the wiki much faster than just Omega and I... Please? 

[Omega]

OK, I will do that when I think it's the right time...

Can we try to put a policy or encourage one where modders (Creators of tilesets, factions, scenarios, maps, and etc) would update their own specific page or create their own page themselves? I mean, this would require just minutes of that person's time. This would be very helpful and it would expand the wiki much faster than just Omega and I... Please? 

I agree. Modders should be trying to make pages for their own mods. If they need an example of how to do so, take a look at the Military page. While no where near to be being done, it is currently the most complete Techtree page, surpassing Magitech (which only has 2 unit pages).

[Omega]

The Glest Wiki rates #7 on Google when searching "Glest" (not counting the images and videos).



#1: glest.org
#2: glest.org/en/downloads.php
#3: glest.org/en/engine.php
#4: en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Glest
~~Google Images
#5: sourceforge.net/projects/megaglest
#6: sourceforge.net/projects/glestae
~~Google Videos
#7: docs.megaglest.org


When searching "Glest wiki", it's #1 (in fact, it's the first 4 results):

#1: docs.megaglest.org
#2: docs.megaglest.org/Getting_Glest
#3: docs.megaglest.org/Glest_Controls
#4: docs.megaglest.org/Mods


When searching "Glest mods", the wiki is #1 again (taking the first 3 results):

#1: docs.megaglest.org/Mods
#2: docs.megaglest.org/Mods/List
#3: docs.megaglest.org/Modifying_Glest


Searching "Glest maps" it is #2 (and 3, and 4, and 5) (for now):

#1: glestmaps.wikia.com
#2: docs.megaglest.org/Map_Editing
#3: docs.megaglest.org/Mods
#4: docs.megaglest.org/Maps


Searching "Glest tilesets" it is #1 and 2:

#1: docs.megaglest.org/Tilesets
#2: docs.megaglest.org/Tilesets/List


Searching "installing glest" takes #2, 3, and 4:

#1: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=712500
#2: docs.megaglest.org/Getting_Glest
#3: docs.megaglest.org/Installing_Mods
#4: docs.megaglest.org/Scenarios/Installing


And, to boot, massive changes have been done to the maps pages, as seen here: https://docs.megaglest.org/Maps

Looking at the google results for "glest mods", it only furthers proof of why Glest modders need to place their mods on the wiki and keep it up to date! After all, the Glest Board doesn't even appear in the google search for Glest Mods, besides a useless snippet about file hosting for glest mods: glest.org/glest_board/index.php?topic=4543.0;wap2 (I'm not sure why google is only indexing the wap2 pages of the Glest Board...). Glest's official site is #7, and Moddb is #5 and 6. Bottom line: the wiki is the ultimate place for mods if you want others to find them.

Looking at bing, yahoo, ask, duckduckgo, kosmix, yebol, altavista, lycos, and alltheweb, the wiki is also on the top for "glest mods". Bottom line: every search engine I could find puts the wiki at the top for "glest mods". Start making your pages now. https://docs.megaglest.org/Mods/List is the place to start.

_{Note: Search results on google (maybe other search engines too?) can vary by location (eg: American search might have different results than Canadian search) and by operating system (wierd).}