[Spring-cleaning the Wiki] The Wiki's new structure

[Master-Athmos]

This topic is about discussing the structure the Wiki should have. The desired structure is written down here:

http://springrts.com/wiki/CurrentSiteMap

[SeanHeron]

Erm, actually the desired structure in my opinion is here: http://springrts.com/wiki/SiteMapThoughts (that's also in more of a format for people to be able to grasp it at a glance, and make changes)...

Athmos, what you linked I see more as the "construction site", while what I linked would be the "construction plan".

[Master-Athmos]

Well as we still haven't really elaborated which way we'll introduce the new navigation-structure to the wiki I wanted to provide the full list with all the respective sub-categories (which are missing in the one you linked). It also might help people see what content already exists...

[MidKnight]

Unit development should be sub-categorized into modeling, UVmapping and Texturing, COB, and UpSpring. That is my opinion

[Master-Athmos]

Well the Wiki is not really about explaining how to UV-map or model. That's the job of tutorial pages of whatever software you are using. There of course will be respective sections explaining anything relevant (like which color of unittexture2 does what) in the s3o section...

By undoing the latest change the "Unit development" category itself went one step too low I guess though - I'll fix that...

[MidKnight]

well, you are correct, but modeling for spring follows a specific flow (model -> UVmap -> 2 textures, formatted properly -> upspring + COB -> ingame) that many newbies, however skilled they may be at modeling, don't know. Honestly, one could just write a short article describing the flow, then add sections for users to post their tutorials respective to each section.

Idea rehash/TLDR: We don't truly need a 'modeling section,' but I think one would be nice, or maybe just a bunch of linked/hosted tutorials and an explanation.

[Master-Athmos]

Well tutorial links for popular freeware stuff like for Blender or Wings are very possible in the Resources section. Concerning that "flow": Yes - that's something that is going to be described. So there will be an introduction of how s3o models work leading to further explanations of the respective steps...

User generated tutorials might follow that too although I'm not sure yet how helpful this would be. Well I guess we've to decide that once it's all written - a well done article about s3os shouldn't really leave any questions though. On the other hand simply linking some optional user guides won't harm too...

[MidKnight]

That sounds fine, if you want me to (and if I can recover from Laziness Syndrome in time) I could write you an article on putting a model through all of the various steps, up to UpSpring (I don't consider myself qualified enough to do UpSpring, I'm still a bit clueless about the app's higher functions.), possibly with a little note on COB and mod folder hierarchy.

Speaking of which, in my opinion, there should be an additional section for 'putting everything together,' with information like the standard mod folder hierarchy and what each folder contains/does, and where to put models/lua/etc, along with in-engine testing commands (like /reloadcob) and other bits of obscure but important knowledge.


PS: Just for reference, what I'm trying to do here with my suggestions is draw upon my experiences as a newbie and come up with ideas to prevent people having to learn spring modeling the way I learned it (reread each tutorial 40 times, then spend hours bugging random people to get modeling help ).

[Master-Athmos]

Well I guess no one will stop you from writing a tutorial...

Speaking of which, in my opinion, there should be an additional section for 'putting everything together,' with information like the standard mod folder hierarchy and what each folder contains/does, and where to put models/lua/etc, along with in-engine testing commands (like /reloadcob) and other bits of obscure but important knowledge.

That's what the "Introduction to game development" section will be about which really is something that's a bit missing right now...

[Master-Athmos]

So how exactly would we want to include the multiple languages in that concept? I read the Interwiki article but still am pretty confused how we can realize all of this without having to create and link every category again for every language with also having no nice option for adding another language later on...

[SeanHeron]

Well, the only way you might avoid doing that (adding cats seperately for the other language pages/site) is having all the language versions stored on the same page - (I guess that might have benefits). No idea how you would do that, and keep it switched to one version via cookies or such... or if it's even possible with the MediaWiki without writing your own plugin.
To be honest, though I started the German language version (I think), I wouldn't really bother with other language versions for the moment.

[Master-Athmos]

Hmmm - I guess we have to ask around a bit in order to find someone who's up to date with all that Wiki stuff and might give us an answer...

Until that it really seems we'll have to manage that by ourselves...