Please add your suggestions to this informal page

Official Text

This is what goes after any UFOpaedia entry on every page that has one. Word for word taken from pedia.mt.

From: Apocalypse Ufopaedia

The format: italics to denote that it is not part of the text, double-space after the official text, no period at end. eg:

Something official text from the in-game UFOpaedia sourced from, word for word, pedia.mt file NO LINKS WITHIN official text example example example example example.  From: Apocalypse Ufopaedia

UFOpedida Pic Not Showing

typically: Error:Bin/Bash yadda yadda.

The Solution

THIS PIC is using "frame"

The following pic is:
[[Image:Facil-Build2x2-(Apocalypse).png|thumb|left|THIS PIC is using "thumb"]]

THIS PIC is using "thumb"

Use frame instead of thumb in your code

UFOpaedia Image Format

Making pedia images uniformly.

Cut pedia pic so that left and right edges do not have border colours (white edge typically). Helps to zoom in alot for pixel-perfect cutting. Top and bottom do not have border colours.
Final pic size should be either 329x479 or 329x480. If wildly out from this guide you are not using original pedia pics!
Insert text using Reticulan fontsize= 34 using an 'almost black' colour (see Pic Errors - Black Colour, below). Black (R0, G0, B0) cannot be used! To stop having transparent text, use (R5, G5, B5) as the font colour.
- (R8, G2, B2) works if you still get transparent text.
Align text by hand roughly equi-distance from top-left corner. Uppercase and lowercase is the same.
Text too long? Take the grey bar, cut it then resize it 200% height only. Reinsert the new text bar to align with the top corner - no colour should show above with this double height bar. Insert text so that top-gap, middle-gap, and bottom-gap are approximately equal. Doesn't have to be perfect, but just look uniform.
Save file as PNG 256colour (8bit). This is ideal vs quality whereas TrueColour (24bit) gives minimal quality increase at the expense of triple the filesize.
Rename file as Type-Pedia-Name-(Apocalypse).png

⊗ Sometimes whatever you do to make it 8-bit, it will still show transparent text. The only option is to use the 24-bit version.

Pic Errors - Black Colour TEXT

OBSOLETE solution. See next entry for easier fix: If a pic contains a black colour, that part will become transparent! Manually in-filling all black areas of pic with very dark grey could be a fix, but then its not the original pic anymore. This error seems unavoidable.

example of bad pedia pic: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Brainsucker_Launcher&oldid=114818
"Error creating thumbnail: /bin/bash: warning: ....etc." is solved
Some pics have not been showing up properly since forever (2006): https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Personal_Teleporter&oldid=13076!
Excessive black area in pic detracts, bucket-fill, 5% similarity really helps.
- typical example

Pic Errors - Black Colour PICTURE

Two examples of the problem:
Left=bad, Right=good

The problem with trying to keep original paedia pics, besides manipulating the originals to cutting off the excess, is that any black RGB (0,0,0) areas become transparent as in left-side image.

It is irrelevant if the pic is 24bit or 8bit colour.

To solve the problem, the right-side pic has been Lightened 5% which is just enough to make black areas not black - and takes a few seconds to do.

Its not the picture editor that is at fault for this effect but MediaWiki.

Confusing Wording

Clarification: "Security Guards" wording should not be used anywhere.

Building Security or Guards = note uppercase, these are the generic defence forces (not cultists, gangsters, police or thugs).
Defence Force = any npc (except Corporate Thugs) who appears on a search/raid to defend the building against X-Com or Aliens.

To Do

Pick One!

Considerations

Each Lifeform Page: Move the aliens listed within: infiltration UFOs, crashed UFOs, and Alien chambers to a chart format as similiar to a vehicle spec sheet and stick it in the intro page for alien lifeforms... then remove all info as mentioned from each alien lifeform page, then:
add to chart about alien chamber alien loadout and then remove it from each pages then:
do the same for aliens present on UFOs.

Testing

These need to be confirmed:

Aliens escape from a crashed UFO: ~~Where do they go?~~ nowhere - they die. Score adjustment to tally these? Corpses recovered? ~~How long (RT) before they give up and try to escape.~~ Never - may escape if many dead Can large aliens (2x2) use the blue-exit-tiles?

~~: force a recalculation by loadout = way over 36 aliens present.~~ Maximum of 36 aliens - total unit is 60

Overspawn walks thru some, demolishes others. List which is which. Add solution to Apoc'd Edits page.

===Correction Needed=== The grown-in weapon ranges listed in cell distance IS WRONG!
eg: alien egg goo-shooter claims 11cells but actual in-game range (to out-range its weapon) is 8cells.
This has come about because Apoc'D weapon ranges were divided 16 and then just copy-pasted into this page without being tested. DONE and page has pics of all grown-in weapons.

EASY

Weapon damage types icons added to Damage page. Enzyme icon is already made: GrownIn-Effect-Enzyme-(Apocalypse).png
~~DimGate make more easy to find page - also add to "Unknown" subtitle in Buildings_(Apocalypse) since road and people tubes are mention but are not buildings! ...then why not gates as well.~~
~~Note about alien ranks within X-Com promotions page.~~
Pic of alien search amd raid buttons, add to <somewhere>...
~~GET PICS of battlescape aliens! The user should be shown what they look like. Alive, Dead and agent icon pic when mind-controlled.~~
~~Aliens seem to have ranks observed with the icon image. Add a note about it to Intro page about aliens.~~
Make an extra column in Locations ~~to provide info on how many launch tubes are available for each building listed~~ with a numbered listing AND those numercials overlaid onto each cityscape map to indicate the base position. The compass directions are confusing.
~~Add rating to org pages about alien infiltration speed. Building pages have potential to infiltration, not speed.~~
Buildings: combat tactics and general building interesting features text In-fill to each building page.
~~Keyboard Commands: NEED MORE key-combos although it still is a WIP. Format doesn't matter just yet, just list them for now.~~
~~Alien Buildings: UFOpaedia pic for each structure with briefing screen (with text) which shows the target objective.~~ DONE
~~Facility: under-construction facility pic (only two needed: one of 1x1 and one of 2x2 facility) of in-game overhead view at lev3, placed somewhere.~~
~~Exotic Artifacts: split into into two pages. One for alien equipment and the other for UFO equipment (armaments and devices) so that each part can be put under its relevant section.~~ DONE
~~Civilian Vehicles: same format with UFOpaedia pic + Reticulan fonts.~~
Pics of various plant growths which have an effect of some sort. SOME as listed already. New pic needed with black background.
~~Complete org pages for SELF (pedia pic needs editing), X-Com, Alien~~

MEDIUM

Quantum Physics page: split up the chart into sections (something like): agent stuff, ufo stuff weap, craft devices. LOOK AT the chart at how it is split in two as an example: Alien_Life_Forms_(Apocalypse)#Alien_Presence
~~In-fill~~ Complete to make unitform page structure of X-COM_-_At_The_Start.
Rewrite Hybrid Vehicles page or unlink it. It seems that vehicle pages are too convoluted and repetative. Consolidation needed so that one page only for each vehicle which should include -all- info on that one page.
Agent Equipment: UFOpaedia new-version aka "UFOpaedia pic + Reticulan fonts" (no thumbnail error) pics to right of boxed official text for each page (gun and ammo). Consider UFOpaedia text for ammuntion as well.
Uniform icon pics of weapons and possible what it looks like on the ground. Prefer yellow hand-held icon versus the unscaled black background icon pics.
~~Agent Medals: Rewrite whole page removing boxed parts to be same format as other pages.~~
~~Incendiary: Add an explaination somewhere about it. Either expand Damage Modifier page or within title page of Agent Equipment.~~ DONE
~~Tactics Page Links: fix each page with proper "previous: the page", "next: the page", "home: the tactics title" etc. links to make reading more fluid.~~ DONE
In-game UFOpedia has title pages for the subsections. Attempt to use those pics for completeness - not sure how or where.
~~Unlink humans, hybrids, androids pages that had wall-of-text and redundant stuff. One page not three!~~

HARD

Cut Content page: go thru and removed repetative mention of <text in-game: none> and debug also etc. AFTER the equip listing. Up until that point, it is good. everything south of that equip list could use a clean up (and page size reduction).
Use XME to go thru all battelscape segments and list which ones are never used, then add to Cut Content page - look for entry already there then add to it.
~~REWRITE alien gas page. What a mess!~~ Turned into Alien Gas Grenade. DONE.
Infiltration Force Combined: Gather all information on each UFO's alien loadout and make a chart which combines them. Add it to: "infiltration page" or "title page of UFO craft" or "UFO incursions page" or its own seperate page.
Alien Ship Technology: Propulsion, Energy, Control pages need ~~alot of work~~ finishing. UFOpaedia pic and in-game battlescape pics of each type eg: egg of fuel energy + bone barrier. eg: 4-aspect pic of control pedestal. eg: <there are no propulsion-things!>
Battlescape Tactics: remove "Building Bombing" section from here and make a new page with in-depth info about cityscape style 'missions' so that battlescape stuff isn't mixed with cityscape-only stuff AND move "Illegal Flyer" newly added text from summary page to its own page (and expand it with info derived from Apoc'd).
Orange Pad Timers: I've worked out so far (SH, Food chamber) that an alien spawns in -minimum- every 35secs ...but not uniformly. If somethin busy is happening then the spawn does not happen. Busy? Using alot of mind control on Sectoids and could manually delay a spawn 'at best' for 7minutes. So... TODO? 1.Check spawn times for each alien building. 2. Check spawn timer for each difficulty. DONE
~~Overspawn pics 360° sequence - not ani.~~
Base Locations: add percentage frequency to each layout shown, of getting a particular building for each difficulty (not this format or terse) .

Superhuman location start (approx): Wh02 & ThomMT = 40%, LoveC = 15%, Wh01 & Grim = ~5%, Wh08, Wh10, Wh11 = 0.1%

The "approx" could be determined exactly by 'exploring the code' or by tedious testing eg: restart 100 times for each diff, log the results.
Those "approx" percentages are my interpretation ~~of playing the game to death~~ of observations.

Alien lifeform page which contains XcomApoc pics either: unlink this repetative page via Apoc-Table edit, or remove diect links of alien in intro page and make this page the 'selector' page. Reasoning: The vehicles into page does not have direct links to the vehicles. make alien and UFO intro similiar in format.

~~===EDITED SOLUTIONS===~~

~~Base Defence: (a base with all facs and allowing the hostiles to explore, edited with Apoc'd) find out where/what/why base invaders goto when in your base.~~

TESTED Hostiles will do laps through the base looking for X-Com units, They do not target any facility... they do not even damage anything! They were made hostile 100% to X-Com and vice versa. They were armed with one of every HE and IN grenade available, all guns, all alien weapons etc. by editing "Equipment Sets (Score)" to give the whole range of armaments. If they got shot, they retaliate with massive firepower whereas prox, boomer mines made then congregate around it, then about a minute, resumed with looping behaviour. All types of Defence Forces did the exact same thing - even thugs.
DONE Added to Base Defence Page.

On-going Rewrites

Aliens: multiple pages with the same stuff will be condensed into one major page each for each alien with a format that is easy to read and uniform across all alien lifeform pages. They will be heavily de-waffled.

~~slowly getting there... the format is similiar to other pages but may need minor formatting corrections (eg: influence:minor to influence:weak) and spelling.~~

the pictures are showing black sections as transparent (see note above: Pic Errors - Black Colour). FIXED

~~UFOs which don have alien type on board are listed, this will be swapped to those which have them onboard.~~

...~~slowly slowly they will get done!~~ ALIEN Lifeforms individual page are done

UFOs: pages with two almost identical pictures? Really? ...it will be done. Tactical overhead of UFOs entrance layout needed.

FLUFF

Agent 360 collage could use a black background and double sized to see finer details (gang pic is too dark).
PDS need a better icon.
Cityscape and Tactical pages: pics with pink arrows and boxed text pointing to buttons could use a more thorough explaination.

To Do List (Apocalypse)