Talk:Main Page

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- NKF

Site Backups

The server hosting the UFOpaedia experienced a few issues over the weekend, but nothing major. However, I've decided that being reliant on a third-party backup service is foolhardy - consequently I'm going to be installing my own backup solution to the server soon (hopefully within the next few days) that will backup all user-submitted data. If anyone would like to volunteer to receive additional backups via e-mail (no point me just having backups, if I get knocked down by a bus we'd be stuffed ;) ) then please contact me at gazchap at gmail dot com. --GazChap 13:48, 31 July 2006 (BST)

Ok, gents. Here's the scoop - straight from GazChap. The site is backed up every day, so there is basically no worry about losing everything if it should go down. The only thing that may be lost are transactions during that day when it is down. Normally there isn't much activity, but there is the occasional marathon editing session which some people partake in. ;)--Zombie 19:41, 9 June 2006 (PDT)

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Main Page design

The Main Page redesign has now been implemented; see User talk:Ethereal Cereal for the archived discussion.

UFO2000 Section

OK, Gazchap has given its OK. I am going to start working on the page for UFO2000.

-- Hobbes 06:45, 7 June 2006 (PDT)

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Excellent! All us here on the XCOM wiki send UFO2000 the best wishes. I've been meaning to check it out myself when I get finished with XCOM... but I never seem to get finished, lol.

---MikeTheRed 10:33, 7 June 2006 (PDT)

One thing I'd like to ask: right now I've started naming the pages as "UFO2000 whatever". However, I've noticed that this limits the category pages (all entries are in the U letter). Any problem if we start naming them like "whatever (UFO2000)" since that seems to be the format to differenciate between games (such as "Aliens (TFTD)", "Aliens (UFO Defense)) ?

--- Hobbes 12:17, 8 June 2006 (PDT)

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Makes sense to me. Another option you have is to pipe your category links: [[Category: UFO2000|Aliens]] will make the link will appear on the Category page under the "A" heading as "Aliens".

--Ethereal Cereal 13:05, 8 June 2006 (PDT)

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Hobbes 15:42, 8 June 2006 (PDT)

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Hmm, I misspoke. Pipes will change the sort order, but the original page name will still be used on the category page, so a page named "UFO2000 and X-COM" with the catlink "[[Category:UFO2000|Quick Start Guide]]" will be sorted under "Q" but still called "UFO2000 and X-COM", which looks quite strange. You'll probably have to select your page titles to accomodate this -- but at least piping can be used to keep everything from being sorted under U.

Incidentally, you don't need two [[Category]] links -- just one will do, with or without a pipe.

--Ethereal Cereal 16:08, 8 June 2006 (PDT)

I started noticing that something was not right ;)

I've just finished renaming all the pages. It fits better with the page naming of the rest of the ufopaedia.

--- Hobbes 16:13, 8 June 2006 (PDT)

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Does anyone know if we can adjust those main navigation links (upper left of each page) so that we can add a link to the UFO2k Main Page? I think that would be appreciated by them. But I have no idea where that's accessed... maybe the managers have special areas?

As long as anyone's editing that, it could be cleaned up a little... do we really need e.g. Current Events, and Donations? Although maybe GazChap likes that last one, hehe.

---MikeTheRed 07:14, 9 June 2006 (PDT)

Math formulas

There seems to be some kind of problem with the latex math formula generating. Either that or a problem with me. I'd appreciate some feedback about this, since it would look nice to have actual pretty looking formulas. And there are some very ugly formulas coming. (reposted from talk: accuracy (UFO 2000))

- Arcozelo

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MediaWiki needs to be installed for TeX to work.

For those who haven't heard of LaTeX (I've just quickly read up on it), it converts Wiki code to PNG format.

The pros are it looks nice, the cons are PNG images don't copy and paste well into programs or notes.

Of course, just because it's installed, doesn't mean it has to be used in all cases.

- Bomb Bloke

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I used LaTeX long ago at the university, before programs started having their own built-in equation editors. Strictly speaking, it's a way to code "fancy" equations with simple alphabetic characters. Much like wiki markup symbols etc. I guess it outputs picture formats now too, eh?

Can the site managers install MediaWiki or do we need to ask GazChap? Anybody know?

---MikeTheRed 15:53, 22 June 2006 (PDT)

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The software UFOPaedia runs on is MediaWiki (see the icon in the lower right?). Normally the following code would work:

<math>\pi=\frac{3}{4} \sqrt{3}+24 \int_0^{1/4}{\sqrt{x-x^2}dx}</math>

--Ethereal Cereal

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Huh... Well how 'bout that...

In that case, the option must simply be disabled... Unless this is an old version of MediaWiki? I wouldn't know how long LaTeX has been supported...

pi = 22 / 7

- Bomb Bloke

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Pardon, was doing a little research and posted an incomplete thought above.

It looks like a MediaWiki extension called texvc must be installed to enable inline LaTeX.

But I for one don't consider the Reactions formula to be so complicated that it needs special formatting: I think the way the Psionics formulas are presented is a good example of how to present things in plain English.

--Ethereal Cereal 18:37, 22 June 2006 (PDT)

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Although I'm a bit on the fence here on this issue, I do lean more towards simple maths displays as well. Not saying that latex won't spruce the site up a bit. If we get it, that's great. If not, well, we can make do with manual formatting and using some of the special math symbols like ∫, λ, ×, ∇, ±, ≡, ×, etc. Formulas don't have to always look like they're right out of an advanced maths text book.

Just a reminder for those that use these symbols - it's good practice to remember to insert the semicolon! Some web browsers are a bit slack and will draw these special symbols without the semicolon. This makes it look awful on browsers that enforce stricter special symbol parsing.

P. S: Just as a brief aside, does anyone have images of the various Apocalypse base modules and corridors? I'd like to try my hand at an Apocalypse base map template. It would definitely be much more complex with the various 2, 3 and 4 way corridors.

- NKF

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I say let folks use whatever they want... I'd like the option of making complex equations more clear. PNG pastes fine into Office 2k... it's not that new a format. NKF, if you don't get a response on Apocalypse here, try the forums. ---MikeTheRed 00:32, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

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Heheh, by "programs" I meant "program code"...

Though I suppose I'm one of the few people who'd use formulas for that (if not the only one). And if I didn't originaly post one of them, I'd probably end up re-writing it before I used it anyway...

Re the base modules and corridors, getting those isn't too much of a problem. However, the tiles themselves are transparent, and displayed on top of a large, grey, stony background thing (check ufodata\base.pcx)- you can't incorporate the background into the tiles themselves, because no two corridor sections look alike once they have the background under them (ie you'd need way too many images).

The solution is either to set a background to the template, or do away with it altogether. But, using it as a background seems like a good idea to me, because you could have one background per base layout (how many of them are there, anyway)?

- Bomb Bloke

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I was planning on doing some real accuracy calculations for ufo2000. None of the straightforward formulas is really that much complicated. The ugliest is sqrt(2/(1/a^2+1/b^2)), but I believe most people can handle that without fancy pngs. However, accuracy is handled in a more "physical" manner in ufo2000 - your accuracy is correlated to a random angle by which your shots deviate from the ideal path, which means same accuracies have different chances of hitting depending on the distance. From what I understand, in stock UFO your accuracy is a more statistical approach and roughly independent of distance. To calculate odds of hitting in ufo2000 requires gaussians and integrals (well, if I am to explain how it works, at least), and if I were to stumble on such a page without pngs, I would skip that without a second thought, whereas with pngs I might have given it a try.

- Arcozelo

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I don't know how UFO2000 handles accuracy. In UFO, the map is a 3D area, and the bullet must travel past all sort of terrain to hit a target. You've got much less chance of hitting a person behind a window and across a field then you do of hitting them at point blank range, for example.

The game gives you different %'s when you bring up your firing options, but I dunno if anybody's ever tried to work out what the actual chance of any given shot hitting is. Given that you'd need to make extensive referrences into the data files to work out the shape of the terrain, I doubt anybody ever will.

I doubt anyone has anything against installing the LaTeX support, it's just a matter of finding a person who can do it and bugging them until they do. Would I be correct in assuming that the sysops are the ones with this capability? If so, place a note on Hobbe's talk page or something.

- Bomb Bloke

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No, general sysops do not have access to the server here to allow this support. If you want, I could contact GazChap about allowing LaTeX. I generally have no use for it, but wouldn't mind sprucing up some of the equations. (By the way, I cut this page down a bit as we are nearing the 32kb warning level. Will cull some more later.) --Zombie 13:10, 25 June 2006 (PDT)