Talk:Main Page/Archive

Discussion/talk page proposed format

Ok folks, we all seem to have our own ways of adding comments to a discussion page. The way it stands now, it becomes really difficult to follow a discussion when it is broken apart with different formats. What I suggest is this: when you leave a comment use a horizontal line to separate your post from the one(s) above it. In this manner, everything is left justified and the comments are separated. The reason why I do not support the colon as comment separation is that as the discussion progresses you are going to be adding more and more just to get the indenting correct. It also makes it confusing. Another side effect is that once you have a lot of colons present it pushes the text off the page itself and forces a scroll to the right to view. That isn't good.

I suppose if we really want to use colons as separators, we could alternate the use. If a comment is indented above yours, do nothing. If a comment is not indented, use a colon for your submission. Still, the constant zig-zagging isn't really the best idea either.

My vote is therefore to stick with the horizontal line (four dashes). If the discussion veers way off course, or if you have a couple questions/comments, break it apart into different headings. And always sign your post too as that makes it easier to follow.

Discuss.--Zombie 20:46, 9 March 2007 (PST)

Works for me, Zombie. Another problem with indentation is that one isn't necessarily addressing only the previous comment, but it could be about the previous one, and tying together things that are 4, 6, and 12 entries back. Colons are fine for quick rejoinders, but not as a requirement. A potential alternative is to leave two blank lines, as I just did after your sig. This is a fairly clear delineator for folks scanning quickly. However, the horizontal separator is more clear, in general. So I guess I'd vote for the hor-sep for all except quick comments thrown in, which can use colons. And anything that's a new topic or big break should get a new topic, using = signs. - MikeTheRed 21:10, 9 March 2007 (PST)

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I've reformatted Talk:Exploits#Extra_Ammo_Exploit to demonstrate how the indentation style can work, if done consistently. I think it's somewhat better than the line-separator style for very long discussions, making the structure a little clearer. However, if it's sometimes-used and sometimes-not things get messy, as you've noticed.

I'll codify the rules right here (surprisingly, they're not well-codified on Wikipedia itself, despite the fact that it's used quite consistently throughout the site):

• Add an indent for each reply
• Reuse your prior level of indentation if it's a back and forth:

First person's comment

:Second person's comment

::Third person's comment

:Second person again

::Third person again

::Third person's afterthought

:Second person again

::First person jumping back in

:::Third person once more

::First person again

• If you get to 5 or 6 indents, just "reset" (start without indents for the next reply).
• If you have an addendum to your own comments, use the same indent level and re-sign.
• If somebody doesn't know/doesn't use the right indent level, fix it when adding your next reply so the rules become clear during the course of conversation.
• Likewise, if someone adds a new comment to the top or fails to add a heading when starting a new subject, fix it when replying.

The problem we've had lately is the mixing of styles, neither being used correctly. So far it seems that myself, Sf, and NKF have been using indents, you (Zombie) and Mike favoring dashes, and most newcomers failing to use either. No clear winner just yet. ;-) --Ethereal Cereal 23:56, 9 March 2007 (PST)

What if you're addressing several and various issues raised before, not just a comment on the previous statement? (And it runs on for four or six paragraphs?) - MikeTheRed 00:14, 10 March 2007 (PST)

If you're consolidating a bunch of replies to several earlier points, that's a good time to reset the indent.--Ethereal Cereal 01:07, 10 March 2007 (PST)

Works for me, Eth - MikeTheRed 16:47, 9 November 2007 (PST)

Game Editors

I was going to add a link off the Main Page to the Game editors section that I wrote, under Misc. I still have a nagging feeling there is another list of them somewhere, but I can't find it. Any comments?

Also, any additions to the Game editors section are welcome.

Spike 03:40, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

I don't think we've ever had a particular listing of editors.

Tell you what, I'll throw these changes in, and we'll see how this works out.

1. I'll put the new game editor section onto the UFO main table (I've also renamed the page to stick to the first capital letter naming convention the other articles use).
2. I removed XComutil off the main table, since it'll be under the game file section.
3. Removed the UBK - it's just a tool for wiki editors and not something that would interest players of the game.

I might also add the Command Prompt to the game editor section for its notes on using MS-Edit as a binary file editor.

- NKF 04:46, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

While I see the validity of adding XComUtil to a page regarding editors won't it make sense to keep a sublink to the page which deals on how to use it, together with MSEdit? I mean, the other editors only have links to them on that page and I think that at least XComUtil deserves main page status because of its notoriosity and complexity. What do you guys think? - Hobbes 14:08, 15 March 2008 (PDT)

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a good idea to include the Command Prompt help. How about broadly dividing it into 2 sections: X-COM-specific tools and general purpose tools? Spike 07:08, 17 March 2008 (PDT)

Newb questions

Hello good sirs. Sorry for my bad non-native english. While in total noob in wiki, im relatively for long playd this great games. Great thanks for you for this great site, it really helped me with some ideas, especially with Funding Nation, even dont know how i played it before without it. Now more close to point, i realized what TFTD section here are, say, unperfect, if not somewhat wrong. As i readed somewhere not all play TFTD much, UFO1 instead, so it maybe be the point. Id edit something on it, but im totally dunno how to do it, and my language will have too many mistakes to be proudly presented to people. So id be glade to hear what you may propose for me to do. Again big thanks. Ill wait for answer.

PS Or im searched too badly, or its differ in TFTD (i play only it now) from UFO1, but i cant find here about stunned persons behaviour. Cant find what they awake only if theyr stun is lower then HP's and if only they have awaken person in theyr tile during end of turn. IMHO its important thing to know off, at least for me.

PPS. My friend made great tiny changes to one tiny file, what make FundingNations game way more easy and elegant then described in issue. I can upload it if you need this, tho its for TFTD im sure he can do UFO1 also if its needed. Anyway this game too easy even on FN to play it without it :).

Eh PPPS. Dunno how to properly log on :(.

Do not worry about the language barrier - sometimes it's harder to understand people who speak English natively! ;) In any case, There'll be other editors who will be able to help fix the article for you if you can get the idea across.

To get started editing pages, check the Community Portal on the left sidebar. That has links to articles that can help you get started - more or less. One good way to find out how some text is formatted (or anything else you'd like to duplicate) is to edit the page and see how it's done in the source.

If in doubt, or if you're unsure about editing the article, feel free put your ideas or suggestions in the article's Discussion page.

Because TFTD and UFO share a lot of the same mechanics, there would be a lot of unnecessary duplication if we were to write up articles for it that are already available in the UFO articles. Therefore we mainly include articles that cover topics that are unique to TFTD, like the weapons, door opening, aliens, etc. General mechanics like how damage works or how experience is earned is identical to UFO's, so there's no need to duplicate them. What sections do you think need improving or what sections do we need to add? The more input the better.

Regarding consciousness, have you checked the Unconscious article? I think we might need to redo that article bit and perhaps add a few illustrations. One note about the difference between UFO and TFTD with the visual appearance of a unit recovered with a medikit needs to go in there too if it hasn't already. Oh well. - NKF 22:54, 22 May 2008 (PDT)

PS, to sign your messages in the discussion pages, put four tilde's ~~~~ anywhere you want to insert your name and the timestamp.

same questions

Thank you for answer. I been somwhat incorrect in my english. I didnt mean what TFTD pages are bad or what they lose reduntand UFO1 information. All they lack are only slightly wrongly described alien's dangers levels (one of most dangerous creatures cant be low treat, and least dangerous one medium) and lack of mission types what only TFTD have. Also i readed "Unconscious@ article few times, stiil cant find only how to use medkit and no word about what generally need for stunned person to rise. From that follow advices to grenade stunned chryssalids and so on.

PS. Oh, yes, and whats wrong with door openings? Derrida 08:59, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

A unit falls unconscious when the stun bar is equal or greater than the unit's remaining health points. If it's under that, the unit will be awake.

To wake a soldier up, you have to reduce the stun level by either waiting for the stun to wear off, 1 point per turn, or use stimulants on a medikit. Looks like the TFTD section doesn't have its own medikit page, but UFO's Medi-Kit section explains how to use it, as they are identical. Basically, if the unit is unconscious, the medic must stand on top of the unconscious unit and use stimulants (the second choice) until the unconscious soldier wakes up. When the unconscious unit wakes up, they'll appear to the north of the medic.

TFTD's stun weapons are much more powerful than in TFTD, so you often have to use a lot of stimulants to wake a person up.

TFTD's unique because it allows you to open doors by right clicking them - and it's a free action so you won't spend any TUs to do it. UFO cannot do this (except the Playstation version).

As for the threat levels of the aliens - I agree, some should be reclassified. Personally I'd move the Gill-Men and Calcinite up to medium threat - all the current medium level threats look just about right though. What are your suggestions?

Hang on, why are there so many references to vibroblades in the overview article? That can't be right. I'll have to update that later on. - NKF 15:05, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

Nonono. I mean what if unit's stun damage falled below it's HP, and no one stand in tile it lying, it will never rise. Medkits not the point. No stunned aliens or soldiers will rise if no one will end turn on it, or take it to inventory/hand. I tried to say this. Maybe it been different in UFO1 (as with doors, i thought what doors always open by right click, and in UFO1 too (btw cant find about door opening anywere in wiki)), but in TFTD it means what you dont have to bother with stunned tentaculats etc to rise after stun if you do not stand on it, or try to move it in backpack/hand. Same with soldiers, you can click zillion turns, but they will never rise until someone stand on it. Without this game must be horrible with all this undying lobsters awake afer you pass them. With danger level id suggest this: Harmless: hallucinoid; deep one; Low: gillmen; aquatoid; Meduim: zombie; calcinite; bio-drone; lobsterman; xarquid; high: tasoth; triscene; What really matters: tentaculat. In line of growing dangerness. Derrida 16:30, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

Regarding image file formats

I'd really like to add a note somewhere obvious about using GIFs for screenshots in the wiki, rather than JPGs. For 256-color images like X-COM uses, GIFs are no larger than JPGs and generally look much better. For example, see the nasty compression artifacts on the terrain maps in the Terror Ship article. PNGs might work just as well, I'm not sure, but we should really avoid JPGs.

Where would be the best place to mention this? I'm thinking near the top of the main page for visibility, but that might be more clutter than people want. Phasma Felis 23:59, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

It's been dealt with here that PNG is the preferred file format of the wiki; however, where to note this...I honestly don't know. Arrow Quivershaft 00:37, 12 June 2008 (PDT)

PNG's reduced to 256 or less colours can be quite the space saver for X-Com screenshots. You can go the extra step and run them through PNG compression programs and somesuch - but they're pretty good as-is. Jpgs should be reserved for images with a broader range of colours. One place the note could go is in Guidelines to writing articles. In fact, that section could do with a few extra additions in any case to expand is to that it's not just covering the composition of the language of the articles, but to cover the creation of the articles. - NKF 03:04, 12 June 2008 (PDT)

Hosting move.

Hi guys. It appears I'm still hosting the UFOpaedia - I did discuss moving it to StrategyCore with both Zombie and Pete a while ago and I think I gave them copies of what would be required.

Anyway, I'm moving hosting servers so the UFOpaedia is going to move too. I'm aiming to carry out the transfer on Sunday September 28th at about 8pm GMT+1. Any changes made between this time and the time that the transfer completes may be lost, but hopefully not. Just thought I'd give you guys a bit of notice.

I should point out that I still have no objection to hosting the UFOpaedia on my servers, it's a great project and you guys have done a bang-up job with it, it's far surpassed my original intentions :) However, if StrategyCore want to take over hosting to remove the potential "failure point" (i.e. me) then that's fine and we can give it another shot?

GazChap, 25th September 2008 12:50 GMT+1

Thanks for the heads-up Gaz-Chap! Sure, StrategyCore is still willing to host the UFOpaedia. Sorry things didn't quite work out the last time we talked. Pete needs to be constantly reminded to do things as he's easily distracted. I'll try and start a fire under his bum to get the ball rolling again. --Zombie 07:14, 25 September 2008 (PDT)

Hosting has now been moved to StrategyCore. Cheers to Pete and Zombie for sorting it out. GazChap, 11:28, 1 October 2008 (GMT+1)

There may be a slight problem with caching of the temporary holding page ("coming back soon". On some browsers I'm using (not all), the temporary page is still up and you can't see the UFOPaedia site. Spike 17:48, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

The new website address is quite likely still propagating out through DNS, since we moved hosts. So that's just the nature of the internet and should be gone in a day or two. Arrow Quivershaft 19:06, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

Most browsers seem to allow a full page refresh via Ctrl + F5. There's also an option re caching under the Misc section of your Preferances - I had to disable it ages ago 'cause it was always failing to show me page changes... - Bomb Bloke 21:54, 1 October 2008 (CDT)

Sorry about the downtime everyone. The bandwidth limit wasn't set high enough after the recent change in hosting and basically didn't allow access. I contacted Pete and he fixed the issue. Good to catch these issues earlier rather than later. --Zombie 15:11, 15 October 2008 (CDT)

14 March 2009

Zombie mentioned that Pete may be moving the server this weekend. I'm getting lots of errors and more or less unable to make updates to the site. Probably this is to do with the server move. Spike 19:14, 14 March 2009 (EDT)

Apparently the move has been complete most of the day. So if you guys continue to have problems, please contact me and I'll relay it over to Pete. I'm not experiencing any problems though. --Zombie 21:34, 14 March 2009 (EDT)

500 Internal error

This seems to occur whenever I edit a subsection on a page, and I click the edit button on the TOP of the page instead of the edit button next to the subsection title. So, if you wanna avoid this error, try using the button which only edits that subsection... Jasonred 05:40, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Already been tried. Doesn't work any better. UFOpaedia admin is on it, I've been told. Arrow Quivershaft 12:05, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Pete's finished his latest round of changes. Give it another go. - Bomb Bloke 22:12, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

Humor and Flavour Text

GEH!!! This whole issue is taking on a life of it's own. On one hand, yes, I can see the allure of ufopedia being a serious informative site. On the other hand, there's the "fun" factor... When you get right down to it, Xcom is actually a rather simplistic game in terms of storyline, and storyline interactivity, so we REALLY have to make up our own, otherwise the game degenerates into "capture this technology, research research, shoot shoot. MC = win game". The ingame UFOpedia is great, but it's limited to several paragraphs to describe an entire race of creatures, and 2-3 lines to describe the horror of Blaster Bombs and such. ... I vote that this online UFOpedia becomes everything that the ufopedia in-game was missing... let's have something that ENTERTAINS as well as giving good accurate information!

I'll wait for the votes to come in before touching anything else. I agree with you guys, the Lobstermen and other aquatic aliens getting eaten is something that is VERY much a part of the X-com community's culture... it should go into the UFOpedia. Jasonred 04:00, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I've nothing against humour. All for it. In fact I'd very much like to see more of that so that definitely gets my vote. A few light hearted moments in between all the seriousness does wonders. Perhaps not when you're getting into the particulars, but the descriptions or opening paragraphs that don't get into deep detail could be livened up a little. In moderation, of course!

However, the hard part is deciding on the line between being humorous within the confines of what's available (yes, funny discussions amongst the troops about eating lobstermen after battle instead of selling it could count towards that), and then there's making stuff up. Apologies to Morken for borrowing an example from his on-going graphic novel: explaining the alien's general idiocy/sportsmanship through their strong belief in the tenets of Amgoth. Highly amusing, but not part of the story. Granted, I don't think we've got anything like that on the wiki, but you never know.

In any case, a good mental exercise for the writers. -NKF 05:14, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

My two cents then: I like the humour, anecdotes, flavour and fan fiction but I think the main purpose of UFOPaedia is informational and that should not be compromised. I like the little touches of humour, and I've been known to attempt them myself. But humour and anecdotes should be kept brief and supplementary - e.g. one-liners and wry observations at the end of a section. Non-canonical flavour text and fan fiction (especially) should be kept clearly separate and distinguishable. Someone reading the site with no prior knowledge of XCOM should be able to tell right away what is factual vs what is humour or speculation/imagination. Not quite sure how to do that - maybe by using sidebars, the Humour category... ok ran out of ideas there already. Maybe we need an "official" font for reproducing canonical, in-game flavour text, so it stands out. Not sure.

Also, humour, anecdote and flavour are much more subjective than fact. What one person thinks is funny, others may not. So non-factual content may just get edited out unless a lot of people agree that it's funny/cool/interesting etc - in fact that's probably already happening. Maybe a good idea is to make the jokes on the Talk pages, and if they are found to be universally funny, move them on to the main articles later - pretty much the same as factual content in fact? Spike 05:19, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I'm certain that we would all agree that the wiki is first and foremost an informative site. We needn't go so far as to point out to the readers what is or isn't. That would be overdoing it. A dash of humour anywhere we can get away with it without compromising the message, facts or turn it into fan fiction is really all that's required and can be more effective. Like spices, the right amount can add to the flavour of a dish. Too much and it just ruins it.

Now a little creative writing to make the articles (with or without the humour) more captivating to the reader and less like text-books will certainly go a long way. But then again, I believe that we've always attempted to do this. -NKF 06:04, 13 March 2009 (CDT)

I agree with NKF's point here regarding humor. But, concerning fanfic, to make up and add things that aren't on the original UFOPaedias or the History distributed with Interceptor is to take too much liberty with the original material (in regards with fan fiction). Just because it gets discussed in the forums at strategycore or xcomufo or that it is mentioned in someone's fanfic doesn't mean that it should be taken as a fact, regardless of the argument that the game story belongs to its fans/players. The game belongs to all of them and quite frankly we are quite a minority (although a very loyal one) regarding that. Hobbes 21:58, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

I personally hate the in-game perspective of some articles. I come to this page mainly to get information, not cheesy stories somebody made up. How about splitting it into two wikis? A serious one in the style of a guide book and a fan-fic one full of funny stories and made up background information? RedNifre 07:55, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

That's why we've got the Field Manual, which is all fiction. The rest should be as fan-fiction free as possible, and any light hearted bits in the non-essential text shouldn't affect the game mechanics explanations (which I feel is the wiki's star aspect). Much of what fiction there (all the non-canon stuff) is a throwback to when we first started and were populating the wiki before we started developing article standards. If you think there's anything that can be done better, we can easily sort that out. -NKF 08:53, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

XML dumps available?

Hello guys! Kudos for creating this amazing wiki!

I have some ideas and I'd like to test them on an XML dump of ufopaedia, since it's a small but interesting wiki. Do you offer the dumps for download somewhere (like wikipedia does)? That would be absolutely fantastic. :) RedNifre 10:23, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

Do you mean Special:Export? --Zombie 20:31, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

I'm not sure if that export page does the job. It seems that it only allows downloading a list of articles I have to type in. What I want is ALL articles of Ufopaedia in XML, be it one file per article or one file for all articles(which I would prefer, since that is what Wikipedia provides and I'd like my software to work with all wikis). You can see what Wikipedia offers here [[1]] and here [[2]]. Thanks! RedNifre 23:19, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

Never mind, I just entered all the relevant categories into the export page and got the XML file I was looking for (Downloading only the files relevant to playing X-COM 1 results in 1.5MB of XML). Thanks! RedNifre 11:21, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

More problems! Since "Special:Export" seems to only allow categories it is impossible to download articles that have no category (e.g. "civilian"). I see two ways how you could fix this: Add an option "Include all uncategorized articles to export" to the export page or put every article in categories. Or run a script that puts every article without category in a "Other" category. RedNifre 07:26, 10 May 2009 (EDT)

Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

I've read a post concerning this and I suddenly couldn't remember if there's any guidelines regarding this, so I decided to ask your opinion about it. I've been transcribing quite a few descriptions from game manuals and game UFOPaedia's for the articles about Apocalypse that I've been adding because I worked under the assumption that this site is basically an online resource for players and it already uses a lot of copyrighted materials, especially images (and also to save some work in creating articles for the pages I've been adding). Another thing that I've been putting into practice is some special editing to differenciate canon material from official sources, I can't remember how to describe but just check any the page of any organization from Apocalypse. Likely there's a better way to it but the most important would be to add something regarding this matter to the UFOPaedia's guidelines Hobbes

I've been thinking that official quotes of in-game text should be clearly defined as such and left unmodified. Perhaps a formatted table with a note at the end stating its source (or title/author/publisher/ISBN if it's from official printed material). Perhaps even have the quotation in italics.

(Example removed)

Would something like the above, or along similar lines work? Could be done by way of two templates (open and close), and you just sandwich the text in between them. The open/close templates could take one parameter each, the title/source. Leaving it out will obviously leave a blank. -NKF 21:56, 28 February 2010 (EST)

Something like this would do rather nicely. I think the important part is for the source of the copyrighted material to be clear. Hobbes 12:36, 6 March 2010 (EST)

These could use some adjustments if anyone has any feedback to offer, but I've converted the previous example into a pair of templates. We now have {{Ref Open}} and {Ref Close | }} to wrap around quotations.

UFOpaedia entry

Celatid Autopsy Official Entry "The core contains a small bio-mechanical device which appears to be a naturally evolved anti-gravity propulsion system. The sac of venom is the largest organ and there does not appear to be a separate brain structure. There is no discernible digestive or reproductive system. A small organ contains embryos which can grow rapidly into a new being."

Source:

The pipe symbol is very important for Ref Close - you put the list of references right after it. Check the source for the above example. The text is set to display one size smaller than the current font and is right aligned, but you can also use links and simple text formatting in the reference list. -NKF 22:15, 6 March 2010 (EST)

Awesome stuff - thanks for the great work NKF. Spike 4:57, 7 March 2010 (EST)

And for those wondering if the above reference blocks look a bit off, I've update-ified the reference tags to make them a a bit easier to maintain and so that less effort goes into formatting the text that you sandwich the ref open and ref close blocks around. Actually the formatting and indent are gone - but I don't think it matters too much. On the bright side, the formatting can now be altered site-wide by just editing the templates rather than the individual pages.

Another change is that I have made the parameters into named parameters. Means you've got so specify them to set them. They also appear to be case sensitive. Ref Open now takes a title. If not set, it uses a default message UFOpaedia entry. Ref Close takes source. NKF 06:40, 6 June 2012 (EDT)

Translation?

Hi everybody

I just found this ufopaedia and now I'm spending most of my time at work here :-)

In Uruguay there is a very small X-Com community, and AFAIK, I'm the first one to find this site. I was thinking about translating the articles to spanish (very slowly), since most players around here are not familiar with the advanced "tips and tricks". I could also post about the rather poor game translation. Do you think it could be worth it?

Diegoba 06:38, 15 August 2009 (EDT)

Hi Diegoba. I think those are great ideas. You could even work on an improved SPANISH.DAT. Hobbes posts here frequently and I believe he did the Spanish translation for XcomUtil. If you were translating Wiki pages, I wonder which pages should be translated first? We would need to think about how to structure it. Maybe an /en and an /es path, like Wikipedia does it?

Spike 13:10, 15 August 2009 (EDT)

Having the /en /es path sounds good. I was thinking about leaving the pages with the most basic info (IE, Geoscape / Base screen description) for the last. I believe that anyone already knows this basics, and are not that hard to understand.

But I really don't know how to get it started. Do I just create an article called "pagina principal" (main page) and then link from there? I guess that page can then be mapped to es.ufopaedia.org

Diegoba 07:04, 16 August 2009 (EDT)

I see you already started on a home page, cool. It makes sense to start with "Top Tricks & Tips".We probably need that in English too!

Thinking about the structure, this is a wiki, so maybe name your pages e.g. "Home Page (Espanol)". Then link each Spanish name "{Spanish Name}" as a wiki redirect to each "{English Name} (Espanol)" Spanish page. Or vice-versa.While you only have a small number of Spanish pages, link them from See Also of the English page, as well as from the Spanish Home Page.Just some suggestions. Hopefully Zombie and those other sysop-type guys will express a view.

Spike 09:47, 16 August 2009 (EDT)

I have no idea how this would work out to be honest. An /es path would probably be the best idea, but I think we'd need to be running a second copy of the wiki software to make that possible. (Something I always wanted anyway as UFO2000 isn't really a game in the series but a project - we are just hosting their pages). If anyone knows how the Wikipedia handles the languages internally, please let me know. Doing all those redirects just doesn't make much sense to me because it is a huge amount of work and could tax the system if there are too many queries. --Zombie 22:30, 18 August 2009 (EDT)

What about just creating a link for both languages in the left side menu, and a link to the other language in the main page?. That is simple enough, and most people will be visiting one language or the other, not switching around.

Diegoba 20:18, 24 August 2009 (EDT)

That would work for now and it has the benefit of being simple. Spike 06:31, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Ok, I added a link to the Spanish main page in the sidebar. Is that good? --Zombie 23:53, 28 August 2009 (EDT)

Juju Dredd 12:00, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Hi, I'd like translate at least part of this great wiki to French, could somebody tell me how to add Français(french) in the list, or do it if I'm not autorised to do it by myself?

It has to be Gazchap (administrator) to add it to the list on the left methinks. But it is possible to add the link to the main page when the french main page is ready. Hobbes 15:55, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Ok, so I should start with translating this one. Juju Dredd 17:16, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Oh, I've just seen how to modify the languages section. Juju Dredd 17:27, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

I can edit the side panel if you want me to add a French section to the wiki. Shall I call it Francais and link it to Page Principale? -NKF 19:02, 30 September 2010 (EDT)

Yes, I was mistaking with the "other languages" sentence at the begining of the main page, I cannot add the link by myself. You guess right, I've begun to write Page Principale as the main page for French. But I think you should call it Français (French) with the cedilla to be consistant with the two others languages links. Juju Dredd 3:16, 1 October 2010 [EDT]

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Site TODOS

A general dump of to-dos or maybe not-do's. Add any where appropriate:

• Template navigation toolbars for subsections. (Some tests have started)
• Strategy by terrain notes?
• Mention of bug where unit gets stuck in the corner of the map
• Mention of bug where you reload a battlescape mission only to be on an invalid level and how to recover from it (use OHMap, go back down to legal level, click until you find the map again, save the game). Often happens after editting the game, strangely enough. Is it possible the game stores map camera coordinates as a file checksum or somesuch?
• Categorizing all pages related to the games. I've finished it already with Apocalypse and TFTD shouldn't be too hard because it has the less pages, but it UFO is going to be a long work. I've already started a few categories for UFO and TFTD (Category: Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and nowiki>Category: TFTD</nowiki>, along with a few specific ones (Research (TFTD and so on). It could also be possible to have some general categories that emcompass the whole of the series (UFOs/USOs, X-COM craft). Hobbes 16:32, 4 November 2009 (EST)

Discussion/talk page proposed format

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Discussion/talk page proposed format

British vs. American spelling

Summary: Use which ever convention you want. It does not matter as long as you do not get into petty spelling convention battles.

XCOM Box Art

Someone (NKF? Danial?) once asked if anybody could scan XCOM's box art, so that they might e.g. put a better graphic on the main page. I just uploaded a 300 dpi scan of all four sides as Media:XCOM_UFO_Defense_DOS_US_Box_Art.zip (3.2 MB). The box is not in mint condition (see the ReadMe), but a little tweaking by somebody with skillz (Danial) could easily spruce it up. - MikeTheRed 18:05, 19 October 2007 (PDT)

Was it me? Hmm. Can't remember. I did think to just grab the cover for the PDF version of the X-Com Player's Handbook (US version - with the Mars/Super Avenger cover), but it's black and white. Could've sworn I've seen a copy in colour somewhere. Not that sepia version wouldn't look great though!

Oh hang on, I don't think it was for the front page graphic in particular, but we did want to get various versions of the box art for the various games. - NKF

---

NKF - or anybody - can we consider replacing the current main page art, with the XCOM box art? Or a portion of it. I loved the game's intro and in-game "cartoon art", but why not use the game's best image, for our primary Main Page image? (Is there somebody with skills that can clean it up quickly? I'm happy to, but I'm no pics wizard.)

One of many possible screencaps

Related to this, I think it would be a nice touch if anyone put a bunch of selected and/or random screen captures (screencaps) onto a page, with a link just "under" (i.e., indented under the Main Page entry for) About X-COM: UFO Defense...

I have a sneaking suspicion that we get a ton of lurkers (someone who is there but never speaks) who once played X-COM and came across our page by chance, and would like to relive it, if even for a few screencaps... yet as it is now, our site is becoming more of an in-depth encyclopedia, instead of a "you were once here" kind of place. All us hard core players gravitate toward the encyclopedia - but even if folks who once played it don't stay, if they say, "wow, I remember doing all that" based on a stack of screenshots, that would be good. I'm thinking of easy sections that are light on text (and no Ufopaedia info), but heavy on thumbnails and click-on screencaps (see the image to the right - I love that financier in the background) like:

• My first base - Decisions
• The Globe - Radar alert!
• First contact! Small farm in Iowa, USA
• Managing Research
• Terror in Sydney! (include zombies - squad wiped out - see next)
• Headline: World Council generally supports X-COM efforts - subheadline - Australia may now be under the control of aliens (funding results for a month)
• Headline: X-COM squad impacted by "Blaster bomb" - the world cries (before and after pix)
• The tricky depths of a Battleship
• Elite squad Mind Controls all aliens
• Final showdown: Cydonia

Each of the sections above might have 1-5 images. Something like that.

If no one objects, can I ask that anyone who is willing to do it, make a bunch of screencaps, using .pngs and thumbnails as shown above. Then lurkers can "remember the days" right up front. And a few more lurkers than currently breeze through, might stay.

To put this in context, CNN recently had a number of articles admiring Commodore 64s (one of them here). X-COM is like that, to me... it lives past its "life expectancy" to gamers, because of how well put together it was, especially including how much it hit you in the gut.

In summary, then. I have one question for us XCOM hardcore (can we change the Main Page image) and one for everybody (want to post a lot of screencaps?). I have made a stub page for the screencaps page. I'll retract it if the hardcore object or there's no response in a couple of months' time. - MikeTheRed 21:44, 14 December 2007 (PST)

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I'm perfectly fine with getting the main title changed. Get a few more ayes and we'll make it so.

A screencap section would be nice. I'm quite partial to creating screencap mini-comics (no, not real comics. Just sequential before/during/after images), although I never use them and they just get deleted in the end.

One benefit is that some of the shots can also be recycled throughout the rest of the site to illustrate certain things. Or for an article that's no more than a solid block of text, something to break up the monotony. I'm also always for a few well placed humorous shots.

-NKF 01:02, 15 December 2007 (PST)

Sounds good, NKF. There could easily be a "comics" page link several ways:

1) The new Main Page entry indented under About X-COM: UFO Defense could also have a link to a comics page, but on the screenshot page itself,

2) That same new entry on the Main Page could read something like "Screenshots - and Comics!" The concept of the screenshots page is to help folks relive the past. And something just as good as screenshots - or better - is screenshots with humor.

3) Or, make a link for it, all by itself, somewhere obvious on the Main Page.

I think it's a great idea!

As for the other idea - you said you're fine re: changing the main title. But it's the graphic at the top of the Main Page that I'm talking about. Just to make sure we're clear on that. - MikeTheRed 17:21, 21 December 2007 (PST)

Request

I have noticed that there is no pictures of TFTD, Apoc, or Int on the main welcome page. Any ordinary joe browsing to here from the four wiki (which I just added the links to point to here in "External links" on each page) is going to leave if they see just the first game picture (and not scroll down to see the other games covered).

SO, my request: have a collage of all four (five incl. email? ) on the front page which easily shows each game box-front. If copywrite issue, then someone could get creative with their own personal artiste skills.

Further up this page there actually has been discussion of using the box art for the various games. Real life, as is often the case, intervenes. But it's not a bad idea mind you. A change is as good as a vacation. -NKF 18:20, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

I was just thinking about this the other day in fact. Anyway, there is a nice collage of all the game boxes on the side of the X-COM Collection box. I could probably scan that and stick it up here for you guys to check out if you want. --Zombie 23:30, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

Zombie, have you had a chance to scan the collage? Just spotted this as I was responding to a different matter. -NKF 22:05, 28 February 2010 (EST)

Favicon

Does the UFOpaedia have a favicon? -- NinthRank 17:51, 6 November 2007 (PST)

We did have it at one time but I think it disappeared after an upgrade to the wiki software. If you have an idea for a favicon, submit it here. --Zombie 18:21, 6 November 2007 (PST)

Okay, I don't know where that logo in the upper left came from, but after a quick GIMP edit, I came up with this: Media:favicon.zip. I'm not quite sure how The GIMP works with icons, so I also included the .png's. What do you think? -- NinthRank 18:51, 6 November 2007 (PST)

Not too shabby. Next time I talk to GazChap, I'll run it past him. Any more ideas for a favicon? I'd like to get a few (at least 3) and run it through a vote here. --Zombie 20:28, 6 November 2007 (PST)

NinthRank and Z, my two cents are something like this. My pics are incredibly crude - I'm a total graphics n00b - and would need somebody like you, Ninth, to turn it into the "burnished gold and navy" (or is that black?), like you did with yours. I couldn't even get my damn background to change for me using simple MS Word art ... what do you use? (See how n00b I am?)

I think you have some great ideas there, but my favicons show as 16x16 pixels. (Is this because I use small icons? I had never heard the the word until you said it, Ninth, at which point I read the wiki entry, and it made immediate sense.) At 16², you have to keep it incredibly simply... having the COM on a big X does that, because it doesn't "waste a repetitive 'X-' across the center", if that makes sense. Another idea is be careful with the X ... I didn't like the X in your 16x16 and 32x32 because it was "narrow" (more vertical than horizontal). I definitely like your 48x48. (I can't tell what's going on with your animated 16x16 .ico, my friend - a 16x16 pic on a 1280x1024 screen (or higher) needs to be real simple. It looks like a tiny pulsing thing, with an X sort of there, overall.) I think the X should be, if not symmetric, then, more wide than high - to me, this implies something "ominous". A true X would have to be "cut off" at the corners to be "wide and fat" at 16x16. This shows more in my second try than the first.

You can make things bigger than 16², a real plus and you get much more flexibility, but for me, only 16x16 exists.

My two cents. I love your overall idea, and using navy (or black?) with gold trim. Thanks for signing in and helping out, NinthRank! -MikeTheRed 19:40, 14 December 2007 (PST)

Technical Commentaries

I just thought of adding a specific section concerning commentaries regarding the game, i.e., trying to explain how the weapons/diplomacy/funding/etc. would work in real life. The idea here is not to expand on the canon X-COM material but to describe/explain in a rational way. I've come with this idea after reading Spike's section (on his User talk:Spike page) explaining the economics of X-COM and starting my own section regarding the Council of Funding Nations. I think there is plenty of material available on the Data canisters that could be used/adapted to this. Also, the discussion regarding Elerium (with all those formulas) on the Talk Page is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.

- Hobbes 22:59, 10 March 2008 (PDT)

I don't see any problem with it. Go for it. We've started with a magnificent wealth of knowledge about the game itself (and a bit beyond, with the binary file diving). Theories and explanations of the X-Com world wouldn't be out of place. They'd certainly add a bit of literary colour and interest for those that wish to look beyond the game. There are lots of interesting bits and pieces scattered throughout the articles (like real world equivalents of weapon or tanks, just to name one example) that would probably fit better in a section like that than in the articles. Perhaps a an expanded data-canister like section would be in order. - NKF 01:13, 11 March 2008 (PDT)

Regarding image file formats

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Regarding image file formats

Proposed top level links

I've written some pages which I'd like to be proposed be linked to the main page, unless anyone can suggest where to put them (careful now!).

I'd like to link Fictional Equivalents to the main page.

I'd like to link Wish List (TFTD) to the TFTD page. It would also be good to start a Known Bugs (TFTD) page, for TFTD-specific bugs.

However as some tricky template work is involved, I'd rather not make these links myself for fear of screwing up the main page(s). Thoughts? Spike 11:20, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Feel free to edit the templates - as long as the tables look okay when you preview them, they shouldn't break the page. The templates are standard pages but with a fancy prefix to their file name to categorize them as templates. This was needed so that any updates to them would show up on the main page right away without forcing the viewers to force-refresh the page. - NKF 12:46, 14 November 2008 (CST)

It should be noted that the TRTBAG more or less covers the "Known Bugs for TFTD" segment. Arrow Quivershaft 16:08, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Well it covers the Research Tree bugs but not any of the other TFTD-specific bugs as far as I can see. Still that's a good starting point, thanks AQ! And thanks Zombie for adding the links. Spike 17:34, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Maybe TRTBAG should just BECOME the "Known Bugs(TFTD)" page. Arrow Quivershaft 17:36, 14 November 2008 (CST)

Because TRTBAG is such an excellent self contained guide, and well written, and quite long, I think it should be separate. I will link to it under the Known Bugs (TFTD) page. I suggest the main page link to TRTBAG be remained "Research Bug Avoidance Guide". Probably the TFTD Alien Glitches page can be gotten rid of. It only mentions one bug, which is not a bug at all. Spike 06:16, 15 November 2008 (CST)

Terminology

X-COM/XCOM/XCom/Etc.

I remember reading about this discussion before and if something concrete comes out I think it should be added to the Guidelines to writing articles. Do we have set a proper spelling to refer to the organization? IIRC the game uses X-COM/XCOM/X-Com/etc. Should we set a standard for the Wiki? Hobbes 07:52, 21 November 2008 (CST)

It's a good idea to agree on a single standard spelling for the Wiki, if only to keep links consistent and prdictable. But it's a shame if there is no clear canonical spelling though. Spike 12:28, 21 November 2008 (CST)

From what I recall there isn't a standard followed on UFO Defense, where you have X-COM/XCOM/XCom/etc. Apocalypse might be more consistent and I have no idea for the other games. I try to use X-COM and I've done some edits to follow this standard spelling but I'd like to read more opinions Hobbes 17:43, 22 November 2008 (CST)

I've had a check through the in-game strings and most if not all of them say "Xcom", which is my least favourite spelling. :( I think X-COM has the best flavour. Spike 19:41, 22 November 2008 (CST)

If any of you folks here have been following what I've been up to lately at the StrategyCore forums, you'll see I have been amassing a collection of most of the game versions in the series. Checking my UFO Game Versions site page, you'll see that the original European release used XCom while the budget releases used X-Com. Other than that, those spellings quickly fell by the wayside as MicroProse decided on X-COM which quickly gained approval and remained the standard spelling throughout the series. (You can't really go by in-game text as those were not checked for consistency). Anyhow, I'd opt for the same route MicroProse took: X-COM. --Zombie 20:33, 22 November 2008 (CST)

Capitalization guidelines/rules for the wiki

Another thing that crossed my mind are guidelines/rules tossed in to prevent overcapitalization.

Specific ingame terms/names should be always capitalized:

• Weapons (Boomeroid, Elerium, Entropy Launcher
• Alien Races (Sectoid, Lobsterman, Skeletoid, etc.)
• Organizations (MarSec, General Dynamics, Council of Funding Nations)
• X-COM Crafts (Skyranger, Manta, Dimension Probe)

Generic ingame terms/names (that already exist in English) should be capitalized the first time they are mentioned on a wiki entry. Some examples:

• Weapons (Plasma Rifle, Torpedo Launcher, Vortex Mine, etc.)
• UFO types (Large Scout, Dreadnaught, Alien Mothership, etc.)
• Soldier Attributes/Agent Stats (Stamina, Psi-defense, etc.)
• Base Facilities

Wiki terms should be capitalized the first time they are mentioned on a wiki entry:

• Tactics
• Economics
• Game Mechanics
• Etc.

A few other rules to prevent overcapitalization and make a smooth reading:

• After the 1st mention, generic ingame terms are not required to be capitalized. As an example, after the first mention of a Laser Pistol, any additional mention(s) to them can simply use the term pistol(s).
• When refering to similar names/terms, it is advisable to capitalize both when they are mentioned. Eg. "Auto Cannon, unlike Heavy Cannon, allows for automatic fire" "Large Scouts are more dangerous than Medium Scouts".
• The same applies to wiki terms.

Hobbes 16:54, 23 November 2008 (CST)

Humor and Flavour Text

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Humor and Flavour Text

Stats & Purchasing Options

Two wildly different subjects here, but worth mentioning:

1) Are any of the Wiki overlords interested in gathering Wiki usage statistics using something like Google Analytics? I just fished about in the server logs and it may interest you to know that the Wiki gets 6,000-8,000 unique visitors a month with anywhere from 13,000-25,000 visits a month from those visitors. With Analytics plugged in (which would take about five minutes from me) then interested parties could keep an eye on what's getting the most attention and, possibly, what people are searching for most (as in things that they're looking for that may not be covered). I'm new to MediaWiki though so I have no idea whether it's got some level of reporting built in?

2) Is it worth putting a link in the menu to the left to a page with more details on buying options and what's in the "complete" collections (as they're not totally complete technically, and people may not be aware that they can buy just one of the games if they want)? I would imagine it's something that quite a few people would be looking for, though admittedly without the detailed stats it's hard to say. Just pretend I don't have an interest in affiliate linking with this question too - I'd thought about it before putting my business hat on, honest! --Pete 17:58, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

1 - MediaWiki doesn't have much in terms of stats so it would be great if you could install that for us. Would be a handy tool for all sorts of things.

2 - Good idea. If someone creates such a page I'll add it to the left menu. :) --Zombie 20:11, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

I like both ideas as well Hobbes 20:30, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

That is a decent number of UVs and well worth monetising just to defray the costs a bit, which is all it would do. I guess you are talking about some Adwords and affiliate links to Steam? Fair enough. I don't pay for the site and it has to be paid for somehow.

Interesting stats though. So there are 6 to 8,000 people viewing and what, at most 10-20 people posting regularly? That's a pretty high "lurker ratio". :) Spike 21:18, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

See Talk:Main Page/Archive#Copyrighted Materials from Official Sources

UFO Classes

Hi all!

I recently finished a mod for X-COM UFO: Enemy Unknown that automatically assigns class and level to soldiers based solely on their stats, called "UFO Classes". It would have been nearly impossible if not for all the reseach into game mechanics i gleaned off this site.

In hope that my work improves the best game of all time, for all the people who made this possible, I proudly present: UFO Classes

--Necuno 15:20, 9 December 2009 (EST)

NPOV-ing of TFTD Equipment

Deleted old discussion for brevity. NPOV-ing of articles in general still in progress.

OpenXcom

Hello,

I thought you may be interested in this new project - it's open source reimplementation of original X-com engine (it uses data from original game). Besides fixing bugs, adding new features and support for new platforms, aim of this project is to create clean open source cross-platform code, which will be useful for future tweaking/modding etc. It's in early development phase. You can find more information about that project on official site http://openxcom.ninex.info/ --Michal 11:43, 29 June 2010 (EDT)

Duplicate watch

Just as an attempt to streamline the wiki, if anyone spots an article that appears to contain duplicate information that is clearly covered in detail in another article, can we have them mentioned here. It occurs to me that since the wiki is quite large, there is bound to be some duplicated information floating out there, or even stand-alone pages that are probably not necessary. The problem is that there could be some disparity in information when one or either article is updated independently of the other. Again, if you spot any, please feel free to bring up the issue here. -NKF 03:00, 17 August 2010 (EDT)

Main Page reorganisation

Just throwing up an idea for everyone to consider. The wiki's a great resource, but I've often found the main page to be a bit cluttered since it has the main menus for all three major games that are being covered and they're restricted to tight columned tables. Also sometimes finding specific information isn't always that easy as some of the relevant documents are buried several articles deep.

I'm no organisational expert, but one thing I thought that might help reduce the clutter is to simplify the main page and have it mainly link to the various submenus for each different game. The submenus can be broken out of their tables and rearranged in a format that would make it easier to access all the relevant articles.

The earlier suggestion of using actual game box art would be a great idea for the main page as well.

Thoughts, suggestions, etc? -NKF 06:45, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

?. More book like. A simple, from a information point of view, and short, to make it in fit(in general) into a singe browser window, main page. And link it up to a general main index page. Could be a full index page. But having a special short-type of index page seems better to me. --MvGulik 09:20, 16 October 2010 (EDT)

I agree with NKF. The main page is cluttered. I agree the solution is to reduce the main page to pretty much a menu option for each game and some other links that are not game-specific. Then fill up unused space with some nice box art. :) Spike 14:41, 17 October 2010 (EDT)

I resurrected and cleared most of the Mock main page to make a space to be able to draft a concept new main page. Haven't really got a handle of how it should look at the moment, but got to start somewhere.

The excellent work Zombie's done scanning the various game boxes from his collection will be a good resource for the box art images. How big should they be though? More specifically, what dimensions?

I've got an idea how we could re-organize main page, but also I've got a lack of time to draw a sketch of it. And some questions: does wiki allow to use an image as a background for template and how to do this? And where can I get these Zombie's scans?

I am not entirely sure about the backgrounds, but as the wiki does allow some CSS code in the HTML and wiki markup code, I imagine you could put some background images into some page elements like the tables and some blocks of text.

As for Zombie's scans, they can be found on Strategycore's game data bank. Look under the individual games in the series and check the 'game versions' to see scans of various releases of the game. For example: UFO's game versions. What i was thinking was perhaps an image that contains bot the European and American styled box art in one image for UFO. And the same for TFTD and Apocalypse. -NKF 08:53, 22 October 2010 (BST)

Also regarding the news box. There's not a lot of news, but I was thinking that it could be template-ized and we simply include it on the main page. We don't get enough news, but the template markup that includes/excludes part of the template could be useful to keep only the new items visible on the main page while the old news is hidden except when you view the actual news page. We could even go without it too. Any thoughts on that? -NKF 07:44, 22 October 2010 (BST)

I would be happy to assist with a new layout in terms of box art as I've got all the files to hand (as pointed out in the databank link above). I think maybe the way MediaWiki does news on their site is possibly the way to do it: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/News - if you look on their homepage it pulls in that latest news block (though I don't know how) so we could have latest and older news similar to that. Alternatively there does appear to be a few extensions for handling news but people seem to be having some difficulty with them. --Pete 10:32, 23 October 2010 (BST)

Looking at the source, there is a bit of code there, but otherwise looks like it mostly manually updated. Or only the items under the recent news heading may be included. Still, I think I think we could bash together something similar by hand easily enough to not need an extension for it.

Any suggestions on how the box art should be displayed? -NKF 23:16, 24 October 2010 (BST)

It's a tricky one to be sure. If the box art is given too much prominence then you might not realise they're clickable (assuming you want to use them to click through to the relevant game, which would make sense). It maybe needs to be box art, with an obvious link to go to that game and perhaps a short sentence about each game. Not sure whether that's wasted space though as most people will know what each game is, but maybe that's just an assumption on my part as there's a new generation who are starting from scratch so a short sentence overview could be really useful.

I would say maybe just do it with two or three games per row perhaps and lay them out like that with a link to each section and an intro. The issue with this site is how silly it would look on wider screen resolutions as it stretches, but I can pull off some stats for the most commonly used resolution and work it out so it looks good on that. What I'll probably do is take a screenshot of the current homepage and whip something up later on quickly in Photoshop as a rough example for discussion. It is best to keep it basic though obviously so the layout easily survives future software upgrades (the exact opposite of what happens on StrategyCore ;)). --Pete 13:48, 25 October 2010 (BST)

Check the Mock main page - is something like that what you had in mind? Just imagine the icons filled with pretty box art. The box art would be links to the pages as well. The end size of the boxart will have to be something that would work well both for wide screens as well as tiny devices like cellphones. -NKF 06:57, 26 October 2010 (BST)

Wiki software upgrade - 15/10/10

Hi all. After discussion with NKF regarding adding some new extensions to the wiki in an attempt to help out with the spamming issue, I've been working on an upgrade routine to update the software from the current version (1.11) to the latest (1.16) as well as installing these helpful extentions.

Using a development version of the site, I've worked out any kinks in the upgrade path and as such will be going ahead with the upgrade betwen 3-4pm GMT today (see note on the homepage - I figured a nice, obvious message was called for on this occasion).

The upgrade itself should only take 15-20 minutes - it's a case of uploading the new files and running the upgrade script, so it hopefully shouldn't take even that long. Extensions can be added once it's back up and running as they don't cause any interference, however I'll be looking to do all of this within that window. Please see the link in the message at the top of the homepage for an idewa of the time difference between where you are and where I am.

Fingers crossed this should close several security holes in the system (according to the software developers), maybe reduce the amount of spam and certainly give sysops more tools to combat it. --Pete 04:00, 15 October 2010 (EDT)

This has now been completed as of 4.05pm (slightly later than scheduled due to going for a walk this mornig that turned into a long one!). All upgraded and new extensions installed which can be seen on the Special Pages:Version page, and I took the upgrade message down off the homepage. I've had a good look around and everyhting seems in order, however you can contact me easily via PM at www.strategycore.co.uk/forums if you do spot any issues. Thanks! --Pete 11:09, 15 October 2010 (EDT)

Hosting Move - 20th October 2010

We're having and issue with the current hosting is that all sites on our server (including UFOPaedia and StrategyCore) are going down at random intervals several times a week for anywhere between 15-30 minutes. Unfortunately the hosting company are unable to track down the issue, and their best suggestion is for us to upgrade to a package with more resources, ie. try a different server as they're baffled. Now, if we're facing a server move one way or the other I'd rather be in control of it than leaving it to web hosts to do it when I'm not around to monitor it.

Firstly, before anyone gets flashbacks of the less-than-perfect way this was handled last time, I'll re-assure you all that this is a necessary evil and that I've done my best to test an exact copy of this site on the new server with the help of NKF and Bomb Bloke in order to work out any potential issues and minimise any downtime.

Whilst I've been researching the best way to do this as seamlessly as possible over the last few weeks, I found another host that was able to provide us with more resources for a cheaper price whilst providing a higher level of up-time - this sounds like the new server is cheap, but in reality I was paying over the odds for the current hosting - we're talking a few hundred dollars more than necessary here. I use this host for UK sites and they also do US hosting for the same prices, which is good as both sites in question are on US hosting currently but I then also get the benefit of the pricing being in Pounds Sterling for my accounting purposes (I live in the UK in case you were wondering).

Theoretically I can migrate the site with no downtime and minimum interruption to service. The process involves putting up a message on the homepage with the date and time of the move (which I'll do in a few minutes) followed by another message 15 minutes before the move reminding people not to add to or edit the WIKI until they see a message saying they're viewing the new site. Then I copy the site across, which takes 10-15 minutes and point the domain to the new server, which takes a further 5 minutes or so. I've reduced the amount of time that the domain name should be cached by DNS servers to 15 minutes - in laymans terms this is the amount of time browsers and DNS servers cache the IP address that relates to a domain name - and this will take effect in 23 hours (I changed it about an hour ago). At that point, your browsers should be checking the IP address associated with the domain every 15 minutes, so once you see the message saying the site is being moves, wait 15-30 minutes and refresh your page - you should then see the new site.

An additional failsafe will be in place in that I can tell the current server to forward all HTTP (web) traffic directly to the new server at the same time, so even if your browser is caching the old IP for longer for some reason, the current server should forward you on to the new server instantaneously.

All that said, this is the first time I will have attempted all of these "tricks of the transfer" at the same time, as last time I was unaware of the reduced DNS refresh trick and the domain IP forwarding. There is a lot going on and I'll be going through it very carefully to ensure it's done right this time, so please be patient with me.

Assuming all goes to plan, you will know you're on the new server and can begin adding to/editing the site once again as I will replace the red "server move on 20/10/10 at 9AM" message on the homepage with a green "server move complete" message (but with a more descriptive message) so there will be a clear indicator as to which server you are viewing.

Just a final note that I will only be moving UFOPaedia.org on the 20th, not StrategyCore as well. Last time I moved both at once and it was a nightmare to track down issues across two sites, especially since StrategyCore has 3 pieces of software to troubleshoot and UFOPedia has just the one. My aim is to focus on one site at a time this time around to keep potential disruption to an absolute minimum.

New Sysop appointments

Just letting everyone know that Pete has let me appoint a few new Sysops to the administration team to assist with dealing any spambots, spammers, vandals and general troublemakers. Spike, Bomb Bloke and ufo.mesh have been appointed to the roles. Thanks everyone. -NKF 00:55, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Be afraid, be very afraid... >:] - Bomb Bloke 03:00, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

I appreciate your confidence and will serve loyally for the growth and prosperity of the unique Ufopaedia! --ufo.mesh 07:06, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Carry on the good work guys! --Pete 07:44, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

Сongratulations to all! :) ---=Troll=- 07:50, 19 October 2010 (EDT)

New registrations temporarily disabled

Just a heads up to everyone and potential wiki contributors: Due in part to the recent vandalism, new user registration has been temporarily disabled. Apologies for any inconveniences caused, but don't worry as this situation is only temporary. -NKF 06:34, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Something must be done to prevent vandalism in the future. Temporarily disabling registration you'll only delay future attacks. Open it and new attacks will follow. I noticed that every wave of vandals was after the moment when I published update news at Russian forums. After that in a day or two new trolls appeared here. I think they visit forums regularly and track down changes at wiki from there but I can still be mistaken with that.--ufo.mesh 17:35, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Just a quick one to say that registrations were re-opened "the other day" (Friday 15th or Saturday 16th - can't remember exactly). I'm not sure whether the vandalism we've been seeing was potentially automated or due to real-life people signing in and wrecking stuff, but if it was partially automated then the updated software should hopefuly curb the level of vandalism. either way, just to let you all know that registrations are re-open to test this out. I'm also keeping my eye out for other software extensions that may help with this ongoing battle. --Pete 15:46, 18 October 2010 (EDT)

Dubious Accounts

There have been some pretty dubious user registrations over the last 2 days. Names that look to be generated by an algorithm. Views on what to do about these accounts? At what point do new accounts become eligible to post? Spike 22:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the new accounts are allowed to post right away, but these ones look very suspicious indeed. Having a bunch of them sign up at the same time and with the same format with random numbers and letter after the name - and not one of them's posted (yet). Might be sleeper bots waiting for a certain time/date before they become active. I'd like to take action, but don't want to be jumping the gun either. -NKF 23:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Could be that the new Wiki software blocked whatever the presumed Bots tried to do. I think we should block these accounts, and any like them that appear in future. But, what's the recourse if one of these accounts is a genuine user? How would they be able to let us know the mistake? Spike 18:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I had a very brief look at the past block logs and it seems that similar accounts have been blocked since late August or early September. Either I've been blocking them or the wiki's been auto blocking based on the IP's of some past accounts I'd put blocks on. All feature the same generated name format.

Unless the bots are designed to use the e-mail feature as well, I think one option is to block the account but allow them to send e-mails. That way they can contact the admins to sort the problem out. -NKF 06:30, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't you just add some kind of Turing test feature to the registration procedure? That should block most bots but should not be to much of a hassle for real new users. And add a autoremove after 30-60 days without a posting after registration(no checking for inactivity for established users)?

--Tauon 14:16, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Hosting Move - 7 December 2010

Unfortunately the current host isn't as good as I'd initially hoped and there have been unacceptable preiods of downtime for both UFOPaedia.org and StrategyCore as a result.

I've since found what looks like very good hosting with support technicians that will proactively work to get the sites running again as soon as they do go down (fingers crossed they won't), rather than the current hosts who pretty much leave it until you notice it yourself. To my mind that's worth a bit of extra hassle to move the sites again and worth the slight added expense for that kind of service. There are also far more resources available to us in terms of processor power and RAM which should hopefully see the end of the recent periods of instability.

So, the plan is to move UFOPaedia.org on Tuesday the 7th of December at 7pm GMT (again, refer here to see the differences to your local timezone: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/current-time.htm ) with as minimal impact as possible. As per last time, a red notice will appear on the homepage just before the move begins, and when you see the green notice to say the move has completed successfully you will then be viewing the site on the new server. I'll put up a notice shortly directing people to this message to give some advanced warning.

Thanks again for your patience.

Due to being stuck on the other side of the country for most of the day because of adverse weather (in England that is) I've had to reschedule this to tomorrow night instead - sorry for the short notice! --Pete 21:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The server move has now been completed and everything seems to be working okay. If something isn't working however, please let me know! --Pete 17:10, 8 December 2010 (EST)

Thanks a bunch Pete. Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from here on. Or at least better than it was before this. -NKF 00:39, 10 December 2010 (EST)

Fingers crossed. Stupidly enough just after the files were moved across the site on the old server got into difficulty so there was some unexpected downtime for a few hours but with it being mid-week I'm hopeing nobody was affected/noticed too much! The new server is showing a CPU load of 0.01-0.04 (1 = full CPU load, but the number is a bit random as I've seen it working at 4.0 on some sites and on the last host anything much over 1.5 was causing massive issues). I'll monitor it tonight and tomorrow when it's likely to be busier and all being well I'll move StrategyCore over on Sunday afternoon if everything looks like it's behaving itself. --Pete 14:33, 10 December 2010 (EST)

<~~ Nudges the conversation stream left again

Hi Pete and NKF. Pete, I looked at your Talk page... good to see another fan, plus a StratCore founder. I'm impressed!

Thanks for caring for the UFOpaedia. I haven't touched XCOM lately - like you, there's so many games and so little time... plus a tiny niggling reminder in my brain about real life, whatever that is... but still. I feel like a major chunk of my soul is on these pages, and I wouldn't want it lost. I hope that anyone who loves XCOM can appreciate all that I, Zombie, BombBloke, NKF, and many many others have done here. And I still remember the heady days that Zombie, I, and Danial rushed to pin down the explosion and weapon damage equations - made effortless by BB's great tools.

Thanks and - enjoy! --MikeTheRed 03:18, 12 December 2010 (EST)

Why not to move 2012 OR vanilla ufopaedia stuff to another hosting?

<IMHO> With this X-COM Enemy Unknown (2012) classy ufopaedia became almost unreliable (unsearchable) source of information. "Modification history" is spammed with 2012 project, which has nothing to vanilla xcom. There are no "filters" which could make it slightly better. Moreover, whole internet become spoiled and spammed in sense of searching something about ufo defense. And it's a pity. Because Ufopaedia is not The Ufopaedia anymore. Wouldn't it better to have totally another hosting? After all XCOM:Enemy Unknown (2012) doesn't even have UFOPAEDIA.

With this 2012 heavy spam I stopped to make my Xcom1/Xcom2 contribution here. That's one of results. --Volutar 13:28, 11 November 2013 (EST) </IMHO>

Totally agree with NKF and disagree with SuicidalSectoid. Mixing new with old contents makes mess in both sides. It would be better to setup different wikis with different modification histories for classic xcoms(1-3) and for new titles. And not to get into conflict to each other. There's nothing in common between them in terms of game mechanics. Personally I was very annoyed and disappointed seeing modification history spammed with 2012 info, and having no chances to monitor what's happening with ufodefense/tftd info. And seeing how fast my ufodefense info update drowned I stopped to make any updates. --Volutar 14:43, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Have you tried using the [watchlist] function on the top right? You can use that to track changes to the specific pages you're editing if you don't want to see all the changes.

My complain is about spam in change history. I just don't want to see any history of EU2012 pages. Unfortunately there's no such filter. To use that "watch" I'll have to tick evey non EU2012 page and new non-EU2012 pages also should be ticked by default (that's clearly impossible.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

What you call 'spam' I call a lot of it my personal work. The same way I call work all of the edits I've done on UFO/TFTD/Apocalypse. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Is there an option in the prefrences that allows us to set all edits to minor edits unless otherwise specified?--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)

This wiki has always been about the game series: Apocalypse/Interceptor/Enforcer have about as much in common with UFO/TFTD as Enemy Unknown (2012) and The Bureau, regarding game mechanics. And now that there's a ton of new information on the internet because of the new games and new wikis, that's the main strength that separates The UFOPaedia from all the rest: it is the only site that focuses on the whole series, not a specific game. And if we split the wiki into smaller ones, you're basically contributing to turn UFO/TFTD into footnotes, because only the few players of the old games will know about UFOPaedia.org, since it's not anymore on the new game. By having all of the titles together (and the specific pages with the common aspects of the series, like Sectoid/Sectoid (EU2012) crosslinked we're contributing to keep the old games alive. Hobbes 15:32, 11 November 2013 (EST)

And how big the UFOPaedia is in helping to pass the torch? Read it from Jake Solomon itself, lead designer of EU2012: "I've spent more time there than I'd like to tally" [3] Hobbes 16:08, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Sorry, I'm just not interested in EU2012. And one notice - this wiki was never about Interceptor/Enforcer. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Nor did I say it was only about those two games. Read the top of the Main Page of the UFOPaedia: "This site is dedicated to X-COM, a computer strategy game series introduced in 1994 by MicroProse." Hobbes 16:21, 12 November 2013 (EST)

And would you be willing to move all the pages over to another wiki.

Also it is a bit late to be separating them now, we have an almost complete EU2012 section and half completed Bureau section, it would take us ages to separate them.

Yeah, so I quit updating this resource. It'd be easier to setup new information reosurce, without spam of casual modern pseudo-ufo-like games, than to split this on vanilla (xcom1-3) / non-vanilla.--Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

You don't like the new games, I respect that. You want to go through the work of setting a new wiki, I'll respect it also. Hobbes 16:43, 12 November 2013 (EST)

My third is that most of the people who edit the wiki commonly edit both, so separating the wiki would be like trying to force them onto one wiki where they are unable to monitor the other wiki.

My final point is that hardly anyone actually edits the original three games' pages anymore because they are almost – if not fully – complete. So on the Original X-COM wiki you would get edits every now and again, which would make it less worthwhile to host. But hosting them on the same wiki allows for fans of the new to see where it all began and begin to play those games.

Just some ideas--Ditto51 15:21, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Something else to add about what Ditto51 said about the first 3 games pages being complete: before Enemy Unknown 2012 was announced you could spend weeks on the UFOPaedia without any meaningful edits taking place. That pretty much showed the general lack of interest and activity regarding the first 3 games. Do we want to get back to that? Hobbes 15:41, 11 November 2013 (EST)

Aah - Where to start?

The new games are new, so they are in the spotlight, and it's not unexpected for there to be an explosion of new data to chronicle on the wiki. Once things have settled the update pace is likely to slow back down back to what it was.

I must comment however that recently there are a lot of micro updates on the same pages within a short span of time. That does have a tendency to fill up the recent pages very quickly. Preview folks!

Mainly my fault there, specially since I forget to check the "minor edit" box quite a bit during mass edits. But I also feel that we're lacking something to individually keep track of specific pages, like Volutar has mentioned. Hobbes 16:36, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Next, looking at the time stamp on my comment in the conversation above, about a year out, I must admit that I completely forgot about that conversation. Likely because I was too busy playing EU2012 at the time and never did get round to come back and elaborate on my vision.

My thought at the time wasn't to move it to a new host or make a whole new UfopaediaV2.org just for the new games. Heck no, just keep it as the one wiki to rule all the X-Com wikis. I was thinking one wiki with interlinked subwikis that share the same resources, so there will be no loss in the legacy of the originals at all. In fact, it would be no different to the end user than it is now.

Administration wise it would be a hassle to start off with, but you then would have less to worry about disambiguations or conflicting names and any updates on the recent updates or searches will be context sensitive and relevant to the game or series you're looking at. Section-wide changes like skins could also be implemented without having to update each and every single page. It may also offer the possibility of fostering smaller community of contributors that want to focus on particular games who would otherwise be shy or intimidated to contribute to the wiki as it is now.

The idea was a bit of an offshoot of how multilingual wikis are implemented. Not quite, but just an idea to manage it in smaller chunks. But all that doesn't really matter to me anymore. I'll just get back to casually tending to any pages that take my fancy. -NKF 00:34, 12 November 2013 (EST)

If you look at my update history you'll notice that I was updating vanilla pages pretty often, but stopped as EU2012 came out (sep'2012). Just because changes was heavily spammed, and I felt how this site became ufopaedia2012 (though there is no ufopaedia in EU2012), so I lost interest in fixing unreliable info and adding new for vanilla. Just what for? It will anyways be drowned in this EU2012 massive promotion. Which spoiled whole internet. When you'll search for UFO:Enemy Unknown you'll still find EU2012 info. And it will be a luck to get anything about vanilla. I feel like vanilla ufopeadia became kind of unnecessary here, so i think I better move on. Thanks for your points. --Volutar 14:08, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Seriously, lets just leave it now, this was a conversation from a year ago that would have been relevant then, but now there is just too much information to move onto a separate site now, so lets leave it as it is.--Ditto51 17:35, 12 November 2013 (EST)

Other Wiki

I have recently found another wiki bearing the XCOM title. It focuses purely on the remake and frankly it is pointless considering the Ufopaedia is already established.

I'm just getting the word out.--SuicidalSectoid 14:08, 24 December 2012 (EST)

Got a link to it? Redundant or not, it's nice to see other eager about the game. NKF 16:00, 24 December 2012 (EST)

This one, I'd say. Most likely exists because someone thinks every new game needs to be on wikia. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 05:03, 25 December 2012 (EST)

I've noticed it even before the new game was out. They have nice design and content for the new game and a lot of traffic from being on wikia but all those commercial advertisements and structure and being restricted to the new games are the negative factors. Hobbes 12:13, 25 December 2012 (EST)

Ugh. I wouldn't describe wikia's design as "nice". It's superficially impressive, but crammed with advertising and if you try to actually get anything done on it it's horrible. There's a reason most of wowwiki deserted wikia when they imposed that format. Binkyuk 12:45, 25 December 2012 (EST)

By design I mean the navigation elements that make it easier to access game sections. Visually I also think it has too many elements. Hobbes 13:54, 25 December 2012 (EST)

Recent Spambot attacks

I've sent Pete a message about the recent spammer issue. I've suggested a temporary halt on new accounts.

Also, just a note to other members, please don't alter new pages created by the spammers and wait for one of the admins to sort it out. It adds a bit of confusion in the clean up process. Mainly because the block option is near the member name in the recent changes, I've caught myself nearly blocking a valid member a few times now! If I have, you have my apologies. Please go to the official Ufopaedia forum and give me a buzz.

NKF 01:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

Would it be possible to determine the IP of the spammer(s) and block it instead, as Ditto51 has suggested in my Talk Page? I think that putting a halt on new accounts may be a drastic measure since the amount of fake accounts isn't overwhelming for admins to deal with. Another thing I've been considering is to add new admins to help with the running of the wiki. Hobbes 06:59, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

Since to create an account we need to do that weird word/letter enter thing to create an account, wouldn't it be an actual person who is extremely bored? So wouldn't they eventually get bored of making accounts and then getting blocked?--Ditto51 17:48, 20 September 2013 (EDT)

My guess is someone has developed some software that can see through our Captcha. Given the naming conventions and whatnot I doubt this is manual work. Binkyuk 05:37, 24 September 2013 (EDT)

User:SonyaUliana has got the same name format at the other Spam Accounts, and I'm pretty sure SHIVs can't save civilians during terror missions or deactivate powernodes or bombs on the bomb defusal councilmissions (see [4]). --Ditto51 05:05, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

Well, it looks the same name format but there's a regular user at the 2K forums named SayuriUliana and although I don't use SHIVs myself I seem to recall a few discussions at the 2K forums mentioning their use to save civilians. Hobbes 07:31, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

Ah, okay. I was just wandering.--Ditto51 07:37, 28 September 2013 (EDT)

I know that we really do not want to stop all User Creations, but the number of spam accounts have increased recently and so when you look through the Recent Changes all you can see are the new Users. Although we could possibly find and install something that allows people to remove User Creations and Blocks from the Recent Changes menu.--Ditto51 09:44, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

We're still waiting for Pete to answer NKF's message and to temporary suspend all account creation so that the bot will go away. Otherwise it will still be a lot of unnecessary work to have to delete pages/block users, even if there's an easy way to do it. Hobbes 12:09, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

I meant make it easier for those of us who aren't admins and so don't have the ability to see the user creations and blocks so that we can just see what we want to see plus maybe the extra pages the spam accounts make--Ditto51 16:05, 8 October 2013 (EDT)

Ditto51, I really really wish we had that sort of filter too. We do have a recents cleanup plugin that admins use to manually hide the signups and blocks, but it's a manual process and not suited to a large number of attacks like we've got at present.

By the way, Hobbes, it probably can't hurt to send Pete a PM as well. There's not too much we can do until he gets back, but the more the merrier. NKF 00:47, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Just sent Pete a PM Hobbes 05:36, 9 October 2013 (EDT)

Over on Bulbapedia they have it so new accounts can't edit their Userspace or make new pages in the mainspace until they make an edit on a mainspace article. Have we got something like this implimented, if not then we should so that the spam accounts should, in theory, be unable to create pages or edit their Userspace.--Ditto51 03:06, 2 December 2013 (EST)

If not, we could make a "Introduce Yourself" page for new users to make a short quip, like which XCOM they prefer. Other option could be making spelling/grammar edits on pages to identify not spam. Otherwise if they make new page or edit namespace first, instant red flag?--DracoGriffin 17:34, 2 December 2013 (EST)

I've just sent Pete another message asking about the spambot situation and possible solutions. I've also asked about the new wiki functionalities mentioned on the thread below this one. Hobbes 17:52, 2 December 2013 (EST)

New Main Page using Tabs

Welcome to UFOpaedia.org, Your X-COM Wiki featuring 2,788 articles and 4,275 users.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) Terror from the Deep Apocalypse

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

In other languages: Español, Pусский, Français, 한국어.

This site is dedicated to X-COM, a computer strategy game series introduced in 1994 by MicroProse.

This wiki contains a wealth of information including strategy, tactical tips, plus an in-depth look at how the game functions. If you love X-COM and want to contribute, please see the Community Portal. All rookies welcome!

Disclaimer: To be absolutely clear, this site is dedicated to a series of computer games and not to general conspiracy theories regarding UFOs and aliens.

X-COM News
Phoenix Point One Year Edition released! Phoenix Point Geoscape December 8th, 2020 Phoenix Point, the successor to the XCom series made by its original creator, Julian Gollop, has just released its one year edition on Steam and other gaming platforms. The player takes control of Phoenix Point, a top secret organization created to deal with extraordinary threats, as it fights the Pandora virus, an alien lifeform that wishes to remake Earth at its own image, while dealing with human factions that also have their own agenda for the future of the planet, in a game heavily influenced by the Cthulu Mythos. The game follows the classic 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) for its Geoscape layer, with a turn-based combat system situated halfway between the original game and Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Phoenix Point even has its own wiki and it seems influenced by the UFOPaedia! XCOM: Chimera Squad announced! April 14th, 2020 Firaxis has announced an upcoming spinoff to the XCOM franchise, "Chimera Squad", to be released in April 24th. The events of the game take place 5 years after XCOM 2 and are centered upon the titular multi-species law enforcement unit keeping the peace among the humans and aliens living together in the metropolis known as City 31, as a seeming spiritual successor to X-COM: Apocalypse. The released gameplay trailer reveals that in addition to playable alien squad members, consisting of the Sectoid Verge, the Viper Torque and the Muton Axiom, the game also introduces a Breaching mechanic for setting up an opening surprise attack at the beginning of combat, a Timeline system where the combatants on both sides individually take turns after each other in a fixed, faction-alternating order rather than the entire team acting as once like in previous games, as well as disposable androids to take the place of injured agents on the team roster.
Archived News

UFOPAEDIA News
January 1st, 2018 Maintenance In Progress. In order to improve the wiki's usage, UFOPaedia has been moved to a new server, together with an an upgrade to its MediaWiki software, all thanks to NineX, who has offered to host the wiki. Please reports any bugs you might find in the Talk: Main Page. August 10th, 2016 Site move to the new server complete. Ufopaedia.org was successfully moved to the new server, which should solve the past month issues with accessing the wiki. Anti-spam measures are also going to be installed, which should allow later for new site sign-ups. Big thank you to Jo5hua for the new hosting and all the work updating the site. June 9th, 2015 XCOM 2 on UFOPaedia. An XCOM2 page has been created to collect all the information released so far about the upcoming sequel to Enemy Unknown. Later a section for the new game will be added. June 3rd, 2014 Long War on UFOPaedia. The much acclaimed Long War mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Enemy Within now has its own subwiki at the UFOPaedia. Long War features over 700 changes to EU/EW and has been described by Jake Solomon (EU's lead designer) as: "If you liked XCOM, give The Long War mod a shot. Takes XCOM to a new level." March 17th, 2014 UFOPaedia on Twitter. The UFOpaedia now has its own Twitter account (http://twitter.com/UFOpaedia). Please use the hashtag #ufopaedia on your posts. December 29th, 2013 Software Upgrade. UFOpaedia has now been upgraded from version 1.16 to version 1.22. Whilst functionality has been checked and should work as normal, if you encounter anything odd then please let Pete know under the Wiki Software Upgrade section here. December 27th, 2013 Server Transfer. At 10am GMT on the 27th December the UFOpaedia will be transferred to a new server on strategycore. Posting will be disabled for a short period whilst the transfer takes place. December 20th, 2013 Enemy Within mapped out. The Maps section of XCOM: Enemy Unknown now contains overhead images of all the EW DLC's new maps on the individual map pages. November 22nd, 2013 Site Maintenance Continues. The good news is that it is possible now to register new users. The bad news is that the spammer problems aren't solved yet, so when registering please don't choose a suspicious username or you might find yourself blocked. Hang in there, Commander. November 2nd, 2013 Site Maintenance. We're currently performing some site upgrades in order to solve the spammer problem and other issues. While the maintenance is underway it won't be possible to register new users but already existing users can continue working. Thank you. </noinclude> September 23rd, 2013 Spam attacks. We've been having a lot of spammers recently so we're taking the policy of preemptive blocking of users with suspicious usernames. To prevent this happening to you either choose a username XCOM related or page edit right after you register. Thanks. August 20th, 2013 The Bureau: XCOM Declassified section open. The UFOPaedia's section of the new XCOM game is now open. Feel free to start contributing. February 7th, 2013 XCOM: Enemy Unknown maps revealed: The Maps section of the re-imagined game's now contains overhead images of all maps on their individual pages. December 28th, 2012 Enemy Unknown section growing: The EU2012 section now has over 200 pages. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far and keep enjoying the game in 2013. :) October 4th, 2012 New Main Page: UFOpaedia.org features a new Main Page, this to better structure the information and news. Each section draws information from two different pages XCOM_News for general news about the games and UFOpaedia News for news on the wiki site.
Archived News

Enemy Unknown (1994)

UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense)
Overview General Information Background OpenXcom The Geoscape Geoscape UFO Detection UFO Interception X-COM X-COM Bases Base Facilities Manufacturing Research Country Funding X-COM Craft Craft Armaments Soldiers Equipment Weapons Armour Heavy Weapons Platforms Miscellaneous Equipment Aliens Alien Life Forms Overview of Aliens Alien Missions Alien Ranks UFOs UFO Components Alien Artefacts	The Battlescape (Tactical Combat) Battlescape Mission Types UFO Crash Recovery UFO Ground Assault Alien Base Assault Terror Missions Base Defence Tactics Field Manual Night Missions Squad Composition Rear Commanders Initial Deployment Scouting Sweeping the Battlescape Time Management Reaction Training Reaction Fire Triggers Alien Movement Patterns Grenades Proximity Grenade Smoke Grenade Grenade Relay Stun Rod	Game Strategies A Beginner's Guide Base Management Base Layout Strategy Experience Training Economics Buying/Selling/Transferring Hiring/Firing UFO Recovery Values Manufacturing Profitability Tricks, Tips and Hints Common Mistakes Managing the Item Limit Making the Game Harder Murphy's Laws of X-COM Miscellaneous Information X-COM Timeline Weapon Analysis Sightings in other fandoms Glossary of Terms Data Canisters Realistic Equivalents Cultural Influences on X-COM Mars Game Editors & Mods Council of Funding Nations The Mysteries of X-COM Wish_List_(EU) GUS Music in Dosbox Ideal DOSBox Settings (UFO/TFTD)	Technical Information Game Mechanics Damage Explosions Destroying Terrain Damage Modifiers Fatal Wounds Stun Accuracy Formula Reaction Fire Experience Psionics Unconsciousness Recovery Time Equipment Recovery Line of Sight Difficulty Levels Research Technical Details Data Tables Alien Appearance Ratios Inventory TU Table Movement TU Tables Item Weight Unit Height Scoring Kill Modelling Starting Stats Alien Stats Research Times Terrain Exploits Game Files Known Bugs Game Versions Open Questions

Terror From the Deep (1995)

X-COM: Terror From the Deep
General General Information Background OpenXcom The Geoscape Geoscape X-COM Subs Sub Armaments Aquanauts Equipment Weapons Submersible Weapons Systems Base Facilities Research Alien Research Alien Artefacts Economics Funding Aliens Alien Life Forms Overviews of Aliens Alien Missions Alien Ranks Terror Units Alien Weapon Loadouts Alien Subs Alien Sub Components	The Battlescape (Tactical Combat) Battlescape Overview Mission Types Alien Sub Crash Recovery Alien Submarine Assault Terror Mission Port Attack Island Attack Shipping Lane Mission Artefact Site Colony Assault Base Defense T'leth Terrain	Game Strategies TFTD Strategy Guide Miscellaneous Weapon Effectiveness tables Weapon Analysis Realistic Equivalents Sightings in other fandoms Enabling the cinematic intro/outro Wish List GUS Music in Dosbox Ideal DOSBox Settings (UFO/TFTD) Technical Information Scoring Data Tables Alien Appearance Ratios Game Files Known Bugs Research Tree Bug Avoidance Guide

Apocalypse (1997)

X-COM: Apocalypse best viewed in 1280x1024.
General Information & Credits History & Background Keyboard Commands Known Bugs Mega-Primus Cityscape Cityscape Overview Cityscape Maps Game Difficulty Organizations Buildings & Areas Population Unit Attributes Damage & Modifiers Relations Trade Score & Technology Progress Cityscape Mission Styles Battlescape Battlescape Overview Battlescape Mission Styles Battlescape Tactics & Gameplay Start A Mission Equipping Agents Agent Controls Using Cover Engaging Hostiles Anti-Alien Strategy Capture Live Aliens Psionic Agents Defend Your Base Combat Format Combat: Real-Time (RT) Combat: Turn-Based (TB) Comparison: RT vs TB	X-COM Bases Overview Locations Layouts Facilities Science & Manufacturing Overview Science: Biochemistry Science: Quantum Physics Manufacture: Engineering Agents Overview Attributes Promotions Equipment Armor Vehicles Overview Armaments Engines Equipment & Devices Aliens Aliens Overview Life Forms Exotic Artifacts Alien Infiltration UFO Overview UFO Appearance Cityscape UFO Combat Alien Dimension Overview Dimension UFO Combat Alien Buildings	Miscellaneous Information Historical X-COM Timeline Cut Content Cheat Codes Weapon & Equipment Analysis X-COM In Other Works Technical Information Image Properties Audio Properties Music Files Cityscape Files Learning AI Apocalypse Editing Useful Utilities Apocalypse Guides & Modifications User Guides OpenApoc OpenApoc: The Open Source Remake OpenApoc: Suggestions, Ideas, & Concepts

Enemy Unknown (2012)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) / Enemy Within DLC
Overview Game Information Commander's Briefing Base Location The Council Difficulty Levels Second Wave Achievements Headquarters Mission Control Research Alien Containment Genetics Lab Psionic Labs Engineering Foundry Cybernetics Lab Barracks Officer Training School Hangar Situation Room Gray Market Finances Covert Operations	Soldier Classes Assault Heavy Sniper Support Psionic MEC Trooper S.H.I.V. Covert Operative Equipment Armor Weapons Gene Mods Medals Aliens Alien Life Forms Overview of Aliens Alien Stats Alien Deployment UFOs Alien Artifacts Meld EXALT EXALT Soldiers Equipment	Missions Mission Types Maps Tables Gameplay Mechanics Chance to Hit Cover Critical Wounds Damage Overwatch Suppression Movement Guides & Tips Strategy Guide Building Optimization Economy Panic Air Combat Story Walkthrough Combat Tactics Squads Class Builds List of all Abilities Survival Guide XCOM Substack Posts	General DLC General Information Elite Soldier Pack Enemy Within Slingshot DLC Operation Slingshot Friends in Low Places Confounding Light Gangplank Shaojie Zhang Progeny Operation Progeny Portent Deluge Furies Annette Durand Multiplayer Multiplayer Multiplayer Tactics Squad Builds	Miscellaneous Game Credits Storyline News Ticker Game Universe/Artwork XCOM Heroes Making The Game Harder Glossary of Terms Murphy's Laws (XCOM) Technical Information Patches Bugs Mods & Suggestions Game Editors Game Files Unused Features Wiki Tips

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2013)

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
XCOM Game Information From the desk of Myron Faulke Difficulty Levels Achievements The Bureau The Base Investigations Equipment Weapons Personnel Classes Agent William Carter Director Myron Faulke Agent Angela Weaver Lieutenant Leon Barnes Doctor Alan Weir Agent Nico DaSilva Supporting Staff	Aliens Alien Life Forms Infiltrator Axis Origin Missions Gameplay Mechanics Combat Tactics Battle Focus Squads Mission Types Major Operations (Spoliers) Base Investigations Minor Operations Dispatch Missions	Game Strategies Guides & Tips Story Walkthrough Class Builds Miscellaneous News From the Front In-Game Notes In-Game Photos Glossary of Terms Patches Bugs Mods & Suggestions DLC Codebreaker Hangar 6: R&D Agent Donovan Light Plasma Pistol

Spin-Offs

X-COM: Interceptor General Information Background The Frontier Hypernews Network Research Cheats/Exploits

E-Mail X-Com General Information

X-COM: Enforcer General Information The Enforcer, Dr. Standard and the Enemy Weapons and Power Ups The Missions Tips and Tricks

Featured Projects

UFOpaedia.org is also home to several open source X-Com based projects.

UFO2000	OpenXcom	UFO:AI
UFO2000 wiki	OpenXcom wiki	UFO:AI wiki

Discontinued Titles

X-COM: Genesis	X-COM: Alliance
General Information	General Information

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Site Information Community Portal Contributors How to Edit This Site Guidelines to Writing Articles Links Where to Get the Games

New Main Page layout.

I'm working on a new Main Page layout. Found here: [5]. So I was wondering if it would be possible to apply something like this ([6])? Preferable (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NoTitle) --Kokkan 16:34, 18 September 2012 (EDT)

Looks good to me, just one thing: why is the OpenXcom logo displayed? Hobbes 09:11, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

That was just a aesthetic choice. =) --Kokkan 12:36, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I see :) Well the thing is that it's that placing that logo there is going to bring a lot of attention to that project. My question was if that was intentional or not. Hobbes 12:43, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Kokkan, would it be possible to squeeze the 'featured article' on the corner below the 'UFOpaedia News' (probably enlarge the corner)? I like how the new design has a compact look to it and to me it would look better if the 'featured article' was integrated with the news sections. Or probably even switch its position and put it on top rather than the 'UFOpaedia news' Hobbes 12:57, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Right now it depends on the width of the browser and the content in the Featured Article. I might be able to set some auto-width on the XCOM New window. --Kokkan 09:11, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to bring up the Enemy Unknown 2012 table as the first table, at least for some time after the game is released. With my current maximum resolution both tables still appear one over the other, and I think the UFO Defense table might need a little reorganization and after it is done both games go back to being side by side. Or any other ideas. Hobbes 20:15, 8 October 2012 (EDT)

What?! This layout should work with all resolutions down to 1280x720 without stacking items. So it should be fine on everything except the smallest ( <11" ) notepads and pads. --Kokkan 04:49, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

My resolution on my monitor is 1280x1024 and both tables are stacked. Hobbes 05:00, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

Same issue here with the overlapping tables, and my screen's 1024 pixels wide. Doesn't look any better on the tablet. Quick solution: Break the table out and have it on top ala the original's old main table, and have the original follow immediately after.

A while back I had wanted to redesign the front page but had to shelve it (and then quickly forgot about it). That was to make the main page just contain the news and a list of box art for the various games that point the users to separate main pages for the different titles, allowing the main tables for each title to be a bit more elaborate. Perhaps this might be a good time to resurrect that concept? NKF 07:15, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

I'll place the EU 2012 table on top of the original game table (*sniff* *sniff*) for now until a permanent solution is found or the issue is fixed. I'm good with that solution or any other.

Quick fix: I've moved it to the Featured section. Hobbes 08:03, 9 October 2012 (EDT)

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Hi folks, I think the partition to having the XCOM 2012 on its own main page is a really good one... now, folks can go to town on it, without having to keep touching the original fansite per se. But it is still kept close by having a highlighted announcement - Thanks for that, Kokkan! Some other comments:

It's UFOpaedia

• Do we need two "action" pictures at a time? Maybe we could have one, and use it to help balance the X-COM and the UFOpaedia news so that both "sides" of the news end at about the same place. For that matter, either side of the news could otherwise be tightened up, or expanded. But I wish they both ended at the same place so the main page looks more professional.
• This is the time to make the standard for the new XCOM 2012 pages. Can I please ask that, for the URLs themselves, we not put parentheses around EU2012? I see it leading to a lot of hassle because ultimately there will be citations in citations in citations and other future complexities, including for other sites trying to cite us... parens just make everything more difficult and clunky. If you agree but say "but it'd be a hassle to fix it now", I say that's the wrong answer because it's about to explode (I'm sure!!!), so it's really now or never. Just append EU2012, without parens... everybody can figure out what it means. :)
• I'm not sure just how/when it happened, but there's a lot of "Ufopaedia" on the main page. We use the original game as the convention setter, right? It's a minor thing, but still, we should have a convention, one way or the other. Does someone think it should be Ufopaedia?
• To me, the brief OpenXcom logo nip slip (laugh) raises the issue that I wish we highlighted these efforts better... maybe they could use a little shout-out at the bottom of X-COM News section (just a very brief mention or link - little or no write-up), instead of the tiny section they now have, way at the bottom of the main UFOpaedia page.

Again, the above points are minor... the big thing is the new place from EU2012 (great idea!). Thanks!! -MikeTheRed 14:24, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

We can set the hight at fixed values, but I really don't see a point to it. Since the size of the content will change. I prefer the parentheses in the naming, it clarifies what game the page relates to, and I don't see an extensive problem in linking to pages. Like ( Enemy Unknown). On the UFOpaedia & OpenXcom logo, I fully agree. --Kokkan 09:11, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

One easy trick to link pages with the (EU2012) suffix is to open the top page on the category, which usually contains a list of all items related with that subject, press edit and then copy/paste the links. Hobbes 09:19, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

XCOM Sidebar logo

One possibility I thought of would be to replace the old logo/badge on the upper left corner of the wiki with the newer XCOM badge. Here's some options:

Anymore ideas? Which would be best? Hobbes 13:44, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

The game logo is much cooler, while the insignias seem much more real-to-life. That said, I vote for cooler. The essence of the old X-COM was how scary cool it was. -MikeTheRed 14:33, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I say keep the old X-logo, show the roots and lets not take over the entire wiki with EU2012. Use the new logos at appropriate EU2012 pages. --Kokkan 08:55, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Not selling ourselves completely eh? ;) Well I just have to say I love the yellow and black insignia - that's probably the first XCOM logo/icon I really enjoy :) Hobbes 09:15, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Showing roots is good, too. The gold one does not seem as high-rez as the other... can we get it any better? -MikeTheRed 09:55, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Disambiguation of 1994 vs 2012 Entries

See for example the Sectoid entry, where a link to Sectoid (EU2012) has just been added as the first line of the entry. Are we going to do that for every entry that has the same name in 1994 as in 2012? That's a lot of minor edits someone will need to make! And putting these cross references under See Also would be less intrusive. But maybe a lot of enquiries from new site users are going to be related to EU 2012, and they will be confused if the cross reference is not clear and up-front. Let's agree a standard approach for this. As an alternative we could use disambiguation pages that show links to both the 1994 and the 2012 versions. Instead or as well, we could start moving 1994 pages by appending (EU1994) to the name. That's also quite a lot of work, but may be clearer in the long term. Even more work comes in if we were to use for example Sectoid as the disambiguation page, because that would mean rewriting all links to Sectoid in all the 1994 entries of the Ufopaedia. Thoughts everyone? Spike 03:56, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

On a related point - do we really need to append (EU2012) to every entry? I would think it's only necessary when the same term is used in both games. So it makes sense for Sectoid, but not so much sense for Gollop Chamber. I would suggest that for a term that is definitely unique to EU 2012, the (EU2012) suffix is not required. But there should always be an EU 2012 Category tag on the entry. Spike 06:28, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

If we don't tag everything now, do we risk the same issue we're running into with UFO Defense? Also, the new Sectoid page has a space between EU and 2012. No other new page has that. My OCD is making me want to stab people. Is there a way to edit it to not have a space? As far as which way to go, I prefer disambiguation pages much like wikipedia does, but that typically requires tagging both. I would be happy to do the leg work and chase down all the 1994 ones but I don't like how EU1994 looks (especially since it says 1994 in the Games column to the left [sorry - fixed that - Spike] ) and I don't know how to update page names. --PixelOrange 06:34, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Yes, we do need to keep the games a part to not run into conflicting pages/links. Hence we suffix ALL pages on the NEW game (EU2012); this is the simplest and most clear way to do it. It does make it a bit of a hassle to link stuff yes. Even if some parts are unique, keep with the naming convention to keep it all as clear as possible. No, There is NO WAY we can do the same for the original game, there is just to much pages and links (and if we start and don't complete or something goes wrong, the wiki is in a fucked up state). So all pages on Enemy Unknown without the suffix refers to the original game. --Kokkan 07:12, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

So, if we're not going to retroactively update the old Enemy Unknown, redirects at the top of every page is my favorite choice (just as they do over at wikipedia). It gives you a quick link right at the top of the page, it's non-intrusive, and it's easy to implement across the board. --PixelOrange 07:38, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

OK but that's only going to be workable for the EU2012 pages, right? Any modification to all of the EU1994 pages is a big task, whether it's a disambiguation link at the top of the page, or a systematic rename to suffix "EU1994" on to the end of the page name - the workload is similar. I guess we could take a policy that says - anytime you create an EU2012 page, check to see if an EU1994 page of the same name exists. If so, add disambiguation links to the top of both pages. Or, for that matter, Move the EU1994 page by adding the suffix to its name. By the way, Move is how you rename a page, and the old name is preserved as a redirect to the new name. Spike 08:12, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree that disambiguation notices/links on top of pages probably is the best way to handle this (as in the Sectoid page). Moving and creating disambiguation pages is to much workload, and to have some (EU1994) pages and some without would be even more confusing. So I say no (EU1994) suffixes at all. --Kokkan 09:17, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I don't think it's that cut and dried myself. Moving (renaming) the old pages is less workload than creating the disambiguation links. Also, adding the disambiguation links will disrupt the style / formatting of the existing EU 1994 pages which were not designed to have these links at the top, and which have had a lot of effort put into their layout over the years. Creating a disambiguation page with the "base" name, eg "Sectoid", the same name as the existing 1994 page, is a huge workload, because then all the links will break. Creating a new page called "Sectoid (disambiguation" and redirecting to it is not much better. A simple Move/rename will not break any links, meaning low workload - same as inserting a disambiguation link/notice. Keep in mind that the scope of the problem is only the pages for terms that exist in both games. "Sectoid (EU1994)" vs "Sectoid (EU2012)" is part of the required disambiguation workload. Heavy Cannon (unique to EU1994) vs Alloy Cannon (unique to EU2012) does not need to be part of the workload. It's a safe strategy to keep naming all new 2012 pages with the EU2012 suffix, but whatever method is selected does not need to be applied to all pages in both games. For example, we do not label all TFTD pages with (TFTD). We don't say "Tentaculat (TFTD)" and "Chrysallid (EU)". We do say "Zombie (TFTD)" and "Zombie (EU)" (even though the differences are only cosmetic). Spike 09:51, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

We already had this discussion a while ago because of Apocalypse and the common elements of the series that extend to it and TFTD. I don't recall the discussion but you guys mentioned the main topics but the idea was to start using the suffixes, specially when creating new pages, and not to worry about the existing pages because of the workload involved. It's basically to avoid the mess of the original game's pages regarding naming and to help categorize identify pages.

This method makes linking a bit harder but it's a matter of using a few tricks (which I already use when linking on the original game), like open and edit the section page (Soldiers, Weapons, Alien Life Forms, etc.) and just copy/paste the links you need. That's also why the section pages usually consist of lists of items.

Finally me and Spike can delete, move and rename pages, as an administrators so just let us know what you need :) Hobbes 11:09, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

I've been thinking about the effects these new XCOM games (EU 2012 and the upcoming FPS) may have on the future of the series. If XCOM sees more games even further in the future that involve the aliens from the original, I don't think links at the top of the page is going to do the trick. We should make disimbaguation pages now to pave the way for recurring aliens and items that may make an appearance in any potential future installments. Just a thought!--SuicidalSectoid 21:26, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Another option that I've been thinking over is asking Pete if he could set up a separate Wiki for the modern title(s) and keep this one for the classic titles. It would keep things tidy, and there's actually little crossover or common material between the new and old apart for historical and ancestry referential purposes. NKF 21:46, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Personally I think all games of the series, old or new, should be all united in a single wiki. It helps this one grow, instead of just running out of material. It also shows how the series began and progressed to become what it is today. It helps people who are new to the series find older games in the series far easier and learn all their quirks and strategies. Of course there is what I mentioned above to consider, if this series really has been revived, then more games in the series may emerge and the new wiki could end up being "untidy".--SuicidalSectoid 10:54, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Pretty Colours

You know what'd be cool? Different page themes depending on the game. Say for example, yellow for TFTD, red for Apocalypse, black / dark grey for XCOM, and so on. Or maybe even custom wallpaper for each title - nothing overly eye-catching, just an easy way to differentiate what you're looking at with a glance.

We'd need an extension to do it (I've already got my eye on a simple looking one), but before I bug Pete about it, what say ye all? The way I see it, we'd need to make one template page per "theme" - but then we'd need to edit just about every page on the wiki to implement them...

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 02:59, 18 January 2013 (EST)

I wanted to do something similar many years ago when I started making the navbars so that when people went to a page, they'd go "oh, this is EU or TFTD" just by the colours. Didn't get received very well if I remember correctly. But, with todays better versions of wiki software and scripts, why not? Go for it I say. -NKF 17:47, 18 January 2013 (EST)

I think that's a wonderful idea, the issue is to pick a good color design that retains readability. Hobbes 18:30, 18 January 2013 (EST)

Great Idea! I second what Hobbes is saying about readability. If you can't read what's on the page there's no point to new colours.--SuicidalSectoid 17:45, 25 March 2013 (EDT)

{{StyleTest01}}So, yeah, I did bug Pete, and not long after he delivered: We've had the plugin online a while now...

Anyway, this afternoon I sat down and plugged some stuff into it. It works much like I hoped (though unfortunately it doesn't have much control over images - can't set them as background for eg). Adding the tag {{StyleTest01}} to a page and saving it (or, perhaps for now, previewing it - though I've applied it to THIS page for now) applies the effects within that template.

That one's just an experiment, might be a little garish maybe (I basically grabbed colour codes out of screenshots from EU2012; I won't call myself an artist), and doesn't yet override every wiki element that needs to be handled - but I reckon it's a decent start. :)

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 03:47, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

I like it. Leman Russ 04:05, 21 April 2013 (EDT) Thanks! -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 06:41, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Nice, I like trying to replicate but the colors sure need some testing. One thing I'm wondering: is it possible to use the font used in EU2012 (it seems to be Century Gothic)? Another suggestion I'd make is to replace the XCOM logo on the top left with the new one.

I've applied the styling to the page I'm currently working on: Class_Builds_(EU2012). The main issue is the color of the links (dark blue isn't the best for contrast). Another thing needed would be to change the default colors used in the table templates to match the new style. Hobbes 04:36, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Apparently Century Gothic is not installed on most machines by default. It may be possible to load it on to the wiki somewhere and get viewers to download it as needed, but I really dunno. I'm guessing 'MS PGothic' is the best match that's widespread - I've tweaked the template to use that if Century Gothic isn't available, or to fall back to the wiki default if neither are on the viewer's machine.

I did try switching the logo, but apparently the plugin doesn't allow it. Or the icon isn't accessible to CSS. Or I didn't know which element to tweak. What I've read specifically states I shouldn't be able to use the required "background-image" tag, but that's exactly what I needed to do to change the toolbar at the top of the page...

I HAVE overridden the main 'wikitable' template, and there should be no blue links visible (except for ones leading off-site, I forgot about those)... In fact I'd go as far as to say the table looks great on that Class Builds page in particular (where the text matches the icons) - are you seeing what I'm seeing? A screenshot may be in order? I'm a little worried about browser compatibility in regards to my CSS overriding that which is already in the wiki site files.

Depending on how I go for time I may deal with image thumbnails, the category bar, table of contents etc tonight.

Please feel free to experiment if you feel so inclined! Either make a new StyleTestXX page and copy/paste my starter version in, or go right ahead and modify mine! If you lack any tools on your system for colour code generation, here's an online one.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 06:41, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

On my laptop I see it like this, I think it's the same and it seems to be using Century Gothic: style1.png - Hobbes

Ah yes, that was a match of colours, though you're definitely using a different font (it's installed by Office, see).

Still not sure what you're meaning about the tables, but I've switched monitors and see what you're saying about the links. I think maybe yellowy? Dunno.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:50, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Yellow links look better than the previous ones. What I meant about the tables is that on the Class Builds the background color of each table is table while the page background is dark grey. I got Century Gothic installed (it's a free font IIRC), is it the one being used? Hobbes 11:20, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Er...

The cells should have a black background, the header cells should be grey. This is what I intended, though if you're expecting something different (or have a different suggestion) I'm more then happy to try other styles.

I'd say you're indeed using Century Gothic. If you check the "font-family" line in the template, the web browser reads it from left to right, and uses the first font specified that exists on the computer (so if it can't find one, it falls back to the next, and so on). Hence if you start removing fonts from the front of the list and previewing the page you can compare each one. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 19:11, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

There were a couple of white backgrounds on table but those seen to have disappeared. Century Gothic still looks the better (and it seems to be free) since it is the one (or really close) used in Enemy Unknown 2012. Hobbes 20:43, 21 April 2013 (EDT)

Best I can make out it should be possible to use an uploaded font no worries, though I'd need to bug Pete to actually get it on to the server.

In the meantime, bold tildes are pretty much rendered blobs under PGothic (~). They looking ok to you? -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:04, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

This is what I see using it as a font File:PSGothic.png Hobbes 17:37, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

I'm trying the new Style in a few pages and it is looking great. What I'm starting to wonder is what will happen to the other pages (non-EU2012). With UFO, TFTD and Apoc it should be possible to replicate it (although I have quite a few doubts about TFTD's colors...). But what about the other pages not directly related to a game? Hobbes 17:55, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

We can currently only skin pages we manually add the template link to. That means that certain pages (like recent changes or page history) can't be skinned, not unless the skin files are changed on the server side... Which'd be a lot harder then skinning through these templates is (lots of files to modify with no simple way of previewing the changes, unless someone sets up their own wiki to play with on a home computer).

In short, for now we may just have to leave 'em. While it might currently seem a bit jarring with just a black skin and a white skin, I think it won't seem so bad once there's a few others floating around the place.

In particular I was thinking of leaving talk pages unskinned regardless of what game they belong to (if only because most articles don't HAVE a talk page). -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 19:05, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

Please tell me you're not sticking to the green background when showing a page's changes... ;) Hobbes 14:01, 23 April 2013 (EDT)

Can't think of anything better for it myself. :|

You do mean the green background that goes against added lines, yes? The bit of code to tweak goes along the lines of:

td.diff-addedline {

background: #559E06;

}

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:11, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

Indent resetinator activated! I certainly hope this is a work in progress. It's very hard to read on my smartphone browser, and even on my laptop it's a real squint-fest. I'd probably recommend a slightly lighter dark background rather than having extreme darks or lights.

But that aside, we could ask Pete to implement a few snazzy skins that you can access from the appearance tab under your preferences screen. The skin will then apply to all the wiki pages with no specific skins assigned to them. Mind you, this change will only affect the individual accounts. NKF 02:36, 24 April 2013 (EDT)

Yep, if I considered it done it'd have a rather more official looking name and I'd be slapping it onto pages left right and center. ;)

I will say I can't see much room for improvement myself - I'm no graphic design artist. I'm more then happy to implement any mock-ups people show me if they're not interested in tweaking the colours themselves, though.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 09:11, 25 April 2013 (EDT)

Well, no one else suggested improvements, so I'm wondering if we should start using the new style on the EU2012 pages. Hobbes 10:52, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

I disagree with the use of individual styles over-riding the default one at special pages, it makes the wiki inconsistent and messy.
If you are to add a new style to site, do it RIGHT and add it as a skin in the user preferences. --Kokkan 07:34, 6 September 2013 (EDT)

I agree since I made a test the other day of the proposed EU2012 style and I wasn't satisfied with the results regarding readability - the colors make it too tiring to read. I have no idea of how to add skins though Hobbes 17:10, 6 September 2013 (EDT)

The Bureau

We better start thinking of adding a section for the game since it will be released next month. Hobbes 08:30, 17 July 2013 (EDT)

And we have the starting page and table for the The Bureau online, although it is completely bare for the moment. Hobbes 22:30, 22 July 2013 (EDT)

UFO: Alien Invasion

I am one of the developers of UFO: Alien Invasion, an open-source game inspired by X-Com. Ufopaedia.org taught me how to not suck at the original X-Com years ago and I've always been grateful. I wondered if the maintainers of ufopaedia.org would be interested in adding support for our game. While we have our own development wiki where we could host strategy advice, I think there are several benefits to having a third-party strategy guide. Of course, the fact that our game undergoes rolling development will lead to extra maintenance work. But I think this could be limited by only providing data on the latest stable version (released once every year or two). I am willing to undertake the work to prepare the initial content for our upcoming stable release 2.5. --H-Hour 09:55, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

Hi there. I'm one of the administrators and although I can't speak for the other admins or the site owner (Pete), I think that it would make sense to add UFO:AI to the Featured Projects section. I'll ask them if there's any objection on the UFOPaedia's forum at Strategycore and if they're good about it, I'll add the link to the wiki sidebar. Should the initial page be named UFO:AI or do you prefer something else? Also, the game needs a wiki suffix, to be used in the guide's individual pages name and for their category tags, as an example all XCOM: Enemy Unknown pages use (EU2012). Hobbes 10:25, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

That's great, Hobbes. UFO:AI is fine for both the main page name and as a page suffix. If you think it is better given our rolling development, we can include the version for clarity (UFOAI2.5). --H-Hour 10:44, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

Better to keep version out otherwise it might be confusing. I'm just going to wait a day or two to give the other admins time to read it. Hobbes 11:47, 26 August 2013 (EDT)

I've just added UFO:AI to the Wiki Sidebar. Happy editing :) Hobbes 05:33, 28 August 2013 (EDT)

Thanks Hobbes! I'll get to it soon. --H-Hour 11:08, 28 August 2013 (EDT)

I've put up the initial table. Please let me know if there is anything that should be changed regarding the format or structure to ensure it complies with ufopaedia standards. --H-Hour 10:41, 29 August 2013 (EDT)

We don't really have any standard for those tables, just use what you feel is more comfortable/logic :) Hobbes 11:25, 29 August 2013 (EDT)

Extensions

Over on wikia ot is possible to put sub-pages into tabs so that when u click on one it has different info than the other. If we had them on here then we could split the main page into 2 different tabs with old X-COM on one and new XCOM on the other while leaving the news where it is and the spin off/based off titles below it.

Just an idea--Ditto51 04:08, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Just checked to see how subpages work on Wikimedia but by default they're limited to the user and talk pages. Might be interesting to implement for specific game items that are changed between EU and EW (Chitin Plating, etc.). I'm still waiting for Pete to fix the login process though since we need to get rid of the spammers before anything else. Hobbes 06:56, 25 November 2013 (EST)

I've been spending some time browsing the Minecraft wiki recently, and a couple of convenient extensions like expanding/collapsing content would be nice to have here as well. It would handy for the EW content as per the discussion elsewhere. It would be worth forming a list of the extensions we could use (and a link to said extension on www.mediawiki.org if possible). Once the signup issue is sorted we could suggest them to Pete. -NKF 07:06, 25 November 2013 (EST)

The info about the subpage is here [7]. The other extension we were discussing before was spoilers [8]. We might as well ask this already for Pete so that he can set time for it. Hobbes 07:33, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Spoilers is now installed. Subpages are an interesting idea - essentially categorising the content better as you would on a normal website (if you were thinking of going /terror from the deep/aliens or something like that?). Since MediaWiki handles moved pages pretty sensibly (moves the page and its Talk page to the new location and points the old URL to the new page) there shouldn't be an issue with this. I would say that it's more of a library format then and it needs a few librarians to be in charge of the categorisation, but you guys seem to be doing a grand job of that anyway :) --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Found the tabs I was talking about tabber --Ditto51 08:37, 25 November 2013 (EST)

Tabber is now installed --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

I can't get this to work, even when I use the example coding on the mediawiki page.--Ditto51 (talk) 18:01, 29 December 2013 (EST)

My bad - was updating the wrong version of the settings file. The other extensions should now be avalable.

Multiple Upload, to make it easier to upload images multiple images.--Ditto51 10:48, 1 December 2013 (EST)

The author doesn't seem to be maintaining this which is a worry, plus the discussion page for it mentions security issues so I'm not going to bother with this one --Pete (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Installed an extension called MsUpload instead - you can see a bar at the top of the editor where you can drop files, or click the up arrow on the toolbar. This adds files to the queue and you can click on the name to rename them before uploading them. It then provides links to insert them --Pete (talk) 09:41, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Seems like only MsUpload is installed based on Special:Version; doesn't seem to show any other mentioned extensions?--DracoGriffin (talk) 19:47, 29 December 2013 (EST)

My bad - was updating the wrong version of the settings file. The other extensions should now be avalable.

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Wiki Software Upgrade

The Wiki software has now been upgraded to version 1.22 (was 1.16) so a few things have changed cosmetically and functionally. Whilst I've tested things myself and they seem alright, you guys might spot some things I won't, so please let me know here if there are any issues. Now we're up to date, I can look at the extensions requested above :) --Pete (talk) 07:24, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Pete has asked in a thread on the Strategycore.co.uk forums for suggestions of new features to add during the wiki software upgrade. Please go there for the discussion or post here what features you think relevant for the UFOPaedia upgrade. Hobbes 08:42, 27 December 2013 (EST)

That wasn't exactly what I was asking there - it was more "if there were an ideal WIKI software what would its main features be?". Though I suppose if there are other features that are required (aside from the obvious "better spam filtering") then I could see what's available after I've upgraded. Just so you all know, I've pencilled in 10am GMT tomorrow (see link for current time: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.co.uk/time-zone/europe/uk/time/ ) to move UFOPaedia to the same server that StrategyCore now sits on. The move gives us more power to run the software and expand it and sees the end of recent server instability. I'll put up a message at the top of the site in a few minutes, but just so you all know what's going on and that there will be downtime for a few hours. Once you see the message disappear from the top of the screen, you'll be looking at the new server and can post again. Apologies for the short notice, but whilst it's quiet and I have time, I really need to do the move and get things more stable before attempting the upgrade. --Pete 14:39, 27 December 2013 (EST)

Most embedded images no longer display properly with the update, barring for a brief period during page load, only to disappear after page fully loads. Tested in two browsers. Arrow Quivershaft (talk) 16:48, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Can you give me a few examples of pages where this happens? I know I caused a weird issue for a while earlier on if you had www. at the start of the web address, so make sure you don't have that in your address bar, but aside from that I can't think of anything that would cause that without seeing a page where it's happening. If you can link a page AND describe which images disappear on it I can investigate further. --Pete (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2013 (EST)

Seems to be working fine now, thanks for the response! Arrow Quivershaft (talk) 19:50, 30 December 2013 (EST)

Watchlist E-Mails

When I recieve E-Mails about edits on the EU2012 pages, it always take me to a new page because the bracket at the end is no included in the link for some reason Eg. An E-Mail about Second Wave (EU2012) takes be to Second Wave (EU2012

--Ditto51 03:45, 28 November 2013 (EST)

Simpler Main Page

I know this is going to generate all sorts of responses - there are some people here being quite negative about the new games (the old ones aren't coming back, nor have they gone away though!) and since UFO and TFTD seem to get the most love of all of the original series of games this idea might not go down too well, but what do you think?

It is just an idea after all, but my train of thought was that (not intending to offend) the homepage is too busy. The links next to the intro text are a bit small, and then the game "contents" links are just way too far down the page for people to bother with so I thought perhaps something a bit more visible might be good, then lose EVERYTHING below the news. To my mind, the homepage should have your introduction, obvious links to the content people are searching for and then news - that's it. The contents further down the page are merely replicating what you get when you click on the game links anyway.

I have introduced an issue using the 1994 UK box cover at the beginning there, so might be best having it alternate between the two or be half and half somehow, but I suspect that's the least of the comments I'm going to get.

So why would I want to promote the other minor games? Well... they're incomplete. Obviously this is because people aren't contributing content, but I'm not sure it helps that the Games list on the left doesn't list them (I know why it doesn't, just pointing out that that will cause people to miss them).

Another thought I had was a simple graphic - half and half - for old and new and go to a page listing the old and new games, but can't think of a sensible graphic for that.

Something interesting to note is that since I fixed the tracking code for Google Analytics, it shows just how popular the new games are on this website.

Once upon a time I had been toying with the idea of changing the main page into a very simple page with almost no content, but instead set it up as a launchpad to the various 'main pages' for the different games by way of the box covers as you have done. That never eventuated - partly forgotten as with many ambitious ideas on the wiki in favour of other more exciting things in the recent updates, and a major change like that would've been too much of a culture shock. But with all he new fangled extensions and other things the new software can do, perhaps a move back in that direction isn't a bad idea. It would be nice change to the traditional game intro screen at the top of the page. -NKF (talk) 08:07, 30 December 2013 (EST)

Pete, I completely agree with your idea of dropping everything below the News since it's easier to simply use the left links and I doubt a lot of people bother to scroll down so much.

Regarding the old vs. new games, one of the most telling graphs from Google Analytics is this one:

The first increase in daily visits on January 2012 is when XCOM: Enemy Unknown was announced, the massive spike in November 2012 is when it was released. But what's even more interesting is that for the same period, the Apocalypse page was the 2nd most visited, UFO Defense the 3th and TFTD the 7th. There's no info for Enemy Unknown 2012 though (there must have been a problem with Analytics since it only started recording visits to the EU2012 pages last month - this might also explain why the visits decreased from November 2012 onwards since visits to the EU2012 were not recorded by Analytics). To me this means that the old games are still live and kicking but also that the new game brought again a big interest on the series. Hobbes (talk) 08:23, 30 December 2013 (EST)

I've been toying with some alternative graphics that are better than my original idea. There's a colour version, but it's a bit "full-on" on a predominantly black and white page, and a greyscale version that might work better. My thinking is that if they are both set to something like 49% width with the latter having 2% left padding, they will scale with the different screen sizes people will view it at. That sort of thing works a lot better in browsers nowadays. Any good? If they're both still a bit bold I could wash out the backgrounds a bit more (that or change the colour of UFOPaedia :D )

Grey Scale looks better, but it looks like you forgot The Bureau Case on the Reboot series image--Ditto51 (talk) 08:44, 1 January 2014 (EST)

I agree with Ditto51, Grey Scale looks better. Hobbes (talk) 11:52, 4 January 2014 (EST)

Long War at Featured Projects

I've been having a discussion at the Nexusmods forums regarding the possibility of having a subwiki hosted at the UFOPaedia for the Enemy Unknown (2012)'s Long War mod. This is a mod that has been in development for the past two years and has been highly praised by gaming magazines and EU's developers and the beta for Long War 3 (compatible with Enemy Within) has just been released. Any comments? Hobbes (talk) 20:15, 26 May 2014 (EDT)

Hm, I'd certianly say it's a noteworthy mod (though it may be more due to the fact that, in this day and age, information simply travels faster and with greater acessability/ease, than say, the mods for the '94 game, but that's a different lecture), so I'd say yes, a sub-wiki under XCOM:EU/EW, not as sure as to has a separate sidebar/front page space (besides in the news section, and "yes we have no bannanas" perma-link)(if you understand a thing of what the hell I just said/usually say) like the offical releases (ie; like how EW isn't in the sidebar, just vanilla EU). Also, I don't even see a mod/hack page on the xcom.wikia, so that'd be another thing we'd have over them, heh heh~ --Xuncu (talk) 07:35, 27 May 2014 (EDT)

Well I've just tried it the first time and downloading the latest beta. I had participated in a few discussions at Nexusmods regarding new features but I had never bothered playing (just another mod and it required a lot of user steps to install) since I had my hands more than full with EU/EW. All I can say is that this is as big as the Enemy Within DLC regarding new features and reworking of the existing ones, turning it into a different game and installation is much easier than before.

So I'd definitely add this to the Featured Projects since it's as big as UFO2000 and OpenXcom and it is more comparable to them rather than EW. The reason why EW is not on the sidebar is because it would require its own separate table and either a lot of duplication of already existing pages or it would be a rather small table. Long War on the other hand reworks the Strategic Layer (air interceptions, panic system, AI), soldier classes/abilities, equipment, Research tree, and several aspects of combat so it will require specific pages to detail all those changes.

To finish, I'd use the same rules for Long War as OpenXcom/UFO200: keep its pages completely separate from the EU2012 ones by using a (Long War) category and suffix; no links on EU/EW pages to Long War pages (to separate official games from fandom), and finally create a specific table for Long War, based on the current EU2012 table format. Hobbes (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2014 (EDT)

Wiki Etiquette and Word Choice

You should probably change "COULD OF" to "COULD HAVE". Particularly since it's in bold. Unless you want everyone to notice your awful grasp of the language, of course. Magic9mushroom (talk) 02:34, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Keep in mind that for several users English might not be their first language (myself included). Or that 'awful' can be understood to be as insulting as 'autistic' ;) Hobbes (talk) 08:35, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Spanish is my first language. Feel free to edit my Bureau entries, 'Shroom.... Which is pretty much "all entries for The Bureau." Have fun! --Xuncu (talk) 17:27, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Hobbes: I have an awful grasp of French (significantly more awful, at that). Also, the reason I reacted to Connor wasn't that he'd insulted Xuncu, but that he did so using a slur that implicitly insulted others (including me). Compare, for instance, the reason people get angry if someone calls a miser a Jew; they're not angry because of the insult to the miser, but because of the insult to all Jews by equating them with misers. My autistic obsession with X-Com has produced useful pages on this wiki; Connor's slur denied that and implicitly told me to GTFO. Magic9mushroom (talk) 18:42, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

You have a right to feel insulted whenever someone says something that offends you, but the way you communicate it to the offender is your decision. I find it easier not to take these situations too personally because ignorance is far more common than malice :) Hobbes (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

The two blend together in the context of hate speech; while specific malice toward the group in question is not necessarily required, a generally xenophobic mindset and a willingness to stereotype with callous disregard for accuracy is present in basically all cases. Hate speech "by mistake" (ie, using slurs without intending to) is extremely rare and easily distinguishable from the intentional sort. Magic9mushroom (talk) 21:17, 19 September 2014 (EDT)

Wikis have one principle (amongst others) to work: assume good faith on the part of its users. I've been called here 'pedantic' due to my obsession with detail and personally the term has a negative connotation to me but I chose to assume good faith and accept the feedback. Otherwise, if we take slight on every badly chosen word, then this really hurts collaboration, which is what wikis are all about. Hobbes (talk) 08:50, 20 September 2014 (EDT)

XCOM2

Off to the madness we head out again. :) First issue is what suffix to add to page names to help classify and identify their content: (TFTD) for Terror From the Deep, (EU2012) for Enemy Unknown, etc. Any suggestions? Hobbes (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

Like we've been doing up to this point. EU, TFTD, Apoc, Int?, EU2012 and now I assume XCOM2. If the name changes in the future, we'll have to adjust the suffix accordingly. Which reminds me, I wonder why we use EU2012 suffix instead of just XCOM?--Zombie (talk) 23:49, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

EU2012 is a bit clumsy, but it helps disambiguate it from the original game. XCOM for the reboot would probably have been too generic (a bit like Gunship!). On the other hand XCOM2 should work as a temporary suffix for the new game. Or ADVENT perhaps? NKF (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2015 (EDT)

IIRC the discussion, the EU2012 suffix came from with distinguishing the original EU from the remake, while avoiding using of XCOM as a suffix (too generic). I've avoided using XCOM2 for this reason although there aren't other options at the moment. Hobbes (talk) 07:43, 3 June 2015 (EDT)

Hmmm, well I have no trouble telling the original apart from the reboot because the original had the dash (e.g. X-COM). Granted, the dash wasn't there right from the start, but it did become the de facto standard by TFTD and remained that way in one form or another (the middot: X·COM was used for the logo a lot too). Likewise, I'll have no trouble differentiating between TFTD and XCOM2. Have no idea why others would get hung up on this, but whatever. --Zombie (talk) 00:04, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Solomon has confirmed that the name is simply 'XCOM 2', without any subtitles so this solves the issue since there are no other alternatives. Hobbes (talk) 06:59, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

License

What software license does this wiki use? Is it a Creative Commons license like Wikia, StrategyWiki or GamePedia? Mikali (talk) 04:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

As I understand it, we're running on Mediawiki which is open source. So it falls under the GNU General Public License. NKF (talk) 06:43, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

You both are referring to two different things. Creative commons isn't a software license. It's for text and other creative works. GNU GPL is indeed the software license, but it doesn't apply to the text contributed into this wiki.

It's a really good question though. According to UFOpaedia:Copyrights and UFOpaedia:About, text contributed here is copyright the respective author, and here authors implicitly agree when they save their changes to allow other contributors to edit/remove their work. So in practice it's similar to a creative commons license, but legally it isn't the same.

A big question is can we copy/edit content legally from the other wikis? In the case of xcom.wikia which is CC-BY-SA (it's noted in the footer), we should be able to as long as it's explicitly attributed to the author and explicitly tagged CC-BY-SA. Robertp (talk)

A bit late to reply as I missed the response in the deluge of recent activity. I wasn't entirely clear what you were asking in the original question and was unsure if you were referring to the Wiki software itself or the content. NKF (talk) 07:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that you need to give credit to *all* authors. If you're copying something that you know has only been written by one person then fine, but if it's a paragraph of a wiki article it could have been edited by many. The easiest way to give attribution is to link to the source wiki page, in which the page history gives attribution and you're covered. Rewriting the information in your own words is better though. Binkyuk (talk) 13:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Rewriting is usually the best option, although not the easy one Hobbes (talk) 00:18, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

My concern is people are going to assume this wiki works like most every other wiki (including wikipedia), but legally it doesn't. I think it'd be good to move to CC-BY-SA, but that's a high level decision and I wouldn't know who to talk to.

Robertp (talk)

Changing the license would be incredibly difficult, since you'd need agreement from all the copyright holders, which is basically everyone who's ever contributed. Might be changeable on a per-page basis maybe. The only major problem I see with the current situation is that content can't be copied from this wiki to elsewhere because that's not a right that's granted by anything. Binkyuk (talk) 13:15, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

There was a discussion of moving the UFOPaedia to CC-BY-SA, but coincidentally at the same time we had an incident where content from one of our pages was copy/pasted on another site without any attribution. This at the time dropped the issue but it's something worth discussing again. Hobbes (talk) 00:18, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The wiki's license really ought to be CC-SA or CC-BY-SA. The latter protects against copy-paste without attribution (technically; unless you have a legal fund, this is all theorycrafting, more-or-less). I should also point-out that the current statement of copyright is wrong too. There is material that belongs to Firaxis and Pavonis on the wiki, specifically images, as a lot of the writing is about the game, not directly from the game, and that puts it in the same waters as any Wikipedia article, for example. The images all belong to Firaxis/Pavonis/whoever-else, but they fall under fair-use (as long as their existence on the wiki is for the purpose of documentation, not redistribution). Again, theorycrafting because in reality, it's extremely unlikely that Firaxis or Pavonis would go after any of the wikis about their games; it's a lose-lose for them for obvious reasons. (Improving license clarity on all images would be very useful, and is something I could work on gladly, but I don't want to start building new templates and working through them without access to the site CSS for the same reason I don't want to deal with other templates; I don't have the time, and it has become a contingent factor for me because most of my edits have been dealing with styles.)

I should also point-out there's a serious amount of liability for the wiki with saying that whatever gets put on here is copyright of the editors. I'll use my own recent work as an example. Under the current rules, I haven't forfeited copyright on any of the templates I've done, the info I've added, and most importantly the images I've put-up. Most of the images are from the game, but any additions like categorization are my work. The base templates are definitely my work, and the skill icons are sketchy since I had to edit them but they aren't derivative work. Under the current licensing rules, I could technically revert all of my edits, remove all the templates I've made, and leave the LW2 wiki in a broken state.

As I said, huge liability. Any user could come back and do this if they wanted to as long as they only did it with their edits. And since MediaWiki logs everything, it's not hard to write a script to revert every edit one has made. And it would all be perfectly within the wiki's own rules. This is why wikis that are open for editing by the general public don't let users maintain their copyright to their edits.

To switch, I don't know what options you have. A "clean break" to an entirely new wiki might be the easiest. You'd have to reconstruct everything (so that you technically don't copy but instead create new work that happens to be similar to this wiki; as a side-note, if I built a new skin and restyled the wiki, that'd quite clearly count toward it being a derivative work), but as was pointed-out to me by someone recently, most of what is on this wiki falls under factual information. You can't copyright facts, like how game mechanics work, settings in the game, descriptions of characters (though that's a little fuzzy for characters with actual stories like Tygan or Shen), etc. The most important thing is that as a new wiki, users would have to re-register and you could change the user agreement to have users' rights to work be transferred to the wiki and then released as CC-BY-SA. (In fact I have someone bugging me to do just this, because of the difficulties in reaching the site admin, whom I still haven't been able to contact. I can't even email him since my account email isn't verified and the email verification is, ironically, broken too.)

Or you could just change it. Send a mass email if you feel nice. As I said, this is mostly all theorycrafting. If we're going to talk about reality instead, then the reality is that the copyright of any work on the wiki quickly becomes insanely difficult to discern, because people will make edits to it. It's unusual for one person to hold the copyright to a page (which is why I brought my own templates up as they are a worst-case example since I've clearly done the vast majority of work on them) or any part of its contents because of the constant editing. If someone wanted to come back and claim copyright, they'd have to file a lawsuit, which would be insane since there would be almost nothing to be gained and it's not cheap to do so.

Keeping the license agreement as it is is untenable though, for all the reasons above. --Tvol (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Just thought I'd throw in my 2c. I've only skimmed the discussion, but I assume it's the copyright blurb on the UFOpaedia:About page that's at the core of the issue.

In all honesty I strongly and truly believe that the copyright guff (highly technical term) that Gazchap put up on this page during this Wiki's infant years was more a case of simply wanting to get something up and running quickly with a very generic copyright statement. Then have it updated as and when necessary. Of course, with the monolithic nature of a wiki, we never really got round to it until it was very briefly visited in the case that Hobbes mentioned.

While I don't mean to speak for all of our past and present users, I suspect the issue of the license is for most of us something that's the farthest thing from our mind when we come to peruse the wiki. We're not policy makers - we're just fans that enjoy the games and are happy enough to put our own time and effort into writing about and chronicling information about the games.

I'm only one voice, but I'm more than happy if we bring the wiki in line with the others and go with a form of creative commons license as with the better known Wikis. Doesn't matter to me as long as I can keep accessing the wiki and make use of its plethora of accumulated information. The main thing I assumed we've always operated on was a sense of common courtesy to cite the source of borrowed material, and to expect the same of others who wish to use any of our content verbatim.

Oh and Tvol, this is apropos of nothing much, but Firaxis did give this wiki a subtle wink with a small detail on the EU2012 Skyranger. Until the cease and desist letters come in, I think we're in the clear! For now. I think. Fingers crossed. NKF (talk) 07:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Well to be clear, I don't actually think Firaxis would ever go after a wiki. As I said, it's a lose-lose situation; no game developer has ever gained anything other than bad press and a sour taste in the mouths of their fans by going after the very fans who support them on a legal technicality. :P

"Doesn't matter to me as long as I can keep accessing the wiki and make use of its plethora of accumulated information."

Indeed this is the crux of the issue, I think. It's not likely but with things as they are, a malicious former contributor could wreak some havoc. The XCOM 2 modding community got a dose of this a while back with the extra ability icons mod being unceremoniously yoinked from the Workshop, leaving people with broken saves. Similar could happen here, which would be pretty awful for all involved. :( (Has Joshua seen this or weighed-in? I haven't been able to reach him on Skype; still waiting for a contact confirmation.) --Tvol (talk) 07:38, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Heh - for the moment we've thankfully got admins with very big sticks to keep any malicious former contributors from causing any vandalism. Of course that won't last forever as life takes it course and folks move onto other things. I'll message the bigwigs and see if we get something in motion. NKF (talk) 09:38, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Heh - for the moment we've thankfully got admins with very big sticks to keep any malicious former contributors from causing any vandalism.

I don't think you're seeing my point. As editors still hold copyright on their work, removing it wouldn't be vandalism. They would just be removing their work from the wiki, which since they still hold copyright to it, they are totally within their rights to do. No one here would have any basis for complaint, let alone justification for blocking them. That's why I specifically brought-up templates. If someone writes a template and it gets used on the wiki, and then they remove it, that's allowed (even expected) by licensing rules, but it would leave the wiki broken with someone else having to rewrite what was removed. --Tvol (talk) 09:55, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Fear not, with a couple of rudimentary templates under my belt, I do understand what you're getting at. I just have a cavalier light hearted approach to things - please ignore my poor attempt at humour. NKF (talk) 11:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh. That was humour. Seems I'm not the only pedant around here... --Tvol (talk) 20:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

SVG images

I have an SVG image of a keyboard with key bindings on it. However, the wiki software won't let me upload it. Can you enable SVG images please? Mikali (talk) 04:09, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Long War 2 AWC Perks

I noticed some missing perks in the LW2 AWC perk lists and was planning to update them, but I'm unsure as to the significance of the yellow question mark symbol that's enabled for some of the Perks and not for others.

Could someone clue me in so I don't make a mess of things? -- Dodger

Those symbols are there to indicate that there is additional/supplementary info for the ability/perk. It emulates the interface in-game that is also indicated by the same icon and opens a window with said supplementary info inside. That info is kept on a subpage of each template. For example, {{Aggression (LW2)}}'s info is held at {{Aggression (LW2)/Info}}. This is done mostly to keep the templates themselves clean as well as better deal with whitespace (since MediaWiki can be really finnicky sometimes about whitespace and will periodically bite one in the ass when making templates). Here is a fiddle demonstrating what I was hoping to have them look like (with input from Mavoc). Unfortunately, doing so requires access to the site's CSS, and I haven't been able to contact the admin yet. (Also you can sign your name with four tildes.) --Tvol (talk) 06:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I added all those perks and there data. Though there are a couple still missing info, see section talk for list.

Site CSS

Since I haven't been able to reach the site's admin, I've written everything out in this PDF. Hopefully even non-technical people will understand what I'm getting at with it. --Tvol (talk) 07:20, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

I got in touch with Joshua today so hopefully these changes will be coming along in the near future. (And I can get back to spamming the wiki with new templates. :p ) --Tvol (talk) 04:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Template Design (with pretty pictures too!)

After fumbling around a bit with the Ability template, I've decided upon a general structure for future templates that are in similar domains. Please take a look at this diagram (which is probably a serious abuse of UML for which it wasn't intended but whatever; this PDF will be updated as I settle on the design for other templates): Template Diagrams (If it doesn't load right away just wait for Dropbox's silly PDF viewer to load.)

And yes, before you say anything, I am playing really loosy-goosy with everything in the diagram. Templates don't have any type checking, nor do they enforce rules for access, nor do they have methods. This is just a rough sketch of how I think these paramters will be intended to be used. Templates are really wishy-washy about everything, and that's why the diagram is wishy-washy too. O.o

One small note: The template names in the diagram are CamelCased, but I intend to name them with hyphens, so "AbilityInline" would be "Ability-inline" instead, it's just that UML doesn't allow that in class names, so bleh. MediaWiki is flexible on this point and that could be a space, but I want it to be obvious if an errant space is working its way into that bit of the template, as it could really muck things up.

Supplementary Info:

Variable Templates (How the heck to dynamically choose which template to use.)

Summary of counts for template limits

General Structure

The point here is to separate the data from the implementation. So, we make a template that holds the data (like {{Suppression (LW2)}} and its kin), and then have that template choose an implementation/displayStyle template to use whenever it's called. Ideally, the calls would look like this:

{{Suppression (LW2)}}                      // inline display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=inline}}  // explicit inline display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=table}}   // table display
{{Suppression (LW2)|displayStyle=infobox}} // infobox display

Inline display will be default since that's where it's most advantageous to use as little space as possible (to make the source markup for content pages easier to read).

Each display style template will have it's own defaults, which is actually really good news so there is no conflict of concerns (for table display, I can assume the user wants everything displayed by default, whereas for inline, it makes more sense to hide everything but the name by default).

These templates should definitely be backwards portable to the XCOM 2 pages, and probably XCOM:EU and XCOM:EW as well.

Parameter Changes for Ability Templates

s_icon will be renamed and moved to s_image. A new s_icon field will then refer to an icon specifically. s_image will be used for the infobox, as a demonstrative image, like an in-game screenshot.

I'm considering changing b_info to b_infoIcon for clarity's sake. Actually not a good idea, since it enables both info display and the icon.

New Parameters for Ability Templates

s_displayStyle : The big one. This will be one of either "inline", "table", or "infobox". This will determine which one of the "base" templates gets called to handle display of the ability's content/info. This will allow all the relevant data for each ability (and later on, every other in-game item or mechanic that can be well defined like equipment or armour) in one place, while still allowing flexibility in display styles. This structure is also extensible, meaning more templates can be added later as different displayStyle options with relative ease (provided we do our level best to get every important piece of info in these templates from the start; see below).

i_ammo : Ammo requirement / uses per mission; 0 = unlimited use i_cooldown : Cooldown of the ability in turns; 0 = no cooldown.

Once I get to infoboxes I'm sure there will be many more things to be added. I've certainly forgotten things.

Stuff To Figure-Out

Sane defaults, and most especially, how to display extra info or description inline. A pop-up box could be done with JavaScript, but it should also be possible with only CSS to have a simple div appear like that fiddle I made as a demo.

I'm also strongly leaning toward storing all default parameters on their own subpages. This removes a costly switch function (which costs 8 preproccessor nodes on an instant match and 2 thereafter for each check). The expansion size will also be just the size of the text, not twice that size. It's the most efficient way to manage these, and if someone wants to make a whole page that lists all the abilities in the game, then that could become quite costly. (No idea how costly, but on the theory that limiting resource use is generally a good goal I'm probably going to do it this way, even if it's a little less convenient.)

Breaking the implementation into separate templates also has the benefit of needing fewer parser functions each time a template is used, since the most important check was done by selecting which template to use. It's just all-around better.

Where I Need Help

Figuring-out data types for each type of thingamajig in the game that can be well defined (the stuff in the "Data Paramters" section above). So, take armour as an example: For that there's supply cost, resistances (which will need to be handled separately), elerium core cost, uhhhhh, probably other stuff I forgot. The important thing is to have everything that can be added there from the start; it's a lot harder to refactor the templates to display new data than it is to build them once and be done (the most time-consuming part is actually adding the new variable to all the completed data-templates, not adding the ability to display it, go figure).

Off the top of my head I've got, so far, Abilities (Perks; unfortunate naming on my part but whatever), Armor, Grenades, Heavy Weapons, PCS', and Weapons, as general categories. Each will have an inline, infobox, and table displayStyle.

Parameters for these templates fall into three categories, which I've called "Parameters", "Data Parameters", and "Wiki-Related".

Parameters: These are the paramters that actually are intended to be used when someone calls these templates. They are used to tell the template how to display the content, like whether or not to display the name, description, info icon, etc. They are not meant to hold or override data associated with the ability/item/whatever.

Data Parameters: These are the parameters that hold data for the associated ability/item/whatever, and the ones I need the most help with. They are defined on a template page (like {{Suppression (LW2)}}) and nowhere else (so they are defined once and only once). These are not exposed to the caller and can be thought of as protected variables (for those with programming experience). Maybe we can build a table for these somewhere? It is not important to have these filled-in with data for everything, just that they are in the definition of the templates from the get-go (e.g. just because the s_image field will exist for each ability doesn't mean we need a screenshot for every ability right now).

Wiki-Related: These are anything that is for wiki-related housekeeping only. So far it's just s_id and s_templateName. The ID field is intended to be used for the construction of unique element id's, just in case that is useful for something later (namely targetting elements with CSS); future-proofing. The s_templateName parameter is also future-proofing of a sort; all it does is provide the full page name name of the template it belongs to (so for {{Suppression (LW2)}} this reads "Template:Suppression_(LW2)"). It's required for accessing subpages, which so far have only been used for extended info (although a lot of them seem to be just repeats of what the description says, which was not my intention). It's good to have so that long-winded, supplementary information can be held somewhere else so the template itself is kept clean and as easy-to-read and understand as possible.

Visual Style

I think the colour palette here is appropriate for these. I'll be going for a flat style; no frilly stuff like beveled borders (ewwwwwwwww).

As usual (unfortunately), this is all contingent on my getting access to the site-wide CSS so I don't have to duplicate significant portions of each template. Depending on time I can probably have this done in a week (or two) from that point (getting access to the CSS), barring any weirdness or delays. --Tvol (talk) 11:13, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Documents

Parameter Definitions (HTML) (Cleaner, but can't be previewed in-browser.)
Parameter Definitions (PDF) (Looks worse, but can be previewed in-browser.)
Parameter Definitions (Markdown)
Template Diagrams

Skeletons (HTML)
Skeletons (PDF)
Skeletons (Markdown)

Template Design Discussion

Nice you got what you wanted :) I was wondering if all the info you've posted about templates shouldn't be moved to a specific page explaining how to use them. Hobbes (talk) 15:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Well not yet, but I'm hoping Joshua will get to it soon. --Tvol (talk) 04:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I have added documents above. I would appreciate it if others could go through the Parameter Definitions document and offer suggestions on anything I might've missed. --Tvol (talk) 16:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Hobbes, to answer your question more definitively (because I've thought about it more), that'll be something I'll figure-out later. Once it's all done it'll have to be documented, but it should be easy enough to explain with the pretty UML diagrams. The data templates should be straightforward if you refer to the spec sheet (see documents above). The implementation will be the most complicated part. Both of those layers will be "hidden" to editors; that is, you won't need to know how everything works under the hood, just that it does. In all there are actually only a small handful of parameters that an editor would end-up using, all of which are related to how the data is displayed, not what it is. I'm hoping Joshua will set-up a user-group with the editinterface permission soon so I can get started (I've given him everything he needs to know how to do it). I can't (reasonably) start on the implementation until he does and I'm added to the group. --Tvol (talk) 04:27, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I am tentatively calling the spec above done. Unless I missed something and someone points that out, I'll start working on template skeletons soon. If anyone has time to read through it to look for missing stuff, that'd be great. --Tvol (talk) 12:17, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Skeletons are done, as is the spec, probably. These can be used to start uploading data to the wiki in the form of data templates (similar to {{Ability (LW2)}} ). {{Ability (LW2)}} will take more work to change-over, and doing so will also temporarily break the templates where they are being used on the wiki. Without implementation templates, and updating of the template calls, they would stay broken. Please leave these alone until I have a chance to write the implementation templates. (As usual, this is not feasible without site CSS access, which I am still waiting on.) --Tvol (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Given that I've received almost no feedback here, and Joshua seems to be absent again (and not responding to my messages on Skype), I really gotta ask: Have you guys thrown-in the towel? I ask especially because of what I saw on the most recent posts on Strategy Core. The wiki needs serious maintenance work done. If you have, I'd like to know, so I can take this work to a new wiki where progress can continue being made on documentation. --Tvol (talk) 02:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Xenonauts

Surprised that I couldn't find anything about that game on the wiki, not to mention a page dedicated. Is it a deliberate decision (then what's the reasoning behind it?) or there just wasn't anybody to actually make it? --Al Arz (talk) 14:05, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

The simple answer is that despite the game's obvious X-Com inspired roots, it's not an X-Com game. It's the same reason we don't have sections for the UFO:After~ series. Of course, if there's a demand for a Xenonauts wiki, we could always put the idea forward to our admins to get one set up. NKF (talk) 05:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I see now. And a demand doesn't seem to be that high to be honest. At least I'm not ready to fully commit myself to that topic (yet) :) Though I think having some kind of "X-Com inspired games" page wouldn't hurt. With maybe 1-2 paragraphs about Xenonauts, Extraterrestrials, some (discontinued?) fan-made projects perhaps. Also, there's UFO:AI in 'Featured Projects' after all... Well, anyways, your answer totally makes sense, thanks! --Al Arz (talk) 11:20, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

A place to report UFOpaedia issues

I saw a board on Strategy Core, but registration is closed and I don't have an acc so couldn't reply there. And today is first day in a week I was finally able to log in to ufopaedia. That's frustrating a bit. I wonder if there's a way of reporting ufopaedia technical issues (and ideally tracking progress towards solving them) that I'm not aware of. If not, probably we need one? --Al Arz (talk) 14:31, 16 July 2017 (UTC)