User talk:Hobbes

Nav Boxes

How do you make them? I was thinking of setting up some for Enemy Unknown (2012), namely one for base buildings/addons, one for all equipment (backpack equipment, weapons and armor), one for Aliens, one for Classes, etc. etc. Leman Russ 18:16, 19 April 2013 (EDT)

Easiest way is to use an already existing template to create a new one, such as Template:Organizations_Navbar, which gives you this:

X-COM: Apocalypse: Organizations
The Good:	X-COM Government Megapol
The Bad:	Alien Cult of Sirius
The Ugly:	Cyberweb Diablo Energen Evonet Extropians General Metro Grav Ball League Lifetree Marsec Mutant Alliance Nanotech Nutrivend Osiron Psyke S.E.L.F. Sanctuary Clinic Sensovision Solmine Superdynamics Synthemesh Technocrats Transtellar

Or, if you click to edit the code:

<table width="75%" {{stdTable}} cellpadding="3" border="1">

<tr {{stdTable Sub_Heading}}><td colspan ="2">{{Apoc Icon}} <b>[[Apoc_Table|X-COM: Apocalypse]]:</b> [[Organizations]]</td></tr>

<tr><td width="80"><b>The Good:</b></td><td>[[Image:Apoc_xcom.png]] [[X-COM (Apocalypse)|X-COM]] [[Image:Apoc_govt.png]] [[Government]] [[Image:Apoc_megapol.png]] [[Megapol]]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>The Bad:</b></td><td>[[Image:Apoc_aliens.png]] [[Aliens (Apocalypse)|Alien]] [[Image:Apoc_sirius.png]] [[Cult of Sirius]]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>The Ugly:</b></td><td>[[Image:Apoc_cyberweb.png]] [[Cyberweb]] [[Image:Apoc_diablo.png]] [[Diablo]] [[Image:Apoc_energen.png]] [[Energen]] [[Image:Apoc_evonet.png]] [[Evonet]] [[Image:Apoc_extropians.png]] [[Extropians]]<br>[[Image:Apoc_gm.png]] [[General Metro]] [[Image:Apoc_gravball.png]] [[Grav Ball League]] [[Image:Apoc_lifetree.png]] [[Lifetree]] [[Image:Apoc_marsec.png]] [[Marsec]]<br>[[Image:Apoc_mutant.png]] [[Mutant Alliance]] [[Image:Apoc_nanotech.png]] [[Nanotech]] [[Image:Apoc_nutrivend.png]] [[Nutrivend]] [[Image:Apoc_osiron.png]] [[Osiron]] [[Image:Apoc_psyke.png]] [[Psyke]]<br>[[Image:Apoc_self.png]] [[S.E.L.F.]] [[Image:Apoc_sanctuary.png]] [[Sanctuary Clinic]] [[Image:Apoc_sensovision.png]] [[Sensovision]] [[Image:Apoc_solmine.png]] [[Solmine]]<br>[[Image:Apoc_sd.png]] [[Superdynamics]] [[Image:Apoc_synthemesh.png]] [[Synthemesh]] [[Image:Apoc_technocr.png]] [[Technocrats]] [[Image:Apoc_ts.png]] [[Transtellar]]</td></tr>

</table> To create the template, just write the link for it, for instance Template: Aliens (EU2012), click and start editing. Just edit/replace/add what you want. After you've done a template, you'll have to add it to all the relevant pages by adding at the bottom the following code: {{Aliens (EU2012)}} Hobbes 18:58, 19 April 2013 (EDT)

Got a number of them out. How do they look? Only one that I can think of that still needs doing is one for classes. Leman Russ 13:16, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

Looking good, but only two comments. It might be a good idea to have added a Navbar suffix on the end of the template names. The other is perhaps to use wiki table markup for the outer/main boxes. NKF 16:37, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

NKF, could you please post here an example of wiki table markup? I'm not sure exactly myself of the difference. Hobbes 21:02, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

Sure. I'll use wiki table markup to replicate the example navbar above. Check the source.

X-COM: Apocalypse: Organizations
The Good:	X-COM Government Megapol
The Bad:	Alien Cult of Sirius
The Ugly:	Cyberweb Diablo Energen Evonet Extropians General Metro Grav Ball League Lifetree Marsec Mutant Alliance Nanotech Nutrivend Osiron Psyke S.E.L.F. Sanctuary Clinic Sensovision Solmine Superdynamics Synthemesh Technocrats Transtellar

It's the same result, but has the advantage of being tidier to maintain. For nested tables, you can throw HTML tables inside and not make it one big block of greater/less-than symbols and slashes. ;) NKF 21:34, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

I'd quite like to see one done for the maps, though it may require a reduced font size in order to fit everything in without massive page bloat. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 18:17, 26 April 2013 (EDT)

Might be better to use only the loading screen images on the Navbar. I'll look into it later Hobbes 06:12, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

How about something like this?

Hobbes 20:20, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

The layout and appearance looks perfect to me, but I don't like the use of style templates within the table - guess what THEY conflict with?

Starting a cell with a ! instead of a | is enough to tell the wiki it's to be a header cell, there's no need to use a template for that. I've hence modified the above table to do away with templates as an example.

If adding it to the map pages as a template, could I also ask for a {{EU2012_Style}} tag to go in as well? Doesn't actually exist as yet, but the plan is to save a little time later when it does. Er, in to the map pages, not the table template, that is to say.

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 22:12, 27 April 2013 (EDT)

Just made a few more and edits and I've moved it into Template: Maps Navbar (EU2012). I'll add it later, along with the {{EU2012_Style}} tag, meanwhile I want to redo the maps pages. Hobbes 04:39, 28 April 2013 (EDT)

And just added both the Navbar and the Style tag to all the map pages. I still want to redesign the map page format but that's for later. Hobbes 16:22, 30 April 2013 (EDT)

In regards to the image layout on those pages, you may or may not find the code used in this article useful. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 02:54, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

Spamming Accounts

Since we think that all of these accounts are one person, surely we should try to block his/her IP Address which would stop him/her from creating new accounts; or do we not have the add-on installed on the wiki to block IPs? --Ditto51 02:59, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

Well, it was possible to block IPs until it was decided that only registered users could edit the wiki to prevent massive spamming. I have no idea about that add-on. Hobbes 05:32, 19 September 2013 (EDT)

Undo?

I haven't. --Xuncu 15:28, 18 November 2013 (EST)

I think he was talking about these ([1] [2]) and ([3] [4])

Only thing I can think of was that I opened to edit, someone else opened to edit, they wrote something quick, saved, while I was taking my time to test and check, then saved with the origional text. --Xuncu 00:49, 19 November 2013 (EST)

That's possible as well but you get a warning that someone has edited and saved a new version of the page while you're editing. To try to avoid this situation it's better to edit the EW main page by subsections if you're only adding a couple lines of text. But since we're now using page templates rather than having all info in the main page it should be easier to avoid conflicting versions. Hobbes 06:51, 19 November 2013 (EST)

New template / standardized words / main testing page

Hey Hobbes, since you're very active admin and user, I was wondering if a template akin to citation needed to add to information that needs verification would be useful or if talk pages are appropriate at this point.

Also, I was thinking of a page to showcase for editors to utilize when combing over pages for readability/uniformity. For instance, is Squad Sight Sniper or Squadsight Sniper better; the ability is called Squad Sight though. Or during movement, are they cells or tiles or squares? So as contributors add information, editors can go back and clean up pages with "minor edit" for readability.

Lastly, it would be useful for me personally if there was a single page to consolidate testing/verifying with others instead of marking my page or trying to remember all the different talk pages. :P--DracoGriffin 13:47, 13 December 2013 (EST)

I've been wondering myself if we should make a Guidelines_to_writing_articles page solely for EU2012 due to all these questions you've just posed. I'm following a certain logic when editing pages to keep a consistent style and if contributors tried to keep that in mind it would surely help with the work.

• Use the ingame terms on the pages to keep consistency: not Squadsight but Squad Sight; XCOM but not X-COM
• Capitalize when you're using the exact term
• For emphasis, i.e. you're mentioning specific abilites on a page that is about abilities, use bold for the ingame terms.
• Use italics for transcriptions of ingame text, if they are not in identifiable boxes (like the pages dealing with research topics).
• Don't write as if you're in a chat room: 'crits', 'dmg' and other abbreviations should not be used.
• DO NOT WRITE phrases or words on full caps just for emphasis.

Just some ideas to start. Maybe it would be nice to have a template informing people to check the Talk page if some info is disputed. Hobbes 14:03, 13 December 2013 (EST)

Hi, Hobbes! Have some question: can I create new templates for Russian section with (R) suffix? For example, Template:Ref Close (R). The point is that words like "Источник" is more familiar than "Source" in Russian articles. --HansOlo (talk) 12:38, 20 June 2014 (EDT)

Of course! Hobbes (talk) 13:14, 20 June 2014 (EDT)

Kinetic Strike Module and Flamethrower Bug

Do you know if it affects the Flamethrower (and if so what the eventually damage is. Does it round the 4.5 down or up?). Also do you know whether the bug resets for the game after being upgraded to the bugged value in the previous. I think it does but I can't remember.--Ditto51 (talk) 14:49, 15 August 2014 (EDT)

I don't remember about the Flamethrower. All rounding of numbers is usually down in EU2012. The bug continues to upgrade the weapon until you play a game without getting the upgrade, IIRC, after which the next game the values are reset to normal ones. Hobbes (talk) 19:43, 15 August 2014 (EDT)

OK, just had a little more time to check this. The flamethrower should be upgraded to 13 (9 + 4.5, rounded down). I never actually confirmed this personally with the Flamethrower. Hobbes (talk) 20:54, 15 August 2014 (EDT)

Well, that was rather rude

http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Mods_%28EU2012%29&action=history Connor's edit 'comment'

There are two issues here. First I agree with you that the comment wasn't a nice one. However, I also might take it in a more light manner since the stuff that he removed (XCOM/My Little Pony crossover) gets me scratching my head whether to laugh at it or to take it seriously. Hobbes (talk) 00:54, 15 September 2014 (EDT)

Code of Infiltration

I put some of the code for the infiltration routine on my user page. I remove a lot of code so that the important stuff is easier to follow. The code only goes up to the UK as that is where the logic is easiest to follow. If something is not clear, let me know. Tycho (talk) 20:43, 5 December 2014 (EST)

Thanks a lot and yes, I can see how it works, the logic behind it is actually simpler than I was imagining it. Hobbes (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2014 (EST)

Glad to help!Tycho (talk) 23:49, 5 December 2014 (EST)

Something else I'm wondering if you could help. I was mentioning before that I wanted to update the page about Alien Missions with details about how the missions are generated, based on the info present in OpenXcom. But from our exchange I started realizing that the logic followed by OpenXcom might not be the same of the original game, even though the results are. So, I wrote a page about Alien Missions in Enemy Unknown (OpenXcom) but describing the process from the OpenXcom's code perspective. But since you're familiar with the original game's code I'm wondering if you could adapt its contents to the original game's code and update the Alien Missions page since you're way more qualified than me. Just an idea. :) Hobbes (talk) 00:03, 6 December 2014 (EST)

Something I don't quite understand is what you mean by missions. In your various postings about alien missions in openxcom, you talk about the different trajectories and how a UFO uses them. Missions and trajectories are different things. The way missions are selected and completed has nothing to do with their flight patterns. Is this what your wanting to discuss, not how missions are selected or how they are completed? - Tycho (talk) 19:41, 29 December 2014 (EST)

I'm interested in describing the whole process behind alien missions in the original game: how the mission is selected, how the UFOs are assigned to it and how their flight patterns are determined and finally what happens (score) when the mission is completed. Hobbes (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2014 (EST)

Variables

Hi! Recently I joined article writers and created several pages. Almost immediately, I faced with the duplicated information problem. Sometimes page should contain the same string twice and it is really pain in ass to update such strings. Maybe I am blinded but currently there is no way to use variables. So, is it possible to install pretty extension called “Variables”? Here is the link: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Variables El. (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2015 (EST)

Hey there. I noticed the insane amount of templates that you guys were creating for Long War and I wondered how necessary they were. I can ask Pete (site owner) about the Variable extensions, I have never used them myself though. Hobbes (talk) 19:43, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

I personally have created pages and templates only for russian language from scratch. So yes, I realy need them :). It would be cool if Pete did the favour for guys who need variables. --El. (talk) 02:50, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

Just to let you know that I've emailed Pete about the Variables, now I'm waiting for an answer. Hobbes (talk) 19:40, 8 July 2015 (EDT)

Spam flood

Shit's fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked! --Xuncu (talk) 23:08, 9 February 2016 (EST)

Working as intended

Just FYI the bot was working as intended. More info on my talk page. Now I just need to figure-out why the tables are breaking in such a weird way. --Tvol (talk) 18:47, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Tvol-bot

Do you think you could flag User:Tvol-bot as a bot? I'm doing a lot of batch processing on the wiki with it. And I'm sure other people might appreciate not seeing the wall of edits in the recent changes (or at least I certainly would :P ). --Tvol (talk) 01:22, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea if that's even possible to do on this wiki... do you know how to do it?Hobbes (talk) 01:31, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Should be somewhere in here. Otherwise poke around Special:AdminLinks. --Tvol (talk) 01:37, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, I'm not authorized to make edits on the Special:UserRights and I can't find anything about bots on Special:AdminLinks, so that's above my pay grade. Just go ahead with the bot for the mass edits - there might be some complaints but the amount of edits is natural since we're creating a whole new section and people should understand that, without edit things don't get done in a wiki :) Hobbes (talk) 16:51, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Seems like I have access to that section, so have given Tvol-bot bot status. NKF (talk) 22:04, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Image Strangeness

Do you have any idea what is going on here? File:UIPerk_aceinthehole.png The current revision is stuck as the original. But you can see from my upload attempts that the new images were successfully uploaded. The catch is that each time I would upload one, I would see the most recent version as the original. Which...makes no god damn sense. O.o Maybe the server needs a restart. Or a massive kick in the pants, either or. I'm fine with both. (Edit: I would try a mass delete and re-upload, which would almost guarantee this would be fixed but I don't have the perms.) --Tvol (talk) 20:24, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Right now it's working properly it seems. I have no idea what was going on. --Tvol (talk) 00:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Thinking about this, it's likely you were seeing the local copy in your browser's cache rather than the latest copy on the server. The next time this happens, try doing a full refresh of the page with a shift-reload to re-download the content from the server and see if that sorts the problem. NKF (talk) 05:42, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Fraid not. That's the first thing I tried. I tried a full page refresh, purging my entire browser cache, and then on a whim I tried doing all that on Safari (on 2 computers), Edge (on one), Firefox (on all three), and Brave (again on all three). It's definitely not a caching issue on my end. For some reason the wiki is slow in updating the pointer to where the current revision is stored when it gets called on a page. The good news is that it eventually does do it, it just takes a while (half hour to an hour). --Tvol (talk) 07:32, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

User CSS

Would it be possible to enable user CSS ( $wgAllowUserCss )? I'm trying to test-out CSS to make {{Ability (LW2)}} better. What I want to do is have that extra info icon invert its color (like the game does; I'll make a custom image for that later), and set a div underneath the ability to appear (which would hold the ability's extended info text, so it appears under it only when rolled-over). With access to user CSS I can test this, and later add it to the Common.css file (well I couldn't, but someone else with admin rights could). Otherwise there's no good way of going about it.

Alternately I can add CSS to each ability template in theory, but in practice every time I try to add any CSS in the <css></css> tags the server hurks and doesn't show me the preview page. It also might add an issue with server and browser load. The wiki would probably do well to be using this extension instead anyway. --Tvol (talk) 04:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll ask Jo5hua (current site admin) about it since I dont' have any skills related to this issue :) Hobbes (talk) 18:00, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Much appreciated. --Tvol (talk) 20:41, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Hey Hobbes, while you're at it, do you think you could propose installing the MediaWiki CSS extension? It allows for inclusion of complete style sheets and inline css, which could prove useful for pages where specific css is repeated. If need be (e.g. if it conflicts with the NewCSS extension) I can easily go over the wiki and convert any markup that uses the <css></css> tags (though as far as I can tell, NewCSS is broken, since I can't successfully add any CSS to a page with it and have the preview come back). (Edit: And take a look at WhiteSpace too if possible. Sorry for asking for so much, but both would eliminate some major headaches for me.) --Tvol (talk) 07:55, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Any word on this? If it's easier, there's a slightly more straightforward solution. Assuming you guys are okay with creating another group and handing me those permissions to edit the site's CSS (I promise to test thoroughly first; that's the primary reason I'm asking for user CSS to be enabled).

To summarize what I've asked for (in order of importance) for the sake of anyone reading:

• Ability to use own user-specific CSS. Editing one's own CSS (e.g. Special:MyPage/vector.css ) isn't the issue. It being active needs to be enabled by the server admin. (see: $wgGroupPermissions and User style)
• Permissions to edit site CSS.
• Depreciate Extension:NewPageCSS and install Extension:CSS. This is for several reasons.

1. Extension:NewPageCSS tags don't work. If added to a page with valid CSS in them, the server will not respond when the edit is submitted (not even a response error code; it just dies). (Edit: Well this was what was happening to me. They seem to be working now. Not idea why. In any case there are only three pages that use the extension right now, and Extension:CSS provides both transclusion of entire style sheets as well as parsing CSS inline.)

2. Extension:CSS was updated more recently.

3. Extension:CSS allows inclusion of other style sheets onto a page, which reduces potential repetition for any specialized CSS (it will also almost certainly be more efficient than transcluding a style sheet into the tags from Extension:NewPageCSS and then having it parse it every page load).

• Install Extension:WhiteSpace. This is for my own sanity, but especially for the sanity of anyone looking at template code in the future. Consider the current source code of {{Ability (LW2)}}. This will only get more complicated if/when I add interactivity via CSS.

If you aren't convinced this is a good idea, I've made a fiddle (and another based on Mavoc's suggestions) of what the Ability template could look like. There are piles of other changes I would like to make, primarily to reduce duplication of effort. For example, without any default table styles other than .wikitable, changing the colours used requires an ungodly number of style tags. This makes maintenance of these templates much more difficult, and practically speaking, requires editors to be familiar with regexes and have Pywikibot installed to make any general changes to similar elements across the wiki. (It is, in short, a very bad way of doing things. It's a massive time-sink when building new templates as well because of the inevitable mistakes and bugs that crop-up from constantly repeating the same code.) --Tvol (talk) 05:58, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not skilled to decide if this is a good idea from the technical side of the wiki, I'm just forwarding your request to the appropriate person :) I got word back from Jo5hua, he thinks that there might be security issues with allowing what you're suggesting. Could you clarify this issue better? Hobbes (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, it's better if you just talk to Jo5hua directly on Skype. His Skype address is joshua.dominguez Hobbes (talk) 16:42, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Okie dokie; I've added him as a contact on Skype. --Tvol (talk) 03:38, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

ADVENT Warden

Hey,

I don't think it's called an ADVENT Warden, but I have definitely seen that unit without having ABA installed. It probably has a different name, and it appeared during a mission to liberate a region, providing bonuses like Fire Discipline to allies.

That unit is the Advent General (and there are two versions of it on LW2, one red and the other black) Hobbes (talk) 15:03, 2 February 2017 (UTC)