DoomWiki Months in Review (Issue #53)

[Xymph]

The past two months at the one true wiki weren't terribly buzzing with activity, and March even less than February, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to summarize. In fact, an important milestone was reached, as through the concerted efforts of MF(G)38, Blursphere, Nockson, Gregor and SectorBasedPencil, the number of map pages in need of soundtrack information was pushed down through the 4K barrier, and is already below 3,900. Well done, editors! And another maintenance project was completed with the consistent italics styling of external and non-core game titles.

 

As expected, the majority of mods in the 2023 Cacowards have now been added, with Getsu Fune/NMM covering the secrets in all those maps. Meanwhile specialist Gauss added or updated walkthroughs in Doom 2 the Way id Did, Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel and The Classic Episode, Part 2, while Dynamo(128) caught up on multiplayer WADs. And thus the list of new articles still ends up being sizable:

 

Core Content

 

Can it run Doom?
Dean of Doom
The Doom Game Editor

 

Ports

 

X-Doom

 

Mods

 

Abscission
ACS Arcade
Ancient Battlegrounds
Armageddon (WAD)
Austrian Avian Association
Blood World
Break//Point//
Come Sail Away
Coop Build
Corruption
Cosmogenesis
Crumpets 2
Damnation Awaits the Wicked
DBP64: The Vast Silence
Destination Unknown
The Diseases, and Casualties this year being 1632
Doom Infinite
Doomworld Maximum Project 2023
Dream Duel
Drown in Blood
El Viaje de Diciembre
Exalt not the Wicked
Fear is the Key
Fear is the Price of Sin
Fear Station Bravo
Fear Station: Charlie
For the Wicked Shall Perish
From the Ashes of Fear
Godless Night
I CANT GIVE YOU ANY THING
I C H I N I C H I
The Lost Magic
MAYhem 2023
Obsidian Deathmatch
OmegaDM
The Settlements
Shogun Trogun
Solve Et Coagula
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Town Infection: The Flooding
Toxic Darkness
Toxic Darkness 2
Toxic Darkness 3
The UAC Base
What Lies Beneath
The Wicked and the Damned
Wicked Be the Ways of Men
Wickedly Simple

plus map pages for older articles:

Armageddon 2
Doomworld Maximum Project 2023
Hardfest 2
WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony

 

People

 

Ak-01
Yousuf Anik
James Bauer (Isle)
Alan Carr (thefwf)
Diego Cea López (Proteh)
Csabo
DJShrimpy
EVILNECK
David Finnamore (Daeron)
Patrick Hipps (Patrix)
Henri Lehto
Olivier Montanuy
José Navarrete (CoTeCiO)
Joe Pantuso
Phoenyx
RockyGaming4725
Brian Rowan (B.J. Rowan)
SkullDemon
Spunkman
Suzerduzer
Terrarienn
Tm512
Whybmonotacrab

 

Index of previous issues

 

Edited April 2 by Xymph
Add map pages for older articles

[taufan99]

Oh hey, ACS Arcade! I remember spending some time on ZDoom playing it back then (and discovering the Renamon easter egg by using the fly cheat).

[DoomGappy]

Good morning/afternoon/night, @Xymph. Hope you're doing fine. I wanted to become a contributor to the wiki to post some WADs that still don't have pages there. The ones that prompted me to create an account were Switcheroom and its sequel, Switcheroom 2. I am wondering if it would be okay for me to add these WADs to the wiki, as there are some criteria that should be obeyed before the page is created. I also wanted to ask if the wiki editors have any way of communicating with the wiki managers in a faster and more reliable way, like a discord server or something of the sort. @NiGHTS108, who has been helping me with another project, told me to learn about the Central Processing area of the wiki, and I'm reading it thorougly. I'm also reading the policies and guidelines, but the criteria of notability still feels a little obscure to me for the purpose of me deciding to create or not the pages for the aforementioned WADs. Thanks in advance.

Edited May 26 by DoomGappy

[Xymph]

I am by no means familiar with all WADs/CPs and their notability, nor a definitive voice on whether to add specific ones, so frequently chat about such topics with Dynamo, who has followed this much more throughout the years. We think adding those is all right - but not the Forgotten Maps for both.

A couple of editors and admin Quasar hang out (ir)regularly in #doomwiki and that can be a quick way to chat about these and other wiki matters before hitting Central Processing. But it is of course more primitive than Discord.

Edited May 26 by Xymph

[DoomGappy]

26 minutes ago, Xymph said:

I am by no means familiar with all WADs/CPs and their notability, nor a definitive voice on whether to add specific ones, so frequently chat about such topics with Dynamo, who has followed this much more throughout the years. We think adding those is all right.

 A couple of editors and admin Quasar hang out (ir)regularly in #doomwiki and that can be a quick way to chat about these and other wiki matters before hitting Central Processing. But it is of course more primitive than Discord.

Thanks for the swift response. I will start working on the article soon. I'm unfortunately extremely unfamiliar with an IRC chat. I mostly use Discord for my Doom related subjects. I will try to learn a bit more about it, but don't promise anything. If I have any doubts and questions not answered in the wiki guides, would it be okay to send you a DM here in DoomWorld? 

[Walter confetti]

Uhm... Aren't Green cacos from Coop build shooting fast BFG projectiles? Or most simply It was a false memory...

[Xymph]

15 hours ago, DoomGappy said:

I'm unfortunately extremely unfamiliar with an IRC chat. I mostly use Discord for my Doom related subjects. I will try to learn a bit more about it, but don't promise anything. If I have any doubts and questions not answered in the wiki guides, would it be okay to send you a DM here in DoomWorld? 

If not excessive, that's okay too. But several editors use HexChat as IRC client, which is easy to set up, connect, and use. So that shouldn't be an obstacle.

[Xymph]

On 5/27/2024 at 12:05 AM, DoomGappy said:

I will start working on the article soon.

But what about finishing it? A brief intro paragraph (which was already improved and expanded by Plerb) without levels list is not really an effective way to contribute to the wiki, I'm afraid.

[Gez]

52 minutes ago, Xymph said:

But what about finishing it? A brief intro paragraph (which was already improved and expanded by Plerb) without levels list is not really an effective way to contribute to the wiki, I'm afraid.

Yes. I'd say generally the real criteria for notability about a project is whether you're willing to really put the work into giving it sufficient documentation yourself, and it's not just a vanity endeavor.

 

If all you're planning to do is a stub, then let other people do the work of filling it in, then suddenly the criteria for notability becomes much more stringent.

[DoomGappy]

5 hours ago, Gez said:

Yes. I'd say generally the real criteria for notability about a project is whether you're willing to really put the work into giving it sufficient documentation yourself, and it's not just a vanity endeavor.

 

If all you're planning to do is a stub, then let other people do the work of filling it in, then suddenly the criteria for notability becomes much more stringent.

No, I don't want to do just a stub. I'm still learning about the wiki. I was reading about XymphBot and I thought it would automatically format the page to the style of other WADs, that's why I left it there for a while. I will edit the page slowly over the days, if that's not a problem. I've been using the Valiant page as a template to learn about editing. Would it be better for future endeavors that I write things in a text file before creating a page?

Also, is there a tool that allows me to get a screenshot of the automap layout in the same format of the wiki?

Edited May 29 by DoomGappy

[Gez]

32 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

Also, is there a tool that allows me to get a screenshot of the automap layout in the same format of the wiki?

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Wiki:Software

[Endless]

38 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

No, I don't want to do just a stub. I'm still learning about the wiki. I was reading about XymphBot and I thought it would automatically format the page to the style of other WADs, that's why I left it there for a while. I will edit the page slowly over the days, if that's not a problem. I've been using the Valiant page as a template to learn about editing. Would it be better for future endeavors that I write things in a text file before creating a page?

Also, is there a tool that allows me to get a screenshot of the automap layout in the same format of the wiki?

The bot is not some sort of automatic being that easily fills the gaps, it must be first operated by Xymph, plus it doesn't fill multilevel-WAD articles, only single-level WADs or individual maps. For that, you can also use the {{subst:map skel}} template.

 

40 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

Also, is there a tool that allows me to get a screenshot of the automap layout in the same format of the wiki?

I believe it's better if you don't do this manually, unless you are 100% sure of what you are doing. The automap screenshots follow a set of proper characteristics that are better left to automated tools IMO.

[DoomGappy]

7 minutes ago, Endless said:

The bot is not some sort of automatic being that easily fills the gaps, it must be first operated by Xymph, plus it doesn't fill multilevel-WAD articles, only single-level WADs or individual maps. For that, you can also use the {{subst:map skel}} template.

I thought it would autoamtically fill a template for levels, soundtracks, etc. I understand now. How would I implement that {{subst:map skel}} when creating a new page? Just edit, copy and paste it onto the new page?
 

7 minutes ago, Endless said:

I believe it's better if you don't do this manually, unless you are 100% sure of what you are doing. The automap screenshots follow a set of proper characteristics that are better left to automated tools IMO.

Okay, I'll wait for better instructions on this, as I'm not completely sure how to do it. Will focus on technical information of the WAD itself.

Edited May 29 by DoomGappy

[Gez]

8 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

How would I implement that {{subst:map skel}} when creating a new page? Just edit, copy and paste it onto the new page?

Literally just write

{{subst:map skel}}

and only that in the page.

 

Save.

 

Then edit it to fill it in.

 

Basically, map skel is not a classical mediawiki template, it's just a boilerplate text. The subst command tells the wiki to write the content of the template in the article, instead of processing it like a template is usually processed.

 

Alternatively, as this is pretty much the exact same thing, you can go to https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Map_skel&action=edit and copy the content, then paste it in the editing window of the wiki article you're trying to make. Same result.

 

Note that you can remove some of the sections if there's pretty much nothing relevant to say in there. I'm thinking of technical information, inspiration and development, trivia, see also, and sources, in particular. Deathmatch can be removed if there are no deathmatch spots.

 

Statistics should be kept, though, so that XymphBot can do its job.

[Xymph]

As noted above and before, XymphBot is just a bot account suitable for running scripted updates without cluttering Recent Changes - not an autonomous all-knowing entity. It does very little on WAD overview pages, only (if applicable) the built-in demos and speedrunning sections can be added to an existing, fleshed-out WAD page. I need a properly formatted levels list to create a .ini file for the project, and only then skeleton pages with a lot of basic info for all maps can be created through a series of scripts. subst:map_skel should NOT be used for multi-level WADs either, then, because existing partial pages can get in the way of those scripts.

 

Valiant is too complex an example article to learn from, something comparable to SR1/2 like Congestion 1024 or Literalism works better. View the source (but don't change/submit it) to learn how to create a proper map list with the maplinkgen template (there are other ways, but for beginners that template minimizes the chance of mistakes). Also, the map authors should be listed with their full canonical names - wikilinked - on the first occurrence, and then the alias (or regular name, if no alias) - not wikilinked - can be used for their additional map contributions, if any. Redlinks on mapper names should be avoided. A soundtrack section should not be included if the WAD has no custom music.

 

Map images are created via Omgifol from cropped levels that don't show monster caches and control sectors, so that should not be attempted until one understands all aspects of that process. I already prepared map images for SR1 & 2, anyway.

 

1 hour ago, DoomGappy said:

Would it be better for future endeavors that I write things in a text file before creating a page?

Sure, you can create a complete draft in an editor first. Or enter wiki text in the page create form in multiple phases, but then repeatedly use Show preview until the page is complete and looks correct before submitting, to avoid spamming Recent Changes.

 

41 minutes ago, Gez said:

Note that you can remove some of the sections if there's pretty much nothing relevant to say in there.

We generally leave those in for a long time as open invitation and easy hooks for adding such info bits.

 

41 minutes ago, Gez said:

Deathmatch can be removed if there are no deathmatch spots.

DMMPST and dmmpstBot don't add that anyway if spots are absent.

Edited May 29 by Xymph

[Xymph]

Unfortunately my explanations were mostly ignored in that last edit - I've now brought the article up to wiki standards. Hopefully that helps to make SR2 creation a smoother process.

[DoomGappy]

9 minutes ago, Xymph said:

Unfortunately my explanations were mostly ignored in that last edit - I've now brought the article up to wiki standards. Hopefully that helps to make SR2 creation a smoother process.

I'm sorry for the trouble, I generally do smaller edits, will try to gather all the necessary info before creating a page for the next wad in the series. I'm analyzing the changes to see what I made wrong. About the soundtrack for the wad, I'm pretty sure there are custom midis for at least some of the levels. Should these be added, or only if they are original midis? I didn't understand that part clearly. 

[Xymph]

36 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

I'm analyzing the changes to see what I made wrong.

One thing needing correction was using the forums post for the map/mapper list, resulting in the E2M5 discrepancy. The WAD itself (so its MAPINFO/DEHACKED and (C)WILV lumps) should be used as primary source, its .txt file(s) secondary, and only if neither provides (enough) information, a forum post.

 

Also, secret exits don't need to marked if they're the defaults.

 

36 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

I'm pretty sure there are custom midis for at least some of the levels.

Look again in the WAD, there aren't any.

Edited May 30 by Xymph

[DoomGappy]

37 minutes ago, Xymph said:

One thing needing correction was using the forums post for the map/mapper list, resulting in the E2M5 discrepancy. The WAD itself (so its MAPINFO/DEHACKED and (C)WILV lumps) should be used as primary source, its .txt file(s) secondary, and only if neither provides (enough) information, a forum post.

 

Also, secret exits don't need to marked if they're the defaults.

 

Look again, there aren't any.

Oh, I confused it with Switcheroom 2, which does have a soundtrack. My bad. Will tkae these guidelines to heart for the next edit I do. Thanks a lot for the patience.