CrawlWiki talk:Community portal

Welcome! Use this page to discuss general topics about the Crawl Wiki. If you want to discuss a topic that is specific about playing Dungeon Crawl, please consider discussing it in a relevant wiki page or on a forum (e.g. The Tavern).

Old Discussions: CrawlWiki:Community_portal/Archive 1: August 2012 – June 2013

Poll on scrolls of acquirement

There's not much hilarious life and dialogue in this wiki I observed. And there are no such things like polls that might change that. So I make an attempt to introduce it. -- Bwijn 23:04, 21 March 2013 (CET)

What do you do *usually* when you find an identified scroll of acquirement?

a) Read it immediately because any increase in power or shelter is crucial to success?

b) Put it in a stash because as an advanced character in the deeper regions you will get better stuff?

c) Use it soon to cover the worst weaknesses of your avatar, e. g. choose armour in hope for resistances for your spriggan?

d) Put it aside because you might need later sth special for a Ziggurat/treasure trove access?

Room for answers and debate:

I generally use them immediately. Treasure troves usually request other things, and there's nothing more frustrating than dying knowing you hadn't used some resource that might have saved you. As for WHAT I pick, it's almost always armour, if only because there's usually an armour slot that would benefit from a ludicrously good artifact, even if the RNG usually gives me a crappy +2 ring mail of uselessness. The only reason I might save it is if I haven't even found a mundane item for a particular armour slot yet, as that tends to make the acquirement give you a boring normal item. --MoogleDan 23:53, 21 March 2013 (CET)

I tend to a) use them immediately. Also I think that the official forums or r/rogulikes would be a much better place to have polls like this. You'll get more responses too =) --Flun 15:39, 22 March 2013 (CET)

I normally do not use SoA immediately because I found out that the result in low depths (even Lair:2) and/or low XL tend to be be "pretty" disappointing. And like Dan it's mostly armour I acquire. - The proposals above are not meant as one and the other 3 not! I think that Dan's answer reflects that fine.

As for Flun's ideas I don't consent. Surely the wiki will never be a competion to those forums. On the other hand I don't intend to spread my activities to a lot of places like that. Just sometimes when I'm here editing some stuff I miss a little non too serious talk. - Beyond that I have a research interest in my topic that is genuinely attached to increasing knowledge (wiki's core mission). My questions investigate aspects of this scroll that are not in the code-database but in the gameplay itself. So it depends on completely individual traits of behaviour. Hope I made myself understood. (I don't have to explain such difficult connections frequently, it's not my native language.) -- Bwijn 18:22, 22 March 2013 (CET)

I always use them immediately. Weapons and wands are my usual choices. --CommanderC 19:36, 22 March 2013 (CET)

Re Bwijn: You have a good point. Anyways, will you be joining us in our tournament team? --Flun 20:01, 22 March 2013 (CET)

I usually use them right off. As for what I request, it varies depending on the situation: I often ask for armor, but sometimes I'll ask for a weapon if I think I need a better one. If I'm running an Earth Elementalist and haven't found a staff of earth yet, I'll usually ask for that. --spudwalt 00:55, 23 March 2013 (CET)

I generally use them immediately as well. I've never noticed that huge a difference in acquirements between shallow and deep levels - it's not directly affected by depth anyway, it's just less likely to give you stuff you've already seen, so having seen a whole lot of items makes it less likely to give you some of the more common ones. But that might be because I almost always acquire armour, or occasionally jewellery - in both cases, the "common" items are usually more useful than, for example, with spellbooks. And you have the not-small chance of getting a randart.

The only case where I will "save" scrolls of acquirement, so to speak, is if they're in a shop. In that case, I will usually wait until I have explored all of the shop-bearing branches, so I don't end up lacking the gold to buy something really awesome that I come across. -Ion frigate 03:14, 23 March 2013 (CET)

Will you get warned, if new trunk-versions don't "stack"?

As online games are much too frequently disconnected I've downloaded my own trunk version to play at home. I'm not sure if any new "builds" can be installed over the previous? I saw once while online gaming that a new build "stacked" without problems. Will there be warnings if not? Only in the bug section? -- Bwijn 19:20, 27 July 2013 (CEST)

Not sure, but a simple solution is to just make a backup copy of Crawl before you try it. Just copy the whole directory/folder somewhere safe. If it works, delete the backup if you don't want to feel like you're savescumming. -Ion frigate 02:36, 28 July 2013 (CEST)

Backgrounds

Just curious why the background article is separate from the list of backgrounds. There is probably a good reason for this I'm just foolishly not seeing it. If not, any thoughts about merging the two? One article to reference both doesn't look overly large. Buddy23Lee 01:27, 3 August 2013 (CEST)

No reason at all! At least no substantial one. A lot of the original site framework has just stuck around due to being grandfathered in, and if it looks unreasonable, there is a good (but not 100%) chance that it's just been overlooked by others all this time. I think merging those two tiny pages makes sense, with List of backgrounds being turned into a redirect to Backgrounds#List of Backgrounds. Knock yourself out BL. --MoogleDan 02:09, 3 August 2013 (CEST)

Thanks MoogleDan. I just wanted to make sure those types of merges aren't too controversial. I'm still trying to figure out if this wiki is better off with fewer, more centralized articles, or a larger number of smaller, more specific articles. Maybe I'm just overthinking things? Buddy23Lee 02:18, 3 August 2013 (CEST)

Unnamed areas in 0.13a

I took the stairs down to Spider's Nest:3 (had been there before) and stumbled upon an area of transparent green-rimmed fields that hadn't been there the last visit. No, the phenomen is NOT a status effect like Silence creates it. A right click description gives nothing but 'the floor'. It is a0-2632 trunk-version. Anyone who can give an explanation or clearing hint? -- Bwijn 08:52, 13 August 2013 (CEST)

I believe that'd be the aura from a moth of suppression. --spudwalt 09:22, 13 August 2013 (CEST)

MediaWiki engine upgrade and new extensions

Yesterday our server administrator (User:Epyon) upgraded our version of MediaWiki, the software that runs Crawl Wiki. We now have some new extensions including Parser Functions, Pipe Escape, Scribundo and Semantic MediaWiki. Other new stuff can be seen at Special:Version. --Flun (talk) 15:31, 15 August 2013 (CEST)

Excellent news! --CommanderC (talk) 20:44, 15 August 2013 (CEST)

The Cite extension has also been added. This allows us to use the <ref> and <references /> tag for easier citing. --Flun (talk) 14:49, 16 August 2013 (CEST)

It seems that there is something broken after the upgrade. I tried to upload a file and got this error message:

Could not create directory "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/7/70.

--CommanderC (talk) 23:07, 19 August 2013 (CEST)

Looks like its fixed now. --Flun (talk) 20:28, 21 August 2013 (CEST)

No, obviously not completely fixed. Just these days (2015!) I've seen the very same error message when I was wanting to upload a file. -- Bwijn (talk) 15:15, 7 January 2015 (CET)

Item articles reconciliation

I was thinking of trying to merge Item with Items as they are obviously trying to describe the same thing. Does anyone care if I change Items into a redirect of Item? It's a decent length article, but looks like it's just copy & pasted content at present. --Buddy23Lee (talk) 21:36, 19 August 2013 (CEST)

No need to ask. --CommanderC (talk) 23:07, 19 August 2013 (CEST)

Opening up registrations/edits

Just curious, are we still planning to open up the registrations/edits? And if so, in which form? --Lokkij (talk) 00:00, 21 August 2013 (CEST)

Kornel said he is still looking into it... not sure when it will come =/ --Flun (talk) 20:02, 21 August 2013 (CEST)

One thing we could try is to create an account (called Anonymous or AnonymousUser) with a public password that would be available in the main page. I don't know if it will work, but if it doesn't it should be easy to cancel that account, or change its password and announce the new password in a less visible place. --CommanderC (talk) 01:09, 1 April 2014 (CEST)

Joining a clan in tournament

I'm considering to join a clan leader in tournament 0.13. Possible up to 19th Octobre says the online rule page. I'm not knowing anyone (beyond the available stats at http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.13/players/). Is it enough to write the clan captain's name in my rc file? Will he perceive that? Are there other ways to ask someone suitable in the list. Naturally I'm quite modest and won't ask a team that is in the top ten of clans. -- Bwijn (talk) 19:11, 18 October 2013 (CEST)

Yep! Write it like the first line in my rc --Flun (talk) 00:03, 19 October 2013 (CEST)

I chose Clan *Silence of the Lamias* and wrote # Teamcaptain Drone in my rc file. Just like I remembered of last year. If I did copy/adapt your first line I would make myeself a team captain, isn't it? -- Bwijn (talk) 08:48, 19 October 2013 (CEST)

Yep, here is your clan profile.--Flun (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2013 (CEST)

new version pictures' repository

Where would I have to look for the decks icon images? They are missing a while now. Developers' image (new version) repository is where? - BTW this Community portal page could have another archivising clean up, isn't it? It's filled with old stuff. -- Bwijn (talk) 20:28, 4 November 2013 (CET)

In the source code. They are created dynamically by combining several images in the source/rltiles/item/misc folder. --CommanderC (talk) 21:15, 4 November 2013 (CET)

Thank you for the location. I downloaded the pictures under "raw". But they seem to give only the deck type specific symbols. The deck frame picture is not included. - Further on I found out: the [[Template:Item]] is the right one. There you find the lines: "! align="left" | Icon | 32px". I'm not sure how to insert the correct pagename.png. Please help out experienced operators! -- Bwijn (talk) 22:15, 4 November 2013 (CET)

There are three base images. One for each kind of deck: plain (misc_deck.png), ornate (misc_deck_rare.png), and legendary (misc_deck_legendary.png). I have used the plain one. The way to obtain the correct names was clicking the red links. --CommanderC (talk) 23:46, 4 November 2013 (CET)

DECj guide

Hi everyone! I'm new here, but I'd like to share my playing experience, so I've made this guide: MistyMan's Deep Elf Conjurer of Vehumet guide. If people think it can be useful I'll put up appropriate interwiki.--MistyMan (talk) 16:37, 17 December 2013 (CET)

Development stop?

I noticed that since 26 february 2014 no new 0.14a trunk versions have been published. Anybody of you who knows background? Has development completely stoped? Major devel team breakdown? Creative timeout only? -- Bwijn (talk) 12:08, 15 March 2014 (CET)

CDO was migrated to new servers starting then, and still is in the process of being migrated. I'm guessing that putting out nightly builds is something that is still being migrated. It also may be a lower priority, since the stable release of 0.14 is coming up soon (so 0.14a is about to branch off into 0.15 and 0.14 anyway). But development is definitely still ongoing, and I imagine that if you play online you can get access to the latest trunk. -Ion frigate (talk) 16:12, 15 March 2014 (CET)

Thank you, Ion! Looking up for the new 0.14 stable today was a disappointment. The official Download section tells: "Latest stable release 0.13.2"! But the changelog that can be found is: "Stone Soup 0.13.1 (20131128)". And still no new trunk versions since 26 february 2014. There must be a serious lack of manpower or of any care for responsible documentation /communication. -- Bwijn (talk) 14:58, 5 April 2014 (CEST)

Merge community, community portal pages project

In order to facilitate this, would anyone have a problem if I renamed this particular page to Community Discussions and renamed the existing Community page to Community Portal? It seems like that would make a bit more sense since this page is less of an entry and more of a focused section.

Merging sounds like a good idea. My suggestion would be to put the stuff in Community in CrawlWiki:Community portal article and the discussions currently on Community Portal go into CrawlWiki_talk:Community portal talk page.--Flun (talk) 15:45, 2 May 2014 (CEST)

Okay, I've performed the merge so we should be good to go ahead and remove the old Community page now.--DC_Malleus (talk) 03:17, 5 May 2014 (CEST)

Monster Genus/Type Templates

Would there be any objections if I started creating templates for monster genus and type? It feels like a conspicuous absence, so I wanted to check before just going ahead and doing it.

What contents are you going to write in those templates? Which pages will they link to? If we are going to add only a genus category to each monster, the program we use to update the monster templates should be able to do that without the need to create new templates. --CommanderC (talk) 14:50, 9 May 2014 (CEST)

Strength weight

Does the concept of strength weight still have its effects in 0.14? I've noticed that the "this weapon is better for the strong" or however it was worded is gone (and maybe has been for a while, I was content playing an older version before upgrading to 0.14). I'm asking because it's become less clear what attribute (if either) is particularly important for any particular weapon. Both the articles on strength and dexterity still make reference to strength weight and how they affect it, but it's not clear which weapons prefer strength or dexterity except perhaps in the most extreme and obvious cases (giant spiked club vs. quick blade). Any chance someone has some special insight into this and can add the info to the respective weapons articles and/or the strength weight article? Buddy23Lee (talk) 01:19, 26 May 2014 (CEST)

0.15 now definitely out

One day in front of the new tournament version 0.15 now definitely is out. For 8 hours now it is even downloadable! We could and should react now as for the wiki. -- Bwijn (talk) 14:15, 28 August 2014 (CEST)

Merge monster flag pages?

Monster flags take 1 or two sentences to describe, so all of the individual pages are stubs. It might be better if they all shared the same page --Orecros (talk) 01:07, 4 March 2015 (CET)

That's not a bad idea. If you feel like doing so, go for it. Just be sure to convert all the old pages to redirects to the new one. --MoogleDan (talk) 04:21, 4 March 2015 (CET)

Wish adressed at the crawl wiki software developers

I'd wish the mediawiki feature I know at wikipedia which permits to say thanks! to any contributor for a special useful edit would be introduced at crawl wiki as well. (I've just seen such a contribution, alas the feature is still not activated.) -- Bwijn (talk) 15:30, 13 May 2015 (CEST)

It looks like the crawl wiki developers don't read our community portal. There is still no trace at all that this useful feature is to come soon. A pity! The advancement of quantity and quality of wiki contributions should be a priority. We need features that support the willingness of contributors to give this wiki some of their time and diligence. No cross, no crown. No sweet without sweat. -- Bwijn (talk) 14:45, 4 November 2015 (CET)

Warning as for certain templates

As a regular like me contributing to this wiki you should 've observed it itself: the spellbook-template-script isn't doing what it should, no longer delivering a complete up to date list of spells contained in 0.18 spellbooks. We all know that this wiki nowadays has a very discontinuous group of users who contribute. Thus a warning: do not trust too much in such template scripts, they aren't very reliable in the end. A fixed box of parameters as we had before was much more solid, even if it needed to updated manually. (Well, if there is somebody who could repair the concerning template that would be welcome. I'm not a programmer beyond basic knowledge and do not know where to search for it.) - And be aware that the developers have abandoned the wiki team while providing uncomplete documentations, example given: the new 0.18 Book of Misfortune that did not appear in the update listings. -- Bwijn (talk) 19:29, 18 August 2016 (CEST)

The the part of the script that generates the data needs to be manually re-run for each version. Nobody had done that yet, so it was still using the info from 0.17. I have now updated it so everything should work fine again. Is there some central page for "things do do when Crawl updates", so that we can leave instructions for future Wiki editors?

GenericPseudonym (talk) 21:44, 18 August 2016 (CEST)

No, there is no page like that AFAIK. No need for that as long as there are experienced admins. Regrettably those have abandoned Crawl wiki. (No game is fresh for years and at a certain point it gets boring even while evolving like DCSS into new variations.) We should create a page listing those necessary service steps to be performed directly after a new version upcoming. Thank you for finding und running the spellbook template script. -- Bwijn (talk) 18:32, 19 August 2016 (CEST)

I thoroughly disagree with not relying on source-scouring automated templates- due to the sheer scale of content involved in Crawl, and due to all of the out-of-date pages kept on this inactive wiki, having somebody remember to run a checklist of scripts is much more effective for providing up-to-date information than expecting people to update a pile of pages with each update. The wiki just needs new admins and a public regular checklist of scripts to run with new versions for new admins- I'm sure that if it's of minimal enough effort, some developers could be roped into this as part of the development version release routine.

Speaking as (sigh) one of the Crawl developers, the abandonment of the wiki has many traceable causes- including the amount of time and effort it takes to regularly update the wiki, the constant presence of out-of-date information, and the absence of regular contributors. Automated template scripts can dramatically assist in these areas, with proper maintenance. Other issues like the historical problems with making new accounts, the omni-presence of advice that presumes much of the player and is out of tune with the community's optimizing elite, and the tendency for page updates to be rather selective in their output. This medium is still substantially more suited to in-depth explanations than the learndb, and providing a centralized repository of such detailed information can be helpful for even development if we provided sufficient care to the lot. --Tower (talk) 20:43, 16 October 2016 (CEST)

Variants

Presently AFAIK we have no information about variants. I have an obvious conflict of interest here in that I am a variant developer, but I propose we create Variants and pages with information about variants. Pinkbeast (talk) 17:31, 25 September 2019 (CEST)

I think it would be useful to have some information about DCSS variants here. Although, adding new articles for forks-specific content, like new items, spells, or monsters or mixing information about vanilla and variants is probably not a good idea. But something like an overview page for all of them + a more detailed article for each variant should be fine, if this is what you suggest. Ge0ff (talk) 21:17, 25 September 2019 (CEST)

I was thinking of one page per variant, indeed; I would simply reproduce whatever each variant writes about itself as an introduction (for example this page details changes in Stoat Soup), perhaps compressing it slightly since I appear to be hopelessly verbose. Pinkbeast (talk) 23:15, 25 September 2019 (CEST)

Obsolete pages

Some of our pages on features that were removed are located on titles that also refer to features that are still in the game. The two I've noticed recently are royal jelly and crossbow. What seems cleanest to me would be to move the current royal jelly page to royal jelly (food), and then have the title royal jelly redirect to The Royal Jelly; and move the current crossbow page to crossbow (weapon), and then have the title crossbow redirect to crossbows. Then we could link the obsolete pages in a "history" or "trivia" section in the main articles. Thoughts? Emufarmers (talk) 11:19, 27 April 2020 (CEST)

Sounds good to me. Anybody have any objections?--spudwalt (talk) 17:50, 28 April 2020 (CEST)

I see you went ahead and did this. Thanks. Emufarmers (talk) 07:22, 7 May 2020 (CEST)

Case-sensitive search autocomplete

Hello again! Who manages the technical infrastructure for this wiki? I've noticed that the search autocomplete is case-sensitive, which makes searching needlessly difficult. MediaWiki's TitleKey extension adds support for this, and it's very easy to set up.

There's also a more advanced search engine, but it's not quite as easy to set up. :-) Emufarmers (talk) 01:11, 8 May 2020 (CEST)

spudwalt, any idea? Emufarmers (talk) 10:42, 12 May 2020 (CEST)

I'm not really sure who's in charge of the behind-the-scenes technical stuff these days. Looking at the link, it looks like those extensions require access to the base-level wiki files, and I don't know where those are or how to get access. You might be able to ask around on the forums. --spudwalt (talk) 04:18, 14 May 2020 (CEST)

Okay, I'll give that a shot. Or I would, if the login link and register link didn't both go to a login page. :) Emufarmers (talk) 07:19, 14 May 2020 (CEST)

Since CrawlWiki is hosted on chaosforge, the chaosforge forum is the right place to ask these kind of questions. For example, when the wiki was down back in 2018, posting on that forum fixed the issue. Ge0ff (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2020 (CEST)

I found the Mantis tracker and saw it had a wiki module, so I filed it there. But now I see that might actually be for whatever DocuWiki setup you had years ago, so I went ahead and posted on the ChaosForge forum. (I don't think I've ever had to answer 14 verification questions to post something before!) Emufarmers (talk) 00:49, 15 May 2020 (CEST)