Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T17:21:52+02:00

Morax wrote:
It would help if you could actually log in and use it... I have given up after a number of attempts to get my login credentials restored.

Believe brutus recently fixed an issue that was stopping people from logging in on it.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 01 Feb 2020, 17:21

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T15:27:36+02:00

It would help if you could actually log in and use it... I have given up after a number of attempts to get my login credentials restored.

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 01 Feb 2020, 15:27

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T14:04:27+02:00

As to the unit matrix code, it can be directly stolen from the og supcom wiki (https://supcom.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Unitnav_T1_Land) assuming we have found a way to generate a full list of wiki pages for each unit from the db.

Statistics: Posted by Laticlave — 01 Feb 2020, 14:04

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T13:47:17+02:00

Anihilnine wrote:
That is an overstatement and seems careless given the rediculous amount of time people spent on putting that together. The wiki is behind in some areas but its still useful in zillions of ways. We have the unit database for all the unit stuff. Why is it super important to also have the unit stats in the wiki?

It was definitely hyperbolic but I think that the faf wiki, while good and relevant information is there, still lacks the very basic information one would expect to find there (complete unit list with up to date stats). It definitely helps during the learning process to have a source of game data you can check on other devices, provide centralized information and start feedback loops (learn-play-learn etc)

As to why it matters, I think people do not feel incentivised to start playing faf because it appears as unnecessarily complicated as it is (which it isn't). I'm nearly positive most newer players would drop the game before even learning of the existence of the db or the factory attack move (although I'm nearly sure they did visit the wiki but didn't find what they wanted there) because the game wiki is one of the most spontaneous and natural place to search for comprehensive data, again this is industry practice for complex online games.

Statistics: Posted by Laticlave — 01 Feb 2020, 13:47

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T13:41:08+02:00

The problem with the wiki is that there's not enough people who would care to keep it updated or improve it. So the main challenge is finding those people. Few years ago me and Retard pretty much rewrote the whole wiki and it stayed relevant for just few months.

Statistics: Posted by speed2 — 01 Feb 2020, 13:41

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T13:26:01+02:00

It's nice to hear someone will be giving the wiki some more love!

Laticlave wrote:
The faf wiki is quite frankly nearly useless

That is an overstatement and seems careless given the rediculous amount of time people spent on putting that together. The wiki is behind in some areas but its still useful in zillions of ways. We have the unit database for all the unit stuff. Why is it super important to also have the unit stats in the wiki?

Statistics: Posted by nine2 — 01 Feb 2020, 13:26

Re: Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T12:59:21+02:00

Here is some other things from the wiki that are no longer good:

The map editor tutorials, especially the GPG one have been convoluted with techincal crap that has been haphazardly dumped into the page and now it is bad.
The tutorials page, is outdated mostly (besides petric's stuff) But i'm working on that as of now
All the client stuff still uses the superior python client
ALL the lists are now outdated

I think we need some boys on it now tbh

Statistics: Posted by biass — 01 Feb 2020, 12:59

Wiki concerns

2020-02-01T12:44:58+02:00

Given that biass took the time and effort to make important points about the current state of faf tutorials (/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18703) it's probably a good idea to make a thread to seriously talk about the faf wiki.

The faf wiki is quite frankly nearly useless as of right now. To change that, it needs a few things but the bare minimum would be to have the unit stats exported automatically from the DB to the wiki's unit pages (which would be largely generated with their relevant sections for manual edits) so that each balance change can be reflected on the wiki by running a simple command.
This way we could also have a comprehensive changelog for each unit which is how every single wiki out there for a game comparable in complexity to faf works, a random example being the dota 2 wiki : https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Storm_Spirit#Recent_Changes.

The comprehensive unit matrix from the OG supcom wiki is also something we need there.

The way information is unnecessarily hard to access (can't check the db if you're on another pc) is harming our new player retention rates, meaning I suspect that most of the people who sign up, install faf and actually stick around long term are people who were already playing supcom years ago. I don't have any stats to back up this claim, but I think any effort to advertize the game to a more general RTS audience is wasted before the new user experience gets a serious overhaul. I'm tired of reading people saying faf isn't growing because it's too complex of a game because I don't think it's even remotely close to being true, although the game does look unnecessarily more complex than it is from the outside given the problems highlighted by biass and I.

Some help for the wiki generally could be used, especially for the unit matrix part. I tried to write a script to export the unit db to a valid wiki page format, however I feel like I'm doing this the wrong way and surely there could be a way to just recycle the db html code itself, if anyone has any input on any of this, feel free to share below.

Statistics: Posted by Laticlave — 01 Feb 2020, 12:44