Just gonna toss this in here - IIN will be sticking in a little ‘call to arms’ as it were asking for help with the wiki, and we’ll be pulling some info out of it for various feature’s we have planned. Hopefully that can get a bit more help filling stuff in 
Just gonna toss this in here - IIN will be sticking in a little ‘call to arms’ as it were asking for help with the wiki, and we’ll be pulling some info out of it for various feature’s we have planned. Hopefully that can get a bit more help filling stuff in
Great idea. Many thanks. ;]
Note: the ships’ info has been updated to the current patch.
Is wiki proper gone or just temporarily gone?
It’s all gone. And there really isn’t much of a point in completing it if these changes happen ALL the time… I suggest we start keeping track of it as of 10.0, though…
It’s all gone. And there really isn’t much of a point in completing it if these changes happen ALL the time… I suggest we start keeping track of it as of 10.0, though…
10.0? alright, see ya in 5+ years!
To be fair, all game wikis have this problem. wowpedia needs huge updates every major patch and almost complete rewrites on each expansion.
heh, i know i repeat myself, but having a data dump accessible, which serializes the game mechanics to some kind of xml, json or similar at each patch deployment, and building the wiki to update core information by exactly that data dump would help this game immensely. they could simply stick it in a folder next to the game for tinkers, and use it to deploy a well designed information webpage at the same time.
it did help eve to big success, since developing any kind of tool in that game is peanuts, you have basicly tools in all kind of languages, and every community using that data can update its core tools or websites with it in seconds after a patch dump release. its also pretty fun to do some crazy apps, like damage simulators or rotating starmaps. finally the step to do such a thing also helps the dev team later, not just by more reliable feedback by users, but also to keep a good eye on the abstraction of the code and the actual numbers involved in the whole system, helping to make analytics more easily.
everything in a wiki which is not related to core data is additional lore or content to specific things. but mostly, you search for data, which is actually a pain to be updated by human singletons, if a simple python script could extract those informations and build your webpages with a click much more error-prone.
in my opinion, such a data dumping process is the first thing you do for any major application, because retrofitting it will become more work each day you wait, so I guess they even have it already, if they are not even building their scriptset out of a database, also of course, some information has to be filtered if it is secret, tho.
In Enterprise Languages like Java, serializing classes is even sometimes part of the overall development process, which make them so great for people who get paid for lines of code instead of synapses used.
Building a wiki is usually just a temporary solution, and can fast become either completely shallow or totally bloated or hopelessly outdated, if done otherwise.
Actually we do have a dropbox of data, one of the files in which are the ship stats. Feel free to make an auto-updating wiki bot for me… Well, when we actually have a wiki again.
And that drop box is actualized frequently?
Depends of course on the wiki tech used, but such a tool is certainly possible, probably even not a biggie.
It’s the loss of ship descriptions I’m most upset over…
And that drop box is actualized frequently?
Doesn’t seem to have been updated to 0.9.0.
Depends of course on the wiki tech used, but such a tool is certainly possible, probably even not a biggie.
It’s pretty trivial, all the data is in a single convenient csv, would probably take 15 minutes tops to come up with a script to dump that onto the wiki unless they had some sophisticated captcha system that you’d have to circumvent.
It’s the loss of ship descriptions I’m most upset over…
Grab them from google cache if you want…
Doesn’t seem to have been updated to 0.9.0.
It’s pretty trivial, all the data is in a single convenient csv, would probably take 15 minutes tops to come up with a script to dump that onto the wiki unless they had some sophisticated captcha system that you’d have to circumvent.
Yeh, had it already, got the link and was pretty happy.
The data is pre 0.9, but if it gets updated like this, it does not matter for now.
Yeh, had it already, got the link and was pretty happy.
The data is pre 0.9, but if it gets updated like this, it does not matter for now.
Same, hadn’t seen this before and the link is certainly handy even if outdated.
Regarding up to date data, you’d probably end up having to extract the data from the client, but then it gets a bit more complex.
It’s certainly possible - I used to run a client file data -> wiki process for the World of Tanks wiki for a bit and was pulling some data from both client files and client memory for a MechWarrior Online fansite a little while ago, but reverse engineering things like that takes time and I’m not motivated to invest that time for SC. Disclaimer: Things like that are always against the EULA, do at your own risk.
I rather use the existing data and hope they will continue to update it.
I believe in positive reinforcement, if the community shows, they can do things with it, updating such data is much more in the interest of the devs; if people start to tinker around just to get datasheets, they’ll invest more time in securing it.
I rather use the existing data and hope they will continue to update it.
I believe in positive reinforcement, if the community shows, they can do things with it, updating such data is much more in the interest of the devs; if people start to tinker around just to get datasheets, they’ll invest more time in securing it.
I hear you, and what you say makes complete sense, but from the games I’ve played the only devs who really embraced the third party community in that way were CCP, the EVE Online guys. Fingers crossed though, that dropbox thing was already a step in the right direction, but just taking the wiki down without further notice quite the opposite.
Nah, CCP aint the only white knight.
Eve is not the only one. Back then, you had e.g. UO engineers at Origin even help in the reverse engineering of their protocol by hints, or file format explanations linked on their official website, which resulted in the boom of early mmo server emulators, continued until today; eve was inspired by UO as well. Most network programmers possibly read that code back then; There are multiple emulators available, all open source monuments of early massive server dynamics. They even took back ideas for the official servers from the custom ones, and the Avatar pledge for 10$ even gives you total absolution by Lord British, if you feel bad about it ^^
You had HL releasing header files to enable modding communities to create more sophisticated mods, leading to CS, or even valve and steam itself.
You had Blizzard develop more and more sophisticated editors for their entity engines, and since SC2 even opening their file specifications to the public (replay, etc.)
Also, they basicly try to design everything now scriptable and moddable to a certain extent, of course, they dont want to lose control.
Eve is the only game, where it does not matter, how much you know, or is even good for the game propaganda, that they have APIs and complete DB dumps, after all, the major and core gameplay of Eve is a finance and entity relation simulation, and all of the simulation is running on their end, giving you only information you need to know, cheating pointless, except botting.
I like to see the stars in the night instead of the darkness around the lightspots.
I bet they want to do something more elaborate in that area,and thats why they took the wiki off. Such a wiki can also be communitydriven, tho.
Oh sure, back in the day modding was actively supported by plenty of games, but that was before DLCs and micro-transaction stores made third-party mods unwanted threats to monetization. 
No, I would not say so. Modability for games has increased in the last 10 years. In the 90s almost all mods were very hacky.
It is more, that for games like this, mods make no sense, datasheets however do. It really depends on the product you are doing, and supporting things like modability is usually also work on the dev side.
Also, without third party modability, Arma2 e.g. would not have been such a success, after DayZ becoming incredibly popular on the net. Minecraft is constantly modded actually by reverse engineering, more because Notch was too busy making holidays after his initial success, less because he don’t want it to be modded.
It is more, that for games like this, mods make no sense, datasheets however do.
All depends on where your priorities lie.
There are literally thousands of mods available for World of Tanks and the two games are pretty similar in the basic concept. I, for example, would love to be able to modify the UI in SC, because I’m not happy with it at all.
On the other hand, personally I’m not too bothered about datasheets for this game. The ships are all way too similar for me to care.