Wiki Structuring Project

From Armagetron

This little corner of the wiki is where we talk about and plan the structure of the wiki itself. It's used by editors and admins and anybody else interested to order and organize the information so that it will be the most useful it can be. If you're just a content writer, it's helpful for you to participate over here, but not required. There are folks around here that will go over what you did and place it in its right place so you can focus on writing new content.

Informational Structure

The information on the wiki is of several topics, described here. Below this list each topic is discussed in more detail on how it should be organized.

Playing the Game
Documentation of the game itself and the game client used by players.
Server Administration
Documentation of the game from the standpoint of running a server, and documentation useful to server administrators. There is some overlap here with Playing the Game.
Extending Armagetron Advanced
Documentation for extenders, people who want to make new graphics/sound/whatever.
Development Docs
Documentation written by and for the Development Team, part of their regular work cycle.
Project Docs
Political-type documentation by and for the Armagetron Advanced Project Members. Includes organizational documentation, project goals, etc.
Tournament Hub
There is a tournament hub that has sprouted up in the last months that needs to be either spun off to its own website or incorporated more fully into the structure of the wiki.

Playing the Game

This is the User Manual for the game. The goal for this section is simple: everything a player needs to know to play should be here. So it should include tactical and strategic articles, documentation for how to use the client, install extensions, and so forth. How-to articles should also be here. The top-level page that is linked from the portlet should contain an article and a table of contents that together constitute the table of contents in a book and the introduction. The article text needs to tell a user summary information for each section to guide him to the area he needs to know. The entire Playing the Game section should *only* document public releases. If a code hack is required, it should appear at most as a footnote in this area. Keep in mind always that this section should only document the game client, it should never document the server. When information here is also needed for the server, it should be put on its own page and transcluded in both places.

This list shows the structure that should exist under Playing the Game:

  • Getting Started - Basic guide to downloading, installing, and playing a local game, ending with a discussion of internet play. The Object of the Game needs to be factored into the top-level Getting Started page.
  • Program Documentation - Complete, canonical documentation for the game client *only*, but should include how to use the game client to host a network game.
    • How-to information, such as "how to install a moviepack", "how to change player colors", "how to use in-game chat". Feature by feature, a separate page for each with detailed discussion including screenshots. The top-level page here should be a Category: special type page.
      • Player Settings
      • In-game chat
      • Installing and using moviepacks and other extensions (sub-levels as needed as the 0.3 series gains those abilities)
      • Network settings
      • Configuring the client to play specific game variations
      • Discussion on how to use client settings and the console to construct your own game variant
      • Others as needed (insert your topics here), but stay focused soley on "how can I do <this> with my game client?"
      • Console
      • Effects and Display
      • Customizing the game
      • Playing Maps
    • Complete UI reference, appendix-style, with screenshots. Every menu item and possible choice needs to be documented here. Categories should be used to distinguish between 0.2.8-series and 0.3.0-series. The top-level UI reference page should be a Category: special type page.
  • Game Concepts - detailed discussion of the concepts that drive the game and most affect players. These should be understandable by non-technical people although they can and should contain technical details. Categorize with Game Version.
    • Lag
    • Rubber
    • Scale
    • Frames Per Second (both simulation and renderer)
    • Grid Games - Games people play that are *not* supported in settings so they can't be considered variations
    • Game Variations that are currently supported and known about in a public release. May require additional external scripts, but may *not* require building a patched client.
    • Camping
    • Etiquette
    • Clans
    • Glossary of terms
  • Strategies and Tactics - Ongoing discussion of strategies. All articles under this section need to be put in the category for the game client version to which they apply. Multiple categories can be used. In this manner, old tactics that become less useful in newer versions can be phased out and ultimately cleaned up or moved to a historical section.
    • Getting Started - Top-level discussion for new players
      • Building your skill set
      • Basic Tactics
    • Single-player tactics vs AIs (currently an empty section on the wiki)
    • Multi-player tactics, should include both multi-player local and multi-player network tactics. Each article should be put in the server category in which it belongs. If the server it's associated with no longer exists, it should be also be included in a category that indicates the tactic may be obsolete because the server no longer exists (called "Dead Servers" or something like that)
      • General Tactics
      • General articles about tactics
      • Swamplords
      • Tigers Classic
      • Armagoshdarn
      • SP
      • MBC
      • Generic Sumo
      • Specific Sumo servers
      • Specific Game Variations not specific to a server
      • Others (you know what goes here)
    • Team Tactics - As with Multi-Player tactics, categories for servers with an additional category to mark that the server doesn't exist anymore.
      • General Team Tactics
      • Standard Fortress team tactics (i.e. tactics useful when the server includes examples/cvs_complete.cfg)
      • CT Tactics (tactics useful on CT Fortress)
      • Other Team Tactics that make sense
      • Specific Team Game Variations not specific to a server

Moderation and Editing

Mostly I have nothing to say about this, not sure it belongs on this page. :)

Trash Cleanup

Nothing really here either, just that we need to work out how we're going to mark pages for deletion and/or factoring those pages' content into other pages before deletion.