PLRPG Wiki : Standards and Consistency

[Sephiroth X]

Since the Wiki has been getting updated, I think its a good idea to set some standards so that the pages are consistent with the information presented in them.

First thing I'd like to get is a general consensus from the DZX community is what computer resolution you all generally run at. If we can get a general idea of what resolution sizes we are looking at, it would give us a good idea of what to do in regards to formatting and what not.

The other areas of consistency we should establish come in regards to character pages and so forth. My characters page has a good general feel for what I think we should do, base information first, a general backstory, and then supplementary notes near the end with a profile picture included. Bax's page is also a good example of this. I'd like to open up discussion as to what we should require on each page, again for consistency's sake. With character pictures, I'd like to set the standard at 250 x 400 and if possible it would be nice to get these pictures from similar or identical sources so the wiki has an additional feel of consistency (ZC, any chance of supplying avatars?)

Lets get some discussion going!

[ZaCloud]

My resolution: 1024 x 768 pixels
Color Depth: 32 bit.
That's the best my poor poopy video card can do.

Due to that, having large (regular-sized) headings on the wiki pages looks absolutely HUGE on my screen. That's why in pages I've done, I've used "small" headings (which Sephy seems to have done as well).

Sephy's page is nice n concise, mine n SP's are looooong like long-cat, which is why the Table of Contents is nice. Anyone thinking we should cut down or divide pages up more? (It'd be hard to get rid of so much writing though )

Pics look big on my monitor, too, though I know shrinking them further would look way too small on higher-res comps.

(As for avatars... I sure hope to. I'll try and scribble once in a while, in addition to folks also being able to crop/resize current pics.)

[The Waffle King]

as for screen resolution, all web content should be able to be viewed normally at 800x600. that way pretty much everyone should be able to view it properly.

and as for character pages, mine was based off of Zack's page, since it was the first fully developed one in the list. but yours seems to be well organized too.

as for images, it's tough to get correct fitting art that's all consistent without just having one person make it all. i'd like to make my own avatar since varied pics of valtiel are few and far between. i don't think a consistent art style per say is necessary, but a consistent size would be good

[Shadow Phoenix]

My resolution is 1280 x 800. And I like the model that Seph, Zack, and I have.

I'd like to make a motion for the newly created PLRPG Battles page to not only include the specially written battles but also large scale operations. For instance, I already included "Operation Nibelheim" in Nibelheim's page. I modeled this after the "Battle of the Gardens" on the Final Fantasy Wikia. In addition to the Battle for the Element of Prosperity, Prodigi vs. PH, Bax vs. Seph, Crono vs. Valtiel, Bax vs. Lynx etc....we could have the Fall of Midgar and other major events.

Thoughts?

[Sephiroth X]

Jul 23, 2009 16:51:18 GMT -5 Shadow Phoenix said:

My resolution is 1280 x 800. And I like the model that Seph, Zack, and I have.

I'd like to make a motion for the newly created PLRPG Battles page to not only include the specially written battles but also large scale operations. For instance, I already included "Operation Nibelheim" in Nibelheim's page. I modeled this after the "Battle of the Gardens" on the Final Fantasy Wikia. In addition to the Battle for the Element of Prosperity, Prodigi vs. PH, Bax vs. Seph, Crono vs. Valtiel, Bax vs. Lynx etc....we could have the Fall of Midgar and other major events.

Thoughts?

Hmmm. Could either make two sections, one for battles and one for major events, or make The Battle page an Events page that gets broken down into Battles and Events from there. However, moving major events and what not to the Wiki might actually defeat the whole purpose of reading the RPG all together. But if it was a summary of said event, that would probably be fine.

Also, I suddenly realized how much more I need to add to my guys page! @_@

I'd also like to redirect everyone back to my characters wiki page again, I did some tweeking with tables and what not and made things look a little more streamlined with the display of miscellaneous information. I think we should adapt this template since it looks pretty slick, and visually is very similar to a normal Wikipedia page

[Sephiroth X]

I also suggest that important NPC characters (like Catrina, Hodia, etc) should be given their own page on the Wiki. We could add another level of pages within The Cast tree for this. Like? Dislike?

[The Waffle King]

i like

[ZaCloud]

I like too, since there are a LOT of 'em a single page might end up very long.

[Shadow Phoenix]

Yeeeah, I agree. We have a lot of NPCs...

[Shadow Phoenix]

Gil or Dollars?

Internet or no?

Fast food chains or local places?

The questions continue to pile up!

For the sake of our own continuity, we could just create our own currency. This was the main reason I avoided the money issue entirely in Nibelheim. Zion, Midgar, and the Super City probably all have their own currency.

Might the Super City have some form of internet? If anyone would, they would. Zion probably has its own intranet, a mainframe for all of them to communicate on.

And I think that the fast food chains are tied exclusively to the city. The cities are large enough. McDougal's was mainly introduced for comic effect if I recall, to make fun of McDonalds. It could be the only one in existence, for all we know.

[ZaCloud]

Hmmm, well I did mention internet several times in creation of the Strife history (da big giant document) and the Hand of Belenus thang. It was stated that it existed before (and partially during) the 200-Year War, and has made a comeback in Midgar, though access may be somewhat poor in Midgar compared to Beta (like, say, US availability/speeds/price compared to Japan's). Plus Jack's buddies have been doing mad h4xx0ring to remote locations, so it almost certainly has to exist for all the major cities, and is connected to Beta as well. Though I do agree, Zion would have a local intranet, though they might have heavily-regulated internet access too (like the censored China version).

Gil has been openly used in Midgar, so it's at very least their currency. I've been figuring it's the case in Zion as well since they've had a strong (albeit fairly quiet) presence in Midgar, and they'd likely not bother much with exchange rates. Though that can be changed if needed, and I can just retcon a few quotes in my Strife history (or figure that they all used to use Gil but now it might be different; times change).

Fast-food chains, that has little important bearing overall, so whoever wants to decide can decide on that, whether McDougal's is a local establishment or a franchise, and whether any franchises exist or not, maybe differeing in Midgar vs Super City.

Maybe Beta's so prosperous because there ARE no chains, so local businesses all got equal headline, or maybe it's gotten really corporate and is teetering at the brink of monopoly... all interesting possibilities you guys can discuss, depending on what is planned for the cities in the future.

[SqiKy kLeen]

For the sake of saving sanity and not having to call Extreme Makeover to fix up the storyline, I would vote to keep the Internet in the story. Zacloud has already explained most of what would need to be changed if we chose to remove it, but I just wanna cite one major thing I'd have to change if we took out internet. One of the first things that happened in Jacks "written" timeline is that his computer insider, Ereki, gets info from the Senate's network reguarding the transit of the super-weapon. This event, combined with his need to avenge the murder of Ereki for his illegal hacking, leads Jack to go for the weapon and throws the monkey-wrench into his life needed to begin his part of the story. I understand that you want to keep continuity, but this is a rather big event for me to change.

But I think I can provide a vision/description of what the Internet would be like in pre-Valtiel Midgar that would be sensible to the story purposes. Here goes:

"The presence of the Internet in the PLRPG differs by region and community. The Super City easily has the largest presence of Internet activity, due to their immense wealth, standard of living, and technological advances. A decent portion of the population has access to the Internet, and due to its widely accepted use as an advertising medium there, about 99.99% of all Internet content is created in the Super City.

Zion also has its own version of the Internet, although it would probably qualify as more of an Intranet. Zion's network is many times more encrypted and locked down, and most of the software used on it is propietary, developed specifically by Senate-employed programmers for Senate use. The general Internet user in other parts of the world may not access any information on the Senates network in Zion (besides a useless goverment homepage) without knowledge of hacking, an offence that is punishable by death.

Midgar also has the Internet in limited amounts, but is generally not part of life for the majorty of Midgar's citizens. All access comes through a large underground pipeline leading directly from Zion, and all information is filtered through Zion's mainframes before reaching the user. Originally, no internet existed in Midgar, until there became a demand for better communications between the Senate cells operating within Midgar and Zion, and also the interest of the top 2% of the richest portion of the population demanding it for their lavish lifestyles, as the rich usually had their hands in dirty dealings with the Senate anyways. Since then, modems started becoming available, but only if you had the cash. However, they were so expensive, that most of the population still couldnt afford them, and the information superhighway slipped off of most citizen's radar, as most people could barely scrape together the cash for a meal everyday, let alone afford the extreme expense of paying for Internet service and hardware. Most incidents of hacking occour when an already activated piece of internet hardware is stolen, and the orignal owner's account is used without their knowledge, allowing the offender to utilize programs and executable files nessecery to read Senate information. However, it doesn't take long for the Senate information system to detect this, and such offenders are silently prosecuted usually within days or even hours. Unless the hacker has a great deal of skill, and can keep himself hidden from scans for extended legnths of time..."

This should give you a little hint on the background of Jack's deceased friend, Ereki.

As far as the other story traits, I vote Gil as worldwide currency. If the Senate qualifies as the "one world government" in this story, then I think it would make sense to say that they would have established a "one world currency" to go along with their tyrannical empire. It would be easy to incorporate too, since Gil has been mentioned in Midgar, but in Super City its undecided so far.

And as for McDougals, we can simply refuse to acknowledge it in the wiki to avoid the headache there. It will exist as an easter egg only within that post it was mentioned in, as a gag reference that attempts to break the fourth-wall and humor the reader in a different way.

Sorry for causing so much of a headache with the culture section... This is why we edit and discuss the Wiki I guess, so these things wont happen!

[ZaCloud]

Really good ideas here, Sqiky! I like how balanced you have everything in terms of access and affordability based on each area. :3

However, I've already had two official sources (one which has been around for several years now) citing internet as a fairly major societal trait before, and partially during, the 200 Year War (During the Iraq war, I still chatted with a few people who lived there, so even a war-torn country can sometimes maintain access for at least a little while... though it's safe to assume that it didn't last the ENTIRE war and had to be reintroduced).

Also, the War took place in quite a distant future from even now. While this is a different world, it was assumed from the start that society had evolved technology relative to our own pace. So, the World-Wide Web (or at least a world-connecting internet of some sort) almost had to have existed before the War. Especially given the fairly advanced scientific procedures that led to the Strifes being created in the first place.

So I'm figuring that Midgar's internet would still be based on the under-ocean pipeway to the Beta Continent, which hopefully still survived the rigors of time, but is probably given low-priority power, resulting in agonizingly slow speeds to and from the landmasses.

Or maybe the option of both can be arranged; Zion offering Znet or whatever for cheaper than the trans-continental world-wide, thus suckering the population into switching over and being under their filter.

News gets between the continents somehow, as we've seen storywise, so either they've got satellites at least sufficient for news/tv broadcasts, which may or may not also power internet... or just the "series of tubes" under the ocean suffices. Unless there are other options I'm not aware of.

Feel free to toss more ideas around and oppose if need be. :3

[Sephiroth X]

Aug 3, 2009 0:20:05 GMT -5 SqiKy kLeen said:

For the sake of saving sanity and not having to call Extreme Makeover to fix up the storyline, I would vote to keep the Internet in the story. Zacloud has already explained most of what would need to be changed if we chose to remove it, but I just wanna cite one major thing I'd have to change if we took out internet. One of the first things that happened in Jacks "written" timeline is that his computer insider, Ereki, gets info from the Senate's network reguarding the transit of the super-weapon. This event, combined with his need to avenge the murder of Ereki for his illegal hacking, leads Jack to go for the weapon and throws the monkey-wrench into his life needed to begin his part of the story. I understand that you want to keep continuity, but this is a rather big event for me to change.

But I think I can provide a vision/description of what the Internet would be like in pre-Valtiel Midgar that would be sensible to the story purposes. Here goes:

"The presence of the Internet in the PLRPG differs by region and community. The Super City easily has the largest presence of Internet activity, due to their immense wealth, standard of living, and technological advances. A decent portion of the population has access to the Internet, and due to its widely accepted use as an advertising medium there, about 99.99% of all Internet content is created in the Super City.

Zion also has its own version of the Internet, although it would probably qualify as more of an Intranet. Zion's network is many times more encrypted and locked down, and most of the software used on it is propietary, developed specifically by Senate-employed programmers for Senate use. The general Internet user in other parts of the world may not access any information on the Senates network in Zion (besides a useless goverment homepage) without knowledge of hacking, an offence that is punishable by death.

Midgar also has the Internet in limited amounts, but is generally not part of life for the majorty of Midgar's citizens. All access comes through a large underground pipeline leading directly from Zion, and all information is filtered through Zion's mainframes before reaching the user. Originally, no internet existed in Midgar, until there became a demand for better communications between the Senate cells operating within Midgar and Zion, and also the interest of the top 2% of the richest portion of the population demanding it for their lavish lifestyles, as the rich usually had their hands in dirty dealings with the Senate anyways. Since then, modems started becoming available, but only if you had the cash. However, they were so expensive, that most of the population still couldnt afford them, and the information superhighway slipped off of most citizen's radar, as most people could barely scrape together the cash for a meal everyday, let alone afford the extreme expense of paying for Internet service and hardware. Most incidents of hacking occour when an already activated piece of internet hardware is stolen, and the orignal owner's account is used without their knowledge, allowing the offender to utilize programs and executable files nessecery to read Senate information. However, it doesn't take long for the Senate information system to detect this, and such offenders are silently prosecuted usually within days or even hours. Unless the hacker has a great deal of skill, and can keep himself hidden from scans for extended legnths of time..."

This should give you a little hint on the background of Jack's deceased friend, Ereki.

As far as the other story traits, I vote Gil as worldwide currency. If the Senate qualifies as the "one world government" in this story, then I think it would make sense to say that they would have established a "one world currency" to go along with their tyrannical empire. It would be easy to incorporate too, since Gil has been mentioned in Midgar, but in Super City its undecided so far.

And as for McDougals, we can simply refuse to acknowledge it in the wiki to avoid the headache there. It will exist as an easter egg only within that post it was mentioned in, as a gag reference that attempts to break the fourth-wall and humor the reader in a different way.

Sorry for causing so much of a headache with the culture section... This is why we edit and discuss the Wiki I guess, so these things wont happen!

Aug 3, 2009 0:42:27 GMT -5 ZaCloud said:

Really good ideas here, Sqiky! I like how balanced you have everything in terms of access and affordability based on each area. :3

However, I've already had two official sources (one which has been around for several years now) citing internet as a fairly major societal trait before, and partially during, the 200 Year War (During the Iraq war, I still chatted with a few people who lived there, so even a war-torn country can sometimes maintain access for at least a little while... though it's safe to assume that it didn't last the ENTIRE war and had to be reintroduced).

Also, the War took place in quite a distant future from even now. While this is a different world, it was assumed from the start that society had evolved technology relative to our own pace. So, the World-Wide Web (or at least a world-connecting internet of some sort) almost had to have existed before the War. Especially given the fairly advanced scientific procedures that led to the Strifes being created in the first place.

So I'm figuring that Midgar's internet would still be based on the under-ocean pipeway to the Beta Continent, which hopefully still survived the rigors of time, but is probably given low-priority power, resulting in agonizingly slow speeds to and from the landmasses.

Or maybe the option of both can be arranged; Zion offering Znet or whatever for cheaper than the trans-continental world-wide, thus suckering the population into switching over and being under their filter.

News gets between the continents somehow, as we've seen storywise, so either they've got satellites at least sufficient for news/tv broadcasts, which may or may not also power internet... or just the "series of tubes" under the ocean suffices. Unless there are other options I'm not aware of.

Feel free to toss more ideas around and oppose if need be. :3

I am Sephiroth X and i approve these messages...







...and green doors