Wiki content (almost) tranfered

Discussion about the site's wikis, including bugs/issues encountered.

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miau
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Post by miau »

Banshaku wrote:Regarding a list of commercial games with their specification, yes this is an idea because I wanted to find some details about X game and the bootgod database was down (now it just went back up). I would be useful a simple list of game N uses mapper X, board type X, has Y ammount of rom etc, anything that can be useful. We could always get the list from the bootgod db then format it for the wiki. At the least it would be useful when the bootgod db is down.
Oh yeah, almost forgot about bootgod's db. That's one more site to put links to.

I forgot to mention that apart from being useful for emu authors it might be useful for homebrew programmers, too, if questions like "how does game X pull off effect Y?" are covered. You can still learn from the old masters.

I know there are people around with a huge amount of knowledge about specific games. Knowledge which currently, if shared at all, seems to be scattered throughout many different places.
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MetalSlime
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Post by MetalSlime »

I think there should be a "programming" section on the main page, and "getting started" should be underneath it.
MetalSlime runs away.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

MetalSlime wrote:I think there should be a "programming" section on the main page, and "getting started" should be underneath it.
I know what you mean and I though about something similar before but there is one issue. If we do this, this mean where do you put the info for rom hacker that may not technically program in some case, hardware guys and other possibles case like this?

This is way I reverted to "getting started" where you could put all the sections inside like "looking for tools , go here, programming tutorial? here, want to make a dev cart? here" etc.

But if all a sudden we receive an influx of programming tutorial only then I guess this section will become the programming section and we should switch the name.

I'm in the group of programmers myself and I don't mind that the section is called programming but I'm just trying to not forget everybody else ;)
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MetalSlime
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Post by MetalSlime »

Banshaku wrote:
MetalSlime wrote:I think there should be a "programming" section on the main page, and "getting started" should be underneath it.
I know what you mean and I though about something similar before but there is one issue. If we do this, this mean where do you put the info for rom hacker that may not technically program in some case, hardware guys and other possibles case like this?

This is way I reverted to "getting started" where you could put all the sections inside like "looking for tools , go here, programming tutorial? here, want to make a dev cart? here" etc.

But if all a sudden we receive an influx of programming tutorial only then I guess this section will become the programming section and we should switch the name.

I'm in the group of programmers myself and I don't mind that the section is called programming but I'm just trying to not forget everybody else ;)
I plan on writing a bunch of articles with example code to tackle specific topics, so that influx might be coming :)

I think programming articles should be separated from hardware/reference articles. I envision a main "Programming" section, and then under it have different sections like "Compression", "Mappers", "Sound", "Graphics", "AI", etc. Then those sections would have individual articles under them.

For example under "compression" you'd have a bunch of articles: "programming RLE", "programming Fixed Bit Length Encoding", "programming Huffman", etc. Then, if someone is writing their game and they think "hmm.. I wonder how I should go about compressing the text in my game", they can head to the programming->compression section and read through the articles there. They will get a good idea of how many compression algorithms work, and they will get to see some example code so they have an idea of how they can get it up and running.

I just wrote up an article on programming UNROM. This is the kind of article that I want to see under the programming section. It has just what the programmer needs to implement the idea and nothing extra. It is separate from the UxROM reference article (though it DOES link to it at the end) and I think it should stay that way. Right now, the path to this article is Getting Started -> Programming -> Programming Mappers -> Programming UNROM. My hope is that the "Programming Mappers" section will one day be full of articles teaching you how to use each of the different mappers.

I'm going to continue writing little articles like this and organizing them under the Programming page. They aren't really going to be tutorials, but rather example solutions for specific, targeted problems.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

MetalSlime wrote:I plan on writing a bunch of articles with example code to tackle specific topics, so that influx might be coming :)
Great to hear! I already read your article and this is simple and useful. There is only one issue but not specific to your article. Right now the article was made with some code sample in ca65. Everyone as it's own taste of assembler they like. How to make everyone happy in that situation... I would like to find a way to be able to show the article with different syntax but how. hmm... For example, when you use MSDN, you can select for which language to see the sample by checking some checkbox at the top. I don't know if we can find a way to make something similar or if there is a plug-in for the wiki for this. Another possibility is that we do all the sample for 1 assembler only for uniformity but hmm..
MetalSlime wrote:I think programming articles should be separated from hardware/reference articles.
Yes, this is correct. It should explain the hardware only and not show example. Right now the reference section is a little bit messy about that. The programming section can go in more detail for a specific option.
MetalSlime wrote: I envision a main "Programming" section, and then under it have different sections like "Compression", "Mappers", "Sound", "Graphics", "AI", etc. Then those sections would have individual articles under them.
I have the same idea too. And some section that explain which assembler exist, tool for map etc. There is not enough information about that. I was searching recently for a tool that can import some bmp but there was no information about that in one place, which one is better for what reason etc. You often end up making your own tool when there could be already one available!
MetalSlime wrote: For example under "compression" you'd have a bunch of articles: "programming RLE", "programming Fixed Bit Length Encoding", "programming Huffman", etc. Then, if someone is writing their game and they think "hmm.. I wonder how I should go about compressing the text in my game", they can head to the programming->compression section and read through the articles there. They will get a good idea of how many compression algorithms work, and they will get to see some example code so they have an idea of how they can get it up and running.
Yes, this is what the getting started(or) programming section is for, explaining about common problems that you have to solve while programming for the nes. There is many common one like:

- compression
- Using mapper for more data
- How to organize data (interleaved, column based, screen based compressed etc)
- How to scroll an infinite map
- How to scroll with less artifact
- How to split the screen for a status bar
- How to do parallax scrolling with the scroll register
- How to keep state
- Frame based algorithm
- Trick of the trade from well known commercial games
- Graphic editing (map, tile etc)
- Music, how to make, to play, sound fx
- NMI, best practices (Dish already started a good document about this)
- etc etc
MetalSlime wrote:My hope is that the "Programming Mappers" section will one day be full of articles teaching you how to use each of the different mappers.


Yes. Once you understand a specific "breed" mapper, often many a related so we could group many type of mapper together too.
MetalSlime wrote:I'm going to continue writing little articles like this and organizing them under the Programming page. They aren't really going to be tutorials, but rather example solutions for specific, targeted problems.
It doesn't have to be a tutorial. Any information is a reference that will help other people to understand more. This is already great that you're contributing this information. If more people do the same, we could end up with quite a nice wiki compare to the other platform. That would be great. Keep up the good work ;)

I may change the name of the section already. How many object to this? (wind.... no sound is heard at all). That's almost rhetorical since recently nobody really seems to object to the current direction that it's going. Either people all agree silently or they just don't care as long there is content :P
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

So, is the new wiki the official one already? Will the links to the old wiki be updated?
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

tokumaru wrote:So, is the new wiki the official one already? Will the links to the old wiki be updated?
I guess the answer should be yes since there is no official jurisdiction on who decide what is the official wiki.

The first goal was to improve the availability of the wiki because of the recent down time. This phase is done. Now we need to put content in it and announce is as the new home for the wiki.
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MetalSlime
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Post by MetalSlime »

Banshaku wrote:There is only one issue but not specific to your article. Right now the article was made with some code sample in ca65. Everyone as it's own taste of assembler they like. How to make everyone happy in that situation... I would like to find a way to be able to show the article with different syntax but how.
...
Another possibility is that we do all the sample for 1 assembler only for uniformity but hmm..
Yes, this is an issue. It might be enough to accompany each code example with a note in parenthesis, like:

(Note: this code was written for the _____ assembler. Some minor changes may be needed to get it running with other assemblers)

It doesn't have to be a tutorial. Any information is a reference that will help other people to understand more. This is already great that you're contributing this information. If more people do the same, we could end up with quite a nice wiki compare to the other platform. That would be great. Keep up the good work ;)
Thanks. :) Here's the one I posted up today: Fixed Bit Length Encoding
I may change the name of the section already. How many object to this? (wind.... no sound is heard at all). That's almost rhetorical since recently nobody really seems to object to the current direction that it's going. Either people all agree silently or they just don't care as long there is content :P
Speaking of changing the name of the section, you might want to make a new page for it too. Right now "Programming Guide" still links to the url called "Getting Started". I think we should just copy the content of "Getting Started" and paste it on a new page called "Programming Guide" and update the link.

Later we can have a "Getting Started" category under the Programming Guide that will be targetted at new nesdevers, telling them what they need to know to get up and running.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

For the disclaimer, this is an idea. We could make a template for this.
MetalSlime wrote: Here's the one I posted up today: Fixed Bit Length Encoding
Great, another contribution :) Now I need to see how to put more order in the current content and check how to contribute myself.

Regarding the name of the section, I just updated the main page for now and will move the content soon.
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Post by cpow »

Banshaku wrote:For the disclaimer, this is an idea. We could make a template for this.
MetalSlime wrote: Here's the one I posted up today: Fixed Bit Length Encoding
Great, another contribution :) Now I need to see how to put more order in the current content and check how to contribute myself.

Regarding the name of the section, I just updated the main page for now and will move the content soon.
Very nice article! It is that kind of writing that will help game developers and tool developers also. I've been wondering about what types of compression to offer support for.
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MetalSlime
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Post by MetalSlime »

Banshaku wrote: Great, another contribution :) Now I need to see how to put more order in the current content and check how to contribute myself.
NESICIDE wrote: Very nice article! It is that kind of writing that will help game developers and tool developers also. I've been wondering about what types of compression to offer support for.
Thanks. :) Writing articles is pretty fun. I did another one today. It's under a "Programming Tricks" section: RTS Trick

Also I posted up a Programming UOROM article, though it's pretty much just a copy/paste of the Programming UNROM article with a few details changed.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

MetalSlime wrote:Thanks. :) Writing articles is pretty fun. I did another one today. It's under a "Programming Tricks" section: RTS Trick
You're on fire these days :lol: This article might come in handy on a project I'm working on right now. I get the basic idea, just need the time to read it properly (I did an overview only and it was interesting already).

Thumbs up ;)
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