Anything going to happen?

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

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Disch
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Anything going to happen?

Post by Disch »

Are we waiting on a wiki software update? Is anything going to happen with the wiki?

I'd like to see things up and moving -- but I'm not really sure what needs to be done (I have next to zero experience with wikis and relatively little knowledge about them --- and I'm not the world's best organizer).

Perhaps we could lay out organization ideas?

I kinda like the idea behind how the current wiki is set up. A section for emu developers and general knowledge (which lays out how the system works), and another section which approaches it from a nes homebrewer standpoint (how to actually utilize the system).

Just wondering what's happening ^^.
Hyde
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Post by Hyde »

Well, I do not know whether you recall this or not Disch, but I came up with a list some time ago that had the names of several titles that were fairly difficult to emulate, mostly due to their usage of sound IRQs. I was wondering if a section could be added to the Wiki just for the purpose of listing games that are tricky to emulate, in other words, games that require extremely accurate PPU, APU, and CPU emulation. So here is a possible way of doing this:

APU
-----

- Games that use frame IRQs:
- Title - Description of how the game behaves in case IRQs are not emulated properly

- Games that use DMC IRQs:

CPU
-----

- Gamest that require accurate NMI timing:
.
.
.

The purpose of this list would be to provide emulator authors a starting point for perfecting their emulators; it should be fairly compact, provided that not a lot of games require accurate timing. An example of what should not be included in this list is listing Super Mario Brothers and saying that it will not run properly if primary object collisions are not emulated properly; such an issue would be way too trivial for the purposes of this list.
tepples
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Post by tepples »

Hyde wrote:An example of what should not be included in this list is listing Super Mario Brothers and saying that it will not run properly if primary object collisions are not emulated properly; such an issue would be way too trivial for the purposes of this list.
Nothing is too trivial. Perhaps if you don't want to go on and on about sprite 0, include a small number of examples which require progressively more exact sprite 0 behavior.
Hyde
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Post by Hyde »

Which is exactly what I meant. Thanks for making it clearer.
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blargg
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Post by blargg »

I just noticed this thread. I went ahead and put some time into the wiki. One error I made last time was to put up too much structure without experience. I was trying to plan ahead for people randomly adding things. I've seriously trimmed the main index down and fleshed out the emulation section. At this point I think it's best to slowly add quality content, focusing on the core things, and grow the overall structure as needed.

The main thing that needs work is planning on how to present mapper information. First off, work needs to be done on presenting the information concisely and accurately. Take a look at the MMC1 page; it's really long. I think it could be made 1/4 the size without losing anything. One thing that will help is to describe common aspects in one place, so that only the unique aspects of a particular mapper need to be described on its page.

Another issue is the different audiences. You've got NES programmers, emulator authors, and hardware developers, so it might be better to break information into separate pages. Each of those three audiences will also be learning about a mapper for the first time, and later referring to it many times, so having a concise register map is important (either near the top of the mapper page, or separate).

I used some of these ideas in the APU reference, though that is a bit different because it has so many separate units that all interact, whereas each mapper is separate. I think the best approach is to start with the common mappers and experiment with different ways of presenting them, finding how people like each. My vision for the wiki is a very polished information source with careful design of how things are presented.

Another great ongoing use of the Wiki is to keep various small databases of information, like games people find difficult to emulate, or glitches that are not due to emulation problems.

One thing I suck at is choosing names for pages. I have little experience with it. It seems that it will be hard to change names later, and having arbitrary names makes it harder to remember it when you want to link from another page.

Regarding which Wiki software we use, I think we should continue with the present software and perhaps eventually upgrade to MediaWiki, which allows images to be easily inserted.
Roth
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Re: Anything going to happen?

Post by Roth »

Disch wrote:A section for emu developers and general knowledge (which lays out how the system works), and another section which approaches it from a nes homebrewer standpoint (how to actually utilize the system).
blargg wrote:Another issue is the different audiences. You've got NES programmers, emulator authors, and hardware developers, so it might be better to break information into separate pages.
Yeah, you guys are right on with that... I like the sound of that organization.

Something else to note... one of the advantages AND drawbacks of a wiki is that anyone can contribute to it. Now, I really don't see your average browser coming on to the NesDev wiki and posting some info that's bogus or so incorrect that would make you vomit... but I think someone should give the wiki a good once-over about once every two-months or something like that. Someone that's qualified (i.e. knows what they're doing/talking about). That's just something to keep in mind so that none of the information submitted is misleading and ends up staying on there because no one took notice.
tepples
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Re: Anything going to happen?

Post by tepples »

Roth wrote:one of the advantages AND drawbacks of a wiki is that anyone can contribute to it. Now, I really don't see your average browser coming on to the NesDev wiki and posting some info that's bogus or so incorrect that would make you vomit... but I think someone should give the wiki a good once-over about once every two-months or something like that.
Wikipedia seems to handle this with self-appointed experts who watch for changes to specific articles and then quietly fix things that break.
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