General Discussion

I think ImageMap templates need improvement in overall design. I feel they're a gaudier part of the site and I don't really like them.
 
It's basically Mystery Meat Navigation of templates. That's-that's not necessarily a good thing. I really think they're there solely because we can, rather than enhancing navigation (the navigation is only clear if you played the games that use the image maps)
 
I dislike image maps particularly I find it annoyingly difficult to even recognize what I'm trying to click. I've played Superstar Saga to death, but I've had so much trouble using the image map for it. I'm pretty sure this is an uphill battle, though: there are at least a couple of proposals supporting the idea that image maps should exist wherever a map exists.

Pi said:
Or, maybe you look at the page, see the image, and then go !!! cool, it's a weird-looking location, maybe I'll check that out !!!
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That argument holds more weight with the RPG's, if you can recognize one low-res blob from another, but there are (Template:WL4 Golden Pyramid Map) some (Template:LM Mansion Map) cases (Template:LM Lab Map) where not even that can be argued. At the very least, we need to get rid of at least a few of these maps.
 
I don't see what's so wrong about the Wario Land 4 map you linked. There are seven links, all of which are easily clicked.

On the general topic of image maps, they also help navigation if you don't know the name of a location, but know of its relative location in relation to other locations in the game. This hasn't happened to me, but if you are inexperienced with the Mario series, this is a great feature to have.
 
I feel like that hasn't happened for anyone, or it's happened for so few people, it really doesn't justify uglying up all these articles with obtuse templates, especially when the place could still be found with some poking around in promisingly-named places. Most games are pretty modular so relative position is arbitrary anyway, while most areas have nicely indicative names: if I wanna look up the lakeside area of M&L:BIS, am I gonna remember "oh yeah, it's below Toad Town" or am I gonna look at the nav template and be like "hmm, Blubble Lake sounds promising"? Even the Bowser's body map: it's useful for Bowser's body for matching the list of names to places, but if I'm hopping around the articles and looking for a different place, the names will be far more indicative than the vague positions of the circles, and it's much easier to skim through the names with a regular nav template, rather than having to wave the mouse around the picture. And what's wrong with the WL4 image is that it's completely redundant: if someone needs an annotated map to tell them that the giant golden pyramid in the middle of the hub is the Golden Pyramid, then they have problems.
 
Pi said:
Or, maybe you look at the page, see the image, and then go !!! cool, it's a weird-looking location, maybe I'll check that out !!!
Click to expand...
What makes this different from seeing the place names and clicking on those? And even in the RPGs, where you're more familiar with these maps, chances are, you already know the names of those locations, making the image maps even more pointless, and it doesn't remedy the issue for readers that have never played the games. I thought ImageMaps might be a good idea because I myself have trouble distinguishing street names without looking at the street's surroundings but ImageMaps haven't helped me at all.

I wanted the ImageMaps to be improved by having labels on the maps, but the maps themselves are so low-res that it wouldn't look good. And that's the core issue, we should rely on low-res thingamabobs for navigation. They also look very tacky on the pages they're in and they've mostly bothered me. If you recall my comments on this years ago, I wasn't too keen on the idea, but I thought it could have potential for the visual learners.

I wanted to nix ImageMaps, but I like to see if there is a good way of improving them because maybe they do have some merits. For now, they may have their use, but I find it trivial and at the cost of making our pages with ImageMaps look presentable. They're really just there because they look cool.
 
Probably going to set up a proposal for ImageMaps later since they're pretty big in this wiki, but setting this temporarily aside, I found out that some sprites in the Costume Mario page aren't taken directly from the game; they're potentially inaccurate fan-made renditions. That Bowser Jr.'s sprite was inaccurate set up a red flag for me, but my biggest concern is if their colors are accurate.

Yeah, we could always wait until a game-rip, especially this late in Super Mario Maker development, but I question why people do this.
 
They may as well just wait until the damn game is released, then take pics of it. It's a week from now, people need patience.
 
The admins can remove edits from history pages, but as long as they aren't posting anything particularly malevolent, hateful, or harmful, I don't think it's worth trying to scrub all of their edits. It might be annoying to see a spam edit while going through a page's history, but wouldn't it be more annoying for the admins to constantly keep track of every spammer that comes and goes, possibly even going through every history page just to remove any old spammers? It just seems like a waste of time that doesn't net us much in return.
 
she's asking for a way to prevent obvious spambots from ever editing, not clearing the edit history.

to answer it, I have no clue (maybe refreshing the question it asks when you're editing as an ip? idk).
 
Maybe we need a stronger catchpa.
 
This has been brought up by me before, but should we create horizontal versions of RPG infoboxes such as spmenemybox, MLinfobox, and other related infoboxes? In pages where enemies appear more than once, they often either clutter them or leave behind big blank spaces. Fawful, Blooper, Dry Bones, Spiky Tromp, Lava Piranha, and many others. Resolution might be an issue, but I like some suggestions if it is very concerning. Maybe removing some information and linking the rest to the appropriate bestiaries?
 
Sorry for not answering your question, 'Zooka, but I have one of my own

Say, what if a character has non-game artwork, but that said artwork is used as one of the textures for a track in, say, Mario Kart 8. Will that make that said artwork come from Mario Kart 8?

I am, of course, referring to that banner of Baby Park as a DLC track in Mario Kart 8, where it uses non-game artwork of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi on the banner.
 
I'd say the artwork's origin should take precedence over its later usage, unless it's re-uploaded using the in-game version (like, ripping the DLC banner and cropping out the image, or whatever).

Mario Party Δ said:
This has been brought up by me before, but should we create horizontal versions of RPG infoboxes such as spmenemybox, MLinfobox, and other related infoboxes? In pages where enemies appear more than once, they often either clutter them or leave behind big blank spaces. Fawful, Blooper, Dry Bones, Spiky Tromp, Lava Piranha, and many others. Resolution might be an issue, but I like some suggestions if it is very concerning. Maybe removing some information and linking the rest to the appropriate bestiaries?
Click to expand...
I'm sure I'd said somewhere that being able to toggle infoboxes between vertical and horizontal modes would be great for situations like described here, since vertical stacking definitely works better than trying to arrange them side-by-side, which often looks terrible at narrow resolution (multiple rows) and wide screens alike (blank space). Even stats sections with single vertical infoboxes look bad thanks to all the blank space even on small screens.

Here's an example I made of the M&L infobox (User:Walkazo/Essays#Infoboxes), not including the toggle function, just what it'd look like (minus the variables). I also updated the colours to be in line with the nav templates and tweaked the item and notice stuff a bit to be more space-effective (so the item2 variable is gone, but everything else will work with either design, it'd just need an additional vertical/horizontal variable).
 
Hm... I don't seem to recall that. Looking at it, I'm not sure if I like the background color of the notice section (especially that gray text, which is a smidge difficult to read, but it's only one word; either way, I don't like the aqua blue background). I think it should be ordered vertically (so the top row shows HP Level Defense and Speed, the bread-and-butter stats).
 
Walkazo said:
I'd say the artwork's origin should take precedence over its later usage, unless it's re-uploaded using the in-game version (like, ripping the DLC banner and cropping out the image, or whatever).
Click to expand...

But that means that we have to relabel this artwork to make it not come from Mario Kart 7, since this Wario artwork was first used in promotional media (and Nintendo Power).
 
Was the promotional material for MK7? Then it can stay associated with MK7; just have a note in its entry in the Gallery or something. Either way, that image should mention the File:Wario MK7.png art that also has it in it.

Mario Party Δ said:
Hm... I don't seem to recall that. Looking at it, I'm not sure if I like the background color of the notice section (especially that gray text, which is a smidge difficult to read, but it's only one word; either way, I don't like the aqua blue background). I think it should be ordered vertically (so the top row shows HP Level Defense and Speed, the bread-and-butter stats).
Click to expand...
It was probably years ago and could easily have been in a staff discussion anyway; I don't remember where I said it, just that I have said it. Anyway, I looked to see if I could figure out to get #if or #switch to toggle the templates, and no luck so far, if indeed it's possible at all.

Anyway, I lightened the notice background and darkened the grey to the actual grey colour rather than silver to up the contrast. I also reorganized it to be horizontal instead (although I still prefer vertical), and also made a couple other possible designs using alternating column colours and row-dividing bottom borders, rather than checkerboards - but I find that style really makes me wanna read vertically first, rather than horizontally, so I made both option for comparison.
 
Walkazo said:
Was the promotional material for MK7? Then it can stay associated with MK7; just have a note in its entry in the Gallery or something. Either way, that image should mention the File:Wario MK7.png art that also has it in it.
Click to expand...

Nope. I think I first saw that artwork in a Valentine's Day issue of Nintendo Power, before the release of Mario Kart 7, where it displayed under "characters who won't get a date".
 
Walkazo said:
It was probably years ago and could easily have been in a staff discussion anyway; I don't remember where I said it, just that I have said it. Anyway, I looked to see if I could figure out to get #if or #switch to toggle the templates, and no luck so far, if indeed it's possible at all.

Anyway, I lightened the notice background and darkened the grey to the actual grey colour rather than silver to up the contrast. I also reorganized it to be vertical instead (although I still prefer vertical), and also made a couple other possible designs using alternating column colours and row-dividing bottom borders, rather than checkerboards - but I find that style really makes me wanna read vertically first, rather than horizontally, so I made both option for comparison.
Click to expand...
How about rearranging the rows to make them 4 per column, and 3 columns while lengthening the left column to compensate? If not, how about making the rows alternate color rather than the columns? And yeah, the contrast is much better. The alternating colors, I prefer over the checkerboards.
 
I made examples with data filled in: once the stats are in, rather than just the headers, they help drag the eye horizontally, so I'll concede on that one (the vertical one's only still on the draft page for the variable references; I removed the checkerboard). However, I feel like 3 columns and 4 rows would look way too spacious on wide screens; my screen's narrow, so I can only confirm that 4 columns works for 1024 px resolution (with some room to spare for ads), but even at this size, the 3 column version is getting spacey. Plus, the 4 columns version has the two-row two-phase stats in the same row, also saving space - granted, that only comes up occasionally, but it's still worth considering.

Baby Luigi said:
Walkazo said:
Was the promotional material for MK7? Then it can stay associated with MK7; just have a note in its entry in the Gallery or something. Either way, that image should mention the File:Wario MK7.png art that also has it in it.
Click to expand...
Nope. I think I first saw that artwork in a Valentine's Day issue of Nintendo Power, before the release of Mario Kart 7, where it displayed under "characters who won't get a date".
Click to expand...
If it's not related to MK7 then it should be disassociated from the game (e.g. removed from the MK7 Gallery), except for the images themselves mentioning each other in their aboutfiles. It's not the first time images or parts of images have been reused for different things.
 
I was thinking that the first column consist of Level, HP, Defense, Speed. With the color pattern like that, it makes my eye go top-to-down rather than right to left. But yeah, even with my 1024 wide resolution, it is getting kind of spacey.

When would the template be considered done? And when is a good time to implement it?
 
I would disassociate them if I had some sort of source proving my statement correct.




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