Wiki Team Hub
Introduction
Welcome to BTA Wiki Team. Here you'll find guides to how to edit various bits, as well as Feature Requests for wiki functionality. If you're new, don't worry about the latter and just familiarize yourself with the guides.
Rough Guide to Editing the Wiki
Preface
We've taken a few steps to try and ease the task before you, but there's still some tricky bits to understand. For the most part, following this page will see you through.
Depending on the work in front of the team, you might have a spreadsheet to avoid people stepping on each others toes - 3+ people working on the same table can be a headache. Follow the process on that and we'll minimize collisions.
Now, lets get one thing straight - you almost NEVER want to be adding stuff via the editor. It's a relatively small box. Get a separate text editor, copy in the template you're using or otherwise do your work in there. Then paste it back in at the appropriate spot. Bonus points if your editor has tabs, so you can keep track of multiple files on the go. If you're stuck trying to do something, ask in #wiki-work or if you trust your technical skill and patience, go digging through the MediaWiki docs.
Creating Screenshots
BD provides icons, but we provide loadouts. I just use Steam's screenshot manager because it's the lowest impact on the game and you are going to be moving between skirmish mech bay entries a lot. Either way, rename them as per their variant (i.e. THM-4M.jpg) and upload them using the Upload Wizard. You may want to do it in batches, alongside the mechs you're editing, because there are several steps that require some repetitive work. (Note: Amid, at some point, will try to provide a CLI batch uploader to take the repeat effort out of using the Wizard). You'll need to swear its your work and provide a description.
At that point, they're submitted and available. The Wizard will spit out some helpful data about using them in the wiki that we're gonna ignore because 90% of the work is in templates. Now you can get to editing!
Actually Editing
Some generalities. Tabs and table entries are entered alphabetically, with gladiators appended at the end. For tables, Community Content get their own tables, but are appended in the tabs behind gladiators.
For tables, the length of an entry shouldn't matter, but if you find yourself making looooong columns, ask BD for how he wants it to look.
Creating Mech Pages
If you open an existing mech page, you'll find that it is actually incredibly short. That's because the vast majority of pages are created with templates. Below is really all you need.
<tabs>
<tab name="ABS-2L">
{{AutoInfoboxVariant|ABS-2L}}
===Description===
{{MechDetails|ABS-2L}}
===Bonuses===
{{QuirkEasyToMaintain}}
{{AffinityAgile}}
===Factions===
{{MechFactions|ABS-2L}}
{{LoadoutImage|image=ABS-2L.png}}
</tab>
</tabs>
[[Category:30 Ton Mechs]]
[[Category:Inner Sphere BattleMechs]]
[[Category:Inner Sphere Mechs]]
The "<tabs>" line initializes the tabbing system and is only needed once. Closing it is done at the bottom of a doc and closes out tabbed information.
Each tab is captured within a "<tab>" block.
Everything in a "{{ }}" block is a template and its in here that you'll do most of the work. For a new page, copy the above, change the mech name and variant id. For updating pages, copy a "<tab>" block and change the variant id.
The gotchas here are the images - you may need to change the .png to a .jpg for the loadout. And the AutoInfoboxVariant template goes looking for a .png with the name of the title of the page, which can get hairy. If you need to do some digging, see the section below about #Finding Mech Images.
If you're uploading new images, say, for loadouts please keep the image size relatively sane. The vast majority of the world is still on 1080p. No 4k and no ultrawide images please.
Editing List of Mechs
This... is a little bit more involved. And by a little, I mean a lot. You're going to want the Skirmish Bay open for some of this information, unless you're do maths gud in yer noggin.
Below is a complete entry within a table. Creating a whole new table is rare and beyond the scope of this quick intro.
|rowspan="4"| [[File:Anubis.png|125px|border|center]] '''[[Anubis|ANUBIS]]''' '''Mech Quirk:''' Easy To Maintain (Fast refits) [[Pilot Affinities|'''Pilot Affinity:''']] Agile (Gains 1 bonus evasion on movement) |ABS-2L |30t |Fire Support |0 |0 |2 |4 |0 |XL |240 |DHS |Endo |Ferro |None |16.5t |25.5t |8 |12 |0 |- |ABS-3D |30t |Fire Support |0 |4 |0 |0 |0 |XL |240 |DHS |Endo |Stealth |None |16.5t |25.5t |8 |12 |0 |- |ABS-3L |30t |Fire Support |0 |0 |4 |2 |0 |XL |240 |DHS |Endo |Stealth |None |16.5t |25.5t |8 |12 |0 |- |ABS-TZ |30t |Gladiator |0 |4 |0 |4 |0 |XL |240 |DHS |Endo |Stealth |None |16.5t |25.5t |8 |12 |0 |-
See that "rowspan="4"" bit? That is the single most important bit to get right, because it maps to the number of variants each mech will have per "Chassis" column and if its not exact, the table gets real wonky. Increment it by 1 for every variant you add or just make sure it matches the number of variants. Above, the Anubis has 4 variant entries, hence "rowspan="4"".
Where you see "Anubis|ANUBIS" the all caps is the displayed text and the "Anubis" is a dynamically created link
The remaining columns are fairly self-explanatory, but some bear some calling out:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Role | The big grey striped box in the top-right of loadout pics. Maintain its exact wording is key, particularly for anything comedic. |
| Hardpoints | Do yourself a favour and memorize "BEMSO" and remember that "B" comes after the Role descriptor. |
| Core Gear | With the exception of the engine, core, e-cooling and gyro (i.e. anything in the CT core gear), all non-fixed equipment and armor is stripped to give a free tonnage value. This is the default free tonnage measurement for OmniMechs with locked gear. |
| Bare | All components and armor are stripped. This shows the weight taken up by structure and gives a broader idea of total free tonnage on BattleMechs |
| Speed | Use the values in the mechbay UI, don't bother calculating supercharger/TSM/MASC |
Now you just need to learn to map the columns as they appear on the List to how they appear in edit mode. Welcome to Wiki Hell! You're here forever. ☺
Note that the final line ends with "|-", which indicates a new section coming up. The very final section of a table ends in "|}", closing out a block waaayyy at the top that you ideally shouldn't need to worry about.
Finding Mech Images
For cases where an image is just not resolving, you're going to have to go digging. You can do this one of two ways, by going to the File list page or searching via the bar with the prefix "File:". 99% of the time, a file has been misnamed on accident while uploading, which is a quick fix in 99OKFINE 90% of cases - save the image, delete the file and re-upload with a correct name (ignoring the bit about the file already existing or having been uploaded before).
The search bar is helpful for finding, say, a file that has been slightly misnamed or finding the page of a questionable file. On that page you can find its details, and file history, which might point to why its busted.
The File List page is useful for finding a file that's wildly misnamed because you can go through looking for the right picture. You're probably working with newer uploads, so it should be pretty close to the first page. Otherwise, prepare to go back a while.
Miscellaneous Gotchas
- Gladiators use a special faction line on their mech page, go find it and use that instead of the above. Actually, any mech that is ONLY found as a reward or through an event gets that treatment.
- On the List of Mechs page, the picture has a px (pixel) value. This is basically resizing it on the fly. 95% of the time, you won't need to touch this, but occasionally something just doesn't play well. The only real fix here is to play with the value until it looks more or less like the others.
- Community content mechs get their own table, but exist as tabs in the mech's main page.
- RAWDATA editing: here there be dragons, ask Amid or Wulf, if only so the latter can make a backup of the DB.
Creating Faction Pages (WIP)
Faction pages are made from several categories: Infobox Description Enemy Factions Faction Store Inventory
Since all the factions are new, we make BD deal with the Infobox and Description because new factions are probably going to be homebrew. Enemy Factions currently have to be filled out by hand, consult the code at (AMID SUPPLY THIS INFO)
The Faction Store Inventory section is the single most complicated bit: in order to get it to work, you need to update the Module Factions page, the Faction Store Table, and then you need to generate a formatted entry for that table.
Mech Factions Script Overview
Script page: Module:Factions
In short, this script does two things.
factionMechs: This takes in a factionId (ex: Davion, ClanNovaCat, EridaniLightHorse, etc) and outputs a list of mechs, by weight class, fielded by that faction. This is used for faction entries to show all mechs fielded by a faction.
- Code Overview
- This is fairly simple. It searches the wiki database for mechs that have the given faction in their tags list. Then it defines a function for making links, this function adjusts some specific mech variants slightly so they link to correct pages. Next we create mechList, which will be our final return, and four unordered lists for each weight class of mech. The list elements are then populated based on mech tonnage in a for loop, and finally added to the return div element, which is finally returned.
mechFactions: This takes a mech variant (ex: AS7-D, CP-10-HQ, MAD-5S, etc) and outputs a list of factions that use that mech. This is used on mech pages to list the factions where a given mech variant can be fought. The list is outputted as a collapsible div with a list containing the major factions that field that mech. Any faction with sub-commands will have a further expandable section listing the sub-commands fielding the mech.
- Code Overview
- This function gets the mech variant given, and then iterates through its tags, tags in
factionIdsToNamesare deemed to be faction tags and processed further. These faction tags are added to a dictionary of parent tags to child tags. If a tag isn't inspamFactionsToParentsthen it's added as its own parent. We then create the HTML framework using mediawiki with a parent list element. The dictionary of tags is then gone through in alphabetical order by parent tag. Single tags are just added to the list as individual items, tags with multiple children are added as their own sub-list. The idea here is that the list of parent tags is which parent faction to go fight to acquire a mech, while specific sub-factions are listed under that. Finally the tag is appended to the parent unordered list tag. When all parent factions have been iterated through the list is returned.
Useful Formatting Prefabs
Chunks of markup or wiki code that can be copy-pasted for use elsewhere with little or no tweaking.
Collapsible Section with Title
Creates a collapsible section with a title that will remain visible and bolded. Also shades the background with "toccolours" class on the div.
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="max-width:1000px;"> <div style="font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;">'''Found On These 'Mechs: (Click Expand For List)'''</div> <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> CONTENTS GOES HERE </div></div>
Feature Requests
Factory World Improvements
Users report the current setup for searching for what factory worlds have what is sub-optimal and takes quite a bit of time to do. The options before us are:
| Option | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Make the Factory Worlds page sortable | This would make the whole page a table and sortable: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FilterableTables | A LOT of manual work and wikitable fuckery. |
| Basically not doable in a single session. | ||
| Would have to be developed separately and pasted in | ||
| Create a Found On Factory Worlds template | Make a new module and template that would be inserted everywhere and link back to Faction Worlds pages | See this? https://www.bta3062.com/index.php?title=Template:EquipmentMechs |
| Do that, except for Factory Worlds. Requires learning how to write a wiki Module + permissions to do so | ||
| Ask Wulfbanes/BD for the permissions and Amid for guidance if you need it | ||
Vehicle Entry Improvements
Add ammo to vehicle entries in the vehicles table. This could be nice to have, but doing it manually would be a massive pain.
Tips
- Save frequently. This allows for granular rollbacks, a wiki function found in the View history tab at the top right. This is especially useful if you accidentally broke something.
- Templates update on a successful save of the
gamepage, so even if you've, say, changed an image name, a page with a link to that image won't necessarily show it until the page is edited and saved again. No changes need be made, just trigger the save button. You would not believe how many things can be solved by this. If a page or tab is giving an error, try that first.