Oolite Bulletins

I've added an OXP Template at being Template:Infobox OXP and an example of it's use is for the Capisastra OXP.

I've provided a link to the OXP page from the Other Information column in the OXP page. What do others think?

Moderator: added links.

Well, that was repetitive work.

Another thing that needs doing: major OXPs which add lots of ships need pages for the OXP as a whole. Assasins, Black Monks, Commies, Dictators, Ionics and Thorgorn Threat spring to mind. The relevant ships should then link to the OXP page rather than having a direct download link, and the OXP page should link to each ship page (as well as having a download link, obviously).

In the particular case of Ionics, the current Ionics OXP page should be moved to, say, Ionics OXP: development, without the Category:Oolite, and the Ionics OXP page used to describe the OXP from a user perspective.

OjnoTheRed wrote:

I've added an OXP Template at being Template:Infobox OXP and an example of it's use is for the Capisastra OXP.

I've provided a link to the OXP page from the Other Information column in the OXP page. What do others think?

Hmm. There’s already a Capisastra page with background (needs wikification) and that page and the various ship pages all refer to the Seosu OXP, which confuses things…

As to the actual issue at hand: it’s a good start, but could do with some tarting up. For a start, the N/A bits are unsightly. Fortunately, templates can include optional statments: I’m not sure about auto-including Category:Oolite expansion packs; it should probably be left to the user of the template to add the appropriate OXP sub-categories (like Category:Ship OXPs) and leave Category:Oolite expansion packs as primarily an index of subcategories, with only otherwise-unclassifiable OXPs being listed there. If the category is left in, it should be in <onlyinclude> tags.

I’ll take a stab at it…

Meh, no #if: for us. Dylan hasn’t installed the ParserFunctions extension.

Ha ha, yeah bad example.

I think that our general thinking is converging, though, even if I'm displaying my ignorance about what's already on the Wiki?

I've modified the Capisastra OXP page to link to that page you've just described at least.

I agree about making the for OXP category an index of sub-categories - but I'll leave it for a little while. Bed calls!

I'd suggest just having one page instead of a download link (so for Capisastra OXP this would be the one already there). I added a link to S's new Icarus ship, just by adding his existing page as a link in the download section of the table.

So the player gets S's description when he clicks on the table link. Having read the description, if he wants to download it, he clicks on the download link S has provided. This makes it a lot easier for the authors to update, without having to change the table. If S spots a bug in his OXP and uploads a new version, he just makes needs to changes to the page he's already created, where his OXP lives, rather than also having to change the download link on the table.

It also stops dulpication. I'd suggest only adding a new page where there isn't one already there (eg for Boyracers). The Boyracers page could give a short description of what the OXP does with links to the existing pages for the ships the OXP adds. The download link can then be added to the bottom of this page.

Assassins, Velocity, Imperial Courier and Icarus already appear in this format on the table. It makes things much easier. Click the Assassins link and you are taken to a page describing the OXP, with links to other wiki relevent pages (such as the Powers and Organisations page) given on the Assassins Page. The download link is given here. Once I've playtested Version 1.3 on the new version of Oolite, I only need then to change the download link on the Assassins page.

Really like the table idea. With Oosat1 and Oosat2 being dead as far as updates and new OXPs are concerned, it a really good idea to have a single page that has links to all OXPs.

My 2 Credits anyway!

LittleBear wrote:

I'd suggest just having one page instead of a download link

I agree. I’d take it further (or make it more explicit) by saying that each entry in the table should have exactly one OXP-specific link – to a wiki page for the OXP if there is one, otherwise a download link (marked "(download)"). Stuff that could go out of sync, like version numbers or release dates, should be avoided; the Ships and Stations columns should be removed in favour of listing that stuff on the relevant page.

Some I think there is a need to put something like Version number or release date into a list. The reason I say this: If someone has installed 50 different OXPs he somehow must have a way to see which OXPs have been updated - without visiting each OXPs Wiki entry. Or he wants to see if there has been any new OXPs released. With an alphabetic list this is not really possible.
But this could be made possible if there was something like an "OXP News" article where descending by date the new or changed OXPs would be listed: If such thing would be embedded into the Wiki structure, this would surely be an enhancement.

I would like to add my vote for adding some kind of date and or version identifiers for the OXPs. My reasoning is as a newbie player of this great game. I find myself almost daily reading and downloading an interesting 'newer' OXP, only to find out after doing a GetInfo on the file...that I have already downloaded it! This would go along way towards making it less confusing to be able to see the version numbers or dates listed with the descriptions.