Oolite Bulletins

On a suggestion from Red Ravens on the EBBS, EliteWiki has been started. It is for all Elite-related stuff, fiction, factual, how to, etc. It needs articles.

If you want to contribute Oolite information, please do.

Once there's some content up, I'll advertise the EliteWiki further.

Good Oolite articles would be:

- Quaternions and why are they useful
- How to make an add-on ship
- How to make missions
- General information on the game

etc. (It's not just for factual information either - there are categories for fiction, too).

EliteWiki is at http://wiki.alioth.net and anyone can add articles, categories, edit etc. The front page has a link to the MediaWiki help so if you've never edited a wiki before you can find out how. MediaWiki is the software that Wikipedia uses.

I wanted to start out with setting up th Oolite subdirectory, but it sez no uploads possible (I wanted to add the Oolite Logo....)

Oh, and I almost started wiki-fying a piece of fiction, I guess that's not the way to go, heehee...

Try it now.

It works.

But I could see how you'd be wary of letting people upload arbitrary stuff...

I'm gonna stay off it, untill you put up some more stuff, feels too much like I could mess up the structure you have in mind.

I'm too used to go in articles and internal-link everything I see, but in this case that'd be overkill, people visiting know already most of the stuff etc...

Don't forget we could get a rush of new users when the Windows port gets an installer - so it is worth internally linking lots of stuff. (I've expanded the initial entry on Oolite a bit, and added a template for describing games which is basically a cut down version of Wikipedia's game infobox template). What I'll probably do is start adding at least a skeleton of Oolite stuff (because a lot of that isn't covered elsewhere yet) before pulling in Alioth.net ficional stuff. But it is supposed to be an Elite encyclopedia, so any fact on Elite, however trivial is fair game

But you're right, it's difficult to know where to start!

really difficult.
feels like the old dawgs should put down the ground stuff first.

age before beauty, eh?

would the wiki be permitted to have The Dark Wheel on its pages?

It's part of the Elite scene, so yes - although articles about The Dark Wheel (with a link to the story itself) rather than the actual story. It would also cover things like the OXPs for Oolite that add Dark Wheel features (although I think the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard really deserves its own article).

re: Dark Wheel: Did you contacting the author? Sometimes they're all too happy to put their stuff up elsewhere, esp. when you add links to some other stuff of them.

Oh, and I spotted a 'problem'...

ships like the Constrictor... They're in Oolite too, so the way it is presented now, leaves a bit to desired. But what would be the right way? A list of pics of a certain ship in its various incarnations in various games, with different specsheets, or 'sub pages'? first solution may look unwieldy, second unnec. complicated...

There's two approaches that can be taken. Since ship descriptions are unlikely to be huge articles, both versions could be covered on the same page (under different subsections). A different ship info template will be needed for each of the versions since the stats don't match 1:1. I'll probably add some more templates during my lunch break today.

I'll try and put something together on texturing tips, if that sounds okay?

was tinkering with expanding the oolite section and how to get started making OXPs, and I already feel I've strayed from the structure's ideal harmony. I trust a firm editing hand will keep the order.

wouldn't it be best if each game branch would have exclusive ship sections rather than share a page with subcategories? or is that too stubby?

The best thing to do is to start anything that should be its own article as an article (in its proper category of course - i.e. stick [[Category:Oolite]] in your article. So for example, texturing would justify its own article, as would AI, as would mission scripting etc. Then have an article that links it all together. This 'Writing OXPs' article would have an overview of what needs to be done in general terms, with links to all the sections for finding out about those specific steps. The main Oolite article can link to this (and any others). For example, I'll be writing an article on Oolite-Linux, which will be linked off the main article (and of course, appear in the Oolite category index).

Murgh!

I'd love to see an entry on the 'Space Rikshaw' on the Wiki...

still recovering from thargoidbelly, but it seems I'll be ok so if I could concoct a jolly backstory for them, I suppose I could.