Civ4 documentation wiki

Hm...maybe categories aren't the best idea, then?

After all, our entries most likely won't be dynamic. We'll have a list of pages to make, and that's it. We will rarely have to change the listings.

I'll crosspost this here so we can get some discussion going.

Hi. Just checking in over here.

I'm hosting civ4wiki.com. I don't know if you'd call me "in charge." People jumped on it like a pack of wolves.

Merging the wikis is fine by me, but there's a whole lot of details that should be worked out before jumping the gun on that.
* What content goes in the wiki. Just game modding or also the civlopedia, strategies, etc.
* How should everything be organized? There were some good suggestions in the thread over at CivFanatics. A few users have aready put togather some nice templates as well.
* Who should host it? I have no problem hosting the site. I also have no objections to using someone elses bandwidth.
* What should it be called? I'm (obviously) partial to civ4wiki. Plus I've already invested $10 in the domain name.

I'll try to keep in contact here and in the other thread.

MarkG, check you PMs over at civfanatics. I sent you my email address.

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rkyte said:

Merging is fine with me, either on my host or theirs. Unless there's some kind of outcry against it, there's no reason to have two. (Apolyton killed your brother and you've taken an oath of vengeance? OK then, I'll leave it up. ) You guys tell me.

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Personally, I'd prefer Civ4Wiki as a URL. I think the name is better, and it also doesn't have any connections to CFC, or 'poly (which I think is good). Modiki, IMO, doesn't sound good, nor, in it's title, does it mention Civ. It also leaves no scope for a "Civilopedia" section.

@The Great Apple: I have notes and info om most tags, but I wouldn't exactly call them documented, so please go ahead. If you take on the Units section, I'll keep going in the GameInfo section, then we can let each other know when we move on so we don't bump into each other.
If I can get my notes on the UnitInfos section sufficiently cleaned up, I'll email that to you, if you'd like.

About the format: Just in this thread, I see 3-4 different formats being asked for, and hey!, aren't we all lucky? If we just add pages for each of the XML elements, anyone and anybody can create the 'entry pages' their own way, with their own sorting and color mark-ups and whatnots.... ... ok, maybe not everybody and anybody, but there's at least room for 3-4 different formats, and depending on the task one is trying to accomplish, there may be lots of good reasons to have several different formats. For example, I've now worked with the XML files for a long time, and having them listed in the order they appear in files makes no sense to me, as I rarely go through an entire file from top to bottom looking up most elements as I go along. I'd more likely be looking up a specific element or a specific set of elements, and for that an alphabetical list or (as vbraun proposed) a list sorted by the type of data stored would be much more handy. In some cases I would not even need the whole file, as I just want to figure out what <iDontComeNearUsOrWeWillSlapYouWithAWetTroutThreshold> means......

This is just like creating an interface to a database really - first of all we gotta make sure we store the data in a way that will let us display it just the way we later figure out we want it displayed.


About the name: Meh.. name, shmame. We can call it Rhonda, for all i care - just as long as we only need to go to one place to find the info (and only need to go to one place to update it.. )

Isak said:

We can call it Rhonda, for all i care - just as long as we only need to go to one place to find the info (and only need to go to one place to update it.. )

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Rhonda! I like it!

Right. I've pretty much finished off the summaries for ALL the unit tags. There are a few which I haven't got (I just don't know what they do), and a few which are speculation. If somebody could go over them, and fill in any of the gaps in, it'd be great.

Now to start work on the detailed definition of some of those tags!

I'll just keep this bumped, the mods should really consider stickying this..

Aye... We sure could use more help with the wiki. So if anyone is willing to create something useful you're welcome to do so.
Since the wiki will also cover game concepts, rules and basically everything the civilopedia contains (list+description of technologies, units, promotions .... you name it) there is definitely still a lot to do also for non-techie guys.

I'm going to try to add more of the civilopedia stuff this weekend.

Another thing that we should figure out is what format we want to upload the button icons in. So far there has been some gif, jpg and png files. It would probably be best if it was consistent.

Png has the alpha transparency that all of the icons use in the game, but has some issues with internet explorer evidently. Jpg will have borders, and so will gif unless someone spends a lot of time making the edges transparent.

Has something been decided about the categories/list or are we still building blind ?

The Great Apple said:

Right. I've pretty much finished off the summaries for ALL the unit tags. There are a few which I haven't got (I just don't know what they do), and a few which are speculation. If somebody could go over them, and fill in any of the gaps in, it'd be great.

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Ok, I went over it, and filled in a few gaps. There are still some left, and I'll ask 'the Powers that Be' for clarification on those (as some are quite impossible to figure out, like the elusive <iMinAreaSize> that is set for all Naval Units...

Other than that, great work - I'll see if I can get some more GameInfo files added today.

Supa said:

Has something been decided about the categories/list or are we still building blind ?

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Right, seeing as there was no answer to this, unless somebody objects before I come back to my computer, I'm going to change quite a few of the things back to lists (units, etc.)

EDIT: Ok, I got bored - I'll have a go at it now.

And what's happening with the merger?

I added a religion section to the civilipedia.

The Great Apple said:

And what's happening with the merger?

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We've been sending emails back and forth. I think MarkG lives in Greece, so the time difference makes communicating a bit slow.

It looks like we will be moving everything over to their server, and I'll be updating the nameservers so that civ4wiki.com points there. We'll work out some way to dump all of the database tables from my wiki to add to theirs.

There has also been a few requests for addons to the wiki so I'm trying to get them installed as well.

I have no idea how long it will take to get this all done.

Ok, no worries - good to know that stuff is happening though!

The 'poly section doesn't seem to be very alive at the moment. Maybe once they're merged a load of 'poly people will start adding stuff.

Quite a lot of new stuff has gone on already today - I like it! Some of the formatting is a bit dodgy... but it's the information that counts!

I really would love to know what all the lines mean in Civ4ArtDefines_Leaderhead XML. I'm having real trouble getting my custom leaderheads to work.

I really would love to know what the NIF and KFM files do. Any explanation on what each lines means in this XML would be greatly appreciated.

Feet said:

I really would love to know what all the lines mean in Civ4ArtDefines_Leaderhead XML. I'm having real trouble getting my custom leaderheads to work.

I really would love to know what the NIF and KFM files do. Any explanation on what each lines means in this XML would be greatly appreciated.

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Well I've done it... I think the NIF and KFM files are fairly self explanatory. Aren't they just links to the .nif and .kfm files for the leaderhead?

Yes I got that much. But since I can't open the buggers (nif and kfm) what are they actually for? What do they look like?

How come for the Desert war scenario they're just using a still portrait for the diplomacy screen and buttons and yet they also link to a.nif file? What is the .nif file? The flag?

As you can see it's not self explanatory for me at all. Maybe it was a stupid question, I don't know...

Feet said:

Yes I got that much. But since I can't open the buggers (nif and kfm) what are they actually for? What do they look like?

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nif:
"A .nif file is a 3D model. There has been some success importing a static untextured .nif file into the game, however we do not currently know how to edit them, or animate them."

kfm:
"A key frame master file (probably). This file probably defines in which order the keyframe (KF)) files are played in, and maybe even the speed in keyfram transition."

Basically, it is, at the moment, impossable to edit them.

Feet said:

How come for the Desert war scenario they're just using a still portrait for the diplomacy screen and buttons and yet they also link to a.nif file? What is the .nif file? The flag?

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I don't have Civ installed on this machine... but I'd guess the nif is an unanimated model making the still portrait.

Man, i need a HOW TO: type guide on how to stick in my own custom leaderheads. i know loads of people have managed it but I just can't work it out.

Thanks for those answers though, they kinda help.