Talk:Creature Template

Creature Melee/Missile/Magic Defenses
Is there any easy, reliable way to determine a creature's melee, missile, and/or magic defense? I've seen like 1 creature with this information filled out on the wiki, and I personally don't know any way to realistically calculate it when out hunting. Just curious, because if its impossible to find (or not worth it), perhaps we shouldn't include it in the template. --Atarax 11:38, 4 February 2009 (CST)
 * The way maggies site had many values calculated was by using a plug-in. I don't use decal so I don't know anything about it, but basically it uses the values of exp you earn directly into your attack skill to determine the difficulty of the hit, which is some formula involving your attack & their defense, and the pulg-in would spit out a number. The same formula can be used in reverse, based off of the exp you gain directly into defense skills, to determine a creature's attack skills. here is the link on maggies: http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Pets/statdirections.htm --An Adventurer 11:45, 4 February 2009 (CST)
 * Interesting. Do you think anyone will ever do that though? And more importantly, is it even relevant or important? --Atarax 11:48, 4 February 2009 (CST)
 * It'd be a nice feature if you decide to start hunting something new and want to have an idea on how easily you will land and evade/resist, because you could compare it to the stats of a monster that you already hunt. But honestly, no, its probably not that useful information - I'm pretty sure when the creature template was first being created, it was added just so it could be as thorough as maggies listings. --An Adventurer 11:58, 4 February 2009 (CST)

Formatting Template for Table
I am replacing the table formatting with a template so it will be easier to populate values quickly. Also this will, as is the case with other formatting templates, allow changes to all creature entries if needed in the future. The default will be horizontal layout, however you can add a "Vertical = True" to use the vertical layout if desired. --Tlosk 16:13, 16 January 2009 (CST)

Spawn Maps
I'm looking to add Spawn maps to terrain spawning creatures with help from Yew, I have a first mockup ready for Dual Fragment if anyone has suggestions.

Also working now on an alternative that would communicate directly with Mob Tracker and I'll post an example when it's working.--Tlosk 11:11, 6 January 2009 (CST)

Older Discussions
--Tlosk 15:59, 14 June 2008 (CDT) I think I'm going to start putting a link to an image of the stat panel on the Talk page for creatures, just so we have it for reference in case there's a question about a stat being in error.

--Sanguis 01:00, 2 April 2008 (CDT) I'm loving the way this looks now that it's implemented, I think it was a great choice overall.

looks fine. --An Adventurer 18:54, 31 March 2008 (CDT)

--Tlosk 19:29, 30 March 2008 (CDT)Sandrick suggested over on the forums including both the defensive and offensive values for magic melee and missle. I suggested blending them into the existing boxes by changing the headings slightly and having both values in the same box (see below) for what it looks like. So instead of "Melee D" you have "Melee D/A" then the creature's melee defense followed by the creature's attack skill.

--Sanguis 18:12, 28 March 2008 (CDT) Interesting, the only issue i'd see is that sometimes the "locations" link will show the general monster type as well as items dropped by it. In the case of the Biaka, you see both Broken Black Marrow Key and Margul which are obviously not locations but other pages that naturally link to Biaka. It's still a very effective way of doing it, just not absolutely perfect.  Also, the grey background for images is a solid idea, it makes it look less amateurish and fills in the space really well and I would definitely agree we need to keep the "introduced in" snippet at the top of the page for consistancy.  Overall it's looking really good for the template.

--Tlosk 15:25, 28 March 2008 (CDT) Wow that's a good idea, I did some digging and I found out a way to do this (I had assumed it wouldn't be possible since it's programmatic rather than a static link. This also opens up the ability to do any other toolbox items as well, glad you suggested it). It would just require putting the name of the page into a preformatted snippet in the template. The nice thing about this too is it could be the first bullet in the notes, that way we always have at least some notes (don't have to leave it blank for anything so the bulleted format would be evident for someone coming in to add more info later).

Locations where Name can be found.


 * Locations where Biakas can be found.

That's sweet.

I think the "introduced in" at the top of the page is fine. We have the same link at the top of all the npcs and items. Another idea for the creature template: is it possible to create a link on the page that directs to the "what links here" button? Like, for altered drudges, somewhere in the page would be Find this creature, or something like that. Basically, would that be easy to automate when converting? If not, we could simply include on the page somewhere "Click "What links here" in the toolbox to find locations with this creature."

I think that is one of the major strengths of the wiki - any dungeon, POI or landscape area that has a link to that creature will be listed. But its possible that people wouldn't know to check the "what links here" button to find where the creature spawns. --An Adventurer 13:36, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

--Tlosk 12:17, 28 March 2008 (CDT)Yeah, that works with any size image (I also added the ! so that it centers itself). That was a great idea about the grey background, it really improves things with offsize images. So when doing live pics, the ideal size would be 300x420 (no bars and no resizing so no artifacting).

--Tlosk 12:09, 28 March 2008 (CDT)Yeah that's easy to do, I had to do that with some pictures on the old zone pages, it made it very easy to manipulate the position of the image and text using borderless tables and matching the background color with the cells. Also I need to double check this but I'm pretty sure if a WidthxHeightpx is used it will make it so any size picture can be used (an ideal size would mean no resizing or bags on the sides but it would mean there'd be no fiddling with numbers each time).

Also I'm not sure which is better, should the Introduced in Patch line stay at the top or go in a bullet under Notes?

One idea for the new table. If its possible, put in a grey background color for the table cell the image is in, so images that are too short are not floating in white. --An Adventurer 11:36, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

--Tlosk 23:23, 26 March 2008 (CDT) Ok cool, I'm going to let it sit for a day or two to see if anything else occurs to us, then I can make a conversion macro (probably 95% of the entries are the same format now so it shouldn't be that hard to make one).

that looks really good. just need to redo the 600+ monster pages already done :P --An Adventurer 23:03, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

--Sanguis 22:53, 26 March 2008 (CDT) That last template was perfect in my opinion, the double line works out well and you're right with the creature type and lvl being self explanatory

--Tlosk 22:06, 26 March 2008 (CDT) Looks like specifying the hex color works (bgcolor=#e0e0e0 instead of bgcolor=lightgray), although may be worth doing so for all the colors (even though it appears that just the light gray was different between IE and FF.

--Tlosk 21:55, 26 March 2008 (CDT)Out of curiosity I checked how it looked in IE7 (I use Firefox) and it's thwacked lol. I imagine there's a way to have it be consisent but I'll have to look into it. (So if you're using IE, click the thumbnail below to see what I was trying for lol. Only Microsoft would be able to interpret light gray as meaning dark blue.



--Tlosk 20:50, 26 March 2008 (CDT) A few more tweaks - creature type and lvl are self explanatory, perhaps mirroring the stat panel would be nice. In most templates there's redundant formatting that can be removed to make the template cleaner and easier to populate with values (for example the width of a column only needs to be set for the first cell in that column, and quote marks aren't needed). Perhaps using a bulleted list for the notes would keep it clean and look good no matter how many notes there are or the size of each individual note (tables can be difficult to make look good when lots of variability). Perhaps using the label "Trophies & Items" would force a double height row so there'd be room for 2 or 3 items without changing the size of the table (again for the purpose of allowing a standard size for live images). Here's a suggestion for a template (just a suggestion, if a new template is decided on, it should go through a couple iterations to make sure it's what everyone wants before old entries get updated):