User talk:Mendel

Welcome!

Hello Mendel! Welcome to UESPWiki! It's always good to have new members. If you would like to help improve any of our pages, you may want to take a look at the following links:

• Policies and Guidelines: UESPWiki standards and expectations
• Help Contents: a list of in-depth Help pages
• Quick Editing Guide: a quick guide to wiki markup
• Getting Started: how you can help

If you would like to spice up your userpage, click here for a list of userboxes you can use, including a guide to making your own.

When you're editing, it's always a good idea to leave edit summaries to explain the changes you have made to a particular page, and remember to sign your talk page posts with four tildes ~~~~. Also, the "show preview" button is a great way to view the changes you've made so far without actually saving the page (our patrollers really appreciate it!).

Feel free to practice editing in the sandbox or discuss the games in the forums. If you need any help, don't hesitate to contact one of our mentors. Have fun! Jeancey (talk) 18:56, 2 February 2014 (GMT)

Signature

It likely wasn't intentional, but your signature last time was over 4k characters long, a clear breach of signature rules. Please find the likely error in coding and fix it. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 15:21, 9 February 2014 (GMT)

--◄mendel► (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2014 (GMT)

Hm, that's weird. If you look here, you'll see that something really weird (like, really weird) happened to your signature in that edit. We just want to make sure that if you could possibly control it that you do so, and it appears that you do have it under control :) •WoahBro^►talk 15:42, 9 February 2014 (GMT)

I was used to editing on a wiki where you could just #subst: the smiley template. This reduces the number of template substitutions on a busy talkpage, and the number of links on the smiley template.

Obviously this is a bad idea here. I apologize for the inconvenience. --◄mendel► (talk) 15:48, 9 February 2014 (GMT)

MetaTemplate Subpage

First, I assume you don't mind, but I'll be deleting an entry from that list in a moment, as I'm about to delete the page.

Second, to answer your question on the page, while you could conceivably get a list of all pages via Special:AllPages (by asking for each namespace individually, then scanning the pages within it), or a similar API query, it's far easier for me to do it directly from the database, though the output may not be quite as well formatted. I don't imagine we have much other than #define and #local outside of Template space, though. Out of curiosity, what're you looking to use the list to do? – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 23:28, 12 February 2014 (GMT)

Oh, and as far as an actual page dump, I don't believe we're keeping anything up on a regular basis, but ask Daveh about that, as I remember there being a request for one a while back, and he did do some work on it. I just don't know what happened with it in the end. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 23:39, 12 February 2014 (GMT)

Thank you for your reply!

User:Mendel/MetaTemplate is quite large, so it might be best to let small changes and deletions redlink and accumulate for a while, since the wiki stores a copy of each version of the page in the database.

I was hoping there'd be an XML dump to move the current content from the wiki to the dev server (where is that anyway?), but maybe Dave is doing that with a straight database export/import. It's also a good way to keep a backup. My procedure is to get a page list for a namespace with AWB and then plug that into Special:Export. The content namespaces are going to be somewhat bigger than Template:, so I'm reluctant to do that if a page dump exists.

I'm expecting that #listsaved is used on content pages directly; that's relevant to the SMW evaluation I've proposed on the community portal. In general, I'm hoping to use the list to get more familiar with the way templates are written here. --◄mendel► (talk) 03:41, 13 February 2014 (GMT)

The development server is at http://dev.uesp.net. It's just been recently copied for an upcoming 1.22 update, so it should be mostly up-to-date. I was forgetting that you can do entire namespaces with Special:Export, but yeah, that'd definitely be one way of doing it, if a somewhat bandwidth-intensive way. As for #listsaved, that never really took off. I think only a couple of us are even aware it exists. It always seemed there were exceptions to the rule that made it more of a nuisance than it otherwise might be. It has been used a few times in the past, but not very often, and most of those have since been overwritten (e.g., Skyrim:Military Forts). The only place it's still in actual use is {{Ingredients By Effect}}.

Anyway, as I said, Dave's the one to talk to about an XML page dump. I know he played with it a bit and I'm pretty sure it was working—I just don't know where the dump is and if it's been updated recently. If you'd like a database query of anything in particular, let me know, but be aware that queries are a bit limited in what they can detect, and will pick up things like <nowiki>'d code along with the real thing. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 04:53, 13 February 2014 (GMT)

Thanks for the info about the dev server, I'll remember that when I want to go on a template editing spree. ;-) And now I need to read the rest of the Mediawiki changelogs (I was up to 1.19 yesterday).

The XML dump tool comes with Mediawiki, see mediawikiwiki:Manual:Backing_up_a_wiki#XML_dump. I don't know if it is more efficient to pull individual namespaces (without talkpages and without User:) via Special:Export, or to create the dump.gz and download that. If there isn't a current pages dump around already, it might not be worth the effort. --◄mendel► (talk) 06:04, 13 February 2014 (GMT)

More MetaTemplate

I'm taking this discussion here, since it's getting kind of off the original topic for the Community Portal. You mentioned on CP that you wanted to document all places where #save is used. I assume you mean on the documentation pages (like we've already got on a couple of them)? While you're doing that, if you don't mind a small amount of extra work, it would be useful to know if there are corresponding loads, and if that loaded information is actually in use. I wouldn't be surprised if there are several data items that we could stop saving, but haven't realized that over the years as the templates have evolved. I'd suggest only worrying about it for the simple case for the time being, since trying to track down dynamic loading and saving (e.g., {{Faction}}, {{Save Named Values}}) could get a bit tricky. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 11:00, 14 February 2014 (GMT)

"Documentation pages" means Template:name/Doc? My idea was to collect that info in one place.

Good point about watching out for the #load, that makes sense.

I need to understand the "tricky" cases, because they're going to be the challenge to port over to SMW, right? --◄mendel► (talk) 11:49, 14 February 2014 (GMT)

LOL @ the HTML comment. :) Yes, Documentation = /Doc. You can see where I've done one at Template:Faction/Doc. I thought I'd done one or two others, but didn't find anything in a search, so maybe not. As for the tricky cases, by all means, go ahead and make sure you understand them, I'm just saying it's probably not a big concern to figure out whether the loads and saves match for them. Using Faction as the example, there will no doubt be a lot of data that never gets loaded by any of the pages, but it'd take a number of queries/bot runs to figure that out, and I imagine we'll want to keep saving the faction rank data anyway, for completeness. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 19:30, 14 February 2014 (GMT)

Using show preview

You may have expected this (gah), but please be sure to preview your edits before saving them. This will prevent you from needing several edits to correctly add a link to an article, each of which requires patrolling. Thanks, and happy editing! --Xyzzy ^Talk 04:02, 28 February 2014 (GMT)

Yes, I'm sorry. It's always the simple edits that get me - the more complicated ones demand previewing, but those "let me just link that" where preview seems unnecessary can catch you out, in this special case because the wiki's using namespaces so much. --◄mendel► (talk) 06:18, 28 February 2014 (GMT)

I completely understand. I can't count the number of times I've messed up the unsigned template, only to catch it when I preview my edit. --Xyzzy ^Talk 06:33, 28 February 2014 (GMT)

Thanks [Archery]

The tables and info on the archery discussion page was a noble effort and very informative. Interestingly, your info, which I was not aware of, has born out my actual in game testing exactly. Unfortunately, the powers that be of the wiki seem to be much more concerned with matters of importance like not doing multiple edits, than time consuming works like yours. I also wanted to mention that in practical testing of bows, the graphics of the game need to be dialed all the way down to the lowest level. My play testing of damage done in MPH, Mammoths Per Hour, is significantly altered by the graphics setting. No, I'm not just being funny here. With graphics at the lowest setting the re-click of the mouse button to fire another shot gets execution start a fraction of a second faster. That pause between shots is the greatest slow down of the actual damage done. My test criteria was using various bows, archery at 100 legendary, no clothing augmentation, dwarven arrows and legendary difficulty level. I used an on screen stop watch clocking from the moment an arrow is fired until the mammoth is zero health before it's graphics death. Am also using a mod that prevents kill moves/cams. I'd be happy to talk with you more about archery! Sniffles (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2014 (GMT)

About the wiki: the "powers that be" is ourselves - people write because they want to, and their work is kept because it is corfirmable/confirmed and useful. I don't blame anyone for actually wanting to play the game (and *do* archery) over writing about it. The note above is a friendly warning to be more considerate of others when editing here, even in minor matters, which I'm sad to say I'm sometimes careless about. It wasn't a big deal, and of course it comes with everyone being allowed to edit.

About archery: I love your MPH metric. How exatly does MPH convert to dps?

My approach would probably have been to use the creation kit to drum up a stationary archery target with a set number of health points, but that would have meant hours of work learning how to do that before actual shooting began. (Maybe somebody has already done this?)

I think the biggest problem with my spreadsheet data is that it doesn't reflect actual bow usage. I am uncertain whether archery perks affect only the bow, or the arrows as well: bow in my inventory increase in damage rating when my archery improves, but the arrows do not. Maybe a general dps table should simply plot "single shot damage" vs. "speed", then everyone could total up the displayed bow damage, arrow and magic damage, find the row with the damage closest to that, and then consult the column with the corresponding bow speed. Then there would need to be a version with the quick shot perk applied, and one or two that assume that the first (or the first two) shots benefit from sneak damage.

That's a lot of tables, but for what? When going wolf hunting, it won't matter much. At my point in the game, I'm still holding out on the dragon quest line, so I don't even fight them yet: and that is probably a question such a table would be well to answer, as in "which bow should I take to bring a dragon down with the best speed", but I can't even pose that question in-game, and don't know what prerequisites should go into the computation.

If you have any ideas in that respect, please suggest them to me! I'd be happy to amend my spreadsheet and post new tables (and the new spreadsheet) to the wiki. --◄mendel► (talk) 01:02, 17 March 2014 (GMT)

• This is wonderful! I'm going to leave the number crunching to you and simply give you info I've extracted from the game. I would also be happy to undertake tests you might come up with. So the facts I've discovered.

• Trajectory is wrong. In the original game lofting, arrow rise, was calculated in correctly. Using Angi's archery range the closest arrow went dead flat, the second closest arrow lofted and one had to shoot below the target, the third target lofting was the highest and a full targets width was required to hit. The farthest target lofting had gone and the aim was dead at the target again. This changed with official patch 1.3 (I think). Lofting was entirely removed. Now arrows start by shooting high and slowly come down to the target. The power of the bow determines how quickly they drop. Because the developers altered this, all numbers and formulas arrived at before that patch should be suspect.
• Draw. The bow is not fully drawn when the graphics show it is. Thus graphics and calculations are separate and do not correlate. The fully drawn bow occurs a few milliseconds after the graphics.
• Draw and damage. A bow does not deliver full damage when not fully drawn. In my mammoth tests: Criteria: Daedric bow for slow speed. Iron arrows for minimum damage. Bow fully drawn with a slight pause after the graphics show it is, it takes approx 35 to 40 arrows to reduce it's health bar to zero. Partial draw, it takes approx 75 arrows. Full draw when the graphics show it is drawn it takes approx 45 to 50 arrows. Maybe the actual calculations use the same factor as the overdraw perk?
• The quick shot perk has a limiting factor somewhere. Test criteria: Using Zephyr and going by the partial draw damage reduction as mentioned, I noticed no substantial increase in damage when I took the quick shot perk. Zephyr, legendary, 290 damage with my clothing augmentations equipped, dwarven arrows. Before perk, 7 arrows to do a mammoth. After perk, usually 7 but occasionally 6. Because of the damage limiting calculations, there is a very narrow margin between hyped up archer and the fastest bows with and without the perk. Not enough to be significant. The increased speed and thus damage can easily be negated by the players skill with the mouse.

Does any of this help? Anything you want me to test? Sniffles (talk) 05:24, 17 March 2014 (GMT)