Liandri Archives general discussion thread or subforum?

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Neon_Knight

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Mar 2, 2009
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I've noticed that the Liandri Archives wiki is the only part of BU which hasn't any subforum. While at first I've barred it as the wiki having its own discussion sections, I've noticed that the Unreal Wiki has in fact an own subforum. And there isn't even a "general discussion" thread about the LA Wiki as well.

I think it's critical for this Wiki to have either onr or the other because not only it has always been a part of BeyondUnreal as far as I know, but there are also a lot of questions and worries left unanswered in a lot of the discussion pages of this Wiki, not to mention Sir_Brizz's wish for this wiki to get more contributors for it.
 
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AWW SNACK

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Feb 13, 2009
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The Liandri Archives needs a HUGE update. There are several bits referencing UT3 as if it weren't released yet, a vast majority of the "beta" info is flat-out wrong, and there needs to be decent map and weapon navigation templates. I also think that each weapon should have a seperate page instead of jamming, say, all of the assault rifles on one page, but that's particalyl because there's been a trend in wikis towards giving each type of weapon it's own page, no matter how similar it is to similar incarnations.
 

Sir_Brizz

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Feb 3, 2000
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What would get people to contribute to the wiki more? Looking around "da webz" it is by far the most complete repository of information about Unreal but it has very low editorship.

We used to have a subforum for it but it was either closed or merged somewhere else because of low activity. If you think you would use it, I can open one for it.

It does need many updates and there is a distinct lack of source information for most things even though I know they are accurate. Again, I'm at a loss to improve editorship.
 

AWW SNACK

Member
Feb 13, 2009
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You also have to realize that there's really only so much that the Liandri Archives can cover because there hasn't been new official content made for the Unreal series since the Titan Pack came out. When you don't get a steady stream of new content, you're bound to run out of stuff to talk about, at least on a surface level. Yes, there's the new UT, but that's little more than an overglorified proof of concept that has a very long time before it becomes a complete game.

I certainly think there's room for expanding pages, like adding actual weapon strategies and the like, as modern wiki pages do with video game items, but the Unreal series' userbase is small enough that nobody's really arsed enough to actually care about it, much less do it.

Also, there are other sites out there that cover some Unreal content better than the LI can. Ie, tcrf.net is much more suited for Unreal/Unreal Tournament beta talk than LI is because unused and prototype content is why they exist and they have a much bigger readership.

Regardless of the limited amount of content it can cover, I think that the LI still has pleanty of potential for expanded content.
 

Sir_Brizz

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Feb 3, 2000
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I don't disagree but there is a lot of content that is still missing from LA that needs to be filled in. Lots of map pages are missing along with map pictures and such. Also, it should be possible to have much higher resolution images on there now than what we have.

Also, the UC/UC2 pages are pretty sparse and good images of anything on there are missing.

There is a lot that could be done I just don't know how to get people interested in doing it.
 

AWW SNACK

Member
Feb 13, 2009
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I don't disagree but there is a lot of content that is still missing from LA that needs to be filled in. Lots of map pages are missing along with map pictures and such. Also, it should be possible to have much higher resolution images on there now than what we have.

Also, the UC/UC2 pages are pretty sparse and good images of anything on there are missing.

There is a lot that could be done I just don't know how to get people interested in doing it.

Certainly. I'm just mentioning that you can only make so many pages, not things like images and filling out misc. details, before you run out of content. LI has most of the important stuff covered, so people don't feel as motivated to continue once you have things like all of the vehicles, weapons, and a vast majority of the maps with their own pages.

Getting proper images for the UC/UC2 content shouldn't be hard, its just that it takes more steps and time than people are willing to invest in creating content for an inactive wiki for an old game series. I love the Unreal series and taking screenshots, but I'm not going to spend close to $170 USD to get a decent capture card, a working original Xbox, and functioning copies of UC1 and UC2. That type of money is ridiculous for a long term benefit of being able to occasionally boot up UC2 and fuck around with it (I'm not a console gamer :p).

It'd be best if some sort of task force was created, but how can you recruit people to work on it? The people that have what the wiki needs don't have enough time to work on a wiki because of things like jobs and kids, while the people that do have wiki experience don't have enough information on Unreal to do anything beyond touching LI up visually.
 

Sir_Brizz

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Feb 3, 2000
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I agree. Maybe making a forum would help. We can list things that need doing... I'll think about it more, it would help if you guys could think of ways we could motivate people to help out with some of the harder places to fill in like the UC games (I have them both but not a capture card).
 

Neon_Knight

Member
Mar 2, 2009
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Well, at least if a forum isn't going to be a thing, I suppose a "general discussion thread" may do well, isn't it?

I was lucky to find the .ini and .int files in the UC2 disc, that's where the bulk of UC2 info I've gathered originates from. There's a file, MapThumbnails.utx I guess it's called, in the Textures folder, which I guess contains the levelshots for maps. I had no luck opening it with UTPT, though, and I lack the knowledge necessary in order to make it to work with UC2 files. :/ A bit of hacking may be needed in order to obtain such shots.

I'm also going map-by-map in UT99 in order to gather the info necessary to fill the map pages. I shall continue with UT2004 and then UT3. Everything, of course, whenever I can do such things.

Some of the worries I had include:
- Shall we open a page for UT4 now that it's a thing, or shall we wait until it's more advanced?
- I feel my latest attempt at unifying the map pages is lacking something. I'm talking about the weapons & pickups sections. The way I've tried to solve this (I've applied it in the UT99 DM maps up to Malevolence or KGalleon, I guess) seems a bit impractical.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
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Nah I think we can have that open at this point.

Uploading images isn't working again?
 

Kaithofis

The Seldom Seen Kid
It's a vicious circle of sorts. There aren't enough motivated contributors because of the low overall activity on the site, and the there's a low overall activity on the site because there aren't enough motivated contributors. That's the reason I stopped anyways. I did my fair share of work, only to find out I was almost the only one left editing and using the wiki. That's when I stepped out.

I still have all of my map layouts and all icons on a backup though. If anyone wants to use those, give me a holla.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
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Yeah, if you have stuff we can use let me know. I can stick them somewhere until we are ready to add them. I know that needing an account is friction to editing there but I did that to try to keep spam in check because there weren't enough people watching for spam... Just need some ideas :) Maybe that restrictions needs to go in order to make the site better.

It really bugs me that the Unreal Wikia site ranks higher than us on Google search despite having FAR worse information and missing tons of information. It's not complete at all. We fortunately come up for most specific searches but I want to boost our search ranking.
 

Neon_Knight

Member
Mar 2, 2009
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Agreed as well. Also, there's a reason of why a lot of wikis go that road.

About the wiki edition, I don't know, I have a lot of info to add to the wiki, and I also have no problem on adding it, but how well I manage my english writing depends on how well I wake up in the morning. :/ I want to complete at least the map pages, but sometimes I can't think on a good description for each of them.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
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I think on the maps the biggest thing to get in for each of them is the in-game map description and an image, if not the little gif rotation on several of the maps.

It would be especially nice to get that filled in for UC2. The map pages for that game are rather weak.

Another thing I'd love to see added are the taunts for each of the characters.
 

Neon_Knight

Member
Mar 2, 2009
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Argentina
The in-game descriptions are all already there, and yeah, they're as short as they come. Fortunately, the int files had that info.

About the screenshots, well, we need someone with a bit of hex-editing knowledge in order to edit a file and extract the shots from there.