Template talk:Familiar

• I would like to suggest quite strongly that we remove the 'Combat Messages' section from the template. The reason for this is because if you try to go to any wiki page and click 'edit' on the combat messages section, you get an error about it being locked. I do not believe that this is what the desired intention is. --Shagie 20:30, 3 December 2005 (Central Standard Time)
• ...why is this template locked? none of the others are, plus the lack of section header editing and like is disorientating compared to when I'm on/editing other pages.--Dehstil 16:18, 6 May 2006 (CDT)
• People would hit "edit section" on a familiar page and would edit the template, and most of the time would never even notice they screwed up every familiar page, so the template was locked. I guess the 'combat messages' section could be removed, it was just added in the first place because all pages had it, so it was faactored out into the template, but that's 51 pages that need to be changed along with it ;-) --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 17:03, 6 May 2006 (CDT)

It would be nice if we could add the Familiars category to the template itself, so as to not require manually adding the category to the bottom of every page which uses it. Unfortunately, 4 pages (Sandbox, Established Standards: Familiar Pages, User:Phelyan, and User:Stik guy) which are unrelated to familiars also include this template, making the idea useless. Is there any way to block the inclusion of categories on specific pages to get around this problem (and possibly do the same for other templates as well, such as Adventures)? --Quietust 20:33, 7 June 2006 (CDT)

• I know it's been a really, really long time since you asked this, but the answer now is: yes. I've essentially made this modification already, and am currently removing the manual categorization from the pages. Although I will note that the current listing of the established standards page is a happy coincidence of one auto-cat overriding the other. I've intentionally had the standards pages categorized in the category they carry standards for, and have them listed at the top of the category. But I hadn't noticed this particular standards page directly called the template, so it was being categorized twice, and it seems the one later on in the page is trumping the familiar template's categorization. I could fix that, too. Could be done by throwing in more #if and #ifeq statements into the templates to recognize the special cases. Or subst'ing the template on the established standards page and then manually deleting the categorizations. Any particular preference? --Flargen 10:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

We could use {{head}} to fix the section header issue now.--Dehstil (t|c) 19:48, 23 June 2006 (CDT)

• Also, not sure if it's supposed to be this way, but it says "Return to Main Page" at the bottom of the View Source page. Is that the way locked pages are supposed to be or should is it possible to say "Return to Template:Familiar"?--Dehstil (t|c) 20:53, 23 June 2006 (CDT)
  • That's a problem with the entire wiki. I figure we could go ahead and report that to the section for things that are broken....if Mag even checked it anymore =/.--SomeStranger ^(t|c) 22:04, 23 June 2006 (CDT)

Equipment

The code for the equipment field assumes that it will receive exactly one item. This breaks slightly on the Pet Rock page and others of it's ilk, as mentioned at Talk:Bulky Buddy Box (familiar). --Starwed 16:26, 13 December 2007 (CST)

• It used to work with {{!!}} which acts acts as ]], [[ so when [[{{{variable}}}]] was given equip1{{!!}}equip2 it would render as [[equip1]], [[equip 2]], but this template was just changed to take the variable and lookup its data page to get it's item name, so using {{!!}} no longer works. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 21:59, 13 December 2007 (CST)
  • Dare wuz a prawblum, but I eats it! I mean. I fixed it, using {{!!}} in this case was an old-school, pre-parser function, pre default/optional parameter wiki way of faking it with a template to be included in another template, i made {{!!}} over a year and a half ago! Remember using {{p1}}, anyone? You people are so spoiled with being able to use these things called "if"s and "ifeq" on the wiki, ;-) heh --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 22:29, 13 December 2007 (CST)

Arena specs

I'd like to see this template edited in some way so as to completely list a familiar's arena specs. "Strength" and "Weakness" omit the other two possibilities, which are good to know if (for some strange reason) you are trying to level your familiar without using some sort of script to do it for you (or at least tell you what choices to make at what weight). It's also just a little strange that all of this information is out there and fairly easily obtainable, yet the wiki does not contain it except when it happens to appear on chat pages. I could certainly do the editing myself, but I'm not sure what would be a good format. --Flargen 09:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

• Now that you mention it, I think it's kind of weird we don't list the other two possibilities. We should probably add them. However, I don't think it would be all that easy to present the Arena mechanics on every page so the reader can easily choose the optimum path for each opponent/event combination. The image I have in my head is replicating something like the table in that section--at that point, we may as well just link "Strength"/"Weakness"/"Average"/"Handicapped" to that explanatory section in the arena article. --Bagatelle^T/_C 03:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • How about something like

The Cake-Shaped Arena	Ultimate Cage Match	Strong
	Obstacle Course	Average
	Hide and Seek	Weak
	Scavenger Hunt	Unable to perform

I'm not too happy with the "unable to perform" thing, but I'll stick with it for now since that's what the event pages use. --Flargen 03:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

• Here's a wiki history lesson. Originally, familiars were only Strong, Weak, or Average in Area events. So events were mentioned under Strength: for strong events, and Weaknesses: for weak events. All other events not explicitly mentioned were assumed average. We mentioned strength and weakness, and we didn't feel the need to mention average ones, since (it used to be that) familiars always had one strength, one weakness, and were average in all the others. But now familiars can be good or bad in multiple events and sometimes refuse to compete in certain events, so this section probably should be updated to be more specific. Maybe some of you found this interesting, or not, but this is how the display originated, and just was never updated. It just ended up being show good, show bad, else assume just average, check notes for no-competes. Wiley, old wiki-veteran out. Holy crap, the wiki started May 6, 2005 and I've been an admin since July 25, 2005... and don't get me started on wiki editing with a whole 5 templates and no parser functions, uphill in the snow both ways, barefoot. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 04:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • And just for fun, around the time I became wiki admin, the front page of the wiki looked like this! Oh, nostalgia, heh. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 04:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The Cake-Shaped Arena:

Ultimate Cage Match	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek	Scavenger Hunt

The Cake-Shaped Arena:

Ultimate Cage Match	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek	Scavenger Hunt

The Cake-Shaped Arena:

Ultimate Cage Match	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek	Scavenger Hunt

I'm not entirely happy with the color, formatting, or the symbol chosen (martini guy olives ;-) ), maybe hearts , or Jick eggs , or a happy, sad, neutral face thing like , , insert the smiley with the straight mouth that i can't remember the name of here. Then the template could take variable like cage=3, course=2, hide=1, hunt=0, all defaulting to 2 (average) if not mentioned and autogen it. The more different ideas the better. Or maybe a random symbol of a chosen set, HAH! One day, be rated 3 , the next 3 or , or just ignore that. :-D --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 05:24, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

• Ooh, I really like that style. I say we go with this one. Yes, JRS. That includes the olives. --TechSmurf 05:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
• I don't think the border will go well on familiar pages. Maybe borderless like this:

Template:Click

Fighting, dancing sprite Dinnae try tae cross his path Ye'll get yer heid broke.

---

Ability: Acts as a Fairy, attacks and drops up to five tiny bottles of absinthe a day.

Hatchling: bottled green pixie

Familiar-Specific Equipment: green pixie spog

The Cake-Shaped Arena:	Ultimate Cage Match	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek	Scavenger Hunt
	Template:ClickTemplate:ClickTemplate:Click	Template:Click	Template:ClickTemplate:Click	Template:ClickTemplate:Click

• Whatcha think? --Flargen 06:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
• Oh, and for auto-gen'ing it in the template, we probably shouldn't go with a default value. We should probably just have it spit out "unknown" and have the template auto-cat the page in ⌈Incomplete⌉^?. --Flargen 08:28, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Another possible format:

Template:Click

Fighting, dancing sprite Dinnae try tae cross his path Ye'll get yer heid broke.

---

Ability: Acts as a Fairy, attacks and drops up to five tiny bottles of absinthe a day.

Hatchling: bottled green pixie

Familiar-Specific Equipment: green pixie spog

Template:Click	Ultimate Cage Match	Obstacle Course	Hide and Seek	Scavenger Hunt
	Template:ClickTemplate:ClickTemplate:Click	Template:Click	Template:ClickTemplate:Click	Template:ClickTemplate:Click

There's a barely visible border on the right side of the image. This is to attempt to "trick" the mind into automatically associating the arena with the events and pictures beneath the events, without it being terribly obvious visually. But maybe I'm trying too hard to do that and it could just be omitted. Any thoughts on this or any of the other possibilities? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? --Flargen 08:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

One Implementation

Currently at Template:Test, I've coded up the changes using one of my proposed styles, and added in a few examples to show how it will behave under various inputs for each event. This should give a decent idea of how it would look on real familiar pages. Thoughts? Issues? Likes? Dislikes? The meaning to life, the universe, and everything? --Flargen 13:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• I don't really like the olives (they don't make much sense in context) and I don't think it's immediately clear what all of the images mean. I would much prefer a modified image of the cake arena (perhaps shrunk) with a numerical representation of each area with a small link to a page explaining what all of the numbers mean.--SomeStranger ^(t|c) 19:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, you can blame JRSiebz and Techsmurf for the olives. I'm not married to them. It's a fairly trivial change to the code to switch the image. But, seeing as how there was little input on anything, I went with what we had so far. As far as the images being unclear, it was a risk I took to remove meaningless image clicks. I hate it when an image is clickable but all it leads to is the image page, especially when that image is not "native" to that page's content (olive having a clickable olive image, for example, is something I'm okay with). And, according to Template Talk:Click, adding in alt text for click isn't possible. Though I don't know if that is still true. As such, I'm not terribly happy with the current question marks; was debating going with candy_question.gif instead. --Flargen 23:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh, and as for explaining what things mean, that's basically the role of the event pages themselves. Ultimate Cage Match, for example. I think it should be pretty intuitively clear that "more olives = more better". --Flargen 23:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)