Wiki for Railroads!

[intisol]

Hi everybody.
My second post here.
I added some basic information to the interface section of the Railroads! wiki. I hope this is in the correct mood of the thing and that more info will follow in the same basic and simple style (eg: how and where add maps and other mods downloaded from here).
I just want to advice that from an inner page of the railroads wiki (eg. Interface) if you click to the "main page" button you don't get the main page of the Railroads! wiki but, instead, you get lost. This should be fixed.

Happy new year everybody from Italy (excuse my tricky English).

Oscar

[Falconer]

I have added the Wiki link to the top forum menu. That way we can all reach it easily.

I noticed someone laid the foundations, good work.

We're also running into a rather interesting question rather soon... RK, you asked about the Main Page being empty. Originally I had planned to open up the Wiki for more games than just Railroads but the way you have structured the Wiki (and it is a perfectly reasonable way of doing it), it becomes a wiki -just- for Railroads because a page like for instance Maintenance can only be used once.

So, the question is; do we re-structure so that other wiki's can be added, or do we make it a Railroads wiki only... (It's a decision we, HG, have to make, I'll get back to you on that)

edit
Decided that we'd LOVE to have more game wiki's here at HG and that it would be incredibly contra productive if we were to set up a completely new Wiki up for everything we do. It would also defeat the purpose of people creating their own wiki's.

I restructured the Railroads! wiki to reflect this. For any pages you create, use the following format: Sid Meier's Railroads!:Pagename (ie: Sid Meier's Railroads!:Maintenance).

[RedKnight]

Jancsika, sure, a Map Creation page(s) sounds great... I personally like figuring out how a game works, so I can optimize my play. The Menu reflects that. But there is much more to this game, of course...

The Menu I slapped up there is only something to get us started. I expect and hope for it to change greatly over time. The X-COM wiki has re-invented itself several times over the years, with major re-organizations and facelifts as it grew from piecemeal articles, to a comprehensive summary of everything in the game. (With a nice looking Main page!)

Also, I'm not the type to make things look pretty... it's just the facts, with me. But it takes all types to make a wiki, so anyone jump in with whatever they want to do. If you are considering doing a big change, ask about it first on the Discussion tab of the Main page.

I've already learned something, as of the second page on Interface, posted by Initsol... now I see why Maintenance uses that odd 5.2 year period. It's 1,000 of the 16 ticks per month! Interesting page, thanks for that.

Which reminds me... "Interface" might not be the perfect place for that. (I was thinking, Hotkeys, etc. when I slapped it up there.) Everyone feel free to make a new entry or tweak an unused one. That menu is only a straw man. Modding is so big it should have its own top-level Menu entry on the Main page... somebody please add it.

Falconer, it's looking great! I know others have tussled with the naming problem... Oblivion also made the same choice. But if there's any way around it, it sure is nice to be able to just have to put a topic in [[brackets]] and keep moving. If there isn't any practical way, though, c'est la vie.

[Disco Stu]

Hi y'all,

been visiting this forum quite a bit lately, seems like the only place to offer some serious game strategy discussion. I think the Railroads! wiki is a great idea!

After playing the game for a while during the holidays, I thought I'd share some of my observations. So I created a new wiki section about stock trading. May (and probably will) not be 100% accurate, so everyone please feel free to correct any errors or add your own insights.

Greetingz,

Zef

[RedKnight]

Looks good, Zef! I will add in a few data I collected.

One question: What does the "SG" mean in e.g "if the current stock price of a competitor equals SG20 ..."?

[RedKnight]

Ok Stu, I added my stuff onto your page. Good deal! I also included an example (#2 in Buyouts) that Snoopy55 posted over in my Strategy thread on stocks.

Feel free to edit the wiki page however you like. It was a little hard to decide where to put some of my stuff (and whether or not some of it was repetitive).

It looks like maybe we should make a decision over whether to standardize number formats for the wiki. I will post a Request For Input on the back (Discussion) of the main wiki page.

[Falconer]

Looks pretty detailed.

As a side note, the main page links are a little big, overwhelming even. Perhaps we should reconsider the layout of that...

[RedKnight]

One thing would be to make them be farther into the TOC (use 2 ='s instead of 1). For X-COM though, we didn't use TOC at all for the main page. I'm good with most anything.

[Disco Stu]

RedKnight, thank you for adding your valuable observations.

I must confess that I thoroughly read your file on "Stock Basics" before I started the wiki page. Didn't want to rip off your work (especially with all the plagiarism warnings on the wiki page...). Kinda hoping you'd notice and add some content - didn't have to wait that long thx!

Concerning the mysterious term SG, this is the currency symbol as I see it in the game. Maybe Suriname Guilder? Or Sid's Gold? But I imagine it represents Sterling Gold. I noticed some Railroads! screen shots online that showed the dollar sign $ instead, guess it depends on the game language version. Kinda like the sound of sterling gold, it has a classic ring to it that fits nicely to the game era. Or does SG mean something completely different?

Maybe we should add an entry about currency to the wiki site somewhere, and also decide on a standard currency symbol for use on Railroads! wiki pages? Mixing currency symbols seems like a cause for confusion. Since the SG symbol is special to (the european edition of) the game and the $ symbol is universally recognized as a currency symbol, the latter seems like the better option. (I'm trying not to get into a heated america vs. europe debate...)

Anyway, just my 2 pence

Now who's gonna write a nice page on trains or tracks? This game is called Railroads!, or isn't it?

[snoopy55]

the 'Tips for publishing your mod' section was added to but I and/or it need a little clearing up by whomever added to it. In the part 'replace TAG_CITY_NAME_CLEARWATER with TAG_YOUR MAP NAME_NAME_CLEARWATER', isn't that supposed to be TAG_CITY_YOUR MAP NAME_NAME_CLEARWATER? The 'CITY' does have to be in there doesn't it?

Also, names in my map would have no effect in other maps would it? Even the main Cities file in the game does not have all the names used. That is specific to each map.

[RedKnight]

Hiya Disco,

Those changes look great. Right, I asked Falconer whether we might have a standard numeric convention, or ask the community, or leave it up to individuals... he replied, let's make it U.S. standards... because even though he's European, the majority of folks are U.S. So he made a note on the Discussion tab of the Main page, to use U.S. conventions. I was actually asking about whether we want commas or periods to indicate thousands; I guess it matters less about currency... exept for the fact others may not know what some of the abbreviations are, like I didn't. I guess Railroads! checks ones' local settings because mine always used $; thus I didn't even know where you were getting SG from.

I too certainly hope folks jump in with stuff on trains and track, etc. Me, I'm a numbers person. But I know from other wikis that there will be e.g. folks who like playing with graphics, and are liable to e.g. post up some pretty train pictures for that section. Unless a wiki is absolutely huge, it tends to go in spurts, as individuals have free time plus inclination to contribute. (Right ATM I'm a little pressed.) Over a long period of time, it can become a deep, great resource. "If you build it, they will come."

[d53642]

The CIty doesn't have to be there, look at any of my maps or some of the retail ones Snoop.

<City>
<szName>TAG_ALASKA_NAME_HOLY_CROSS</szName>
<Type>Village</Type>
<StartX>19</StartX>
<StartY>150</StartY>
<Rotation>45.000004</Rotation>
<bIsStartLocation>false</bIsStartLocation>
<szDefaultTrackSide>SOUTH</szDefaultTrackSide>
</City>

<City>
<szName>TAG_US_NORTHEAST_NAME_YORK</szName>
<Type>Town</Type>
<StartX>40</StartX>
<StartY>170</StartY>
<bIsStartLocation>false</bIsStartLocation>
<szDefaultTrackSide>SOUTH</szDefaultTrackSide>
<CitySongs>
<CitySong>
<szSongID>AS3D_ERA_EARLY_CM_JOHN_BROWN_EARLY</szSongID>
<SongEras>
<szSongEra>ERA_EARLY</szSongEra>
</SongEras>
</CitySong>
<CitySong>
<szSongID>AS3D_ERA_MID_CM_JOHN_BROWN_MID</szSongID>
<SongEras>
<szSongEra>ERA_MID</szSongEra>
</SongEras>
</CitySong>
<CitySong>
<szSongID>AS3D_ERA_LATE_CM_JOHN_BROWN_LATE</szSongID>
<SongEras>
<szSongEra>ERA_LATE</szSongEra>
</SongEras>
</CitySong>
</CitySongs>
<Rotation>-134.999344</Rotation>
</City>


Daryl

[snoopy55]

OK, I conceed to it's being there, I just don't see the reasoning. I'll add it to my notes on map making tho, along with a simple way to do it.

[recca421]

added instrictions on how to enable error logging to the "interface" section - this setting actually helped me a great deal in eliminating CTD problems on my main system. Also (more than likely, anyways) useful for modders.

[Falconer]

Yup, good tip!