How is our wiki going?

[tomangelo]

Few months ago link to wiki was removed from main site, because some sites of wiki wasn't up-to-date. It passed about 2 months, wiki still isn't on our main site. There is more and more information that need to be described more accurately (like new scene files, or new directory schema, or tips how to compile the game with MSVC compiler). In fact, we have GDD, but it's quite huge and probably it isn't available from search engines, so if someone is looking for help with porting level from original Colobot to Gold, he can't find any tutorial.
I'm just wondering if somebody still remembers about our wiki and what remains to be done.

[tomaszkax86]

Since we have a bit of chaos in here and nobody seems to be interested in topics about Wiki, I guess it would be nice to ask ourselves few questions:

• What information do we have that would be worth putting on Wiki?
  
• What general structure of Wiki should we use?
  
• What should be put in which part of Wiki?
  
• Define some milestones with rough finish dates maybe?
  

I know everyone is either busy doing their school/work stuff or being super lazy and doing nothing productive at all, but we could try to do something. From practice I know it's next to impossible to do anything unless we define some logical goals. Like simple TODO list. I know not everyone can program/write issues/edit Wiki, but everyone can and should make a list of things to be done and share with others. How about we make a list of things we know for sure we need to put on Wiki, decide the structure and style of Wiki, and then people who can do things will make changes to it?

Also, I can't login to our Wiki. It says there's no user "tomaszkax86". Can someone help with that?

[tomangelo]

If I recall correctly, wiki is supposed to be more detailed SatCom (Cbot, objects, etc) + some tutorials, like "how to create new level", unless it changed recently. There was even idea with SatCom being directly downloaded from wiki, but I don't think that there would be necessary to downloading huge description instead of short one with simple descriptions, with possibility to open more advanced specification with an internet browser if we're working on more advanced program.

[krzys_h]

If I remember correctly, we've decided to make GDD first, and then work on the wiki basing on what we've written in the GDD. Well, GDD is still not finished so nothing is going on on the wiki.

There was even idea with SatCom being directly downloaded from wiki, but I don't think that there would be necessary to downloading huge description instead of short one with simple descriptions, with possibility to open more advanced specification with an internet browser if we're working on more advanced program.

I kinda like the idea of opening advanced documentation in the browser. We wouldn't have to worry about HTML formatting in SatCom.

Also, I can't login to our Wiki. It says there's no user "tomaszkax86". Can someone help with that?

I don't remember, did you actually register after wiki reinstall, like, half a year ago?

[tomangelo]

Advanced documentation might scare beginners, they might think "Oh no, so much text, I don't know if I could understand that all". But if they'll look at current, simple text they might be more confident, "oh, it's so simple, I like that".
If we really want, we could hide advanced features with some button "show more", but I think think that we should stay with current division on simple and advanced documentation.

[Simbax]

Yes, let's maintain two separate official sources of crucial informations about the game about programming. That's an awesome idea, especially because of our huge human and time resources.

We can't even rewrite the current SatCom and don't have any documentation of the new features FFS. Maybe better don't make any official wiki and stick to artificial SatCom. When I was working on CBOT wiki I was sure it'll be used as SatCom, guess I was wrong.

Oh, and by the way, the current in-game documentation isn't really simpler than what we have on Wiki as you put it. I'd rather say it lacks a lot of informations and even provide wrong ones. It's not the worst doc I have ever seen, but not the best either. Also, a lot of people probably would like to play in full screen mode. You know, it's much more convenient to read about a game in the actual game than alt-tabbing to RAM-consuming web browser. It will be especially painful on low-end PCs and mobile devices in the future. Why even would someone have to open a separate browser for informations he needs? Is it supposed to be a part of the game or not? Programming in Colobot is not a feature for moders, it is an important part of the game.

[tomangelo]

Current SatCom isn't simpler, because Wiki was in most part copy-paste from SatCom, some of them were slightly expanded.
We don't have documentation because almost no one is working on that (lacks of time, I know).
How often will we change the documentation? And because we're doing releases at least 6 months after previous one, we should have enough time to describe that, unless we won't start to update our wiki and SatCom when code will be released.

[Simbax]

Tell me more about how I wasted hours on writing nearly 40 articles (I still have old txt files) about CBOT which were "copy-pasted", testing a lot of examples, experimenting with not-documented features and reading about general concepts from other sources. There was a plan on an old forum, but nearly anybody stuck with it. I saw someone copy-pasting and not even trying to make articles similar to the others, I was hoping that while I was writing about CBOT at least someone else would write articles about objects and the only person that was actually helpful was krzys_h, who made really good templates. Hell, because of that guys responsible for writing the Object part had easier work to do! They didn't have to fix broken code, provide new one, describing general concepts like variables and so on. It seemed that nobody cared about wiki or my work anyway, so I stopped.

I really too often think that TerranovaTeam thinks that everybody is only waiting for being able to work on Colobot in every free second. No, working on this project at all provide neither fun, nor satisfaction, nor money, nothing. Except criticism, arguments and wasted hours of work. Whatever, I already haven't been doing anything for this project for a long time and it seems it will stay that way.

[tomaszkax86]

I can't even anymore. How many active users do we have anyway?

[tomangelo]

Ok, in fact now cbot documentation is more extensive that I've remembered them. You admitted that some pages was copy-pasted.
I thought that more persons were working on wiki, but if you say you were working almost alone it changes everything.
I can register on wiki and help with that if nobody else is working on it.

[Simbax]

First of all, each article on the PL wiki has to be verified by at least one more person other than an author. If it's a copy-paste from SatCom there is no need to translate it as there is already an translation in the game (however, I wouldn't copy-paste anything to wiki, but at least do some proper formatting). If an article seems to be good enough, it should be considered as ready for translation. There was actually a table for that on Trello, I'm not sure if it still exists and if anything happened there, but I guess it's a good time to remind this awesome tool.

Of course, our main goal is EN wiki. Main article should be in English and eventually it will be translated to Polish after verification.

That's a way we were supposed to work some time ago. I'm curious if at least one article will be written.

Also, work on the wiki would be a little simpler if there would be a good navigation...

EDIT: yeah, our Trello boards needs translation too... I guess we must start from here.

[RaptorParkowsky]

I think we should forget about wiki for now. Completely. And other languages too, except English. Other languages can stay until GOLD Release 1.0 as "unstable", maybe even as "add-ons" marked as unofficial, not checked by TerranovaTeam. I think we can just leave them as they were, waiting for pull request from people, who need them.

First of all we should document all hidden/added functions of CBOT in main SatCom documentation IN GAME. That TXT's will be later very easy to editing and parsing, in every way. I don't know, how commiting this changes in po4a will be working, but I think this should be as easy as it can, without doing a mess in other languages. Next stage should be a small refactoring of existing documentation to make it clearer and gamers friendly. I think we should updating CBOT and game objects documentation just before next another "stable" release, starting from 0.1.6. Especially from 0.1.6, when rest of devlopers will be working on graphic bugfixes.

[krzys_h]

I don't know, how commiting this changes in po4a will be working, but I think this should be as easy as it can, without doing a mess in other languages.

You just edit the English .txt file and then execute "make" as you normally would, po4a will detect changes and update translation files. That's the reason why we eve use it instead of normal text files with translations - the parts of files that did not change will be translated, parts that were changed will be displayed in English until somebody translates them. That makes keeping the translations synchronized a lot easier.

First of all we should document all hidden/added functions of CBOT in main SatCom documentation IN GAME. That TXT's will be later very easy to editing and parsing, in every way.

That's what we should discuss now - do we want to work on first - SatCom or wiki? Or maybe copy the same text for both?

I also have an idea to do the reverse of what we were planning earlier with importing wiki into SatCom. Maybe instead of using MediaWiki we could just make an online SatCom viewer, using the same formatting tags as the game does and loading files directly from GitHub? That would be a lot easier to maintain, that's really important considering how little time most of us have to work on this project.

[Simbax]

I also have an idea to do the reverse of what we were planning earlier with importing wiki into SatCom. Maybe instead of using MediaWiki we could just make an online SatCom viewer, using the same formatting tags as the game does and loading files directly from GitHub? That would be a lot easier to maintain, that's really important considering how little time most of us have to work on this project.

That's a nice idea, but I'm not sure if SatCom syntax is that good. It may need more features in the future also. In that case, wiki won't be needed. I just hope that at least a little of all my precious work will be added...

[tomangelo]

If we want to use SatCom online:
1) Could we just modify some existing engine, or we need to create new engine?
2) We need to use current syntax, or quickly discuss new syntax and implement that in SatCom Online and in game, which may take some time

[krzys_h]

Could we just modify some existing engine, or we need to create new engine?

Probably our own, custom one. That wouldn't be a lot of work through.

We need to use current syntax, or quickly discuss new syntax and implement that in SatCom Online and in game

We already have a second, more user-friendly syntax that was created to ease translations. We can use that as a base for the new format, if we decide to change it.
https://github.com/colobot/colobot-data/...bot-syntax

[tomangelo]

Just came to my mind.
If we want to abandon wiki and store everything on SatCom Online, does this mean that information like "How to compile the game" or "How to make custom levels" will be in SCO too?

[krzys_h]

How to compile the game is on GitHub already, not on the wiki (INSTALL-*.md files in the repo)
I'm not sure about the userlevels. In CeeBot4 this info was in SatCom so why not.

[Simbax]

If we want to abandon wiki and store everything on SatCom Online

Do we? Only three people have agreed here yet. Maybe make a poll?

[tomangelo]

If we want to abandon wiki and store everything on SatCom Online

Do we? Only three people have agreed here yet. Maybe make a poll?

Three people agreed, rest didn't opposed to this.
I cannot make a poll in topic.