3DGC:Design

3D Game Comparison - Game vs. game. No hype; just facts.™

Originally designed for a database, conversion to MediaWiki presents some problems:

This page is MediaWiki-specific but see http://tnlc.com/eep/compare/database.html for general design ideas.

Contents 1 Classification 1.1 Categories 1.2 Namespaces 1.3 Subpages 1.4 Wiki markup comparison 1.5 Extensions 1.5.1 Dynamic Page List (DPL) 1.5.2 Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) 2 Comparison table

Classification

There are different ways of designing this "database"'s classification system using MediaWiki.

Categories

The most obvious is with categories. Unfortunately, these can quickly clutter up the bottom of pages if there are too many. Categories could be named like namespaces (i.e. Game:Tomb Raider) but why not just use namespaces then to reduce having to type the link (:Category:Game:Tomb Raider vs. Game:Tomb Raider)?

Namespaces

Perhaps the next most obvious is with namespaces for games (game:), companies (company:), engines (engine:), characters (character:), effects (effect:), etc.

Subpages

Less obvious is using subpages (games/Tomb Raider) but they may be easier to manage than namespaces, although I'm not sure how DPL (see next section) can handle them. Additionally, subpages are automatically transcludable via template calls ({{/Tomb Raider}}).

Wiki markup comparison

System	Markup	Adavantages	Disadavantages
Category	Category:Games Game (or Category:Game) Category:Years Category:Genres Category:Companies Category:Engines Category:Camera pan, perspective, zoom; shaking (in Category:Effects) Category:Lighting (subcat of Category:Effects or Category:Lighting effects?) Category:Shading pixel shading, vertex shading Category:Physics Category:Collision detection Category:Texture Category:Texture filtering Category:Texture mapping bumpmapping, environment mapping (reflection), mipmapping Category:Sound Category:Characters Category:Actions bow, climb, crawl, crouch, dance, drink, duck, eat, drop, hit, hop, jump, kick, lean, punch, roll, run, sit. skip, sneak, stab, stand, shoot, strafe, swim, swing, tumble, vault, walk Category:Player characters Category:Non-player characters Category:Animals birds, fish, insects, mammals, reptiles--see [1] for extensive list Category:Vegetation flowers, plants, trees Category:Environment Category:Effects Category:Interaction Category:Puzzles Category:Traps/hazards Category:Effects (see also Category:Physics) Category:Breath effects cold breath, fire breath, poison breath Category:Dust effects Category:Lighting effects coronas, flickering, lens flare, lightmaps, shadows Category:Particle effects blood, debris, dust, explosions, fire, gas, shards, sparks, smoke, spray, steam; see weather Category:Reflection envrironment mapping mirrors, water Category:Shards glass, wood Category:Smoke effects Category:Spray effects Category:Steam effects Category:Water effects bubbles, current, drops, ripples, splash, waves Category:Weather effects clouds, fog, lightning, rain, snow, wind transitions (can also apply to levels) Category:Objects--see [2] for extensive list books, candles, doors, flares, Category:lights (flashlignts, lanterns, torches, etc), keys, ladders, ropes, scrolls, staffs, weapons, windows Category:Weapons (melee/ranged?, general type/kind only?)--see [3] for extensive list Category:Bows Category:Guns Projectiles arrows, bullets Category:Swords Category:Surfaces dirt, grass, gravel, metal, mud, plastic, sand, snow, stone, water, wood cutsenes, FMVs, inventory	Default classification system with auto-generated lists	Mixing same-named articles and categories causes redundancy (redirect to categories only?) Games with simple names (like Rune, Dirt, etc) can conflict with object names (like a "rune") or surface types (like "dirt"); engine names like Steam and Source can conflict with the "steam" effect and "source" of something (though rare; or short for "source code"). Lowercase names can help alleviate most of these conflicts but not these: bow action -> bow weapon Camera pan (view pan, camera pan?) -> object pan (pans?) sprite (computer graphics) -> sprite (fantasy creature)
Namespace	Game:Games Game:Tomb Raider Effect:Effects Effect:weather Effect:wind	Name conflicts less likely	Must use extension to generate lists
Subpage	game game/Tomb Raider effect effect/skid mark	Name conflicts less likely	Must use extension to generate lists

Extensions

Note: DPL and SMW appear to cause pages to load slower (lots of server calls, flashing the web browser statusbar like mad most of the time).

Dynamic Page List (DPL)

Using DPL, lists of pages linking to other pages (as well as pages in categories and namespaces) are possible. This may be the best option that will allow all classification schemes to be included/used.

Semantic MediaWiki (SMW)

This extension is similar to DPL in outputting lists of pages in categories and namespaces, but also allows more complex relationships between things. Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated to use (even moreso than DPL), which makes it a last resort. Programmers still code for programmers, apparently...even if they claim to be "semantic"--try being "intuitive" and "user-friendly" instead.

Comparison table

So far I've tried 2 extensions for the comparison table. One (TemplateTable) is easy-to-use but very limited and the other (DPL) is more difficult to use but more customizable (yet still not enough for my needs).