Wiki?

[catty-cb]

And @catty-cb  attachments work again

That's really great news and I also see I don't need to attach the spreadsheets .... thru after so long without being able to do it on WoB I have this overwhelming desire to do it just cos I can   

Have given the idea of a wiki much thought over the day, and bit of a sidetrack backwards before the site went down we had maybe a dozen people posting and not very frequently and I freely admit that I'm probably one of the worse when it comes to posting on here .... I visit for any new mods from Kid and Abandoned Smallville series and that is pretty much it, and yet I'm a regular poster over at Simtropolis .... why there and not here I think its because the site always has someone posting about something even if its not something you are particularly interesting in, they have welcomed any game that involves people and how and what they live in, the site is extremely well run and while all the staff are volunteers they keep things running smoothly and don't join in any heated discussions or allow those discussions to continue past a certain point nor do they ban anyone unless they have done something really inappropriate.

Now the other main reason I think their forums is still so active is while they have a discord channel, you can't join it until you have posted in the forums, here the banished discord is completely separate, the same situation applies when it comes to the steam banished forums, reddit, etc. Before these sites came along people would have been posting in the WoB forums and in all honesty I can't see that changing .... people are going to post where they feel most comfortable and as a case in point me and and simtropolis forums

So that brings me back to here and the wiki .... WoB needs a point of difference, a reason for the users to visit, here we have the exchange and that's a major drawcard when it comes to visitors and people signing in to be members, but we need something else, something that is only here and I think a banished wiki covering everything to do with the game from basic how do you do something, thru to tutorials to re @kralyerg suggestion about MegaMod .... being able to come along as a user and see a detailed wiki entry on all the .... for example Inns what they look like, how many bannies can stay in them, links to where they are located on either this exchange or if they are anywhere else .... sort of like a giant reference library of what's either in the game already or what you can add to the game via a mod

I still think whether via the forums or if a wiki allowed comments you would still want to give the people the ability to post questions and get answers .... but and this is the big sticking point its no good creating a wiki if no one is willing to spend the time adding the entries to it, and we all have our own interests so carving time out of our days to do something that most of us are going to find pretty boring ....

[brads3]

Well, whether it's a page about mods with accompanying descriptions and pictures, or a page a learning how to mod, what do you think is the best format?

Just making a forum post about it seems inadequate.  I like the idea of it being wiki-based, just so it's more collaborative, but I'm open to suggestions.


There's a whole array of different options that I can install for free.

there are lists here of various modders with their mods. I'd recommned a list added with CC mods and accompanying or add on mods in the same list.

maybe i am mis-understanding the question thou. anything beyond that would b a huge undertaking. since modders have moved on,  there may b some info in the development logs. lots of reading to find it. and not ever mod has the same info added. I tried to do a chart on some building requirements and sizes of storage capacities years ago.   not all the info is posted with each mod.

[kid1293]

You have a point @catty-cb
This site should have a better profile, but people seem happy with what is here.
Now, I have a Banished club over at Simtropolis. Abandoned and I will post there too.
There is a risk that we will be alone. When WoB came back, people returned here.
So... WoB is our home. We will do what we can.

I am not interested in a Wiki. But tutorials on modding are needed. Information is
scattered all over the Internet. It can be very hard to get an answer.

We need modders! This is where I think WoB can make a difference.
@scoutae4 is on the right track. Making a tutorial on how to start modding is,
of course, the primary step. If people don't understand the modkit, they give up!

@kralyerg You know what is in the Laboratory here. We have all agreed to share.
Use that. I always leave a trail of code snippets for people to follow and maybe
get interested in modding.

With more people involved in things, not just downloading, a Wiki is not far away!

[catty-cb]

We need modders! This is where I think WoB can make a difference.
@scoutae4 is on the right track. Making a tutorial on how to start modding is,
of course, the primary step. If people don't understand the modkit, they give up

@kid1293 yes that's the lifeblood of the site, but oh boy that modkit is tough reading even  @Discrepancy excellant tutorial on creating a mod in Banished is pretty daunting reading, and thanks again @kralyerg re fixing the attachments issue, as its not only fixed the post attachment problem, but also the missing avator's 

PS: I really like the Banished Ventures wiki, its got summary pages you can comment on, click on any of the mods you get a large picture of the mod, a lot more details and again the ability to add comments

https://www.banishedventures.com/wiki/homes/

[scoutae4]

I agree that new mods grow the community and keep them engaged! I'd be happy to create a series of mini tutorials to ease wannabe modders into the steep learning curve. Maybe once you get momentum, you'll be encouraged to stick with it, you know? I am going through it myself right now so might as well invite anyone interested for the ride-along. I think I'm going to start by posing the question on various Banished boards to see if there is any interest. If it seems viable, then you can guide me on if it is wiki-worthy, and if I should channel interest to WoB or just put it out everywhere...?   

[kid1293]

Mainly WoB!

[kralyerg]

Rather than a wiki for mods, I think a posting of the individual mods with a good description and picture is a good idea.  I have not used MegaMod but I am sure there would be individual mods I would be interested in having.  There are many players who don't use the big mod set, I think, that would appreciate that.  Here at WOB would be a good place  So nice that it is back.

@Abandoned What exactly would you imagine this looks like?  A huge list of mods with links to each one that describes what's in it?

[catty-cb]

I think i can see what abandoned is suggesting, as the downloads area doesn't really show what the mod is or does ... and I'm not for one moment suggesting we alter the downloads area given the effort that's gone into getting it fixed after the file corruption  ... but maybe something like a picture album with a decent picture and a brief description of its stats and it being public so that will attract people to set up an account here so they can download the file

[kralyerg]

Is there an example of something like this?  This is a genuine question. What does something like this actually look like?

There's 385 mods in the 1.0.7 downloads section, not counting the still corrupt files.  There's no way to organize something like that as forum posts.

[Abandoned]

I started one for MegaMod, but it's a huge undertaking on my own, so it's kind of bare bones right now.

I'm also willing to expand the scope beyond MM to include all mods individually if there's desire for that.

@kralyerg I think I misunderstood what you had posted here.  I thought you were wanting to post MM mods individually and I commented on that thought, it would be a huge undertaking.  If I am not mistaken, most MM mods have been released elsewhere especially on WOB. Only those not released individually would need to separated. Great job restoring the site and the downloads.  A Wiki on MM mods alone is a huge undertaking.

Every posted mod has a thread in the Mod Discussion 107 category (viewable by none members), perhaps there would be a good place for added description and pictures.  I always thought the download descriptions should have a link to those threads.  I don't think one picture can accurately describe what is in most mods.  Big job, there are a lot of mods.

[catty-cb]

Not any more as I shut my website down a few years ago, but I had over eighteen thousand pictures of SC4 plugins with what their name and file name was, etc .... couldn't copy the album across to sumtropolis cos the software wasn't compatible , but most of the information is on the omnibus in the form of the data lists (has to split them up cos they were too big to do as a single list) that belonged to each picture, plus I zipped up the pictures and dumped them in a topic over there ... I'll put something together tonight so you see what it originally looked like

[catty-cb]

so my website was using RSMediaGallery to hold very small pictures of SC4 buildings, am attaching one and along with the picture was the unique ID information, file name, name, author and url, for the picture attached I had this information on it

0x2C5C7E2D
CSX Unemployment Office RH_2c5c7e2d.SC4Lot
CSX Unemployment Office by Colyn
https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1825

This worked for SC4 and people are actually using the lists even tho the pictures are sitting on a separate location to the lists, but I don't think it would work for Banished .....

..... anyway I went and took a look at the gallery and found we have 451 pictures just in the Building Category, each picture has a title, category, description and keywords .... it may be possible to add additional fields and more categories to it, it would be faster than starting from scratch ... anyway just a passing through

[catty-cb]

I was rummaging around the internet and found this

https://www.silisoftware.com/tools/banished-colonial-charter/

https://www.silisoftware.com/tools/banished-colonial-charter/building/

[kralyerg]

I was rummaging around the internet and found this

https://www.silisoftware.com/tools/banished-colonial-charter/

https://www.silisoftware.com/tools/banished-colonial-charter/building/

I'm not sure who runs that site.  I think I did at one point, but I forgot.

It's a helpful site, but I don't know if it's completely accurate or up to date.

[kralyerg]

@kralyerg I think I misunderstood what you had posted here.  I thought you were wanting to post MM mods individually and I commented on that thought, it would be a huge undertaking.  If I am not mistaken, most MM mods have been released elsewhere especially on WOB. Only those not released individually would need to separated. Great job restoring the site and the downloads.  A Wiki on MM mods alone is a huge undertaking.

Every posted mod has a thread in the Mod Discussion 107 category (viewable by none members), perhaps there would be a good place for added description and pictures.  I always thought the download descriptions should have a link to those threads.  I don't think one picture can accurately describe what is in most mods.  Big job, there are a lot of mods.

Yes, that was my original post.  But I was setting that aside for the moment and trying to wrap my head around your suggestion and what that would entail.

Adding extra descriptions and images to the existing posts in the forum, while it's easier, feels like it would be cumbersome to actually find anything, searching through pages and pages of posts.

(And I think I broke the part where it auto-creates a discussion post when you post a new download.  I posted 2 the other day, and it didn't make a post.  Need to figure that out)