Guide to contributing to the wiki
Foreword
Welcome to the guide for contributing to the Yogstation Wiki - we're happy to have you here. As a first order of business, in order to edit pages on this Wiki, a Yogstation Wiki account is required. These can be obtained by joining the Yogstation Discord at https://discord.gg/0keg6hQH05Ha8OfO, and making a request in the #Wiki-and-Mentor channel; Wiki staffers with the relevant permissions would be glad to assist in getting an account set up for you (a list of all active Wiki team members can be found here. We welcome all contributors and assume good faith for all edits made, so there are very few protected pages, but Wiki Administrators do patrol changelogs to attempt to combat bad faith attacks or changes, so please be mindful of what you are doing and be ready to justify it if it raises a red flag. Once you've received your account, don't be afraid to jump in and start correcting and adding to pages.
Getting Started
There are a few concepts that drive Wiki functionality, and this guide will attempt to touch on the very basics that you'll need to get in and get going. If you have questions regarding more advanced topics, you can ask in the above mentioned #Wiki-and-Mentor channel of the Yogstation Discord, and Wiki staff will try to help you as they can.
Wikicode
Wikicode is the syntax used by all Wikipedias, including this one. If you don't know it and are prepared to learn, you can read the internal wikicode page here, or read the Wikipedia page about it here. It is daunting at first, but once learned the processes become more intuitive, much like coding, which in some regard it is.
These functions are used for the formatting and visual display of information, mainly. Instead of having a page be a long meandering paragraph, Wikicode allows information to be broken up and changed in appearance for greater clarity, such as the section headings shown in this guide. If you aren't able to figure it out on your own, please get in touch with Wiki staffers on the Yogstation Discord - they can attempt to guide you through the process, or potentially take your raw page information and apply formatting to it if you have no interest in Wikicode and merely wish to produce content.
What needs doing?
The Yogstation Wiki is an utterly massive project, and the active Wiki Staff team is small, comparatively. Most everywhere you look there is out-of-date information, duplicate guides, broken links, unintelligible references. The Wiki Team attempts to keep core pages up to date and patrolled, but there are many pages on the periphery in dire need of attention. A good place to start is by analyzing your strengths and the completeness of your knowledge within the context of Space Station 13, and then attempting to revise or update material relevant to that. If you are a person who plays Roboticist every round, then take a moment to look over the Roboticist page and verify the information there - add tips and tricks that you've picked up; publish a new guide page for some advanced facet of the position - in short, play to your strengths when editing and contributing, otherwise information can be left worse off than when it started.
New pages
New content is constantly being added to Space Station 13, which requires new tutorials and guides and information. Before you begin a new page, please search thoroughly and completely for an existing or similar page to avoid creating duplicate guides or pages. If you can't find it or anything related to it, you are clear to start a page yourself! This can be done simply by plugging in the title of the page you would like to create in the Search Bar in the top right - if nothing is found in the Wiki databanks, you will be prompted to create a new page under that title; this will generate a blank page that you can begin formatting and filling in with your information. It is highly recommended that you first assess the type of page you are trying to make, i.e. is it a new guide? is it a new job? and then navigate to pages that exist within that same familial typing and copy the formatting over to your new page. This will save you a lot of work in the end, as well as standardize the formatting across your new page and existing ones of the same type.
Content revisions
A list of pages which need revisions can be found here. Revision flags on Jobs or Guides tend to take highest priority, as these are the pages utilized the most by Wiki visitors.
As a recommendation, if you wish to work on a page uninterrupted and not worry about other users editing the same thing while you are working, you can mirror the page in to your personal sandbox area or anywhere in your own pages. This will create a "localized" copy that you can change unfettered by interference by others.
Additionally, if you are revising a page, PLEASE put a summary in the Summary section of your editing window towards the bottom of the page. This will help Wiki Administrators immensely when patrolling new page edits.
Images
If you have image files to attach, you can upload them via the Upload File link on the left toolbar (also accessed by Alt-Shift-U keyboard command), and then add them to the page they're intended for.
For item images, it is appreciated if the image has a blank background and is in the .gif or .png format.
For most ingame assets, the easiest way to add images of them is to download the source code, open the icons .dmi files and export images as .gif's or .png's from there.
Marking for revision and deletion
If a page is out of date or doesn't have a reason for existing, add one of the following tags to the top of the page (TO COPY THESE TAGS, PLEASE VIEW THE SOURCE CODE OF THIS PAGE):
Needs revision due to being out of date:
|
This page needs revising!
The following page is out of date and/or needs to be revised. If the page's guide needs revision, see here for an example. |
Flag for deletion:
 THIS PAGE HAS BEEN MARKED FOR DELETION
|
| For the following reason: REASON. Tagged by: NAME |
Jokes
Some pages are intended to be entertaining, but when writing guides, please remember that a new player might not realize that something is a joke or sarcasm and will instead take it at face value. For more practical guides, less jokes are better. Where it is more discretionary, please think about where jokes fit and where they don't, and if you are updating someone else's joke, think whether yours is actually funnier.
Guide to Writing and Revising a Guide
Always keep in mind what the guide pages on this Wiki are for. They are so new players can quickly glean relevant information about the role they have chosen, or been chosen for, or about mechanics of the game on the whole.
A good guide generally consists of:
- A brief introduction or overview of what the guide is going to be describing or accomplishing.
- A detailed run down of the various topics mentioned above, with sectioning and sub-sectioning for clarity and ease of access.
- Images and visual information where needed and appropriate.
- Reference links or further reading material to give a grasp of content adjacent or connected to the topic at hand - for example, the Cook job page has links to the Guide to Food and Guide to Drinks, as these are relevant.
- A conclusion which ties together all the above information and seeks to reiterate the material covered prior.
Poorly formatted or written guides can make it hard to convey relevant information and may be discouraging to newer players.
Extra tips:
- Keep your facts correct and as the primary focus.
- If you are writing a basic guide, keep it basic, and put the advanced topics on a separate page.
- Make use of formatting, tables, white space, headings, and other methods to draw attention and give direction to critical points of information
Adding icons
What would articles be without proper icons of things like ingame-items
Simple Icons
Here is a short guide of how to extract, upload and use them:
- Download the source code
- Start the program Dream Maker (was installed with BYOND)
- Menu > File > Open Environment > your_path_to_the_code/yogstation.dme
- Navigate the filestructure on your left to your icon, for example icons\obj\hydroponics\harvest.dmi
- Rigclick your image on the right, for example firelemon > Export
- Make sure to save as *.png for normal icons and *.gif for animated icons
- Go to the Upload of the wiki
- Select your file and upload it. Make sure to leave a comment like "Extracted from icons/obj/.../xxx.dmi"
- Write down the name of your uploaded file. In this example File:Firemelon.png
- Go to the article you want to edit and insert your image with [[File:Firemelon.png]]
Animations of combined icons
Some icons are used together to create animations. Do this to combine them into an animated gif:
- Open the appropriate *.dmi like explained for simple icons. We will use icons/obj/hydroponics/growing.dmi as an example
- Select multiple images with Ctrl-Leftclick
- Rightclick > Combine > 1 direction (The other options are used for things like walking-animations for different directions)
- If the images are not in the right order: Rightclick > Edit Pixels/Movie
- Use Shift+Drag to swap the images on the bottom into your preferred order
- exit the editing view via the Back-button (right bottom)
- Rightlick > Export > Safe as gif
- (optional) Revert the Image-combination with Rightclick > Split > Split animation frames
- To adjust the animation-speed of your gif you have to edit it. In this example we will be using https://ezgif.com/maker
- Upload your gif
- Change the delay of the frames (I usualy go for 50)
- Set a tick at 'don't stack frames'
- Make and download the gif
- View it to make sure it works as needed
Automisation
You can extract all icons of a *.dmi (as png) with this little python-tool: https://github.com/alexkar598/DMIExport/releases/tag/1.0.0 Animated icons will be extracted by frames as separate images.
Beware: Make sure to review the results, as icon names can get mismatched.
Useful pages
Categories: Used, unused and wanted
Templates: Used, unused and wanted
All pages: All existing pages and Wanted pages
Contribution guides
| |
| General | Hosting a server, Setting up git, Guide to GitKraken, Downloading the source code, Guide to contributing to the game, Reporting issues, Game resources category, Guide to changelogs |
| Database (MySQL) | Setting up the database, MySQL |
| Coding | Understanding SS13 code, SS13 for experienced programmers, Text Formatting |
| Mapping | Guide to mapping, Room Structure, Map merger |
| Spriting | Guide to spriting |
| Wiki | Guide to contributing to the wiki, Wikicode, Styleguide |