Emphasis on Competitive Gameplay
The Dustloop Wiki is not a place to talk about the lore of the games - there are other wikis for that. The purpose of the character pages is to give information about how a character plays in a competitive/tournament setting. Try to keep any backstory/personality section for characters brief - think about a paragraph total. Use the majority of the overview section to discuss the character's play style/unique abilities in the game, like how would you describe to a new player what this character does in a conversation.
Remember the Intended Audience
When writing guides, remember the intended audience is beginner and intermediate players --not experts.
- Move explanations should not be very long if possible. Use bullet lists to list interesting properties, and paragraphs for deeper explanations.
- Do not waste words describing what the attack looks like - that is what the image is for.
- An exception is when the move is too visually complex for a small set of images to explain. In these cases, describing what a move looks like is acceptable.
- Do not compare a move against older versions of the move unless there's a really good reason to do so.
- Ex: Explaining that the older version of an attack was an overhead doesn't help the reader learn about THIS version of the game.
- The combo section should not list ALL combos for a character. List enough for a person to learn the basics for standard situations (common starters, big punishes, corners, etc.)
- The strategy section should explain the goals of the character and how to achieve said goals. Be sure to explain tips and tricks the character uses such as Yosuke's glide technique, Arakune's fast-fall, Slayer's BDC, or Kagura's easy drive attack inputs.
Tone
The primary goal is to transfer information to the reader - it's best to think of yourself as a technical writer rather than a story teller. If information can be conveyed while being entertaining then all the better, but do not sacrifice informational value simply to be entertaining. Please try to keep this wiki primarily a place for information rather than to write jokes and story synopses. One suggestion is to mix the two; incorporate useful information into the entertainment and not simply joke around.
The main offender of this tenant is adding joke captions for images; occasional joking is fine, but giving every image a joke is overkill. Try adding a little useful info, trivia, or even no caption at all.
Length
Readers don't have a long attention span so get to the point - this isn't a school book report and you're not trying to hit a word count. Having said that, it's a difficult balancing act between being thorough enough to fully explain something, but brief enough that readers don't get bored.
Look over what you've written and try to remove filler words or find a clearer way to phrase a sentance.
Other common pitfalls include:
- Adding too many examples to the point that it is a full list rather than a few examples that illustrate the general rule
- Going into details that would be considered trivia rather than help the player learn how or why a system works the way it does
Creating Images
Editing Frame Data
Use the Templates
Templates are pre-defined sets of text used to maintain a uniform look throughout pages on the wiki. You can recognize a template when it's enclosed in double {s such as {{MyTemplate}}
. To learn more about templates, check out mediawiki's help page.
Most users won't need to worry about them as they will already be in place. But just in case all the pages follow the same pattern:
- When in doubt, look at other character pages, copy, and adapt for your own uses.
- Each move uses the template Template:MoveData to lay out an attack with move name, images, captions, and truncated list of frame data.
- Each character's page refers to their Data page that has all the data for that character, for example Answer's links and frame data are all on GGXRD-R2/Answer/Data. Sections on the data page are referenced by the character page, such as by
{{#lst:GGXRD-R2/Answer/Data|5P}}
- When creating AttackData templates for new games, remember that not ALL frame data should be included. For example, Template:AttackData-BBCP does not include P1, P2, or SMP values while Template:AttackData-GGACR does not have GB+, GB-, or TG values.
Examples
Below are examples of the current standards for character page entries for their respective games and or series.
Guilty Gear Series
6P |
---|
Expected features:
- Image of the move
- Frame Data and damage
- general description of when the move is useful
- bullet point list of move properties
- list of gatling options with link to gatling table on frame data page
- supplemental frame data such as invulnerability and wall-stick
- expandable hitbox preview
- different "versions" of moves (as applicable)