Talk:Spells

• TODO: Make individual pages for each spell.
• TODO: Make a template for spell infoboxes (I can't figure out how that works...)

Weakman54 (talk) 08:12, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

As opposed to creating a template for spell infoboxes, I have uploaded images of spell infoboxes from in game, screenshots. You can view these for any spell you've collected (and used?) by pressing escape and clicking progress, then hovering over each spell. I did so for each spell that I have collected on that page thus far. Flabort (talk) 22:14, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually, I like how you've done the new infoboxes, so I'm keeping up the pattern with new pages I make. Feel free to edit the pages I made or however you'd like to do it. Flabort (talk) 17:29, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Page revamp

So, it's been on my mind for a while (especially when adding new spells) - but I get the feeling, that the more spells the game has, the less readable it becomes. At least, considering projectile spells; there are lots of them and there are lots of columns, so in the middle of the table it feels like some mumbo-jumbo of numbers. A good workaround would be to have the header always visible, so the readers know which column is which. Or we could take a different approach, and make a nice list (like three columns) with only the spell icon and name:

• Spark Bolt
• Spark Bolt with Trigger

And then, if we could get some tooltips (presumably generated from the spell's page itself - that would require spells to have their separate pages though), it would look a lot more presentable, and a lot less dense. (Doing something simillar to the progress page would look super cool, but I feel like it'd be hard to find a spell without being able to CTRL+F its name.)

"But what about sorting the spells by damage?" - that's a good point that I don't know how to solve yet. But y'know, it's the discussion page, so let's discuss! Also: Flabort would be probably happy to hear that we went back to his idea of this page, lol. Gloore (talk) 18:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

RE: the point about spell tooltips and separate spell pages: personally I'm most in favour of giving every individual spell a separate page, rather than trying to group them. It's a simpler pattern for new contributors to follow, nobody has to be called on to make a judgement call every other month as new spells are added and we need to know whether we group them or not, and it gives us more options with templating to help lessen the workload of editing for all of us overall. Granted, there is likely to be some arguably "duplicated" information, especially with spells that have a "with Timer"/ "with Trigger" variant.

For those spells, and for spells like Spitter Bolt, Magic Missile, and Firebolt, which have several "size" variants, I think it's most effective to keep their individual pages more minimal, and have a shared "Fireball Spell Family" kind of page; we could even look to use templates to copy the info (e.g., combat tactics) across into all the individual spell pages, rather than actually duplicating information.

For the main point though, I think I do see the more abbreviated list as more beneficial for a general spells page. If folks want a big comparison table, there should be a "Spells Stats Comparison" page with a table that is (ideally) automatically generated from the infobox data on spell pages, to keep maintenance requirements to an absolute minimum IMO. Vexx32 (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I vote in favor of individual spell pages. Like Vexx said, it's easier to make a single page for a new spell rather than think about if there's a similar spell that it should be grouped with. Spells are only going to get more complex and might fit into multiple groups, like Larpa Bounce: is it a part of Larpa or Bounce? Also, as mentioned by Gloore, having individual pages means each spell has a reliable source from where its data can be pulled, so only one page needs be updated instead of both the Spells page and the spell itself.

Spells with Large/Giant variants, or just variants in general, could have a table on their pages comparing all the spells within the family, like so:

	Magic Missile	Large Magic Missile	Giant Magic Missile
Mana Drain	70	90	120
Damage	75	100	125
Uses	10	8	10
Etc.	...	...	...

On the topic of sorting, a big table containing all the spell data (similar to Enemy Information Table) could work for people that want to compare statistics. Each spell entry would get its data from spell's page and it would update accordingly. The Spells page itself could be trimmed down to be similar to Enemies or like the in-game Progress chart. — Gat235 (talk) 07:09, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm against having individual spell pages for every single spell. We used to have this before and all that really amounted to was many spell pages containing duplicate information with only the infobox being different. In other cases where the original spell was referenced, ex. "this is the most powerful form of firebolt", made the spellpage extremely bare and didn't seem to be able to justify its own existance.

This was the initial argument made to have tabbable infoboxes made that could cover spells with very few differences between them, such as "with trigger/timer" things and large/giant versions of the same effect. I do think we should be careful about grouping similar stuff together though if the effect isn't extremely similar. For example, the "spells to" i don't quite feel right about, especially with the inclusion of "spells to power" which isn't even the same class as the others.

I do not think that making these judgements on what should and should not be grouped is very hard. If in doubt, then _don't_ group. If we were to have spell "family" pages, then the same judgement call needs to be made again on what to include in it, so that'd just mean another page. Lancar223 (talk) 14:00, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

If we're going to stick with the current combined pages, then I feel we need to define which ones should stay as groups, which should be split into individual pages, and (potentially) ones that should be grouped together. For now, let's ignore the grouping on Template:SpellNav since it was done to avoid redundancy (No need to display "Circle of" nine times). The Spells to situation was due to me assuming that it'd be more convenient to aggregate the six spells into one because they shared the same aspect of conversion and naming convention. In hindsight, they should have been separate from the beginning since they each can definitely have different applications and strategies, and the introduction of Spells to Power makes this even more apparent. In fact, Spells to Power isn't even classified as a Utility Spell and only shares the naming convention.

Pages with timer/trigger variants and size variants should obviously stay together since they basically do the exact same thing with increasing damage. But then there are the spells that have logically "larger" variants like Concentrated Light into Intense Concentrated Light, Digging Bolt into Digging Blast, and the new Disc Projectile into Giga Disc Projectile into Summon Omega Sawblade, which all have their own individual pages. Pages that could be split include the aforementioned Spells to page as well as the Larpa page due to Larpa Bounce being a odd case of falling into two groups.

As for fitting Gloore's suggestion of having spell statistics stored on each page, I believe that having the data stored, but hidden, on their redirect pages could still function. The redirect page data could be sourced from the shared pages to avoid the additional hassle of having to update two pages if a variant is changed. — Gat235 (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Quick comment to the spell stats: there is also the idea of making a "Spell Information Table" (similar to Enemy Information Table), that would contain all the data about the spells. Then, the basic pages and infoboxes could be made using that one centralized resource. It would probably be easier to manage than hidden stats on redirect pages. Gloore (talk) 21:03, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Organizing of spells

Hey guys, I'm kinda new to this wiki stuff so take it with a grain of salt, but I feel that for now the page is a bit cluttered. Spells from one familly are all over the place (like Acid Trail and Fire Trail). So I figured I'll get to it and try to organize it a bit with a big table - simillar to what Gungeon did with guns.

With this, we could have a quick overview of different spells in the game with additional info being added to specific pages. Also, I thought of not going 100% with alphabetical order and grouping simillar spells together (like Firebolt, Large Firebolt and Giant Firebolt in order). Also, we could get different sections and subsections for different types of spells. As in:

   - Modifiers
       -- Trails
       -- Arcs
       -- Formations

What do you guys think? Gloore (talk) 18:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of the table solution. I would suggest adding a colum for the spell icons. The separate spell pages could then be used for strategies and more in-depth descriptions of the spells. It might be reasonable - after the spell infobox template is used - to remove the screenshots of the infoboxes and use the spell icon as the image in the inoboxes. That should help with accessibility and make it easier to search for things. --Arthan the one (talk) 08:11, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we need another column for icons - we could just add them above the name. But for now, we either have to cut them out from screenshots or wait for data miners to extract them. Either way, it's a pain to do! For infoboxes, yeah, the spell icon is really needed, BUT I would leave the tables from the game in a gallery of some sorts - they look real nice! Also, thank you for formatting the rest of the spells! Although, I would replace the "Description" column with "Effect" column - as some descriptions don't tell anything, see Chunk of Soil. ~ Gloore (talk) 12:35, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Adding icon to the name: that seems fine, i just wanted them to be more recognizable.
Description to Effect: that's a good idea, the descriptions were really just a starting point as i haven't seen quite a few of the spells in detail.
Having the original Screens from the game around is handy for checking for "translation errors", so that seems fine, too.
--Arthan the one (talk) 13:13, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Ack my baby - Actually, this looks really nice, and while it's gonna be more work to add spells as they're found (due to having to add rows and fill out information etc), it's really useful with information at a glance and all sorts of potential. I do object to having certain projectiles and static projectiles in the materials section - that section was created specifically for spells with "Material" as their type, such as the cement spell or "Sea of X". Mist of Spirits and Raincloud, for example, I think should be in Projectiles.

So while seeing such a large edit all at once on something I spent a lot of time on for the past few days is jarring, I approve; mostly. Flabort (talk) 20:46, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree that spells should be with their type, i hadn't noticed the Rain cloud when converting to tables - i was mostly operating on full auto ;-) If no-one else does it until i have the time, i'll go ahead and move it. pretty sure that was just a simple oversight. --Arthan the one (talk) 15:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

moved rain cloud to static projectiles, wasn't sure about mist of spirits - the page say projectile, but it seems that it should be static projctile; can someone provide a screenshot of the infobox? --Arthan the one (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I definitely jumped the gun with it - sorry for that! I figured that the spell list was a work in progress and subject to changes (although not as big as that one). But yeah, I was a tad too eager. And thanks to devs and HDanke1061 we now have icons for all kinds of stuff! We can start working on adding them to infoboxes, but I don't know whether we should add them to the table as a separate column or put them into "name" column and split it with a line break. As in:

Icon	Name
	Acid Ball

Name
Acid Ball

Gloore (talk) 22:13, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

just so we're less certain: the third option:

Name
Acid Ball

i think i'll start adding the images in front of the name this afternoon as that would be easiest (will have to find all the right files^^), and if we decide to change it we can do so fairly easily

i'm somewhat curious though - how did you manage to get all the good quality icons with transparency? has there been some release of icon files? you mentioned us having the developers to thank for it? --Arthan the one (talk) 05:54, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

From what I know, the devs were super kind and put the zip with all icons to the discord channel! And then HDanke upscaled them to 5x their size, because wiki use a real awful upscaling algorithm so they were blurry. And yeah, the third option is probably the best of both worlds for now! Gloore (talk) 08:29, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

i have actually gone with a separate column, just adding them to the name gave inconsistent results. will proceed with the remaining categories now, then the spell pages and ther infoboxes--Arthan the one (talk) 16:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Does every spell really need its own page? I think obviously direct size variants could share pages. There could be one page for multicast spell, one for multicast scatter and maybe a single one for formations. Spells, like touch and mist spells, where the only difference is material could be in one page. And so on. Readers should not have to click to so many pages to look at stats. I'll start by adding information on all the spitter spells to the spitter bolt page. LightningmanFTW84912 (talk) 09:02, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Trigger and Timer

we might want to add the trigger and timer spells asseparate spells instead of variants; they seem to be treated as such by the game:

• they get separate encyclopedia icons
• they have separate localization entries
• they can have completely new effects )

This is the list of all spells with timers and triggers from the localization file: Timer:

1. Spark bolt with timer
2. Magic arrow with timer
3. Magic bolt with timer
4. Energy orb with a timer
5. Spitter bolt with timer
6. Energy sphere with timer
7. Tentacle with timer

Trigger:

1. Spark bolt with trigger
2. Spark bolt with double trigger
3. Magic arrow with trigger
4. Magic bolt with trigger
5. Energy orb with a trigger
6. Decoy with trigger
7. Bubble spark with trigger
8. Firebolt with trigger
9. Unstable crystal with trigger
10. Dormant crystal with trigger

What are your opinions? --Arthan the one (talk) 16:59, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to seperate them from their original variants. At the very least, it's more clearer what spells could have triggers and it's easily available. Gloore (talk) 17:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I started linking trigger/timer variants to the pages for the base spells before I saw this. It's probably worth making unique pages, but for now I've been consolidating them to lead to the same place --FuNx24x7 (talk) 15:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

If I may suggest something, I believe there's a way to make infoboxes have tabs at the top that allow you to switch between different information. For example, a game wiki may allow you to compare how a character's look has changed over several sequels. A real pezzo guy (talk) 03:37, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I looked into it, and while i only half-understand the code behind the infobox and tabber code, I can't really test it out due to the Tabber extension not being installed/active on this wiki (despite the documentation on Fandom saying it should be on by default). To make this happen, activation of that extension would need to be a first step. After that, I can test a bit in sandbox to see if the functionality needs to be part of an entirely new infobox template (named variantspell, or something) or if it can be seamlessly integrated into the existing one. No promises i'll succeed :p. Should we give it a go? Lancar223 (talk) 08:55, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't see why not if you can, but I may be a bit biased on that :). How easy would it be to install the tabber extension? A real pezzo guy (talk) 21:21, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

You have to have the admin do it. I'll put an entry on their page, see what happens. Lancar223 (talk) 12:54, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Re: Tables and such

Now, that 1.0 is out and around, we've seen lots of different spell modifiers and static projectiles that have properties which are not showed in tables (such as Reduce Recharge Time decreasing recharge time - there is no column for that in projectile modifiers). But I don't think we should add more columns to the tables, because those cases are few - just put them into notes or something. And it would look like "Other" table, where some columns are always empty.

But still, that's a work in progress and I need to hear your thoughts on that. Gloore (talk) 11:27, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Uncollapse the tables?

The collapsed tables make it impossible to Ctrl-F search within the page (unless you manually expand all of them). Can I suggest removing the autocollapse that was added last month? Ping user:Veeyu22 for thoughts. :) Quiddity-wp (talk) 12:35, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

This was continuously frustrating me (and I imagine other people?), and nobody has replied, so I've boldly uncollapsed the Template code. Hope that's ok. Quiddity-wp (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

That should be fine. I went back and added the mw-collapsible class so that they can still be collapsed if desired, but I think leaving them expanded by default is OK. Vexx32 (talk) 23:41, 30 December 2020 (UTC)