Namespaces will probably be implemented by the time UT2003 and U2 are concurrent. Until then see UT2003 for how to deal with new pages.
EntropicLqd: Tarquin m8 - from what I've read the UT2K3 class structure is completely different and will contain no content from either Unreal or Unreal Tournament. How we going to integrate information about UT2K3 and Unreal 2 (which I guess will follow the same pattern) into the Wiki? Or are you going to wave your magic wand and create a new one? It's worth starting to consider that now I think. Just don't lose sleep over it.
Tarquin: Big question. I'm aware of it but no magic wands. Thoughts so far:
Contents
Namespaces
Implement some heavy wiki techology such as namespaces so the global namespace is the latest version of the engine, and for example current page Actor becomes UT:Actor. Would require major scripting.
- ...but is definitely the preferable way. Everything else is bound to lead to major confusion. – Mychaeel
- urg. But do we simply fool the current system into accepting names like "UT:actor" by using some sort of escape character and then detect it in the GetLink subs, or do we have to majorly hack the way the data is stored? Or even somehow hijack the built-in InterWiki links – they work like this: Wikipedia:Pagename AFAIK, but I haven't implemented them.
Mychaeel: We could make it upside-down: Not consider the namespace a new top-level branch but a page-level distinction (as if we were to provide each page in different languages). Then all versions of a page could even be stored in the same file without having to mess around with the whole data storage code. If you are viewing a certain flavor of a given page, all links would default to the same flavor of other pages in case they're present.
EntropicLqd: That's not a bad idea. Conceptually you could argue that the next gen Unreal engine stuff is really another language. It's stretching the metaphor a little but sounds easier than creating a whole new namespace. However, thinking ahead to Christmas we'll probably need some Unreal 2 specific stuff as well - but goodness knows just how similar UT2K3 and U2 will be.
Hmr: Ok. How do namespaces really work though?
Wormbo: They don't. (yet) Namespaces are not yet implemented.
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- See Namespaces
Simpler, hackier, more wiki-esque solution: provisionally add UT2 info at the top of any page that shares the name (Actor I expect will).
Subpages
Use the existing subpage system so we have Actor (current version) and Actor/UT. Then we either:
- have to trawl through the UT tree changing links, from Light to Light/UT for example, or
- let people browsing the UT class tree land on UT2 info from time to time.
I expect a lot depends on whether people are still using the 4xx engine after UT2 is released.
I'm sure they will be - the specs for UT2 are fairly impressive. It's hard to quantify just how many people would be wanting to create mods for UT though with UT2K3 out - most mod makers care deeply about the specs of their PC. How does the sub page stuff work? Any examples in the current UnrealWiki?
- This here is a subpage. MainPageName/SubPageName. It only goes 1 level deep. It's handy for splitting a single topic when it gets too long, or for subtopics. They're a pain to link to, so I don't use them much myself. For example, I figured this page would only get linked to from Project Discussion, and whaddayaknow, I was wrong... still, it's a 10 second admin job to rename it.
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- Although I don't post much on this project any more I think I should say the best Idea would be to make a secondary site where we would just import everything from the original wiki,THEN proceed to make the changes corresponding to the new engine features and differences.After what we would put a menu on the home page to select which version of the wiki to browse.The old UT engine should be abandoned fairly quickly once UT2003 and U2 are released. →TaoPaiPai
- Or a better idea:we would import the pages to the secondary site only once they are all checked and amended to the new version. →TaoPaiPai
UT2007
- What is the wiki doing to prepare for UT2007? Is any preparation on the part of the wiki even neccessary?
Tarquin: This would be better suited to Project Discussion. I've not given UT2007 much thought, but I imagine the change will be the same as for UT -> UT200x. We add a suffix to all old pages and make sure everything is tagged.
SuperApe: I'm not so sure. While there were huge changes between UT -> UT200x, from what I have heard, the new Unreal engine version in UT2007 will be completely different; a top-down restructuring. We might have to get a little more information on it's structure before we commit to a scheme of integration to this site.
Sweavo: from the point of view of this relative noober, I think it would be best to really stamp the difference on it. Maybe go so far as to have a whole separate wiki with, say, a green skin instead of blue for pages that apply to UT2007. Coming to this wiki last year, I had (and continue to have) a lot of trouble figuring out what stuff applies to what version of unreal.
Alternatively, It's kind of getting away from the wiki ethos, but I think it could be great to have a series of checkboxes on the edit form that let you say whether the page you're submitting applies to UT2007, UT2004, UT2003, UT...
On the one hand that looks too structured for a wiki, on the other, structure seems to be the biggest bugbear here. The tiny amount of editorial input that such a checkbox system would have, would really help keep the wiki organised. Then from the reader's point of view it should always be possible to indicate what version the information applied to.
The way I'd see it progressing from there is that the checkboxes could show up on the reader's interface too, and irrelevant pages simply aren't returned, or are sorted to the end of search results. Whether done by checkboxes or by a whole separate wiki, over time, there would be a UT2007 wiki plus a bunch of older material that could be used to draw from when the UT2007 wiki draws a blank.
Fyfe: El Muerte had a better idea for distingushing which games a page is relevant to, see Legenda on Project Discussion.
As far as UT2007 goes I don't think we should start anything until the game has been released. From the screenshots [1] I've seen of UnrealEd4 there's been some significant restructuring of the code (or it may simple be the way UnrealEd represent the code).