Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion
|
|
Dark Mode
I don't think I even need to explain this. Wikipedia itself has it, so do other wikis. I do have a browser extension for dark mode, and optimally a dark theme for TFwiki should still keep muted earthy orangish tones and such, but at this point with my eye strain I'd take anything. It would encourage more dedicated editing streaks, perhaps, since many of us are night owls too.-- Akolyth (talk) 03:23, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
- Easier said than done, it's being worked on but we can't promise anything.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 11:13, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Valve Store
The official Store has been closed down for months now by Valve, and there's no reasonable smidgeon of proof to believe it's coming back any time soon. The Wiki, in many articles, links directly to the Store still, or mentions it, but even tooltips for certain hats will just say they're "not available". This is kind of awkward, and makes the average user waste a click (the horror, I know). And even I get a false hope sometimes that it changed, but it's Valve after all. Should something be done about this, and how? Can there be an automatic disclaimer the Store is gone? Should links be removed? Just let the dead ends sit forever?-- Akolyth (talk) 02:44, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- Try to find an archive.org version of it, otherwise just add a tooltip saying it's not available anymore due to store shutdown.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 11:12, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Painted variants with both Styles and separate Classes images, a design proposal
Hi. So, I have several mockups of things to suggest which I'll be writing it up eventually. For now, I was making changes to the Robot Chicken Hat page, and was thinking about adding class variants to the paint gallery, as each class changes the hat's design a little (taller combs, different beak designs, etc.). However, if I were to make those paint variants per class, the current way we put styles and classes to the table looks... off, to say the least. At the moment, if I were to make it consistent with the rest of the Wiki, it would look like this: https://i.imgur.com/gfdAUBL. But, instead, I thought about this mock-up: https://i.imgur.com/QmQCLsK. Not only this looks more visually appealing, but it also takes a lot less space. The only problem that it may be confusing for cosmetics that separate styles by a group of classes (Cotton Head, Brotherhood of Arms, etc.). So... I thought about just making the class buttons that aren't active a little darker (same thing with the Style name): https://i.imgur.com/Fiw1zRT. Here's another example with the Cotton Head: https://i.imgur.com/ZhkQwGG. Mouse-hovering the class icons could also show their class names ("Pyro, Medic, Spy" and "Other classes" in the case of Cotton Head) Thoughts? - ▪ - 13:11, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- I like this proposal, although I think it's not necessary for every page. Only for the ones where the tabs become too much.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Inconsistency regarding items with one team color, but shows team-colored parts of a player model
Hello. So, when I started adding tabs to the paint variants, and just browsing the Wiki as a whole, I noticed that a couple pages are inconsistent in regards to the unpainted variants. In almost every case of cosmetics that use part of the player model, but only has 1 skin (not team-colored), the team-colors syntax isn't added to the tab, and we only have the UNPAINTED version on the paint variants table (example includes the Soldier's Stash, Horrible Horns on Spy, and much more), but some other pages still shows the BLU variant of a player model despite the item only having one skin (Texas Half-Pants, Millennial Mercenary's Streaming 2Fort style, Exquisite Rack, Battle Bob's With Helmet style, Bacteria Blocker's Headphones style, etc).
Some other pages also includes two identical RED and BLU images for the infobox, just because the item has two materials per team, but still uses the same exact texture and values (basically two identical .vmt files). I don't remember what pages has it now, but there are some pages that has that. I did that on Decorated Veteran since I've heard about doing that in the past before: "even if they look identical, put in two separate uploads". There's also no current way to just show one skin on the infobox (however that's something I'm looking to suggest soon enough on my mega infobox improvements topic).
Because we use the infobox, as well the RED and BLU parts of the paint variants table to show the different Skin Colors of the ITEM, I would say to actually cleaning it up these inconsistencies. So, for instance, on Texas Half-Pants, there wouldn't RED and BLU images for each style, because they look identical on either team, and, there's only two skins on the model (one for the Tan style, the other for the Midnight style [older cosmetics used a different way in handling styles, as opposed to separate models, many old cosmetics would use different skins for styles, and the Item Schema would redirect what skins to use depending on the style chosen]). The colors change on the images right now, because it's the colors of Engi's default pants, but not the actual item model changing colors. Meaning that, the RED / BLU on the infobox would be removed, the BLU_... images would be deleted, and the RED_ images would be moved to the _UNPAINTED.png suffix instead.
Some may argue that, since the team-colored paint can image previews also change the pants colors, that these should stay in, but, I don't agree. These are to show the item's team-colors being affected (both the UNPAINTED versions and the team-colored paint cans), not the player model's team-colors, but let me know what do you think.
Items that have 0 changes on team-colors despite having them (same exact .vmt values), I'd also say to get rid of it, as they provide no real information for the reader other than perhaps modders, so they don't need to go all the way of decompiling models to add team-color support, for instance. Some require close inspection however. The Mann-Bird of Aberdeen looks like to be the case, but the green area is just slightly brighter on BLU. I'd still keep the same colors for Styles and classes (like Team Captain for Heavy), until a more fully-fledged infobox edit comes along the way that adds support to just 1 skin on the infobox (like this: https://i.imgur.com/GQP1ou0). I will still point out many of these on my eventual discussion of infobox changes in another topic. - ▪ - 13:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
- I would support every page having both team colours.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:57, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
Articles for individual environmental hazards
Some of the older environmental hazards have their own articles. Specifically, they are: Ghost, Pumpkin bomb, Saw blade, and Train.
These are some fairly simple hazards: ghost goes "boo", pumpkin bomb goes "boom", blade goes "bzzt", and train goes "[Train horn noises]". They all have fairly short articles, and are also covered in the Environmental death article.
I propose we change these four into redirects to the Environmental death article, similar to Pitfall.
As for their Update histories, I have three ideas:
- Add the section to the Environmental death article and carry them over.
- Create a separate page for that (similar to the Item timeline pages).
- Ignore them (essentially already the case for all the hazards that don't have their own articles).
I am ok with Skeletons and the Halloween bosses having their own articles, however, as they are more elaborate (which is noticeable by simply comparing article sizes).
Opinions? - BrazilianNut (talk) 16:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
- I think some of these pages can add value, such as the specifics in the hazard infobox. I'd push for more articles rather than less, similar to List of game modes, where each hazard has its own page as well as a short description on the overall page. I would prefer this because it would cut down on the clutter on the Environmental death page, for example the pumpkin bomb section is 5 identical hazards that are just reskinned. It would be better to have this in a gallery on its own page, rather than several entries on that page.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 16:40, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
- I believe it is better to keep the pages separate, as putting them all together in one could generate a lot of visual clutter, in addition to having a lot of information for the reader to consume at once. Furthermore, it would be complicated to gather all the update histories on the articles. Essentially, we would be taking separate articles and combining them into one big article, where each section (divided by
== Section title ==
) would be a "complete" article.
Tiagoquix (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
- I believe it is better to keep the pages separate, as putting them all together in one could generate a lot of visual clutter, in addition to having a lot of information for the reader to consume at once. Furthermore, it would be complicated to gather all the update histories on the articles. Essentially, we would be taking separate articles and combining them into one big article, where each section (divided by
A request
In Polish language we don't capitalise most words like in English language and the way quality items have their quality displayed looks like this: Rocket launcher (vintage). The problem is that in Template:Mann-Conomy Nav Vintage quality in Polish and Russian is not capitalised and looks weird in the template where everything is capitalised except this one word. Is it possible to add a new entry in the dictionary for this template only, where 'Vintage' is capitalised for these languages? In Polish it's even more confusing, because Classic and Vintage share the same translation, so it could be shown in the tempalte as 'Vintage quality' (Jakość klasyczna in Polish). Denied (Talk) 10:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
- If it's the very first letter that needs to be capitalised, you can use {{ucfirst:<string>}} to turn the first letter into a capital. For example, {{ucfirst:hello world}} generates Hello world.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 11:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- Could you help me with this? I've changed it in Template:Mann-Conomy Nav but doesn't seem to capitalise the first letter. Denied (Talk) 10:54, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hmmm, yeah seems like the automatic translation templates automatically uncapitalise it. If you really wanted to implement this you'd have to use the
{{lang}}
template instead.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:49, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
- Hmmm, yeah seems like the automatic translation templates automatically uncapitalise it. If you really wanted to implement this you'd have to use the
- I already did it once and... Denied (Talk) 14:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
- Perhaps leave a hidden comment and use
{{lang incomplete}}
?
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 14:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
- Perhaps leave a hidden comment and use
Looks like you forgot to add a vertical bar, which made the link [[VintageVintage]].
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Mann Manor/Mountain Lab's history
I feel maps that we know more detailed information on the history of we should actually have written down so it isn't forgotten, such as for example, Mann Manor/Mountain Lab being an art contest was not the original plan in fact the maps used to have textures before but, that's just what I think. The American Boot (talk) 04:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- If you think this fact is worth and most player don't know, you can try adding it to Trivia section. Here is a more detailed Trivia guild.Profiteer(奸商)the tryhard (talk) 05:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not sure where this Trivia came from or if there is any source for. The Art Pass Contest page states that Robin Walker said they had a map that hadn't been worked on for a while and they didn't have time to do an art pass on it (which means the map just had dev textures).
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 21:34, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Weapon articles mentioning taunts that aren't kill taunts
I've noticed a few articles for weapons mentioning that those weapons have a unique taunt that is not a kill taunt, or a variation of the default weapon for that slot (which is still not a kill taunt). These are the Lollichop, which mentions it has a unique taunt based on a scene from Meet the Pyro, and the Third Degree and Neon Annihilator, which mention the added guitar sounds, respectively. In comparison, the Cow Mangler 5000, Scottish Resistance, and Ullapool Caber, which also have unique taunts, do not mention them since they're not kill taunts, and the Vita-Saw, which has has a variation of the default taunt, does not mention said variation.
I think we should remove these notes from the Lollichop, Third Degree, and Neon Annihilator, as they are already all noted in the Pyro taunts page.
Speaking of the Pyro taunts page, I think we can move the "as in Meet the Pyro" comment from the Lollichop's description to a new Trivia section and add that Execution is also based in a Meet the Pyro scene (which is not mentioned). - BrazilianNut (talk) 16:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- I think variants on an existing taunt should be mentioned, such as different sounds (such as the Third Degree/Neon Annihilator adding guitar sounds and the Vita-Saw having different melodies being played), but the non-kill taunt shouldn't be mentioned (no note about the Lollichop taunt. Although seeing as it's unique to that weapon, I think the Trivia can stay).
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 17:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
'Smissmas 2023' is localized but 'December 7 - January 7' is not. Is it possible to localize it too? Denied (Talk) 10:29, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
- See Dictionary common strings.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Link of the wiki team fortress energie drink don't work
[[1]] you see this page on the wiki contain a team fortress wiki energie drink with a link for have it but it don't work and is not secure, can someone help me ? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nonolemage (talk) • (contribs) 2023-12-21, 13:46 UTC
- Please sign your messages using ~~~~.
- The website appears to be down and no archive of it exists, so unless someone here happens to have a copy we can't do much.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 13:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I have been wanting to write this in the past, but, well, finally here it is. I have a couple suggestions about things related to infobox, and other things to make the design of the Wiki flow better on certain articles. I will be posting here as it covers a multitude of topics, as opposed to posting each one of them on their respective templates. When adding "Support" and "Not Support" on your responses, please make sure to add the number (and letter) behind to specify what you are supporting (or not supporting) as a change (like: "1-c"). With that said, let's get going:
1) Implement a way on the Item infobox
template where if a style or class has only one team-color compared to other styles with team-colors, include an icon in the middle of both teams. For instance:
a) The Heavy variant of the Team Captain only has one color, but the page right now includes a duplicate of the RED variant as a workaround. What I suggest is doing this: https://i.imgur.com/YgQHk5z. Make the Heavy variant only one file, and center it. It should be pretty clear that because of the image is in the middle, is that it looks like that on both teams.
b) For items with styles that only has one color (not team-colored), do the same thing as well. In the example of Close Quarters Cover, include the "Alert" style on the infobox in the middle of the "RED" and "BLU" sections of the infobox, something like this: https://i.imgur.com/lARBQME.
c) For items that are not team-colored, but have class-specific variants, include a new part colored in grey called "Both Teams", and include each image on the middle as well. For example, the Dead Little Buddy have 3 model variants, one for Pyro, one for Demoman, and the other for the remaining classes. The idea is this: https://i.imgur.com/xPD9PMO.
d) Although I do not have a mock-up right now, I thought of also doing the same as above for items that has only one color. So, for instance, the Jumper's Jeepcap would have a "Both Teams" section, and it would include the "UNPAINTED" variant on the center. Items with styles with just one color, like Mustachioed Mann, would be similar to Dead Little Buddy, including each style on the infobox, alongside their names. Items like Carl that has no styles, but is neutral-colored, would also have the "Both Teams" part.
2) Get rid of the current "2D" images of Weapons, and use "Item icons" instead. The 2D weapon images are not consistent throughout the Wiki. They have different lighting, different angles, and so on. What I suggest is doing something similar to another Wiki I also contributed (one related to a TF2 sourcemod): https://i.imgur.com/vbvPbGP. This looks extremely clean, and every page would have in this angle. The 2D image only includes the RED variant, just like we use RED classes on our cosmetic previews.
3) Add the "RED" and "BLU" sections on the infobox for Weapon pages, even if the 3D image allows you to switch between teams. Right now, the RED variant is used as the 2D image (for team-colored weapons), while the 2D BLU variant awkwardly sits on the Gallery section. My suggestion would be this: https://i.imgur.com/dM9z7Oo
4) For cosmetic pages that has styles alongside class changes on the Painted Variants table, include additional buttons that include class icons. The idea is to remove clutter on pages with a lot of tabs to choose from (see this page). In technical terms, the style buttons would be responsible to change the "style" part of the filename, while the class buttons would change the class part of the filename. If the first class is chosen, then the code needs to get rid of the class part of the filename, as the first class is always the default: https://i.imgur.com/QmQCLsK
a) Additionally, text could be placed on each row, one for "Style:", and the other for "Class:" for the second row, just so it's a little more intuitive and understandable for everyone.
5) Include "infobox images" for separate styles, and add buttons that let you change it. The idea is to include identical images (with identical classes and facial flexing), with the only thing changing the model. For example, Main Cast would look like this: https://imgur.com/a/OmTIYVs.
6) Include more sections on the Gallery for items with more than one Style. In the past, the Robot Chicken Hat page did include all 9 classes on the Gallery section, with 2 separate sections, one with the "Beak" style, and the other with "Beakless" style. It would follow the same rule as "5)", with both images looking identical facial-flex and pose-wise. Some pages like Dead of Night wouldn't include all classes on each section. Classes with lack of grenades wouldn't be there.
Edit: Some users asked for an example, so, when I talked about the Robot Chicken Hat, it originally looked like this. The images don't exist anymore, but you can still see how it looked like. When I wrote the suggestion, I thought something about that (though it could have been changed a little, like include an "Other" title for the remaining images that aren't related to the class images), but, after Swood's suggestion, I'd say that using Tabs would be more ideal, something akin to how we do on the Tournament Medal pages.
I did an example on my 2nd Sandbox page. I thought something about this: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/index.php?title=User:Gabrielwoj/Sandbox2&oldid=3598538. I decided to not make the Tabs centered as regular cosmetic pages are usually not centered, unlike Tournament Medals / Community Medal ones. I also decided to make the gallery width "485px", so it shows 3 images per row, and looks pretty nice and cool with whatever's below that does not require a Tabs section.
7) Lastly. Items that include noticeable team-color differences could also get "Single Color" paint can previews on both teams, even if the paint look identical on the area that is paintable. When Paints were first introduced, they were mostly applied to cosmetics that used the same texture on either team. Now, nowadays, we have cosmetics that include team-colored parts that are not paintable, alongside other parts that are. So, for instance, Brawling Buccaneer would have its Painted variants table from {{Painted variants}} to {{Painted variants full}}, and single color paint can previews for the BLU team would be made, to show how the paint looks like, and despite being painted in the same area, the rest of the item is in another color. Readers might want to know how an item looks on the BLU team. This would take a long time too make for the entirety of the Wiki, and would be a project that would require remaking some paint variants if they do not have Rotation values saved, or if there's another issue that doesn't make them 1:1, but I think it would look good, and useful as well.
8) For items that has several styles / classes on the infobox (such as Manndatory Attire, Beaten and Bruised and Boarder's Beanie), make the Infobox template show less of them by default, and include a button with a caption "↓ Show remaining ↓". If possible, make the last one have a "fade" effect, so it's perfectly clear what the button is about. My idea was to include at least 10 of these sections, then fade (because if it reaches 10 of these, it means there's more than one Style per class, where other pages would include 9 of these per class, though, it could be shortened if needed, but personally I would go with 10 sections before the button and fade shows up). It would look like this: https://i.imgur.com/jh6geu6
Edit: 9) Regarding the Styles section. If we include Styles on the infobox, even for items that look the same on either team, is it really necessary to include the "Styles" section on the page, alongside the table, if everything would be on the Infobox? It seems redundant to keep both of them, but, I'd only get rid of the Styles section after everything is added to the infobox, including the single-color Styles on it. Additionally, certain pages that has Styles that change between classes are a little confusing at the moment. Manndatory Attire has only Scout's styles being demonstrated on the table, despite each class changing the visuals.
a) Originally I was going to suggest a class-switcher button, similar to the "4)", but, if "1)" is implemented, I don't see any reason to keep the Styles section. Please let me know if you think there should be either: "An arrange of buttons that lets you change classes on the Styles table" or "Getting rid of the Styles section entirely as it would be redundant with all the styles on the infobox once the "1)" suggestion is implemented.
b) The only problem that getting rid of the Styles section would be problematic for items that has barely any difference unpainted, but has more notable differences when paintable. Items like Onimann mostly change its visuals when painted between styles, and if there's no section for it. However, the painted variants table, alongside the main summary on the top of the page, would both visually show the difference, as well would explain in text what each style does in terms of paint.
Please let me know your thoughts below. Notice that I'm not sure if I would be able to implement some of these suggestions, specially the ones for the "Item infobox" template. If there's enough support, I'd appreciate anyone who could implement suggested changes / additions. - ▪ - 21:13, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
- 1. I think that section should be dedicated to showing off the team colours rather than different styles for different classes. If a cosmetic looks different on different classes I would prefer a different box for it similar to the "Styles" section.
- 2/3. That's fine by me, though I would also want to add a second button to it for the BLU variant rather than stuffing it in the Gallery.
- 4/5. I like this.
- 6. I like this, although I would suggest we use the
{{Tabs}}
template for it. - 7. I like this too, but it would require a ton of work and I'm not sure we'd be able to make it through.
- 8. I'm not sure that I'm a fan of collapsing a bunch of them. I would prefer having them sorted by class instead similar to
{{Tabs}}
. - 9. See answer on 1.
| s | GrampaSwood (talk) (contribs) 21:59, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
- 1 Agree - All of these changes look very nice, I don't have anything to say about them.
- 2 / 3 Not sure / changes - Would the change to using weapon icons include BLU weapon icons as well? If it does, I would rather have the 2D BLU image in the main infobox when you click on BLU and then switch to the 2D image instead of it being below the main image.
- 4 Agree - This also looks nice.
- 5 Disagree - I don't know how I feel about this, I feel like the painted variants sorta already accomplish the goal of knowing what the cosmetic would look like with the different styles. It would also take a lot of work to recreate a lot of infobox images just for this.
- 6 Disagree - I have the same thoughts about this as 5, it would take a lot of work to redo a bunch of galleries when the styes / painted variants section already get the job done.
- 7 Sorta Agree - This would look nice, however it would again take a lot of work to get done.
- 8 Agree / changes - I like the idea, though I agree with what Swood said with that it would look better if it was just in tabs instead.
- 9 Not sure - I sort of agree with the idea of removing the styles section, but I also do like how there's a sort of simplified section for seeing all of the styles instead of it only being part of the infobox and painted variants.
- Andrew360 03:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
- 1 Disagree - Same reason with Swood, I think the style section should do the job.
- 2 Agree - Good idea!
- 3 Sorta Agree - Instead of taking space in infobox, Why don't we use the same button used on 3D images?
- 4 Agree - Yes.
- 5 Agree - Looks nice, but considered what Andrew says we might not getting those done in recent.
- 6 Agree - We are gonna do a lot of work then I guess.
- 7 Agree - Same with Andrew360
- 8 Not sure - Looks good, though yeah, why not use
{{Tabs}}
? - 9 Disagree.. or Sorta Agree - If I have to choose one from infobox and style section, I would take style section. In my opinion the infoboxs shouldn't be too long and contain too much information, comparing to a small space on the right side of the page, I think the style section can display the information better. If 8 gets passed then I'm fine with it too. (I just don't want to see infobox gets longer than the page itself.)
- Profiteer(奸商)the tryhard (talk) 06:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
- 1 Sorta Agree - Eh, doesn't matter to me either way.
- 2 Not sure - I wanna see how it would look first.
- 3 Agree - I was kinda the one to start the whole "shoving the blue variant in the gallery" and have always wondered why there wasn't a color toggle for the 2D variants.
- 4 Strongly agree - I wish it was like this since the beginning!
- 5 Not sure - I like the idea, but it will take a lot of work updating all the pages and such with the change.
- 6 Not sure - Same answer as 5.
- 7 Agree - I'm only saying yes because we'll only have to edit the templates which are used across all translation pages.
- 8 Somewhat disagree - There aren't very many items that have loads of different styles like this, I think I'd wait until we get something like a shirt or coat that includes a load of different styles (with team variants).
- 9 Strongly disagree - Yeah it is necessary to have a styles section, because they mostly show examples of what they look like on the character wearing it. I know that the infobox has styles too, but they're only the raw models.
- ShadowMan44 (talk) 01:52, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- So, after some user's responses, I'd like to mention a couple things. In regards to most of "2)" and "3)" responses, here's something I didn't mention. There would be a slight problem for items that are not team-colored if we just implemented a RED and BLU image switcher. The idea of using "Item icons" with the RED variant / neutral-color variant, would that it would make everything consistent and nice looking, While "RED" and "BLU" 2D images are usually very consistent too, the current "2D" images used on weapon pages are all over the place. Using the "Item icon" in conjunction with the RED and BLU team-colors means we could use already existing images on the Wiki, too. Not that I would have a problem if new images had to be created for the Neutral-Colored weapons, but, I still think that using the Item icons would highly benefit here, since how nice they look on weapons.
- However, if we go with a RED and BLU switcher, what we could perhaps do is team-colored Item icons, yeah that would be awesome. Not only that, but we also have Item icons for Australiums, and, I even made Australium Festivized icons for TF2B a while ago, that is only used there and not on the Wiki, at the moment.
- GrampaSwood 6) Yeah, I didn't think of this, but using Tabs on the Gallery would be pretty good, something we already do in Tournament Medal pages, actually.
- GrampaSwood, Andrew360, Profiteer 7) While I can't promise I will be on the Wiki forever, and, with my statement on my userpage being correct (that I won't be as active in 2024), making BLU team-colored variants on "Standalone" models is a faster process than when making when loaded as a "weapon" (e.g.: Cosmetic loaded on a player model). The reason I did all the Boarder's Beanie paint variants is solely because it's a standalone model, I was able to generate the paint variants very quickly (and in high quality and proper colors). I can still do every single style and class on BLU as well, for the Single Color paint variants, for the Beanies, I just haven't done since we are still discussing this.
- My Laptop is currently not being used. I have thought of the idea of making an HLMV machine, and letting paint variants being made while I do other things. This is something I thought about in the past, but I would require another monitor (which I can buy, no problem), but I also would need time, something I will not have that much starting 2024. However, I'm also in the point where I feel like I have contributed quite a lot for the Wiki already, so I'm kinda conflicted if I should really do this or not. I would only require to re-install Windows, re-configure HLMV (which can be painful), and things like that, before I can make it an idle HLMV machine that makes paint variants.
- ShadowMan44 7) Correct, currently, the "Painted variants full" template states that mouse-hovered "Single colors" states that "due to how the cosmetic's textures are set up, it changes colors between teams". This would require to be changed appropriately, somehow, though I don't think that yet another Painted variants template should be made. It should be possible to just add a parameter of some sort.
- Gabrielwoj, Andrew360 5) Despite me suggesting this, I was also not too sure about it, but I decided to post it as a matter of discussion. In most cases, Styles just change the look of an item, without changing the placement of the model, or the model itself. In some other cases, however, it does change something Liquor Locker, Pocket-Medes, etc. While it would be an interesting idea, and I do have a couple cosmetics with all styles made already, most of the rest would require to be remade. This could also be a little difficult for regular HLMV users, as refreshing the model viewer gets rid of the facial flex entirely, but not on HLMV++. While you can unload and load submodels without having to refresh, HLMV does read from "$color2" instead of "$colortint_base", which means if someone forgets about that on an older cosmetic, they'd need to refresh after fixing it from the .vmt.
- Profiteer 9) That's a good point. I guess if the Styles section was more populated (actually shows differences between classes), then I suppose that items like Manndatory Attire and Boarder's Beanie wouldn't require that huge amount of styles being shown on the table. But then, there's another problem. Items already show their unpainted RED and BLU variants on the infobox, and how exactly could we categorize "exceptions" to be only on the Styles section if we follow your idea?
- ShadowMan44 9) I'm not quite sure if I understood what you said. The styles table on both the Style section and infobox use the same exact images, same files, with some exceptions like the Dead of Night and Pocket-Medes. This is why I mentioned it being redundant, because in most cases, both sections use the same images. - ▪ - 11:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
- So Tekinz and Mgpt talked with me via Steam and Discord DMs, and I'd like to post their opinions on this. Tekinz asked me to post on my behalf, explaining what he told me instead of directly quoting him, while mgpt allowed me to directly translate what he told me. With that said, here's what they had to say:
- Tekinz: He told me that he agrees with most of my proposed update and changes, while pin-pointing some specific numbers with further explanation. He adds that for "7)", it would be a huge amount of work, and we would need quite a few active image creators to be able to achieve it in a timely manner, but otherwise it would be a general improvement to the pages. On "8)", he adds that he has no real problems with and thinks it's pretty good, mentioning that if combined with "1)", it would look great. On "9)", he mentioned that it's probably a good idea considering how the Styles section is located pretty far on the page and that it would probably be better to have them focused to the infobox since it's much closer to the top, alongside the rest of relevant images. He further adds that the Styles section always seemed not as important since it was too close to the Trivia and Patch Notes, while also being beneath the huge Painted Variants table that overshadows it.
- mgpt:
- Agree 1. Everything looks okay to me, if it's easy to implement;
- Agree 2. I did take a look on some weapons, and I agree in using "Item icons";
- Agree 3. I saw the comments, and Andrew360's idea, and I agree, it has my vote;
- Agree 4. You got my vote, very good;
- Disagree 5. I agree with Andrew360 and Profiteer, I don't think that it's worth the work, considering there's already images below on the infobox, alongside the painted variants;
- Info 6. It ends up being the same as "5)", however, I'd like to see an example how it would look like;
- Agree 7. I'm not sure if I noticed completely, but would that be switching the template from "Painted variants" to "Painted variants full" In several cosmetics, like how it was done in Brigade Helm? If so, I don't see a problem;
- Info 7. An idea to the template. Wouldn't it look better if it was something like this, with 2 buttons? https://i.imgur.com/LVXXb4C Or is it being done currently like it's on the page so it's possible to compare both teams at the same time? Probably that;
- Agree 8. I like the idea, however, the information still continue to be too deep on the page, wouldn't be better to only show 4 or 5, instead of 9?;
- Info 9. a) "An arrange of buttons that lets you change classes on the Styles table". In the example of Beaten and Bruised, the images wouldn't be anymore on the infobox, correct?;
- Info I like "8)"'s idea, but if "9)" is applied, then number "8)" is discarded. - ▪ - 12:16, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
- I also replied to mgpt regarding some of his questions, so I had the following to say:
- 7) On number "7)", it would be including previews like how it's done on "Single Color" paint cans on the BLU team, even if when they are applied on the same area, the paint color looks identical to the RED team. Currently, we only use "Painted variants full" in cases of items that has different colorization between teams, such as the case of Stout Shako;
- 7. a) I liked the idea of including RED and BLU on the top, it would be very intuitive. Post-thoughts: After re-reading his thoughts on this one, I saw that the original idea would be buttons, while I first thought they were simply two sections that would separate the teams more properly, visually. I thought if maybe that by doing so, we could include a faint red and a faint blue background to separate them both, and make the template a little more nice to look at, as currently there's a bunch of paint variants all included in one table.
- 8) In regards to the default quantity, it would still be discussed, but the main idea would be something that could be expanded to show the remaining. I finished the Boarder's Beanie images, and the infobox ended up being very lengthy. The table for Painted variants will probably change if "4)" is implemented.
- 9) The images would still stay on the infobox section, but the idea would be that on the Styles table, it would include an array of buttons with each of the classes icons, so it could be changed, similar to what it has been suggested on "4)". The only thing that, if "1)" is implemented, the Styles section may not be as necessary anymore. - ▪ - 12:16, 3 January 2024 (UTC)