Game property and video setting categories

[Farlo 0]

Hey all.  So I was reading this thread over on reddit that was asking about which games are known to support high frame rates and I thought "I know who has a giant list of games with this kind of info, I'll bet there's a category for this!".  Unfortunately upon arriving at the Borderlands 2 page, I was disappointed to see that categories for game properties/attributes have not been implemented.  That should be fixed!

 

When I was working on Project STEP's Wiki we wanted the same functionality: sort and categorize pages based on the properties defined in infoboxes and templates.  This can be done rather easily thanks to ParserFunction's #if and #ifeq functions.  I see a lot of the templates already use these functions so this may be obvious, but as an example, let's implement Category:High framerate support.  Framerate support is cataloged using Template:Video settings's "high frame rate" argument.  At the moment "high frame rate" is only being used to toggle the checkbox's display.  We can add the following text to also categorize the game based on this argument:

{{#if: {{{high frame rate|}}} | [[Category:High framerate support]] | [[Category:Limited framerate]] }}

Obviously this statement can be expanded to include any number of potential values, although it looks like you're currently only using a Boolean to represent true/false.

 

Anyways, I think this rather simple addition (if applied to most game properties) provides a lot of benefit when it comes to organizing game features, improving discoverability for users, and potentially providing some interesting statistics to ponder thoughtfully over.  Thanks for reading, I'd be glad to help flesh out and implement this feature if desired.

[Andytizer 269]

We actually use Semantic Media Wiki to do all of this stuff dynamically that's a lot more flexible than categories and parser functions. But basically we can generate a query for all high frame rate supported games.

 

For example we can generate a page for all Unreal 3 engine games: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/User:Andytizer/Sandbox/SMW

 

You can make a query here: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special:Ask

 

I can't remember how to output games with high frame rates but I'll get Soeb to reply to this as he knows the best way to embed the code as he designed the system. 

 

Perhaps we should have a way of clicking through and dynamically generating these queries directly from the page, so people can make lists of other games, e.g. List of games which support multi-monitor'.

[Farlo 0]

Hi,

 

We actually have something way better than categories for this - Semantic MediaWiki!

 

This allows us to search for games based on any information in a very precise manner. This includes looking at true/false/hackable settings in any combination.

 

I'm currently on mobile, but if you hit me up on Steam or IRC later, I'd be happy to explain more. As a quick note at the moment however - on pages like Borderlands 2, there's a link to "browse properties". If you click on it, you'll be able to see all properties defined on the page, and from there, go and see more games with those properties and values defined.

 

We do need to do more to advertise this feature though, that much is clear. But feature-wise, we're way ahead here :)

 

Ah, I obviously should have dug a little deeper before posting! I'm actually very familiar with SMW (or was at one point), that's what STEP is using for all the mod categorization and guide tables.  I'm glad to hear that you guys are doing it right, although I guess I should have expected that given how well the site is doing in general.  I definitely agree that more user friendly presentation would be great to see, when I get a bit of free time this weekend I can throw together some of the basic ones and make them as presentable as you can with giant tables/lists.

 

As far as advertising the feature, you could put a "View all games that support X" banner/link on the glossary pages or maybe even a small link in the table itself?  I'm sure there are lots of interesting properties and ways to display them that I haven't noticed yet.

[Garrett 214]

I have made a new template for this purpose, Template:Feature, which links to a list of all games that have the specified feature marked true or hackable. You can see this in action on Glossary:Frame rate (FPS) and Glossary:4K Ultra HD.

 

​This initial implementation has highlighted a technical limitation of using Semantic MediaWiki's Special:Ask function in this way: hyphens are not encoded correctly. If linking in this manner is to be the standard then the hyphenated properties would need to be renamed in order to be compatible.

[Garrett 214]

I have added a basic description to Template:Feature/intro. Semantic queries do not pass template parameters, so it looks like the queried parameter can't be automatically named in the template text. Another option would be to use separate intro templates for the applicable settings; this would allow the intro text to be tailored to each setting.

 

I have resolved the hyphen issue by introducing a switch template (Feature/switch).

[Andytizer 269]

Fantastic work Garrett! Do you think it's feasible to do something like this - add an extra column to all templates called 'List' and have a link to the appropriate Feature|attribute? Also I'm thinking that it might be good to list all possible states including 'false' as this is useful information.

[Andytizer 269]

So TotalBiscuit has been galvanizing the community with the concept of a 'Framerate Police' Steam Curator. However we already have a very big list of crowdsourced information on games that fail to provide high framerates (although our sights are set higher- a true tick is for native120FPS support). It would be good to expand our community and get an influx of traffic.

I'm thinking of creating a new project, e.g. PCGamingWiki:List of games that support high framerate. Technically this would be a list of all games but sortable via the 'High framerate' attribute. This would have a custom intro to cater to people who had heard of the 'Framerate Police', and would encourage new editors to contribute information to PCGamingWiki and link to the editing guide, etc.

I've been experimenting with the queries but haven't been able to get it working:

[[Category:Games]] [[high_frame_rate::true]] OR [[high_frame_rate::hackable]] OR [[high_frame_rate::false]]

Could you help me out with the SMW code?

Edit: the Special:Ask query seems to work but when I embed it, e.g. http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:List_of_High_Framerate_Games the icons don't show up.

[Nicereddy 109]

So TotalBiscuit has been galvanizing the community with the concept of a 'Framerate Police' Steam Curator. However we already have a very big list of crowdsourced information on games that fail to provide high framerates (although our sights are set higher- a true tick is for native120FPS support). It would be good to expand our community and get an influx of traffic.

 

I'm thinking of creating a new project, e.g. PCGamingWiki:List of games that support high framerate. Technically this would be a list of all games but sortable via the 'High framerate' attribute. This would have a custom intro to cater to people who had heard of the 'Framerate Police', and would encourage new editors to contribute information to PCGamingWiki and link to the editing guide, etc.

 

I've been experimenting with the queries but haven't been able to get it working:

[[Category:Games]] [[high_frame_rate::true]] OR [[high_frame_rate::hackable]] OR [[high_frame_rate::false]]

Could you help me out with the SMW code?

 

Edit: the Special:Ask query seems to work but when I embed it, e.g. http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:List_of_High_Framerate_Games the icons don't show up.

Shouldn't it be only True/Hackable, and then show icons for either of those?

[Andytizer 269]

I'm happy for lists to show all games in every state, and people can sort them by themselves as they wish.

 

For the 'Framerate Police' curator, they're looking for games which fail 60 FPS so they would want ::false and ::hackable displayed only. However I'd be happy to list all game relationships with that property so people can sort themselves.

[Garrett 214]

Edit: the Special:Ask query seems to work but when I embed it, e.g. http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:List_of_High_Framerate_Games the icons don't show up.

​

The icons are provided by templates specified in the query. I've applied the feature ones to this page now.