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The mess that is the Creatures entry(s)


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OK so the entry for creatures currently is not great. There are a few problems with it. First there appears to be 2 entries for the same game, "creatures" and "creatures 1". Creatures appears if you search for it where as Creatures 1 is the entry in the GOG.com Enhancement Project list, http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:GOG.com_Enhancement_Project. This entry needs to be deleted completely (its contents were deleted on the 4th but the page remains). Then "creatures" needs to be migrated onto the list replacing the spot "creatures 1" took up.

The next problem is the listing of system requirements. The current page ,http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Creatures#Utilities, lists the system requirements for the original game. I then added the system requirements for The Albian Years version I added this as the only listed source for availability is gog.com. Technically gog does not sell "Creatures" instead it sells "Creatures: The Albian Years". This has its own unique system requirements completely different to to the original game. So as it stands the "creatures" entry is trying to provide details for 2 different editions of the game each with their own details. I am new to this so I have no idea if this is OK. Should this article be split into 2? (a "Creatures" article and a "Creatures: The Albian Years" article). The problem is further complicated with even more editions. A quick search on amazon finds a physical copy of "Creatures: The Albian Years" (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fusion-Software-Creatures-Albian-Years/dp/B0008EI0LO/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1386346283&sr=8-11&keywords=Creatures) however this version has a different set of supported OSs which based on the reviews do not seem to be a typo. The gog version supports XP, Vista and 7 whilst the amazon version supports 98, 2000, ME and XP.

So as it stands we have 2 articles for Creatures, one which is redundant and one that is trying to provide information for all editions. Should the Creatures article be split into a "creatures" article and a "Creatures: The Albian Years" article? If not how do you handle this sort of variation, for instance for system requirements do you just have 3 different tables? Do we even need a artcile for the original creatures? There are not sources listed for where to buy it and I do not even think you can buy a new or used copy of the game anywhere. I would appreciate some input from somre more experienced members as to what the protocol is for these sort of issues.

Cheers

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I've fixed the Creatures 1 issue on the GOG.com page, thanks for reporting it! If you find any other similar issues please mention them.

 

As for handling these re-releases, in the past we've simply left each game separate as "Game 1", "Game 2", "Game 3", etc. unless there were large changes between the games. I can't think of any good examples at the moment, though. After reading the Wikipedia article, this looks to me like just a repackaging without many changes, so I don't really see any reason to change the current listing.

 

As for the system requirements, what you did seems fine to me (although I did move the "other" categories outside of the sys reqs templates). The accuracy of system requirements aren't a huge deal, we simply have them for convenience and as a unified way of tracking system requirements across games.

 

As long as a game exists the article is perfectly fine to have. I think we really need to implement a "disambiguation"-esque page for this type of situation so we can direct people to either Creatures 1 or Creatures 2 if they look for The Albian Years.

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