User talk:TheCodingGamer

Welcome

Hello TheCodingGamer, and welcome to Dragon Quest Wiki! We're glad to have you here, and we hope you'll stay and contribute. Make sure you check out the community portal for general information about editing.

Note that you cannot upload any images until you have confirmed your email address! You should receive the email confirmation shortly after registering. Enjoy your time at Dragon Quest Wiki. - The Dragon Quest Wiki Staff

-- DragonQuestWiki (talk) 17:00, 20 September 2016 (CDT)

Fact-checking resources

Salutations! This is just a courtesy call of sorts to help spread awareness of some very useful websites from across the pacific. These tools ought to help clear up any confusion when it comes to the less documented things. They've helped me out a ton with my contributions, and hopefully they'll be just as useful for you!

General information

http://wikiwiki.jp/dqdic3rd/ Character ages, nicknames, how often monsters appear, developer quotes, etc. Only thing they lack are pictures.

Hard data

http://www7b.biglobe.ne.jp/~dqwiz/ The one most regarded by the gamefaqs crowd. Its ceased updates as of VII's remake, but covers monster resistances, stats, equipment price, you name it.

https://www.d-navi.info/ Absolutely the best resource for IX's data, providing all the calculations for skills and spells, as well as hidden equipment stats.

http://dq-gh.com/ Not quite as detailed as Navi, but they do provide images for most games, and it pays to have additional sources

Transparencies

I must admit it made me a little nervous at first when you started removing the backgrounds of the images I've uploaded, but you're a real professional! - icysugarspike (talk) 14:53, 12 October 2016 (CDT)

I mostly handle images on the wiki. Please, direct your comments to User:Follower of Light. He's a nice guy. - icysugarspike (talk) 16:19, 12 October 2016 (CDT)

Improving the DQIX enemy template

Would you happen to know how to add % boxes to templates? I've got all the legacy boss data for status and element resistances, but the way the template is set up right now I can't add Blunt, Sap, and Decelerate. I hate to have to ask this of you, but I simply don't know how to edit templates(Follower of Light (talk) 14:19, 15 October 2016 (CDT))

Cloak of evasion

Sorry, but could you add the transparency to this image? I uploaded a better image. - icysugarspike (talk) 12:02, 17 December 2016 (CST)

Sure thing, my friend! I took care of it. Feel free to leave me lists of high priority images, and I'll be more than happy to take care of them for you.TheCodingGamer (talk) 13:41, 17 December 2016 (CST)

Thank you! - icysugarspike (talk) 14:03, 17 December 2016 (CST)

Potential request features

I've brought up this idea to Zenithian, but do you have any ideas as to how we can better serve our readers? By this I mean address what people really want to know about Dragon Quest--the staff, development history, cultural impact, things like that. You've been a tremendous help with my monster data, truly, but I fear I might be making the wiki a bit impersonal by focusing on raw data. The problem is I have no way of knowing what the readers would prefer to know about, and any attempts to address that would be like playing blind darts. If you could, would you mind brainstorming from the perspective of a casual reader and decide what you think the best way to allow readers to make requests. No rush or anything, especially considering its Christmas. (Follower of Light (talk) 11:46, 23 December 2016 (CST))

First off, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, my friend! :)

Anyways, some ways we could get feedback would be:

• Directly contacting DQ fans through communities like Dragon's Den and /r/dragonquest, and asking them what they're looking for.
• Creating an online survey and linking to it on the homepage.
• Creating some type of public chatroom, and allowing people to discuss it there. (Bonus the editors could use it for casual discussion too)

I'd be more than happy to help out with this in any way I can. Just let me know.TheCodingGamer (talk) 20:24, 25 December 2016 (CST)

I'll admit I'm a bit leery of reddit overall, but I'll give it a shot. These are some good ideas to work upon, and I think the should be easy enough to implement once the holiday malaise wears off. Until then, Happy New Year!(Follower of Light (talk) 19:00, 26 December 2016 (CST))

Happy New Year!

Hopefully it isn't quite as frozen where you are! This past year has been one of the site's most productive, and the next looks to be even better thanks to your help! (Follower of Light (talk) 19:56, 31 December 2016 (CST))

Happy New Year to you as well my friend! Let's make 2017 the year this site gets the (reader) attention it deserves! :) TheCodingGamer (talk) 23:02, 1 January 2017 (CST)

DQVIII

You're swelling my head up with praise, I thank you. I do have something I've been keeping under my hat for the 3DS DQVIII release, it's the rest of this image: [1]
It's the home page icon that takes you directly to the DQVIII page. I'm just not sure how to incorporate it into the page (or if I even should). The entire image, in all its splendor, is coming. I think you can guess why I'm saving it. ;) - icysugarspike (talk) 10:31, 2 January 2017 (CST)

Enemy infobox templates

I don't mean to throw you off your groove or place you under the bus, but would it be alright if we start spitballing ideas for 8's infoboxes now that the portable version is out? I'd also like to toss around ideas for the other games as well, namely color patterns to give them just a bit more individuality. By all means though, please don't take this as an "order" or anything--I'm still way behind on 7's data so I'd be calling the kettle black if I implied we were behind any miscellaneous schedule! (Follower of Light (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2017 (CST))

Thank you for this! I've been itching to make the other infoboxes, but I was waiting for a green light. I think 8 should be done first and then handle the rest in order. It's probably best for the sake of the wiki to have the infoboxes for all games set up quickly, that way popular articles like slime won't be half updated for a long time.

Okay, so I'll need a good link to 8's monster data, unless the site you gave me is good. Also, did the 3DS version shake things up statistically, or will we go the route we did for 7? What color scheme would you like? TheCodingGamer (talk) 13:14, 22 January 2017 (CST)

Hey now, no need to thank me and certainly don't wait on me for any kind of signal to begin your own undertakings--I'm nobody's boss here and all of you lot are more than clever enough to know what's best! The best part about 8 is that there is plenty of documentation in english, this one being the best I've seen thus far. Aside from bosses, I haven't found any monsters who have been given significant changes so maybe a secondary bracket for those changes could be added, like how you pulled it for for 7? I could always just post the template twice and but a notice underneath it as well. Not sure about colors just yet, but I was thinking they could either be based on the schemes from the japanese logos, or perhaps the main colors of the heroes. So for 8, it could be blue with white accents, or saffron-yellow with blue highlights. You're the muscle behind all of this, so the choice is yours!

Regarding the various elements and statuses, 8 is much more coherent than the cluster**ck 7 was. For example, if a monster is resistant to frizz then it will have the same resistance against sizz and fire breath, so a single "flame" attribute would work well for readers AND save yourself valuable time. The full list of attributes is Flame, Ice, Wind, Blast, Lightning, Stone/Strike, Army*, Sap, Drain Magic, Dazzle, Fuddle, Snooze, Fizzle, Ban Dance, Paralysis, Poison, Stun, and Death. There is an odd little one for regular attacks that factors in after regular damage calculations, but it only appears on ghoulies and elementals. Monster stats are the same as ever, just no tame rate due to system changes.

• There's only ONE move that uses that event flag, ha!(Follower of Light (talk) 16:22, 22 January 2017 (CST))

Haha well thanks for trusting me. :)

Anyways, I'll handle it with the 7 route. Are there any exclusive monsters in the remake? or will we only need one box for everything? And I think I'll try the saffron/blue scheme on this one.

Also, thanks for the link. My English is a lot better than my Japanese. ;) On question though, in the monster resistances, the guide uses "@", "$", "*", "^". Got a key on how to read them? I scrolled through the guide twice, but I either missed it, or it's presumed goin' in.

Also should the monsters "spells" and "skills" section be seperate, on should we combine then under a single "attacks" field? And if we do, should we retcon the boxes for 1,2,&7 as well? TheCodingGamer (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2017 (CST)

You're welcome! There are a handful of new mons for the remake, but they don't have any special attributes or "new" systems to them, so a copypasta'd window like with 7 works perfectly. Resistance benchmarks are 100%, 80%, 50% & 0% for spells/skills, and 100%, 85%, 50%, & 0% for status ailments.

Regarding the skills & spells section, I honestly think it makes more sense to have separate sections for them-- there isn't much that's magical about Body Slam for example, except maybe for how dumb it is. If that adds a lot to the work load, I can do my best to add that section in myself.(Follower of Light (talk) 10:30, 23 January 2017 (CST))

Minor, off-topic question: do you know how the information for quote boxes is organized? I'd like to customize the colors for each character, but for now I'm stuck with the grey set up.(Follower of Light (talk) 15:40, 4 February 2017 (CST))

Okay, so I just fixed the bgcolor parameter on Template:quote, so you can now color them to your hearts content. Hope that helps :)

"User:Follower of Light is awesome."

—User:TheCodingGamer

Also, sorry I haven't gotten the DQ8 template done yet. I've been really busy with life, and so I have a half finished copy on my desktop making me feel extremely guilty. I'll try to wrap it up ASAP. Also, if you happen to have a convenient list of which spells and skills fall into which resistances, that'd be great. Otherwise I'll just scour the FAQ you gave me. TheCodingGamer (talk) 19:20, 5 February 2017 (CST)

Code, you're a saint. Don't feel guilty about a thing, everyone has real life obligations they need to handle first and foremost. Besides, there isn't a quota editors need to meet each week or anything. Thanks so much for helping out with the quotation boxes--all I need to do now is find the list of colors and their assigned codes. Gah, trying to figure things like that out is my least favorite part of all this. Ever feel like Indiana Jones plumbing the depths of an ancient crypt when you peruse the older bits of a wiki?

Regarding the spells and skills for each resistance marker:

• Fire = Frizz, Frizzle, Kafrizzle, Sizz, Sizzle, Kasizzle, Flame Slash, Firebird Throw, Big Banga, Magic Burst, Pit of Fire, Arena of Flames, fire breath skills
• Ice = Crack, Crackle, Kacrackle, ice breath
• Blast = Bang, Boom, Kaboom, Shining Shot, Starburst Throw
• Wind = Woosh, Swoosh, Kaswoosh, Axes of Evil, Typhoeus' Maul, Wind Sickles, Thin Air, Pink Typhoon, Pearly Gates,
• Lightning = =Zap, Kazap, Lighting Storm, Gigaslash, Gigagash, Gigathrow
• Strike/Stone = Knuckle Sandwich, Stone's Throw, Boulder Toss, Clean Sweep, Power Throw, Super Throw, Swing Both Ways, Serpent's Bite, Monster Mia (Mazin summon)
• Army = Golden Oldies, Fire in the 'Ole, Monster Mia (sabercat pride), Dosh Toss,
• Death = Assassin's Stab, Sudden Death, Needle Shot, Needle Rain, Grim Reaper, Grimmer Reaper, Death Dance, Whip Whack, Whack, Thwack, Kathwack, Kamikazee
• Sleep = Snooze, Kasnooze, Sandman's Arrow
• Blinding = Dazzle, Flower Shower
• Fizzle = Fizzle
• Fuddle = Fuddle, Kafuddle, Sexy Beam, Hypno Whip
• Sap = Sap, Kasap, Helm Splitter, Morrie's shield breaker
• MP absorption = Drain Magic (Cherub's arrow and Seraph's arrow ignore DM resistances)
• Poison = Toxic Dagger, Toxic Sword
• Ban dance = ban dance
• Stun = War Cry, Underpants Dance, Puff-Puff, Heart Breaker, Mind Breaker, Blow Kiss (causes paralysis but uses the stun resistance), Feel the Beat
• Paralysis = Parallax, Whiplash, Lashings of Love, Angel eyes, Charming Look,

In that I don't end up pestering you every week

Would you happen to know of an adequate user manual on how to create templates, alter box color, and generally more easily change the style of something? I realize that's a much more hefty request than what I usually burden you with, but its about time I learn to do these things on my own and not place undue stress upon yourself. I've got several ideas on how to improve the presentation of the site, but I lack the actual knowledge to implement them.(Follower of Light (talk) 08:46, 7 March 2017 (CST))

Unfortunately a universal guide for this stuff essentially non-existent. I had to just teach myself through trial and error, but it helped that I had a background in computer science. However if you really want to take the time, I recommend you look into the basics of HTML. Here's a good tutorial to start with. Once you learn how the tags work then you'd probably only need to read the section on tables (since nothing else applies to the wiki.) From there you could look at the basics of CSS for styling things. It's once you get to the wiki markup that things get really messy. Overall it's a pain no matter what! And remember, feel free to start work on something, and if you get stuck midway I'd be more than happy to help out. Besides you'll probably learn more from experience anyways :)

Also, I've finished the DQ8 template, but I haven't documented it or added the spell/skills list for each resistance. If I can I'll post a rough cut today and you can consider it to be in beta. It should be usable, and I'll update slowly, but it can already start appearing for some monsters.

Also has there been any luck contacting the admins? The problem with image uploads and the news feed seems to be beyond the reach of users like me, so unless we can bring it to their attention there's nothing we can really do.

TheCodingGamer (talk) 13:47, 9 March 2017 (CST)

I've sent out an email to Woodus asking for assistance, so here's hoping things happen soon. Been a bit of a long day today but I'll check out the guides as soon as I can. I've no true knowledge of computing at all, but crash courses tend to be fun more often than not. I'm certain the beta version of 8's template is more than up to snuff, and if I can I'll add in the missing data bits. Thanks again for everything TCG! (Follower of Light (talk) 19:16, 9 March 2017 (CST))

Woodus responded and says he's sent PMs and emails to both Zenithian and Flyingragnar, and will respond again once they get back to him. Shouldn't take too much longer.(Follower of Light (talk) 17:51, 11 March 2017 (CST))

Awesome. It'd be nice to have admins running this place again. :) Anyways, I finally finished the DQ8 Enemy template. It's a pretty rough cut, and I'm sure there's a bug or two still in it, but you should be able to start using it. Just let me know if anything's wrong with it, or if you don't like the design. Also, I'll slowly add the list of spells/skills for each resistance, so don't fret there. :) TheCodingGamer (talk) 15:22, 13 March 2017 (CDT)

Beat you to it =P. I removed the asterisk marks for the handful of statuses that only have one skill/spell to inflict them on the principal of redundancy. No word yet from Woods, but its still early in the week.(Follower of Light (talk) 01:07, 14 March 2017 (CDT))

You're just too good, Follower! Thanks for that. :) Keep me posted on the hunt for the admins! TheCodingGamer (talk) 20:02, 14 March 2017 (CDT)

Would you mind if I removed the logo images from the enemy templates? Its a wonderful touch, but they keep clashing with info boxes and require large amounts of space to compensate.(Follower of Light (talk) 06:55, 28 March 2017 (CDT))

Yeah, go ahead my friend. I trust your judgement over mine. :) Just curious though, what do you mean by clashing with infoboxes? TheCodingGamer (talk) 13:23, 28 March 2017 (CDT)

If the infobox is directly above the enemy template, then the game's logo is pushed down and covers whatever is directly beneath it, such as agility in 8's case.(Follower of Light (talk) 21:00, 1 April 2017 (CDT))

Dang, I'm missing them more than I thought I would :( lol Do you remember any specific articles the problem occurred on? Would they work on the left side by, or in place of the monster name and kanji? TheCodingGamer (talk) 00:35, 2 April 2017 (CDT)

It happens on any article in which an infoboxe appears above a template. Conducting a quick experiment on blue fang's page, I'm seeing that its everything in the first layer (name, kanji, romanji) that's being pushed down and not just the logo. The sprite box is unaffected, and that leads me to assume that its just the coding for the three name spaces and the logo that needs looking into, in that they're missing the "hard-set" definitions the lower sections have if that makes any sense.(Follower of Light (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2017 (CDT))

Duly noted and I'll look into it. It doesn't seem to be a huge issue site wide, but hopefully I can find a solution that'll prevent this from happening (and maybe keep the logos.) I'll see what I can do. :) TheCodingGamer (talk) 21:58, 3 April 2017 (CDT)

I must thank you personally for uploading my images and transforming them into beautiful transparencies (I'll admit at first, I was a little nervous). You are aiding in keeping this Wonderful Wiki alive, while some of us have important matters to attend to. Again, keep up the excellent work! And I shall return, when the time is right. :) - icysugarspike (talk) 03:55, 13 April 2017 (CDT)

Re: Image problem

Re: security certificates. Agreed. I'm not sure how much I can do about that at the moment. The site currently runs on shared hosting from hostgator. I'm not sure if there is a way to install a certificate from somewhere that generates them for free or not. Hostgator may be enforcing that we would have to pay to do that. I'll make a note to investigate. For the record, nothing about how the site operates in terms of security has changed, we just haven't upgraded to use certificates yet.

Re: Uploads. You might try adding the purge parameter to the URL to see if that helps clear the cached images faster. See Manual:Purge. The problem with the log outs will still happen on any page that you visit which ends with a file ending. It actually doesn't really log you out, it is just the cookie information is not processed so it thinks you are just a regular visitor instead of someone logged in. I'm not sure I can do much about that yet or not. My first effort on the rewrite rule was to see if I can trick the webserver into thinking the pages didn't actual end with file endings. However after that didn't succeed, I feel back on having it redirect the user to a page that would actually work instead.

I don't have control over how they administer PHP rules for the server because we are on shared hosting. I'll see if I can find out more about why the policy changed at some point since this was not an issue until recently. --FlyingRagnar (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2017 (CDT)

Re: Random Page. You're right! I had not seen that before. It is broken for me too and always goes to the same page. I'm not sure what would be causing that. I will look into it. --FlyingRagnar (talk) 20:36, 28 March 2017 (CDT)

TheCodingGamer, I need your talents to get rid of those green backgrounds for me! - icysugarspike (talk) 07:25, 19 April 2017 (CDT)

What's the bug you're referring to?

One I'm aware of is that if you go back to reedit a page immediately, there seems to be no signs of one's recent additions. Though I get around it by refreshing on that particular page. Antiyonder (talk) 00:41, 10 April 2017 (CDT)

Burning Down the House?

You said you've been "juggling a lot these past few months that it's felt good to do even the smallest edits". I've been doing more of a "guardian angel" thing. And I love the DQ series and this wiki so very much, I've got to pop in now and again just to see what's new and to make sure this "house" does not "catch fire" because of some idiot. It's happened to me before. PAX. - icysugarspike (talk) 06:50, 17 April 2017 (CDT)

The next bestiary project

Now that I've got 8's monsters taken care of (bloody took me long enough), which band of of beasties would you like for me to fill out next? You're doing the hardwork by coding, so by all means you should be allow do decide which one gets the taxonomical treatment!(Follower of Light (talk) 23:41, 25 July 2017 (CDT))

Sorry for the late reply, friend. The tiny number of contributions I've made in recent times is rather pitiful, but you know how busy things can get. Anyways, perhaps now that the more modern realeases (VII & VIII) are done, we should focus on the slightly older titles. Considering IV and V are frequently recommended as starting points (at least from what I've seen), I say that'd be a good area to work on. Give me a reference and I'll whip up those templates as soon as I can. :)

Also, this seems like the perfect time to bring up a point I've been wanting to discuss for a while. As it currently stands, all variants of a monster are placed into a single article (e.g. dracky, drackolyte, drackyma, drackmage are all found on the article dracky) While this works for monsters with few appearances and variants it can get messier with others. It causes articles like slime to be unnecessarily long, as well as causing all of the titles and headings for the variants to be one level deeper than they normally would. My idea was that we'd go back to breaking each variant-monster into individual articles, but to keep the idea of variants intact I was thinking we could modify Template:Monster Infobox to include a section labeled "Variants", and there a small list could cross-reference all of them. It'd be cleaner for both readers and editors. What do you think?

Anyways, we just gotta keep working I guess. I can't believe how much this site is improving everyday! Lots of work on the horizon, but at least we have a year until XI drops on us! TheCodingGamer (talk) 18:34, 3 August 2017 (CDT)

I started combining the pallet swaps with the original monsters' pages to try and prevent "hollow" pages from popping up here and there, where its just the monster info box and a stat dump. I'll admit the slime page did become pretty bloated though--maybe the old collapsing tab our paragraph reveal button would help things look a little cleaner? Now that I've put more of your data templates up I'm going to start combining pages again, but none of them should be anywhere close to how big the slime became. I will keep an eye out for the problem though and experiment with a few of the above methods to see if it doesn't keep things tidy.

As for the monster data, we're actually in luck! 3 and 4 are very consistent with elements and monster stats, with the only differences being that 3 lumps frizz, sizz, fire breath, and bang damage into a single fire element when 4 only combines sizz and breath, and that 3 also has an element for deceleratle resistance. 5 is a little more complex, having elements for poison, stun, and recruitment rates. Beyond that, all three are the standard elements and stats like in 2 and 8. If you need any help at all though, just say the word! (Follower of Light (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2017 (CDT))

Alright, thanks for the breakdown. Sounds easy enough. I guess I'll start with 3, and go from there. I'll try getting on those ASAP. Keep up the good work! :) TheCodingGamer (talk) 11:57, 8 August 2017 (CDT)