RogueBasin talk:Community Portal

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Archives

Added some content to this page

Since it was pretty blank, I added some content based on wikipedia's one --Slash 19:15, 31 August 2011 (CEST)


Game Announcements

If you have a new game/version/release to announce to the world, Make an edit to the News page, and please follow the existing format. If you want to generate discussion and receive feedback and comments, make sure to head over to RogueTemple and use their forums, as well as rgrd. Stu 14:21, 16 May 2008 (CEST)


Link breaks wiki, News at 11

The following link (from 'dead-end pages') fails to display anything other than nasty error messages. Possibly due to illegal characters in title?

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Hansj%3F%84%E2%80%9A%3F%82%C2%B6rg_Malthener

Other 'bug'ish news. SDL exists, but searching for SDL will return zero hits. PaulBlay

The error with Hansjoergs page are not because of illegal characters in the URL. They should be valid even though they look like at least twice encoded in Unicode. There seems to something terrible broken recently with non 7-bit characters. Database update maybe? Try searching for any special character like e.g. '????' (U+00C4 "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS" if it gets mangled). Even the db search bails with an error. --Bhaak 15:58, 23 March 2009 (CET)


All those guides!

Where did all those good guides at http://www.roguelikedevelopment.org/ go? according to the news, the content has been moved to this wiki but I can't find any of those guides! me want's 'em badly! Solarnus 11:28, 16 January 2008 (CET)

Sorry, I meant of course that alot of guides are missing, as least most of the map algorithm stuff previously found on the old site is missing here at the wiki. Anyone got copies of those guides, please? Solarnus 14:28, 23 January 2008 (CET)
And you looked in the map section of Articles? All the ones I recall are there. Perhaps you can use the wayback machine to calculate which ones seem to be missing? Duerig 17:12, 23 January 2008 (CET)
lol, the wayback what..? No, realy, I know there's alot missing from the site. Some examples are the guides written by Mike Anderson (Dungeon-Building Algorithm, Fractal Landscapes) and Radomir "The Sheep" Dopieralski (Recursive LvL Generation) Solarnus 17:52, 23 January 2008 (CET)
Look at this URL. It is from www.archive.org, the wayback machine for the Internet: http://web.archive.org/web/20060114055601/http://roguelikedevelopment.org/ but before you go adding all of the articles to the wiki, you should know that there was some effort to move them over, but only if the original authors could be found to give permission. So you should check with an admin here about what to do. Duerig 08:50, 24 January 2008 (CET)
Oh crap, I thought I could just go and add what I managed to find, since it had already been released on the site o.0' Pardon me, I'm too quick sometimes, doing stuff without thinking first.
But, IMHO, not moving over all that stuff just because the original author couldn't be found kinda buggers me, that's just wast of time and good knowledge, stupidlly forcing to "reinvent the wheel". And it buggers me even more, since obvisiouly (spelling?) it can still be found on the web thanks to that wayback machine you're talking about (thanks for that link btw, would've never thought of that).
Thanks for telling me dude, I'll try slowing down/backing off and poke an admin about it before doing anything else.

Anyway, should the "previously missing" Dungeon-Building Algorithm article I dug up yesterday be removed, or just leave it for now and hope for the better? Solarnus 13:50, 24 January 2008 (CET)


Is there any chance of the articles being reposted on the original site until they can be ported here? They're only text documents, and a number of them were very good references. Most of the original files are not stored on wayback machine, so forn ow they are lost for good. lapoubelle 30 April 2008

I have spent most of today searching for and collecting all of the articles that were on the old system but not on roguebasin. I was able to recover all but two. Those two and links to the archives are at User:Duerig. That way they should be safe until we can decide how to handle them. If the admins have a problem with this, I'll host them on my own domain if I have to. Let me know if you can find information on either of the two remaining articles. Duerig 21:53, 1 May 2008 (CEST)



Game or project?

Template Template:Angband-variant asks for status field. Then game entry is added to "status games" category. This works well for stable games and defunct games but fails for alpha, beta and talkie talkie *projects*. Thus any Angband variants which classify themselves as having alpha or beta status do not get included in proper category. Any ideas how to correct that without destroying too much existing work? I would opt for removing status field and adding all variants to categories manually. Other choice is to spilt template into several like it was done with Template:Gameinfo. What are others opinions on this? –Michal BielinskiTalk 16:18, 19 August 2008 (CEST)

I think the best bet is to split the template like the Gameinfo did. I presume there was a good reason to do that split rather than use the status field cleverly. I don't like people having to manually add the category tag as that will result in people forgetting to categorize the variant at all. --JeffLait 05:21, 21 August 2008 (CEST)
Foundations are lain. I am going to wait some more time before proceeding to change all Angband variant pages in case better ideas show up or someone has objections. –Michal BielinskiTalk 15:03, 25 August 2008 (CEST)

1krl

We should add this to the wiki, but I'm not sure where. http://1024brl.googlepages.com/ (and a link to the rgrd posts of course. --Soyweiser 02:00, 22 August 2008 (CEST)

Rule of thumb for new -> old news?

How many months (or how many posts) should be in News before you should move some to Old News? I would suggest that four months or so is enough as the 'News' section is currently longer than the rest of the Main page. PaulBlay

I think that we should move all news from 2008 to Old News. We actually don't really need the News page to show news older than a month, as it is intended to show new releases. I will move all news from 2008 now. Nathan Stoddard 22:34, 22 March 2009 (CET)

More bug-ish behaviour - support for unicode/multi-byte characters

I've just noticed that Japanese text typed in my user page spontaneously changed into gibberish (technically 'mojibake' ;-). The interesting point is that initially it displayed properly, only after a day or two did it turn into unintelligible characters. Similar behaviour can be seen at POWDER/Russian translation. For test purposes I will now write something in Japanese. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? PaulBlay

My bet is someone used a browser that didnt handle jis/utf or whatever encoding properly and saved it back... your test string is nothing but ?????? to my browser... (ff3.5) Stu 19:59, 10 July 2009 (CEST)
Nope. Because it happens to me and Japanese works just fine with Firefox elsewhere (including other wikis). I should test whether it still happens on the new Mediawiki version. PaulBlay
Testing now ... ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????PaulBlay
Nah, it still stuffs up. :-( PaulBlay
Will see what I can do tonight --Slash 13:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I believe it may be down to encoding on the MySQL database - it may need switching to unicode (UTF-8, off the top of my head?) as what is probably happening is that it's being munged into single bytes which make no sense. Scautura 13:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

talkie = pre-alpha / planning ?

The 'talkie' category appears to be a little off compared to the line-up of "alpha, beta, stable". Should I understand it to include games that are pre-alpha / planning or should "pre-alpha" be a new category?

A significant number of 'alpha' projects include no download. I was under the impression that 'alpha' meant that you could run it and see something even though it might not be a playable game yet. PaulBlay

Yes, I think that games that are in 'alpha' but have no downloads should be moved to 'talkie'. Nathan Stoddard 23:23, 12 April 2009 (CEST)

Image uploads?

I see that file uploads are disabled. I'd like to be able to upload a few small icons for alpha/beta/stable/defunct (after I find/create them ;-). If I can't do it myself, is there an admin who I could email or something? PaulBlay

It's not possible to upload files, but you can use images from other sites. Put the image's URL on the page, without any special formatting (look at Downfall for an example). If you need a site to upload to, I recommend Imgur. Nathan Stoddard 23:26, 12 April 2009 (CEST)


'roguelikes' section of Main page.

I think that influential would be clearer (and less controversial) than popular. There are arguably many recent roguelike games that are more popular than ToME, but few (if any) that have been more influential.

I suggest that Major Roguelikes, Roguelike Reviews, Tree of roguelike evolution, and Recently Updated Roguelikes be added to the 'inclusion' page Lists of Roguelikes, and the text changed as below:

= Roguelikes = Many Roguelikes are freely available online. The most popular influential are:

ADOM · Angband · Crawl · NetHack · ToME

Since the control systems of these Roguelikes are geared towards "expert" players, the novice player may be interested in trying a 'lighter' game like some of the coffeebreak roguelikes or just dive in at the deep end and find a game to suit you.. The following may help you find out more:

Also ...

See Talk:List of roguelikes for possible replacement for the content of that page. PaulBlay

Location instead of Nationality?

In the developer info, I think it would be more fun to have a Location option instead of a Nationality option. With location, people can put in however much information on their location they want. They could type things like "Sacramento, CA, USA" or just "Arizona, USA" or even "France". The Nationality field limits this information purely to the country where the person is from, which in many cases might not be as interesting as the state in that country that the person lives in.

So, the advantage with using the word Location instead is that it provides people the flexibility to put in however much or little information they want, and it can still contain the exact same information that Nationality does. Also, upgrading is easy because we can just replace all instances of Nationality with Location. Although this might be considered a minor issue because people can enter their state and so on into the Nationality field, the Nationality field still encourages new contributions to contain as little information as possible on the location of the developer. Renaming it Location would encourage them to put in as much information as they wanted to. - elig

I'm not hard against it, but it doesn't sound that great a move. I doubt the excitement would keep you awake at nights if I told you that I live in Wiltshire now but Berkshire before I moved. ;-) States are mostly only going to be interesting if you happen to live in the same country. That said, go ahead and do it if you want, it's no big deal either way. PaulBlay
The biggest problem with this is that every developer would have to change their developer info. It would be better to create a new template with the nationality changed to location, but then some developers would have a "location" field and others would have a "nationality" field, which could be confusing. I don't think it's worth it to change it. Nathan Stoddard 00:38, 8 May 2009 (CEST)

Important links on front page?

What about having some closely related important community links on the front page? There are very few major resources aside from Roguebasin, pretty much just Temple of the Roguelike, the rgrd newsgroup, #rgrd and Temple of the Roguelike's forums. The RGRD links are currently under articles, perhaps for lack of a better place. They're not articles and it seems a little confusing to me to have them under there. Links might be appropriate, but since there are so few other major resources for the roguelike community, why not highlight them directly on the main page? I feel this would really help people who find Roguebasin for the first time to enter the community. At least, I think all these links should be placed in a single location that is easy to access and properly labeled. Thoughts? - elig

I have now added this to the front page, to show how I think it might look. Feel free to take it off ofcourse if you absolutely hate it, but I think it could be a valuable addition to the front page. Thoughts? - elig

A few PaulBlay

  1. Although I like "Temple of the Roguelike" it doesn't really need two links.
  1. r.g.r.d Newsgroup and R.G.R.D IRC Chatroom could have direct links as well as (instead of?) the links to RogueBasin pages.*
  1. angband.oook.cz deserves a mention.
  1. You've just stolen the space I wanted to use for the "Featured game section" ;-) (But I can't complain too much as I didn't take the time away from Angband/65 development to feature even one game)

NOTE: r.g.r.d Newsgroup should probably have a Google groups link - many people won't have a browser that supports things like news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.pocketpc. If there was a browser equivalent for IRC:// I'd probably say the same about that.

Also note that there's a "links" link at the top of the page. I'd suggest that page could be made more user-friendly and updated.


Featured games is a good idea. We can always put it above or below the community links. But it should definitely have a featured games thing on the front page. The other changes are all good, I'll probably just leave the Temple of the Roguelike forum, since this page already has news physically on it. The r.g.r.d. newsgroup should be a direct google link IMO as well. IRC I think it would be better to have a seperate page for, just because there's no easy way to specify an IRC server's address, to my knowledge. I'll also add angband.oook.cz - elig

I've also added a temporary space for the future featured Roguelike section. Feel free to remove/edit it of course. Just figured I'd reserve the space :) Also, feel free to put it above the Roguelike community links if you want. Also, what about having the featured roguelike at the very top of the page? Like, in the space where "What is a Roguelike?" is now, with "What is a Roguelike?" right below it? It might be something neat to entice any new visitors to try a Roguelike. - elig

Specific games..

"I don't think we should have links to sites about specific games"

http://angband.oook.cz/ is not about a single game, it is about an entire genre of roguelike games. As evidenced by the fact that there are 82 *band variants in the List of Angband variants. There are at least as many posts on variants as on 'vanilla' Angband and frankly it gets more traffic than http://www.roguetemple.com/ by a long way. PaulBlay

Okay. From the description of the site, I assumed it was primarily about Angband. I didn't even look at the site. I will re-add it. :) Nathan Stoddard 21:50, 14 May 2009 (CEST)

Reorganize site?

Right now, this site serves two main purposes: to describe existing Roguelike games and have articles about creating new Roguelikes. I think that at least for the average user, it might be confusing to have the two "mixed" like they are. For example, I think the news section of the main page should be divided into two sections: games and development tools. What do you think? Nathan Stoddard 21:54, 14 May 2009 (CEST)

I don't think the development tools should be split out of news, but I do agree that something of a reorganisation is needed. The site is, IMO, more accessible for game information than it is for development help. The great majority of game information is in one of two types - 1) Lists and categories, 2) Individual game information. That is basically all that's needed - ways of finding a suitable game efficiently and information on the game itself.
Development articles (and related content) are trickier. For one thing I suspect many of the articles may be old fashioned. There are also quite a few articles that are 'locked' (can't be edited). They are spread around between different languages and I think there are big gaps in difficulty level between them. What I think would be great would be if there was a series of articles all in the same language (preferably one accessible to new learners and usable on many platforms) that cover all major aspects of development. Don't worry about having the most efficient algorithms, worry more about understandability and consistency between articles. Make use of stable libraries if appropriate. Basically with the intent that someone starting at the first article and finishing at the last could go from newbie to having made a basic functional roguelike game. That series could form a stable "trunk" and generous inclusion of links to other relevant articles would provide branches off to the details and options that more experienced developers (and those using other languages) will need. PaulBlay
I think that's a good idea. It might be best to use Python, because it is easy to learn, fast to develop in, and portable. It's slow (some say it's 100 times slower than C++), but as you said, efficiency isn't very important. I have some experience with Python, so I could help write some of the articles. Nathan Stoddard 01:42, 15 May 2009 (CEST)
As I understand it the latest version has improved quite markedly in speed, hasn't it?
I'm pretty much booked up working on Angband/65 as far as my free time goes up till the end of August so I'm afraid I won't be of much use (and I don't know python). PaulBlay
Definitely, the game info is far more accessable than the development info. What we're desperately lacking is more information on development, a better organization of that information, and a better way to access that information. I'm not entirely sure how to fix these problems, except for maybe creating a generic Roguelike Development page that is linked to from the front page. Aside from that, I'm not sure. :\ I've thought about adding articles from time to time, but I never know what to name them or where to properly add them. - elig

Library template(s)

I've added Template:Library and applied it to the pages in category:library. While doing so two points came up to be resolved:

1. Should there be -alpha, -beta, -stable and -defunct divisions for libraries?

2. Should Roguelike Library For Java and Roguelike Library For Perl be changed to use the library template I added?

P.S. Feel free to change / or comment on the library template I made. PaulBlay

IMO all libraries should follow the same format, and I love the alpha beta stable etc. thing. Sounds good to me! - elig
I also like that curses uses a library like template to specify that curses is a series of libraries. elig

Who's minding the store?

That is to say, who is it that does the admin stuff like delete pages in the delete category, pay for the domain name, update the mediawiki version? I'm just asking because it would be a real shame if I came back here one day and it was all 404'ed or something. PaulBlay

Not sure, might be slashie. I was thinking of just such an awful idea myself recently. Maybe we should start some kind of fund to financially support roguebasin. Erowid for instance has a non-profit donation based organization that pays their bills. Of course, we wouldn't be able to do anything nearly so fancy, but a paypal account and the ability to donate might be nice... Thoughts? - elig

I just now noticed the PayPal donate button on the lower left side of the page. Is that new? I definitely think it should be given a more prominent place on the website if it is! Maybe a nice spot on the front page, and one on the left right under the logo, maybe. Glad to see this place has a donate button now, though! Everybody donate! :D elig
That's been there forever. Before everybody donates I think someone should email the address shown and see if you get a reply. (I don't think Bjorn has edited anything here all the time I've been here?). PaulBlay
This is being discussed at http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=413 , thanks for your interest! --Slash 07:18, 2 July 2009 (CEST)
To make sure the info is here as well:
DOMAIN. I, Björn Ritzl, is the owner of the domain (roguelikedevelopment.org). I intend to keep paying for this domain for several reasons: 1) Domains are inexpensive 2) I've had a keen interest for roguelikes for 10+ years 3) I was the one who contacted all the original article authors to get their permission to move them to roguelikedevelopment from the old abandoned site 4) I use the site to promote my own RL Dweller.
roguebasin.com has been redirected to roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org. roguebasin.com is owned by Slashie
HOSTING I'm also paying for the hosting (currently hosted by binero.se). I intend to keep paying for this for several reasons: 1) It's not very expensive (less than €100 per year for a lot of space and unlimited domains etc) 2) I use the hosting for several other domains as well 3) See above reasons for paying for roguelikedevelopment.org.
ADMINISTRATION I am not actively taking part in wiki administration, but I will be the one who does wiki updates. I can share access with someone else (Slashie?).

Wiki backup / duplicate?

With the current situation (not sure who runs RogueBasin, not sure who has the admin account for the wiki, out of date mediawiki version) would it be possible for someone to duplicate / backup the wiki content? Worst case it wouldn't all be lost if it goes south. Best case someone might be willing to set up a new host with better spam-protection and less bugs. PaulBlay

I agree, it would be a great benefit to the entire community if we were able to duplicate/mirror this wiki. If anyone could duplicate it, we could set up some mirrors in case the main site ever goes down. Plus, this has the added advantage of independent members of the community being able to download a backup copy. We definitely need an easy way to mirror/download/backup Roguebasin, IMO. elig
There's a special page for Exporting pages for import to another MediaWiki wiki. Special:Export. Not sure how well it works. Or you can just manually copy each page source. Possibly to a wiki host like PBWorks ??? PaulBlay
I have written/grabbed a few scripts to begin automating the backup process and I've also used them to make a complete backup of the roguebasin wiki. Both the scripts and the initial backup are available in a package at: EDIT: Download scripts at http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin-backup-scripts.zip and backup at: http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin/backups/ /EDIT so grab a copy and keep it just in case. If somebody feels ambitious, they can finish automating the process. Duerig 07:05, 2 July 2009 (CEST)
This is awesome, Duerig! This is exactly what we needed! :D Thank you. I'm going to download it right away. elig Edit: After having downloaded it, this really is EXACTLY what we need. This is fantastic. Everyone should download this. elig
Ha-ha, maybe not *everyone* (surely there are bandwidth concerns?). But great news and thanks Duerig. I have just downloaded it and will experiment with how easy it is to set-up elsewhere. (It's not a backup until you've tested the restore process! ;-) I'll report in the Temple of the Roguelike thread. PaulBlay
Given your enthusiasm, I decided to bite the bullet and finish automating the process. Download the scripts and run 'backup.sh' and everything will be done for you including downloading the actual xml files and compressing them into a tarball with the current date. I converted a piece of my webspace into backup storage and I've set up a cron job to make monthly backups and stash them there. Fully automated backup scripts at: http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin-backup-scripts.zip and backup index at: http://www.xmission.com/~tyrecius/roguebasin/backups/ I plan to leave things running and available until/unless my provider complains. Duerig 09:32, 2 July 2009 (CEST)
Scautura has made the very generous offer to supply ad-free wiki hosting. Depending on whether we get any replies from Bjorn (and what those replies are) I think it might be a good idea to move RogueBasin. Obviously it will still be a good idea to make regular backups whatever else happens. Otherwise YourWiki looks like a possibility for temporary / emergency backup location. I'll be waiting a while to see how things proceed before doing more. PaulBlay
Duerig comes through once again! This is absolutely amazing stuff, and exactly what we need. Thank you! Now I can start a torrent based on the backups/ directory. This is awesome! :D elig

Weird error?

Every time I search for Bjorn or Bergstrom the search crashes. I was trying to figure out when the new paypal button was added by searching for Bjorn Bergstrom and then seeing when he added it. Unfortunately, it crashes. Any idea why? elig

I've seen this before. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact reason for the problem (or where I wrote about it) but I think it's got something to do with the content of the pages searched for (possibly related to the way non-ascii characters get messed up). PaulBlay

It's because Bjorn Bergstrom is a great and terrible demon who must keep his super-secret-secrets completely secret. So, he fucks with your search if you try to find him. Many great demon hunters have fallen to this terrible foe. The answer will be revealed when the fourth sun of Galastrom 5 eclipses the blood moon. Mort432 18:24, 24 April 2012 (CEST)

The Roguebasin torrent!

Here is a torrent for the most recent backup of the Roguebasin. I'll be seeding it at 50kb/s pretty much forever. Remember, seeding this is completely legal and supports the preservation of the Roguebasin, so please seed! Get the torrent here!

You can also save the copy on Adrive or Skydrive --Pilotpirx 11:36, 8 July 2009 (CEST)

Will download/seed now, no worries. How else will I live without my endless repository of wierd and wonderful games? xxx Mort432 18:21, 24 April 2012 (CEST)

It's been removed, a more up to date tracker would be appreciated. Mort432 18:22, 24 April 2012 (CEST)

New spammers

Think its time to update the wiki again? or do something with captha or something to lock new users... the spam is coming thick and fast Stu 17:39, 10 July 2009 (CEST)

It might be best to have an administrator activate each account before it can be used. This would prevent the spam, and there aren't very many new accounts, so it wouldn't be too tedious. Another option would be to disallow accounts with "buy" in the name. We would need an administrator to do either of these, and it would be useful to have more administrators. Nathan Stoddard 21:23, 10 July 2009 (CEST)
Right its time someone locked new users down until something can be organised. its beyond ridiculous now. Stu 18:41, 12 July 2009 (CEST)
The wiki is currently in a transition period. The old ops had been idle for quite a while (see comments above and linked thread on TotRL). Slash has just recently been given shell access so he can set things up. I believe that he is planning on upgrading the wiki software and take other measures to prevent spam. While he figures out a permanent solution, we should try to keep things as clean as we can. Duerig 20:59, 12 July 2009 (CEST)
Hello people, I was performing the upgrade but I ran into some problems with the PHP version... hope to have it fixed tomorrow -- Slash
New captcha measures have been installed, I hope we will have a better time with spambots now --Slash 18:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
The spam seems to have slowed a bit, but it definitely has not stopped. Are you using a generic captcha? Perhaps something that requires some basic knowledge of roguelike games would work better (I know the original Dudley's dungeon used Nethack-based questions and I never saw it get spammed.) Rdanhenry 09:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Revised opinion: This is not working. You either need a different form of captcha or accounts need to be approved by a human. Rdanhenry 09:43, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Or possibly more sysops able to block IP ranges (on the technical side, are all those 'fullmassage' spammers from the same IP?) PaulBlay
Paul Blay has been appointed as a SysOp, about 330 spammers have been deleted --Slash 12:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I am using "reCaptcha", which is a popular captcha plugin (which may not be a good choice, as popular security measures are the first target for spammers), human approval proved to be clumsy in the past, but if the situation scales we will go that way. --Slash 12:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Maybe it is about time to look into that.--Darwin 12:14, 20 September 2012 (CEST)

Roguebasin mediawiki updated to 1.15.0

Well, the upgrade is finished. Let's collect all things broken here. --Slash 22:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

1. I noticed the images can no longer be referred to using only the url, so we will have to fix them up --Slash 22:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC) Fixed --Slash 00:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

(re)Captcha is broken! (or not)

It doesn't matter what you type, the update goes through anyway. No wonder we've been spammed to heck. PaulBlay

In theory, reCaptcha should give you one "known" word, and one "unknown" word, such that there is one word to check against, and one that they are trying to figure out - if the known word is correct, it doesn't matter what the other word is. Sounds like someone's fouled up with the code on their end and neither word matters. Scautura 12:01, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
"reCaptcha should give you one "known" word, and one "unknown" word" Oh, I didn't realize that. I'm not sure if it's working or not now. I'll have to check. I just linked 'google' to get a reCapture prompt and it didn't ask for one. o_O???. Oddly reCapture prompts have been appearing when I haven't added any new URLs. PaulBlay
I just tested and reCaptcha is working when creating a new account? and there's no way to edit pages if you dont have one... am I missing something obvious? --Slash 12:24, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I think I was misunderstanding the reCapture system. Scautura noted that you only have to get one of the words correct, right? I didn't know that. Before I was 'sysop'ed I was getting a reCapture prompt on all edits that added a new external URL. I was also getting a reCapture prompt on quite a few edits that didn't add an external URL, but I'm not sure what all that was about. PaulBlay

Community Portal

Unless someone can suggest a reason I shouldn't I'm going to unprotect the RogueBasin Community Portal page, remove the redirect and delete the rather useless stub in Community Portal Alias. PaulBlay

I think that's ok --Slash 14:42, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Um... the roguebasin itself has a reason. When Jeff last tried to do it his attempts were thwarted by data base error. I would be surprised and grateful if you somehow managed to make it happen. –Michal BielinskiTalk 11:41, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm back and I finally did it. Now we just need to know what actually goes in a RogueBasin Community Portal. :-P PaulBlay 09:27, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

NetHack poll news-worthy?

Is the NetHack poll for current and former player a news-worthy item?

The news section is labelled 'New Roguelike Releases' so I guess rather not? --Bhaak 11:46, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

elig: I think usually temple of the roguelike handles news related stuff like that. Although, maybe we should have some kind of a more general news feed on here? What does everyone else think?

Template change suggestion for handling released / updated data

In an effort to a) make the data for 'updated' and 'released' more consistent and b) make it easier to handle by the IRLDB I'm going to suggest splitting up the 'updated' and 'released' information into two fields each. One for the date, and one for the relevant version number.

See Brogue and Template:Game-stable for how this could work.

This would also be a good opportunity to decide on a common date format. I would suggest that

a) Years have four digits (yyyy) - anything less is just confusing now.

b) Months are in letters, not digits (mmm) - no chance of confusing with day-of-month

c) day of month is displayed without the NNth NNst NNrd, etc., notation - saves space.

For me that gives the prime candidates as ...

Mar 12, 2009

or

2009 Mar 12

Advantage of first option - Arguably looks nicer

Advantage of second option - Year is first so it will sort nicer in text sorting. PaulBlay 09:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Ido Go for it! 12:02, 13 July 2010
If you want a date with the year in front don't do "2009 Mar 12". It looks ugly as hell and is extremely uncommon. The only reasonable leading year format that is also widely used would be ISO 8601: "2009-03-12". --Bhaak 10:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


Copyright status of pages edited ever since the wiki stopped telling editors that they GFDL their edits

Hi all,

RogueBasin has sometimes required contributors to release their work under the GNU Free Documentation License and sometimes not. So what's the effective copyright status of the pages here?

RogueBasin:About says this wiki was hosted at roguebasin.swiki.net, then roguebasin.t-o-m-e.net, and now is hosted at roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org.

I've tried for a while but haven't managed to get the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to show me any part of the wiki as it existed at swiki.net. What copyright license did the wiki use back then?

At t-o-m-e.net, RogueBasin indicated that it was GFDLed. See the Main Page as it was in mid-2006 for example. At the bottom, it says "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." When a MediaWiki-based wiki says that, it almost always MediaWiki tells editors that when they click "Save page", they agree to release their contributions under the GFDL. We can safely assume that RogueBasin did so back then.

Here at roguelikedevelopment.org, RogueBasin has no license information at the bottom of the page, and while I'm editing a page, it only says "Please note that all contributions to RogueBasin may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. ... You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource ... ."

In the "Future of RogueBasin" thread at roguetemple.com, Paul Blay wrote "Articles in RogueBasin are those which are under either the 'GNU Free Documentation License 1.2' (most of them) or a modified version that doesn't allow the content to be modified (a handful or two, I guess). There should be no problem with copying them to another site as long as they remain under the same license." I think he meant those articles which were posted to Usenet by a single author then copied here later.

But many of our pages here, like the NetHack page and the Angband page, have been written by many wiki contributors. So, at one point, contributors agreed, when they clicked "Save page", that their work was GFDLed. Later on, further contributors didn't agree to such a thing. The GFDL frowns upon this: it seems to me to require that if you modify a GFDLed work and distribute the modified work (e.g. by saving it on a public wiki server), your changes must be released under the GFDL.

What's the copyright status of the pages which were once all-GFDL and now are not?

Cheers, --Unforgettableid 20:24, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

4DRL Template

4DRL Template: There is now a game-4drl template for use in the entries to the 4DRL challenge! (use this instead of game-stable, game-alpha, game-7drl, etc.) --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Nolithius (talk), 17:57, 28 October 2010.

Shorter repost: Are the pages on this wiki GFDL or not?

This is a shorter repost of my long post above.

In certain years, RogueBasin has required contributors to release their work under the GFDL open-content license. In other years, RogueBasin hasn't required it. So what's the effective copyright status of the pages here: are they GFDL or not?

Cheers, Unforgettableid 20:19, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Assume they are not because you cannot divide content that is affected by GFDL from content that is not.
–Michal BielinskiTalk 04:46, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Clearly everyone who's contributed to the wiki's been fine with having their writing go on the wiki. But I figured that since the GFDL requirement wasn't always there, only certain people have agreed to have their text become GFDLed. And what you said seems to confirm that. That's unfortunate; it stops us from copying large chunks of text back and forth between this wiki and other GFDL wikis. Oh well. Thanks for your time Michal. Unforgettableid 08:35, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Add Prominent IRLDB link into the homepage?

The International Roguelike Database ( http://www.roguetemple.com/irldb ) leeches data from roguebasin, providing a searchable database as well as allowing rating the games and adding comments about them. Should it be added at the frontpage?

http://roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=1476.0

Why not? Sounds helpful, useful, and relevant to me. —Thomas Larsen 01:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
Completely relevant and should be in the main links. —Nathaniel Inman 22:36, 4 March 2011 (CST)

Previous medals

Hi,

I've got an 7DRL '10 medal (http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Pammpi) wich is signed to my old nickname. Can you guys transfer it to this account or can I do it on my own? Do you need proofs that it's really mine and if so, how can I prove it?

I haven't registered to this site previously (or at least I don't think so?:) so they must been taken that nick from my Google groups name.

Thanks! :) -Cujoes

Cujoes, you can edit content as you see fit, especially your own medals. Also, please note that while the page Pammpi has been created, User:Pammpi does not exist. --Nolithius 18:40, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi, thank you. :) I didn't realize there's a single button to transfer text to another page, I should've check that before asking any questions.. anyway, problem solved! =) --Cujoes 19:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
No problem. I can move the old page or delete if you would like. If you prefer to leave it with the redirect, that works as well. --Nolithius 22:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

RogueBasin:Copyrights

RogueBasin:Copyrights is still empty. Will it be filled someday? At least in germany this means all the text is under some Kind of Copyright an can NOT be used freely. I think CC-BY-SA (as used in Wikipedia) would work here too.

A CC-0 or similair completly free would perhaps a be a bit much for most users here? Elvis 23:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is caused by previous licenses used by RogueBasin. Partial answer to your question is slightly above in two sections started by Unforgettableid. Core issue is one just cannot slap CC-BY-SA or any other free license on without getting explicit permission from EVERY user of this wiki. This just plain sucks but not much can be done about it.
I may be mistaken but few guaranteed things one can do include editing this stuff and using it without copying. Unless one can prove that by editing a wiki on MediaWiki engine one automatically agrees to GFDL status quo will persist.
–Michal BielinskiTalk 20:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
it would be possible to say "every edit after $now is licensed under $license", this would make all new pages fall under this license and after enough edits (when there is nothing left of the pages prior to $now) also old pages.
oh, and editing in an mediawiki does DEFINETLY NOT use any license other than the automatic (c) when there is no other license agreed on and shown. Elvis 12:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Replying to your original post: I just created a RogueBasin:Copyrights page telling people not to copy large blocks of text from RogueBasin. Thanks for inspiring me to do that. :)
Replying to your most recent post: How could you know that the new edits don't include any text copied from non-GFDL revisions? Maybe you could use copying-detecting technology like turnitin.com and some other websites use. An easier way, though, might be to get permission to relicense to CC-BY-SA from the vast majority of the wiki's contributors, and then to move all the text we don't have permission to relicense over to another website.
Best regards, Unforgettableid 02:36, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Python/pygame roguelike help with item system

Hello, I've been making an open source python/pygame roguelike and I need a bit of help with an item system. Not so much the system itself but with the content. Does anyone know an open source spritesheet of items or something or of 'dolls' of characters to assemble items onto, with the items, but mostly with a database of some kind of the items, so that I can use it to program around and not have the hassle of writing my own huge list of items. I've been using these: http://rltiles.sourceforge.net/ so far but there's no item list or information connected to the images that I can find, if there is one that someone can point me to can you point me to it? (haha) or if there's another tileset around with an item list, or in a open source game or something. Thank you, Jon P.S I should put the source up somewhere when it gets anywhere remotely fun to use. [EDIT] I think I got it but suggestions are still welcome, thanks!

420 Date Formats

Apologies for my mistake, I should have removed the greeting earlier, however I fell asleep before 12PM GMT. I was basing the message on GMT, as opposed to EST. Thank you for removing it at an appropriate time.

Happy 420, all. ;)

non-roguelikes being added

It seems like there are many non-roguelikes being added, i.e. games that do not have an ASCII & console mode, and ones that are not turn-based, such as platform, 3D, and realtime games. While some of these may be partly relevant if they are based on roguelikes, others should not be here at all.--Darwin 06:49, 29 June 2012 (CEST)

Can you list some offenders?
I personally think that games that has nothing to do with roguelikes should be removed, but also that we should be very lenient with roguelikelikes. Maybe some rules for what is acceptable is in order - I'd set the bar at "randomly generated 'world'" and maybe "resource management". Colonp 23:50, 22 July 2012 (CEST)

I think that the definition of Roguelike for the purposes of the wiki will need to be a little more refined. For example... Earl Spork has a randomly generated world, but in my opinion, is not a Roguelike, and should be axed. Cataclysm on the other hand, has a set-in-stone, hardcoded world, and yet, in my opinion, is very much a Roguelike.

I'd like to propose a set of criterion right now that we can consider. I'd appreciate revisions and opinions.

  • Top-Down Viewpoint
  • Grid-Based
  • Player avatar can grow stronger, either with new equipment or gaining experience
  • Progressive difficulty
  • RPG elements
  • Usually turn-based. Some exceptions.

Alternatively, it might be wise to have some way for the community to vote on new submissions regarding whether they count as Roguelikes or not before they are permitted onto the wiki.

Mort432 22:40, 3 October 2012 (CEST)

Those side-scrollers are the main type I am arguing against. My definition of a roguelike is a turn-based, top-down basic ASCII map terminal game, or one that otherwise the text can be copied out of with a terminal-type tool. The rest actually varies. Tiny roguelikes do not have all the elements you say. Gary Gygax, one of the founders of RPGs, defined them as games one or more person tells the story of to other people, and other games are role assumption (RA.) Games that force graphics are not roguelike, but real-time multiplayer games such as Mangband, TomeNET, Interhack could be called roguelike, though in other ways they are not, and it is a matter of personal taste--Darwin 02:01, 15 October 2012 (CEST).
There needs to be a community consensus on this matter, I think. Give me a little time as I'm busy today, but I'll set up something on the front page for people to vote on regarding this matter. Mort432 (talk) 17:24, 18 October 2012 (CEST)
According to the Wikipedia entry for 'Roguelike', the 2008 Roguelike Developers' Conference has already defined the criteria that a game must meet to be considered a 'roguelike'. Until we reach consensus, I suggest we use the RDC's definition -- if nothing else, we'll at least have a common point from which to start defining 'roguelike' on our own terms. FredNotBob (talk) 00:40, 4 December 2012 (CET)

critical spam problem

For a few months there has been a critical spam problems. At least half the time, a large/major number of the recent changes are spam. Admins, please get better spam protection or consider requiring that you approve all new members again. You could ask people who have been clearly doing helpful additions to be admins and help. Right now you are fighting a losing battle that wastes all your time, and it would take you less time to approve new members--Darwin 02:05, 15 October 2012 (CEST).

Agreed. Maybe it might be an idea to disable everyone's accounts and send out an email requiring all users re-confirm their accounts before they can edit again. That should put a short, sharp stop to this. Mort432 (talk) 17:23, 18 October 2012 (CEST)
To make it easy for an administrator to delete spam, I suggest you tag any spam page with {{Db-content)). Preferably, also delete the spam content. An adminstrator can find the pages using this template with what links here.-Muscles (talk) 03:42, 23 October 2012 (CEST)
I found that some such pages are being tagged as Category:Delete, so never mind my suggestion above.-Muscles (talk) 03:55, 23 October 2012 (CEST)
I wish you had explained how to do that so people could see (I had forgotten, myself.) There are probably hundreds of old pages that should be deleted. If anyone wants to help. what you type in a page to delete is: [[Category:Delete]].
Could someone contact some of the admins--if necessary on the Temple of The Roguelike forum--to tell them what is going on? Almost all new accounts are still obviously spam accounts, and their creation clutters up the recent changes list. I am almost giving up on this wiki since nothing seems to be done about it.--Darwin (talk) 02:19, 19 December 2012 (CET)
I was contacted today regarding the spam problems. Ido contacted me and Slash in october regarding this and I upgraded MW and it was my understanding that Slash has a look at the captcha questions. Now I hear that spammers are still getting through. Today I did the following: Added four new captcha questions of a different character than the existing ones (maybe these should be deleted). I also upgraded the "User Merge and Delete" extensions as it wasn't working with the new MW version that I installed in October. I am primarily the one who provides hosting for RB, I am not an active maintainer, but I will gladly help out in any way that I can to handle this situation. What are your suggestions to solve the problem? Do we need more active wiki admin people? Another means of handling spam? Is it possible to use some kind of reputation system? --Bjorn (talk) 20:45, 27 December 2012 (CET)
Spam is annoying, but it isn't out of control here. We get a spam or two actually posted each day, and I clean up some of them, and others get cleaned up before I get to them. I do see lots of spam accounts created, but most never manage to make a post, so they must be cracking one captcha to make the account, and failing to crack the second to post.
I just hit "Random page" about 20 times, and didn't get a single spam page. That's pretty good. I think the random page algorithm ignores the blank pages left when users delete spam pages though.
It would be nice if an admin would delete the pages in Category:Delete occasionally. I'd be happy to do this, but I understand that I probably haven't been here long enough to have accumulated a sufficient level of trust to get the admin bit.-Muscles (talk) 02:47, 28 December 2012 (CET)
I'm not sure if "having been here long enough" is the best criteria for deciding if someone should be given extended privileges to perform admin stuff. I think it's more important to show concern and a willingness to help out, as you have done Muscles. If you contact me via e-mail (bjorn dot ritzl at google's e-mail service) I'd be glad to give you enough access to deal with spam and spammers efficiently. I will be able to assist you with installation and configuration of required extensions, but I do not have the time to do actual day-to-day admin stuff here.--Bjorn (talk) 14:03, 6 January 2013 (CET)

Mass deletion

I'd like to get some input from someone with a bit more MediaWiki experience: Isn't there a fast way to delete all articles belonging to a certain category (ie the Delete category)? Do I really have to delete them one by one? --Bjorn (talk) 15:42, 28 December 2012 (CET)

There's nothing in the core MediaWiki software which allows this, but there are several extensions which might do so. Nuke is already installed here, although there is a later version available. However, I've just looked at it running on Wikipedia and don't see any option to delete by category. NukeDPL looks like it will delete by category. It requires the Dynamic Page List extension. I don't have access to a Wiki with this configured to be absolutely sure it does what I think it does.
Other promising extensions are DeleteBatch and MassDelete, but I have no experience in using these.
The problem is that you will still probably want to check that all pages in the category have been correctly tagged, and that's the time-consuming part, not the two clicks required to actually delete a page.-Muscles (talk) 23:42, 28 December 2012 (CET)
AutoWikiBrowser will also automate deletion of pages, and can get a list of pages to work with from a category. This might be a simpler option than the extensions I mention above.-Muscles (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2012 (CET)

Preventing spam

The spam problem does look mostly taken care of now, but a few likely spam accounts are still getting through, and it could probably increase at any time. Why not use the question that you always ask users who are editing, before they even sign up? The idea of freezing all accounts, and emailing them to reactivate, also sounded good.--Darwin (talk) 06:24, 31 December 2012 (CET)

The pattern of spammers here is to create a new account, then within a few minutes to write their spam to their talk page. They then move the talk page to a different name, within the user talk namespace but not for an existing user name. I presume this gets around anti-spambots on some other wikis which detect spam being posted in article space or to pages outside the user's own talk space, but don't trigger on page moves within the same namespace. These spammers never seem to post again after the initial creation of their talk page and moving it.
To create an account already requires solving a roguelike-related question, and adding an external link to any page requires solving such a question again. I suspect that attempts to create spam accounts usually fail for this reason, and such failed accounts do not appear in the recent changes list. However, spammers who do manage to create accounts have managed to solve the question, and to create their talk page they must solve an additional question, which they have about a one in four chance to doing. All such spammers are bots, so if they've been programmed to solve such questions (by selecting one of the choices at random) then they can keep solving them, but with a high failure rate.
Blocking accounts identified as spammers wouldn't therefore be productive. Freezing all existing accounts would do nothing to deter spammers, as their accounts are already long abandoned, but would put off some existing contributors, most of whom only post occasionally.
I've found (on other wikis) that requiring all accounts to be pre-approved is highly effective, but also has a chilling effect on the creation of genuine new accounts. It may be less chilling here than on some wikis, as many people signing up are the authors of games and have a vested interest in producing and updating a page about their creation.
Preventing new accounts from moving pages (requiring them to be registered for 4 days and having made 10 edits before becoming "autoconfirmed", as English Wikipedia does) would prevent spammers from moving their talk pages, but since this pattern is so easy to identify as spam I'm not sure there's a benefit to preventing it. The spam talk page would still exist.
Another anti-spam strategy which has been somewhat effective for me in the past is to blacklist any external link from certain countries, such as Russia, and possibly every external link not on a whitelist such as the country code for the country a community wiki is held in (ie only accept .uk external links for a wiki dealing with a small English town). I think this will not work here, as roguelike games can be hosted on any domain, and those are the links we want.-Muscles (talk) 02:16, 1 January 2013 (CET)
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