About Categories and Infocards

[FatMcK]

Hi,

I think it needs to be discussed how categories and infocards should be handled in the wikis future.

The game itself gives us five categories: Logistics, Production, Intermediate products, Combat and Technologies

In the wiki we have currently a lot more categories. Which are usefull, which are not? And is it better to create subcategories or paralel 'main'categories?

For an example lets take Combat. There are weapons, ammo, capsules, armor, modular armor equipment, walls, turrets, radar and the rocket defense.

So categorize all of this simply under combat is not really usefull. It clearly needs to be divided between armor and weapons for example. But should there be categories that are named armor or should it be something like combat/armor. What about sub-subcategories? Does modular armor equipment needs it own category? And so on ..

The same thing applies similar to the infocards. Should all combat subcategories need their own infocards? What about the color shemes? All red for example? Or different red values? And how to name them?

[ssilk]

My plans where to use the same types/categories, as the entity types, which are currently about 9 (I will take a look into the XML tonight, which can clearly answer this.

[FatMcK]

Great, can't wait to see what you find there.

[ssilk]

List of all used entity-types

Code: Select all

accumulator
ammo-turret
arrow
beacon
blueprint
boiler
car
cargo-wagon
checkbox_style
construction-robot
create-particle
create-sticker
deconstruction-item
electric-turret
equipment-remote
fish
flame-thrower
flame-thrower-explosion
flying-text
generator
generator-equipment
ghost
graph_style
gui-style
item-entity
lab
lamp
land-mine
line
locomotive
logistic-robot
map-settings
market
movement-bonus-equipment
night-vision-equipment
num-quick-bars
offshore-pump
pipe
pipe-to-ground
player
player-port
poison
pump
radar
radiobutton_style
rail-category
rail-signal
repair-tool
roboport
rocket-defense
scroll_pane_style
scrollbar_style
slider_style
smart-container
solar-panel
solar-panel-equipment
sticker
storage-tank
tab_style
train-stop
unit-spawner
use-on-self
wall

Well, some can be ignored, like "tab_style" or "gui-style". Some are not relevant like "player-port" (might be sometimes), or "ghost". But much more, than I thought.

I'll make a list of type<->entity-name this week, because the point of this is, that I think, that the type of an entity is also the class (C++ wise), so if we describe a type, we describe more or less all of the entities below that type, because they share the same program-code.

[FatMcK]

Hmm, not really sure what this list shows.

Which of this are the ~9 types/categories?

[ssilk]

well. It shows every content of any <type>-tag in the xml.

Take for example the steam-engine. It exists with 8 types:

Code: Select all

xpath tmpdata/factorio-data.xml //steam-engine//type
Found 8 nodes:
-- NODE --
<type>recipe</type>-- NODE --
<type>generator</type>-- NODE --
<type>create-smoke</type>-- NODE --
<type>instant</type>-- NODE --
<type>direct</type>-- NODE --
<type>fire</type>-- NODE --
<type>electric</type>-- NODE --
<type>item</type>

This xpath query searches for tags of <steam-engine> and in that tags the <type>-tags.

I don't know yet, what "instant" and "direct" is, but the rest seems to be logical and useful.
My plan and current doing is to use XSLT to convert this structure into something more readable. But that means to learn xslt/xpath first. Something I always wanted, cause it might be useful for my job.