User talk:Sryx

Hi Sryx,

I hope this gets through. I've started to go through some of my old DOS games, and thought it would be fun to update the list on your site, and also the game articles.

On the top of the GAMES page, it says "Here is a list of every article for every game that is known to work or not work on DOSBox.", however in your introduction the this Wiki you say: "A Game or Application that runs without any issues or needs no special configuration is not an ideal candidate for an article". These two statements seems to be contradictory, and as a user of DOSBox and this wiki, an example of the minimum I would expect can be seen in my recently added article for GAMES:Descent.

What do you think? Would you rather not have the articles like seen in GAMES:Descent, or is it ok?

Regards,

Hb

PS. I just noticed the games database on the main site... (http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?letter=a). So now the question becomes: Why should it even be duplicated on the wiki?

Hey Hb

I've been noticing your updates (I track the RSS feed), and I'm impressed with how much you have done. As for the compatibility database, I asked the same question back when the new Wiki first launched (or relaunched) the idea that I had (and I should say that there is no reason to believe that I have an official say in DOSBox or this Wiki) was to store notable articles on games that might be hard to get running (like King's Quest Games) or on games that come up a lot in the forum, so threads can be directed to a central repository of quick and easy information.

The compatibility list serves a purpose, and I happen to think there would be a benefit to linking the two (it was something that I tried to set in motion with the "status" property in the game template, but it will take a lot of work on the compatibility database side). I've noticed a trend for people to add games article links perhaps in hopes that someone else will fill in the information, this could be for man reasons. The one I think is most likely is that people are sing the Wiki to request for game specific help rather than ask on the Forums. I think this is a great development. The Wiki is a much more elegant way to accomplish this, because a game can be added and not receive any attention for weeks (or months), but the moment some one else with experience or the patience to sort out what the original person was looking for, the request and the capacity to respond are conveniently organized. If they resorted to the form, the might have to keep the thread alive until someone responded.

But everyone is free to use or not use this Wiki as they see fit (it is after all a Wiki). I've been much busier than I anticipated these last few months, and haven't contributed nearly as much as I would like to. I'm working on a more detailed article on VR Studio that will explain how to use the program. I don't know if anyone else will care about that games, but for me it is one of the only reasons I use DOSBox (that and Legends of Kyrandia. I happen to think your work has been rather cool, and I hope you still find the motivation to contribute, this community is better for having people like you.

Hi again Sryx,

Thanks for your update. I'll continue trying out my games, and update the wiki and the database.

As for linking the two, could the wiki "Infobox" for a game include a field indicating the game-id in the database? For example, [Sim Ant] has id 237. Could the infobox include a field "id=237", which would automatically create this link? I'm rather new to these kind of wiki-templates, so maybe you could have a look? Alternatively, the link could be hard coded each time, in each article, however might fail if somebody decides to change the DB "comp_list.php" page.

When it comes to linking the other way, from the DB to the wiki, I guess a start is to include a comment in DB with a http link to the wiki article?

Regards,

Hb

Hi again,

Cool, I just looked at the link. Works very well! Thanks!

Hb