Hey folks,
A big thanks for all the hard work you all put in, but I wonder if I could ask for some help or support quickly.
I'd like to request and use a new Template that defines a location or region on a larger body, such as a planet or station. Such a template could be used to describe, for example, a hangar complex on Manhattan, a bar on a station, a geographical feature such as a mountain or shipwreck, or perhaps a players' private residence.
Initially I looked to just create an infobox each time I wanted one, but figured that a more reliable and reusable template might be desirable. Unfortunately the current templates don't offer suitable parameters - the Planet Infobox is probably the closest, yet contains a bunch of irrelevant parameters which are included by default (such as temperature, escape velocity, mass etc.).
Worse still, I don't have a clue how to create a working template myself, and have spent the last few hours failing to pick it up - and don't want to create a mess of the wiki. So I wonder if anyone could perhaps help me out, or propose a solution? I'm after such a "location" or "regional" infobox to help add to the depth and backstory of my characters and lay some groundwork for (potentially) a new faction, and I think that other players might be able to use the same template for their own ends too.
I suspect that someone would have to code in a new template for the wiki, for now this was the best that i could think of.
Code:
'''Location Infobox:'''
* system = [[New York]]
* region = [[Planet Manhattan]]
* name = Bob's Bar
* owner = Bob
* population = at least 15 around happy hour
* purpose = To serve chilled liberty ale and provide a place for old drunks to rant about the good old days.
* reputation = Freelancer
Result:
Signatures may not be bigger than 700x250, 1MB. ~Skorak
Thanks for the effort! I fixed up the rest of the code a few seconds ago, by the way, so it seems to be working like intended on the sample page. It was just missing a few <noinclude> tags to prevent the entire template page - including the usage example - from being included every time the template was called.
PS: Feel free to contact me if you need any help! I'll try to do my best, even if I'm getting a bit rusty on my template-fu.
Cheers for the suggestion, Findarato - I managed something similar before posting this, but I wasn't quite satisfied!
Instead, I decided I'd try teach myself a bit of the wiki markup language and write out a new template myself.. With at least moderate success.
I've had a few partially working templates (see: Template:Region_Infobox) but after submitting them found a few errors and bugs that I couldn't quite fathom out. Seemed to work in the preview but trying to add in parameters or save the page must've jumbled things a bit or highlighted an error, I dunno.
I was going to leave it a few hours and try again and perhaps ask here for help - but it seems Error has been keeping an eye peeled and has beat me to it, so thanks hugely! I'm still only picking up how to work it all, so apologies if it was actually a big mess. I haven't tried it yet - but we'll see soon if it works.
- V
Edit: It does seem to be working for the most part, and the template page itself is no longer a repeating mess - thanks! However I must be missing something I meant to include in the code; it seems whatever I enter as parameters for "parent", "system", "access" and "population", the template still shows "unknown" for each. Ideally that would be the default only if no other data is input. Any ideas how I could go about that?
Editedit: Also quickly swapped out the example on the page, to something utterly random. Just 'cause what I was prepping there isn't properly thought through or ready to share yet
LastEditHonestly: Since we're getting on track to have the whole thing working - does anyone have requests as to additional lines of information that could be displayed? They code shouldn't be *too* bad to copy/paste and customise for an individual infobox each time you might want to alter it, but if there's anything universal that could be included do say so! At the moment we can only define a name/image/owner/parent body/system/access rights/population - which does make for a fairly small box.