Talk:Patch Tree Template

Old Patch Content (Numerous Sections)

For older patch content I'm finding that there are many sections which are no longer used in the current template, but are necessary for archiving content that was previously part of the monthly "package" from Turbine. For an example where I had to make numerous additions, check Groundswell. That month, there was an update login screen as well as splash page, so that had to be created, also the site that hosted the Teaser images was all on the old Insider page which no longer exists (not even on the internet archives) so the content had to be inserted directly into the page. Also, during those times, each patch had teaser pics for the fansites as well as 4-5 "official" teasers, which there was no section for in the template. I believe that we can use the Groundswell event as the template for older patch content as I mentioned above, numerous additions had to be made. I was also unable to locate some of the "official" teasers for that month's patch and the 2 I was able to find were being hosted by maggie... I'm not sure if we should take those and host them here at the wiki or not, so I hot linked to the location I found them until a decision can be made. I'd love some feedback on this as I'd like to go through and start the process to archive all the old patch content. (at least in terms of official announcements and teasers). --Sanguis 15:00, 27 March 2009 (CDT)

I'd been thinking about the teasers as well, I have a near complete collection of the teasers and think that for any sites that are no longer active we can host a local copy no problem, and for others we should archive a copy after they are more than a year old (but still link to the sites where they were first posted). We could add a section to the page template for code commonly used on older patch pages (and we can move some of the items like letter to the players down to it). I was in the process of doing the announcement pages and got from the present back to October 2004 when I stopped to work on the template revisions, now that those are almost done I'd planned on going back to work on them also. I'll finish out 2004 and 2001 if you want to take 2003 and 2002? Also I noticed that you don't have sysop status, that was an oversight and you should have been added a while back, I'll fix that. --Tlosk 16:53, 27 March 2009 (CDT)

There have been several forms of official patch notes that turbine/microsoft put out over the years. I don't think we necessarily need to make a template for older patches, we just need to make sure that each style used for certain time periods is the same across all patches in those times. As for old teaser images - in the past, I noticed that CoD and perhaps a few of the other fan sites would host all the other teaser images from other fan sites after the patch went live. I do not think there should be any issue with us hosting older images, especially if we only do 1+ year old images like Tlosk suggests. As for older turbine teasers that are no longer available, I'm fine with taking them from other sites. The wiki should not be excluded from hosting material that turbine freely provided to all the fansites/players just because the site started in fall 07. --An Adventurer 14:25, 28 March 2009 (CDT)

Current Links and Original Links

For recent pages these links will be the same. For very old articles from the Microsoft Zone there will be no current link available (use internet archive if available). For pages from the 2003-2008 era the current link will be different from the original link due to the turbine site redesign in Aug 2008 (to find the current link for these older pages see the Turbine Directory). It is important to retain a record of the link when it was first published because most often that is how we can find it in the Internet Archive.--Tlosk 13:32, 31 December 2008 (CST)

Announcements Page Discussion

From the Talk:ACC Wiki Home page:

For patch pages, I think it would be a cool idea to give the teaser, roll-out article, and release notes a background color or some other styleing make them seem more like they are from the Turbine website, i.e. official (kind of like we do with dev posts). Would kind of help separate them from the rest of the patch page. Any thoughts on this? --Atarax 28 October 2008 (CDT)

I've added an Archive of Internet Article Template for the current site design. So, if others think its a good idea to start using the internet article templates for patch notes, we have the two most recent templates available. We could also just use the light grey dev post template, so all patch pages use the same style. --An Adventurer 12:47, 31 October 2008 (CDT)

What do you think? I would like to suggest that we begin to use the internet article template to archive all turbine articles, following the naming format already in place on Category:Turbine, and only post links to our archives in the patch page. This will cut down the size of the patch pages a lot, and put new content right at the top of the page. --An Adventurer 22:04, 11 November 2008 (CST)

I'd be all for it. The only suggestion I would have is because it's difficult to make the section names consistent across all patches (ie dev notes vs release notes, letter to the players vs letter from the team, etc) as well as in number (eg multiple teasers or letters), I think we should make a single page with headings so you can use the actual name used originally as well as not have a problem with additional entries and we'd just link to the sections. It would avoid orphaning content by keeping it all together in one place and would avoid arbitrary names. Because it's a big change we should probably change the last few patches then wait for a month to see if anything occurs to us to add/remove before changing all of the patch pages. --Tlosk 16:48, 28 November 2008 (CST)

So just to be clear, we would move all of the turbine announcements for a single patch to 1 page that would contain them all? If so, sounds good to me. How should they named? Should we just go with Turbine Announcements - yyyy/mm or should we include the patch name as well like this Turbine Announcements - yyyy/mm - Patch? And should we stick with Turbine Announcements, or change it to something like Offical Patch Articles, Turbine Patch Notes, etc? --An Adventurer 14:43, 2 December 2008 (CST)

I think a short, general name would be best, say Patch - Turbine, eg Seeds of Corruption - Turbine, and include any communication from Turbine during that period, whether it be letters to the player, dev notes, teasers, rollout fiction, important dev posts, and dev chat transcripts (there may be duplicate entries for older stuff, like with the zone articles, but I'd like to have everything as well in one place for each patch). The sections would be titled as originally published. On the patch page itself I also think it would be important to give the original link (when the patch went live), a current link to turbine hosted material when available, and a local link to our copy, eg Seeds of Corruption - Turbine#Release Notes. I'm currently working on a revised index of turbine pages (after all the links were broken when they redesigned their website) and most of the old material is still there, but there's no rhyme or reason to the new links in relation to the old so just having to step through them all to see what's there. --Tlosk 17:38, 4 December 2008 (CST)

I like the new style, and I do think we should separate the patch notes, release notes, teaser, etc... from the patch tree. After day 1, people only care about the "content", not really the rollout notes. I like what Tlosk said about keeping it all on one page. Like Patch Name (Turbine) or Patch Name (Announcements). So maybe we could have a horizontal menu at the top like we do with the "quests", that shows Patch Tree - Release Notes - Teaser etc..., which anchors to Patch Name (Annoucnements)#Release Notes, etc... This might be the easiest way to organize them and keep them linked yet separate. Something like this perhaps?

Discoveries - Teasers - Rollout Article - Release Notes

Like you said. It might be a bit of a hassle to go back and re-vamp old patches, but it wouldn't be that hard just tedious. I could help with this. What do you think? --Atarax 13:02, 5 December 2008 (CST)

I was wondering how we would link it all together. I think that a top banner like that would work fine, although I'd prefer something other than discoveries. I think that would be better as just the title of and link to the patch.

About the turbine page for patches - what category would they be tagged as? And are you sure we shouldn't include the yyyy/mm for sorting in the category? That is the reason I suggested it in the first place - it sorts nicely, and our archives of zone stuff like teasers and LttPs are sorted that way. Also, I think announcements might work better than turbine, especially if we follow this template with older patches from MS days. So I'd suggest one of the following for the naming conventions of the turbine patch page: yyyy/mm - Patch - Announcements, yyyy/mm - Announcements - Patch, or Announcements - yyyy/mm - Patch. --An Adventurer 13:35, 5 December 2008 (CST)

Instead of Discoveries, we could call it Patch Tree like VN has.

As far as the Announcements goes, if you want to include the date, I think Announcements - yyyy/mm - Patch makes the most sense for sorting/visibility. I assume we wouldn't include these pages in the Patch Category? If so, then the Patch Name (Announcements) would make sense there. Maybe as an alias? --Atarax 14:44, 5 December 2008 (CST)

I'd vote for Announcements - yyyy/mm - Patch as well. I'd probably go for "Patch Announcements" as a category. --Tlosk 10:03, 8 December 2008 (CST)

+1 for "Patch Announcements" (sub)category. --Atarax 10:33, 8 December 2008 (CST)

Ok why don't we get one mocked up for this month's patch and we can fiddle with it until it's solid then we can update older patches. Announcements - 2008/12 - Sins of the Fathers. --Tlosk 04:44, 9 December 2008 (CST)

Announcements - 2008/12 - Sins of the Fathers is fairly complete now. I added a navigation template similar to that used on patch pages, crosslinked the announcements and patch pages with each other at the top, and added an announcements column to the all patches page. For the old announcements section on the patch page let's retain the "Section - Link" structure and have the link be to wherever the current location is at, if available. Then include an Original Link (when the patch first went live, for historical and archive searching purposes) and a link to our archived version on the respective announcements page. I'll work on framing up the template page next and we can probably move the discussion to Talk:Patch Announcements Template for improvements and additions before we finalize this. --Tlosk 11:12, 10 December 2008 (CST)

Now that we've had the patch and announcements pages up for a few weeks and we've tweaked them I'm adjusting the templates and will begin on older patches. --Tlosk 13:11, 31 December 2008 (CST)

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Old Discussions

I think we should add a new titles section under discoveries. This will make it easy to find titles you need and will make updating the actual title list on the the titles page easier. --An Adventurer 18:45, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

Should we add a miscellaneous section too? To cover things like new animations for creatured added (in A New Threat, mites had a new backflip animation added)--Jedismj 11:15, 9 August 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, the template is a base, for each patch whenever there's things that don't fit into any of the categories in the template feel free to add either a unique section, or a Misc section, whichever you think works best. And if it's something that is common to more than a few patches add it to the template. --Tlosk 20:06, 9 August 2008 (CDT)