Template talk:Map objective

Preliminary discussion

Suggestion

Per the newsletter notification, lets have some dicussion. I choose here because this template is closest to what I'd use for the future version of {{map icon}}.

issue

Chat links for waypoints are currently squirrelled away on a chat links subpage to make the chat link searches work. This is not helpful for players wanting chat links for a specific waypoint who (logically) visit the area page and then cannot find the link.

proposal

1. 1 Move the current {{map icon}} to a name that makes sense based on its functionality of providing icons to every non-item icon template we have. Possible names: {{icon}} or {{game icon}}
2. 0 Add two parameters to a new version of the {{map icon}} template such that it works like: {{map icon|waypoint|Pig Iron Waypoint|id=535}}. ("User:Chieftain Alex/Templates/Map icon")
3. Run a very carefully coded bot through all of the location pages to cleanup the formatting of the location pages. We might as well add the ids for the vistas while we're there.

Lots of work for what seem like very little gain, but bluntly we've had it coming for a while with the way all our icon templates converge into {{map icon}}. -Chieftain Alex 13:25, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Fix the {{map icon}} template

First of all, the icons shouldn't have been merged onto map icon in the first place ^^--Relyk ~ talk < 13:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

If we can agree on a name for the central icon template, then lets carry out that change first. -Chieftain Alex 13:55, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The only thing the icon templates should do is generate an icon, to say the least. I'm not going to like any proposal modifying them.--Relyk ~ talk < 14:13, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I support this, although I would simply move {map icon} to {icon} - the current {map icon} works just fine, no need to change it other than the name. Maybe that's what you intended, but the wording ("Create one icon template to replace...") seems to imply building a new one from scratch. —Dr Ishmael 14:05, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Apologies, clarified the suggestion. -Chieftain Alex 14:26, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Where should we be moving the current {{icon}} to? (I'd like to push through the change to the map icon template before we get too bogged down on this one) -Chieftain Alex 20:40, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

It was only used on 2 game update pages, which I just updated to use skill/trait icon directly. Honestly, I'm not sure what the point of that template is, unless it was intended to be used in complex templates where you need something generic in order to handle many different kinds of output links. But when you know what it is that you're linking, you should use the "right" template to start with. —Dr Ishmael 21:10, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I updated User:Relyk/icon because that's where the template came from. I won't feel bad about deleting/overwriting it now. -Chieftain Alex 21:20, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Map point formatting

(Edit conflict) We could also revisit (yet again) the issue of creating articles for waypoints. Even if we just add waypoint subobjects to area pages, we would still need to create a redirect for each one (honestly, we should have had those redirects in place a long time ago). As I've stated in the past, about half of the hypothetical waypoint articles could be merged with current landmark articles, thus giving them a canonical footing. Since I tend to view redirects as being a messy necessity of a wiki, I would prefer having articles over redirects.

If we do that, the remaining loose thread would be vistas. They don't have canonical names, but game mechanics and the API group them together with PoIs and waypoints as far as being linkable map points. I only bring this up for future consideration, so I won't make any further argument about this - I don't want to derail the discussion on the first reply. —Dr Ishmael 14:05, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

(RE: waypoints) Pages for stuff found in gw2 is the domain of everyone except me.

Even if we don't decide to add individual ids to the links, we could still look them up with a quick {#ask: } -Chieftain Alex 14:26, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, displaying the links on area (and even zone?) pages is better than forcing readers to click down to the waypoint/poi page. We could actually do that right now, since we already have the IDs for waypoints and vistas annotated through Chat link format/0x04 codes.

I would prefer doing this in a tabular format to keep the links aligned when there are multiple points in an area - a list format would get really jagged. I think we might be close to being able to use a single template to list all map completion objectives at once, essentially expanding {{area hearts}} to cover pois/waypoints/vistas and skill challenges. —Dr Ishmael 14:41, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The chat link tables would need the Located in::Area annotated. I can't think of a quick way to get that information into those tables other than doing it manually. (at least I know that the tables listed on the explorable zone pages are consistent with the total number of map things, so it could, in theory be done manually... because we cleaned those up when we did the map completion table work). Also we don't have the skill challenges listed in a similar format, so we might be quite a lot of legwork until we get to the stage where we have a working {{area objectives}} template. -Chieftain Alex 15:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I had a look to see what we'd have to do. {{User:Chieftain Alex/Templates/Locations and objectives}} can do most of what we do in the Locations and objectives section apart from the waypoints and vistas as mentioned above. pretty close though. -Chieftain Alex 17:04, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The Located in property is set for all the subobjects, Malgalad just set the location to the zone rather than the area.--Relyk ~ talk < 18:36, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't say that I blame him, it was a lot easier to put them in the explorable zones, but its a pain in the ass for querying -> totally useless. -Chieftain Alex 19:02, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Got a few points of feedback:

• My first statement, about including the chat links on area pages, was based on the idea of a simple {map point|<point type>|<point name>} template (I really don't like the name {area waypoint}, it feels like it's trying to be unnecessarily super-specific) similar to {{event|<event name>}}. {{map point|waypoint|Akk Wilds Waypoint}} would give you:

{{map icon|waypoint}} Akk Wilds Waypoint — {{map link|{{#ask:[[Has canonical name::Akk Wilds Waypoint]]|mainlabel=-|?Has game id=}}}}

Akk Wilds Waypoint —

As I said, this could be implemented right now because we already have the IDs and canonical names properly and exhaustively annotated. You're right that we can't fully automate the lists because we don't have area information on waypoints/vistas, but it would still be an improvement on what we have.

• While this is an improvement, the jagged alignment it would produce is its own problem. That's why I suggested a tabular format, but that would require converting the area pages' lists into tables and adapting my immediately prior suggestion to a table row template, which would be quite a bit more work.
• Also, I only meant for the tabular formatting to include the map completion objectives: tasks, skill challenges, pois, waypoints, and vistas. Jumping puzzles and mini-dungeons are uncommon enough that there's nothing wrong with the by-hand documentation we already have. This would have the added benefit of delineating the essential objectives from the other locations (and non-location things like events) - currently everything looks the same because we use the same definition list formatting for all types of locations and objectives, and that's something I haven't been completely happy with.

—Dr Ishmael 18:48, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

You keep referring to a "jagged format", but I have no idea what you're talking about, care to expand on that? Is it the end user appearance, or the wikicode side that irks you? -Chieftain Alex 18:59, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Run your new template on The Hinterlabs and look at how the chat links appear on the PoI list. That's what I mean by jagged. —Dr Ishmael 19:33, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. That looks alright to me (even now I now what you're talking about). We could color the chat links in a lighter color if you wanted, e.g. — , or we could put them on the left.

; Points of Interest
: {{map icon|poi}} <div style="display:inline-block; width:90px;">{{map link|1}}</div> [[Aeronotics Lab]]
: {{map icon|poi}} <div style="display:inline-block; width:90px;">{{map link|200}}</div> [[Battleground Plaza]]
: {{map icon|poi}} <div style="display:inline-block; width:90px;">{{map link|30}}</div> [[Incinergen Labs]]

Points of Interest

Aeronotics Lab

Battleground Plaza

Incinergen Labs

(looks ok too) -Chieftain Alex 20:01, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Eh, still looks bad to me, and it will look even stranger when put up against tasks and challenges, which aren't linkable. —Dr Ishmael 20:10, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

You're impossible you know that :D -Chieftain Alex 20:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Blame User:Infinite, he instilled this sense of alignment in me very early on. :) —Dr Ishmael 20:26, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Who cares about jagged alignment, it's fine that way. "map point" is a terrible name.--Relyk ~ talk < 04:10, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Summary so far

I just cleaned up the headers above, as we've gotten sidetracked. Points that have been brought up and are still current:

1. I think that we're all happy with showing chat links on area pages. We can do that with #ask as ishmael demonstrated above, so no need to put ids on each manually. (second suggestion struckout above)
2. We haven't agreed on formatting yet. Dr ishmael doesn't like the format that Alex + Relyk see to be ok with. He suggests using a tabular format. (Example?)
3. We could generate most of the "Locations and objectives" section for a page using SMW with one catch-all template.
   1. It would require quite a lot of work to annotate the area location of each waypoint/vista on the map chat link pages. On the chat links page they're setup to be within the explorable zone.
   2. Nobody has emerged with a spreadsheet with the points in each area, even though it would be useful to have.
   3. If we did this, then we could change the formatting easily, say to a table, later.
4. Relyk doesn't like "Template:Map point" as a name.
5. Alex has produced a bit of AWB code to convert the skill challenges/poi/waypoints/vistas to use the current setup of "map point". Won't run it until we decide on the template name. Could run it before we finalise the formatting of the chat links.
6. Dr ishmael also suggests creating pages for waypoints (combining them with any landmark pages we happen across), and creating redirects for all of the waypoints.
   1. Sounds like loads of effort again, but if we had a spreadsheet with zones located in we could create the redirects with a bot.

-Chieftain Alex 10:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I just had a pretty good idea, though nobody will like it :P

I could, temporarily, add a subobject to all invocations of the map point template. This would annotate the "located in" + location type. we'd also give it a temporary property like "temporary property::Y". Drag a bot through the wiki to convert them all to "map point" (or whatever we call it). Then we can do smw to create a spreadsheet of all the location types based on location. This info would allow us to update (probably with a bot) the chat link pages to annotate the IDs with proper located in. Then we remove the subobjects + fix the formatting. (wouldn't be displaying chat links until we fix the formatting, this way nobody notices the difference on the page). With the spreadsheet we could then create redirects to the area pages. Opinions? -Chieftain Alex 10:24, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't see it being more complicated than:

== Map objectives ==
{{area waypoint|<name>|<id>}}
{{area vista|<id>|<possible description>}}
{{area points of interest}}
{{area skill challenges}}
{{area hearts}}
{{area events}}
{{area jumping puzzles}}
{{area minidungeons}}

Doesn't matter if it's a list or table, that can always be changed later. The #ask function can substitute the id parameter for waypoints and vistas until they are added to the page. Then we can remove the subobjects from {{map link table}}. As ishmael noted, we can create individual pages for waypoints or subobjects on the area page, but we can only store information on vistas on area pages due to a lack of a name identifier.

Another method is to have the vista template create the subobject and have another template generate the output, same applies to waypoints if created as subobjects. That's not really plausible because that information won't be updated immediately and be unintuitive for users. I'm not going to recommend that option.--Relyk ~ talk < 12:50, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Why have 8 templates when you can roll them all into one? (after we get the waypoint/vista areas sorted, of course) The vast majority of areas have NO puzzles or minidungeons, so as I said above I wouldn't template those at all.

I have a database of map info that I built last June. I'll need some time to update it for all the changes that have happened - and to add the Orr zones, dunno why I left them out - but I can provide a point-to-area table. —Dr Ishmael 14:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Then with that we can complete the chat link lookup tables. -Chieftain Alex 14:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@ishmael, that's what I what I presumed with mentioning another template after creating waypoint and vista subobjects. I want the vista and waypoint information located on the area page, not on a chat link format page or a page containing a point-to-area table.

@alex, Why do we need chat link lookup tables? We can generate chat links from the ids.--Relyk ~ talk < 15:11, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with ishmael on the number of templates suggested being nuts. (idea for new template name: {{map objective|type|name}} )

idk why but I had presumed that it'd be better if we had the locations+ids in a central location (I thought that someone had said this above, but apparently not). It would certainly have made automating the whole section easier >.> (though, as I just found out in my sandbox, the vistas get their "how-to" descriptions in the same list + an automated template wouldn't work for that, and neither would a table tbh.)

I'm alright with putting the ids inline if thats the direction we want to go down. Still need formatting ideas though. -Chieftain Alex 15:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I was providing a high-level implementation in pseudocode. Can we get over the fact that it can be either 8 templates or a single template?--Relyk ~ talk < 16:17, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

k

== Map objectives ==
;Hearts
{{map|hearts}}
;Waypoints
{{map|waypoint|<name>|<id>}}
;Point of interest
{{map|points of interest}}
;Skill challenges
{{map|skill challenges}}
;Vista
{{map|vista|<id>|<possible description>}}
...others... don't care

template:

:{{map icon|{{{1}}}}} {{#switch: {{{1|}}} | vista | waypoint = {{{2}}} | #default = {{cname|{{{1}}}}} }} <!-- formatting TBD {{#if: {{{3|}}} | {{map link|{{{3|}}}}} }}-->{{#if: {{{4|}}} | <\nowiki>
::{{{4|}}} }}

Use sequence from ingame interface for H-WP-POI-SC-V imo. I would like to keep the headers, but increase the spacing a bit. -Chieftain Alex 17:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

All landmark data. Interestingly, the API uses "points of interest" as the overall term and "landmark" for the things with a icon. —Dr Ishmael 19:02, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

If you merge a waypoint article with a landmark article, what would the name be? I think that the name should use the landmark name when possible. Yes, that would mean that half of the waypoint articles would be called, for example, Fort Haven Waypoint, and the other half would be called Fort Haven, but naming the article where we would describe Fort Haven and its occupants as "Fort Haven Waypoint" seems really weird. Psycho Robot (talk) 17:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Waypoint articles would contain.. a chat link, a copy of the map from the area, the area that its within... this doesn't sound article worthy. Shall we bot create the redirects from the Waypoints to the Area articles using the spreadsheet? -Chieftain Alex 22:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

2015/05/24

So I took the plunge and added this template to all of the 710 area pages + hooked them up with inline ids and therefore chatlinks.

The remaining task is to make the ChatLinkSearch.js locate the new subobjects rather than the area indexes. I'll add some code to switch subobjects off on certain pages.

I don't personally want to add these to the PvP areas because it took quite a lot of time, but if someone else wants to give it a shot, well you're welcome to try.

Addendum: I chose to display the vista links in the end, even though they appear ingame as "[]", since they do link to the right location. -Chieftain Alex 21:35, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Add Mount Acquisition Objective Icon

Not 100% sure how to do this but these appear to be map objectives, e.g. in The_Sinking_Ruins#Locations_and_objectives. ~ Fishrock ^(talk) 17:55, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Here's the image from the map that I was able to capture during the stress test: - it had a text of Mount: Raptor. I think I either saw or heard in one of the dev interviews / livestreams that there was at least one of these for each mount (spread throughout the maps). From what I understand, going to these is how the other mounts are acquired, in addition to some renown heart interaction. ~ Fishrock ^(talk) 19:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Aren't they more like pets, ie, you find one, charm it, and then it becomes your buddy? If so {{icon|misc|<file name>}} would probably work if mounts are only obtainable in one section. If they're in mulitple places I can add it to map icon. - Do_odleplex 19:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah as Doodle said, you're only going to see this map icon in one place, so use the "misc" option on {{icon}} (or map icon) instead. Not everything should go through "template:map objective". -Chieftain Alex 19:28, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

How to suppress chat link?

Chat link is just clutter. Need parameter to suppress them. -- Shena'Fu (talk) 00:34, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

This is mainly for area pages and lists where the chat link isn't noise. If you want the icon and link, use {{icon}} and wikilink instead of this template.--Relyk ~ talk < 02:12, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Usage note

I added a usage note link with tooltip to the template output if it's used on pages without Property:Has location type set, triggered by this discussion. The output looks something like this:

 Posternus Caverns — ^{Usage note}

I'm intending this as a hint to editors, not to permanently dictate where this template may ever be used. As with all things wiki, please go ahead and edit the warning (or post here on the talk page) if any legitimate uses of this template come up for pages where the warning currently shows.

This template is currently only used on pages with Property:Has location type set to area, instance, city, guild hall and raid, plus one use on The Crown Pavilion (zone) which may or may not be a mistake. There are some location types (like vista) that seem like they should never be able to contain other locations, so it may make sense to display the warning there too, but since it's visible to readers on the final page I figured it'd be better to err on the side of not showing it.

It would be kinda cool if we had a way of displaying the note only on edit previews. Something like:

.preview-only { display: hidden; }
#wikiPreview > .preview-only { display: inline; }

as custom site CSS would do it. Not sure if that's something we'd be interested in doing.

(There's also one use of this template on Bazaar Docks/historical that I'm not quite sure what to do about. Maybe just convert to {{point of interest}}...) -- Dagger (talk) 14:00, 9 September 2018 (UTC)