Template talk:Scan

Level of scan

Should we be documenting the scan levels somehow? In Prime, important scans were bright red, while lesser important scans were orange. In Echoes, important stuff was red, less important was blue. Corruption and hunters, i don't remember.. --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 17:58, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be easy enough for Prime. We could just get screens of the small square indicators and apply the images to the template. If we wanted it to be unique for each game, that would be more difficult. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 18:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

More difficult you say? That's the way I like it >:] In all seriousness, I'm basically asking if it's worth it to have in the template. --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 18:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no problems with it, and it would probably be awesome. As far as the actual coding, well, I think Malake could do something with it. Might want to make unimportant scans the default, then have a parameter for marking it as important, and that could change according to game, as Echoes and Corruption have much different scan icons compared to Prime. Bop1996 _{(Talk | Unfinished projects)} 22:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem with Echoes is that it has no scan icons. The item in question just changes color. So we'd have to pick something (like a console or something that you might find in both colors) to act as the generic icon. But otherwise it's a neat idea. I can grab some Prime scan icons today. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 17:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Corruption's icons are the same way, so we could probably just reuse whatever we do for Echoes there. And once again, we have a defined plan for pretty much every game except Hunters. Bop1996 _{(Talk | Unfinished projects)} 17:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Haha! Time to consult Youtube. :P —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 18:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Object in Question

SO... these templates look great when they're neatly stacked (as on pages such as Exterior Docking Hangar) but there is an issue with our current format. If you're looking for, say, a particular scan in a room, there's no indicator on the header for each template of what it's a scan of (it just says the game name, for example, "Scan from Metroid Prime"). Meaning, if you're looking for a particular scan, you'd have to expand every single template until you find the one you're looking for! Not the most efficient system ever (I think the Wikitroid equivalent, while less pretty, has us beat in user-friendliness in this case).

So far, options I've thought of to remedy this are:

1. Leave them expanded by default (not my first choice)
2. Add an object tag to the header (for example, "Scan of Injured Space Pirate from Metroid Prime". We could use the "Description" parameter for this, potentially.)

That's all I got so far. Anyone else agree with these, or have other, ideas? —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 01:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I would agree with the second option on there provided that doing so doesn't make the header too long, and we don't wind up compromising the quality of our descriptions by having shortened descriptions all over the place. Of course, there's always the option of having another parameter added (which would be slightly more work), which prevents both problems at once. Bop1996 _{(Talk | Unfinished projects)} 02:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Second option seems a lot cooler, and there's a little band-aid, but I'm not quite feeling it, I know there can be much better. For one, descriptions are required to be extremely concise, and idk. Maybe the header isn't the best place to slap it on. This whole template actually appears to need reworking, though it might be better to remake it's coding when we switch to fixed widths. But is this okay? Any suggestions to make it better? --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 20:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The template looks pretty nice as it is right now, but I am still a little worried about the longer descriptions showing up in that header some of the time and being forced to sacrifice clarity in that section for a better-looking template. I haven't actually seen any examples of this yet, however, but that might have something to do with the fact that this template isn't used as much as it could be, so I'm not sure if it'll be a problem in the future. Bop1996 _{(Talk | Unfinished projects)} 21:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

It SHOULD be seeing extensive usage, especially in room articles. --Malake256 ^{{Talk | Contribs}} 00:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

@Malake: Yeah, I have a feeling there's a better option somewhere too. I just can't figure out what it is...

@Bop: I know what you mean about sacrificing clarity. In that case, I would move that there be a brief description as we currently have, and an additional description for the header, if indeed that's the option we use. —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 02:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

So at the moment, the Description parameter is also appearing in the header. If no one objects, I'm going to move that we remove the "Scan of" that we've been using recently. It seems redundant to me to have "Scan from Metroid Prime (Scan of *description of object*)", instead of "Scan from Metroid Prime (object)". The headers end up pretty long that way. Thoughts on that? —Embyr 75  ^--Talk-- 18:32, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

It's redundant with the header as it is, and there's not going to be any clarity sacrificed – if anything, it'll allow us to improve clarity – so I second the motion. Bop1996 _{(Talk | Unfinished projects)}