Champions Wiki

chalupaoffury

Greetings!

As many of you know, a small collective of us players has been pushing for a while now to get a wiki going. The work Lohr did in curating the old one has been absolutely amazing, and she deserves a TON of respect for keeping it up as long as she did, but it's clear that ship has sailed. We've also been back and forth with PWE about getting an official one set up, or getting one sanctioned, but after a lot of discussion? What we came to is this: We can't really delay any longer. The community has an imperative need for a wiki, and not having one is seriously impacting the game as a whole.

With this in mind, a few of us are now attempting to fix the issue. Jasinblaze, myself, and a few other volunteers are now in the process of generating a new wiki, and a Wordpress for game guides. It will be entirely volunteer organized, and community led, under the idea that the people who know the game best are those who play it and love it.

For the moment, we're sorting out permissions on the wiki and prettying it up a bit, so it's not open to submissions. However, we *are* looking to pick up a few contributors. We'll be reaching out to select members of the community with a proven track record of knowing the ins and outs of the game, for guide information. If you think you can help, or want to try to write a guest guide, feel free to contact one of us on the boards or in game. If you feel like helping to sort out some numbers for powers, by all means. Send a message.

For bookmark purposes, the new wiki is located at www.championswiki.com/ . The guide blog will be located at http://guides.championswiki.com/ . Obviously at the moment they're bare bones, and we request that everyone hold off making edits while we get the software up and running the way we want it.

Happy hunting!

edit: for those wondering, our in game handles: @eviltaco, @jasinblazing, and @ralnautikuus.

towershield

Good to see someone taking initiative and getting a project going.

sterga

I hope someone makes a pretty layout for the MediaWiki and WordPress sites. Someone that knows how to make layouts for both bits of software. I'm shallow like that.

+1 for having a wiki again (soon).

chalupaoffury

It's in the works. We're gonna be reskinning both to more match the overall feel of CO. I'm an ex web dev, and a few volunteers with wiki experience have stepped forward.

theravenforce

chalupaoffury wrote: »

However, we *are* looking to pick up a few contributors. We'll be reaching out to select members of the community with a proven track record of knowing the ins and outs of the game, for guide information. If you think you can help, or want to try to write a guest guide, feel free to contact one of us on the boards or in game. If you feel like helping to sort out some numbers for powers, by all means. Send a message.

For bookmark purposes, the new wiki is located at www.championswiki.com/ . The guide blog will be located at http://guides.championswiki.com/ . Obviously at the moment they're bare bones, and we request that everyone hold off making edits while we get the software up and running the way we want it.

Happy hunting!

Heya.

With regard to helping out. I can certainly lend a hand with providing information for powersets in general. I've previously compiled some information on the recent additions to CO which were added to the old wiki but as that went down so did the information. However for reference purposes I still have the information to hand.

At the moment, this covers:

- New Telepathy mini set

- New Laser Sword mini set

- New Fire (Rimefire)

- New Force (Redirected Force)

I have the information in the style of the old wiki with values based on a lvl 40 with no gear/super stats/innate talents/talents and in hybrid as per usual.

I am also free to collect information on other powers and provide information if necessary. (Crowd Control System, Stats, Powers, Missions, In game Lore, Perks etc).

I'd be happy to help!

Due to some issues on my end...contacting me may be a little tricky at this point in time due to RL mess (besides technical issues).

So if you wanted you could forum message me and we can sort out a means of communication for the time being or whenever this information is needed by.

That being said I do hope to have things sorted out this week at the very latest.

Thanks in advance

chalupaoffury

I'll send you a mail.

jerax1011

I'm not a webpage wiz but I'd love to help with an extra set of eyes for the editing part and whatever odds and ends I could chip in on... I think it's really great that you and other folks have taken up this project for the good of the community ^.^

kojirohellfire

mrhinkypunk

theravenforce wrote: »

.:

You forgot one new power: Fluidity.

I'll be happy to help it in any way I can, I've never been much of a Wiki page writer or anything though. <_<

flowcyto

I'm a bit too busy atm w/ other projects to contribute directly, but GL w/ this. Glad someone is taking the initiative.

morigosa

Neat! Good luck! I probably can't (read: am too lazy to) contribute much directly, but I could be convinced to, oh, write up a mini-guide to Vikorin's Lair or the like...

spinnytop

mrhinkypunk wrote: »

You forgot one new power: Fluidity.

I'll be happy to help it in any way I can, I've never been much of a Wiki page writer or anything though. <_<

As a pvper it is your duty to help. After all, who knows more about how this game works than the people who go toe-to-toe with its systems?

itsbrou

I'll send out a mail.

mrhinkypunk

spinnytop wrote: »

As a pvper it is your duty to help. After all, who knows more about how this game works than the people who go toe-to-toe with its systems?

Well I'd name the people who get it to stand still so they can force their way in and see what lurks inside. -_-

I remember there were a lot of things you find in PvP such as the use of LoS and power rotations which are also of use in PvE yet I've never really seen it written in neither a guide or on the old wiki. I don't know what you guys would think but it may be interesting once we get all of the wiki back in place again we can add a tips section to each power just to give a little deeper info on things people may be interested in testing themselves. It also may give people ideas for more new and unique builds.

I've recently been finding out a bit more with the power Mind Link, it's limited to 6x your ego number which I didn't know until recently. Also it appears to sometimes proc twice in the internal 0.5 second CD when you use an AOE to proc the additional damage effect. This means that technically if you have 400 ego and find a friend to be able to hit around 2400 per hit with an AoE attack and you use Mind Link in theory you could see at least 4.8k DPS, if it procs twice it'd be at 9.6k and if (what I haven't tested yet) it procs even more than twice, say 5 times due to the aoe hitting 5 people you'd be looking at 24000 DPS 50 ft AOE.

It's a gimmicky power however it looks cool and if used along with a team mate at the right times you may be able to get some nice damage in AOE. If people know about what options the have with specific powers and how they can be used it may allow them to create some really interesting stuff. The old wiki was what I created my Ice Form SR build from.

zedbrightlander1

selphea

Nice work on the wiki! I'll be away this week but lemme know if I can do anything to help after.

jimhsua

I could provide some short guides, as well as a lot of intense math. Let me know if any of that is useful.

nepht

Yeah they where talking about this on the forumites channel the other night. I seriously hugged the nearest Pug when I seen this

chalupaoffury

Put a bunch of work into skinning the wiki over the last few hours, it's getting there.

For those of you with a bit of web development ability that are curious, I'm basing the wiki's skinning on the 960 Grid System . I found a template that fits well enough to base it on, because writing one by hand would have taken WAY more time than I'd care to put into this at the current moment. The upshot is, it's modular and just about any web dev can step in and understand what the hell is going on. Sadly, I'm without any of my tools at the current moment, so a lot of it had to be compiled or edited by hand. I'm trying to keep the theme somewhat bright, to counter the murky purple fugly that the forums have descended into. Hope that's ok with y'all.

We seriously appreciate the offers for help, a lot of that sounds pretty legit. Actually, the tips on how powers actually function and ways to get more use out of them was something we'd wanted to make a reality. While the lore is VERY important, it's a goal of this project to also make understanding the underlying mechanics a bit easier for new players. A lot of how the game works right now is a bit mysterious, as evidenced by the fact that we *just* got confirmation that tooltips lie when it comes to power activation times.

I guess the best that I can say is: we're hoping to clear up a lot of that information.

As far as guides are concerned, what we're specifically going to probably look for first? Strategies and tips for each alert boss, and the rampages. Lairs. Anything besides that is fantastic, but the common "Why do I always wipe when X happens" questions are the ones we're looking to clear up first. Obviously, power guides are also going to be key. How to get good results from specific frameworks, that sort of deal.

Figured I'd check in and let y'all know what's going on. After the wiki's looking *mostly* how I'd like it to (we're getting there) the very first thing on the agenda is power lists and frameworks. Anyone who wants to help with that, give a yell. We're looking for figures (tooltips are fine for now) on each power, at each rank, without any specs or stats or anything like that. I'll be putting out a call when that's completed for shots of players actually using said powers. So, I guess get those screenshots ready.

deadman20

Excellent, I think I'll try compiling all of the powers and their stats to try to contribute to this. Unless someone else is on that already. :rolleyes:

flowcyto

chalupaoffury wrote: »

We're looking for figures (tooltips are fine for now) on each power, at each rank, without any specs or stats or anything like that.

To save people the trouble of repeating some work that's already been done, ya can ref the base dps sheet in my sig (main revision is for getting the 'real' delay/activation times, and to re-do the pets section).

all powers were tested w/ no: stars, TPs on, gear, or SSs. 5 in each main stat. Lvl 40 FF Hybrid. R1s only for most, but higher ranks on the dmg stats are multiplied by 20% and then rounded.

Won't cover all powers atm and not all aspects of them, but most aspects for the damaging ones. If ya need clarification on the spreadsheet notes or w/e, just shoot me a pm and I'll check in when I get time. There's tons of weird quirks and special notes to the powers, so have fun keeping track of it all- I know I did

chalupaoffury

Ravenforce called the new telepathy stuff, I guess she already had the info saved. I was gonna get on it next, but hell. If you wanna pick a set and go with it, by all means. Just point out if you're starting a set, so nobody else toe steps.

FYI, to those interested in contributing, we've got a channel set up in game. "champswiki". Feel free to join if you wanna pitch in.

chalupaoffury

flowcyto wrote: »

To save people the trouble of repeating some work that's already been done, ya can ref the base dps sheet in my sig (main revision is for getting the 'real' delay/activation times, and to re-do the pets section).

all powers were tested w/ no: stars, TPs on, gear, or SSs. 5 in each main stat. Lvl 40 FF Hybrid. R1s only for most, but higher ranks on the dmg stats are multiplied by 20% and then rounded.

Won't cover all powers atm and not all aspects of them, but most aspects for the damaging ones. If ya need clarification on the spreadsheet notes or w/e, just shoot me a pm and I'll check in when I get time. There's tons of weird quirks and special notes to the powers, so have fun keeping track of it all- I know I did

Oh, that'll do nicely. Thanks!

pantagruel01

While numbers have changed, a lot of stuff could probably still be scraped from the web archives of the old wiki. Are you doing that?

chalupaoffury

It was specifically requested that we NOT scrape from the old wiki. I'm respecting the wishes of the people involved, so it's going to be redone by hand. Shouldn't be too long of a process for the basics, however.

The only long term concerns for this are the lore/perks, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

sterga

Grid? Hmmm.... The template I used for my Wordpress theme had a grid system. I ripped that **** out and replaced it with something that actually works the way I want it to with much less code.

I don't know if you've ever used wordpress before, but you need to either disable comments or have a good filter. Otherwise, you'll get a boat load of spam bot comments every single day. If you're making a theme from "scratch" I recommend Bones. It's under the WTFPL, so you can butcher it however you see fit. It uses SASS and has multi-screen support. Which means it won't look like crap in a phone if you set up the style sheets right.

chalupaoffury

I don't mind grid, it works well enough in mobile devices and tablets, which was really a concern. I'd rather make the whole thing elastic and code it by hand, but that'd take a lot more time than I'm willing to put into design right now. Once we get pages up and running, though, it's more than possible I'm gonna hand build everything. Grid's code is a bit of a mess, but if people aside from me ever pick up the project and work with it, it'll probably be easier for them to figure out. Modular's cool, and at least that code base has a pretty good amount of tutorial available. Anything I script from hand has the risk of people who don't understand how I code just breaking the entire thing. You sound like you've done web dev, you know what I'm talking about lol.

I'm actually more on the wiki side of things ATM, although I'm willing to lend my efforts into skinning the wordpress as well. Another admin is taking charge of that, I'll let him make his introductions and such as far as what he has planned. Bones looks pretty decent, though. Since I'm handling a lot of the back-end design stuff I'll bat the idea around with him and a few of the others. See what he thinks, since that's his project. For that, I'm just the code monkey.

You're 100% right about the spam bots though. It'll be a fun balancing act, having to manually approve every comment will get old rather quickly. We'll have to sort something.

jasinblaze

.............................................

jasinblaze

sterga wrote: »

Grid? Hmmm.... The template I used for my Wordpress theme had a grid system. I ripped that **** out and replaced it with something that actually works the way I want it to with much less code.

I don't know if you've ever used wordpress before, but you need to either disable comments or have a good filter. Otherwise, you'll get a boat load of spam bot comments every single day. If you're making a theme from "scratch" I recommend Bones. It's under the WTFPL, so you can butcher it however you see fit. It uses SASS and has multi-screen support. Which means it won't look like crap in a phone if you set up the style sheets right.

if you would like to design the guides site visually? then bluh can manage content

sterga

jasinblaze wrote: »

if you would like to design the guides site visually? then bluh can manage content

I can if you want me to. Would this include managing the back-end of the site? Plug-ins and things? I don't know if anyone else has WP experience or not. I'd need access to admin things so I can test to see how stuff looks. I don't have comments on my site, so I'd at the very least need to make sure that part doesn't look like poo. Assuming you guys want the filthy peons leaving comments.

chalupaoffury

I can imagine that'd be the case, I know that you need back-end access to deal with a lot of the design side of things. It's only logical. Granted, not my project, but there's my 2 cents on the situation.


Got more of the skinning done on the wiki, and I'm starting to set up categories and tables. The actual layout is probably going to be rather bare-bones at first, while I get the templates designed, but hey. As long as the information is there and accurate, I can sort the customization later.

I'm now ready to open the wiki up to contributors. I'd prefer reliable and respected members of the community, if you're interested please send me an in-game mail (or email, iamaneviltaco at gmail dot com) and we'll get account access sorted. I'll need your email address, so I can get an account creation form sent out. As of right now, to prevent vandalism, access to the wiki is by invite only. I hate to have it like that, but there are a few people out there who actively hate this game. I don't want to get into an edit war with them, it's just safer this way.

As for volunteers, anyone with experience editing and creating wikimedia content and templates would be a bonus. It'll make the process of initial setup a LOT faster with at least 2 of us working on it.


Edit: Just installed a deeper wysiwyg editor to make this entire process easier.

jasinblaze

jasinblaze wrote: »

if you would like to design the guides site visually? then bluh can manage content

Send me your email ingame @jasinblazing, and ill give you admin rights

chalupaoffury

If anyone's curious, the wiki is chugging along quite nicely. I'm optimizing it so it loads fast, and works smoothly on smart phones as well as desktop. The bare-bones skin is laid out, and I've put some work into the frameworks and some categories.

Feedback? Feedback would rock.

championshewolf

Well under your powers section you have mysticism, sorcery and supernatural all seperate when they should all be one framework of Mystic.

You are also currently lacking the Travel tab for the travel powers.

chalupaoffury

championshewolf wrote: »

Well under your powers section you have mysticism, sorcery and supernatural all seperate when they should all be one framework of Mystic.

You are also currently lacking the Travel tab for the travel powers.

They're under a sub-heading. Since arcane/supernatural each have so many shared powers, I thought it'd make sense to give them a sub-cat under the main header. Bunch em up with what they interact with most. I woulda done the same for MA, but MA is already its own header. Like with like, etc... That's why the headers are a different color. I could probably clarify that a tad.

Travel powers are gonna get their own page. Just gonna link to it under the powers page, since they're basically freebies and only marginally effect the overall build.

morigosa

Hm... One thing I'm finding is that, for wider windows, the use of space is very poor. On the old wiki, if I pulled up the page for, say, fire powers, I'd have the main navigation stuff off to the left (instead of across the top), and the whole list of powers would be immediately visible without having to scroll.

Now, some of that is just that you're using a larger font... but still, it's worth noting.

chalupaoffury

morigosa wrote: »

Hm... One thing I'm finding is that, for wider windows, the use of space is very poor. On the old wiki, if I pulled up the page for, say, fire powers, I'd have the main navigation stuff off to the left (instead of across the top), and the whole list of powers would be immediately visible without having to scroll.

Now, some of that is just that you're using a larger font... but still, it's worth noting.

Noted. Trying to plug and play for smart phones is a pain in the ****. I'll try to sort that when I get the skin working a bit better.

Tricky bit is making sure it's all visible on a tablet or phone, but not broken on a big display. Pretty much gonna need to make it elastic at some point.

championshewolf

I might suggest looking at the STO wiki's format for ideas for how to format your front page. It's fairly well conceived, if I was to make an opinion about it, and would probably be better as a layout as a whole.

Also, I would distinguish this wiki as for Champions Online, as people might get confused if you are referencing the PnP or the MMO.

chalupaoffury

Definitely. I'm coding this by hand right now, lacking in a few essential tools, and the end skin is going to be quite a bit different from where it currently stands. Right now I'm working with GIMP and hand coded/modified CSS, and php tags. Wiki format, so I can mod it easier, on the actual pages.

I own a hard copy of the Adobe Creative Suite, I just have to get my old laptop unregistered so I can use it to skin this a bit better. I'd prefer to do it all with legal software that's properly licensed. But I want to get the information out there first and foremost, the skin I'm building while I set this up is just a temp. 99% of the page is CSS, I could plug and play new css and make a site redesign. That's why I chose 960 grid, because it's all easily replaced with new code when needed.

Downfall is, it's static. Upside is, infinite configurations and it's all modular. Modular means I can slice out what I don't want in the end. And in the meanwhile? It looks good on a phone or tablet. I'm currently using larger fonts because they're easier to read on a phone or tablet, and calling functions to adjust the font scale based on device is a bit ahead of "tell people how much damage a base swipe of Cleave does without gear".

If y'all would prefer that I skin it for a browser, rather than devices, in the immediate future? Let me know, I can do that. I was just assuming you all did what I do, and bust out the cell phone while building. But until we have the basic power details in order, I'm going to have to pick one or the other. What I'm doing now *should* be both, but I gather your mileage may vary.

keioseth0

It'll be nice to have it back! Looking forward to it.

sterga

Just make the site work in everything. Might as well start out doing things the right way the first time. You'll just kick yourself later for making all sorts of extra work.

jaazaniah1

I almost never look at a smart phone for CO stuff (don't own a tablet). Would much prefer something that looks good in a browser since I live on my computer.

chalupaoffury wrote: »

If y'all would prefer that I skin it for a browser, rather than devices, in the immediate future? Let me know, I can do that. I was just assuming you all did what I do, and bust out the cell phone while building. But until we have the basic power details in order, I'm going to have to pick one or the other. What I'm doing now *should* be both, but I gather your mileage may vary.

championshewolf

I'd basically say just work on the site basics for a browser first. Make sure all that works before you try to add in the nuisance of tablet and phone support.

selphea

Thirded. Desktop first, separate, lite version for mobile later at m.championswiki.com or something. Haven't seen infodumps like a wiki get handled very well with using the same skin for both. There's just too much info you kinda want to squeeze into a single line of a table.

sterga

Making a site work on multiple screen sizes is actually super easy. You just make multiple CSS files that progressively add more stuff to it as the screen size increases.

And no to the "mobile" version. Seriously, don't do it. That should be automatically handled by the CSS. It's not 1995 anymore. Web design has progress greatly since then.

This is one of those times you should NOT listen to people who have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to modern web design. There is no "nuisance" for tablet and phone support, you just use less fancy CSS. Start with a base style sheet then add new sheets for larger screen devices.

Base > 481 > 768 > 1240

That's a minimum for the screen. Add in Normalize, print, and mixins (because I hope you're using sass). Base file has all of the basic stuff like margins, paddings, font styles, colors. Each column should be in it's own wrapper, so you can just move columns over as the screen sizes get larger.

quasimojo1

The Bootstrap CSS framework probably has everything you need; standards-based, mobile support, and lots of freely shared templates to use as a starting point. Might be worth a look.

Good luck, team. I'm sure this will be a lot of work.

jasinblaze

please refrain from being so negative in the beginning.

making a separate mobile site is 10 years ago.
respect the amount of personal time he is taking on this project.
this is not the other wiki
we are prioritizing builds and powers at first. why because this will help new players more in understanding the game and hopefully staying.
on a project of this scale its best to get something down at first and modify afterwards
once everything has templates ready we can start adding more.
taco is the head of the wiki and he is making templates, what we need at this moment is people to fill in these templates.
in wiki sites the most important thing is to get the information there first
we can worry about the design and adjust templates more later.
I for one am a huge fan of fully responsive grids. it will allow you to use your phone or tablet as a resource while playing on the computer.
so we are initially focusing on mechanics and gameplay.
this is not to say we wont add more in later. we have to focus on each task as we have them however.

so if you want to help out on the wiki contact taco (@eviltaco)

@bluhman is in charge of the blog site. so contact him if you want to write some guides
@sterga will be doing the design on the guides site and will have say there

i was thinking about making another subdomain site.
Fanart.championswiki.com
is there any interest for that?

pantagruel01

Given that you can't run CO on a smartphone or tablet, it seems unlikely that you would spend much time checking the wiki from one, as opposed to just using a browser on the same computer as CO (either tabbed out, or windowed mode and multiscreen).