Template talk:DropRecipeHead

Very Rare Addition

I think I did it right, but added VR for Very rare drops. Might need to make a Very Rare Critter image (purple) to help differentiate. - Snorii 01:53, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

We need to add in a Candy Cane Salvage purchase option for Winter's Gift - they don't drop, they're not a random roll option, they're not a specific purchase option at the Merit Vendors - they are only available from the Candy Keeper. -- Agge (talk) 03:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC) Bump! --Agge

We should probably also eventually rename other things a bit. For instance, there are no longer "Task Force Drops" -- they don't actually drop at the end of a Task Force; you purchase them from a vendor now. They really foobared the nomenclature for these things. :P In any case, do you have any suggestions for where to classify the Winter's Gift ones? I'm not sure it makes sense to create a specific category just for those three (such as "Candy Keeper Recipes"). Maybe something like "Miscellaneous Recipes" as a catch-all for if they do anything else similar in the future? -- Sekoia 02:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Technically, there ARE "Task Force Drops" - the random rolls for Merit Rewards are for Task Force and Trial recipes. They are the same drop pools as before. Adding a "misc" section to catch everything not already established (and future weirdo sources) sounds good, and point to the main set page for an explanation of where they come from. -- Agge (talk) 05:27, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The random rolls for Merit Rewards are for what used to be awarded as Task Force drops and Trial drops. They're no longer dropped at the end of Task Forces and Trials, so the name is now a misnomer. It makes sense to us, because we just transitioned away and that's what they used to be. But for someone new to the game, I expect it'd make little sense. A lot of our articles are similarly going to be confusing until we update them somehow, not that I know a good way to approach it. -- Sekoia 19:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

They *ARE* still appropriate. At the MERIT VENDORS, the RANDOM ROLLS are still called Task Force and Trial. -- Agge (talk) 00:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that we're talking about two different things. You're perhaps talking about what's appropriate in terms of "the game calls it that, therefore, it's appropriate for us to call it that"? I'm talking about "the devs removed the system that yielded its name, so the name no longer makes sense; they should have given it a different name" kind of appropriateness. Imagine you're new and have never played City before. Imagine that you encounter those random rolls at the merit vendor. Why on earth are they called "Task Force drops"? What's the connection to Task Forces? There is none any more, except the piece of text in the Merit Vendor GUI. In any case, this probably isn't the right place for this tangent so I'll stop continuing it here. I'll see if I can't frame the problem I see better on the forums at some point, once I've thought better on how to explain the more pertinent aspects of it and some form of constructive response to it. -- Sekoia 06:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Power Analyzers

The Mk III sells for 3,000 to a vendor (don't know the Mk II or Mk I sale amounts), and the recipe is level 1, which ends up listing the recipe as 200 to a vendor. I don't know how to tweak the template to include an option to input a special amount for vendor sales (kind of like the option to input a special way to acquire). -- Agge (talk) 06:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Bump. -- Agge

Ick. I think I've got an idea, though. I'll try it out over on the test wiki and bring it back here if I can work it out. --Eabrace 04:48, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Update: OK. Fix is in place. You may now override pricing information with a "price" parameter. As an example, I've already updated Temp Power: Power Analyzer mk III to make certain it worked properly. --Eabrace 05:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks much! :) -- Agge (talk) 05:36, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

PvP Recipes

I've added text for the PvP recipes, though I don't know if they sell for something different at stores. The support for PvP recipes in this template will most likely need updating. --Fleeting Whisper 17:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I've currently set Badge DayJob Griefer.png (Day job badge for sitting in PvP zones) as the image for the PvP drops, but there's probably something better. --Fleeting Whisper 17:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't get the image for the PVP recipes to show up at the appropriate 32px. It's showing up at 64px (its natural size), and it makes the PvP recipe pages look odd in comparison with the rest of the pools. For instance, compare GStrike and Oblit. Oblit's icon is 32px, GStrike's is 64px.

Unless this is only happening on my end. But it shows up the same in both IE6 and FFox3. :/ -- Agge (talk) 00:45, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Iconography Change

Proposal 1

I have long hated the fact that "Taskforce Drops" (see above discussion) and "Mission Drops" have an icon that isn't round. Not to mention the fact that the icon used for TFs is only available to heroes, and is now only available after the completion of two new mini-TFs that don't even use that icon until AFTER you have done both! Would it be appropriate, perhaps, to alter the image to some combination of the Merit Reward symbol and perhaps the symbol that appears in the SG Mode area when a TF is active? (I will create a prototype when I get home)... also, any propositions for a better symbol for the mission reward symbol? Again it uses a side-specific image and represents completion of certain missions, not missions in general. —Thirty7 12:27, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I could support a change of iconography, if we can determine some suitable alternatives. I agree with your reasoning on this. Unfortunately, I haven't any ideas on what might serve as better icons. -- Sekoia 14:33, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Some of the other icons could also benefit from a change. Consider Temporary Power: Hand Grenades -- why is the icon for Invention: Accuracy displayed in that article? Sure, I understand that it's supposed to represent "common", but I doubt a random visitor to that page is going to realize that. Interestingly, that icon is used to represent commons in the Recipe section for things like temp powers and costumes... but common enhancements don't use anything in that section. Meanwhile, unless I'm mistaken, the icons for Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare are something some of our editors created on their own; there's absolutely no context that would clue a visitor in to what they mean. Basically, from the perspective of someone not familiar, we just have random icons pinned at the start of the Recipe sections of these articles.

This begs the question... do we even need to use icons for this? The drop pools simply tell you how you can obtain the recipe. Well... take a look at the top of the articles and we have big ole banners shouting loud-and-clear how you can purchase the recipes. It wouldn't be much to add another banner on relevant pages indicating that they can be obtained randomly as drops from critters or whatnot. The pools themselves are also noted in the text and in the categorization. So I'm strongly inclined to just drop the iconography entirely here. It isn't necessary, and since we don't have good options, it's actually even counterproductive. -- Sekoia 14:47, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I can see your point in wanting to just drop them, but I think they serve a legitimate purpose in certain locations, namely in the charts that show rarity via the concise little symbol. Take a look at User:Thirty7/Stuff for my suggestions on this issue. —Thirty7 15:30, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Another option, aside from those suggested, would be to drop the multi-colored IO Ring in favor of just a circular symbol. —Thirty7 15:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Which charts are you referring to? I generally like the direction your proposed revision is taking in using a letter to denote the rarity. This is much, much more clear, and more colorblind friendly too! A few alterations I would like to see for comparison would be: update Very Rare to use "VR" instead of "V"; update mission drops to use "M"; update PvP to use "PvP"; update Special to use "S". It might also be helpful to go ahead and put up a version without the IO Ring for comparison as well. Easier to decide what looks best if we can compare. :D -- Sekoia 15:52, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Charts like on this page: Invention Origin Enhancement Sets. I will make those up after I get up, I am in desperate need of some sleep after Third shift.  :) —Thirty7 16:02, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Aha! Okay, I definitely see the usefulness there. I tweaked your demo page to add a second copy of the sample image you put up with it scaled down to make the icons 20px in height like they are on the chart so we can compare them that way too (I hope you don't mind, feel free to revert if you do!). Also, there are actually three temporary power drop pools: Common, Uncommon, and Rare. So unfortunately I'm not sure it's a good idea to separate those out. However, as an alternative, maybe you can superimpose "C", "U", and "R" on top of the temporary powers icon you picked? For the costume icon, I would recommend two alternatives for comparison sake: one with the text "CP" and one with the same spool image but without the needle if that's possible (it wasn't clear immediately that the needle was a needle, it looked like just a diagonal line at first). Also, sleep well. :) -- Sekoia 16:17, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with removing the IO ring, as it doesn't really *add* anything, and your initial complaint was that things weren't round - which adding the IO ring makes them non-round again, though admittedly with a round "suggestive shape". I also agree with putting letters or *something* on all of the icons to better represent immediately what they are. I honestly had to stare at the bottom row for ages to figure out what the "random swirly thingie" and the "spool-with-line-through" (needle) meant. Not very intuitive at all. ~ AGGE talk/cons 17:48, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd, because those last two you mentioned are taken directly from the in-game images for a Costume Recipe and a Temp Power Recipe... which is what they represent. Also, my complaint re: roundness had more to do with the fact that the shapes were mostly round, with some oddball outliers, I guess I over-simplified in the original post. —Thirty7 23:34, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

The "Task Force" pool isn't even that anymore, so it shouldn't be using a Task Force icon. It's just random rolls now, so let's use the random roll icon maybe?

The Mission icon is still somewhat specific, but I can get behind it since it's clear what it means and Villains have similar icons in similar situations.

The Costume Piece icons needs to not be just the yellow-for-uncommon one, since the Maelstrom's Pistol recipe is typed Rare.

--GuyPerfect 00:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 2

I drew up a new proposal with both "ringed" and "unringed" versions. For the ringed, I am using the ring colors to denote rarity for Costumes and Temp Powers as well... so with that system, we could have a VR Temp power or a PvP Costume if those were to ever exist as well as drops that already exist. Also, I have incorporated the ? Salvage suggestion from Guy since it de-couples the symbol from the idea that they are TF drops, since really they aren't anymore. They are again posted in two sizes on my User:Thirty7/Stuff page. Feedback? —Thirty7 04:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC) ((Just realized that I messed up and put an S on the Mission Drop symbol by mistake... that will be cleared up when I can get home to edit it.  :( —Thirty7 05:21, 20 December 2011 (UTC)))

For Task Force / Random Roll, we could use "RR" instead of "TF" in the text version. I much prefer the way you did the text icons in your earlier set, both the angled text and backgrounds.

I am very wary of using color as a primary means to distinguish anything. One, I'm colorblind and such methods are completely lost on me. Two, they can be too subtle for others to catch as well. The color differences on the two temporary power icons fall into these categories, I'm afraid.

I think I like the look of the image-based icons better, but find them less obvious in meaning overall. However... if we resolve to only use these images with mouseover text, that is easily mitigated and I could live with it. This is already done on pages such as Invention Origin Enhancement Sets where we use templates to provide the mouseover text. If we edit the recipe page templates to do similar, I think we might be set.

Provided with use mouseovers: I prefer the first set of images for most of the icons. I think Very Rare should have "VR" on its icon, done with two upper-cases like the older TF icon, since the "V" could be mistaken for a U. For temp powers and costumes, I prefer the image-based icons but would much prefer that we find a better way to differentiate rarity; perhaps superimpose the letter used for Common, Uncommon, etc. onto the images using partial opacity? I'm not a fan of using the random salvage image for Random Roll/Task Force, since it's an image of random salvage, not random recipes; I think I'd prefer RR for that one unless a better image can be found/created. Actually, perhaps we could have a "!" for Special and a "?" for Random Roll, both done in the style of the first iteration of the Special icon? -- Sekoia 20:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 3

Added a new collection of icons for perusal and feed back to the User:Thirty7/Stuff page. It incorporates much of the feedback, and I am embracing the use of ALT text to convey a bit more info via the templates in use so I went back to a more glyph-oriented approach. Text better in white or black? —Thirty7 22:26, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

How about a small "C" "U" "R" in the center of the temp power swirly? They're still 100% distinguished by color, which as Sekoia mentioned, is bad for colorblindness. ~ AGGE talk/cons 22:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow! These are coming along really nicely.

• I like white text better for these.
• I agree that keeping the ring on the images looks better and more "finished". I think the version you used in the 3rd proposal is better since the ring rotated that way requires less vertical clearance.
• I love the idea of using the Reward Merit symbol for the Random Roll; however, instead of using two small versions within the circle, how about you just fill the circle with a single Reward Merit symbol? That will make it more readable at the smaller size.
• As Agge mentions, the rarity-specific versions of the temp powers are still pure color-coding. I don't think putting a small letter in the center of the swirly will work though, as it'll be too small at lower resolutions. Unfortunately I don't have any better ideas here. If need be, I can live with these.
• As Guy pointed out, you'll also need rarity-specific versions of the Costume icons.
• I like your Mission icon for the larger icons, but the detail gets lost at the smaller icons. The horizontal white bar helps distinguish it, but I don't think it's ideal. Maybe you could use the mission icon you get in the map or compass? I was able to find four possible source images to use for that:
• I think the following icons are perfect in your 3rd proposal: C, U, R, VR, PvP, and Special.

-- Sekoia 00:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad you like the new batch for the most part. As far as I am concerned, I am done with the the ones you mentioned as "perfect" and consider those to be the final versions. As for the other ones?

• I will look at using the Merit symbol as the entire center icon, my only concern there was with losing the vibrant green for a sorta ugly bronze, but if it looks better in terms of clarity, I am all about it.
• I too am at a loss for what to do in terms of rarity distinguishment on the Temp and Costume Recipes. The outer ring is just not enough in the small format, and is still only different via color, which is dissappointing.
• As far as the Mission Drop pool, I think that the might be the way to go... though I would likely have to go blue or maybe green (since the TF Pool is going to be bronze in color now) to avoid color duplication. For the greatest visual clarity, though, I will likely try to make the Pog (background) portion white... so that there is contrast between it and the symbol used.

Any input at all on how to have both a unique symbol/lettering on the Temp and Costume piece symbols while also including rarity information would be appreciated... I am quite frankly at a loss. —Thirty7 07:00, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually... do we even need icons for the Temp and Costume piece symbols? The only place the icons would get used is on the recipe pages. Those pages already have the graphic for the recipe; this graphic contains the same imagery you're using for these icons. Putting an extra icon with the same image in the article doesn't really add anything substantial, so I would argue that we can just omit it there. I was unable to find any other usages of such icons; all of the tables that use the smaller icons seem to be enhancement-oriented. So for now, how about you go ahead and create one temp power icon and one costume piece icon just in case we decide we need them somewhere (since you already have a good icon layout done for them), and not worry about trying to encode rarity in them since they likely won't even get used. -- Sekoia 07:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Very good point. I will make seperate files of them, and upload them prolly sometime later today or tomorrow. Any suggested changes to them can obviosuly still be done to them after that point up to and including uploading additional symbols if needed. As for a system for file names: DropIcon-[Code].png? So the one for very rare would be DropIcon-VR.png, for PvP: DropIcon-PvP... etc. As long as the mission one looks good to me, and I don't run into issues with the Reward Merit one, I will simply upload those as well once they are seperate files without posting again for a seperate round of feedback... unless of course someone objects in the mean time. —Thirty7 07:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I think DropIcon-[Code].png is great. (The code for PvP is actually just P though.) -- Sekoia 08:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I figured that way you could simplify the code a bit with a [[File:DropIcon-{{{#}}}|Stuff, etc.]] instead of now what is likely to be some sort of Switch or If section. —Thirty7 16:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Uploaded, etc.

I have uploaded said icons and fixed most of the places they appear... as for the other places, I am not entirely sure how to fix them. Also, I reverted to the Star and White Bar version of the Mission Drop pool since the use of the splat didn't work out very well for me. It looked hideous even after I completely redrew the design of it... more than once. Hopefully there are no issues with the way it has been initialized, the category the images are placed in, etc. —Thirty7 00:14, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The final set of images look great! Thanks for putting so much work into them. :) -- Sekoia 08:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem! I love messing around with Photoshop. In fact, if you know of any similar projects around the wiki, feel free to let me know! —Thirty7 20:53, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Captions

Also, regarding the captions (alt text) that is to be added... do folks think it would be helpful to have them be along the lines of "Pool A (Critter): Rare" just to supply all of the pertinent info? Spitballing here, a bit. —Thirty7 16:01, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Temporary Powers and new changes

Getting rid of CTP/UTP/RTP (Common, Uncommon, Rare Temporary Powers) has broken all of the temp power pages to categorize within Category:Unknown Recipe Drops. ~ AGGE talk/cons 23:43, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Just to note, they should be categorized in Category:Common Temporary Power Drops, Category:Uncommon Temporary Power Drops, and Category:Rare Temporary Power Drops. ~ AGGE talk/cons 23:46, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Ack! I could have sworn I looked into those and couldn't find anything using them prior to removing them. I'll fix it. -- Sekoia 00:20, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. -- Sekoia 00:28, 23 December 2011 (UTC)