Category talk:Weapons

From Discworld MUD Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Creatorship

Because I am now a Creator, I will not be able to do as much work on the weapons database as I had been. However, we've managed to accumulate a really very impressive database already, and the building blocks are all here- it should be very easy for the community to make this the most complete and up-to-date weapon list onna Net. Cheers, everyone!
-TherionAndAlts 09:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Approx. Weights

I've started adding "(approx)" to approximate weights in the tables, because it's sometimes difficult to differentiate them (since some weapons really are 5 pounds on the dot) from accurate ones.
-TherionAndAlts 21:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Really Shiny Auto-Updating Weapon Tables

What needs to happen for us to have 'em?
-TherionAndAlts 07:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm a humble newbie to the wiki but did the SMW or Data extensions ever get installed? These, primarily SMW, were discussed (under Judge talk) as a requirement for autoupdating item tables on the category main pages.
I added couple of weapons recently and found 4 pages to manually edit for the glaive for example: the item's page (which I created), table on the weapon category page, table for excellent weapons in the category and removing it from the wanted weapons list. At least 2 should've been automated and there's a significant chance of pages going out of sync. There could even be other pages that I should've updated and didn't happen to find.
--Rhonwen 19:49, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I don't thiiiiink they did. In theory we could use Template:Include in a similar way, but it'd mean either putting tags around every excellent-judged weapon (which I think would be both somewhat error-prone, and possibly even more annoying than editing two pages) or separating them out somewhat in the main list (in which case... why have a separate page for them at all?).
It is annoying to have pages potentially out of synch and have the bad kind of redundancy all over; I'm not sure we have a good way to deal with it, though. (You did get all the relevant pages, though; at least I'd be surprised to find out there were any others that were relevant.)
--Ilde 05:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm surprised too but I didn't catch them all. I also created or significantly updated pages for ash spear and javelin, which I added to the Thrown weapons table today. If either had been an excellent melee weapon then it would've reached 5 pages per weapon. :p
It's not the first time a wiki relies on raw man power, at least for now. I swear wiki search engines would be better if the results couldn't be improved by tediously making redirect pages for all other search terms, including the whole singular/plural titles thing.
Rhonwen 14:54, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
...Ah! Mumblemumble thrown weapons, I forgot about them.
--Ilde 18:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong here, BUT...

...Judging weapons against each other tightens up ratings. So if you have three 95-100 weapons, and A is better than B, and B is better than C:

A has a rating of 97-100,
B has a rating of 96-99, and
C has a rating of 95-98.

Or, at least, something like this? And at what bonus is "judge against" useful?
-TherionAndAlts 01:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid it doesn't really tighten up ratings much. 'Judge X against Y' follows slightly different logic to 'judge X', but it's still afflicted by inaccuracy related to the ad.ev.we bonus. Technically, speaking, the margin for error is actually increased - you've got the margin of error from judging weapon A, and then add to that the margin of error from judging A against B.
As far as the code goes, if you're trying to judge two weapons of similar rating against each other, then you're likely to get 'A is roughly the same as B'; the lower your ad.ev.we bonus, the further apart the ratings of those weapons can be for you to get that message. The 'accuracy cap' for 'judge against' is also set at roughly 14% lower than the accuracy cap of simple 'judge'.
--Chat 20:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)



Confirmed Accuracy Indication

Ilde and I talked a bit in game and came to the conclusion that a little indicator showing that an item has been weighed on the Post Office Scales, or has been judged with a bonus of 392 or greater, would be handy. I'll add bold text in the tables for now, but I'm sure if we put our heads together we can come up with something shinier. :) -TherionAndAlts 23:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the bold indicators are messing up the sort ordering with {{weightkey}} - it doesn't work properly if there are non-numeric characters (other than slash) in the parameters. Fortunately, I've now upgraded the template so that you can make what is displayed and what is keyed on different. Thus, if you want bolded entries, do something like '|{{weightkey|1 3/9|'''1 3/9'''}}'. I've updated Category:Swords as an example of how this is used.
--Chat 18:04, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Frazyl fixed the template some time ago, so formatting should now work with the weightkey template.
--Gunde 20:02, 17 December 2010 (UTC)



In the weapons section are you planning on edits that give information about weapons speed or difficulty of use or sp.we tming ranges or alternate requirements for them or just the bare bones info?

Not really, but notes like "This weapon appears to require extremely high bonuses" or "this weapon seems quite good at parrying" would be fine, in a Notes section on each weapon's page. -TherionAndAlts 10:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


I'm going to go ahead and start changing the tables to infoboxes, like so:

{{Infobox weapon
 | Judges as = whatever
 | Weight = whatever lb
 | Commands = whatever
 | Hands = 1/2
 | Type = whatever
}}

I'm thinking it'll be easier to do it now than to either keep doing it as tables, or to wait until there are hundreds of weapons listed. --Ilde 23:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Egad, thanks for doing that. I was Havynge Troubles converting the infobox template from my wiki to this one. -TherionAndAlts 10:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I updated the "Excellent" category pages to reflect instead the weapons with an upper judge rating of 100. -TherionAndAlts 08:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Weight Conventions

In order to allow the tables to sort consistently (and look consistent), we need a standardised weight convention. The Disc's "X X/9" works very well, but only if the person weighing the weapon has access to, and the time to use, a post office scale; without them, we get weapon weights like "1 1/2" or "3/4" pounds. These won't sort properly on an alphabetic table due to the lack of a common denominator, which is only realistically possible with a full conversion to either the "X X/9" convention or a decimal system.

If we go with the MUD's "X X/9" system, we gain MUD accuracy but make it more difficult for players to add weapons, because not many people will be willing to go to the extra trouble of using a post office scale on the weapons they encounter (especially if those encounters are a long, long way from a post office). This method, while extremely accurate, will mean fewer players will be willing to contribute, leading to empty weight fields in many infoboxes.

If we use the decimal system, we sacrifice a little MUD-accuracy for large gains in the ability for people to easily edit pages, since you can achieve relatively accurate weighing on the run via the "weigh" command. Even accurately weighed weapons can be converted to this (i.e. 8/9 of a pound is .88 pounds). Inaccurately weighed weapons will be easy to spot; any weapon weighed on a post office scale will have a double decimal (1/9 is .11, 2/9 is .22, and so on), so weights without a double decimal are probably inaccurate.

I personally favor the second system for two reasons:

  • Its simplicity allows us to expand the number of players that will be willing to contribute.
  • It is more useful to see a close-but-not-quite weight than no weight at all in our tables.

-TherionAndAlts 13:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I suggest we:
  • Display the weights as they would be displayed on the disc - that is, in whole and ninths of pounds (eg. '3 7/9 lb'). I think this is the format that viewers are going to be most familiar with, so we ought to stick with it. I have to say that '03.77 lb' looks pretty weird, especially with the leading zero.
  • Use the hidden key trick to allow the rows to be correctly sorted (with the key being the weight in 9ths of a pound - ie. the key for '3 7/9 lb' is '34').
--Chat 16:16, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that the "fuzzy" weight system you get with the "weigh" command appears to go:
  • less than a pound (0 - 4/9 lb)
  • about a pound (5/9 - 1 3/9 lb)
  • about two pounds (1 4/9 - 2 3/9)
  • about three pounds (2 4/9 - 3 2/9 lb)
  • about four pounds (3 3/9 - 4 2/9 lb)
  • about five pounds (4 3/9 - 5 1/9 lb)
  • about six pounds (5 2/9 - 6 1/9 lb)
(I got this by weighing various numbers of coins by hand and on the balance; it seems that 1-10 coins weighs 1/9 lb, 11-20 coins weighs 2/9 lb, etc.)
Unless there's a skillcheck, I don't see how someone could get 1/2 lb, 3/4 lb, etc.
--Ilde 20:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Yep, there is actually a skillcheck involved here, against your dex stat. You aren't able to determine the weight of an item if its weight, in lb, is less than (1/4 + 89/(36 * (1 + dex))). The upshot of this is:
  • If your dex is 7 or less, you'll not be able to weigh items of 5/9 lb or less, and they'll all appear as 'less than a pound' (or more, in extremely low dex cases).
  • If your dex is 8 - 11, you'll not be able to weigh items of 4/9 lb or less, and they'll all appear as 'less than a pound'.
  • If your dex is 12 - 22, you'll not be able to weigh items of 1/3 lb or less, and they'll all appear as 'less than a pound'.
  • If your dex is 23+, you'll still not be able to weigh items of 1/3 lb or less, and they'll all appear as 'less than half a pound'.
FYI, apart from that there's also a large and convoluted system for determining what sort of message you get when you weigh things by hand, depending on its real weight (there are 17 distinct variable ranges...).
--Chat 21:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
How strange. :O In that case, I retract my statement... I suppose someone with high dex could potentially get "a pound and a half" or similar, then? --Ilde 23:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
FYI, apart from that there's also a large and convoluted system for determining what sort of message you get when you weigh things by hand, depending on its real weight (there are 17 distinct variable ranges...).
--Chat 21:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
You can get the half-pound measurements by taking multiple items, weighing them, and then dividing by the number of items. Fine sabres weigh 3 3/9 pounds; one weighs (18 dex) "about four pounds;" two weigh (18 dex) "about seven pounds." That gives us a weight of 3 1/2, or 3.5. The post-office weight of the sabre is 3 3/9, or 3.33- which is only off by .17 pounds, or about three-eighteenths.
The 3/4 pound measurement can be made the same way. You can increase the accuracy of lighter weapons by weighing two or more items, such as the elegant stiletto; at a 20 dex, the stiletto will weigh "about half a pound." Two will weigh "about a pound and a half," giving us a weight of .75 pounds apiece, which is fairly close to the post-office weight of 8/9. The error margin is similar: .13 pounds, or about a ninth.
These measurements are not, of course 100% accurate; I'm not suggesting that they are. They're close enough for a new article, though- since I believe it's better to have a "close" weight in an infobox (because someone had the item to hand and wanted to help out) than no weight at all (because he had the item but didn't want to be bothered running to a post office). A weapon article with an inaccurate weight can always be fixed later. The placeholder is close enough for most people, and easy to spot for the ones that want to fix it.
Your experiment with the coins gives us a new problem- the post office scales are not accurate because not all items weigh a full "weight unit" of 50 grams (a little over one ninth; this is the way item weights are entered in the code). How will we handle items with weights of less than one ninth? If two widgets weigh 1/9 of a pound together, we can't give their weight in ninths, unless we use "half a ninth," which just looks silly, "less than one ninth," which is correct but vague, or "1/18," which breaks up our convention. The decimal system allows for that; the widget weighs approximately 0.06 pounds.
-TherionAndAlts 23:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
I think the issue with the coins, specifically, is that they're a continuous item (like powders and I assume liquids)... I think one coin really is 1/9 lb, but 10 coins is also exactly 1/9 lb (item weights are in "units" which are meant to be 50 grams but that's fairly close to 1/9 lb, so I guess in in-game terms a unit is 1/9 lb. I think you can only have integer weights (integer numbers of units I mean)).
(I just used coins because I had a lot on hand, and I didn't have a lot of other things weighing exactly 1/9 lb.)
--Ilde 01:17, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
You appear to be correct. All we have to solve now is the issue of common denominators in sortability, if we want to use the fraction system (since not everyone will use a scale).
Of course, we could just do it the easy way (like it is now) with the fraction weights in the articles and the decimals in the tables (they're only decimals for sorting anyway).

-TherionAndAlts 01:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I like the hidden key idea, since it'd let us get rid of those ridiculous 0's in front of weights under 10 lbs. --Ilde 04:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I did a test run with the decimal weights using hidden keys here. Any objection to doing all the tables this way? -TherionAndAlts 05:22, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Boo... I tried doing it the <span style="display:none">...</span> way and it failed horribly, putting the 10s at the top no matter which way they were sorted, and doing... something bad and wrong the first time it was "sorted". :(
--Ilde 08:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Do you want to do it the same way I did, for the moment? It may not be elegant, but it'll do until we work out a shinier method. -TherionAndAlts 12:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
I added hidden keys to the Category:Daggers page. Using zeroes as the hidden key seems to work well from a functionality standpoint, but I personally think that the weird offsetting that results from the hidden keys actually looks worse than the leading zeroes (which you can see here). What do you guys think? -TherionAndAlts 14:14, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
The post office scales are entirely accurate, it's just that the disc defines 1/9 lb as exactly equal to 50g :) Everything in the disc is measured in terms of weight units; there are no functional conversions anywhere to/from grams (there are code comments that suggest that a weight unit is approximately equal to 1/9 lb or 50g, but no actual code that enforces this). There are, however, conversions between weight units and lb. So, to all intents and purposes, all weights can be expressed as exact ninths of a pound; anything else (eg. 1/2 lb, 3/4 lb, etc.) is an approximation.
To the best of my knowledge, individual items cannot weigh less than one weight unit (1/9 lb). There are some items (such as herbs, fluids, etc.) that are designated as 'continuous objects'. They way they work is that they can be made of items which weigh whatever weight you please (including fractions far less than 1/9lb); their total weight is then added up and the whole item is treated as a single object, whose weight is rounded up to the nearest ninth of a pound. Certainly, weapons are not continuous objects, so we should not concern ourselves with the nuances of continuous media here.
Hidden key works just fine, but you need to follow the instructions to the letter to get it right. I've created {{weightkey}} which will do the job for you. It's designed to work with weights in pounds and ninths, but it will accept decimals or non-ninth fractions if you are so inclined (though it will internally round them to the nearest ninth for sorting purposes). I've updated Category:Daggers to use it, if you want examples. You should be sure to read Template:weightkey/doc before using it.
--Chat 20:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Spiffing!
For the record, I never said that the non-ninth fractions were anything but an approximation. I said that they were easy to make on the fly. :)
-TherionAndAlts 22:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Oooo! Well, I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before, but that's a very neat solution. --Ilde 00:26, 19 September 2009 (UTC)