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Forums: Index > Rin's Travel Agency > Archive > Announcements


This forum thread is where staff members, especially designers, will announce technical or structural changes to the Final Fantasy Wiki that aren't large enough to have their own forum thread but still should be mentioned, or affect all users, even those that ignored the original forum thread where they were discussed.

Please report any concerns or bugs here.

Converting JavaScript to Lua[]

As you may be aware, Techno, JBed, and I have been working on rewriting much of MediaWiki:Common.js in Lua (i.e. Modules). There are three main reasons for this:

  • Lua is executed in Wikia's servers, so it will work universally, but JavaScript, which is executed by the reader's computer, fails in Wikia Mobile (a rapidly growing portion of our readerbase). It also fails if the reader uses, for example, NoScript to avoid being barraged by advertising.
  • Even if JavaScript is usable by the reader (that is, because they are using Oasis or Monobook and don't have JavaScript disabled), since it is executed client-side, it is entirely dependent on the speed of their browser, and is usually much slower than Lua.
  • It is somewhat more difficult to edit JavaScript (which makes sense, since JavaScript affects every page on the wiki and thus could easily break it): only admins can edit Common.js, and then each edit has to be manually bugtested and approved by Wikia staff.

This shouldn't affect the vast majority of users; we're trying to keep backwards compatibility, or at least have Intangir Bot go through and remove any uses of functionality that we're dropping.

However, as we go through with the conversion, we're often able to add new features that didn't exist when the code was written in JavaScript. As an example, we are currently converting the Codenames feature into a module called Module:Codename. Data describing each series or release is stored in Module:Codename/data — which is editable by any user, so if the CSS etc. of any release ever needs updating, you can easily implement it yourself. (Just make sure to update odr at the bottom of the module as well; this stores the order of releases for the purpose of Final Fantasy Wiki:Scope and similar pages).

One of the new features of Lua codename that's made possible by the ease of editing Codename/data is being able to call up special page names. For example, let's say you're writing a template that's going to be used on Summon pages all across the wiki. Clearly, for Final Fantasy IV, you don't want to call the header of the template "Final Fantasy IV summons", since they're called Eidolons in that game; moreover, you want to link to Summon (Final Fantasy IV) rather than the more generic Summon. Well, you now can call up the name and link appropriate for replacing "Summon" in FFIV: [[|]]. This feature is experimental (implemented in this diff on a whim of Techno's) and not used anywhere, but could prove quite valuable down the road. Cat (meowhunt) 16:44, July 24, 2016 (UTC)

Please also see Forum:Portability FAQ and description as to why we're doing this. Not only will this introduce neat features like the one above (which I hope to use on templates such as new infoboxes soon), it'll be more maintainable and future proof, which is to say we shouldn't need another overhaul after this one. I intend to document these pages soon so that other people can understand them, but it should be very easy to add new entries just through copying, pasting and changing values. We also hope to be able to generate CSS using this.--Magicite-ffvi-ios Technobliterator TC 17:03, July 24, 2016 (UTC)

FFXIV 3.4[]

I will be updating the item, achievement, and icon databases to patch 3.4 this weekend, or over this week if there are some hitches along the way. Note that this will involve uploading literally more than 25,000 images (via Intangir Bot, of course), which are needed to describe the game's over 14,000 items, 300 achievements, 2,000 quests, and so on. This will be followed by another pass-through to get rid of dups, redlinks, and unused images. If there are no objections, images will be named "File:icon-ffxiv-[icon id].png", where [icon id] is the icon as they are stored in FFXIV, which plays a lot nicer with Lua -- even though it's significantly more difficult for humans to read, humans probably won't ever be touching these icons. Any edits done with such large data sets (never used by the wiki before, to my knowledge, though Xeno's work with mobile games probably comes close) will have to be automated. (Techno, that's your cue for an Intangir singularity joke). Of course, if people do object I'll find a better way to mass upload files than naming them systematically.

One idea I had is an invocation, {{#invoke:FFXIV Data|icon|[file name]}} which returns the icon id. For example, {{#invoke:FFXIV Data|icon|Fire Shard}} returns [[File:icon-ffxiv-20001.png]]. This way humans can still add the icons to pages manually, but mass changes happen automatically on the backend without breaking anything.

Outside of that, there shouldn't be any effect on pages that don't already invoke Module:FFXIV Data -- but if there is, somebody please yell at me so I can clean up the mess.

Anyone curious about FFXIV datamining should look at my userspace, in particular User:Catuse167/FFXIV. A long term goal of mine is to make Lo FFXIV Quests, but each quest has over 1500 data point associated with it, and I have an idea of about what 3 of them do. Even calculating EXP seems impossible. Likewise with NPCs and enemies (actually, enemy data isn't even stored in a single .exh -- it's madness). So these are just pipe dreams but please look forward to it&trade. Cat (meowhunt) 07:23, October 8, 2016 (UTC)

If we're using that naming scheme, we might want to make an mbox noting that the images are intentionally named that way and should not be moved. -- Some Color Mage ~ (Talk) 08:46, October 9, 2016 (UTC)

Sideicons using Lua[]

As you may be aware, Techno, JBed, and I are working to have anything that involves codename be run from this database. Right now we are revamping sideicons. Aside from the usual reasons for most of the changes implemented recently (portability and load times), this allows all aspects of a series or release to be stored in one place for easy changes. Moreover, it will be easier to add things to the sideicon box in the future -- we could even move the sitenotice there, since the current system doesn't work so well.

Cat (meowhunt) 01:38, October 23, 2016 (UTC)

Changes to user rights[]

The FFWiki's custom "moderator" role has been long outdated, superseded by the global Content Moderator role. As such, moderators will now have a handful of rights they did not before. In particular, they will be able to delete and protect pages, and when they view an edit, it will be marked as patrolled in the Recent Changes. Cat (meowhunt) 22:08, August 15, 2017 (UTC)

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