Help:Contents

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This help page will contain information related to the Wiki itself.

FAQ

AlthasWiki FAQ

What is the AlthasWiki?
See AlthasWiki:About.

What is an article?
In the context of MediaWiki, an article is a webpage within a wiki. Any page on this wiki (website) is an article.

Why can't I create or edit articles?
As of right now, only Althas Developers have permission to create and edit wiki articles. It's been set up this way since I'd like to track article creators and editors, and keep article activities simply within the development team. That may change later however. Registered users do, however, have the right to add their comments into article discussion pages and user talk pages.

To Althas Developers: If you've created a wiki account and haven't been able to create or edit articles, then please request to be put into the "AlthasDev" group by sending a message to the Admin talk page.

Why are there "Lore:" and "SO:" prefixes for many of these articles?
Articles with the "Lore" prefix exist only to contain, well, the lore behind the subject in question. SO stands for "Sundered Order" and articles with this prefix only contain information related to the Lays of Althas: Sundered Order game (usually gameplay-related). We set it up this way to lessen the potential length of certain articles and in case this property ever expanded beyond the initial Sundered Order game. So a possible sequel would probably contain articles with its own unique prefix.

"Lays of Althas: Sundered Order" FAQ

What is Lays of Althas: Sundered Order?
See Lays of Althas: Sundered Order (abbreviated to "LoA:SO").

Why work on this game?
As you may know, most of the members of Epoch Games were a part of the Middle Earth Roleplaying Project modification for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. After the C&D from Warner Bros, we ceased all development of the mod. Many of the people on the MERP team, however, still wanted to stay together and create a mod.

That was when original IPs were suggested amongst the team. The rest is history. You can read a more detailed account here.

Why are you creating the game in CryEngine 3 Free SDK?
Originally, Lays of Althas: Sundered Order was planned to be a Skyrim mod. Afterall, modding Elder Scrolls game is what our team had experience in (from working on MERP). However, certain flaws in the Creation Kit (a game editing tool for modding Skyrim) have been discovered: difficulty for importing new meshes, can only accept "idle" animations, and (worst of all) a bug for large worldspace modifications like ours. This worldspace bug effects all heightmaps greater than the size of 64x64 (all activator objects and AI outside the 64x64 space will not function). The Althas heightmap was planned to be larger then that size; with still no solution to this problem, we would be forced to scale down the size of the heightmap to the size of Skyrim (a choice that does not interest most of us).

One of our team members later suggested CryEngine 3 Free SDK. We looked at other game engines as well, but we see the most potential with this engine. Yes, it's a big step for us moving from game modification to a proper game. Yes, we'll need to create a lot of the RPG foundations that Skyrim supplied for us. Still, when we look at the big picture, this project has so much more potential on a proper game development engine than it ever did as a Skyrim mod. So far, this engine is simply an improvement in every way over the Skyrim Creation Kit.

When will the game be released?
Because this is a project that all of us at Epoch Games work on in our spare time, and because this is a non-profit project, we are currently not setting any release dates. So please, do not ask this question. When we have a release date, we will announce it.

Content Creators Help

For those of you who want to create and edit articles (content) on this Wiki, then I suggest reading the following (even if you have skills with creating MediaWiki articles). Please read the AlthasWiki FAQ before reading further.

Creating a Wiki Article

Before you can create (or edit) articles on this wiki, you will need to be a part of the AlthasDev group. If you are not already, please ask on the User_talk:Admin page.

Now, before you create an article, make sure that it isn't already created:

  • Go to the Search box (currently on the left of the page) and search for the article you want to create.
  • If one exists, don't create a new one!
  • If you have information that would benefit an already-created article, then [[Help:Contents#Editing_a_Wiki_Article|Edit the article].

If you can't find an article on the subject, but do see it referenced in one or more articles, then you should probably create a new article for the subject. I say "probably" because not all subjects necessarily need new articles. Some may be irrelevant to the AlthasWiki (creating a general "world" page to explain what the word is) or could simply be added as a part of another page (in which case, please read Editing a Wiki Article).

If you truly feel this subject needs a new article (use your best judgement here), then read on to linking to a new AlthasWiki article. There is another method for creating an article without the need of a link, but it is not advised (and won't be covered in this guide).

Linking to a (New) Wiki Article

  1. Add double brackets around the word that you'd like to create an article for (this will create a link to a new article, unless it already exists in the wiki).
[[article]]

     2.  Figure out a name for the article. As is mentioned in the FAQ, you should add "Lore:" or "SO:" as a prefix to your article name.

          If an article is dealing with the history, geography, etc of Althas, then it needs a "Lore:" prefix.

[[Lore:ArticleName]]

          If an article is dealing with the Lays of Althas: Sundered Order game itself (be it gameplay, quest, etc), then it needs an "SO:" prefix.

[[SO:ArticleName]]

     3.  With links, you need to have the name of the article first, then the word that will show up in the article (containing the link).

[[Lore:ArticleName|word]]

Discussion

To discuss about an article, go to the top of an article and click the "discussion" link. The main intention of an article's discussion page is to talk about the article in question.

Edit

To edit an article, go to the top of an article and click the "edit" link.

History

To see a history of past edits, click the "history" link. The following explains what you are seeing in an article's history page (from left to right).

  • (curr | prev): "Current" and "Previous" show the differences between two edits. The two radio buttons you select (just to the right of these two links) will be the two edits that are compared.
  • Time and date: The time and date of past edits to an article. You can click them to see what the article once looked like at that time.
  • Username: The user responsible for the edit at the time and date in question.
    • talk: The user's Talk page.
  • undo: Undo the changes in that specific edit. Not generally recommended.

Delete

To delete an article, go to the top of an article and click the "delete" link. An article can not be recovered after deletion, use discretion!

Move

To move an article, go to the top of an article and click the "move" link. Moving an article will rename the article and move all of its history to the new name.

Protect

To protect an article, go to the top of an article and click the "protect" link. This page will allow the user to effect the rights of who can/cannot edit and move the article.

Watch

To watch/unwatch an article, go to the top of an article and click the "watch" or "unwatch" link. By clicking this link, your account will be notified of edits to the selected article.

External MediaWiki Guides

Extensions

These are the extensions used on the Wiki:

  • ConfirmEdit: To help fight against bot registration.
    • QuestyCaptcha: Plugin for the ConfirmEdit extension. Adds a question and answer captcha during user registration.
  • CSS MenuSidebar: Allows additional sidebar elements as menus with "dropdown" items.
  • Replace Text: Provides a special page to allow administrators to do a global string find-and-replace on both the text and titles of the wiki's content pages. (If you would like access to this extension, please contact Admin).
  • Talkright: The editing of talk pages is now a distinct action from the editing of articles.


See Special:Version for further details.

Skins

These are skins that are being looked into as options for the Wiki (aside from the MediaWiki default ones):

This help page will contain information related to the Wiki itself.

FAQ

AlthasWiki FAQ

What is the AlthasWiki?
See AlthasWiki:About.

What is an article?
In the context of MediaWiki, an article is a webpage within a wiki. Any page on this wiki (website) is an article.

Why can't I create or edit articles?
As of right now, only Althas Developers have permission to create and edit wiki articles. It's been set up this way since I'd like to track article creators and editors, and keep article activities simply within the development team. That may change later however. Registered users do, however, have the right to add their comments into article discussion pages and user talk pages.

To Althas Developers: If you've created a wiki account and haven't been able to create or edit articles, then please request to be put into the "AlthasDev" group by sending a message to the Admin talk page.

Why are there "Lore:" and "SO:" prefixes for many of these articles?
Articles with the "Lore" prefix exist only to contain, well, the lore behind the subject in question. SO stands for "Sundered Order" and articles with this prefix only contain information related to the Lays of Althas: Sundered Order game (usually gameplay-related). We set it up this way to lessen the potential length of certain articles and in case this property ever expanded beyond the initial Sundered Order game. So a possible sequel would probably contain articles with its own unique prefix.

"Lays of Althas: Sundered Order" FAQ

What is Lays of Althas: Sundered Order?
See Lays of Althas: Sundered Order (abbreviated to "LoA:SO").

Why work on this game?
As you may know, most of the members of Epoch Games were a part of the Middle Earth Roleplaying Project modification for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. After the C&D from Warner Bros, we ceased all development of the mod. Many of the people on the MERP team, however, still wanted to stay together and create a mod.

That was when original IPs were suggested amongst the team. The rest is history. You can read a more detailed account here.

Why are you creating the game in CryEngine 3 Free SDK?
Originally, Lays of Althas: Sundered Order was planned to be a Skyrim mod. Afterall, modding Elder Scrolls game is what our team had experience in (from working on MERP). However, certain flaws in the Creation Kit (a game editing tool for modding Skyrim) have been discovered: difficulty for importing new meshes, can only accept "idle" animations, and (worst of all) a bug for large worldspace modifications like ours. This worldspace bug effects all heightmaps greater than the size of 64x64 (all activator objects and AI outside the 64x64 space will not function). The Althas heightmap was planned to be larger then that size; with still no solution to this problem, we would be forced to scale down the size of the heightmap to the size of Skyrim (a choice that does not interest most of us).

One of our team members later suggested CryEngine 3 Free SDK. We looked at other game engines as well, but we see the most potential with this engine. Yes, it's a big step for us moving from game modification to a proper game. Yes, we'll need to create a lot of the RPG foundations that Skyrim supplied for us. Still, when we look at the big picture, this project has so much more potential on a proper game development engine than it ever did as a Skyrim mod. So far, this engine is simply an improvement in every way over the Skyrim Creation Kit.

When will the game be released?
Because this is a project that all of us at Epoch Games work on in our spare time, and because this is a non-profit project, we are currently not setting any release dates. So please, do not ask this question. When we have a release date, we will announce it.

Content Creators Help

For those of you who want to create and edit articles (content) on this Wiki, then I suggest reading the following (even if you have skills with creating MediaWiki articles). Please read the AlthasWiki FAQ before reading further.

Creating a Wiki Article

Before you can create (or edit) articles on this wiki, you will need to be a part of the AlthasDev group. If you are not already, please ask on the User_talk:Admin page.

Now, before you create an article, make sure that it isn't already created:

  • Go to the Search box (currently on the left of the page) and search for the article you want to create.
  • If one exists, don't create a new one!
  • If you have information that would benefit an already-created article, then [[Help:Contents#Editing_a_Wiki_Article|Edit the article].

If you can't find an article on the subject, but do see it referenced in one or more articles, then you should probably create a new article for the subject. I say "probably" because not all subjects necessarily need new articles. Some may be irrelevant to the AlthasWiki (creating a general "world" page to explain what the word is) or could simply be added as a part of another page (in which case, please read Editing a Wiki Article).

If you truly feel this subject needs a new article (use your best judgement here), then read on to linking to a new AlthasWiki article. There is another method for creating an article without the need of a link, but it is not advised (and won't be covered in this guide).

Linking to a (New) Wiki Article

  1. Add double brackets around the word that you'd like to create an article for (this will create a link to a new article, unless it already exists in the wiki).
[[article]]

     2.  Figure out a name for the article. As is mentioned in the FAQ, you should add "Lore:" or "SO:" as a prefix to your article name.

          If an article is dealing with the history, geography, etc of Althas, then it needs a "Lore:" prefix.
[[Lore:ArticleName]]
          If an article is dealing with the Lays of Althas: Sundered Order game itself (be it gameplay, quest, etc), then it needs an "SO:" prefix.
[[SO:ArticleName]]
     3.  With links, you need to have the name of the article first, then the word that will show up in the article (containing the link).
[[Lore:ArticleName|word]]

Discussion

To discuss about an article, go to the top of an article and click the "discussion" link. The main intention of an article's discussion page is to talk about the article in question.

Edit

To edit an article, go to the top of an article and click the "edit" link.

History

To see a history of past edits, click the "history" link. The following explains what you are seeing in an article's history page (from left to right).

  • (curr | prev): "Current" and "Previous" show the differences between two edits. The two radio buttons you select (just to the right of these two links) will be the two edits that are compared.
  • Time and date: The time and date of past edits to an article. You can click them to see what the article once looked like at that time.
  • Username: The user responsible for the edit at the time and date in question.
    • talk: The user's Talk page.
  • undo: Undo the changes in that specific edit. Not generally recommended.

Delete

To delete an article, go to the top of an article and click the "delete" link. An article can not be recovered after deletion, use discretion!

Move

To move an article, go to the top of an article and click the "move" link. Moving an article will rename the article and move all of its history to the new name.

Protect

To protect an article, go to the top of an article and click the "protect" link. This page will allow the user to effect the rights of who can/cannot edit and move the article.

Watch

To watch/unwatch an article, go to the top of an article and click the "watch" or "unwatch" link. By clicking this link, your account will be notified of edits to the selected article.

External MediaWiki Guides

Extensions

These are the extensions used on the Wiki:

  • ConfirmEdit: To help fight against bot registration.
    • QuestyCaptcha: Plugin for the ConfirmEdit extension. Adds a question and answer captcha during user registration.
  • CSS MenuSidebar: Allows additional sidebar elements as menus with "dropdown" items.
  • Replace Text: Provides a special page to allow administrators to do a global string find-and-replace on both the text and titles of the wiki's content pages. (If you would like access to this extension, please contact Admin).
  • Talkright: The editing of talk pages is now a distinct action from the editing of articles.


See Special:Version for further details.

Skins

These are skins that are being looked into as options for the Wiki (aside from the MediaWiki default ones):

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