GuildWiki talk:Suggestions/In-line crafting material icons

icons of a lot of dif materials look alike. at that size, steel and iron look alike and could cause confusion. &mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 02:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Iron [[Image:Iron Ingot.png|19px|Iron Ingot(s)]] Steel [[Image:Steel Ingot.png|18px|Steel Ingot(s)]] D Steel [[Image:Deldrimor Steel Ingot.png|14px|Deldrimor Steel Ingot(s)]]. Steel looks much more "shiny" to me than Iron, which is simply dull and blackish.  D Steel has a distinctive shape.  And there's always the alt text.  Or we could use a slightly larger height than 19px, of course, since these are for use in tables and not standard text.  25px might be good: Iron [[Image:Iron Ingot.png|25px|Iron Ingot(s)]] Steel [[Image:Steel Ingot.png|24px|Steel Ingot(s)]] D Steel [[Image:Deldrimor Steel Ingot.png|18px|Deldrimor Steel Ingot(s)]].  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 02:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a nice idea but I agree that slightly bigger icons would be better. However I am wondering if all players remember what certain materials "look" like...could you tell me what the following materials are just by looking? [[Image:Bolt of Damask.png]] [[Image:Bolt of Linen.png]] [[Image:Elonian Leather Square.png]] ...I would have bit of a hard time with some of the more rare materials. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 02:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I know what those are - Damask, Linen, ELeather - but I've crafted quite a few armors that used them, so I'm more familiar. Still, if you don't know what Elonian Leather is from the icon, how much more likely is it that you'll know what "E. Leather" means?  Or "D. Steel"?
 * Anyway, this is the discussion on GWW about using the materials icons. Only one user objected, for the same reason (hard to tell icons apart), but the icons have been in use for a year now and apparently everyone likes them.  When you talk to an armor crafter/weaponsmith or the Xunlai chest in-game, you get icons with a mouseover tooltip, exactly like what GWW uses.  I feel that the tooltip is sufficient for identification.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 04:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppose you're right. I just hate to follow in their footsteps, which is what we seem to be doing on an ever-increasing basis. :\ [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 04:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If it helps, I didn't propose this "because GWW does it," I proposed it because I feel it's a good idea. I only mentioned GWW because we can reference their implementation of it and, perhaps, even improve upon it.
 * I've come to see part of what Auron meant when he said that this wiki has "stagnated" - we've stuck to our old ways of doing things because it would be too much work to change. When GWW started up, they were able to implement a lot of new ideas because they had a proverbial "clean slate".  Now, mostly due to Auron and Mendel, we're finally beginning to open up to the possibility of wide-sweeping changes.  If some of those changes seem like we're "following in GWW's footsteps", then I like to think that it's simply because it's a genuinely good idea that they were able to implement first, not because we just want to "keep up with the neighbors".  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 05:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We're not doing it "like GWW" does it, we do it like the crafters display it in-game: when you actually go buy, all you see is the icons, and you mouse over to find out what they mean. Doing it like this on Guildwiki just means players already know how to handle it &mdash; which is why it wasn't a problem on GWW, I assume. I also assume that we can fix the "bad" resizes by changing the palette of these icons to make the transparent color white. --◄mendel► 18:19, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Gah, why do I always forget the most important points? THAT is why I want to do it this way, because it matches the in-game crafting windows.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Given the lack of objections over the past two weeks, I'm going to go ahead with this project. I will be updating the armor gallery pages as I work through the armor gallery template project.

A couple questions on template names, then: &mdash;Dr Ishmael 23:37, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Unlike GWW, I think it would be best to use single-word, all-lowercase names for all the material templates, so I'm abbreviating Deldrimor Steel to, Elonian Leather to , Monstrous Claw/Eye/Fang to //, and Glass Vial to  (since "vial" could refer to that or Vial of Ink).  Does anyone have a problem with these names?
 * is already used by the skill, so we have to use something for the material. I'm going with  for now, which matches dsteel and eleather.


 * Category:Templates/Material icons, I see. Anyway, if we have a naming scheme, is there any objection to making redirects so we can use either "eye" or "meye" ? I also think we should have the canonical names working. --◄mendel► 02:34, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

What about capitalization? and redirects from the lower-case material names? --◄mendel► 02:37, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * *points to potential problem with the templates* Too lazy to repeat here.[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  02:43, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Response to mendel's massive table of redlinks: why? That's too much work for too little benefit - these templates will rarely, if ever, get used outside of crafter tables.  If you want to create all of those as redirects, go ahead, but I don't see any reason to use  instead of .  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 03:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, when converting tables, it helps when you can just replace the brackets with curly brackets, without editing any text. That's why I am going to do the redirects with proper caps for the crafting materials now. --◄mendel► 11:28, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * NOW I want admin - moving this many pages runs into the throttle. :-( --◄mendel► 11:34, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hardly any crafting tables use the "proper" name, they either use abbreviations that redirect (Iron) or the proper name piped with a redirect (Iron), so unfortunately that argument fails. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:37, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, Artisan used the proper names, mostly, and it was easy to delete the "|glittering dust" from the one shortcutted name. Well, with the redirects we ought to be good now; you've noticed the images now link to the material articles so the icons can actually replace materials links, and if you see an abbreviation that doesn't redirect, it's probably a good idea to add it. I am now undecided about the plural forms, but leaning towards not doing them. --◄mendel► 17:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I hadn't forgotten about redirecting the images, I just didn't get around to it last night, then you and Felix did it while I was asleep. :P
 * On Artisan specifically, I think it would be good to keep the material names next to the icon in the first column, since this is kind of a "definition" table for those materials, and that's also what you see at the artisans in-game. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:36, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I was going to icon up the table more with profession icons where the armors are listed. The order of the materials seems off, too; it's not the same order we're used to from the chest or the traders. Fell free to re-add the links. --◄mendel► 22:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Alphabetical ordering seems fine to me, the only one out of place was Linen. The in-game ordering at the Rare Material Trader seems mostly random, so I'd argue against using that.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 23:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

First implementation
I've updated the (semi-}core Warrior armors to use the mat icons: Warrior Ascalon armor, Warrior Krytan armor, Warrior Tyrian armor, and Warrior Obsidian armor. &mdash;Dr Ishmael  05:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * See the sandbox for some suggestions. I believe either the icons have to get smaller, or the amounts need to be bold. --◄mendel► 11:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We could reduce them to x20px (see my addition to the sandbox), but then we get back to Jedi's complaint that they're to small to tell apart (I can tell just fine, though). &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:37, 24 August 2008 (UTC)