Help talk:Contents/Rules & Guidelines

About To-dos

Are you allowed to add Todos? If so, do they need admin permission?

Spoiler assumption

Just thought of something.

Should we add "Write the article as if everyone reading it has already played the game" to this? I figured we wouldn't want to have any pointless story detail or anything like that. --AquaBat 16:48, 24 February 2013 (EST)

I don't think it's necessary. --BMF54123 16:51, 24 February 2013 (EST)

Clarification on pre-release information

The rule for 'Prerelease screenshots & videos' states that the only exception is that what is being exhibited within the image or trailer must still be programmed into the game. This seems a little odd to me I must say, but I just wanted to make sure that this excludes anything that can't be found in the final game. Which includes trailers, instruction manuals, magazine screenshots, developer interviews and even press kit releases? For example, this would include the changes in grammar within the first set of Pokemon games, entire cutscenes that appear in trailers and have been cut from the final (such as in Kingdom Hearts 2). --Spriteit 09:56, 23 March 2013 (EDT)

If the things that were cut can't be found anywhere within the files of the game, we don't cover it. If you have proof that, to go along with your example, a cutscene shown in a trailer for Kingdom Hearts 2 isn't used but still exists hidden within the files of the final game, then it can be covered, and you may add screenshots or videos of trailers that show it (but be sure to upload the cutscene found itself along with those). But if not, we don't bother with it.

As for the grammar in the Pokémon games, are you saying demonstrations and trailers of the game showed different grammar in the text than that of the text of the final games? If so, if you can find the old text within text files for the game, you can set them up in a comparison with the text in the final and put that in the respective articles. If not, that's not worth mentioning, especially since it's such a minor detail.

Does that clear things up? --AquaBat 11:12, 23 March 2013 (EDT)

• I think the grammar thing refers to screenshots that showed things like "The BROCK wants to fight!" and "The MISTY wants to fight!" It might not have been separate text so much as a parser(?) to figure out where "the" needed to be in battle intros. But no, if it can't be found in-game then we don't cover it here, although BMF (I think) has been working on a website to house and document prerelease materials. -WarioBarker 16:09, 23 March 2013 (EDT)

It does, and honestly it disappoints me a little that it doesn't cover all aspects of games that have been cut, I really dig finding out that stuff, but I understand you wanna keep it to stuff that's still in the games. Thanks muchly AquaBat. And it was WArioBarker, well, one example.--Spriteit 04:49, 24 March 2013 (EDT)

Fan Games?

If the rules say no fan games, then why are there pages of Super Mario Bros. Crossover and Super Smash Bros. Crusade? --Dr. Yay 21:54, 30 April 2013 (EDT)

As I recall, those pages existed before the rules were overhauled, so they're grandfathered in.

The primary reason we don't accept fangames is because it's easy for any random schmuck with a terrible game to load it with fake "unused" content, just so they can create a page here and basically get free advertising. (Yes, this actually did happen a few times.) --BMF54123 23:24, 30 April 2013 (EDT)

...But Scott Cawthon wasn't exactly an expert when he made Five Nights at Freddy's 1.

Also, I thought the point was to document unused content or just secrets, and not documenting expert developers.

Edit : I almost forgot! Why is the Adobe Flash section pretty large if we don't allow amateur developers? Everyone's talking about how outdated and bad it is.

(And, I'm actually curious to see these advertising articles)

--The2000 (talk) 12:52, 18 December 2016 (EST)

Yes, the point of the wiki is to document unused content/secrets. Five Nights at Freddy's was an original property, not heavily based on an existing franchise in the same way as Ultimate Flash Sonic. However, the SuperJeenius Game is clearly based on a YTer and wasn't really done with permission. To be fair, the developer of that game is planning to make a commercial project and SuperJeenius was clearly meant as a surprise birthday gift for them. As for advertisements, one example would be how THIS GAME IS IMPOSSIBLE! was created while the game was still being advertised here and the article was done by the author of said game. We restored it once the ad stopped running in Project Wonderful. As for blatantly awful games with loads of fake "unused" content, there was I.M. Meen 2, a GameMaker game that was blatantly based on YTPs, which were themselves based on existing works.

We do allow games from all kinds of developers, but there's also limitations to prevent loads of fan games based on existing franchise from flooding the wiki. For instance, obscure games like Quagmire and Sammy the Cyclebot were from a small developer, but weren't blatantly based on other properties. As for Adobe Flash, a lot of the games are based on licensed games (including games once featured on sites like Lego.com, PBS, Nick and Cartoon Network), particularly games by 4T2, who made loads of Flash games. As for how that category is outdated and bad, I'd like to what type of people are saying that. I do know that we could put more things in from Armor Games, but something like a Flash Sonic game made that wasn't published by Sega on any of their sites wouldn't be allowed here. --From: divingkataetheweirdo (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2017 (EST)

Cheat only pages

Can admins start deleting pages that only have cheats on them? It's very disappointing when I find a page exist, yet has no unused content on it (which is what this site is for). If the cheats are needed to view unused content which the pages talks about, that's interesting. Examples of cheat only pages - Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Sega Master System, Game Gear), Klax (Game Gear), Jurassic Park (Game Gear), The Incredible Crash Dummies (Game Gear).--BossreggiN (talk) 21:58, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

I don't see why such pages should be deleted as they cover sound tests and level selects, both things which are used as debugging tools and are also things we cover. -Einstein95 (talk) 22:00, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

Game demos as prototypes

I'm a bit wary of covering game demos released close to the full game's release as prototypes if the only differences are in sequencing of events, rather than having content that is very clearly altered between an early demo and the final version of a game. If it's a demo released closer to the full game's release, it's very likely that some things would be altered in order to better streamline the demo and offer a better experience to introduce the game to the players. Can we get an official verdict on this? (This isn't meant to spite anyone in particular, by the way, I've been thinking about this for a while.) --AquaBat (talk) 00:38, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Yeah, that isn't enough to justify a page. There used to be quite a few games that did this - the Tomb Raider series immediately comes to mind. --From: divingkataetheweirdo (talk) 00:43, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

If you're referring to the demo comparisons I started, then yeah I wouldn't at all be surprised if the changes were made to streamline things or even save space on the file (removal of music, sound effects, graphics, and effects), so I think it can be concluded that the Nintendo Channel demo has no true differences from the final. In the Flash demo, however, which clearly dates before the game's launch, rather than the Nintendo Channel demo, much of the music and graphics from the final version exists and there are still a few minor differences that aren't so easily explainable, namely Tricks and Gimmicks and Tricks and Baroque being one song and text changes that are highly subjective. In cases like these, I'd assume we'd only note meaningful differences between the demo and the final game? Or are these not clear enough to be true differences? --MrU (talk) 01:21, 2 April 2016 (EDT)

Copy protection

Something seems a bit off with the CD checks explanation, especially when you look at the closely related manual lookups or floppy disk protections. For example, Sid Meier's Pirates! (Commodore 64) and other MicroProse games have a manual lookup, but would technically be "used" since some players could simply decide to trip it just to see what will happen - and that it would be very trivial to trip simply by copying the game and not the manual.

This puts the MicroProse style in a unique position, where it uses an extremely common protection method (and possibly "used") while hobbling gameplay because the user failed the copy protection. To avoid this mixed messages, I'd like to change the exception to "A game that modifies gameplay if it detects attempts to subvert anti-piracy measures", otherwise it might imply that this anti-piracy pattern is more novel than it really is. I'd also like to lump manual checks under that heading as well, since those were also very common. --Sigma 7 (talk) 01:57, 2 February 2017 (EST)

Yes, please go ahead if you'd like. Bast (talk) 07:59, 2 February 2017 (EST)

NTSC and PAL for PlayStation games?

I get why those terms shouldn't usually be used for talking about regions, but I know all of my PlayStation games have labels like "NTSC-U/C" and "PAL" directly on their covers in the top left corner. I guess U/C refers to US and Canada and not the rest of NA, and I know in this case PAL covers Australian PlayStation and not just Europe. And I can think of a couple games that have major differences between those regions, so I'm not sure what the better terms would be in cases like this --Jessietail (talk) 18:52, 24 September 2017 (EDT)

Fan translations

Do fan translations come under the ban on documenting hacks? Because there's one particularly interesting thing about the recent release of MegaMan Battle Network 4.5 Real Operation by website The Rockman EXE Zone. They actually released American and European versions - and the latter has the same crappy title screen logo design that Battle Network 3, 4 and 5 do! The existence of that translation will help with other content for that game, anyway. Digifiend (talk) 22:22, 24 November 2019 (EST)

Yes, they do come under the ban. --From: CounterDiving (talk) 22:39, 24 November 2019 (EST)

Roblox Things

When I created 2 articles about 2 Roblox games, they were deleted along with the assets I've uploaded. Is Roblox really a "build your own" fangame of some sort?

Mention of Translation Section Markers

I've noticed on quite a few pages now when users are making edits of pages they move the translation markers around on the page and it breaks translations that already exist... As more and more pages get marked this could (and will) become a big issue. I'm wondering if there's any feedback as to if something of the sort should go on this page or somewhere else to help prevent that from happening. I think this page makes more sense then putting it on the Translations page since people will run into those markers even if they don't do any translating. Perhaps something like:

Translation Markers

On pages, there may be bits of markdown that look like this: <--T:1-->. These are Translation Markers, and they're used to help split the workload of translating a page into smaller sections, making it easier on the translators. When editing a page with these markers, do not move markers around, add markers, or change the numbering of existing markers. It messes with the translation tool and can create a lot of extra work to fix.

But I'm not an Admin so I don't want to just slap this on the page willy-nilly. Feedback is appreciated! -- Luna (talk) 21:26, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Fan Games? II

"Fan games may be added to the wiki, but they require explicit admin approval before they may be created. Please contact an admin before creating an article about a fan game."

Huh. When did that get changed? Well… time to make that template "official", then. It's pretty much good as written, but need converting to proper code instead of mbox, and it needs an "else/if" line for the "permission was given" thing with two different categories – one for "Fan game" and another for "Fan game needing approval". Or something like that.

… but, is a slippery slope that'll lead to harsher restrictions down the road? (:

~ Jo Li (U, T, C) 21:53, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Alright. I've made a template and it mostly does what I want it to. I'd prefer it it categorized games without permissions as, well, games without permissions, but after two hours of trying to get it to work exactly as I want it, I've given up. I just added it to those two games and called it.

If anyone wants to take a whack at it, you have my full permission to edit the linked page as you see fit. You can probably see what I was going for, but the only thing that's missing is the "if link, tag as 'fan games', if no link, tag as 'fan game pages needing approval'" code. That's all I want.

Please, thank you, and cheers.

~ Jo Li (U, T, C) 10:06, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

As for "When did that get changed?": over six years ago. The policy has more or less always been to get admin approval. -- X (talk) 18:45, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

"Don't Add" #12

Specifically: Don't add "internal lists of prohibited words and terms". There are a number of Notes pages - Notes:F-117A:_Stealth_Fighter, Notes:F-15_Strike_Eagle_(NES), Notes:NBA_Showtime:_NBA_on_NBC_(Nintendo_64), Notes:Pictionary_(NES), and probably quite a few others - that do just that. Is this something we should clean up, update the rules, or just ignore it? Or maybe I missed something in the rules? Just curious. Jtrevor99 (talk) 04:37, 31 July 2024 (UTC)