Template talk:Infobox Game

From Looney Pyramid Games Wiki


When updating this, keep in mind that your changes affect every infobox already in use. If you add a category, that category will show up as a missing symbol in every other infobox. Try to make sure any additions are truly necessary. - brilk 22:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to make the parameters optional? For example, the infobox for Cardinal Connections has a blank "Mechanics" section, but if you just leave Mechanics out of the infobox markup, it makes it say Mechanics: {{{mechanics}}}. It would be better if it just didn't display that part of the box if there wasn't anything there. Can that be done? --Tophu 21:48, 27 Apr 2005 (GMT)

I don't know. I don't know of any way to do this, but I'm not an expert on the template language. You can prevent it from printing {{{mechanics}}} by including the mechanics parameter and leaving it blank, as follows: mechanics=|, but then you'll still get Mechanics: with a blank field in the infobox. We could also remove mechanics from the infobox template, and let people add it if they want in the footnotes, which is basically an area where you can add extra information to appear after all of the other information in the box. -- Lambda 22:03, 27 Apr 2005 (GMT)

Major update (Nov. 2016)

With the launch of the Pyramid Arcade, the subsequent resurrection of the wiki, and the expected influx of new players it was high time we updated the Infobox design (and fixed the issues that came with updating the software)

Change list:

  • Added player count, game length, and rule complexity icons
  • Added options for "game_length", "trios", "game_mechanics", "game_status", "version_num", & "release_year"
  • Compressed min & max player count and min & max playing time to single lines separated by a dash when both variables are defined (note: the variables are still mapped to separate properties, only the infobox display is different)
  • Now powered by ParserFunctions and Lua!
    • Omitted or empty parameters will be automatically hidden. (looks cleaner)
    • Lua scripts are used to intelligently read certain data rows. (fixes processing errors)
    • "designer", "other_equip", & "game_mechanics" can now accept comma separated lists that will be split into separate multiple values of the same semantic property (better for searching).
    • "other_equip", "game_mechanics", and "theme" automatically generate links to the related wiki pages (easier browsing)

Note: all of the original parameters are included with the exact same variable names as the previous infobox. However, some of the old variables are not listed so as to encourage the use of the newer, comma separated fields. Eventually we will phase out the old, hidden parameters once we have updated most of the game infoboxes to include the new data (this may take a very long time)

Please let us know what you think and report any issue you run into! Additional suggestions are also welcome. I will try to keep and aye on this page and respond within a reasonable amount of time Umjahwa (talk) 21:02, 11 November 2016 (PST)

Updates (April 2024)

The way the infobox parses and displays the following fields has be updated:

  • game_length - Values entered as "fast/short/quick", "medium", or "long" (ignoring case) will be linked to the correct page such as "Browse_games/Fast_playing_time". The Infobox will still display "Fast", "Medium", or "Long"
  • complexity - Was similarly updated to look for "simple/low", "medium/moderate", or "complex/high" and properly link to pages like "Browse_games/Simple_complexity"
  • strategy - Was similarly updated to look for "no/none", "low/little", "medium/some", or "high/great/lots" and properly link to pages like "Browse_games/No_strategy_depth"
  • random_chance - Was updated almost exactly the same as strategy, looking for "no/none", "low/little", "medium/some", or "high/great/lots" and properly link to pages like "Browse_games/No_random_chance"
  • status - Also now looks for a few variants on spelling to link to proper pages like "Games_in_Design_Stage_Initial_Design". Might want to move these pages under "Browse_games/" in the future.
  • release_year - Now prepends "Games_released_in_" to the page link so that "1999" will link to "Games_released_in_1999"
  • other_equip - I made a bigger change to how it works along with a change to the way this field should be used. Kataclysm and I feel that the Other Equipment field in the infobox shouldn't contain quantities and sentence-like descriptions, these details should be listed in the Equipment section of the page. It should contain standard items that will get linked to their proper "Equipment/thing" page. This does require entering the name properly like "Chessboard" rather than "Whatever chess board you have". This will also require updating most of the game pages and moving the existing equipment pages ("Chessboard" to "Equipment/Chessboard"). But it will allow for better searching of the other_equip field and a more readable output in the search results.

Dazeysan (talk) 17:21, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

New Talk (2024)

Is there a good way to indicate that a game is an adaptation of an existing game to use pyramids? Would Adaptation be a useful status category in infobox? Eclectics (talk)

Sort of like the "reimplements" field on BGG? I have run across a few games here that use the description field to say that the game was based off another game. Not that we can't add a separate adapts field. Dazeysan (talk) 14:06, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
Instead of a seperate field I was thinking it might be good as a Design status, since it's orthogonal with the others. All the others are about pyramid games, but Adaptation is also a type of complete status, but not designed originally for pyramids. --Eclectics (talk) 11:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Do you have any specific games in mind? I scrolled quickly through a list of game pages and the few I checked that might have been direct adaptations actually had rules changes. For example, Oi! That's My Phish! is almost a direct adaptation, but adds a new rule at the end.Dazeysan (talk) 22:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
There's a number I've played that aren't on the wiki, but are on some bgg lists. Mijnlieff, King's Valley, Quarto, Diam, Gardens of Mars, Rincala, All Queen's Chess, Neutron, Docker etc. The only change required for these is using pyramid instead of other pieces. But you're right; there are many adaptations that are more substantial, for which adaptation is a better word. I'd like to add to the section on the Published Games page about other unrelated games that can be played with pyramids, but how should they be marked up? Does it matter? --Eclectics (talk) 12:45, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
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