Team Fortress Wiki:Polycount

This page will be used to co-ordinate efforts related to the Polycount Pack Update. Admins, mods, translators and anyone else who would like to help out should watch this page (click tab at top of page) to keep track of changes, etc.

The Polycount Update will be quite a hectic time for the wiki. Not only will we have more active users by the time it comes out, there's also a total of 17 new items that may be included. Your typical class update generally only has around 4 or 5. If that wasn't enough, the Update also includes a new game mode (possibly meaning multiple maps) and the trading system. So yeah. (And don't forget that everyone is going to be wanting to play the game with the new items rather than write about them, so we have even less people to help.)

Organisation & planning will be the key here. Feel free to add any new notes or reply underneath any of the existing notes. The talk page of this page is transcluded directly onto the end, so discussion is a little more involved with the content.

Background

Main article: Polycount Pack

Show all items

The Special Delivery Kit (Scout) Short Stop (Secondary) Mad Milk (Secondary - Lunchbox) Milkman (Hat) Holy Mackerel (Melee) by Shawn "5p3tch" Spetch The Soldier's Tank Buster Pack (Soldier) Black Box (Primary) Battalion's Back-up (Secondary) Grenadier's Cap (Hat) by Rob "Larolaro" Laro The Gas Man (Pyro) Power Jack (Melee) Degreaser (Primary) Attendant (Hat) by Steven ".:Progg" Skidmore The Croc-O-Style Kit (Sniper) Ol' Snaggletooth (Hat) Darwin's Danger Shield (Secondary) Sydney Sleeper (Primary) Bushwacka (Melee) by Spencer "Nrek" Kern The Saharan Spy (Spy) Familiar Fez (Hat) Eternal Reward (Melee) L'Étranger (Primary) by Shaylyn "Chemical Alia" Hamm Greentooth pin item

• Estimated time of update: none
• Content to be included in update:
  • In total 17 items were announced as contest winners (remains to be seen whether all items are included in the game)
  • By class:
    • Scout - 4 items
    • Soldier - 3 items
    • Pyro - 3 items
    • Sniper - 4 items
    • Spy - 3 items
  • By type:
    • Hats - 5 hats
    • Primary - 4 items
    • Secondary - 4 items
    • Melee - 4 items
  • Also the Greentooth Pin misc item given to contest winners.

Links

• Polycount Pack winners blog post
• PC Gamer interview with Robin Walker & speculation about what's included in the update:
  • ~20 new items & hats (possible additional Polycount contest runner-up included?)
  • Item trading
  • New game mode

Things to do

Pre-update

* Talk to Robin, other people at Valve, about the possibility of some info in advance (?) damage stats, other trivial stuff

• Public IRC channel (or even just Steam group chat) - constant cross talk page communication, orange new messages banner spam and recent changes flood aren't going to mix well at all
  • Could even have a separate channel for a bot to use to spam recent changes so less F5ing in browser is necessary ([1], [2], [3], hint hint WindBOT)
    • New developments, see talk page
  • Needs to be public as we want to encourage new users' contributions and not shut anyone out
  • WindPower has set up IRC channel #tfwiki on irc.freenode.net (web chat link) If all goes well we should use this, if not, we should use the OTF Wiki Steam Group chat.
• Make wiki more friendly to new users before update comes out
  • Main Page redesign finished, etc
  • Fix up Special:Upload messages & licensing drop down box
  • Add new interface messages shown when creating new articles, etc

Update previews

• Possibly protect all item name titles from creation before release?
  • If we do this, protecting 1 by 1 will be inefficient, instead, create Team Fortress Wiki:Polycount/Protected titles, transclude all titles and then cascade-protect.
• Start sandboxes for content as subpages of this page, so everyone can edit them

Update release

• A lot of stupid trivia notes
  • Remember to rewrite over revert

Post-update

• Go through every new item page & remove the leftover useless trivia

Delegating & jobs

The editor in charge of a specific page or number of pages is responsible for every addition to the page. They are to watch the page closely and test any substantial edits that are made to it. Responsibilities may be delegated to fellow editors as they see fit. Additionally, edits may be added to the talk page of the article, so that page must be watched as well.

Item	Editor
Class packs
The Special Delivery Kit (Scout)	None
The Soldier's Tank Buster Pack (Soldier)	Nightbox (talk)
The Gas Man (Pyro)	None
The Croc-O-Style Kit (Sniper)	None
The Saharan Spy (Spy)	Firestorm (talk)
Secret Polycount Pack	None
Images
Backpack Images	Smashman (talk)
Model Viewer Images	Shine (talk)
First Person Weapon images	Org (talk)
Shugo's item icons	Pilk (talk)
Other
Trading	Smashman (talk)
New Game mode	OluapPlayer (talk)
Redirects	Nineaxis (talk)

Notes

• Discussion needs to be more centralized during the update. We should have some talk pages redirect to Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion and place a notice on Talk:Main Page and Talk:Polycount Pack about it to try and keep everything more or less together.

Discussion

• Create a new section

The following is transcluded from the talk page for convenience.

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

WindBOT spamming RC in IRC channel

Sadly this is not something WindBOT can do. :( It would require keeping a connection to the IRC server constantly open, which would be possible for a bot that runs constantly, but that isn't WindBOT's case; it simply re-runs every 10 minutes (when all goes well and when I don't forget to re-activate it after code-change like I just did right now), giving the kinda-illusion that it runs constantly. Why does it not run all the time? Because it lives on my shared hosting account, which luckily gives me shell access, but forbids long-running processes. Now, this is only a soft restriction; I can still run long-running processes if needed, it's just that I don't know what will happen if I get caught. I can still try though, but if I do, it'll be something else from WindBOT. In fact, that sounds a lot better this way, since those two things don't fulfill the same purpose. I'll try to get that done in time for the Polycount Update (still no release date though? D:), it'll run only during that hectic time, and things should be fine. — Wind 07:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah a constant RC feed seems kind of silly now that I think about it again, and it wouldn't be possible if we go with Steam group chat instead of IRC (which I suspect we will). seb26 [talk] 07:19, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Aww, why not? >: It sounded like a cool challenge from a technical standpoint. Not sure about the practicality of it though... And yes it would have to be done through IRC, until Steam chat finally gets ported to XMPP or something. Regardless, wouldn't a TF Wiki channel be cool? :3 Go to #tfwiki on irc.freenode.net — Wind 07:22, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Definitely, but it seems somewhat infeasible, given that some of the links I posted say you need to add a few lines to LocalSettings.php, and "Currently, anyone can "hack" your bot by sending packets to the port you specify" D: [4] Valve ain't gonna make it happen. But this might work? Could even just run off a local machine? I don't know anything about bots or servers so just feel free to ignore me. seb26 [talk] 07:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

The LocalSettings.php thing would make it work by "push", meaning the wiki's web server itself sending out notifications about RCs to the bot, which would be ideal. But obviously this isn't possible for the reasons you mentioned, so it needs to do it by "fetch": just grab the RCs over and over again, spam new things in channel. Of course it has a delay, but it would be a matter of 15~30 seconds or whatever the refresh rate would be. As for the local machine thing, that's the good thing about it: I already have a (custom-made like WindBOT :3) IRC bot on freenode, idling constantly and with bazillions of commands, including an "external message" one where non-IRC users can give the bot messages to send out on IRC using a plain HTTP request. So there could be a script running somewhere refreshing the RC page, and every time it sees something new, it notifies the bot. Very low-bandwidth on my end because I don't need to fetch the RC log. On top of that, the refreshing script could be distributed to run on your local machines or something, and then the refresh rate could be decreased because everyone's contributing to notifying the bot and stuff. KABOOM — Wind 07:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I dunno if that made sense to anyone else than me but it doesn't matter because it sounds so epic to me that I'll do it anyway even if it's not useful/used. Need to sleep now, got a TF2 practice match tomorrow and stuff. Poke me about the bot thingy on Steam... Or on the IRC channel I mentioned — Wind 07:44, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

If we can make it happen without any bugging of Jeff, etc, then I'm sure no one would say no to having it at all. Plus I like the idea of commands. If WindBOT wants to be really awesome he could post comments to discussion pages on command - like I could say !comment Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion#Section_name Message here and WindBOT could post "Message here –Seb26 (via IRC) 07:55, 29 August 2010 (UTC)". Kind of stupid and unworkable, though. I can't really think of many things that wouldn't be easier to do than to just open up a new tab in your browser or whatever. But still, omfgircchannel. seb26 [talk] 07:55, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Contacting Robin about early info, Shugo icons

1. We will not get early info about this update. It just won't happen.
2. Shugo's icons should happen relatively shortly after. I read the emporium thread and FPSB where he releases them so I'm keeping the entire set up to date. -- Pilk _(talk) 13:42, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't believe you even thought we'd even potentially get info. Also, I'll speak to Shugo about getting the icons asap. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 13:56, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

It's not me who suggested we could get early info. And I can contact Shugo myself o.o -- Pilk _(talk) 13:59, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I know it wasn't you. I was speaking generally to all. And Shugo likes me more than you so, nyah. -- Smashman... _{(t • s)} 14:33, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure this speaks for itself. No coercion involved at all. :>

12:46 AM - Pilk: I'm sure you don't care
12:46 AM - Pilk: But who do you like more? :3
12:46 AM - Shugo: :0
12:47 AM - Shugo: well I have known smash longer
12:47 AM - Shugo: AND he's played borderlands with me
12:47 AM - Shugo: hmmm
12:47 AM - Pilk: so basically you like me more? pretty much
12:47 AM - Shugo: pretty much

-- Pilk _(talk) 14:53, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Lies. Get out. You made that up completely. He didn't say any of that.  –  Smashman _(talk) 15:18, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh no. I've created a love triangle.  –  Shugo 15:22, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

1st person images

Yeah I'll get em done as quick as possible after the pack drops. --Org 19:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok finished them, let me know if there are any issues with any of them --Org 22:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Job Distribution

I wanna help with the new game mode. -- OluapPlayer _(t) 20:56, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Soldier Pack to me please :D -- Nightbox _{(t s)} 21:22, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Add your own names to the damn list. Make sure you use {{ul}}  – Smashman _(talk) 21:25, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Protection

I think we should also protect the pack names or at least redirect them to the Polycount page. --Picard lm(de) 22:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

 Done. seb26 [talk] 06:01, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

The spy's knife

During the Live stream for the golden wrench destruction, a user by the name RobinWalker joined the stream. Of course, everyone (including me) thought he was fake. However, near the end of the stream, he said he would answer the first question about the polycount update. The first was the knife. After a long pause, he replied. I don't have the exact quote, but the bacic gist of it is below.

Can still backstab 10% more fire damage Can "failstab" 3 times before loosing your disguise

Obviously, this is not the most reliable source ever, but it seemed pretty legit to me. --Stevoisiak 13:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Fake. Robin uses the name 'Robin'  – Smashman _(talk) 13:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Click. --Picard lm(de) 19:17, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for linking to the forum. It did seem legit at the time. I should have known it was just some random troll. It's still a decent idea. Though, it WOULD cause alot of rage if it was real. It would be like the new backburner. XD --Stevoisiak 01:54, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

---

Obtaining the models

See User talk:Shine#Polycount idea. I don't see why we couldn't do this and it would give us a massive head-start.  – Smashman _(talk) 15:00, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Item names

I've created 2 sets of item name images based on the existing names, with and without the "the" prefix. Even if the names are changed later, we will still have saved at least some time. seb26 [talk] 05:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Item images.

Anyone mind if I upload item images? like file:milkhat.png OllyTheMann 18:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Weapon page layout

Just a heads up for everyone working on the Pack weapons; take a moment to look at this short weapons page layout and construct the Polycount weapon articles in a similar structure. You don't have to, but it will save me editing them all to fit this in the long run. --Focusknock 07:46, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The preceding discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.