Template talk:Hireling

I'll be glad to help by adding pics (or more) when you're ready. Wyoh is looking good.⇒ meander (Contribs • Message • Email) 23:21, August 7, 2018 (EDT)

I think the template is about ready to be both useable and useful. If you are summoning hirelings regularly, it may be worth taking the relevant pics and sticking the names of them here (e.g. Althea: Hireling_Althea.jpg; Hireling_Althea(Bar).png; Hireling_Althea(Orb).png) so anyone can then update the hireling page.

• Hopefully then we can get all the hirelings updated with relevant info, so people know who is useful to use and when... and who is just a make-weight for increasing dungeon difficulty. There's so much stuff that's not in the wiki about how certain hirelings behave and what they can/can't do that I hope we can start capturing now ⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 07:12, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

Why wait 2 years until someone decides to do an overhaul of the template to make it useful, then make arbitrary decisions about what users will find useful, just for the sake of making changes to the template, then not actually make the full changes to the template required to make the arbitrary changes actually function properly. ⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 10:36, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

The Examine window for hirelings will vary significantly for hirelings depending on what ship's buffs and spells are currently active, so doesn't provide any useful information that isn't provided elsewhere on the page. The hotbar image has a small image of the hireling, thus hirelings can be identified purely by the appearance of the image on the hotbar (if multiple hirelings are summoned), so is very relevant information to include on the Hireling page, especially for people who have not used the hirelings regularly before ⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 10:42, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

• Who's making arbitrary decisions about what users will find useful? I removed the hotbar because it is redundant, not because it isn't useful. I don't know what you are talking about "then not actually make the full changes to the template required to make the arbitrary changes actually function properly", so you'll have to be clearer of what wasn't working. I didn't say examine window, I said description, as in what the contract says when you read it. Ship buffs have no affect on how the contract reads. The small image on the hotbar is the icon used in the contract, we don't need a screenshot of the hotbar for that, just the icon from the contract (which should be uploaded if not already existing, I (Technical 13) actually already started setting that up. ⇒ DDOstream (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:12, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

• File names shouldn't have disambiguating terms if there is no need to DAB. So, following DDO:File naming policy, the file names should be Althea.jpg; Althea (orb).png; Althea (desc).png - no "Hireling" prefix and make sure there is a space between the hireling name and any, lower case, disambiguator. Also note that others may use either *.jpg or *.png for any of the images per the policy. ⇒ DDOstream (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:16, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

Hotbar is not redundant, as it has the image of the hireling on it. "DDOstream" is making arbitrary decisions about what users will find useful, assuming that something is redundant, when it was included for a specific reason. The hotbar is what people see on their screen all the time, whereas the icon on its own isn't - i.e. having the hotbar image makes things easy for new users, who are the ones who are likely to be looking hireling info up on the wiki. Hotbar code has pop-up around it, deliberately added for the hotbar visual, so it can be seen full size on the screen - not really needed for other visuals⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:47, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

If you want the contract to be displayed, imgcontract would be a better code than img desc, as the "description of a hireling" that many people think of is the Examine window ⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:47, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

You probably want to remove the brackets from the filenames now and just leave the space. The brackets were there on my own system, but per your naming convention they are redundant. They (and the Hireling_) were only there because that is how I had the files named on my system, to keep the hireling images together, distinct from NPC images, maps etc and I forgot to rename on upload. For my part, I'll give up editing abandoned templates in order to provide useful information to players, because it seems that the powers that be seem to think it more important to make minute changes to things that are still in progress rather than let someone finish what they are working on (such as the notes to explain why png had been used in preference to jpg (even though both would be suitable), the additional tweaks to the related code, the update of "Usage" etc.)⇒ Glmfw1 (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:47, August 8, 2018 (EDT)

• I do not think you know what the definition of redundant is by your comment "assuming that something is redundant, when it was included for a specific reason". Redundant means that the information that is being provided already is available. There's no reason to include the same information... twice. ⇒ DDOstream (Contribs • Message • Email) 11:51, August 8, 2018 (EDT)