PMTTYD Badge Page Cleanup

[Lee Chaolan]

A lot of GameCube-era games and related articles generally have pretty lackluster wiki pages, as they were some of the earliest made on the site for games that aren't very accessible at this point in time. The Badge pages in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door are no exception to this, and I've personally struggled to find information that I was hoping would be on the wiki page. Information such as a badges attack power tends to be missing or lack specifics on how much a duplicate badge increases damage and FP costs, (Look at Tornado Jump and Quake Hammer as examples.) and most of the time I have to skim through a whole paragraph of text to work out which part applies to the specific game I'm looking for.

With the recent release of the PMTTYD Switch remake, now would be a better time than ever to spruce up these new pages and make them as useful as they can be. It's been a while since I've done much wiki editing myself, so I figured that workshopping a list of ideas on how to improve these pages might be a good idea before we end up with inconsistencies with wiki formatting, and maybe we can make a this a community project to make editing all 80+ badge pages seem a bit less daunting.

Below is a list of ideas on how to improve the badge pages, subject to changes:
- Update latest appearance to the switch version of TTYD
- Update sell price by including the remake's new prices.
- Add a purchase price. Every badge in PMTTYD can be re-bought after selling so there's no reason not to include this too.
- Add a "history" section to each badge that also appeared in the original Paper Mario, going over each badges specific properties in the respective game. (Or maybe just do this with all badges?)
- For attack badges, list how much damage the attack does, and what effects the damage number. This might need some figuring out on how to consistently phrase how an attacks damage can be modified, for example Quake Hammer does a "fixed" 2 damage that isn't affected by Hammer upgrade, but does get increased by badges. Is there a better word we can use? Are there any attacks that aren't affected by gear upgrades or badges?
- Add the attack damage into the infobox. To use Power Jump as an example, it could be listed as: 4 (Boots), 6 (Super Boots), 8 (Ultra Boots). Alternatively we could list them as Base Power: 4 and detail how the boots affect the attack in the article itself.
- Add the PMTTYD remake description to the infobox, as some (such as Hammer Throw) have changed. Or maybe move this information to the article instead as a quote in the history section, as I imagine two or three of these descriptions would be too long to fit well on some pages.
- Include random other things like how long a status effect lasts for, exactly how much the attack power and FP costs increase when duplicate badges are equipped, that sort of thing. This specific information is usually what I'm trying to find in the first place when I look at the wiki articles for badges, so I think it's important that we don't forgot it.

Anyway I'm open to suggestions and would happy for others to join in with editing these badge pages, so feel free to share any ideas that you might have.

 

[AgentMuffin]

I've been thinking about this, and perhaps the infobox should be overhauled.

I'm imagining a grid-based layout with a column for each game. This would get the sprites neatly sorted instead of having them jammed next to each other. It would also make the first and latest appearance parameters redundant, yielding ample space for all the new information requested.

It'd also be nice to use more icons, like to condense the currency names and Super/Ultra specifications. For the Quake Hammer situation, base power could be listed as "<Hammer><Super Hammer><Ultra Hammer> 2". We could even program in the {{#replace}} parser function so that we can literally type bracketed keywords like that and have them replaced with the proper icons for the game, done consistently across all instances of the template.

I could start prototyping this and see what people think.

Edit: Here it is so far: User:AgentMuffin/PM badge infobox

 

[Lee Chaolan]

I think that looks pretty nice, I like of idea of using icons as it's a much cleaner way to easily see the information that you might need. Although there's one or two things to consider first before we change it.

In the (unlikely) event that we get more Paper Mario games in the future that uses the badge system, the table will have to expand horizontally which could potentially take up too much space on the page, which would obviously be less than ideal. A workaround could be to set up another row of three if needed.

Also the infobox format as it is now is currently consistent with the formatting of other Mario RPG related infoboxes, like bros attacks, so if we change it we may need to consider changing the format of some other infobox templates for the sake of consistently. If we do that we would definitely need to consider how many rows should be displayed at once since something like the Green Shell bros attack would take up at least four rows.

Otherwise though I'm in favour of changing the infobox to that format and would be happy for it to continue being worked on.



Some other things that I realised after making this topic is that I forgot that about attacks doing less damage when incorrectly timed. Where would be the best place to include that? Would we consider that to be the "base" power or should it be listed in the article instead? Personally I would prefer the latter.

There's also a much briefer description of the badges when you're buying them in the Badge shop in Rogueport that I don't think I've ever seen listed on the wiki. Presumably every badge would have one of these smaller descriptions since you can sell every badge to the store (might need to test), so maybe they would be better suited to include in the table instead of the longer ones seen in the badge list.

 

[AgentMuffin]

In the (unlikely) event that we get more Paper Mario games in the future that uses the badge system, the table will have to expand horizontally which could potentially take up too much space on the page, which would obviously be less than ideal.

Another idea would be to use CSS to make the grid horizontally scrollable.

Some other things that I realised after making this topic is that I forgot that about attacks doing less damage when incorrectly timed. Where would be the best place to include that? Would we consider that to be the "base" power or should it be listed in the article instead?

That sounds like it should depend on how it's handled internally, and I'm not very familiar with that. But my gut preference is also to put details in the article body.

 

[AgentMuffin]

It seems like there aren't that many stat changes to badges between versions of TTYD—is there anything other than First Attack's BP req and the new prices you mentioned? Given this, I think I should merge the two columns.

Relatedly, including the badge sprites for both versions seems excessive. I wouldn't be suggesting this if more designs were touched up as much as Peekaboo, but the vast majority appear to just be higher-quality versions of the same images. The TTYD GCN sprites could be moved further down in the articles.

 

[AgentMuffin]

I'm starting to add a few instances of the updated template. Once I can set aside the extra time for it, I want to start experimenting with the badges I have (about half so far in the remake) to actually fill in the missing values.

Another issue I'm noticing with the articles is the order of information given. At least some of them open with the badge's location rather than its actual function. This feels pretty backwards to me, as the location isn't intrinsic to the badge, and differs between games. Worth adding to the original post?

 

[Lee Chaolan]

Another idea would be to use CSS to make the grid horizontally scrollable.

Interesting idea, I'd probably have to see what it looks like to make a judgement on it, but it's not an issue that we have to deal with right now I guess.

It seems like there aren't that many stat changes to badges between versions of TTYD—is there anything other than First Attack's BP req and the new prices you mentioned? Given this, I think I should merge the two columns.

Relatedly, including the badge sprites for both versions seems excessive. I wouldn't be suggesting this if more designs were touched up as much as Peekaboo, but the vast majority appear to just be higher-quality versions of the same images. The TTYD GCN sprites could be moved further down in the articles.

Other than Hammer Throw, those are the only changes that I'm aware of so far. I have no issue with merging them I suppose so that's fine.

Personally I would prefer if both badge sprites were included in the table, otherwise there'll be an extremely small image awkwardly slapped onto the article somewhere because it has nowhere else to go. Might need to resize to the switch sprite to make them fit together better (also the massive switch sprite next to the 64 one looks a like funky imo).

I'm starting to add a few instances of the updated template. Once I can set aside the extra time for it, I want to start experimenting with the badges I have (about half so far in the remake) to actually fill in the missing values.

Another issue I'm noticing with the articles is the order of information given. At least some of them open with the badge's location rather than its actual function. This feels pretty backwards to me, as the location isn't intrinsic to the badge, and differs between games. Worth adding to the original post?

Good idea, I'll update the original post sometime in the future when I have a bit more time free. Might also add to keep the abbreviations consistent when referring to the different versions (e.g. GCN for the original and NS for Switch)

I had a look a Power Jump btw and I really like how the description part of the infobox was made collapsible, much better than a giant wall of text going down the page haha.