User talk:HungryPaperweight/HP's sketchbook

The Animals article

I'm not entirely sure on the name of this article. It's purpose is to cover the use of real world animals in the game? right? If you go into things such as Chimera and such then that simply belongs in a trivia section of those respective pages in my opinion.~ dkpat 10:15, 26 February 2011 (CST)

Oh, that? Man, that's an ooooold idea of mine. I'm not even sure if I'd want to go through with it anymore. Besides, what I posted here was a work-in-progress. I think I even stated that I was considering removing the mythological section. P.S. The main reason I haven't taken it down is because, at this point in time, my laptop's charger is busted so I can't save the current version onto my computer. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 11:17, 26 February 2011 (CST)

HP's notes

Okay, let me explain some things about what I've written (after all, this is a work in progress):

• Most lists in this potential article are underdeveloped. All I got done so far is making the actual lists (which may very well be incomplete), and haven't added any details. In other words, imagine if List of Long Swords was just that: a list of all Long Swords, no information about them, just a list.
• Parenthetical notes under the List of animal species, List of animals by location, and Trading sequence animals sections were mostly there so that I wouldn't forget, and shouldn't be included in the real article.
  • Nereid rides on a large turtle, and the only whale in the game is Neptune.
  • The word spring refers to the Lucky Medal Fountains.
  • It's easy to forget which animal appears on which Islet.
• I don't know what that line is doing partway through the Animals and monsters section. I made a few hyphens there (the Animals and monsters section) to remind me that I wanted to put something in there, but I can't remember any more than that.
• The question marks in the Monsters list mean I'm unsure if they should be in the list or not. The more ?'s, the more unsure (I kept it to two tiers in this case, but sometimes I do more).
• The description for the Chimera was originally meant to be used mid-paragraph. I think it was an example of a monster that resembles an animal, but then gave birth to the mythological animals section. Long story short, it needs a serious rewrite. Again, the parenthesis are personal notes: I intended to return to rewrite this and maybe add some more, especially something about the wings.

I hope that clears things up a bit. The world's hungriest paperweight 04:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Breakable Equipment

I'm not sure I agree with this template. It doesn't seem like it is needed at all. Usable equipment I could understand more. ~ dkpat 17:01, 31 March 2011 (CDT)

They're pretty much the same thing, except that I'd have to toss in the Trident of Ankohl. I just named them "Breakable Equipment" because I thought, since I made a template for cursed items, there should be one for items that can be broken. If it's just the name you're uncomfortable with, we can change that. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 17:13, 31 March 2011 (CDT)

Well, since it only excludes The Trident just rename and throw it in. That I am OK with. It seems to me that calling it breakable is just categorizing for the sake of having categories, not for usability purposes.~ dkpat 17:33, 31 March 2011 (CDT)

Djinn

Unlike with the weapons and the Psynergies, I personally have to wonder if the page layout that's been put into several of the Djinn pages so far is already the ideal concept... I'm personally fond of it, and I think the way it's structured allows the page to be more easily updated with GS4 information while at the same time allowing for special cases like Granite and Quartz (Djinn that only make a cameo appearance in DD and aren't part of the game's main Djinn list). But I know I shouldn't assume that the readers would feel the same. So, compared to the other pages that've been restructured, I'll be paying a particularly high amount of attention to the draft you put on your sketchbook. Erik the Appreciator 14:26, 2 June 2011 (CDT)

Well, as far as I can tell, the Djinn have two main fields: Location (including its stats and abilities if it must be battled) and Description (including, among other things, its effect when unleashed in combat). A Djinni's effect doesn't really change between games, so I don't see the problem with merging the info from the separate games so long as we give the location section individual subsections for each game the Djinni appears in. The alternative is to list its effects twice, which is just plain redundant. But, kinda like you said, my opinion may not be the best one; I just want to explain why I think merging the info would be ideal. Of course, I don't plan on doing this until we've more or less established the Djinni Infobox, so first things first! ;P The World's Hungriest Paperweight 16:22, 2 June 2011 (CDT)

Right, I'll be interested in seeing the merged draft (and how a Djinni infobox might end up). Now, even I'm not so sure why exactly I seem to have something psychologically against the concept of merging GBA and DD sections for Djinn, when it works well for weapons and Psynergy. It may be because I've seen GameFAQs posters who have played Dark Dawn but not the old games; would these players prefer to have a Djinni's Dark Dawn information separate from the GBA stuff that wouldn't apply to them? Technically, weapon pages aren't much different from Djinn pages in this regard - they could have been cleaved into separate GBA and DD sections for the sake of these kinds of DD players, but that was decided against.

But maybe it was okay for the weapon pages to be section-merged, but the Djinn pages not so much, because to a given player a given Djinni is a more significant part of each game it appears in than whatever interchangeable weapons and gear the player goes through - a Djinni stays with you throughout the game, always contributes to your class/summon ability, and always remains an option to be measured against all the other Djinn in that game. Since the Djinn collections in Dark Dawn are much more different from the Djinn collections in GBA than how Weapons and Psynergy collections are different between the two eras, it is probably better worth signifying the separate perspectives of these eras by having the two eras in separate sections on each Djinni page, even if that results in the unchanged battle effects and data of the Djinn being repeated in the separate eras' sections. (But hey, that might end up being a good way to show DD-only players outright how much some things have stayed the same since 8 years ago! :D)

It may also have been okay for weapons to be section-merged because they don't have as many images to deal with; each Djinni, on the other hand, is given two separate images - location and battle visual - for each game it really appears in, and Dark Dawn-only players would probably prefer to have the two Dark Dawn-relevant images accompanying text that's relevant to a Dark Dawn player. If GBA and DD are divided into sections on a Djinni page, there's more "room" for GBA images to be in the GBA section and DD images to be in the DD section, if that makes sense. (This would support the "perspective" thing I mentioned.)

Incidentally, there's one more thing I suspect: So far we've taken the initiative with weapon and Psynergy pages on giving them merged-section layouts and establishing how future game content would be added to each of these sections when they come. But depending on what GS4 might have, the possibility is open that it might be worth dedicating GS3 and GS4 into a merged section on a Djinn Page the same way GS1 and GS2 is currently treated as a merged section. In this scenario, if all Djinn pages are already restructured to a layout where GS1, 2, and 3 all share the same sections, we might have just created more work for ourselves. Erik the Appreciator 17:38, 2 June 2011 (CDT)

You have raised some good issues, but I doubt it's anything we need to worry much about:

Images: Location images are an easy fix: Put the GBA location image with the GBA subsection and the DD location image with the DD subsection. As for the battle images, that might be a bit trickier, but I have a possible solution if you want to hear it. But there will be time for that later.

Notability: I'll admit, Djinn are more notable than most weapons, but I think we can fix that problem by just pulling the "ability analysis" section out of the "description" section and treating it like we have in other articles, splitting it up by game.

Possible reversion: True, GS4 may make the separated layout preferable, and it's usually a good idea to have a plan in place should we need to make a change. However, what might happen is rarely more important than what has happened. Until news of GS4 surfaces, let's focus on the present.

While typing my responses, I think I figured out the core difference between the separate-game and merged-game layouts. The separate-game layout is effectively two separate articles whereas the merged-game layout is a single article that occasionally has to be split but always gets re-merged before we move on to the next subject. That being said, I prefer only splitting when necessary, rather than all the time. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 22:56, 2 June 2011 (CDT)

Flint's up

"How can Flint be number 12?" Well, I was going by the visible order, when you press select on the status screen to bring up the Djinn list. If you're thinking in terms of coding, then Flint is technically number one. But how many people are going to see that? Most people, when looking in-game for the order, will see Flint in the twelfth slot in TLA, so that's what I went with. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 23:02, 5 June 2011 (CDT)

P.S. I was going to say this in the Ragnarok/Odyssey edit summary, but forgot to, so I'll say it here: I'll admit, I'm probably getting a bit italics-happy, but there aren't many ways to add emphasis to words on a computer screen ^_^; The World's Hungriest Paperweight 23:12, 5 June 2011 (CDT)

...What? WHAT!? Such a screen existed in the game!? Oh my GOD! This is the first time in my entire life I ever knew such a screen existed in the GBA games' Status menus. That there's a Djinn List in the GBA Games' status menus, and that it's different from how the game auto-orders the Djinn in the Djinn inventories of characters, definitely should go into the Did You Know.

Okay, now with this new information in mind... Honestly, would even half of the total population of people who played a GBA Golden Sun at least once have been aware that such a screen existed? And for those who ended up stumbling across it while exploring game menus due to being quite curious about everything, how many of those people would have used this as their Djinn collection resource when essentially the same information is shoved into your face in the normal Djinn inventory screen everytime you go to trade Djinn? Because I'd bet quite a lot that practically every person who played a GBA Golden Sun would have simply assumed that if there even was any Djinn order in TLA, it's how the game forcibly auto-orders your Djinn for you in the inventory screen. That Echo would end up below Bane if you put Echo on Isaac might actually be gameplay relevant because, while I can't be sure of this, maybe the forced auto-ordering based on the internal Djinn coding might influence which Djinn get recovered in which order when you use a lot of Djinn for Charon summoning. If the actual, coded Djinni ordering that's demonstrated in the Djinn inventory has even the least bit of additional gameplay relevance over the other ordering that happens to be displayed in a separate, out-of-the-way screen all the way in the Status menu, that's all that I would personally need to just say go with the Djinn Inventory ordering.Erik the Appreciator 23:46, 5 June 2011 (CDT)

Much like Lemuria's fountain acting as an inn, this is something I just assumed was common knowledge (although this time I'm not as surprised that there are people who don't know). I can't check right now, but I believe that, on the status screen, there's even a little prompt telling you that you can press select to bring up a Djinn list.

Anyways, after I posted my original explanation, I dusted off my TLA cartridge and noticed what you said about the Djinn inventory sorting the GS Djinn before the TLA Djinn. As you said, gameplay may treat Flint as Venus Djinni #1 and Echo as Venus Djinni #8. On the other hand, we refer to Echo as TLA Venus Djinni #1 (which is another reason I said Flint is TLA Venus Djinni #12). This is a gray area if I've ever seen one. On a third hand, I originally tossed that bit in as a throwaway line and never intended for such a serious discussion about such a trivial comment... Wait, trivia? Maybe we should put this in Flint's Trivia section. After all, what "number" the GS Djinn are in TLA probably isn't that important. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 11:39, 6 June 2011 (CDT)

P.S. I forgot to say, but now I think the main reason the GS Djinn are placed after the TLA Djinn is to avoid spoilers; if Echo showed up at the bottom of the first screen while Steel and Mud were at the top of the second screen, that would probably raise a red flag. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 11:41, 6 June 2011 (CDT)

The status screen does say at the upper right that "SE" equals "Djinn List", which indicates that pressing Select here would bring that feature up, but the reason that had never crossed my mind is because the Djinn inventory has a similar blurb about how SE brings up "Help". I've always been aware of that SE, and therefore psychologically I had always been under the impression that pressing select at any of these menu screens would bring up those mechanics-explaining help text boxes. I took the time to explain this just now because I think it nails what probably happened to a lot of other people who played the game. (BTW, on the Temple of Kraden there was a user who admitted that he played through almost all of GS1 without ever realizing that one can hold B down to run. This bit him when he got stuck at Venus Lighthouse. So I think I'm better off than that XP)

Okay... So mainly, I agree that it's best that for the main article content, Flint is to be described as the first of the seven Golden Sun Venus Djinn, is therefore reacquired in The Lost Age at the Reunion, and is the first of the "main" eighteen Dark Dawn Venus Djinn, while Echo is described merely as the first of the eleven TLA Venus Djinn. Anything about how Flint and Echo are ordered in the game's internal coding and the Status screen's Djinn List is worth putting in trivia. However, putting Flint as Venus Djinni 12 in TLA in this trivia would only work if you specify that that's how the Djinn List screen in TLA displays it, and that how this screen does it is different from the hard-coded ordering that is demonstrated in the Djinn inventory. (Though, I'd have to express that even the idea that Flint is #12 in TLA still doesn't seem right because there's plenty of Djinn that are impossible to get until after the Reunion, where Flint is guaranteed to join.) Erik the Appreciator 12:41, 6 June 2011 (CDT)

Summon Infobox

Just letting people know that, in addition to the visible fields and the skin field, I tossed a "tablet" field into the Summon infobox. Just add "|tablet=yes" and the "Summon Tablet Locations" header will should appear. I considered using the "secondary effect" field instead of creating a separate field just for the header, but there's always the possibility that a future summon will have a tablet but not a secondary effect, or vice versa. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 13:53, 8 June 2011 (CDT)

I'm kinda curious how I missed this. ~ dkpat (talk) 22:47, 5 November 2012 (CST)