The Vault talk:Fallout 3 NPC overhaul project/Archive 1

I think I could help with this too. Spoon 19:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Take it easy :) -- Porter21 (talk) 20:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Nah. I've got 3 weeks of school holidays left. And trust me, I do nothing during the holidays. I'm taking the work off of you. Spoon 20:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm so in on this. I hate seeing stubs about NPC's, especially important ones. STAProductions 21:04, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Areas to improve
The Fallout 3 NPC articles lack consistency. We should start by gathering a list of details about a character that each character should have, then identify how to best arrange this info in sections and finally creating a sample layout for orientation.

As such, everybody should simply list what he/she thinks needs to be present in every NPC article. -- Porter21 (talk) 20:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

List

 * Character background. Who the character is, what he/she does, where he/she lives.
 * Relations to other NPCs. Family members, relatives, friends (as far as verifiable).
 * -- Porter21 (talk) 20:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Their death inventory, perhaps? (Where applicable)
 * Spoon 20:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Possibly their karma level (whether or not you lose or gain karma for killing them and whether or not they have a finger/ear on their body)?
 * 16807 Compunctious Transgression (for the sake of not getting bored writing my name, I'm now going to sign myself as Zip Loc, another one of my many names)

List comments

 * Both inventory/death inventory and alignment sound like reasonable additions. The only problem with the death inventories is that we'd need another GECK user for that. I think we should also pay attention to the "affiliation" fields in the infoboxes and make sure they correspond to the actual "behind-the-scenes" factions. If you look at User:Mirar/Chars, the "real" factions are listed in the "factions" field. Now I don't think we should copy/paste the actual names but we should make sure what's in the article matches what we find there. For example, for Ben Canning the affiliation should be "himself" or for Carol it should be " Greta Carol's Place Underworld ". -- Porter21 (talk) 07:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Dunno, for me the "affiliation" thing was mostly intended to be used setting-wise, not gameplay-wise. Ausir(talk) 07:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't think having a field both for faction and affiliation is very intuitive for readers. The faction info is 1) verifiable in the GECK and 2) controls the NPC's reactions to other NPCs and the player as well as the reaction to the player's actions against other members of this faction, so I think it's kind of important. -- Porter21 (talk) 07:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but for example, setting-wise, the Casdin and Sibley are the same faction, while gameplay-wise, they aren't. Background-wise, Lucas Simms is a member of the Regulators, but not gameplay-wise. Not really sure if the in-game affiliation and affiliation setting-wise should be mixed. This could be counter-intuitive for readers as well. Ausir(talk) 07:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I see your point. Still, for a lot of NPCs "affiliation" is completely random. For example, some town residents will have "none", some will have "himself" or "herself", some will have the town they live in etc. Anyway, I'll ditch making the affiliation field a cross-over between the current system and GECK factions. Instead I'll add a new field to the infobox where we can dump the raw factions from the GECK. It might be a good idea to structure the char template a bit by adding some sub-headers anyway. -- Porter21 (talk) 08:19, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree that it should be more standardized. Ausir(talk) 08:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * How about calling it something like "GECK faction" so that it's clear that it's the faction affiliation in gameplay terms? I'd actually use editor names like "UnderworldCarolAndGretaFaction" to make it more clear. Ausir(talk) 22:43, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

One thing most NPC are missing is the "actor" field in the infobox. Personally, I'm not sure this box needs to be filled in on every NPC page (as many of them have the same voice actor), just on the pages for NPCs with "non-common" voice actors, like James or Augustus Autumn. --Sentinel 101 09:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd tend to agree, it's more an optional field than a mandatory one. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Images
These definitely need to checked. There are a lot of crappy images on the pages of less-prominent characters (poor resolution, parts of HUD included etc). I think we should set up a convention of how to take these images and replace the crappy ones.

In my opinion, a standardized look is easiest to achieve if the images are taken when in dialogue with the NPC (HUD disabled, of course). Then you can simply cut the image to the required aspect ratio (I usually use 1.4:1) and the images will end up looking fairly uniform. Comments? -- Porter21 (talk) 15:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A great idea for a uniform appearance, and easy to achieve as well. -- CapAp 20:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

If there's any image editing needed to be done just let me know, I'm pretty good when it comes to photo editing sadly I only have Fallout 3 for the console.--FLaSHBaCK HaSH 16:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Layout
What about page layouts? A lot I see have random headers and then the usual ones. Here's what I think:

//--TehK (tok) 14:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That box seems familiar :P Anyway, looks like a decent start. I'm not sure we need to mention the "appears in Fallout 3 bit in the intro sentence; after all, we have an "Appearances" section where that's mentioned and it's also in the infobox (I realize that it is this way currently in the createpage template). I think the intro sentence should include the race and area of residence/location for the character, i.e. something like "XYZ is a human non-player character who lives in ZYX." Alternatively, we could replace the "non-player character" bit with the faction where appropriate ("...human raider...", "...human member of the Brotherhood of Steel..."), leaving the generic NPC text for characters who don't belong to a notable faction.


 * In addition, I think Background should definitely include who the character is, what he/she does, and relations to other NPCs (family members, relatives, friends - as far as verifiable). It's possible you meant to include that but I think it needs to be made clear.


 * It's probably better to also have an inventory section in there; their inventory is going to get added by various people anyway so we might as well do it consistently. User:Mirar/Chars includes inventory lists for every NPC from base FO3 so it should be doable for people who play on console as well. All people with a GECK need to double-check is the death inventories as these are not included there and the inventories of add-on characters; that should be manageable. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not fond of using words like "NPC" or the game they're from in the intro myself - I prefer it if it's from the in-universe perspective, e.g. "Lucas Simms is the sheriff and occasionally the mayor of Megaton, a town built around an undetonated nuclear bomb." instead of "Lucas Simms is an NPC that appears in Fallout 3". Ausir(talk) 22:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * By the way, I think we should decide on a basic layout for character and location (and other) pages common for all games, not just Fallout 3. Maybe we should create "Unified page layout project" to coordinate this? Ausir(talk) 23:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Created. See: The Vault talk:Unified page layout project. I suggest moving the discussion there. Ausir(talk) 23:54, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

As a result of the Unified page layout project, the standard layout is now up on the project page. I'll write up a sample article later today, then we should be good to go :) -- Porter21 (talk) 10:26, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Reliable Source
Many character pages suffered from lack of reliable sources. Reliable sources include official publications (Not fan contents), developer's statement, terminals, dialogues, notes on the pip-boy 3000, radio stations and info found on GECK. For example, Mei Wong is afraid of the slaver, named Sister that is a resident of Rivet City, as evidenced by the note found on the pip-boy 3000. That's an example of reliable source. --Like-minded 14:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The question is always which material needs sourcing. To use your example, Mei Wong also tells you the same thing in simple dialogue. -- Porter21 (talk) 14:20, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't really think we need to cite things stated by a given character in their dialogue. I usually only cite sources if a given statement is not from the game but e.g. from a dev or from the official guide. Ausir(talk) 14:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, pretty much the same here. Occasionally I also cite terminal entries when referring to really out-of-the-way information but that's pretty much it. -- Porter21 (talk) 15:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)