Template talk:Rayman series

Ports and Remakes?

I've noticed that while remakes and ports do link back to their source games, (eg. Revolution to Rayman 2), they don't really give much link to other games in the series, do you guys think we should have a section on this template for Ports and Remakes?-- 17:49, 2 March 2014 (CET)

I fear it might be a bit too cluttered with the countless ports and remakes in the series. Maybe we could give it a try here on the talk page though? — 01:32, 3 March 2014 (CET)

With the recent template fiddling I've done, I think we could very well make a template including every Rayman game, but for the sake of demonstrating, here's a quick 'un with a few bits and pieces:

Like I said, not got everything, but I think it's a good start-- 03:24, 13 April 2014 (CEST)

Ok then, I got bored and decided to put in everything, might need a few things moving about, but I think that's everything. -- 13:33, 13 April 2014 (CEST)

The Rayman series are huge if we really count every spin-off title, but that's a good start indeed. --Haruka 00:46, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

I wouldn't blame anyone if they felt we'd need to split things up, but at the same time, the amount of templates we have, or would need, is excessively high in my opinion, we need better links between articles, and less articles in semi-isolation. I came up with the above Nav Box having seen Mario Wiki's, I think you'd agree that what we've got here pales in comparison to that. As for the other Wiki you suggested; Bulbapedia, they seem to also be all-inclusive, but rather than have all on one template, they have a section at the bottom of each template to navigate to others. Either ways, I appreciate the feedback, Haruka. I'm curious as to what the other have to say as well. -- 01:02, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

I don't think there's any need to split the games at all. Many of the ports, handheld games etc are more closely connected to the main series than they are to their own group, so it makes no sense to differentiate them for navigational purposes on this basis. On Wikipedia there's currently something of a movement to remove bracketed years of release from works of fiction in navboxes, and it's something I've gradually come to agree with – unlinked text is unhelpful and creates clutter. Only include disambiguation if two games in the same subgroup have identical or almost-identical titles.

A better way of organising the spin-offs and remakes would help; maybe we could give that subgroup additional subgroups for each game? That might necessitate some awkward repetition, but it might be worth it for the navigational value. A Raving Rabbids subgroup is probably necessary. A subgroup for Rayman-related non-Rayman games (like BG&E) should also be considered, because those articles are basically going to be orphaned without one. Maybe a subgroup for Flash/online games?

Something else to consider is removing the word "Rayman" from the beginning of each game's title in the navbox, since it's in every one and can be taken for granted while vastly reducing the space consumed by saying "Rayman" 59 times in rapid succession. That's how Wikipedia does it anyway. Worth a mock-up. —Spiraldoor 01:31, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

Good point about removing the "Rayman" in every game title, it would help to save space. I also agree with the Rayman and Non-Rayman games subgroups, not just because of the BG&E example you gave but also the Rabbid games that are not linked with Rayman anymore (Rabbids Go Home onwards). I have the feeling there are missing games for the Flash/Online games category. At least I remember there was the Pirate Shoot, Globox 2000, the GBC Rayman and the webbased Rayman. --Haruka 01:40, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

Alright then, I'll move the template over to my User Page, and see if I can make the relevant changes.-- 01:46, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

That Mario navbox is hideously bloated by unnecessary disambiguation, absurd overuse of the words "Mario" and "Super", and whitespace that could easily be avoided by more economical alignment of text. I wouldn't worry about it. —Spiraldoor 01:52, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

Right, Spiral's made a very good edit to the Navbox on my test page, so I'm inclined to agree with his view on ignoring the Rayman title where possible. The issue now is shifting things around to better groups. -- 21:52, 14 April 2014 (CEST)

Your latest version wouldn't be my preference. I just don't see the need to have three large (and largely empty) horizontal red bars rather than one. I'm sure there's a way to incorporate the Rabbids spin-offs without swelling the navbox like this. —Spiraldoor 00:37, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

Fair enough, I'll revert and see what we can do with that revision -- 00:40, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

Can you figure out a way to vary the lengths of individual clusters of subgroups? The spin-offs and portable subgroups only need to be as long as the "Educational" and "Remakes/ports" strings respectively in order to maintain consistency within each subgroup, which is all that's necessary. Varying their length will also make the navbox more intuitive to navigate, and easier on the eye in general.

I'd do more of the work myself, but frankly I've completely forgotten how all these rowspans, colspans and widths work. —Spiraldoor 01:48, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

I'll give it a shot, but I haven't had any luck thus far. Either ways, I think it's looking pretty good. -- 01:54, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

From now on I think we should just work in the actual templates rather than your user page. This isn't some weird little experiment we're doing, we're just bringing the templates up to standard. —Spiraldoor 02:02, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

Fair enough, I'll see about replacing this current template with the one on my page-- 02:10, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

It's looking great! Can you adjust the spin-offs subgroups so that they wrap tightly around the word "Educational", and adjust the supergroups on the left so that they don't go beyond the length of the word "spin-offs"? Once that's done the whole template will be extremely neat and compact. —Spiraldoor 13:01, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

Alright, just tweaked with percentages, and it's done the trick -- 13:13, 15 April 2014 (CEST)

I just have a suggestion. Games like Rayman Gold and others for example aren't exactly remakes and/or ports. I would classify them as re-releases. Would you mind if I added the word? --Haruka 01:19, 16 April 2014 (CEST)

I see what you mean, though perhaps we should add another group for re-releases, as opposed to adding it into the (already quite long) heading?-- 01:38, 16 April 2014 (CEST)

I would oppose splitting remakes and re-releases, since there's no clear line between the two. Many remakes are also ports. It's just too complicated. Extending it to something as long as "Remakes/ports/re-releases" isn't really an option. Maybe we could rename the subgroup something like "Variations", "Derivatives" or "Later releases" (though none of those are quite right)? —Spiraldoor 02:03, 16 April 2014 (CEST)

"Variations", "Derivatives" and "Later releases" would sound really wierd, I think they wouldn't fit quite much. We can try to keep like things are provisorily until there's a better alternative for that. --Haruka 13:02, 16 April 2014 (CEST)

Pictures

As of now, the template feels very messy with all these games, remakes, ports etc. listed. I was thinking if there could be some way to make it easier to navigate, like adding pictures? Here's a quick test of how it could be:

So, what do you think? Would adding pictures be a good idea? --Carrot-master (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of it, looks harder to read and navigate to me with the images. — 18:29, 9 December 2016 (UTC)