Forum:Spell infobox

Nearly all the articles here do a good job of associating the material with the Ultima to which they are connected, with one major exception: spells. It seems that very few spells say which Ultima they belong to, and many of those don't offer any kind of clue.

All spells have some of reagents, words, runes, MP costs, scope of usability, elemental association, circle, and, of course, the game. Could an info box hold these? AngusM 03:32, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

An infobox could hold these, yes; it would get very complicated between games, though. Some spells share names between installments, but change circles, words of power, etc. etc. Not to dissuade you, though; I think it's an awesome idea and long overdue, and a format similar to the NPC box would work to separate the weird changes between installments. --Polygoncount 08:04, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

Any objection to treating each spell within a game as unique? It would certainly clear up the confusion I've had before, where a spell seems to come from one game, but then has properties from another. Perhaps in addition to the above fields, an info box could have related to n in Ultima m. AngusM 19:51, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea.--Sega381 20:51, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree this needs cleanup. Having a spell have a separate article for each game it is in would leave us with some extremely sparse articles though. For example Resurrect we would have Resurrect (U7), Resurrect (U6), In Mani Corp (or Create Life from Death), Resurrect (U4), Surmandum and Anju Sermani. Each of these would have only a smattering of information with a lot of it repeating. How I would arrange this would be to join U5 through U7 (and maybe U4) onto one page. Separate the information by sections. The U5 names would be redirects to the proper section ([[Resurrect#Ultima V]]). U4 could probably be handled by a section as well. U3 is tricky since it has two spells. I'd say give each of those spells their own article but make reference to them somewhere on the Resurrect article. -- Fenyx4 15:18, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

This probably makes the most sense. I'm still waiting to hear your opinion about an infobox, though. AngusM 17:44, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Wanted to have the above figured out so I had an idea what the infobox would need. Sounds like one with similar complexity to the NPC infobox would be called for. (Not AS complex but pretty close.) Not quite sure on all the details but definitely do-able.

Oh! I also feel like we should have more categories. Category:Ultima V Spells, Category:Ultima III spells, etc. -- Fenyx4 20:48, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this solution seems fine. Basically, would be treating each spell as unique, but we would be putting all the "very similar" unique spells together in the same page. We COULD also have separate infoboxes for each of the sections in the article. I'm not sure how this would look, though.--Sega381 14:27, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

I've thought about this a bit, and I've come to realize that I don't know what's so wrong about a lot of sparse articles, which is what would happen if we treated each spell in a game as unique. If we try to group spells, then we'll have a lot of common properties, and then have unique properties, all of which would have to be marshaled into their own sections. At first glance, that looks a lot more hairy. So what's the fear of having a lot of sparse articles? Is it that their numbers would cause spam for the reader when looking for something?

Trying to look at this through a reader's eyes, if I was looking for a spell from a certain game, I might search for a spell by name. If that name was one I came up w/, or got from a game, I'd notice which game it came from, because of the article name. However, if that didn't work, I would think that the related to field would get me where I need to go pretty fast. AngusM 19:29, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

So, any more comments on this? I would really like to start ordering the spells, though I'm not sure if we reached a consensus. If no one comments, I'll probably go this way: create a separate article for spells for different games, with infoboxes and "related to" links in them. I would probably also create some sort of disambiguation page for spells that are repeated. For example, the "Resurrect" article would mention the general idea of these spells, and then link to each related spell. Any comments before I may start with this?--Sega381 11:32, 18 February 2011 (PST)

Oh, please no. I just managed to infobox all the spells, uploaded tons of images for these infoboxes and reworte lots of information. Would it be so bad to just add a field in the infobox in which games the spell did appear? It would as informative and wouldn't create a huge mess of never-visited sub-articles.--Tribun 12:12, 18 February 2011 (PST)

I've just done a quick count of the spells between U1 and U7, only of the numbered games, and there are around 270 spells in total. But from that quantity, probably two thirds or three quarters are the same (or almost the same) spell in different games. I am not sure if we need 270 spell articles, specially if some, as the ones from Ultima 1, will be REALLY short. 270 spell articles... too much I think.

There is another, middle solution: group all similar spells in an article, but treating them as separate spells, maybe with an infobox for each one, in a different section. This is what Fenyx proposed above. There will only be an introduction mentioning basically why they are grouped together. Basically, it would be to take the current articles which talk about the spells as a whole, and add separate sections to be able to differentiate them in each game. Just adding a link in the infobox won't do... what if the spell has a different circle in different games? Or different words of power? Or different reagents? --Sega381 12:20, 18 February 2011 (PST)

Or at the very least, we would need a tiered infobox, such as the NPC one, to differentiate the circles, reagents, etc, for the spell in each game.--Sega381 12:22, 18 February 2011 (PST)

You have to remember that right now, only britannian spells have their own aricles. Meaning only Ultima IV-VII. The current article form is fine for them. You should handle it as with the NPCs, that besides the newest information, you can open a new section of the infobox for an older game. Since Circle, Reagents and Word of Power are already in the new Infobox, this should work.

If you plan to create seperate articles for sosarian, serpent isle, pagan and ascension spells, you should put them into their own categories.--Tribun 12:27, 18 February 2011 (PST)

SI, Pagan, and maybe the U9 spells, I won't touch them for now. And they should be in separate categories/articles, I agree. The sosarian spells... I was wondering if we could merge them with the Britannian ones, as many of the are exactly the same (Kill, Ladder Up, etc). But I'll tackle that later. I am still not sure if just a tiered infobox is enough, but as in any event, we have to add information about the differences between games, in whatever format it may end, I might as well start with just the infobox.--Sega381 13:07, 18 February 2011 (PST)

Ok, I've started with Awaken and Awaken All, using an infobox similar to the NPC one, but simpler. It also doesn't show any information, besides the name and picture, as the "default" info, as in the NPC, but shows the information for each game in each separate sub-infobox. Spells are too different to assume that one of them is the default one. I also created categories for some of the games, which are auto-added to the article when using the infobox. I'll be ignoring FOR NOW the spells from U1-U3, the Underworlds, the Worlds of Ultima, SI, U8 and U9. Therefore, I'll be focusing on U4, U5, U6 and U7 for now. I'll go on with more spells now; any comments or suggestions, feel free to post them.

These articles will need a rewriting, though, as they are still very U7-specific.--Sega381 07:00, 22 February 2011 (PST)

Impressive! However, for the first two spells you forgot to add that they also appear in Serpent Isle. Since SI and BG have many overlapping spells that work the same, SI should be added to the infobox (Note that this doesn't mean IX spells, which are really totally different and need extra articles).--Tribun 07:29, 22 February 2011 (PST)

Thank you! Yes, I blatantly ignored SI as I didn't have the manuals handy, in order to obtain the words, reagents, etc. Besides, as the SI magic is slightly different, I didn't wan't to dabble much into that. But I'll take a deeper look at SI and see if I can easily adapt the template for that, and start adding that related information. I won't comment on U9 yet, as I don't remember at all how magic worked in that game; so I'll leave any comments on that for later.

Another reason I ignored SI was that if I added it, it would end up showing up first in the infobox, while the current article text refers more to the U7 spells, so it was going to be a little inconsistent. Any opinions on the order the spells should appear in the infobox? Right now they are latest-game first, like the NPCs, but I'm not sure it's the best choice for spells. I also wasn't sure if it would be better to leave some of the sub-infoboxes collapsed by default, or all of them, or none (as it is now).--Sega381 12:57, 22 February 2011 (PST)

I agree that the spell articles need to be rewritten. For most of the ones I've seen, the tone and language are generally far too informal. --Terilem 18:00, 22 February 2011 (PST)