Game Ideas Wiki:Tutorial

This area was created to give you a wide variety of things you might need to know when making and editing pages.

This Wiki
Main article: About Us

...is a collection of articles where the brightest gaming minds can layout out their ideas for video games in encyclopedic form. That means that these articles are MADE UP. We may describe Super Mario Galaxy 3, but really, we don't know any more than you do what it will actually look like. We may make up other games. The companies listed do not know about these games. Hence the name of the site is the "[Video] Game IDEAS Wiki". But what is really cool is how you can add your own ideas to this collection. Guideline on what to make are elsewhere, but anyone can make their own idea.

In summary, you will find ideas for possible games. You can enjoy others', or make your own. There are reviews of released games, and a few other goodies on this site. This is not the place to record existing video games; but rather what you would have done different.

Guidelines
Guidelines are smaller rules for smaller wikis. They aren't mandatory, you-will-get-banned-if-you-disobey, life-or-death, the-world-hangs-in-the-balance, laws, but they are advice that we give and wish to have carried out. We attempt to follow Wikia's assume-good-faith guideline, but we make mistakes occasionally.


 * We have a poor ratio of returning users to newbies. Please make an account or leave a tagline to help us identify you.
 * This is a guideline, but is enforced by the admins here. Don't freak out if you forgot, just let us know in another comment. This guideline is mainly to seperate those who will come once to make fun about something, from the returning users who will actually help. To be part of the latter group, you may add comments based on helping with the articles, and probably make an account on your own because you find this wiki suitable for what you are looking for.


 * Please upload or select a thumbnail image for your user
 * Another guideline, but one that is for easier identification of anons vs. returning users. It would help us.


 * Try to avoid making major changes to other peoples' character rosters or other sections of articles
 * These articles describe games on the scale of Fan fiction novels. We each work hard on our articles and don't want changes to them without giving permission. Spelling fixes are fair game.


 * Image Policy
 * Only add images pertinent to the article. Please don't add too many unrelated on unimportant pictures.

Navigation
The wiki is designed to resemble a video game. To add to that, navigation of our guidelines are divided into 5 sections:


 * New
 * Continue
 * Account
 * Tutorial
 * Community

But that list is rather vague. A more descriptive list is in the Manual.

The articles on the wiki are joined through categories. The See More section may the best tool to use when looking for more great articles.

On the main page, the last option "Quit" is meant to be a joke. Quit menas you would like to leave the game. RPG's like Pokemon or Super Mario RPG sometimes limit running or exiting a battle. So the message "Can't Run!" means you can't leave the wiki. Again, it is a joke.

New to wikis?

 * If you are new to wikis, you may want to read the Wikia tutorial and the Game Ideas Wiki tutorial (the rest of this page).
 * There is some advice on getting this wiki started at Help:Starting this wiki.
 * A list of most help pages can be found on Help:Contents and in Category:Help.

Wikia Help
Wikia provides us with a glossary of editing question-and-answer help. It covers most of the stuff that you will need to edit pretty much everything. It has a range from help for novices, to reminders for experts. This is an excellent help. On the other hand, it (obviously) doesn't cover everything. For the stuff it misses, try looking at the specifics.

The Six Pillars of Birthing a Game Idea
These are the Six Pillars of Giving Birth to a Game Ideas. They are supportive and well-known guidelines to help people create their game ideas. We created these to provide a guideline to help users learn what order to edit in. We want them to give us a lot of content before they worry about formatting. Otherwise, nothing gets done!

1. Begin
Begin by brainstorming or writing down everything you can think of for a topic on a new approprietly named page
 * You can create as many game ideas as you like... Anything is allowed for creation except sexual content!
 * Be aware of where you put your article. When making a full game, clicking CreatePage will work fine. (Select "Blank Page" as your template under most cases.) But, since this is a games wiki, I would say make character articles subpages of the game articles. That way when people are browsing various game ideas they don't see random characters.

2. Divide
Divide information based on topics. Commonly, articles are divided into: introduction, story, gameplay, characters, enemies/bosses, trivia/quotes.
 * Use == == for headings and === === for sub headings.

3. Correct
Correct grammar mistakes
 * We do not want to do this for you too often. Mistakes happen, but that is what the preview button is for. We won't kill you, though, if you forget. ;)
 * Another thing for the experienced users to know, an apparently very useful strategy in helping the new users is skipping this step, and allowing them to gain experience through the spelling fixes.

4. Add
Add links, pictures, bold the title, and add categories.
 * Every article must have links. Link to other games, characters, etc. Only link to a subject once.
 * Upload pictures of what your game would look like. They could be screen shots, player art or sprites. On here it doesn't matter.
 * Titles must be bold, characters should have links, games should be italicized and linked to.
 * adding categories can be done at the bottom of the editor, near the publish and preview area. When making an article be sure to add categories that describe it. For right now, that would be would game system your game would potentially be for.

5. Preview
Preview your article before posting. Add basic summaries of your ideas so people who browse them can understand.
 * The preview button is right beside the publish button. But previewing helps you find mistakes that you might have missed while editing a long article. It also shows formatting errors.

6. Post!

 * Click publish to share your masterpiece with the world!

Wikia Help (More)
Many of these come from my blog, as I like to keep track of them. But they will now be added here, to help you guys. There is an extensive list of available "special" tools, a list of "magic words" (" pages on the wiki" is written " pages on the wiki") and one of the best places ever to find answers to your questions (It's so good, you could almost say if your question isn't answered there, you are probably trying to make up a question. Or something.) More to come. There is even a larger list of what Admins can do.

Images
So you've seen this?

Here's the meaning
 * 1) slide: Welcome. (Yeah, that's all)
 * 2) slide: Some articles lack pictures. Many are marked with that image. If you could find or make a good one, we'd love to have it.
 * 3) slide: Other good pics to upload include sprite sheets, animated pics, Box/cover art, character art and any other picture that fits here. We do try to be a bit serious with the article pics, but some amusing pictures are fine.
 * 4) slide: That links to the page bearing our user info. Talk to the top three (based on needs) for answers to any questions.

Help with Accounts
Main article: Account
 * Want to find out what you've done so far? Visit your contributions page.

Definitions
Check the glossary.

N2K
Moved to the inspiration over at "New game"

Being professional
On how to write professional articles.

Things to remember:

 * This wiki is on the internet, and everyone can see your work. Act sharp or don't act at all is what we're saying!
 * This wiki has some licencing awesomeness you should know about!
 * Have fun creating your articles! We wish the best of luck to you and everyone here.
 * Talk pages are for discussing content. Discussions are for the community portal and forum. Your personal talk page is another place to have conversations. This page was made to communicate with the rest of the wiki our standards and remove similar sections that would appear on the main page talk page where they shouldn't be.
 * Talk page comments should always be signed with ~ or just
 * Confused about anything? Contact Us!

This collection is meant for those who do not know, and a reminder for those more experienced with wikis. Thank you for working to accomplish these guidelines and make the wiki a great place to share ideas! Geniusguy445  (talk)  21:54, December 19, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for reading all the way here. We hope you feel confident enough to try out an article of your own. If you want to learn who you're working with, you could check out the Community. It lists everyone here.