Talk:List of devices

This page is behaving strangely. The redirect link is not currently working, but I can see no reason why. I tried to edit it, and the preview turned out fine, but when I saved my changes did not show up. I can only assume this is because there was no difference between my edit and the current revision. What's going on? Is it even possible to redirect to a category page? (I attempted a revert to a previous version, but that didn't seem to work either. The only difference I saw was that one reads "Alien Artifacts" and the other, "Alien_Artifacts". -Fadookie 07:53, 24 Nov 2004 (CET)

You can't redirect to a category page. I reported this bug to the MediaWiki people some time ago (see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710). Regardless, I'm not sure this should be a category page. You can order items in a a list page as you want. It may even be a table with pictures of the artifacts in one column. -- SvdB 15:45, 24 Nov 2004 (CET)

OK, next time i'll read the discussion first before editing :-)
Maybe we should directly link to the Alien Artifacts category from the Main Page. -- Veinsworld 11:31, 20 Jan 2005 (CET)

Images

I've added some new images. I felt some of the older images provided by Fadookie were hard to see. I also added images for devices before you acquire them (when they are on a planet surface), and once they are on board your ship. For the Ultron, I added first the Broken Ultron and the Perfect Ultron next to it (there are two other images, as you add the needed parts to it, but that seemed a bit much - maybe an animated image?). Some objects (the Rosy Sphere, Clear Spindle, Quasispace Portal Spawner, Moon base) have only one image. I haven't updated the Glowing Rod or Wimbli's Trident images yet since they're "red herrings". I'll try to get to them. I don't have the Mycon Deep Child fumarole or the crashed Ur-Quan ship images yet. I'll try to get those soon too. I've been thinking. Since we've decided to include the Syreen Shuttle, although it has no image, we should also include the Slylandro Probe Self-Destruct Code. It is also analyzed at the Starbase, though it has no image.

--PsiPhi 06:41, 9 Jul 2005 (CEST)

Yeah, they were kinda small cause I took them from the UQM content and didn't resize them.

Did you make these yourself, or were they taken from PONAF? -Fadookie 08:23, 10 Jul 2005 (CEST)

I captured them myself and did the clean up in GIMP 2.0. I decided to make the background transparent so that they could be placed on any background. Unfortunately, this makes some difficult to see like the Clear Spindle ... though it is a "clear" Spindle. ;-) It's funny you mentioned PONAF, because I was using one of the maps there to quickly find the right planets for some of the items. After I posted this last update, I went to look at their list of alien devices and that's when I noticed that there IS a Syreen shuttle image. Like the Moon Base, I guess I just never looked in my inventory while I had these items. I'll try to add it soon. I'm fairly certain there is no image for the Slylandro Probe Code, but it IS something that can be analyzed at the Starbase, so I figured it should be included. I noticed that PONAF does not include it, most likely for lacking an image. One of the difficult things about capturing an image of the object while on the surface is that they are all animated (quite nicely). This made it a little difficult to decide which frame to capture. The Sun Device, in particular, was difficult to clean up because the planet surface colors were similar. I guess it would be ideal to take the images from the game code directly. I was thinking it would look nice if you could see an animated version of them, cycling through a few times and then stopping. Perhaps someone knows a better and faster way of doing this than I.

--PsiPhi 08:47, 12 Jul 2005 (CEST)

You can get the images directly from the uqm content file. The .uqm files are internally normal .zip files, but just named .uqm because people kept unzipping them when installing. - SvdB 21:00, 12 Jul 2005 (CEST)

These images should be redone. They should be taken directly from the content. Apart from the possible loss in quality, there's now also all sorts of dimension problems. So if someone has some free time on his hands... — SvdB 08:19, 21 December 2005 (CET)

I put in the missing images from UQM content. All the cargo images are the same size (16x16) and are resized here to 32x32, but the planet images are several different dimensions. I wasn't sure if those should also be resized. I'll leave that to someone else... --Fyzixfighter 03:31, 15 January 2006 (CET)

I think that the wiki software should be sufficient for resizing the planet images. Whatever looks good in the article should be sufficient, but the rule of thumb should probably be an approximate factor of 2.

Also, by leaving the original images alone, they can be dynamically re-scaled as needed without loss.

-Fadookie 01:51, 16 January 2006 (CET)

Renaming list and category

Partly based on discussion with a new editor, what would people think about renaming this and Category:Alien Artifacts to List of devices and Category:Devices? I don't think I was around when the list and category were first created so I don't know what the reasons were for choosing "alien artifacts" as the name. Honestly, I don't know how many current editors there are so maybe the request for input will be in vain. Anyways, my thought is this: "Devices" is the submenu option that allows access to most of these items and the term "device" is the prevalent term used by Commander Hayes in the analysis. In the dialogs, artifact seems mostly reserved for referring to Precursor artifacts (the exceptions being the ZFP reference to the Vault and the Lander's crew reference to the Umgah 'Caster). Also, some of the devices aren't really "artifacts" like the Syreen Shuttle. But perhaps the original reasoning is more compelling - I'm open to that. Thoughts? --Fyzixfighter 19:58, 23 January 2009 (CET)