From PackRat Recipe Wiki

Contents 1 Active Topics 1.1 Image Sizes 1.2 New Retired Cards Markets 1.3 Strategy Section 1.4 Foil? 1.5 Re-Retired Information 1.6 XL Markets 1.7 XL Sets vs. Premium, New, and Free 1.8 Font 1.9 The-vault.large.gif 1.10 Easter Basket Expiring? 2 Old topics 2.1 Introduction Date / Days Active 2.2 Markets 2.3 Suggested Feature: Card Cost 2.4 New Homepage 2.5 Packrat Levels. 2.6 Top Dropdown Navigation Bar 2.7 Recipe cost idea 2.8 New template for "Bake Time" cards. 2.9 Preservation of Historical Dates? 2.10 New Tag 2.11 Editing the Wiki 2.12 Retired collections organization: Alphabetical vs. Chronological

[edit] Active Topics

[edit] Image Sizes

Just a question. Why do we use the smallest image for the card images? I've always wondered that. I know we shouldn't use the largest resolution, but the medium one seems fine (to me). Is it a space issue or a size issue or... what? Grace 13:30, 01 May 2008 (EST)

It's page space, bandwidth, and disk usage that come into account. The medium sizes introduce a lot of whitespace between each card on the collection pages. And the all collections' pages would be gigantic with them set to medium! So, it's just a scaling thing. timdorr 18:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Icon sizes at 16x16, and should be collectioname_family.gif. card size for the collection page is 32x32, and should be cardname.med.gif. There are various other "norms" which are used, these are the two most common.--ikishk (Page | Talk | Pack) 13:10, 17 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] New Retired Cards Markets

Is there going to be a new template for the pricing of retired cards in tickets? I foresee major changes to the wiki. ~K

IMHO, when a collection gets re-released, we should remove all the old market data and only include the new market data. there doesnt need to be a special font or anything. The point of the wiki is to be able to find things faster, not really a historical record. plus, we have diffs for that. --ikishk (Page | Talk | Pack) 13:10, 17 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] Strategy Section

I think it'd be helpful to have a strategy section which describes how to acquire cards using all the new paths in PackRat. For example, how do you earn tickets outside of payment, etc.

[edit] Foil?

I saw the term "foil card" mentioned in the PR discussion board today. There is no article about that - perhaps somebody who knows what a "foil card" is could create it, for the edification for people like me who don't know? --81.226.219.238 10:46, 23 November 2008 (EST)

there is a link already in this wiki.... http://www.packratwiki.com/Foil_Cards

[edit] Re-Retired Information

Any interest in adding a section that would track or give some kind of indication if Ticket cards have been re-retired, such as the Pirate Ship. I was thinking of a page that would list all the retired cards that have shown up in the Premium Markets and the date they have last been "spotted in the wild". I know that Grass Skirt and Tin Star seem to have gone missing lately.

[edit] XL Markets

We need a new colour. As an XL subscriber, I can now almost complete Oz and AE (and have), but it looks at a glance that I can't. Can we have a silver colour for XL cards, as this seems to be the step between ticket and premium markets.

Thanks!

--angelsk 03:17, 10 December 2008 (EST)

How about this?

- timdorr 10:23, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Perfect!!! People are more likely to buy XL stuff for other users, than ticket items :) --angelsk 10:29, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Well crap. I tried adding it but it's not working for some reason. WTF? - timdorr 10:32, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Looks fine on item to me Arctic Expedition --angelsk 10:35, 10 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] XL Sets vs. Premium, New, and Free

People have been asking on the boards for a way to tell, on the collection page, that a set is out of the ticket market, but still in the XL market. Can we put a tag on the corner that's blue and has the XL symbol (like the ticket symbol). I'd do it myself but I'm not confident enough in my template editing skills. 64.26.67.253 16:46, 16 December 2008 (EST)

Wow. That really looks terrible now.

The thread is http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=51498&post=580179&uid=5002231908032 My idea was to try and add data which let the person see what was required to feat. Adding a corner icon for XL introduces problems as some XL might not include premium/tickets while some do. Some new sets don't have XL, some do, etc. There's 7 possible combinations which would have to be included (new, new+xl, new+premium, new+xl+premium, xl-only, xl+premium, premium-only). Keeping the old new/ticket corners would work, if we just add an xl icon somewhere. And for new collections, adding xl and ticket icons would help that. Making 7 diff corner icons would actually look worse, as the icons themselves would be cluttery. As an XL subscriber, I'd like to see which sets require XL markets and some dont, just as any other person wants to see if a set requires tickets or not. --ikishk (Page | Talk | Pack) 17:36, 16 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] Font

Any help - what's the Packrat font called? Thanks --angelsk 12:51, 17 December 2008 (EST) -- PLEASE??!!?!? --angelsk 08:01, 21 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] The-vault.large.gif

It's the only one aside from Poison-plant.gif that doesn't have a large image. I have saved it off Packrat, I've tried forcing it to be a GIF - but when I try and upload it I get an error saying that I can't upload a file of type application-x/php, but it's a GIF! :) Any help? --angelsk 08:03, 21 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] Easter Basket Expiring?

I was under the impression from the from the notice they put up that only the Egg market would be disappearing on May 3rd, not the Easter Basket collection itself. I checked both the collections page on PR and the discussion board, and there's no mention of it expiring any time soon. --72.138.2.139 20:00, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

From the update:

Easter Basket

Remember when we said the Easter Basket collection would be rare? We wanted our fans to be the first to know that it will retire on May 3rd! The collection is now available in the XL Markets and will be released soon to the Standard Markets. Be sure to grab the cards whenever you see them! And since this collection includes a lot of fun recipes, we've made those available right now...

http://apps.facebook.com/packrat/collections/easter-basket/

--angelsk 03:11, 24 April 2009 (EDT)

[edit] Old topics

Please move topics into this area which have not seen any activity in about 3 months. This will help people keep up to date with the active topics more easily

[edit] Introduction Date / Days Active

Using the history functionality of this wiki, and the other PackRat wiki site, I have determined approximate introduction dates for all of the active collections. I didn't notice this information anywhere in either wiki, and I find it to be useful information as a new user, to know what collections might be retiring soon, and which ones are only a couple weeks old.

Is there somewhere convenient to put this data in the wiki, or does it exist somewhere already? ...or does nobody else care but me? That's fine too, I'll just keep my Excel spreadsheet to myself.  ;)

- Eric

I think it's a great idea. Try to edit the homepage first (I left too obvious instructions). Later we might edit sets' pages as well. --Sniegas 10:54, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

I agree. GREAT idea. I'll help out anyway you need me to. Or you can do it all yourself. =) Your choice. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 13:16, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

Wasn't Ninja Storm introduced on Aug 20th?

[edit] Markets

Made a new page, that describs all the markets. I think it's quite important for historical purposes. Hope you can fill the blanks I don't know. And maybe you have any idea where to put a link to that page. --Sniegas 09:55, 13 July 2008 (EDT)

Looks great. I thought about doing this at one point but was struggling for a way to make it look nice. Don't forget Venice which would be between Washington D.C. and Austin as far as chronologically goes. Maybe I'll just do it, I'm not doing anything more. Ha. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 13:18, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Suggested Feature: Card Cost

It'd be good to have a feature that tells you the total cost of making a card, i.e. all the ingredients.--58.89.132.127 23:17, 6 July 2008 (EDT)

A few sets do have that; 7th Inning Stretch specifically.. Mouse over the icon at the top (the greenish baseball) and a tooltip will pop-up with the total amount of credits. I haven't gotten around to hitting each set, but I might do that sometime next week. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 19:32, 9 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] New Homepage

Likey? :) timdorr 01:07, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I preferred the old layout because it allowed you to click through to any of the collections without scrolling. This one is cleaner and looks better but is slightly less functional in my opinion. Sjaustin 04:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks much better now! Good adjustment. Sjaustin 12:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent Tim!! Looks awesome =D --TifDaSplif (Page | Talk | Pack) 07:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it looks better than the corresponding PackRat page looks. Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 08:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

It's just not as convenient as the list view, maybe we should hold a poll and go with what most people vote for? . Jacob

Personally I don't see the difference between this view and the other. The major difference is in how you read it (left to right, like a book; instead of up and down) Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 22:27, 11 May 2008 (EDT)

Depending on the number of current sets, I find the table looks either jagged or straight on Safari 3 for Mac OS X 10.4. Right now it looks jagged, but the one over on BlueWiki looks fine right now. Perhaps some minor adjustments need to or could be made to it. — Pdw93 21:21, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

That's a font issue. If they ever offer whatever the name of the font is (Calibri?) as a free download for the Mac, it'd fix it. It's because of the size of the font. BluWiki uses a slightly different template for the collections. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 00:02, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

Thanks. Just upgraded my OS to 10.5, and it seems to look fine again now. —Pdw93 15:52, 8 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Packrat Levels.

I'm surprised to never have come across any level indicator, that tells you how many points you need to reach each level. Possibly it's even worth a try to figure out the formula? In general it deserves a place on this wiki I think... --Pelotas 19:47, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Go for it. =) I always say if you're making a suggestion, you're volunteering to figure out a solution. =) Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 00:37, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

Okido, done so at Level. Looks crap I know. Is there some sort of table template available on this wiki? Also I don't know the levels yet so I just noted the experience levels of my friends in intervals, which looks nasty... Maybe we need a picture of the level indicator too, but packrat has that I believe. --Pelotas 07:58, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

Look at the Scramble page, as it has a table in use on it. I tried cleaning up the page a bit for you, but feel free to use whatever template you'd like. Give some things a whirl on the Sandbox first, though ^_^ timdorr 10:11, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Top Dropdown Navigation Bar

I have an idea for packratwiki that came to me after construction of another wiki site. Can we put a top navigation bar that can be used for dropdown selection of packs? It has been a really nice feature of the wiki I built. I am not sure how it would be implemented as it was included feature of the wiki site I chose. If you want to see an example, http://packrat.wikidot.com

On a side note, not intending to create competition or split up contributors. Digital Mage 22:18, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Personally, I don't like the idea. A) The way it looks on the link provided is broken up and a little ugly (not to say anything against your Wiki or anything) with the splitting of the collections with see through lines B) I forgot what B was. I'll come back to it. C) I don't think that's editable by the average user. I'm pretty sure that's only changeable by an admin which could cause it to be out of date occasionally. Oh, I remembered B. The top section is already "littered" with stuff. I'm not a full screen user so I don't have a lot of real estate. There are two search bars, a slew of personalized items (My user page, my talk, my preferences...etc.) and under that there's an ad a few options for the page I'm viewing and a news banner. I think a couple more drop down menus would turn into sensory overload. If it's added to the left hand side, then we're got a similar issue. And right hand side menus are ugly when there's already a left handed one.

On a side note: I think it's silly for there to be multiple (I believe there are three right now) Wikis floating around. Not that I believe this one is supreme or somehow deserves to exist where others don't, but it adds unnecessary confusion to new users. Okay, I'm done ranting now. None of that was supposed to be personal, so please don't take offense...or I will kill you. -_- Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 00:36, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

No offense taken, and I was thinking similar about the broken up look. That didn't quite work out like I wanted. I agree with adding a right hand menu, I attempted to add that, but, as you said it looked ugly and cluttered. The drop down menu is editable by authorized users, you just have to find it on the all pages view. I still think if you minimize it's footprint that a dropdown menu is nice. I think my wife agrees with you about the multiple wiki thing, but, as I said, it has been lots of fun making it. Tedious, but fun. Digital Mage 05:56, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

Well I'm definitely more for it now that I know anyone can edit it. But how's the syntax? Relatively easy to learn? And I still think we're going to run into trouble when clutter comes around. Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 14:25, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

I'll need to dig a little deeper to figure out how they do it. It seems to be one of the site features rather than one I can build. I'll let you know what I find. Would we be able to add a javascript file then create a html template to create an editable wiki page? http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/dropdowncontrol.htm Digital Mage 19:40, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

It's something I'd have to implement outside the wiki, so it may not be possible. I do like the idea, but I've got some other things in the queue that I'd like to implement first. timdorr 19:50, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

Ok, well you have the link that I think looks closest to how wikidot.com implements it on their site.

Another idea I had was to put up costs of recipe cards, so that you can see how much it costs to build each card and the pack if you buy everything from the markets. Digital Mage 20:20, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

Hmmm. That's hard to keep standardized. Some recipes involve one or multiple pop-ups, thus there's no real way to know how accurate something is. And for items like the Pagoda that, at one time, was a pop-up and then was available in the market to buy and NOW is retired, what would we do for things like that? Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 20:42, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Recipe cost idea

Ok, splitting idea off into own header.

What I was thinking was to use the tooltip feature, and add a line at the bottom that says something like

Cost of market cards, 30credits

That could go under the $5 chip. I understand that if people steal cards, or need pop up/vault bonus/invite bonus cards, then we cannot account for those costs, but if you are going on a market run, you can have an idea of how many credits you need, so you don't find yourself 3 credits short and have the item slip between your fingers. Digital Mage 23:52, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

I like this idea, but we're already using tooltips (albeit, not everywhere) for a similar feature. QoM is the only place I know of that uses it extensively. It chronicles just how many of what item you need to make it. I'm planning on putting in the base items how many you need to finish the set, so for the Maize it'd have something like "67 needed" or some such. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 19:29, 29 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] New template for "Bake Time" cards.

I tinkered around for a little while today with the preexisting recipe template and this is what I came up with.

Feel free to tinker around with it yourself if you can come up with a better idea. I'll work on converting the existing (all four or five of them) recipes now.

The H sitting there after the 12 stands for hours and will be replaced with M (for minutes) if any minute Bake Time's come out. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 21:04, 10 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Preservation of Historical Dates?

Hey... just noticed that when a collection moves to Expiring or Expired, we lose the Introduced date, since it does not appear to be recorded on the collection's page. I think this info is very important (well, at least *interesting*). Thoughts on whether/how/where we should record it? - --Straffin 00:44, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

I've tried to think of ways. We can leave the introduced date there, I don't see anything wrong with it. Essentially it would become two lines long. The first line would say "Introduced on..." the second line would say "Expired on..."

All those dates should still be in the history. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 11:09, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] New Tag

It'd be nice to have a tag that comes after the NEW Tag for sets that can not be finished without Premium Cards but have all cards out.

[edit] Editing the Wiki

I've never done much with wikis, but with past PackRat wikis I've made a point of updating it where I can. One thing that I've never been able to figure out how to do is add images, however. While I still don't know how to do it, maybe a page could be added that gives some basic tips for PackRat users with no wiki knowledge to update the wiki? Just a suggestion. Andre 18:28, 01 May 2008 (CST)

I'll make one. Colin 21:50, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

After a few hours of work, I have a pretty exhaustive list found here: Help:Editing. If you feel I've missed anything, please add to it. Also, if you ever need it there is a link a few spots to the right of the "Save page" button at the bottom (Editing help). That will open in a new window so your editing is not disturbed. Colin 00:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Awesome, that's a very helpful page. Thanks. :) Andre 21:23, 2 May 2008 (CST)

You're very welcome. Colin 07:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retired collections organization: Alphabetical vs. Chronological

Discuss.

Okay I didn't REALLY think that would work. Do you guys think the retired collections should be listed alphabetically (as it is now) or chronologically (by retired date; whether it's from most recent to recent or vice versa). What do you guys think? Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 13:38, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I think it should be Alphabetical. No one really cares when they were removed, just that they are now totally gone. And when you're trying to collect the remaining cards from a collection, it's easier to find the collection on a list when it's in alphabetical order. timdorr 14:05, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

*nods* My first inclination is to put them chronologically, but that's just impulse. I just want to make sure that there's some kind of standard for that.

Well, it would be cool if we could make them sortable somehow. But I don't think that would be possible, since MediaWiki filters out Javascript. timdorr 15:45, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Hmmm. There seems to be some ways to do it. But it's only in tables as far as I can tell. I added it to my page's table if you wanna see. It's kinda neat. Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 16:46, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I wish you'd leave the "Introduced Date" on the collection status button even after the set has been expired. This can provide some history so we might be able to gauge approximate lifespans of collections in the future. It's good information to have.

Well if we can find all the introduction dates then that's not a hard thing to do. But the problem is figuring out what day all of them were introduced on. If we're going to have one date introduced in the expired collections I'd like to have all of them stated. -Colin (Page | Talk | Pack) 17:25, 1 August 2008 (EDT)