Help:How to Make a Story Page

Hopefully this page can help people with making or editing story pages, as the templates for them are slightly horrendous at first and there are a lot of curly brackets; however, these templates allow users to make nice pages without having to worry about things like colors, how to make a box, the padding of boxes, how to make a boarder around a box etc., while keeping all of those things consistent around the wiki. So while they may not be that pretty to edit they are a lot simpler and prettier than if we didn't have them. Some of us are discussing and working on how to simplify them so that editing pages is easier and less discuraging but in the mean time here is how to use them as is.

The story template is actually three or more separate templates that are put together. The first, the Story Template, is the nice box at the top with the name of the story, the npc's who start and end the story, etc. The second is the the Step template which is used to make the steps needed to complete the story and one is used for each step, sub-step and spacer. The third is the StoryRewardsMain template which has the basic gold, xp, and ap rewards that are in any story (even if they are 0). There is often a StoryRewards template which contains various other templates for listing rewards such as titles, items, or equipment.

I will use A Job for Shayla (3) as an example for most of the guide, simply because it was the first story that came to mind and shows most things we need to know, besides the rewards.

=The Story Template= The Story template creates the nice heading at the top of story pages with the name of the story, its prerequisites, the NPC who starts the story and the NPC who finishes it.

The code for this part of A Job for Shayla (3) is:

which gives us:

The name property gives us the black "A Job for Shayla (3)" at the top. This should appear as it is in game, even if the wiki has to name the page something else because of a name conflict (usually this would be "(Story)" added to the end).

The level property in this case is a "?" either because the story does not have a level requirement or because no-one has discovered it. This would be used with a 20 to get the "Level: 20" (for example) that appears in the top right of a story that has a level requirement.

The prereq property tells us which story one must complete to be able to do A Job for Shayla (3). In this case "A Job for Shayla (2)". This field should use the wiki name of the story to ensure the link works. if there is no prerequisite story/battle then put "n/a" to hide the "You must have completed the story:".

The starting property gives us the "Shayla" in "Starts with Shayla" and with a bit of template code magic the picture of Shayla above it. The ending property is the same as the starting except with the "Ends with Shayla" part. These 2 do not have to be, and are often not the same it just so happens that in the random story I chose they are.

=The Step Template= The step template is the simple but used many times. The code for this section of A Job for Shayla (3) is:

and the result looks like this:

The parameters for this template are not named since there are only two and visually they line up with their positions in the result.

The first parameter is the step number; however there is a special case of ">" which is used to add an additional line to a step, such as for the list of items in step 2 of the example.

The second parameter is the content of the step simply say what to do for the step or the item in the list or whatever else fits the case. There is a special case for this parameter as well, which is "spacer" this makes a narrow bar which is seen at the bottom of the above example. These are used after the last step to add some visual padding between the the steps and the reward and should have ">" for a step number.

=The StoryRewardsMain Template= This template is the bar with gold, xp and AP awards for the story. It is fairly short and simple and looks like:

And the result is:

These are fairly self explanatory. The gold parameter is the gold reward amount,the exp parameter is the experience point reward amount and the ap parameter is the ability point reward amount. Please note the wiki's number format standard is #,### the same as the game itself, other than that these are just numbers and there isn't really anything to explain.

=StoryRewards= The StoryRewards template is a wrapper which makes a box around the rewards that are in addition to the basic ones given in the StoryRewardsMain template, such as items, equipment, titles, and skill books.

Note: Most the story rewards in this section are just randomly selected to display the concepts and syntax of the templates. While these items may appear separately as rewards in various quests, this collection is only meant as an example of what can be done with the templates and does not represent any real set of story rewards in the game.

The code for this is:

which makes:

Where this says "things" you would insert rewards using the templates Item Reward, Equipment Reward, Title Reward, Skill Reward or a combination there of. There may need to be other text in here as well, such as to note if different classes get different rewards. Below is an explanation of the various reward templates.

Item Reward
This template is for rewards that are items. There will be errors if this is used for, say, a piece of equipment, so if you are not sure which type a reward is search for it on the wiki.

The code for an Item Reward looks something like:

When placed inside a StoryRewards like this:

From which we get:

The parameter itemname is the name of the item. The amount parameter is the number of the give item the player receives.

Equipment Reward
The Equipment Reward template is for equipment rewards.

We make one like this:

When put inside a StoryReward we see:

The equipname parameter is the name of the piece of equipment.

Title Reward
The Title Reward template is used when a story gives a title as a reward.

The code looks like:

When inside a StoryRewards it looks like:

Skill Reward
The Skill Reward template is for stories that give skill books as rewards. It require a little more work that the other skill rewards because of the wiki's structure.

The code looks something like this:

When inside a StoryRewards it looks like:

This one sparked a lot of confusion when I first looked at it and then again when I asked if one of the fields could be made optional; however, it that field was indead made optional making this template easier to use in most, if not all cases. The skill type parameter indicates the color of the icon. Restoration skills are greenish or teal, combat skills are red, equipment skills are yellow, and training skills are brown. Use the type not the color here (at least for not) so the options are combat, equipment, training, or restoration. SP skills vary because, while they are their own category, they are put under one of the other categories as well based on what they do and that determines their icon color.

The skill parameter is the name of the skill. It is used as the link target. It will also be used with "Skill Book: " in front as the link text if no name parameter is given.

The name parameter is the name of the skill book. If it is given it will be use in place of "Skill Book: &lt;skill&gt;" as the link text. What that means is you can just forget the "name" parameter unless you are making a Skill Reward for a skill whose book is named differently than the skill itself. If the book is named differently put its name in the name field including the "Skill Book: " part in front.

To demonstrate the name parameter here is the code for Alchemy: Erg Transformation which you learn from Alchemy: Transform Erg:

Making:

Multiple Rewards and Varying Rewards
All these reward templates can be used together inside a StoryRewards to list of the items you receive from a Story. Also other text can be included as well in between the templates for things like if different classes receive different rewards.

Giving us:

=Putting it All Together= One does not so much put them all together as simply put them in order on a page. They are made to match up and fit together without having to put them in a table or anything of the sort.

The last thing one needs to add at the bottom of a story page is a category based on the type of story.

A Job for Shayla (3) is a sub story so this looks like:

the entire code for A Job for Shayla looks like:

and you can see the end result at: A Job for Shayla (3)