Mission Objective template Map parameter

[AboveTheChemist]

I'm new to creating/updating Mission pages so forgive my inexperience. I used the Mission Objective template a few times creating the first two missions for the Market Crash trial. That template has a parameter (called Map) for specifying the map that the mission uses, but it doesn't appear to do anything useful with the map name that is passed to it. Either that, or I am not passing it in the correct format.

 

For instance, if you look at the first Mission page for Market Crash, you can see on the right about halfway down the page it just says 'Map: ROAD_TUNNEL' (after I passed a value of 'ROAD_TUNNEL' for the Map parameter). I would expect the actual map to show up here (assuming a representative image had been uploaded). I am in the process of looking through a bunch of story arcs/task forces to see if I can find an example of this parameter being passed and a map actually being displayed (thank goodness for the 'What Links Here' page), but I have found none yet.

 

If anyone happens to know of any missions where this parameter actually causes a map to be displayed, please let me know. I think I can relatively easily modify the template so that a map is actually displayed, but I don't want to fiddle with it if there are already valid examples of it displaying a map.

Edited October 27, 2020 by AboveTheChemist

[Aberrant]

Nope, that's all it does, just puts the map name aligned right at a small size. Here's the relevant part of the template:

{{#if:{{{Map|}}}|<div style="float: right; font-size: 75%; margin-left: 2em;">Map: {{{Map}}}</div>}}

It displaying the map image as well would be a great change I think!

Edited October 28, 2020 by Aberrant
Said left when I mean right >_<

[AboveTheChemist]

Fantastic, thanks for the feedback! I spent some time this afternoon looking through the missions for about 150 contacts and while I saw plenty of instances of map name displayed as they are in the mission I linked above, I didn't see any instances of an actual map. So given that plus your input I feel reasonably safe that I can tinker and not break anything existing.

 

On a side note, I was thinking about how to display the map, and it occurred to me that I might want to put it in a 'hidden' box to avoid spoilers, such that the user would click 'Show' to display the map. So, I may try to do that if I can, but I am not totally convinced that it's not overkill so if I can't get it to work then I'll just display it as a normal image.

[Aberrant]

Hidden can be a pain in the arse as it by default spans the width of the page. I spent ages trying to get the NPC Text template to shrink if there's something right aligned and I'm still not happy with it, so I wouldn't recommend it for this personally, but if you can make it work go for it!

 

Edit: Finally fixed my issues with NPC Text funnily enough! Now looks near identical to the old Paragon Wiki version. The secret is nesting it in a table so it will properly squash if there's something in the way.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Aberrant
Finally fixed it!

[AboveTheChemist]

Ah ok, I was not aware of that, thanks for the heads up. I'll still give it a shot but I will definitely not get my hopes up!

[Aberrant]

Was just thinking about this, and just wanted to rattle off a few other potential issues.

1. I know this is the case with the procedural repeatable missions of papers/police band, but may also be the case with some regular missions and arcs. Missions can be pulled from a pool of environments (similar to how they're categorised in Architect based on tileset and size), so any attempt to document all the potential map images for these may be an insurmountable task. This is likely more common with older contacts.
2. For these and most other missions, the displayed maps are not a single static texture, but are generated on the fly based on the tiles used. As far as I'm aware, basically any map that displays in the yellow-orange-brown style is generated in this way, even unique maps like you'd find in the interiors of the Lambda Complex I-Trial. The only way to get suitable images of these maps would be to take a screenshot of them in game or manually cobble them together from the dozens of textures that make them up (not recommended!).
3. Many missions have multiple map images usually separated as floors and some consisting of a static texture exterior and a multi-texture interior, that would then likely have to be combined into one composite image vertically.
4. To prevent huge numbers of red missing files all over the wiki where they are unlikely to be fulfilled, it may be sensible to add an {{ifexists}} to the map image call, similar to how it's handled for the small contact image in Template:Mission Briefing, so if no image currently exists on the wiki, it will just display the small text stating the map name as it was before.

[AboveTheChemist]

Great points @Aberrant, thanks for posting that. Point #2 had (briefly) occurred to me previously, but the rest had not. I just started last night to work on implementing my idea and still have some work to do but I'll definitely take these thoughts into account and will likely be back for more discussion once I've gone a little further.