Talk:Fragile Allegiance

WP:VG Assessment

I see some good work here, but there's still a long way to go. I'm going to maintain the current Start-class rating, but here's some pointers to improve the article, I don't think its too far off B-class.

• Make sure the lead section summarises everything that follows it. See WP:LS.
• The gameplay section is too long. Get rid of the sub-headings in the section, and try to summarise the gameplay of the game as briefly as possible: three or four paragraphs should do it. Make sure to get it referenced: you can use primary sources like the game manual and official site here, although secondary sources from reviews and the like are preferable.
• Don't do a direct quote from the manual like that for the plot section. Describe what is in the manual's description in your own words, referencing it to the manual. Quoting it out in such a manner could be taken as copyright infringement. The end point in the plot section about statistics isn't well written, or seemingly relevant to the plot. If it is notable, move it to the gameplay section.
• The soundtrack doesn't need a full section simply for a single statement. Expand the section's prose and add track listings or simply move the single sentence into the article's introduction.
• Is there any development information? If so, add a section for it and merge the compatibility section into it. You need to get that compatibility information referenced as well, avoid original research and cite it to a secondary source.
• Redo the critical reception section in full prose, taking reviews and discussing the reception of various elements of the game, comparing different reactions on key points. That can help establish what is notable for inclusion in the gameplay section. In addition, if you want to add the scores for various reviews, use {{VG Reviews}} to accomodate them in a tidy fashion.
• The external links section should come after the references. Plus, make sure that the external links included comply with external links policy. The GameSpot one isn't really necessary as its already used as a reference, while the MobyGames one should only be included if it contains information beyond this article that isn't appropriate in an encyclopedic context but would still be useful to a reader.

See the example articles over at WP:VG for ideas of what to do. Rating Start-class, Low importance. -- Sabre (talk) 17:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the article taking all of this into consideration although I can't seem to find any development info regarding this game. Any more ideas on how to improve this article would be greatly appreciated. -- Archangel Lucifer (talk) 09:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A lot of the original points Sabre pointed out are still needing to be looked into. To really give things in a nutshell, you should do the following:

• Critical Response would probably be best named as Reception, and really could use that VG Reviews template mentioned above. Additionally the section could use a minor rewrite: the info is a little jumbled.
• Development can include game marketing, packaging, bug fixes with patches by a company etc. That might give you a bit more room to work with.
• Avoid "Many people" in statements, it gets treated as a weasel word even if justified. Try just "Players" and it should give the same result. The sentences there can easily be developed a bit more to pad the section and make it a little less jumbled.
• Try to sprinkle some more references in there. You reference the manual just once for example: usually with game articles you'll see it cited at least multiple times. Basically read through the article and ask yourself as you go "is there anything here that looks like it could be contested?"

Hope that helps. It's still at start for now, but if you can address these issues and improve it give me a shout and I'll take a look at reassessing it. -- Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:VG Assessment

The article is certainly taking form, I'm upping the rating to B-class. A lot of the prose is in place, just give it a run through to remove weasel words and give it a good copy edit to ensure the text flows. The other main issue is the references. I understand that its an older game and is unlikely to have as extensive coverage as later games online, but any additional references to help verify various points throughout would certainly not go amiss. One last thing is the use of flags in the infoboxes. These shouldn't be used. Take a look at some of the high quality VG articles for how release dates in the infobox should be done. Other than that, I'd consider the good article nomination process, that should be able to give you some more specific points for improvement.

One final issue, the images are a bit too large (800px by 600px), and will hold you up with fair use issues later. Ensure they're of a lower resolution (I personally go for a width of 500px), but still of a good quality. Resizing with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro should be able to deal with that. -- Sabre (talk) 17:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Running on Vista and XP

I've changed "will" to "may" in the comment about it crashing on XP when you load a saved game, as I have been running it for hours (saving and loading) without crashes using DosBox. I've had the same experiance with Windows Vista, and added a comment to that effect. The problem is I can't place a citation for this, however I clearly KNOW that the current cited information is incorrect.

I've also found that it has trouble with multiplayer but this may be more of a DosBox issue that anything else, but the only citation for this would be again my experiance and forum messages. -- QU4N71FY (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for confirmation that the game works on Windows Vista using DOSBox, as I have only used it on XP (and Win 95 back in the day) but I will have to search for a reference to confirm the fact. I never said that the game will crash when loading a saved game in DOSBox as I also have been running the game for hours with saves and reloads but the game crashes every time I try to RENAME a saved game when running in DOSBox or XP. Renaming ships and asteroids work fine but not saved games. Many people have reported the same thing so I don't think that the current sourced information is incorrect. If you could try RENAMING one of your saved games while running in DOSBox and see if it crashes, that will tell you if the information is incorrect.

Regarding multiplayer difficulties, I think it's more of a DOSBox problem than anything else but in all honesty I have never tried multiplayer. I've heard that it works for maybe a few hours before a de-sync is detected but all references to 'multiplayer issues' seem to come from people running the game in DOSBox. -- Archangel Lucifer (talk) 08:49, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Fragile Allegiance/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Robin 06:02, 6 August 2011 (UTC) I have started the review. So far it looks good.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

---

This looks good but lacks some minor details

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Contains some spelling mistakes. I may correct some of them.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   mobygames is not a reliable resource as anyone can contribute it without their fact being checked.Also thecrypt is down or the article it was referencing to was deleted.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   the sources are not reliable and the article has numerous spelling mistakes

so i think it can be promoted to GA status only if some of those minor changes (better sources, spellings) can be made. Robin 06:22, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the review so soon, I have removed 3 of the 4 moby games references, however the remaining one references many of the scores used in the "Reception" section of the article and I have been unable to find such a comprehensive collection of scores anywhere else. The information for that reference has been unchanged since the creation of this article nearly 4 years ago. Is it ok to keep that one?

Also, I have gone through the article looking for spelling mistakes and the only possible mistake I can find is changing "criticized" to "criticised". Other words such as "colonise" and "unaurthorised" are spelled correctly in Australian English. The word "megacorporation" is printed in the games instruction manual as a single word and not "mega corporation" and wikipedia also has a page entitled megacorporation. The words "gameplay", "multiplayer", "mortalities" and "hardpoint" are all real words and spelled correctly as far as I can tell. "Scoutship" is what the game describes its smallest ship as, not "Scout ship" so I think that's correct. The other words that come up are "Tetracorp", "Mauna", "Sci-Tek" and the names of the various alien races encountered in the game which are spelled as they appear in game so I don't think they need changing.

I think that covers it all. What's your view on the words that need correcting? I apologise for such a lengthy comment and hope I have addressed all of your concerns for promoting this article to GA status. If any more changes need to be made, there are still a few more days to go before the deadline for nomination is reached so I won't modify any spelling until I hear back from you. Archangel Lucifer (talk) 04:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the tool I use has proven inaccurate. It only gave me the number of spellings which are incorrect but not the words themselves. From what you wrote it seems that the spelling mistakes I was talking about were not mistakes at all.As for the mobygames source.. Wikipedia will not consider it a reliable source and even if I accept it, it will not be long before someone else delists the article because of the sources. If we can find the articles which reviewed the game (PC games, Edge, Gamezilla) and directly link to the articles themselves will solve the entire problem.

Robin 11:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Second opinion

I know nobody asked for a second opinion, but there are several other issues that must be addressed before passing the article. I recommend this review be put On Hold until they're taken care of.

• Citations
  • should have the article author where available
  • only magazine publications should be italicized. Use |publisher= instead of |work= for non-magazines
  • website names to not need ".com" after them, and all of them should be wikilinked unless they are a red link
  • publish dates for articles should also be added using the |date= parameter where available (for reviews, news and such)
  • Several sources are questionable. Please check here for any sources that are reliable. While questionable sources aren't likely to be challenged on anything below GA class they must pass standards to pass Good Article nominations.
  • Citations always go after punctuation. There is at least one instance of it being directly after a word with no punctuation. In that case the cite can be moved to the end of the sentence.
• Images
  • The secondary box art image needs its rationale updated similar to File:Fragile Allegiance title screen.jpg (except the yellow boxed text)
  • Both gameplay images need their rationales updated to further comply with WP:NFCC. See File:Maniac mansion screenshot tentacle.png
  • Both gameplay images are far too large to pass WP:NFCC. They should be scaled back to at or below 500px wide
  • The gameplay images also need smaller thumbnails. The standard is to not set a size so that the user's preferences can set them to whatever they've decided. It's best to remove the size parameter entirely.
• Prose
  • Numbers below 10 are to be spelled out. For example "6" should be "six"
  • There are instances of unnecessary (and probably accidental) spaces before punctuation. For example: "The core gameplay elements of K240 are retained ;" - the semicolon shouldn't have a space before it.
  • Per WP:LEADCITE citations are not necessary in the lead unless it's information that's not in the body, however WP:LEAD states the lead should be a summary of the body, so all cited information should appear in the body and the citations moved there.
  • "such as defense installations, life support, production, etc..." should end in a simple period, not three trailing dots
  • User reviews cannot be used, only professional reviews from reliable sources.
  • The long dash should be used when connecting two thoughts, such as "factions - The Mauna". It should be "factions — The Mauna". The easiest way to do this is copy and paste the long dash from here into the article as some keyboard layouts don't have it natively.
• Categories should be sorted alphabetically

These are things that are required to pass GAN, so please do not pass the article until these are addressed. --Teancum (talk) 13:57, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I just saw the gamezilla article you added as a resource. It never explicitly mentions it gave the game a 75% rating.Robin 09:02, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help guys, I guess I really needed all this information before nominating it for GA but the peer review page is no longer in use so I just went ahead with the nomination. I think there are still 3 more days before the seven day review process is up and I will keep working on it until then. It is a hard game to find references for with the best one being the PC Gamer UK magazine that I still have.

I'll see what I can do.Archangel Lucifer (talk) 14:18, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello Archangel Lucifer. I was "passing by" when I noticed this review was on hold. I went through and fixed a lot of grammatical errors that were pointed out. Let me know if there were any issues, but since I don't know the game that well I am in no more position to help with the other issues. Goodluck getting this to GA Status! Mordecairule 19:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I have done a lot of work on the references but I can't finish all the requested changes until tomorrow. Can the reviewer please wait until at least then before passing judgement?Archangel Lucifer (talk) 17:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I've removed all of the confirmed unreliable sources and the remaining ones are either confirmed or there is not yet a consensus on them. The Gamezilla reference scores it at 75% as far as I can tell. I reformatted all of the references using this article as a guide. I re-sized both of the gameplay images and updated their fair use rationale. The secondary box art image has had its rationale updated. All images have had their thumb size parameter removed.

Mordecairule seems to have taken care of all of the prose issues however when you say "User reviews cannot be used" are you referring to the sentence in the reception section that states Gamespot users rated the game higher than the site reviewer? I'm not sure if you were talking about that or about the unreliable references. Everything seems to be in order now.

Do you guys think it is ready?Archangel Lucifer (talk) 11:58, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Am i the only one or is the main infobox too large because of the oversized image? Even though it is not a GA criteria the article itself should look proper. The large infobox distracts. As for extending the on-hold time limit ... i don't know if it can be done. As im new here but i think we can wait for the changes to take place as the editor was informed of these issues with a very short deadline to complete them.Robin 14:38, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I have re-sized the image in question and I think it looks better now. Unless the reviewers can find anything else that needs changing I believe this article is now ready.Archangel Lucifer (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Reference material

I found these reviews:

• PC Gamer UK
• Computer Games Magazine
• Computer Gaming World
• PC Gamer US

Hope these help. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:26, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

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