Revision as of 14:02, 11 November 2019

XymphBot is an account for use in MediaWiki API queries. It is owned by Xymph, and used via bot scripts written in PHP based on the Wikimate library. After a coding and testing period, it commenced automated edits in October 2016.

The overall goal of these scripts is to put as much computer-creatable content into map pages as feasible, and check that existing content is as complete and consistent as possible, so that human contributors can focus more on crafting creative prose like background information, walkthroughs, trivia and other map-specific content. Also, I like alliteration. :)

Configuration

The starting point for all scripts is a .ini file that specifies settings and a series of map pages. Typically the list includes all levels in an IWAD or megawad, but combining single-level PWADs in one list is also possible.

The settings for all maps include the various input and output paths, the relevant IWAD, an optional PWAD, the type of DMMPST output and any DMMPST flags, an optional pattern for map view filenames, an optional flag defining whether to put the "notally=1" parameter into the map spots template (for Hexen and Strife levels), the WAD ID for Compet-n and DSDA links, and the WAD's author(s).

The settings per map are the episode and mission, the path to the Doom Wiki page, and optional overrides of that map's PWAD, DMMPST output type and flags, author(s), and script-specific actions.

An optional navboxes section defines the number and style of navboxes (Doom-like, standard Doom II-like or Doom II episodic grouping), and the paths, optional episode names, and map ranges for each navbox.

The .ini file can easily be generated from a list of levels in wikicode (e.g. Doom II's) copy/pasted into a file, and passing it through the wiki2ini.php script. This extracts the list of required map settings and prefixes it with the general settings, so that only a few manual edits remain necessary to result in a .ini file usable by the scripts.

.ini scripts

skeletonBot.php

Checks map pages' section headers against the reference map skeleton and shows differences in ordering, spelling, and formatting.

conventionsBot.php

Checks map pages for a wide variety of spelling, linking and formatting conventions.

secretsBot.php

Compares DMMPST's list of secret sectors against those in map pages' Secrets sections (or Official subsections) and updates its formatting if necessary, or adds the list if such a section is empty.

pspawnsBot.php

Compares DMMPST's list of DM/CTF player spawns with facings (directions) against those in map pages' "Player spawns" sections and updates their formatting if necessary, or adds the list if such a section is empty.

dmmpstBot.php

Uses DMMPST's output to replace map pages' Statistics, Map data or Things sections.
Optionally provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the pertaining section, prior to submitting the edit.
Alternatively creates new map pages with DMMPST's full skeleton output.

dmsectionBot.php

Uses DMMPST's output to add "Player spawns" and Things subsections (with a short introduction sentence) to the Deathmatch sections for separate arenas within larger maps. The things tables are generated from WADs with the pertaining levels (linedefs and things) cropped down to just the arenas.
For regular maps without separate arenas, only the "Player spawns" subsection is added, along with the Deathmatch section header (before the Statistics section) if not yet present.
Conversely, for maps without deathmatch starts, the Deathmatch header is removed (unless the section is not empty).
Optionally provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the pertaining section or page, prior to submitting the edit.

extraCoopBot.php

Uses DMMPST's logging of additional Things existing in cooperative (for Boom or Hexen flags) or multiplayer mode when compared to single-player mode to add categories Levels with extra monsters in co-op and/or Levels with extra equipment in co-op.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

uploadmapBot.php

Uploads new or updated map view images with description text, of which the exact phrasing about scale or size and cropping is determined from image sets generated via Omgifol drawmaps. New images are uploaded according to the map view pattern.
Always provides interactive viewing of (old and) new contents of the description, prior to submitting the image and description.

uploadmapDmBot.php

Performs the same tasks as uploadmapBot.php, but for deathmatch (arena) map views with spawn points. The images are generated from WADs with the pertaining linedefs cropped down to just the arenas, but their things left intact (because cropping them in SLADE 3 changes their order, which would result in incorrect spawn points numbering).

mapviewBot.php

Checks and updates the map view (link, dimensions, caption, and map spots template) in map pages' Walkthrough sections. Newly uploaded images are linked according to the map view pattern.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the map view lines, prior to submitting the edit.

mapviewDmBot.php

Performs the same tasks as mapviewBot.php, but in Analysis sections for deathmatch maps or in Deathmatch sections for arenas within larger maps, and without the spots template.

navboxBot.php

Checks and adds the navbox line in map pages' intro sections, updates or strips the nocat option in the map template, and strips the skeleton preamble comment.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the intro lines, prior to submitting the edit.

navboxGen.php

Generates one or multiple navboxes for Doom/Doom II/Heretic map pages based on the navboxes settings, and adds or replaces them in the template space.
Always provides interactive viewing of (old and) new contents of each navbox, prior to submitting the edit.

galleryBot.php

Checks and updates the gallery in map pages' "Areas / screenshots" sections. Adds the gallery container (and section) if it's not yet present. Applies the standard parameters and trims unneeded image attributes, if any. Also cleans up some minor page issues, if necessary.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

demolinkBot.php

Checks and updates Compet-n and DSDA links in map pages' "External links" sections, or adds them if applicable. Also standardizes formatting of categories and H2 headers.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

authorBot.php

Adds one or more authors to map pages' intro sections (optionally omitting wikilinks), along with each corresponding author's levels category at the end. Optionally removes the default skeleton text about custom music.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.
If the page already deviates from the skeleton text, then instead shows the initial intro line and all trailing categories.

partimeBot.php

Parses par times from (separately extracted) DEHACKED and/or MAPINFO lumps and appends standard sentences to the first paragraph in map pages' intro sections. Mentions the origin lump unless the same time is specified in both lumps (they differ in e.g. D2TWID). Uses general lumps for the main (P)WAD, but can also handle lumps from map-specific PWADs.
Alternatively, if no par time is defined, removes the initial stub sentence.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the intro, prior to submitting the edit.

comparisonBot.php

Checks and updates the map view gallery for comparing PC maps with console counterpart(s) on the latter's map pages: adds the PSX variant if not yet included, appends platform indicators to map captions, and redimensions the gallery per the aspect ratio of the PC image so that its area approximates 90000 px².
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

mapperMaps.php

In a mapper's article, finds the multi-level WADs and their pertaining maps that are covered in the .ini collection, checks consistency of their names (using approximate matching to detect typos) and authorship both ways, and (re)links them via the {{maplinkgen}} template.
If needed, italicizes a parenthesized string after an individual map entry (usually cooperating authors). Also, formats bullet indentation consistently, and erases trailing whitespace and extraneous empty lines throughout the page. Further, (re)formats DEFAULTSORT and any categories towards the end of the page, one per line.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.
Lastly, lists any maps attributed in the .ini collection that were not found on the mapper's page, suitably formatted for manual addition.
All this can performed on one named page, or on a list of pages loaded from a file. Auxiliary script listCategory.php generates such a list from the Mappers category.

createMapper.php

From the author registration in the .ini collection, generates the text for a manually createable stub page of a mapper, with preformatted name, alias, DEFAULTSORT (if needed) and category. Organizes their covered projects / contributions by year (optionally with annual section headers), with formatted lists of co-authors per map where applicable.

addCategoryBot.php

Appends a new category to all or selected map pages. Optionally inserts it before an existing category.
Always provides interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

Miscellaneous scripts

These scripts don't work on a .ini file and its series of map pages as such, but perform other convenient tasks. Most of these don't automatically update pages via the bot account, and only produce output for manual updates.

coveredWads.php

Collects and lists the names of all single- and multi-level WADs covered by the aforementioned .ini files and scripts, and totals the number of maps included in them. Also totals the number of navboxes created/updated by navboxGen.php, the number of custom things mapping files, and the number of distinct links covered by demolinkBot.php. Its output is the entire "WADs covered so far" section below.

articleSort.php

Finds article, category and template pages whose titles start with an article ("A"/"An"/"The") and shows whether they contain a DEFAULTSORT tag, named map template, category sortkey, or none. Its output is the entire "Pages starting with an article" page. Thanks to Ryan W for the idea.

textmapStats.php

Processes an extracted TEXTMAP lump with regular expressions and a little code to generate statistics in Template:Mapdata format, along with formatted lists of secret sector numbers and deathmatch spawn points (if any). Useful for UDMF maps, which DMMPST doesn't support.

textmapExtra.php

Processes an extracted TEXTMAP lump with regular expressions and some code to collect monster and equipment counts for single-player and cooperative modes, and lists those where the counts differ. Again, useful for UDMF maps.

listWikiLinks.php

Collects links to Wikipedia by templates, interwiki links and direct links, along with the DoomWiki pages they're linked from, in the following namespaces: main, Doom Wiki, Help, File, Category, and Template. Its output is the entire "List of Wikipedia links" page. Requested by Ryan W.

listInterLinks.php

Collects direct links to sites for which Interwikis are defined, along with the DoomWiki pages they're linked from, in the following namespaces: main, Doom Wiki, Help, File, Category, and Template. Its output is the entire "List of Interwiki links" page. Thanks to Gez for the idea.

listExternLinks.php

Collects direct links to sites for which external link templates are defined, along with the DoomWiki pages they're linked from, in the following namespaces: main, Doom Wiki, Help, File, and Category. Its output is the entire "List of templatable links" page. Thanks to Gez for the idea.

linkArticle.php

Performs a search for the specified string in the main and Category namespaces, then in each of the resulting articles wikilinks the first occurrence of the string, if not already linked.
Conversely, unlinkArticle.php removes any wikilinks.
Both always provide interactive comparison between old and new contents of the page, prior to submitting the edit.

appearMaps.sh

From the archived things tables, collects/sorts the maps with the highest count of a given thing and emits a prettytable. Because Holy Hell MAP05 is a superset of MAP01-04, the latter are skipped from the table.

top100MemMaps.php

Processes the maps list of the Top 100 Most Memorable Maps and appends a sentence about the map's place to each page's intro section (taking a trailing 'level stub' into account). Also checks for the presence of the Top100 category.

rankMappers.php

From all the subcategories under category Levels by author, collects the number of pages, then sorts and prints the 50 highest entries. Its output is the entire "Mappers ranked by map count" page. Inspired by the Most Prolific Mappers topic on the Doomworld forums.

listigf

A Bash script to search (most of) the .txt files in the idgames archive for a regular expression, show the matching context segments of each matching file, prompt whether to include the file, for the selected files fetch the title and ID from the pertaining page in the Doomworld idgames frontend, and output a bulleted list sorted by the files' timestamps and grouped by their years. At the prompt, a comma-separated list of map names can be entered (with optional co-authors), which is then included in a bulleted sublist for the pertaining file (with italicized co-authors). Used primarily to generate body-of-work sections for mappers.

And more?

Ideas for future scripts, anyone?

How can you help?

Create overview pages for all WADs to be covered (e.g. Top 100 WADs of All Time, Cacowards, List of notable WADs) with information as accurate and complete as feasible, especially the episodic structure (if any), the list of levels, and the use of custom monsters/weapons (see below).

And after a series of skeleton pages has been created, edit them to add any music and other introductory information, and of course walkthrough and secrets descriptions, speedrunning records, and whatever else you can contribute.

Custom things mapping

For custom things, a description or table of thing types and the new monster/weapon names is particularly helpful, and can be used to provide a mapping file to DMMPST that automatically incorporates the customizations into the Things table. An initial discussion and example mapping was presented for Valiant.

The mapping file ideally links to description(s) of the custom thing(s) on the WAD's overview page. This can be a simple one-liner but preferably contains a brief entry per thing that mentions which original thing is replaced by which custom one, and may be even more elaborate.

So, to help, please provide such descriptions (or provide a quick mapping table on the WAD's talk page) for the following WADs that I already processed previously:

and verify the correctness of Valiant's mapping file. Then I can (re)generate the Things tables on all pertaining map pages.

Going forward, the same is welcome for WADs I am skipping for now because the overview information does not appear to be sufficiently descriptive and complete. This includes:

and (m?)any more I haven't gotten around to yet.

WADs covered so far

The lists below show the single-level and multi-level WADs that have so far been covered (created and/or updated) via XymphBot and its .ini files. Map counts per WAD and various totals are included (state of 2019-11-11 12:56 CST).

Single-level WADs

Multi-level WADs

Statistics