Forum:The coverage of unused content
(see also Forum:The umbrella title for early/beta/unused content)
Unused content on Nitrome Wiki needs to have some guidelines placed on what is covered and how it is organized.
What is unused content? Unused content is content in a game that is not used during gameplay. This has largely been used to refer to sprites/code inside a game that isn't used, however, it can also refer to places in the final game that the player does not see (like in Toxic when you extend the screen and there's some weird circle things on the left side of the screen). With that out of the way, to what extent do we cover unused content? Do we just cover everything inside a game that is unused?
When covering unused content, I think we should post the content on the games' page an just cover content pertaining to the game that is unused. Sometimes there's also content in the game not directly related to the game, but I'll be discussing this later in the post.
Previously when covering unused content there was heavy speculation, but I think we can all agree that this isn't good so content like this won't be covered. When writing about unused content, should we refer to where in the .swf it is found? For images, each image has a name "DefineSprite #", and some even have names in the form of "DefineSprite # <name>". For code, each script has a name and is in a folder so we can easily refer to it.
I think we should refer to where the sprites/code comes from, since for sprites there sure is a lot to go through.
Inside a game's files, while there is sometimes content that is unused pertaining to the game, there is also the possibility of finding content not directly related to the game. This content falls into three categories: assets from other games, interface text to some program used to make the game, and content used to make the game.
Assets from other games I don't think are worth posting on the page, however, it could work for a trivia point like "<Game1> may have been built off assets from <game2> due to <evidence> in <game1>'s files.". Sometimes, Nitrome reuses menus and other related content from other games before this game has that interface made for. Outside of a possible trivia point, I don't think we should cover this.
The only times I think we could cover this is when something unused from another game appears in another game (like the Dirk Valentine message icon unused in Rubble Trouble), but then maybe this also isn't notable.
Interface text is stuff like "Sound FX manager" and "Music manager". Older Nitrome games have this and unused text for the names of Music (music1, music2, menu, etc.) and sound effects (hop, punch, icicle crash). Sometimes this text is coloured based on the game (like brown for Skywire), but other times it's just black text. I don't think we should cover it because it wasn't intended to be used at all, though maybe if we had a section for "development tools" or made an article for development tools we could use it.
Content used to make the game is coding and/or graphics used in making the game. Many Nitrome games still have that game's level editor's coding (sometimes) and graphics still in the game, and even sprites of the assembled level editor. I think we could possibly cover this under some other section (like a level 2 section titled "Level editor"), or perhaps on an article titled "Level editors".
So, that's what I'm suggesting. --Talk to NOBODY 
22:50, December 6, 2014 (UTC)