Guidelines

This page lays out the expected guidelines for editing the Wiki, as well as some helpful instruction for creating/uploading quality content.

Please try to follow these guidelines as closely as possible when making changes, and feel free to reach out to Coolant if you have any questions.

General Guidelines and Information

•Editing requires creating a user account.

•Text should be written in a professional tone, using professional language, in the third-person perspective, and as neutral as possible.

•Sometimes a subjective tone can be useful when discussing something like mechanics or synergy between upgrades.

•Example: "While often not required, dashing can be very useful in quickly dodging projectiles and especially useful in repositioning."

•This is, by definition, a subjective statement, but the community would largely agree with it, so it's acceptable for the Wiki.

•Sentences should attempt to be relatively brief, to the point, and immediately relevant to the topic of the page/section.

•We're not too strict on brevity as long as the sentence structure flows well.

•Restructuring of pages/sections should be discussed in the Discord before changes are made.

•This (especially) includes adding currently unplanned pages.

•Remember you can always type up the contents of a page in a text editor before we even have the page up, so this shouldn't stall you out. The information is likely useful somewhere, even if a new page doesn't get made, as well!

•When creating/editing a page make sure to refer to other like-pages to ascertain what the formatting should be. For instance, if you're editing a boss page, reference an existing one.

•When uploading images, check images of a similar category to ascertain if there's a naming schema for them.

•For example, enemies are named in the following way: "GhostEnemy.png" or "SkullEnemy.png"

•If a Category is missing for a page, try to add it to an existing category or we can discuss creating a new category.

•Add the category at the bottom of the page.

•The following should be added at the bottom of every page, two newlines after the rest of the content:

•NavTable template

•Category (if applicable)

Where to Start

Not sure where to start making edits? Check out the Work Checklist!

Also check out the following categories:
Category:Stub
Category:Images Needed
Category:Videos Needed

What is needed should be posted in the Discussion section of any pages listed there. On that note, if you notice that something is missing, mention it in the Discussion section of the relevant page and place the page in the category relevant to its needs.

Uploading Ingame Screenshots

Ingame screenshots are likely the least troublesome images to capture, but there are still some notes to consider.

•When capturing a screenshot, make sure that all visual modifiers are turned off (scanlines, CRT mode, etc.).

•Crop anything that is not the focal point of the image.

•For instance, if we wanted to capture an image of a shop, it would be unnecessary to capture the HUD, screenborders, or even the sidewalls of the room in the image itself.

•Try to keep the resolution of the image relatively low. They will be quite small when placed onto a page, so a large image is likely unnecessary.

Ripping and Scaling Sprites

Ripping sprites directly from the game is often the easiest way to get high-quality images of specific objects/enemies/etc.

There are multiple tools and methods that can be used to achieve this, but here I will cover those that I have found easiest for me.

Ripping

1) Download the latest version of the UndertaleModTool

2) Extract the contents into a new folder, and run UndertaleModTool.exe.

3) Click 'File' and then 'Open', locate Monolith's data.win file, and open it. a) This can be found in Monolith's root folder. By default, the location should look something like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Monolith

4) An alert comes up, don't worry about it, just press okay.

5) You can now search for the game's sprites.

6) Enter a generic search term into the bar into the search bar. If it belongs to the filename of a sprite you will find the results filtered in the sprites dropdown.

7) Double-click a sprite to view it.

8) If it is the sprite you desire, you can click the "Export all frames..." button to export all frames related to the selected sprite to a location of your choice.

9) You've now successfully ripped a sprite!

Scaling

There are many ways to go about scaling sprites. For an easy-to-use fairly hands off approach that allows you to scale many at once, you can use this tool. Typically for the purposes of the Wiki, I scale sprites up by 2-3x. If you happen to make something too big, don't worry too much, you can always reduce its size upon placing it on a page.

If you use some other method of altering their size, then the most important thing to note is that you should use 'Nearest Neighbor' scaling. This will make sure that the sprites retain their crisp appearance.

Do NOT add sprites that have been improperly scaled as they will look blurry.

A Final Note on Sprites

One last thing! When you start exploring the sprites for the game, you will quickly realize that many objects/enemies/bosses/etc are composed of many sprites, not just one. These require effort or additional ingenuity to work with.

In general, if you can capture a screenshot of what you want and snip it out of the image, this is acceptable as long as the image is of a high quality and relatively large.

In some cases, you may have to just construct something yourself with the sprites given. No particular tips for that; it requires just a bit of experience with a photo editor.

Uploading Video (GIFs)

GIFs uploaded to the Wiki should be of the highest quality possible while trying to maintain some semblance of size control. See the following tutorial for an idea of what is expected and for some instruction on how to achieve nice results:

1. Take a 60fps, high quality capture of the game in fullscreen.

Turn off any filters in-game to present the clearest image possible.

ie no crt mode, no aiming laser, etc

Try to not take too many hits.

One or two hits is fine, but showing how the attacks can be dodged is also very important as well.

If you're not sure what software to use, I've simply used OBS in the past or more recently Shadowplay. As long as you can get a high quality, 60fps video use whatever.

2. Open video in an editor of your choice. I have Photoshop, so I use that.

3. Watch the video and identify discrete attack patterns.

Even if multiple attacks always happen in the same sequence, I would consider them separate from each other if their patterns are distinct.

4. Separate each attack in its own clip and delete any extra clips after you have determined that you have clips of all attacks.

5. Open a new tab/file in your video editor.

6. Cut and paste one of your attack clips into the new tab.

7. Crop the footage with a 1:1 ratio. All gifs should end up square except, with little exception.

When cropping, simply try to keep the boss and its attack pattern on-screen as much as possible, also showing the patterns dispersal as much as possible, and try to avoid showing the player.

Probably obvious, but also make sure you're keeping the boss fairly centered. If it's a pattern that involves the boss moving around, just try to capture all of the space it moves around.

8. Export the current clip as a 150x150 gif, maintaining the highest quality possible. In Photoshop you can use the "Save for Web (Legacy)" feature.

9. Repeat for all remaining clips in the original editor tab and upload to the Wiki as you would any other image!

Naming schema is typically something like "GuardianAttack1", "GuardianHardAttack1", etc.

10. Get annoyed when someone later informs you that you missed an attack.

Automating Video to GIF Processing

This is a more streamlined method of converting all of the video files into the proper formatting needed for the gifs found on this wiki, as there will be a LOT of gifs to cover for each of the boss attacks and more. This one completely bypasses needing to use software like GIMP or even video software.

NOTE: Make sure to download ffmpeg, and make sure you can use the command window. It is likely you can use PowerShell for this and you can use that if at all possible. Just Shift Select the file folder that your GIFs are in to open either Command or PowerShell. It is required that you move the ffmpeg folder to the proper location in order for everything to work.

Getting Command to work on Win10 Moving ffmpeg to the proper folders

First you make a palette in the command box. Hit enter to generate your palette.

ffmpeg -i “SAMPLE.mp4” -filter_complex "[0:v] palettegen" palette.png

Then in a new command, you convert everything using the code below. All SAMPLE and 00:00:XX text should be changed to the proper file name and timestamps. The SS is the start time of your gif and -t is how long the video should be after the start time. This means you can just record the raw video and use those specific times to adjust the video.

For Videos specific to Chaosgod and Monolith or any other unrelated videos:

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:XX -i SAMPLE.mp4 -t 00:00:XX -filter_complex "[0:v] fps=30,scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos,crop=150:180,split [a][b];[a] palettegen [p];[b][p] paletteuse" SAMPLE.gif

For all other boss videos:

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:XX -i SAMPLE.mp4 -t 00:00:XX -filter_complex "[0:v] fps=30,scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos,crop=150:150:85:180,split [a][b];[a] palettegen [p];[b][p] paletteuse" SAMPLE.gif

When you hit enter, your video should now be generated into a gif! When you’re done with a palette for a certain boss fight (you can reuse the same palette for a singular boss) or video, you can toss away the palette. If you are having trouble with the prompts or ffmpeg in general, please contact Lilac Vrt Olligoci in the Monolith Discord. They will walk you through it.

Additional Video Notes

• The 150x150 size was chosen since gif thumbnails will only autoplay if they are small enough.

• Typically, we still scale the gif down to 115x115 on the boss page itself.

• Despite scaling it down, it's nice to have the bigger file there in case people want to get a closer look at an attack on the image's page.

• When recording attacks, be aware that many enemies have phases where new attacks are introduced.

• Most of the time these phases occur when the boss has 66% and 33% health remaining respectively.

• Some bosses have entirely new attacks or death throes on Hard mode.

• If you would like to record all normal/hard mode variants of attacks you're welcome to.

• Presently, I have only included video of Hard attacks that are entirely distinct from any of the Normal attacks.

Reuploading Images and Videos

Something nonintuitive that has, in the past, stumped many new users is how reuploading works.

When you reupload something, you may not notice any changes to the original. In fact, you may think the reupload did not work at all.

This is due to your browser already having the original version stored in its local cache, preventing it from reloading that and showing the newly reuploaded version.

To fix this, simply clear your browser's cache. You don't need to clear your cookies or anything, just the cache. Once you've done this, you should see the changes reflected.

Star of Providence
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