User talk:Nescientist/Project Trace

Template format

A couple issues that arose previously with {{User:TehPerson/learnlist/prevgen8}} that I realized no one ever thought to communicate:

• The Generation columns are bolded twice over. Once with the header ! and once with '''.
• The links to the past learnset subsections are probably not needed. They could even be confusing if a Pokemon learns a move in more than one way. If people can just get to the page, they can search it themselves.
• Also, the sorting has a couple issues. First off, the numbers just don't sort right. Second, for Pokemon like the Alolan examples, it doesn't work at all. This is probably due to hiding some of the Generation columns, a problem I've had in the past. (I believe the page just thinks the sort button for the second column applies to the second column it has data for, even if it's hidden.) That's one reason it's better to just "erase" the column/cell entirely if you can.

There was also a suggestion that the Generation columns could just be turned into checkmarks ({{yes}}). The column "header" could link to the page instead.

Also, I'll note that #ifexpr is generally a parser we want to avoid using a lot. It'd probably be fine for the past pages, but on the main species page, it could potentially be a problem.

I'm also curious: when you're doing Gen III transfers, how are you going to deal with the fact that individual moves don't actually have a physical/special attribute? Just use the one appropriate to the type and call it good?

Tiddlywinks (talk) 00:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I know the questions were not directed to me, but I think I can add a thing or two. For generations I to III, I believe the idea is to keep the pattern we already have at the learnset subpages for these generations, without putting the damage category. We also would only have to consider this when transferring from gen I to II or from gen II to I, as you can never transfer to gen III.

About checkmarks vs generation numbers, I have a preference for the generation numbers. They are at least just as easy to read, and they follow the same idea we have for listing game abbreviations in move tutor learnsets. And personally, I also think they look more interesting than plain checkmarks, but that's just me.

Another unrelated thing: we should probably have a small list of related talk page sections and user subpages linked in the project page. Suic (talk) 01:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, right, I was just trying to figure out where it might be an issue (thinking that maybe Gen I/II wasn't applicable since you could trade back and forth) and I completely forgot Gen III just wasn't connected.

That's a good point about the tutor templates on the past pages, I didn't catch that. Tiddlywinks (talk) 01:43, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The project page is just pure basics at this point. I'll be updating it (basically to a more useful v1.0) soon, and I'll take care that includes referencing. Nescientist (talk) 18:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The project page is now updated, and we should keep it updated.

Who's working on the other points? Can you please agree/decide on which templates are being worked on, and add them to the WIP section on the project page? Nescientist (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Event moves

Between Suic and myself, we've had some ideas what to do with special/event moves (see here). We basically believe that those should be differentiated, most specifically that

1. Non-transferable moves shouldn't be listed at all (see WIP on these below)
2. Moves only available by events should probably be listed as tranferable, but should indicate as such. This is because it's gone for good if you don't have access to the event-only move; my exact wording/condition/definition was "Can I get it with brand-new copies (or would I need to have done/received something in the past*)?"
3. If a move is available by events in only some generations (such as we're in GenVIII, the moves is event-exclusive in GenVII but TM in GenVI), something should be done about it (waiting for ideas/discussion for these two; it might depend on how common that is)
4. Being event-exclusive in a generation should not exclude that move from that generation's transfer-only list

Are there objections? Is there anything missing? Are there any good/better ideas on how exactly to deal with them? Nescientist (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Result data

I think the initial movelist at TehPerson's userpages (linked on the project page) should be improved in the following ways:

1. It currently includes data from a public database; it should contain more comprehensive data
2. It should incorporate whatever the result of the above section is and use the finalized template
3. It shoudln't bold/italicize moves that deal direct damage and Hidden Power
4. It incorrectly lists moves that aren't transferable, we'd need to research what exactly those are (see below)
5. They're not complete, obviously

I'm working on these (for the first one, I'll try to pull Bulbapedia data), and plan to update the userpages accordingly. Automating what needs to be bolded will probably be easier than italicizing, which might have to be done manually. Or maybe I'll need a list of future move types per species or something!?

Are there objections? Is this missing something? Nescientist (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Is there a defining feature of the moves that aren't affected by STAB? I already have lists of all the Pokemon learnset pages by type, it's just a matter of defining a parameter that can easily check to see if STAB is triggered. So for example I can say all Water moves learned by Goldeen get STAB, it's just a matter of needing to know what moves attract STAB I think, like do all moves with a listed power attract STAB? I can easily create stuff to exclude the direct damage moves too. --Spriteit (talk) 08:33, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think so, the best "algorithm" I can think of is any special or physical move that matches the Pokémon's type(s), except those in the category (or subcategories) and Hidden Power. (Return, for example, is mdash but STAB.)

As for Pokémon types, you can easily just get them from existing learnlist header/footer template params on the page at hand anyway, so I never considered that to be a problem. The hard part is getting evo's types for the italics, maybe the easiest way is to do that manually. Nescientist (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Transfer

I think we should really mainspace User:Tiddlywinks#Transfer.

As can be seen on its talk page, there's not much that's missing before mainspacing. I believe we should mainspace this now; it'll make a great link target from the transfer-only section's header, for example. Also, as mentioned below, it could be used to display what cannot be transfered. Who's willing to get this done? Nescientist (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Non-transferable moves

Someone may have to do some research here, but I believe those include at least

1. HM moves (possibly not all of them, and not in all generations?)
2. For Generation I (Time Capsule two-way transfer), any move introduced in Generation II
3. Possibly some field moves in some generations
4. Event-only moves learned in Generation I or II for later generations (because GB cartridge Pokémon cannot be transfered to GenIII+ games)

An exhaustive list/table would be great. I'm not sure, maybe this would go to the transfer page as well, possibly together with species that cannot be transferred? Nescientist (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Having such a list would be very useful. I think I started looking into this a while ago, I'll see if I can help to get this going. But if the list turns out to be too large, maybe we should include only the general rules and the special cases in the transfer page, instead of the whole list. Let's see.

Something else I just thought about is how we should deal with moves that cannot be used in Generation VIII. Should we even include them as transfer-only moves? If so, we should definitely have them marked as unusable. I'm also not sure if these moves even have power, PP and accuracy listed in Sword and Shield, but if they don't it would probably be better to list them as N/A rather than the values from generation VII (assuming we decide to include them at all). Suic (talk) 22:14, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I believe they do have values assigned, yes.

I think I'd just list them anyway. Also, there are now updates/DLCs that may make them available/usable in the future; I think that was the case for Kinesis, for example. (I haven't looked into it in much detail, so I'd be interested in SnorlaxMonster's opinion, or that of anyone else who has.) Nescientist (talk) 19:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I can actually get all this done in a day, but firstly...

• I need to make sure my cross-generational data is complete and accurate.
• Need a list of edge cases (e.g. which gens do not allow HM transfers)
• Regarding moves that have been removed in Generation VIII -- should I have them totally excluded or simply commented out (e.g. with the <!-- --> tags around them), as we saw IoA re-introduced some moves, though most were just signature moves of the re-added Pokémon.

I already have all the learnsets in my data to do all the cross-referencing, but it may be missing event-exclusive moves, which can probably just be manually added in. I've already ran my script for the Gen VII and VIII sets, all it takes is for me to re-run them with the other generations, with some minor tweaks. I guess all of this has already been covered above, just wanted to give an update on my end. (Honestly been pre-occupied with other stuff and forgot about this for a month.) TehPerson (talk) 04:37, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not a big fan of manually adding in event moves, since that's obviously error-prone, and also requires people to actually do it. As I've said above, I'm automatically grabbing Bulbapedia data anyway.

I also think we're not in need of checking your spreadsheet, my userpage(s) and template(s) already got that covered. (But just FYI, if you desperately want a spreadsheet, Spriteit had done something similar, and that we checked.)

My best idea is still to coordinate. Please have a look at the above sections (maybe particularly the first one at this time). Those are the bottleneck, I believe the rest, as you correctly point out, really can be done "in a day", basically. Nescientist (talk) 18:16, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I'd suggest commenting out the ones that are missing from Gen VIII, since we don't know what will come back and what won't for sure till the games are fully out. --Spriteit (talk) 08:33, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Just for my understanding: you can actually get them, see all the assigned power values etc., they just don't work, right? Because that's why I argued in the section right above that I'd just list them anyway. (If there's a majority for hiding them regardless, that's also fine to me.) Nescientist (talk) 16:36, 29 July 2020 (UTC)