Category talk:Skill animations

Changes

I would like to suggest some changes to this category:

• Rename it "Animations", in case we need to document more than just skill animations in the future (on GWW, for example, we also have animations for the professions' dances and some other things).
• Move it from the "Screenshots" category to the main "Arena Net images", since animations aren't exactly screenshots, and to make the category tree less complex.
• Add a "Warrior skill animations" category and a "Elementalists skill animations" category, moving the proper animations to those subcategories. After release, we may add animations for all skills, like we are currently doing at GWW.

Thoughts? Erasculio 02:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. –alistic 03:07, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) On the first point, I agree, though we'll have to be sure to add sub-categories afterward of course.

On the second, I thought the template for the ANet images category said it was a "screenshot" anyway, unless it's been changed from the GW1W template. (Or is there not a template yet? I don't see one.) I think it should be a more general "ArenaNet content" category with "ANet videos" "ANet images" etc. sub-categories. Doesn't make much difference to me, though.

On the third, also agree. --Kyoshi (Talk) 03:17, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

@Erasculio, so then will we have a separate section for Racial skills when the time comes? Eive Windgrace 03:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Considering those won't fit into any profession category, I think that makes the most sense. --Kyoshi (Talk) 04:02, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) @Kyoshi: We have actually copied the template from GW1W, but by default it just says "image" (as seen here) instead of "screenshot"; most images have been classified under the template by something else, like "icon", "screenshot" or "concept art", though. We would add "animation" to the possible values.

@Eive: Sure. I have no idea of how many racial skills we will have, but depending on the number it may be a good idea to split those into "Human skill animations", "Charr skill animations", etc. I doubt there will be that many racial skills, though; I guess we will decide it for sure when we know how many skills the game will have. However, I don't think it would be necessary to split, say, the warrior skills by weapon, considering how few skills each weapon will have. Erasculio 04:07, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

No objections here, then. Sounds good. --Kyoshi (Talk) 04:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Same, no objections. Eive Windgrace 04:52, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Agreed too. And it makes me sad to say that, but we should probably remove the animations from skill pages too. Chriskang 07:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Skill animations are an important feature of GW2, I think they should stay on the skill's pages. Eive Windgrace 08:18, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Low bandwidths just can't handle that. Most internet guidelines recommend that no page takes more than 30 seconds to load. That is about a 75kb size limit. Even cropped as hell, our animated-gifs can't be that small. The method used in GW1W (a link at the bottom of the skill infobox) is fine IMO. Chriskang 10:00, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to put it in a separate link, why not just make it similar to some Wikipedia articles, where you click on it to activate the animation? --Amannelle 12:43, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

See gw1:Dance as an example of (something similar to) that. pling 13:35, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The idea of a still image redirecting to the gif seems quite good. Just curious: why isn't it like that for skill animations on GW1W? Chriskang 13:53, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this category should be renamed "Animations" - Category:Skill animations should be a subcategory of Category:Animations (which would be the root for all types of animations and be categorised in Category:ArenaNet images). We could then separate the individual skill animations to subcats like Category:Elementalist skill animations and Category:Warrior skill animations. pling 13:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, that makes more sense... Why not just make a new category instead of renaming this one? :) –alistic 17:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

@Chriskang: Well for one, people would argue about the point from which to take the still image capture. Second, and more importantly, we don't even have all of the skill animations recorded yet, so the half-or-so skills without animations would be awkwardly missing an image, and the half-or-so with would awkwardly have it. Feigned consistency is easier when the lack of consistency is subtle. =P

@Pling: Actually, that does seem more appropriate. --Kyoshi (Talk) 04:58, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think people argued on GWW about which animation-stills were appropriate; I doubt that'd be a problem. Also, it's better to have as much appropriate content as we can than it is to be consistent for the sake of consistency. pling 16:51, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

So, do we all agree here to have still images on skill pages that link to animated GIFs? Chriskang 17:01, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

@Pling: Not "argued" but "would argue", as we never used skill animation stills (for this purpose) on GW1W. Again, the second point is more important. We could give it a shot I suppose. --Kyoshi (Talk) 03:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Instead of a still image redirecting to a animated gif, we could do something like the animated gif here –alistic 05:21, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This is exactly how it should work, Balistic. However, there's a bug on this wiki that makes thumbnails animated when they should be still. Compare the thumbnails on those 2 pages: gw1:File:Crippled animation.gif and File:Final Thrust animation.gif. See the difference? Poke wrote here that he was inquiring for the issue. I don't know if he really did it though or if he got an answer. Meanwhile, another still image that links to the gif (like here) seems like a good fix. You can even choose which frame to display. Chriskang 14:04, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

That is strange. I still would prefer the system used on GW1W for animation links from skill pages, but I'm willing to give this a shot and see how it works, once we get the skills to record. --Kyoshi (Talk) 17:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Upload limit increase

Now that our upload limit is 15mB (no idea when that happened, so call me slow if necessary) could we increase the size of the skill animations? They seem so tiny. If we want to keep slow loaders from being overwhelmed, could we make a "File:Meteor Shower animation large.gif" distinction? Just something to think about. --Kyoshi (Talk) 02:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Engineer Skill Animations

Do we have them in a gif format yet? I think it'd be nice if we added animations to all skill pages that have been displayed in a video. --AdventurerPotatoe - 15:31, 2 June 2011 (UTC)