This page contains the style and editing guide for the Subterranauts Wiki.
This style guide is currently based on the Lethal Company Wiki model for inspiration to maintain professionalism.
General Guidelines
When adding information to the wiki, consider the following.
- Is the information speculative?
- Is it a unique interpretation?
- Does it lack a reliable source?
- Is the information related to a modification?
- Is the addition unverified or untested?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the content does NOT belong here. Speculation and non-canon interpretations presented on a wiki can easily be taken as fact and are ultimately more harmful than good.
Perspective and Vocabulary
All content in the wiki should be written in third-person and avoid words like "you," "your," and "I." Articles should be written as if the wiki was a handbook for employees, meaning the reader should be referred to as “employee”. The term “player” should not be used, unless there's a compelling reason to do so.
Media Guidelines
- Uploaded images should contain a general description as their file name as it is the primary thing you see when the image page is displayed.
- Uploaded images should preferably also be added to the #wiki-pictures channel in the community discord.
- Images should depict the main focus of their page.
- The focus of the image should be fully in frame and not partially off-screen
- Unrelated objects such as a different entity should ideally not be part of the image's composition.
- Images should exclusively represent vanilla mechanics.
- Images can contain visualizations or overlays indicating a point of interest, examples being visible hitboxes or pathfinding.
- Images should not be blurry.
- Removing the HUD is preferable but not required.
Modded Content
The wiki exclusively contains information and data about the vanilla game, without any mods installed. For this reason, noting down information gathered from public lobbies, where mods might be present, is strongly discouraged. Especially in public lobbies, where it's impossible to tell if anyone has a content modifying mod that might alter your game experience.
Debugging Tools
The following mods are recommended when testing and verifying game mechanics and functionalities for the wiki.
- Unity Explorer: Very powerful Unity debugging tool to inspect objects, modify values, execute code at runtime, etc.
- Other useful tools to look into the game's source code and game files.
- AssetRipper: A tool for extracting assets and code from serialized Unity files and converting them into readable files.
- AssetStudioMod: Used to extract assets and directly examine them, meshes can be imported from the game and into Blender to make renders with.
- DnSpy / DotPeek: Tools to disassemble the game's code back into readable source code files.
Citations
When citations are necessary, avoid citing the following. Circular Sources
- Mainly IGN's guides among others these often use wikis like Fandom for their information, as a result this falls under user-generated content making it unreliable.
Paywalled Sources
- Anything locked behind a Patreon.
- Linking sources that bypass any paywalls is not allowed.
AI-generated content
- Typically, AI-generated contains a lot of nonsense that tries to make itself seem knowledgeable, but in reality it is very unreliable. Subsequently, Fandom's controversial Quick Answers should be reviewed as soon as they are implemented.
Other Wikis
- Citing other wikis that cover the same topic is not allowed for multiple reasons. On one hand, it's never for certain if the information from other wikis is reliable . On the other hand, Fandom does not allow any kind of links to other wikis.
Social Media
- If citing a discord post is necessary (e.g., a developer's statement), you can use an image hosting site like Pasteboard to upload a screenshot of the relevant conversation or message. Ideally, the screenshot should not be modified in any way.
Opening Blurb
- The opening blurb of a page should always have the first instance of the page's name bolded. All other instances should lack any formatting unless it's to add emphasis, other names such as internal names or commonly used names among the community may be included.
- Unofficial names are discouraged, but it is generally accepted to use names that are very common within the player base as an alias for an entity or another object.