OCR Mascot Bios - 20 more up for grabs!

[Linearity]

rgr that 10char.

[Liontamer]

I will take care of instructions tonight, guaranteed. I'm free until Sunday night, so I'll be able to give this my full attention so that you guys are set. I'd shoot for New Year's if you really want a deadline, but there's really no rush of any kind, IMO.

[Dafydd]

Yeah, I don't think we'll make it in time for Christmas anymore... heheh. But new years, no problem.

[Liontamer]

Ok, so here's the basic layout, now that I've finally done the edits on Toyota Supra.

To create a new article, type in the name of the article you want to create into the Go/Search box. It should tell you the page doesn't exist and ask if you want to create it. Details are critical, so make sure spelling and () usage is correct.

vBulletin format does not work on MediaWiki. For most things, you can use replace commands for easy fixes, but URL stuff will be more cumbersome. Please note the various text formatting methods:

==Header==

===Sub-Header===

<br/> (single line breaks; not needed if you press Return twice to space out separate lines)

''Italicized text''

'''Bold text'''

'''''Bold Italicized text'''''

<u>Underlined text</u> (almost no reason to use this, so please run any underlined text usage by me)

[http://www.randomURL.com Displayed link name]

Article: '''Paul Watkins ([http://www.ocremix.org/forums/member.php?u=10791 watkinzez])''' <br/>

Pictured from: ''Need for Speed: Underground'' <br/>

Created by: [http://www.toyota.com/ Toyota] <br/>

First appearance: 1979 (non-game) <br/>

== Bio ==

The Supra line of cars extends over 20 years of history and four iterations of Toyota's model. Unveiled in 1979, the Supra was designed as a spin-off sports car, inspired from the company's Celica line. It wasn’t until 1986 that the Supra was officially recognized as its own model, though to this day influences from its origins still stand. Supra is a Latin derivation that means to "stand above, over, to be greater than."

Four models of the car were made over the 20 years after its inception, ranging from Mark I to IV. The first, made with intent to compete with the popular Datsune, was not far off the Celica liftback. The second iteration redesigned the front of the car and adjusted its length, allowing for a larger engine. It was the Mark III which separated the Supra into its own line of car, keeping its rear wheel drive and adding a more powerful engine than its 2.8 and 3.0L predecessors. Over the latter years of the '80s, the Supra received new tail lights, a front bumper, badging and side trim amongst other features.

The Mark IV, featured in ''Need for Speed: Underground'' as shown above, took a big leap for the Supra’s direction as a major sports car. The 1993 release featured two new engines, the turbocharged variant able to reach 60mph from rest in 4.6 seconds over a quarter of a mile. The IV's twin turbos operated in sequential mode rather than the standard parallel mode, acting as a gear to increase speed with reduced lag. This resulted in boost and enhanced torque as much as 1800rpm. Toyota also took extra measures to reduce weight of the car, using hollow carpet fibers and aluminum for the hood. It was in 2002 that the company stopped production in Japan altogether, citing a decline in sales. Only recently there have been hints of a revival, targeting different directions in the car.

== Selected game appearances ==

=== PlayStation ===

*[http://www.ocremix.org/game/gran-turismo-ps1/ ''Gran Turismo''] (1998)

*''Gran Turismo 2'' (1999)

=== PlayStation 2 ===

*''Gran Turismo 3'' (2001)

*''Need for Speed: Underground'' (2003)

*''Gran Turismo 4'' (2005)

== References ==

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Supra Wikipedia - "Toyota Supra"]

*[http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/supra.html Toyota.com - Vehicles: Supra]

*[http://www.toyota-supra.info/models/ Toyota Supra History]

[[Category:Mascots]]

__NOTOC__

1. I will run this by djpretzel, but, for now, decide among yourselves how the article writers are to be named. For example, there can be:

Liontamer

Larry Oji

Larry "Liontamer" Oji

Larry Oji (Liontamer)

I'd probably recommend the last one. And yes, we'd have to eventually track down everyone's real name. I could certainly help with that if any problems came up there.

2. Do not include any image links to the mascot pictures in the article. Hold onto the info in the TXT files, but don't use the images for now. They'd have to be uploaded into the Wiki; there's no need to do that or it would just add another picture to be loaded alongside the randomized mascot. I'll holler at djp re: figuring out a way to display the selected mascot in the usual location at the top right. I'll let you know if plans change on that.

3. There is no linking to scans of copyrighted material, particularly game manual scans. Any linked references to manuals, unlink them.

4. Please make sure [[Category:Mascots]] and __NOTOC__ are at the very bottom of every article page (but not the redirects).

5. Every mascot will also need a redirect page from their assigned mascot number. For the Supra, I made the page OCR Mascot 121. Everything will use this naming schema, including three digits for the number (e.g. OCR Mascot 001).

The text for the redirect to the Supra article from the OCR Mascot 121 article is:

#REDIRECT [[Toyota Supra]]

So just remember to use #REDIRECT [[Official name of article]].

6. Don't edit anything else other than Mascots. Punishable by death.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

For the quickest way to reach me when I'm around, I recommend logging into IRC at the EnterTheGame network and sending me a private message.

I will be checking in on progress and making edits as needed. I may even add some myself depending on what's available. Let me know if there are any problems at all; I'm available all weekend including all day today/Friday. Enjoy and thank you!

[Polo]

Comprehensive and much obliged, Super Moderator sir. And thanks for driving the Toyota Supra through the carwash . I just have a few questions...

1) On the Toyota bio page, the Article - First appearance lines are all in one line; is this intentional?

2) Does text within a pair of 'single quotes' remain unaffected?

3) How do we input underlined text?

4) Would you count FAQs as copyrighted material (and should they be unlinked)?

There are 16 writers total who have written at least one bio. Half of them I do not know their real names (OmegaMe, Psychotic Ninja, Daethar, The Instrument of GAWD, Bummerdude, chez dogulov, Kal aMari, and Miletus), so if my colleagues agree on the 4th Article / author option, we (or at least I) could use help digging up the dirt on these folks. (But personally I don't see the harm in the first option.)

To Dafydd and Linearity: Since we're removing game manual links (*sob*), do you think we should cut the "replacementdocs - " prefix from the labels as well?

I'll get started after I get some sleep.

[watkinzez]

chez dogulov is Ben Cherian. Others, I can't help there.

[The Coop]

Since it's been brought up, I wish to only have my screen name listed. Thanks.

[Liontamer]

Comprehensive and much obliged, Super Moderator sir. And thanks for driving the Toyota Supra through the carwash . I just have a few questions...

1) On the Toyota bio page, the Article - First appearance lines are all in one line; is this intentional?

2) Does text within a pair of 'single quotes' remain unaffected?

3) How do we input underlined text?

4) Would you count FAQs as copyrighted material (and should they be unlinked)?

1) yes; use <br> for line breaks

2) yes

3) <u></u>, though I don't see any reason to use it offhand

4) linking those is fine

[Dafydd]

3) How do we input underlined text?

Where do we use it? Links are automatically colored, not underlined, in wiki articles. What else do we want underlines for? I honestly don't remember...

To Dafydd and Linearity: Since we're removing game manual links (*sob*), do you think we should cut the "replacementdocs - " prefix from the labels as well?

Yeah, I think so. If we can't link to the website, no need to mention it. We still keep the manuals as sources, of course (but without links).

EDIT: Ok, made one, http://www.ocremix.org/info/OCR_Mascot_071. Can the "contents" section be removed? It feels like a waste of vertical space for so short an article.

Oh, and thanks for finally letting us get started on this!

[Liontamer]

Yeah, I think so. If we can't link to the website, no need to mention it. We still keep the manuals as sources, of course (but without links).

Yeah, obviously don't use ReplacementsDocs in the title listing. I would just say to keep in mind a consistent, accurate way of naming the instruction manuals. If scans are available, take a look at what they say. Not that I'm looking, but if an NES manual usually say "[Game Title] Official Instruction Manual" or whatever, then you have a good naming schema for referenced manuals of NES games.

EDIT: Ok, made one, http://www.ocremix.org/info/OCR_Mascot_071. Can the "contents" section be removed? It feels like a waste of vertical space for so short an article.

Just add __NOTOC__ to the very bottom of every article and that will remove the automatically generated Table of Contents.

[Dafydd]

Ok, thanks.

[Linearity]

3. There is no linking to scans of copyrighted material, particularly game manual scans. Any linked references to manuals, unlink them.

I am disappointed that this is the first we have heard about this. We all worked very hard finding and reading through those manuals, inserting and double-checking the links to them, and replacing the links and checking them when GameManuals.net went down in favor of replacementdocs. The time to tell us that we shouldn't bother with it was before we did all of this work, not now, when everything is done and polished.

I don't think that we should refer to the manuals as sources if we don't want to link to them. If we deny that we have access to the manuals, what's the point of referring someone to them who likely has no access either? The only purpose would be to hint at replacementdocs without actually mentioning it.

[Linearity]

As for splitting up the work, should we do as Polo said?

Lin and I can just reach into my text file and grab 52 articles each, and Dafydd can add Cloud to his list (alongside the 51 in the first 5 batches).

Before you do too much work hand-fixing URLs, I think I might have a method of doing it automatically. Larry told me that using the command Ctrl+H, you can have Notepad replace one string of text in a file with another string. For example, you can replace "" with the " character to make all of the bold text show up as bold in MediaWiki.

I'll figure it out tomorrow, but we might be able to do URLs automatically too, if we do these automatic replacements in the right order.

[The Coop]

I am disappointed that this is the first we have heard about this. We all worked very hard finding and reading through those manuals, inserting and double-checking the links to them, and replacing the links and checking them when GameManuals.net went down in favor of replacementdocs. The time to tell us that we shouldn't bother with it was before we did all of this work, not now, when everything is done and polished.

I don't think that we should refer to the manuals as sources if we don't want to link to them. If we deny that we have access to the manuals, what's the point of referring someone to them who likely has no access either? The only purpose would be to hint at replacementdocs without actually mentioning it.

Well, since linking to ROMs, free mp3s of music that's being actively sold, and stuff like that is forbidden on OCR, I'm not sure why you thought linking to copyrighted text and images from a printed book would be fine, Linearity. It may be a different medium, but it is a visual scanning of material that belongs to a company. To the best of my knowledge, those sites didn't get permission to scan those manuals, so I can understand why linking to it's a no-no.

To be honest, I'm not even sure why we had to link to them when writing the bios. I was under the assumption that all they were there for was just backing up bio info so we could prove we weren't simply pulling it out of our ass

[Liontamer]

Well, since linking to ROMs, free mp3s of music that's being actively sold, and stuff like that is forbidden on OCR, I'm not sure why you thought linking to copyrighted text and images from a printed book would be fine, Lin. It may be a different medium, but it is a visual scanning of material that belongs to a company. To the best of my knowledge, those sites didn't get permission to scan those manuals, so I can understand why linking to it's a no-no.

To be honest, I'm not even sure why we had to link to them when writing the bios. I was under the assumption that all they were there for was just backing up bio info so we could prove we weren't simply pulling it out of our ass

Like Coop mentioned, we don't allow ROM and commercial soundtrack MP3 linking, and there's no reason we'd allow direct linking to manual scans that are also pretty clear copyright violation. That's not to say we don't love ReplacementDocs; I know I do, and it's helped me a great deal for me in filling out the Songs database when official soundtracks weren't released.

Even though this was something I didn't anticipate, I'll go ahead and take full blame for not addressing this sooner. Only when djp looked at the finished bios and saw the linking did he immediately go "wait, we can't link to those". So that's my fault as the go-between in not having that issue come to mind first. All I can say is sorry for having you feel like you wasted your time, but if you want to appeal to djpretzel (we DO host chiptunes, keep in mind) about linking to manuals as being educational and why that wouldn't be legally dicey for OCR or something to that effect, send me a PM laying out your issues.

The implication that we don't want to reference manuals as sources though, I'm not sure where that came from, but it doesn't extend to that.

[The Coop]

That's not to say we don't love ReplacementDocs; I know I do

Don't we all? That place has been a remarkable help in the used game world.

[Dafydd]

I agree it's a shame we didn't know this sooner - looking up all those url's took a bit of time. I realize why we have to remove them though. What I don't understand is why chiptunes seem to be excluded from this "copyrighted material" rule. They are part of commercial ROM's, after all. So are the forum avatars... and I'd think the mascot images are, too. And I've seen moderators on this site remove links to galbadia hotel, who host game soundtracks as mp3's. Why are chiptunes allowed? Is there a legal reason?

And yes, replacing the vB code with wiki code automatically should be easy enough. It was a pain to do manually, haha.

[Polo]

I've seen moderators on this site remove links to galbadia hotel

They didn't catch this one.

I don't think that we should refer to the manuals as sources if we don't want to link to them. If we deny that we have access to the manuals, what's the point of referring someone to them who likely has no access either?

Some of them weren't linked to begin with. Neither were magazine references in some of The Coop's and watkinzez's bios. That doesn't make them any less valid.

Larry told me that using the command Ctrl+H, you can have Notepad replace one string of text in a file with another string. For example, you can replace "" with the " character to make all of the bold text show up as bold in MediaWiki.

I've been doing that already, thanks. Watch the punctuation, though; the Wiki requires three single quotation marks ''' to make text bold.

Also, Linearity, are you okay with taking Sol Badguy through Ken Masters? If you'd rather have my targeted share (Akuma through LocoRoco) or a different selection of bios in my .txt file, let me know. I didn't create any articles just yet.

Thanks to Larry's coaching tactics via IRC, I've been able to clear up some cloudy issues (he answered more, but they were personal concerns):

1) I thought underlining was reserved for books and magazine names, but apparently italics is better / used more dominantly. So we'll go with that. Helps them blend in with game / movie titles and series.

2) The Article line shall be in Bold to better credit the author (and LT says it looks "swankier" ).

3) Marvel Comics mascots now have (non-game) in their first appearance line like the Toyota Supra (and Dracula's (video games) detail was removed because he's not the same as the historical incarnation).

[The Coop]

I agree it's a shame we didn't know this sooner - looking up all those url's took a bit of time. I realize why we have to remove them though. What I don't understand is why chiptunes seem to be excluded from this "copyrighted material" rule. They are part of commercial ROM's, after all. So are the forum avatars... and I'd think the mascot images are, too. And I've seen moderators on this site remove links to galbadia hotel, who host game soundtracks as mp3's. Why are chiptunes allowed? Is there a legal reason?

To the best of my knowledge, those aren't seen as being part of any ROMs, but rather, simply part of a screenshot. And as we all know, screenshots are everywhere on the web, and in magazines. You can host all the screenshots you want on your website, as there's nothing actually playable being given away. It's just an picture of a moment from the game, which game companies have yet to be against. So having those bits of screenshots (or wallpapers) here doesn't seen to violate anything.

Chiptunes are a bit fuzzier, but again, no ROMs are being given away, and no commercial CDs have been ripped from. It's just the music as it originally was. I don't believe any companies have had issue with sites hosting the musical data in its various formats (VGM, SPC, GSF, etc) for free, only mp3 rips of commercially sold game music CDs (be they the original sounding music recorded as mp3s, or remixed music).

I could be very wrong on this, and if I am, hopefully someone will correct me.

[Linearity]

Thank you, Larry. I appreciate what you said.

I'll defer to Dave about whether or not we should link to replacementdocs. Whether or not we have linked references to manuals isn't that important to me, and I agree that it's safer not to link to them.

Here is my reasoning for omitting the references altogether. A reference to a source is meant to give credence to what we have written. Since Dave wants to officially distance OCR from replacementdocs, it is counterproductive and disingenuous to officially claim credence from it even if we pretend that we actually own the manuals.

We could keep the references; it's plausible that we somehow have legitimate access to all of those manuals. But it's bullshit, and I don't feel like bullshitting our readers.

Polo, I'll take Sol Badguy through Ken Masters in your file.

[The Coop]

Why not just make a general statement on the introduction page of the wiki? Tell the readers the different types of sources that were used to gather the information for the bios, and how carefully each bio was combed over to make sure the facts were as accurate as possible, and then simply remove any links/references to those sites/manuals/gamebooks from the end section of the individual bio pages.

Just a thought.

[Linearity]

Some notes about editing:

I automatically replaced bbcode bold tags with the ''' tag. Similarly I automatically replaced italics tags with the '' tag. After that I auto-replaced

"[URL="[/code]

with "[".

After this, the only instances of the "]" character were in the middle and at the end of a link, as in

[code][http://www.ocremix.org]OC ReMix

as well as in notes about duplicate bios, as in

[#47]

Because of this, I changed the latter brackets to parentheses, and I auto-replaced "]" with " ". Finally, I replaced

"[/url"

with "]".

I think that takes care of most of the replacement without too much manual work.

Also, if we want bold text to be linked to other wiki articles, we have to use the bold tags outside of the "[[" and "]]" tags that MediaWiki uses to link articles together. So, it should be

'''[[Jedah]]'''

[Liontamer]

Here is my reasoning for omitting the references altogether. A reference to a source is meant to give credence to what we have written. Since Dave wants to officially distance OCR from replacementdocs, it is counterproductive and disingenuous to officially claim credence from it even if we pretend that we actually own the manuals.

We could keep the references; it's plausible that we somehow have legitimate access to all of those manuals. But it's bullshit, and I don't feel like bullshitting our readers.

I don't really see it as disingenuous or bullshit. The web is a big information resource; it's not a stretch that this information would be available somewhere, not even limited to replacementdocs, but other places like Atari HQ.

I think it would be much more disingenuous to cite information provided by the manuals while outright not crediting the manuals. I don't see what's to be gained on that level. I consider replacementsdocs and Atari HQ secondary sources anyway. They just compile the information, but they didn't write it or create it, which is why I don't see any issue with not crediting them directly.

[Dafydd]

It's just the music as it originally was.

But ROMS are just the games as they originally were. How's that any different? You can't make a chiptune without ripping it from the original cartridge or from a rom, which are also ripped from original cartridges. I don't really see how it's any different. The same goes for screenshots and avatars ripped from screenshots - very few of the screenshots you see are likely taken directly from a legal cartridge playing on a real console. I'm fine with an explanation like "the people who made the games are not ok with distributing roms, but they don't mind chiptunes". I mean, a rom without the game music probably still counts as a rom, and probably illegal, but the game music without the graphics and gameplay isn't? I just don't see how there's any difference, legally.

[The Coop]

But ROMS are just the games as they originally were. How's that any different? You can't make a chiptune without ripping it from the original cartridge or from a rom, which are also ripped from original cartridges. I don't really see how it's any different. The same goes for screenshots and avatars ripped from screenshots - very few of the screenshots you see are likely taken directly from a legal cartridge playing on a real console. I'm fine with an explanation like "the people who made the games are not ok with distributing roms, but they don't mind chiptunes". I mean, a rom without the game music probably still counts as a rom, and probably illegal, but the game music without the graphics and gameplay isn't? I just don't see how there's any difference, legally.

Don't take this as my jumping down your throat Dafydd, as it's not intended that way...

Let me ask you a question... do you believe that every gaming magazine and website since the gaming press came to be, has been doing something on the same illegality level as offering game ROMs? The gaming industry doesn't charge us for screenshots, they charge us for full (or at times, partial) games. They generally seem to give out screenshots for free, so why would it be illegal for us to do the same in some form?

My taking screen grabs from Ghostbusters and putting them on my website, is not the same thing as my hosting a VOB file of the entire movie. If it was, then every movie (and gaming) site/magazine out there would be shut down or sued out of business. If the movie and gaming industry don't view these two things in the same light, I really don't know why you do. One simply isn't the other.

And as I've come to understand it, the game music you can find on sites like project2612.org (great site for Genesis tunes) isn't ROM data, but rather, it's a format made by a user to specifically record a given system's music. It's not the original ROM data from the cartridge you're playing, but a virtual cassette tape if you will... much like what we used to do as kids when we recorded the game music off of our TVs. Yes you need to have the illegal ROM to make those recordings in various emulators, but the recordings themselves haven't been questioned after all these years to the best of my knowledge. I haven't heard of anyone who's gotten a C&D order because they had VGM or SPC soundtrack files hosted on their site. I imagine they fall into the same area as remixes... as long as there's no profit being made, and no gaming ROMs are being offered, the game companies don't pay it much mind