Caves of Qud Wiki:Style Guide

The Official Caves of Qud Wiki Style Guide is a standard of editing practices and formatting styles for article contribution. Please follow these guidelines as closely as possible, but use your judgment and/or ask others if you believe a situation calls for breaking or amending them.

Pages that are tagged as Category:Guides are not required to closely follow this style guide, but are still encouraged to consider following any guidelines that are useful for them to follow. In particular, it is not necessary for them to explicitly call out opinions. Such pages should also make it obvious at a glance that they are guides.

Article Layout

Page Names and Capitalization

Caves of Qud has all items and creatures titles written in all lowercase, unless the name is proper (Sparafucile vs giant centipede nest). To keep in the same spirit, all items and creatures will follow the same convention. If possible, the capitalization format of the game must be obeyed as much as possible. As an example, all mutations are capitalized in Title Case as they are in game (Multiple Legs) but cybernetics are not (cherubic visage). Concepts and mechanics that have no official name will follow standard wiki title format. The same concept applies to capitalizations of terms that appear within the text of an article.

Exceptions can be made for section titles, table headers, and similar labels - these typically are written in Title Case regardless of the terminology involved.

Examples of terms and their typical capitalization:

Terminology	Capitalization Scheme	Example
Mutation names	Title Case	Corrosive Gas Generation
Skills	Title Case	Dual Wield
Attribute names*	Capitalized	Ego, Agility, Willpower
Proper names	Capitalized	Lake Hinnom, banner of the Holy Rhombus, Flume-Flier of the Sky-Bear
Non-proper location names	Lowercase	desert canyons
Most items and creatures	Lowercase	spaser pistol, gelatinous prism
Game mechanics terminology	Lowercase	critical hit, thrown weapon combat

*There is some inconsistency in whether attribute names are capitalized in in-game text, but capitalizing them seems to be the most common scenario, so we prefer to also capitalize them on the wiki.

Headings

When an article is divided into headings, start at level 2 headings, which are written in wiki code == like so ==. This makes it so that all headings in the page are "smaller" than the page title, which is itself a level 1 heading. Unless there is a good reason, don't use level 1 headings (= like this =) in articles or in templates that are meant to be transcluded into articles.

Headings should use Title Case (most words other than articles and conjunctions are capitalized).

Infoboxes

Infoboxes, boxes which summarize data relating to the article, should appear at the top-right corner of the article content. This includes item tooltips.

Infoboxes should generally summarize available information; speculation, as well as filler rows (e.g., "?", "unknown", "N/A"), should be avoided if possible. Most information required in infoboxes will be in ObjectBlueprints.xml.

Prerelease Content

All content that requires that prerelease content be enabled in order to appear in the game must be prefaced with Template:Prerelease Content.

Book Layout

Book articles should include Template:Item, which is normally generated by Qud Blueprint Explorer. Please do not alter these except through QBE, as they're required in order for QBE to function correctly. The actual contents of the book should appear under a section titled 'Contents', using {{Book Page|(your text here)}) to format each "page", with the 'exact' contents of the book's page data in the game files, including the exact whitespace used.

NPC Layout

NPC articles should include Template:Character, which is normally generated by Qud Blueprint Explorer. Please do not alter these except through QBE, as they're required in order for QBE to function correctly.

Writing

Reliability

To ensure that all information on this wiki is verified and up to date, make sure to include Template:As Of Patch on the top of pages that required manual research or review of the game code.

Infobox updates are performed by QBE and QBE will add a game version footer to the infobox when it updates a page.

To make sure that information is correct in the first place, if it is in a difficult-to-find location (e.g., a C# class whose name is not the ID specified in the page's infobox), be sure to note which C# class you found it in by using Template:Code Reference or, if that template won't work for some reason, a <ref></ref> tag. Line numbers must not be included, because they may be inconsistent across disassemblies/versions.

Formality

Writing in the second person (referring to the reader directly with "you") usually has preferable alternatives. Consider using "the player" or "the player character" instead as appropriate, or something more suited to the context.

Any recommendations or other opinions must be presented only in sections marked with Template:Opinion, in order to help the reader distinguish verifiable fact from other additions.

Terminology

Avoid protagonist bias; many creatures besides the player character are able to use objects and mutations the same way the player does. Avoid mentioning the player character when "this creature" is more accurate to describe the possible users. Do note, for example, when a mutation's effect depends on whether it's used by a player or non-player character, such as Precognition.

“Creature”

A creature is anything with a Brain part in the game data. (Note that this is a distinct notion from having a brain susceptible to psionic attacks.)

The following are creatures:

The following are not creatures:

Depending on the context, exceptions may be made for narrative entities who aren't represented as game objects with brains, such as Ereshkigal, despite the fact that the only thing Ereshkigal has in common with most creatures in the primary sense is that she has in-game dialog attributed to her.

“Currently”

When referring to a feature of the game or some other state of affairs that is not expected to change except between game versions, the word “currently” carries an implicit expectation that the thing being described may change in the future. This is a claim that must be backed up with a source in order to be verifiable. The best way to source such a claim is to link to an issue on the public issue tracker that has been seen during a triage and not immediately closed. The easiest way to tell that this is the case is if the issue has been assigned to someone and its status is “Open”.

Making clear what game version is affected can provide a useful reference point for when the claim may have been true, and can save time for other editors if they decide to recheck the claim to see if it remains true or not. To do this, either:

make sure there is an up-to-date Template:As of patch on the page;
or use a phrase such as “as of patch [patch]” in place of “currently”.

This rule is not related to uses of the word “currently” that are about something that is expected to change within a game session. For instance, “a creature that is currently flying” does not run afoul of this rule and does not call for a citation to justify that wording.

“Monster”

Avoid the word “monster”, except as used in the game. Prefer “creature” instead, regardless of how the player or player character may feel about the creature in question.

“The”

While it is an established feature of technical writing, the “indefinite the”, i.e., the use of “the” followed by a singular common noun used to refer to an entire class of thing, is dispreferred in favor of using “a”/“an” and a singular noun, or no article and a plural noun. E.g.,

A slugsnout is a type of swine. – Fine
Slugsnouts are a type of swine. – Fine
The slugsnout is a type of swine. – Not Preferred

The idea is partly to make it clearer when something really is unique, e.g., “the Kesil Face”.

Units

The standard unit of liquid, including water, is the "dram". Drams of water in particular (and only drams of water) may also be abbreviated with "$". E.g., "$10" means "ten drams of water".

The standard unit of weight is "#". It can also be spelled out as Lbs.(pronounced pounds); However, to avoid confusion, it should never be written as "pounds". Consider using Template:Pounds when writing out a weight.

The time between when a creature receives the opportunity to act is a "turn". The 'standard' unit of time is the "game tick", or simply "tick", which is equivalent to one turn for a creature whose quickness is 100.

"Parasang"

A parasang is, depending on context, equivalent to:

a world map tile
the 3×3 set of surface zones associated with a given world map tile
the 3×3×infinity set of zones associated with a given world map tile
the distance from one zone to any zone on an adjacent world map tile

Spoilers

Any content encountered in Caves of Qud may be added to the wiki. However, in the interest of helping readers who want to avoid spoiling late-game and hidden content, pages should be marked with Template:Spoiler where appropriate, e.g.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains information normally only found in the course of advancing the main quest line.

The question of whether or not content should be marked with {{spoiler}} is left to the writer's discretion. In general, we advise adhering to the following guidelines:

Content that appears in the modding section of the wiki or in wiki meta-discussion pages (such as this one) does not need to include spoiler warnings.
Content related to non-dynamically-generated quests should include spoiler warnings, especially for quests that appear in the mid- to late-game.
Content related to hidden content that is not easily encountered by players, such as Tzimtzlum, should include spoiler warnings.
Content related to special enemies, such as the Girsh Nephilim, should include spoiler warnings.

Formatting

Links

Phrases that correspond to a relevant article on the wiki, such as the names of concepts in the game, should be linked. It is only necessary to link to any given page, or anchor within a page, once per section; avoid linking to the same page more than once per section.

As an exception to this rule, it's acceptable for automatically generated content, such as tables generated from database lookups, to link to the same thing multiple times in a section.

(See also the Colored Names section.)

Color

The wiki already has a template for the main colors found inside Caves of Qud. Do not directly format the text with html;Template:Color has all hexcodes as well as way to quickly format a line with a single color.

Colored Names

Item names such as Stopsvalinn have multicolor names in game. For ease of use, call Template:Qud text instead of manually changing each letter using the Color Template. If referring to an item or character in its page, use Template:name to automatically make the colored version of the item.

If referring to other items and characters with a link, you should use favilinks. There are three favilink templates available:

Template:Favilink takes the name of an item or mutation and links to it.
Template:Favilink page takes the name of a page and links to it.
Template:Favilink id is useful when you wish to specifically link to an object by its blueprint ID, a mutation by its mutation ID, and so on.

The differences between these favilink types can be relevant when objects or mutations share the same name, for example, the night vision implant and the Night Vision mutation. The table below shows how one might link to one page versus the other:

Page	Examples
night vision (the implant)	`{{favilink\|Night Vision}}` `{{favilink id\|NightVision}}` `{{favilink page\|Night Vision (implant)}}`
Night Vision (the mutation)	`{{favilink page\|Night Vision}}` `{{favilink id\|Mutation:DarkVision}}`

Note that mutations linked with Template:Favilink id must be prefixed with Mutation: to distinguish them from object blueprint IDs.

Use of favilink should follow the general rules for linking.

Quoting In-Game Descriptions

When pasting descriptions from objectblueprints, call Template:Qud quote instead of Template:Quote to parse color strings and preserve single line breaks.

Wikitext

For more specific help on wikitext, check Wikipedia's own Help article. For fancier functions, check Wikipedia's Magic Words.

Dice

Format any string representing a dice roll with Template:Dice tooltip.

C# Code

C# code (which will generally only be found in the Modding namespace) should ideally be formatted the same way that Visual Studio Code with Microsoft's C# extension would format it when using the Format command from the command palette. If you need to add code to the wiki but don't have access to VS Code, do your best to follow the style of existing code on the wiki and another editor can put it into the correct format.

References

As a general principle, articles should aspire to help readers discover where to look to verify the information they present, particularly whenever it's not obvious where to look, for purposes of verification and for modding. For this reason, articles should cite in-game sources whenever it aids in this discovery.

For citations to the game's C# code, use Template:Code Reference (see the documentation on that page for a usage example).

It's not necessary to cite the object blueprint for the object that a page is about. However, if some of that object's behavior comes from a part specific to it, the part can be cited using a code reference as described.

All cases not covered by more specific advice can use <ref>ref syntax</ref>.

Whenever an article contains any citations, its very last heading should be a {{References|(game version number)}}.

Maintaining up-to-date-ness

To guarantee that the data on a page is correct, we have two main locations that we place the game version our information comes from:

The infobox footer, which is either automatically populated by QBE, or manually added by setting the gameversion parameter in the infobox to the game version. This is used for the infobox related data only.
References, added by adding {{References|(game version number)}} at the end of the article, before any navboxes. This is used for manually written information in the main body of the article.

For other pages, regular {{As Of Patch|(game version number)}} will be placed at the very top of the article, although if the page uses references, it is best to place in the references section as stated previously.

Sprite Uploading

Main article: Sprite Uploading

Modding

Naming Conventions

When writing mod code for the wiki that involves unique internal identifiers, such as object blueprint names or part names, ensure that the names are prefixed with QudWiki_ in order to show good practice for avoiding name clashes.

Fan art

The Caves of Qud wiki encourages community members to submit their fan art for Caves of Qud. This can include, but is not strictly limited to, portrayals of different events, characters, and locations throughout the world of Qud.

Rules and guidelines

Before submitting fan art to this wiki, please read through the following rules. The wiki administrators may remove any content uploaded to the wiki at their discretion, for reasons including but not limited to violation of the rules below.

Types of work that are appropriate

As long as you obey the rules below, any fan art related to Caves of Qud may be uploaded to the wiki. This includes

depictions of characters and creatures that exist in the game;
art of locations or events from the game;
original characters (OCs) based on the player character;
objects, furniture, and OCs that exist in the universe of Qud;

and so on. In general, work can be added to any page that is at least tangentially relevant to it. For example:

If you have a stylized depiction of a snapjaw, then that would certainly be relevant to the Snapjaws page or a more specific page, such as snapjaw scavenger.
An OC that comes from the Mopango faction could be added to the Mopango page.
An OC with the Multiple Arms mutation could be added to the page for that mutation.

If you have questions about whether a particular work of art would be appropriate for the wiki and where it could go, please ask in #wiki-discussion in the Caves of Qud wiki.

No NSFW content

This is a public wiki intended to serve a large community. Please do not submit content containing genitals or any material intended to sexually stimulate. Waist-up nudity, including breasts, is not inherently sexual but may be sexualized, in which case it should not be submitted to the wiki. Please exercise your best judgment in determining whether a submission contravenes this rule.

File size limit

The wiki imposes a file upload limit of 2MB; your image must fit within these limits to be uploaded.

In general, the wiki admins request that you try to keep images as small as possible. Please keep in mind that many wiki users are visiting pages on low-powered devices and on poor network connections; ideally people should not have to wait thirty seconds just to open a single page. To make your image smaller, consider downscaling it or converting it to WebP (.webp) format.

If you have a legitimate reason to need a larger file upload size, please speak with the Trash Monks first in #wiki-discussion in the Caves of Qud Discord.

Work ownership

Do not upload work that does not belong to you. Among other things, the original author may not wish for their work to be on permanent display in the wiki. This can also create licensing issues (see below) for the wiki.

You may upload a work if

you are its original creator; or
you commissioned the work and own rights to it (including rights to distribute under a Creative Commons license); or
you have obtained explicit permission from the original author to upload the work, including consent to release the work under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Licensing

All work submitted to the wiki, including original works of art, are considered to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); see Caves of Qud Wiki:Copyrights. This gives the wiki and the Caves of Qud community the right to freely download, share, and adapt your work under the same Creative Commons license. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

Distinguishability from in-game content

Any fan art added to a page should be easily distinguishable from in-game content, so as not to confuse readers of the page. For example, please don't upload a tile for a Mechanimists creature you modded in and add it to the Mechanimists page, because readers may not be able to clearly delineate between your work and work from the original game.

Caves of Qud has a very idiosyncratic art style and this rule will not apply to most works uploaded to the wiki. However, if you're concerned that your work may confuse readers, you can choose to add a frame and caption it in a way that clearly marks the work as coming from outside of the game.

How to add your art to a page

Upload image

First, go to the Special:Upload page. Fill out all of the forms in the page, and then hit Upload File.

After uploading the file you should then be brought to its corresponding page, e.g. File:Snapjaw Mages -- Fire and Ice.webp.

(Optional) Add image to the Fan Art category

This step is not strictly necessary, but makes it easier for folks to find your work (and allows it to get included in the fan art gallery).

On the page containing the image you uploaded, click Edit and then add the following line to the page:

[[Category:Fan Art]]

This will add your work to Category:Fan Art.

Adding your art to a page

Now add your art to the page of your choosing! To do this, you'll need to visit the page you want to add your work to, hit Edit, and then link to your art.

For example, suppose that your art was uploaded to File:Super_Cool_Dromad.webp. Then to link your art in the dromad page (or perhaps the Dromad merchants page), you would go to that page, edit it, and then add the following line to the page in the location that you want to upload it:

[[File:Super_Cool_Dromad.webp]]

If you want to add a caption (e.g. to attribute the artist), you can do so with

[[File:Super_Cool_Dromad.webp|frame|Created by Mr. Super Cool Dromad Lover]]

In general, you can choose where you'd like to place the art. By convention, art should generally be added to the bottom of a page before any navboxes, footers, or appendices. However, if you believe that your art may belong in a different area of the page (e.g. at a certain point in a guide where it may be relevant), you are free to add it there instead.

Hit the Save changes button, and you're done! MediaWiki supports many different ways of formatting your images; see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images for all of the options that are available to you.