Shining Ark [7] Using TiddlyWiki

In this rather off-topic Shining Ark post I’m going to introduce a technology I’ve been using called TiddlyWiki ^^;

http://five.tiddlywiki.com/

TiddlyWiki is a non-linear personal web notebook (aka personal wiki) where everything is stored in a single HTML file, which you can store locally. The basic unit of TiddlyWiki is called a Tiddler, which is essentially a wiki page. Working with TiddlyWiki is much faster than standard hosted wikis where you have to wait for the servers to respond, etc. Also, not all wiki hosting services provide private wiki option.

I’m using the new version (TiddlyWiki5) because I have trouble saving in the old version; if you can’t save your changes then there’s no point! (that’s the first thing you should check when using TiddlyWiki; whether you can save) The new version at least works on Google Chrome, but you still have to manually save. I set Chrome’s download setting to always ask for download location; this way I have a chance to set the filename, which I would then use a same short name in order to overwrite the old file.

In case you don’t know what make wiki awesome besides the social part, firstly you can create links fast (the syntax is just like this: [[pagename]]). You can tell whether the pages the links link to exist or not. When you click on a ‘dead’ link, you will automatically be directed to edit the new page the link supposedly links to. And you can find out all the pages that are linking to a particular page (so you might not have to create ‘return’ links). You can also list all the dead links, and all the pages that are not linked from anywhere, etc. Ultimately, it’s considerably simpler to create/maintain an intricate web of connections.

I’ve been using TiddlyWiki for this game mainly to record the monsters’ locations and the items that they drop. This is so that when I need a certain item to upgrade/create weapons, I can quickly look it up; which monsters drop it and which quests have those monsters.

One unique feature about TiddlyWiki is that when you click on a link, instead of moving to a new page, the new Tiddler will be inserted right below the current Tiddler (where you clicked the link). So you can still scroll up and refer to the previous Tiddler(s). When you have many open Tiddlers, you can simply close them individually.

Another feature is that you can categorize the Tiddlers with tags. Think of all those… erm Danbooru stuffs. This is very useful; for example I have tagged my Tiddlers to identify whether they refer to monsters, items, or quests, etc. Then you can list all Tiddlers with the same tag.

Besides conceptual categories, you can also use tags to identify which Tiddlers are incomplete/need updating, etc. For example, I learned that the monsters drop 2-3 different items. For monsters which I only saw dropping 1 item, there is a high chance that they can drop more items, so I put a ‘need check’ tag on their Tiddlers. Later, I can list all the ‘need check’ monsters and hunt them in the game.

As I play the game, as I encounter new information, I just input them into my Shining Ark TiddlyWiki. It’s like I’m building a wiki from scratch. The reason why I don’t just use online wikis is that 1) it’s too easy to get spoiled and 2) sometimes online wikis provide too much information (who cares about the non-gameplay related descriptions that can be found in the game, etc).

If I were to play English games I imagine the input process would’ve been smoother. But Japanese games are kinda a pain in the ass, mainly because of 1) kanji and 2) switching between Japanese and English input methods is quite troublesome.

This site btw helps a lot for kanji radical search: http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/.

On a positive side, I did learn more kanji. I gained a considerable number of kanji to describe natural landscapes, lol.

I hope you would give TiddlyWiki a try, just right-click and save this link for an empty TiddlyWiki and start adding content to it. Just remember to save. Like Trello, you can use it for pretty much anything. It’s like a brain extension.