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As you probably already know, I only played Sacred Underworld, which is still one of my favorite games today. In fact, that's why I met Sacredwiki, and from there I discovered DarkMatters ( ). But the SacredWiki section dedicated to Underworld is very incomplete. This is why I'm applying to add at least the quick walktrough to each side quest. It will take time, but sooner or later I will succeed. I know the game is no longer so popular, but I hope my work is still useful to someone.

So for the past 3 weeks I've been toying with this new template I wanted to build. The Sacred 2 Dialogue Template. Based on our very simple S2frame template; I wanted to try to build a template that was able to mimic, as close as possible, the in game dialogue boxes used in Sacred 2 while using light weight html and css to render it in place of screenshots: 36 Kb list of some dialogue screenshots presently used on the wiki that show file sizes ranges between 10 Kb to 600 Kb each The objective here was inspired by my paranoia over our server space, haha. It quickly turned into a fun creative challenge though that I really enjoyed. So between other tasks I've been working on this. For me and gogo, as admins, the benefit is that submitting NPC dialogues in this way will reduce the amount of server space we use. Space that can be used for other future purposes. Sacred 3 anyone? But the other benefits are much more fun. This template basically allows people who don't have any graphics experience to create these cool looking boxes without any graphics editing needed. Just gotta know how to type! Another benefit for casual readers of SacredWiki is that pages will load just a little bit faster because this template version of the in game dialogues display will be smaller in file size than the screenshot versions submitted on many of our quest pages. And an unintended benefit is that the text inside these new dialogues remain as text which means they can be searched for. And the final result is... Levied Tax This is a picture of what the template looks like on SacredWiki. It's primarily generated using html and css to mimic the appearance of Sacred 2's dialogue boxes. Using html and css means a more light weight version as opposed to using screenshots. There are 4 separate images that are positioned using css that complete every dialogue: The NPC portrait = 10 Kb The Background = 37 Kb The frame around the NPC portrait = 2 Kb The single corner image = 1 KB Total = 50 Kb On a page that has a single dialogue, there won't be a benefit regarding the speed at which the page loads. In some cases... But in most cases there will be a benefit. Most pages will probably have multiple dialogues. When there are several dialogues on a page the dialogues template images will only need to be loaded once on the page since 3 out of 4 of them will be re-used by any and all dialogues. Only the NPC portrait will differ. And of course another benefit is appearances since this new dialogue will always have a nice sharp look. Sample comparison: Realm of the Seraphim page before using the template = all dialogue images combined file size 301 Kb Realm of the Seraphim after using the template = all dialogue images combined file size 77 Kb The background of the dialogue is the only place I kinda splurged regarding file sizes. I'm still on the lookout for an optimum performance/appearance background image though so that could change any time. One last big plus that I like is that by editing the template I can effect all submitted dialogues from a single location. So if I want to tweak the way every single dialogue box that is already submitted on SacredWiki looks like I can do that on the dialogue template page to have the change cascade across all dialogues. Neat huh! Big thumbs up to gogo who has been gogoing away all those old tired looking dialogues for the new template ones. Thanx gogo! So how does this all work?! I've re-written the Sacred 2 Dialogue page in an instructional manner so by all means let me know if it makes sense! The Sacred 2 Dialogue Template