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I and  ray had a perfectly fine working mechanism that lets the poison water rise and lower again automatically in NSHB.
I just wanted to reuse it and modify the settings a little bit, but the problem is I cant do it.
Look at this bullshit:

I know what you mean, I remember some sprites being quite simple, then they were made overcomplicated.

Eel? No its Unagi!
Shark? No, its obviously Sushi!

Sry that Japanese is not my main language. That would be like I would change the names of the Sprite to "Aal" or "Hai" which is German and translates to Eel and Shark.

We should definately change the names of the Mushrooms to Kinoko too.

They are the offical names in English too, but they are not easy to remember.

Just change them to 'Unagi the Eel' and 'Sushi the shark' to compromise.
Problem solved.

The main problem is still the sprite data thing.

Well, not much you can do there but fix the data, unless Dirbaio has backups of it.

I noticed that too. Let me give an example:

The name of the eel was:
Unagi (Eel)
or
Blockhopper (Jumping ? - Block)

But then some people are coming, I don´t want to name then *cough*Asprok*cough* and are removing all of the explanations because tree. Or some completely other changes which are bullshit.
For example:
Someone changed the name of sprite 152 to "POW Block" which is nonsense because the POW block is smth. completely different.
In my opinion there should be a given name which is understandable for all and then nobody should be able to change it.
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Someone moderating the edits would ensure a much better quality of course, but there are not just noobs who change the sprite database's content to nonsence. There are as well experienced users like luckwii who change the sprite database to something that a lot of people cannot understand. (with that I want to say that experienced users moderating the sprite database can not ensure 100% quality either)

So to ensure real quality, there should be a bigger number of people that approve the changes. Probably something like a page where all the recent changes are listed (BEFORE has been changed to AFTER) and all people in the forum are asked to approve this change. Once it has got at least X approvements (replace X with something like 10 or so) it should do the change. This way there is not a single person that decides which sprite name to use. (same goes for sprite data)

You can see all the changes ever made like this:
http://nsmbhd.net/spritedbchanges/?time=999999999999999

I know. And we need a list exactly like this where all the changes must be approved by X users for the changes to come into effect.

Also I think there are some select sprites where the sprite DB, the way it was made, just doesn't cut it.
Comes to mind the sprite 84 (zoom) for example, this guy needs its own section.
And also:

IIRC those two are the only sprites who ever use modulo 32 on 1-byte data, making them impractical for the Sprite DB purposes.

So this explains why I couldn't understand some sprites setting in my old hack although I made them myself...

IMO  MeroMero should be able to do this job. His explanations are easy to comprehend.

Maybe we should upgrade Sprite DB to be able to include some caption images in the description, for better comprehension.
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If we want to overhaul the DB, we need to set up guidelines to follow.



First and foremost, should sprites be named by their official names or easier-to-understand names?


example: Unagi or Eel.
I admit that I'm a bit of an "official-policy" freak, but I can adapt if needed.
(btw  Freeze actually the sharks are called Hojiro in japanese, not Sushi but that's besides the point)



Should the data be listed in the order they appear or should they be listed by category?


example: for the Star Coin, should we list its attributes like this:

Or should we list them in order:




Value of 0 for things like speed, size, etc.


Speed should only have a default value of 0 only AND only if it means the sprite won't move at all.

Think about it, you set up a sprite and you leave the speed at 0, it means the sprite will stay idle.
In my head a speed of 0 means 0 km.h^-1, it means 0 mph, it means 0 m.s^-2, it means no acceleration, no momentum, no speed, NO MOVEMENT.
If the sprite has even the faintest movement, then it's not idle thus its speed is not equal to 0.
If that's the case, put a default value of 1 in the sprite DB.

What I said for speed also goes for length, size, opacity, etc.
I just can't count anymore the number of times I had to go to the sprite DB and put a value of 1 (or more sometimes) because of that technicality.



Event controllers:


 Freeze, IIRC event controllers always had shitty parameters on the Database.
I mean usage mode: unknown???
Jesus Christopher Christ, it should be "On while trigger ID is on".
On that note:
_Target Event ID should be Output ID (target)
_Triggering Event ID should be Input ID (trigger)





Controversial cases:


Nybble 5 for Sprite 155 (Warp): as you know ticking this will disable sounds when you change area but it works only on emulators, if you try that on a real NDS the game will freeze the moment you go through the Warp.

Should we leave the parameter, knowing it will break on a real NDS?

I always thought that attribute shouldn't be there.
 Hiccup, on the other hand thinks the opposite.
I would like more opinions on this.



Modulos

That's more like a current limitation of NSMBeditor, but I suggest there should be another column called modulo when you edit a sprite.
For example the opacity setting gets applied a modulo 32, so if we type in the hypothetical cell called modulo to value 32, only the values between 0 and 31 can be selected.



Sprites 83 and 84

There's simply too much subtle details for all of them to be taken into account without ending with a huge ass description for said sprites.



Goal / Suggestions


The idea I'm trying to convey is that we should get an idea of the formatting before attempting to update the database.

I'm more than honored that you think highly of me  MarioSunshine, but this not something I (or anyone else for that matter) should do as a lone wolf, that's something that should be decided as a team, for that we could elect a council with some of the most sensible users.
10 users seems good enough, give or take 2.
That pretty much rules out members who mass-modified the sprites just to change ONE lower-case letter to a upper-case letter on the sprite's name *cough*.

Of course  ray and  Freeze your input will definitely be useful here, after all you are the ones who came up with the thread.


I say if a sprite has all its data documented (complete with the models it uses) then it should be locked to prevent any further modification (kinda like the wiki pages).

We should have some people granted with the title of Database Keeper.
It may seem elitist but really database used as mean for information is not something to be tampered with everyday.
I mean once data is documented, usually it's here to stay, no to be changed left and right.

If someone with made a discovery but has not the right to modify the database, it can still put in the modifications but they will saved in a queue instead, waiting for one of the database keeper to approve (or disprove) the modifications, the user will be "credited" for the modification if it get approved though.
That should prevent noobs to modify the database on a whim.



I probably have forgotten some things, feel free to add suggestions if you feel like it

I hope you don't mean me . Allthough I won't claim to not be a noob.


I think the events were handled pretty well in the Reggie sprite data. But I don't know, maybe they could be done a completely different, more intuitive way.

I would call the sprites like this:
Sushi (shark)
Unagi (eel)

Edit: I was looking at the Sprite Database, and I don't think Venus Fire Trap is a clear name for the Fire Piranha Plant. -.- But that's my opinion.

Nah, you weren't the one I was targeting, in fact you're the only one who did more changes to the DB than me, that's saying something

No, I was targeting some users who went to the database exclusively to change some lower-case to upper-case, yes there are users who did that and feel like they accomplished a titanic work, for example there's one user who did that more than 50 times the same day and never touched the database since.


Yes you're right, I opened Reggie to see that, and realized that events' parameters are really similar in both NSMB DS and NSMB Wii.
Maybe we could use them as a base.

I thought I'd announce here that I do not approve of this edit, because I don't want to get into an edit war.

http://nsmbhd.net/spritedbchanges/124/?rev=8