Help:Creating a game

All visitors are welcome to add their own games to Ludocity, whether they're documenting a game that they've played before, or are working on a new one that hasn't been played yet.

This page explains how to create a page for your game. Because wiki pages can be edited at any time, though, there's no need to complete all the steps - you can just add filler text and come back to them later.

If you have any questions that aren't answered here, you can raise them on the talk page.

Game page creation

Create the page

Pick a name for your game.

Enter this in the "search" box in the side bar, to check that there isn't already a game of that name. If the game doesn't exist, the search results will begin with "There is no page titled "<your game name> deck". You can create this page." - click on "create this page" to create the page.

Add an infobox

Each game on Ludocity has an "infobox" in the corner that tells people who made the game, the number of players it takes, the stuff it needs, and how playable it is. Cut and paste the following infobox template, adding it to the top of your newly created page.

{{gameinfobox
|designer=A. N. Other
|image=
|players=2-7
|stuff=A chess board and three umbrellas.
|crew=One.
|preparation=Ten minutes.
|time=An hour, plus ten minutes for scoring.
|place=A swimming pool.
|activities=Swimming, bluffing, mental arithmetic.
|status=unfinished
}}

Change the designer name to your own name, and fill the other fields in as appropriate.

The "status" field tells other Ludocity players what state your game is in. A game's status can either be unfinished (you're still writing it), untested (you've finished writing it but haven't played it yet), tested (you've played it and it still needs some work) or playable (you've played it and it works well enough that other people should play it too).

If you want to give us an image of your game, you can upload it at Special:Upload, and then add it to the "image=" field in the infobox (eg. "image=Chess_Umbrella.jpg"). Please do not use copyrighted images for this; either provide a photo you've taken yourself, or find one on Flickr that's been issued under a Creative Commons licence.

Introduce your game

Underneath the infobox code, write a sentence or two that summarises the theme and aim of the game.

Write up the rules

The rest of the article should consist of the rules and instructions of your game, separated by whatever headers you feel are appropriate. (To make a header, just click the button with the big "A" at the top of the edit window, or put a double-equals around the title, such as "==Setting up==".)

When writing up a ruleset, try to imagine that you’re writing out a set of instructions so that they could be printed out and given directly to the players. If there are a number of different roles - hunters and hiders, for example - or if preparation is required, it can be useful to separate these out into different parts of the ruleset: “Instructions for Hunters”, “Instructions for Hiders” and “Instructions for Preparation”, rather than one long essay describing the entire game.

Take a look at the existing rulesets to get an idea of how your ruleset should be formatted.

The end

And that's it. Click "Save page", and your page will be created - the game will automatically appear in the relevant categories of the archive. If you want to make any tweaks or changes later on, just come back to the page and click "Edit".