While reading SquintGnome's thread about paying for a new factory, I was reminded of how many amazing things can be done with the factories and other tools.  I was thinking maybe we could try to capture all this knowledge in one document.  A "WarGear  Map Design Patterns".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patterns

I was thinking a wiki would be ideal, but a simple shared word doc might be good enough to start with.

I started putting a skeleton document together to show what I'm talking about:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14AOjXTWQNlLsEkk6WEYfibLVUGKQYTQtjt6YRJ18ecY/edit

Anyone can edit if they want.

I was just wondering whether someone had put together something like this the other day. It looks great so far. There are so many interesting things that have been done. Nygma's factory ideas were fun to read, but there are so many more things that are possible.

A wiki would be a lot easier for people to contribute and there are plenty of good free ones (such as referata.com which is a semantic wiki).

There are some cool things that people have worked out that would be nice to have some documentation on how they did them.   Even to remind yourself sometimes of exactly how you did something.

But, keeping such a thing up to date may prove to be a challenge.

Can something be done by adding a forum section call 'Documentation' or something like that where we can store and update design suggestions?  Or a link in the help section like the one Ozy posted above.

I don't think forum threads work well for something like this, since we cannot edit posts without Yertle's help.

Hopefully keeping up to date won't be too big an issue, because Tom is unlikely to change the game engine in a way that breaks existing maps, so once something is documented it shouldn't require much upkeep.

Once we get some actual content in this document, I think a link the help pages is a good idea, but no sense doing that until we get something done.

I think even with pretty limited information for a design pattern (name, brief description, and link to either a map that implements or a forum thread that discusses it).  It could be pretty useful.  Detailed descriptions, etc. can be added later if people want.

I went ahead and created a wiki on google sites, because that is what I am most familiar with, but if someone else prefers a different free wiki site, I'm ok with working somewhere else.

https://sites.google.com/a/prestopnik.com/wargear-map-design-patterns/

Right now there is just the default wiki template up there.   Unfortunately I cannot just open it up to be edited by everyone.  I need to enter email addresses, and then I guess you need to have a google account.   Please PM me your address if you want to be able to edit this.

Also, if people want to just post in a thread (this thread?) I can copy & paste into the document or wiki or whatever we decide to do.   As mentioned above, just a name/description and a link to a map or discussion is enough to get us started.