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Help:Articles on Microsoft Agent characters

From Agentpedia, the Microsoft Agent encyclopedia

This article is meant to serve as a guide on creating articles related to Microsoft Agent characters. Examples of these types of article include Genie, Peedy, Robby, and Merlin. You are going to need to have the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer installed for most of the stuff found in this article, and it can be downloaded from here.

If you are certain that the page you are creating follows the below guidelines, you may create a page by clicking on a red-link, going to Special:CreatePage, or using the ACS Page Creator page to auto-generate a character article based on preset fields that can be filled out.

Character article guidelines

NOTE: This policy will become less restrictive as more and more classical Microsoft Agents are covered! Currently, for a character to have an article, they must meet the following guidelines. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in a character article being deleted.

Classical characters

Any classical character article is allowed, as long as they meet the following expectations:

  • Be created before 2010.
  • Any amount of animations.
  • Made in any software.
  • Non-NSFW.

These characters are treated as historically significant, so being lower quality is more acceptable compared to modern characters.

Modern characters

Modern character articles are allowed, as long as the character is considered high quality. This includes:

  • Have proper animations beyond just Show, Hide or RestPose.
  • 10 or more distinct animations is strongly recommended, though 8 is tolerable if two of the strong positives below are present.
  • Use at least some unique sounds (not only default files from C:\Windows\Media, unless reuse is clearly intentional and fitting for the character).
  • Non-NSFW.

The following are considered strong positives, and it is recommended to have at least one or more, though these are not a strict requirement:

  • Correct and consistent transparency color.
  • Developed with tools other than Microsoft Paint.
  • Use of advanced features such as:
    • Speech movement.
    • Custom word balloons.
    • System tray icon (unless your character is a Microsoft Agent 1.5 character).
    • Exit branching or other logic like Return animations.

Currently exceptions to the modern character policy may be made if the character was widely used historically from 2015 to 2018, with one such example being Diamondy. Please note once again this policy will become less restrictive overtime.

Infobox

Image

The image present inside of the infobox must be the last frame of the RestPose or Show animation of a character. The file name must also be "Character0000.png". The only exception to this is if the character's ACS file is broken or lost and is unable to have a screenshot of the RestPose animation. If the image is larger than 256 pixels, please set the screenshot size to 256.

System tray icon

The system tray icon comes directly from the ACS file itself when it is viewed in the taskbar (Windows XP or later). The only exception to this is if the character's system tray icon file is blank and is unable to have an image of the system tray icon. If a character has no system tray icon, avoid using the system tray icon in the infobox.

Description

The character description comes directly from the ACS file itself when it is viewed in the gallery (Windows Vista or earlier) or from the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer. A description that you have came up with for the character will not be accepted and will be removed. If a character has no description, avoid using the description in the infobox.

Extra data

The extra data of a character can be viewed from the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer. If a character has no extra data, do not put anything for extra data in the infobox.

Animations

The number of animations of a character can also be viewed from the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer.

TTS voice

The TTS voice of a character can also be identified with the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer.

Download

The download to a character must be a direct link (such as a discordapp.com or tmafe.com link) and not use a site where the user has to go through prompts (such as Google Drive) to download the character. This is to make it more convenient for the end user to download. Please note that as Agentpedia is hosted on a Linux server, file names are case sensitive (for example, https://tmafe.com/classic-ms-agents/PEEDY.ACS is not the same as https://tmafe.com/classic-ms-agents/Peedy.acs, with the first link resulting in an error due to the way Linux handles files.

1.5 and 2.0 versions

Exclusive template

Features or differences in a 1.5 and 2.0 version of Microsoft Agent must use the Exclusive template to indicate whether or not that feature or difference is related to which specific Microsoft Agent version. {{Exclusive/1.5}} indicates the feature or difference is part of the Microsoft Agent 1.5 version of a character. {{Exclusive/2.0}} indicates the feature or difference is part of the Microsoft Agent 2.0 version of a character. Example usage would be 90 Microsoft Agent 2.0 only. / 100 Microsoft Agent 1.5 only. when referring to character animations in the infobox.

Identifying the character version

A character's version can be identified with the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer alongside all of the other character information. If the character has a version of 1.50, then it is a 1.5 Microsoft Agent. If the character has a version of 2.00, it is a 2.0 Microsoft Agent.

Character information tables

In all Microsoft Agent character articles, the character data table is used to give all information about the character. If there are two versions of a character (such as 1.5 and 2.0 versions existing), create the first table with the Exclusive/2.0 template in the table title as seen in the Genie article and make the second table include the Exclusive/1.5 template in the table title. You can fill out the character data with information from the Microsoft Agent Properties Viewer or use the Agentpedia Table Generator as pictured if you already know the character version with MAPV.


Color table image

The color table of a character can be extracted from a decompiled Microsoft Agent character using the Microsoft Agent Decompiler. When uploading the color table, make sure to stretch the image to make it 32 pixels tall using Paint.NET or GIMP so that the colors can easily be viewed.

Miscellaneous

Short description

Now that short descriptions have been officially ported to Agentpedia, you can add a short description above the infobox template to give the page a short description in the search bar. For Microsoft Agent characters, please use the following format: {{SHORTDESC:Microsoft Agent character by COMPANY/NAME}}

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