Module:ItemsNav/Data/Documentation

Guidelines
The goals for item navs are:
 * Providing navigation to as many game items as possible,
 * using in-game representations whenever possible,
 * but keeping the navigation as simple as possible.

It's also important for the navs to not add too much loading time to pages, as they are non-essential content.

and
Each game can have several tabs, each containing one of two types of navigation:
 * The  type uses  to emulate in-game inventory menus.
 * The  type displays simple rows of item images.

A -type navigation may have several "upgrade" states to represent different items that occupy the same slot in the inventory. Users can navigate between these states using the up and down arrows next to the image map. Each upgrade state is actually its own image map.

The  is used for items which are not represented in inventory, or are too numerous to a slot.

Slotting
For maps, every item should be positioned as it is in-game. If two items occupy the same slot, add an "upgrade" image for all the items that are the second to appear in their given slot. Add a third for items to appear third in their slot, etc. Do so regardless of whether these items actually appear alongside each other in-game. Note for example that the Template:MM Items "Quest Status" tab shows the Hero's Shield alongside Twinmold's Remains, which is technically impossible. This is intentional — to do otherwise would overcomplicate the navigation. The goal of the templates is to provide navigation, not to represent every possible in-game menu state.

If a single slot holds many more items than the others, then use  for those items instead. See for example Template:OoS Items — rather than add 13 upgrade states to the Quest Status Screen tab, the trading sequence items were linked in their own tab.

Numbering
When it comes to numbering on the menus (Arrow counts, Bomb counts, etc.) there are three options:
 * Show zeroes
 * Show the maximum quantity (which may increase with upgrades)
 * Show no numbers at all

The guidelines for this are not yet well defined. For now contributors are asked to use their best judgement, keeping in mind the goals listed above.

Item Groups
Generally, the navs should link to specific items rather than the grouping hypernym. For example, Template:PH Items links to Crimsonine, Aquanine, and Azurine — not Pure Metal.

Sprite Sizing
Default sprite sizes are generally much too small for navigation. For this reason, the  type provides two ways to size the images. For example,
 * scales images to three times their original size
 * sizes all images at

Use  when all the row sprites are the same size. In some cases the sprites themselves can be padded to make it so. See the "Magic Rings" tab on Template:OoS Items, for example.

Use  sparingly — it adds a lot of loading time when overused.

Reports
On each item nav template, a report (example) is generated that displays the state of the nav and gives an overview of its completeness.

Pay special attention to the "Omitted Items" column – these are items that exist in the wiki's category system but not in the nav. These items likely need to be added to the nav.

The "Omitted Items" column may also contain subsections for item groups or common items (appearing in 5+ games). Items in these sections can be ignored. As described above, item groups are less than the items themselves. Common items that are not particularly unique to one or a few games are also less important — currently the item navs will not generated on these pages anyway for performance reasons.

"Extra Items" indicates items in the nav that are not in the game's item category. This can be a useful hint for finding item pages that are missing categories.