Style Guide

It contains accepted standards and guidelines for editors to follow. You can discuss any suggested changes in forum.

   When editing the wikia, there are certain guidelines and conventions for the layout of each page, in order to create a consistent theme across the entire wiki and maintain a cohesive style. These are not hard rules; anyone is free to contribute to the wiki and no one will be banned for incorrect or unconventional editing (except for clear cases of vandalism, obviously).

## Opening Paragraph

The opening paragraph should be a short description of the character, location or object that the page is focused on. This doesn't have to be detailed; that comes later, but should be able to accurately get across the key aspects of the subject to someone who might be unfamiliar with it.

**Example:**

***Vincent van Gogh** is a minor protagonist, appearing in one of the Cube Escape games. He was a famous 19th century post-impressionist painter.*

*(from the page Vincent van Gogh)*

This is also the place to put an infobox, which will provide quick, pre-formatted information about the subject. For more on infoboxes see Help:Infobox.

## Characters, Locations, etc.

The rest of the page should be longer and more detailed, and divided up with headers into various categories. The first category should be the game the subject appears in; for things appearing in multiple games, create separate categories for each game, in chronological order of release (refer to List of Games if you're not sure). These sections talk about how the focus of the page relates to that particular game; for characters it will be mostly how they respond to the player's actions, or indeed whether or not they are the player character. For items or locations, describe how they they are used in the game. Remember to put a Pic template and a space on each heading before the title. For more information on the Pic template, check out Page Pictures.

For an example of a character or location page, see Harvey or The Cabin.

## Links

Links to other pages should be used in the text if the subject of that page comes up. The first instance of that page being mentioned should always be linked, others mentions can be left as plain text. If you edit a piece of text and remove a link, check to see if there's a possible replacement anywhere. If you add something to the text that comes *before* the link but could still be the link, consider changing them both around, though as long as there's at least one link, it's not too important.

Also, when linking to pages with a "The" before the main subject (e.g. The Chapel), it is preferred for the "The" to not be capitalized if it is in the middle of a sentence.

## Game pages

Games pages start with the same opening as character/object pages; a brief description of the game, where it sits in the timeline, player character, etc. In the later sections, follow this structure, using these types of headings:

* H2: Characters (a bulletted list of appearing characters, in alphabetical order.
* H2: Locations (a bulletted list of all locations that gameplay takes place in. Locations seen, but not visited are not needed here.
* H2: Walkthrough (a step-by-step guide to completing the game, divided into sections as needed. Use simple directions for each line; so it can be easily followed.)
	+ Use an H3 for each major section (e.g., chapters).
	+ For each minor section, use the H4 template. This is to keep the TOC from being horribly unwieldy.

For an example, see Cube Escape: Harvey's Box.

## Other Sections

Some sections are common throughout many pages; these should go at the end of the page, after the final appearance for object pages and after walkthrough sections on game pages. They should go in this order:

* Any untypical heading (Some objects, such as Deer Steak or Bloody Mary, have extra sections, e.g. "Ingredients", that don't appear on many other pages. These go before the Trivia and Soundtrack sections but after the main information. On the rare occasion that a page has two or more, they can go in any order.
* Soundtrack (a listing of all the music related to the page topic. This may be the music that plays within a location or somehow is related to a character. For games with their own collected soundtrack, you can just link to that. Games released before Rusty Lake Hotel use music from incompetech.com, and tracks must be linked individually.
* Trivia (A bullet-pointed list of extra information that doesn't belong in any other section, yet is still relevant to the page.)
* Gallery (Other pictures of the character, or images related to the character that aren't included in the upper infobox. These should always be from official Rusty Lake sources, i.e. no fanart (There is currently one single exception to this rule; on the page Alchemy for an alchemy creation guide. Any other unofficial sources should be first considered by the rest of the wiki). Larger galleries (above six or so) can be split off into their own pages by creating a page named (subject name)/Gallery.)

## Ending

If the page appears on a navigation box anywhere, this is the place to put it. (For the moment, this only applies to games).

Lastly come the categories, on the thin band at the bottom of the page. All pages should have at least one, with as many on the list as are needed. For currently existing categories, see Special:Categories. Some categories are included in other categories (e.g. Player Characters is a subset of Characters). In this case, include both of them.

You should now be ready to edit the Rusty Lake wiki! If you want to get started, try heading over to Helping Out to see what needs doing, or just feel free to edit anything you think needs a good change!