NEW: Our Web-Browsable Game Database!

[digitalpress]

This has been on our list of projects for a long, long tiime and I am happy to announce that the BETA version of the Digital Press ONLINE Collector's Guide is now a reality!

It's not PDFs. It's a searchable database that lets you filter and view your game lists thousands of different combinations, and then view all of the details for the games themselves. For example:

- You're going hunting for Sega CD games. You can simply call up a complete list of US released - Sega CD games and print it out. Now you've got your rarity list "cheat sheet" with you on the hunt.

- You're interested in all of the DP recommended Atari 2600 titles. Select Atari 2600 and check off the "recommended" box and whammo!

- You're looking for games by that guy - what's his name? - that did Barnstorming. Look up Barnstorming, click on the game from the list, and when the designer's name appears in the game details, click his name - instant list by designer!

- You're curious what arcade ports were made for the Intellivision. Easy.

- You want to see all of the games that were supposed to be released in 1985 and never were. A breeze.

- You want to get all of the Atari systems into a single list, showing only those games that have Easter Eggs (tricks). Piece o' cake.

- You want to see screen shots of every Earthworm Jim game. Advertisements too. A cinch!

- You want to see every game with the word "Mario" in the title. Child's play!

- You want to list all of the 8's, 9's and 10's for all US systems, then sort them from rarest to least of the rare. No sweat!

- You're really just into the history and lore. Pick a company, a system, a game, ANYTHING. read the game description, which will have links to other similar games in the genre, on the system, by that manufacturer, developer, etc etc etc

Oh, you probably want that link!

http://66.92.250.36:8080/DP/cmf/search.cmf

PLEASE NOTE: This is a BETA. It's running on our test box and there are a few hiccups to work out and our content is eternally growing (no pictures in this version yet). The engine itself is good to go, however, it's quite fast and even at this first stage is incredibly handy!

Give it a test drive and let us know what you think.

[digitalpress]

SPECIAL THANKS to Adam ("SpasticFuctard"), who designed the game engine and managed all of the technical stuff and who is now forever locked in to DP Industries Inc :) - AND - the superb men and women who make the database tick and whose names you will see at the bottom of every game details page.

[digitalpress]

ANOTHER NOTE: Pay no mind to the style/genre area which is broken at the moment (and also causing some duplicate records in the action/puzzle genre). We'll have that fixed up in a jiffy.

Carry on!

[Barbarianoutkast85]

I just tried it out and its very cool...Good work

[dreamcaster]

This is indeed an excellent resource. Great work guys!

[hydr0x]

aaah so my guess was right :)

great addition to the site, thx

[Mayhem]

Heh heh... trust me, if you think it's good now, it can only get better ;)

[§ Gideon §]

Goodness--what a monumental project! I presume this is the "secret tenfold" update that I've heard about...

[hydr0x]

hey joe, i just realized the old us/non-us "problem" gets even bigger with this database, right now there is no possibility to let it list all PAL Master System games or whatever PAL list!!

you could add a Country field to search (like the released, developer... fields) but that also wouldn't work really good, if you would search for Europe, you would miss all France/UK/Germany/Australia... exclusives :((

i would just change it from us/non-us to US/Japan/PAL, that would REALLY help, i know the guide is us-based but i don't think it is too much work or whatever, and all import fans would also appreciate it

even if you don't like that specific idea, you've got to change something, users must be able to search ONLY for japanese or pal games...

[kainemaxwell]

Great job guys!!

[anagrama]

One word: Wow! :)
Again, this is what I was hoping the forthcoming 'surprise' would be. Just wait until all the finalized DP Advance data is entered :D

[anagrama]

you could add a Country field to search (like the released, developer... fields) but that also wouldn't work really good, if you would search for Europe, you would miss all France/UK/Germany/Australia... exclusives :((



With the PAL Megadrive list, what I've done is to list all Euro games under 'Europe' in the country field, and if they were only released in UK/France/whatever, I've just noted that as part of the description.

It's for the same kind of reasons that you mention here - when the list is published, I want all European PAL games to be in the same section, and not to have a large 'Europe' section aswell as piddling little separate sections for UK/France/Germany etc. I've kept the Australian & Brazilian exclusives separate though.

However, a TV format field (PAL-E/NTSC-U/NTSC-J/PAL-M etc) would be nice, but I imagine it's a little late in the day to overhaul all the lists now.

[gamergary]

Very nice work guys.

[SpasticFuctard]

Does this mean I get a cookie now?

SF

[digitalpress]

ANOTHER NOTE: Pay no mind to the style/genre area which is broken at the moment (and also causing some duplicate records in the action/puzzle genre). We'll have that fixed up in a jiffy.

UPDATE: This bug has been fixed.

[digitalpress]

However, a TV format field (PAL-E/NTSC-U/NTSC-J/PAL-M etc) would be nice, but I imagine it's a little late in the day to overhaul all the lists now.

It's never too late! When I call in the next update from the section editors I'll have this added in. We've also been requested to add ESRB ratings and due to the nature of the web beast we'll also have fields for URLs to our screen shots, adverts, and box art (all from the DP site, natch).

[jgenotte]

I dunno if this is where bugs found should be posted but:

Bug Found (example):
- Search: NES, Recomended Only.
- Sort by: Name.
- Returns: All NES items sorted by name.

I assume that this is not such a specific problem, but I have not explored it any further. :D

-james

[digitalpress]

I dunno if this is where bugs found should be posted but:

Bug Found (example):
- Search: NES, Recomended Only.
- Sort by: Name.
- Returns: All NES items sorted by name.

I assume that this is not such a specific problem, but I have not explored it any further. :D

-james

I was wondering if anyone would pick that up. It actually happens for "Recommended Only", "Landmarks", and "Slant Only". The other checkboxes and fields do not have this problem. Looking into it now, I'm sure SF here already has the cure.

[Kid Ice]

Suggestion for this; for the "Rarity" field, allow a range. Often when I'm perusing the guides I'm looking for the 5 and up rarities so I know what to purchase on sight. Like this:

Rarity ___ to ___

Beautifully done by the way!

[SpasticFuctard]

sorting and paging on those three fields should be working now at the cost of some speed. It'll be faster when I can get the sysadmin to bounce the servlet runner.

As for range, you can't have range. :P

but we'll let you do inequalities. (IE: rarity>5, dollars < 80)

SF - Cope.

[jgenotte]

but we'll let you do inequalities. (IE: rarity>5, dollars < 80)

This isnt working. I assume that you mean it will be avaliable.


BTW: You guys rock!!!!!!!!!!! This new feature is Biziddy Bad Ass.

[nesman85]

this sounds awesome! the link isn't working for me though.

[richmond]

great tool! many thanks dp team :)

[Sph1nx]

That thing is NICE. Mad thanks to everyone who helped make it happen.

[digitalpress]

but we'll let you do inequalities. (IE: rarity>5, dollars < 80)

This isnt working. I assume that you mean it will be avaliable.

Maybe it looks easy but there's a little planning and skill involved! Look for implementation on the < = > value/scarcity on Sunday.

[robotriot]

I assume it's probably planned to be included anyway, but if you've got a really long listing and you can browse only between the different pages via the next and previous links at the bottom, it gets quite annoying after a while. A direct link list to all the single pages of the search result would be really usefull :)

[VinnyT]

I'm gonna sound stupid, but what does "Slant" and Landmark supposed to mean when searching for games.

[SpasticFuctard]

"Slant" is Joe's self important rambling about the game

Landmark is flagging that title as a landmark in the industry.

SF - Yarrrr, it's drivin' me nuts.

[robotriot]

If I right click on the rarity listing for example, and choose open in new window, the list that is being displayed doesn't have to do anything with the original selection :)

[digitalpress]

If I right click on the rarity listing for example, and choose open in new window, the list that is being displayed doesn't have to do anything with the original selection :)

When you click on rarity 8 you get all rarity 8's, for example. When you click on $20 you get all $20's.

[badinsults]

I get a nice 400 - Bad Request error. :p

[klimatron8]

waaayyy coool. When you get the (<=>) scale in and later pictures this'll be even better than sliced bread.

Q- i'm having trouble printing this white on black style -is it just me?

[robotriot]

If I right click on the rarity listing for example, and choose open in new window, the list that is being displayed doesn't have to do anything with the original selection :)

When you click on rarity 8 you get all rarity 8's, for example. When you click on $20 you get all $20's.

Nope, I meant something else. Say for example, I choose Atari 2600 and Non U.S. releases, then click on Find it. Now I've got that listing, and when I right click on the 'Scarcity' link on the top of the page, choose open in new window, I'm getting a list with all kinds of systems, not only Atari 2600, and they're not sorted by scarcity as I wanted to (that list is 247 pages long versus 21 pages of the original 2600 listing).

[digitalpress]

I get a nice 400 - Bad Request error. :p

To ANYONE who gets crazy results, crashes, occasional outages - please bear in mind that this is a BETA, and Adam and I are still working on it in the background. When all of the development work is done it will be moved to the main server and stabilize.

As for that right-click issue, robotriot, I'll look into it. I haven't done any testing with right-clicking opening in new window so far. Thanks!

[punkoffgirl]

Does this mean I get a cookie now?

SF

Adam, you can have all the cookies you want!

[Sotenga]

For some reason, I'm only checking this out just now... WHOA. Joe, SF, and all the rest, you've outdone yourself! Excellent! :D

Of course, I'm sure that this isn't yet complete... I can't find Gradius Gaiden. S'okay, take your time to add what you need. I just won GG over eBay for a mere $25 and I wanted to find out just how hard it was to obtain. :)

[digitalpress]

Of course, I'm sure that this isn't yet complete... I can't find Gradius Gaiden. S'okay, take your time to add what you need. I just won GG over eBay for a mere $25 and I wanted to find out just how hard it was to obtain. :)

I'm not sure why you can't find it. I typed in "gradius" and there it was.

http://66.92.250.36:8080/DP/cmf/game.cmf?gameid=99756

w00t.

[Sotenga]

Of course, I'm sure that this isn't yet complete... I can't find Gradius Gaiden. S'okay, take your time to add what you need. I just won GG over eBay for a mere $25 and I wanted to find out just how hard it was to obtain. :)

I'm not sure why you can't find it. I typed in "gradius" and there it was.

http://66.92.250.36:8080/DP/cmf/game.cmf?gameid=99756

w00t.

Oopsie. I wasn't using it right. Apparently, it's not required that you choose a system, genre, etc. Tee hee... red, my face is. Thanks, Joe. :)

... its rarity is zero? Huh? Thought it was harder to find than that...

[digitalpress]

Oopsie. I wasn't using it right. Apparently, it's not required that you choose a system, genre, etc. Tee hee... red, my face is. Thanks, Joe. :)

Oh that's OK! It's actually good to hear about what bits might not be "intuitive". I'm planning on addings some instruction to the page that will help with the searches.


... its rarity is zero? Huh? Thought it was harder to find than that...

Rarity "0" means it hasn't been rated yet. The PSX section is an immense effort, as you might imagine, and imports an even trickier business. But we're on it. Over time, everything will just "fill in".

[SpasticFuctard]

The right click open as a new window on sort or paging:

Yeah, and it's going to. Don't do that if you don't like the results.

The sort and paging stuff is all javascripted, all I can do is make their links something bogus like, "Hey, knock it off. That's not how you use this sucker." and you'll get a 404.

Or I can make all the search stuff a get rather than a post, but then you'll get a huge mess in the url, and frankly, you might hit the upper bound of query string length.

SF - Knock it off. :)

[robotriot]

Buuut on the other hand, this way you can never copy&paste a specific url of any list you want to show to a friend :/

[djbeatmongrel]

this is purely awesome. good job :D

maybe after this you guys can working on a game collection system like on ign. i figure it wont be that much of a stretch since you'll have a database to work off of. the only problem with it would be imports but i'm sure it'd be easily worked out.

[sisko]

What a fabulous tool.

I can't wait for the final to be released :-P

[digitalpress]

I added a "how to" page this morning, ripped primarily from the DP Guide texts. If you click any of the "what's this?" links on the search page you'll be taken to the appropriate area. Hope this helps with some of our terminology and philosophy!

[SpasticFuctard]

Ok, the inequalities stuff is in. And if you guys really,really want the form stuff to be copyable, I'll do it. It repels my desire to hide implementation, but I'll do it.

SF - Yar.

[digitalpress]

Made a few "efficiency" changes, and added an indicator to the pricing that tells you if our estimate is based on loose or complete titles.

Big update coming this weekend.

[digitalpress]

The long road to populating the images for the 25,000 or so titles in the database has begun! The 3DO section was our guinea pig. Look at Daedalus encounter, Slayer, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, Killing Time, and others for examples of how the screens look with the graphics filled in.

Links to our complete reviews are also being populated as we go. Enjoy!

[sisko]

The long road to populating the images for the 25,000 or so titles in the database has begun! The 3DO section was our guinea pig. Look at Daedalus encounter, Slayer, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, Killing Time, and others for examples of how the screens look with the graphics filled in.

Links to our complete reviews are also being populated as we go. Enjoy!

Need any help with scans? I would be more than happy to oblige.

[Mayhem]

Spotted a couple of errors in the C64 section...

1) Double Dragon (Ocean) has the arcade listed as being released in 1982.

2) The database can't handle non-English characters, witness the "?" in place of an umlauted O in the Rechenlowe titles, and ladk of apostrophes too.

Also the Vic20 section is still listed as being maintained by Ward ;)

[digitalpress]

Spotted a couple of errors in the C64 section...

1) Double Dragon (Ocean) has the arcade listed as being released in 1982.

That's something the C64 section editor has control over. I don't mess with that stuff.


2) The database can't handle non-English characters, witness the "?" in place of an umlauted O in the Rechenlowe titles, and ladk of apostrophes too.

This one is already on the "honey do" list :)


Also the Vic20 section is still listed as being maintained by Ward ;)

Until this past weekend, it was! I'll correct that for the next upload.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Professor Hector]

This is very impressive, and I imagine it took a hell of a lot of work to get everything moved over to a browsable format. Kudos to everyone involved.

[digitalpress]

This is very impressive, and I imagine it took a hell of a lot of work to get everything moved over to a browsable format. Kudos to everyone involved.

Thanks!

The process of linking in screen shots, advertisements and box scans, as well as our own game reviews is in progress.

Also updated: the issue with the non-recognizeable characters producing "?" in the text in some places should be resolved. If anyone spots any of these in their travels on the database, please let me know.

We're almost ready to go "live".

[SpasticFuctard]

What's most impressive is that it's running on a Vax III! I wrote a ton of procedural COBOL and Assembly to build it.

SF - Wake Up! It's 1984! And we've been here before!

[v1rich]

I get a "Error 504 Bad Gateway" error. My company has a firewall. I'll try from home and see if it works from there but I am on dial up at home.

I have a lot of SNES games I can give you scans for as well, let me know if you are interested.