Other printable lite lists! Thanks to Slash!

[Sylentwulf]

I need a jaguar, sega cd, 32x, virtual boy, lynx, game.com, 3d0 games list. Like the lite lists on this site, except they're not up for those systems.

I know they're small lists to begin with, but I don't want 10 pages of sega cd games listed and described when all I want to do is checkmark them off Anywhere I can get these listed in one printable page (with or without checkboxes). I tried google, but it's just a mess.

[Six Switch]

this is a dumb question,but where are the lite lists on the site?i'd love a snes one.

[Sylentwulf]

I can never remember, I actually have to google search for the link whenever I go to check lol:
www.digitpress.com/lists/

I know, it's a complex link, and I should be able to remember it :P

[Matt-El]

I must concur. There are good lists, but are limited to a few major consoles. I do think its great that I have a Master System checklist now!

[MK_Man]

My cousin Michael has these on his site---> http://www.gooddealgames.com/ReleaseList.html

Is that what you were looking for?

[Sylentwulf]

My cousin Michael has these on his site---> http://www.gooddealgames.com/ReleaseList.html

Is that what you were looking for?

Kind of, but it's not overly printable. It's all good, I'm just being really picky
Those lite lists are a PERFECT format.

[DDCecil]

I just found out I saved some lists from awhile back. It still has some info on some of the games, but a whole lot less than they do currently. I have 32X, Jaguar, Sega CD, and a couple of more.

[devilman]

This site any use to you?

[swlovinist]

I was the one that started the concept of DP lite awhile back. I wanted a version of complete lists that were printer friendly, and was doing it by hand at home. I emailed Joe an example of what I had done and he was kind enough to construct several lists that you now see on the above link. It must of saved me hours and days of work. If anyone at DP could help flesh out other systems, I think that many collectors on this site could benefit from a DP lite guide for some of the other systems such as Playstation and 3DO. I am currently doing an inventory in my game room and it is a bloody nightmare. These would definately help me out. Again I would like to thank DP for helping out collectors with these lists, which I use in my inventory binder every day.

[swlovinist]

I thought I would bring this post up again. I have talked to alot of local gamers that LOVE the idea of having a printable, paper friendly list for video game systems? I absolutely love the lists provided, is there any way some others can be made? How about one for every US game system? Playstation US? CD-i? 3DO? Neo Geo AES? Any help????

[Slash]

Hey, I am kind of a lurker to both the site and forums. Decided to register for the forums because of this topic. Sorry for bumping it up again.

These lite lists are infinitely useful for cataloging and looking up your collection quickly and is a "have list" and rarity guide all in one, which is huge for yard sales, flea markets, etc.

All the games in question are in the online database, of course. It should be within the realm of possibility to dynamically generate these pdf lists from the database. For example, in PHP there are pdf libraries and functions in which you can generate pdf's such as these lite lists on the fly. If code was made to do this from an arbitrary list of games, it would be trivial to make lite checklists for any and every console.

In fact, it would be possible to have a button or link on the Online Rarity Guide search results page that says "Create Lite Checklist from Results" and have it dynamically create the pdf and send to the client. Then you could make lite checklists of essentially anything you wanted.

Of course the big issue here is how difficult is it going to be to properly implement this so they turn out just as good as the current checklists. I just wanted to throw it out there to see if anyone had any thoughts on this concept.

[Synergy]

Whoa! I never knew about these lite lists. Checkboxes and rarity ratings = genius. I'll be using these as I begin buying games!

[Slash]

I figured I would give the dynamic PDF's a go.

For a data source, I took the Atari 2600 game list and tried to use some regex to clean it up into a standard format in a plain text file. Of course for a "real" version of this, it would need access to a database or some curl-based hackjob. Here is the list of games:

http://digitpress.slashbunny.com/game-list.txt

I used the FPDF libraries for PHP to take this list and generate a PDF file that looks as close to the DP Lite lists as possible. The fonts don't look exact... I must have a different version of Tahoma or something. I also need to align the columns slightly closer to the original lists, but I will do that tomorrow. But unless you are looking for the differences, it's pretty close.

Anyways, have a look (if game names and stuff are messed up, it's probably because of the text file I couldn't be bothered to make perfect):

http://digitpress.slashbunny.com/test.php

Here is the original list for aesthetic comparison:

http://www.digitpress.com/lists/dplite_atari_2600.pdf

Hrm, I just noticed that the checkboxes don't show up in some viewers... weird. Works on Acrobat Reader 7.0 and gv, but not epdfview.

[Sylentwulf]

Looks really good slash, missing the actual boxes, but that's not overly a big deal.

So, you going to be doing up those other lists that are missing? Keep us updated! I can host the files if you need the bandwidth/webspace.

[Slash]

It doens't show the checkboxes for you? That's actually just text, the font is ZapfDingbats.

The font is not embedded in the PDF file, so your client uses a substitute instead if it can't find it. I'm told this font is available in all clients, but apparently not. What PDF viewer are you using?

[Slash]

I decided to switch to Wingdings and embed that (the original lite lists used Wingdings anyways). Now it should work on every PDF viewer.

Oh, and yea, I could make all the remaining lists with this, but the problem is getting the data needed. I don't want to search for "Playstation 1" and "US Releases" and then copy and paste every single game name/publisher/rarity by hand on every result page. :/

EDIT:
Moved work to http://digitpress.slashbunny.com/

[Slash]

I did a bit of work today and it looks pretty complete so far, I just need to test for bugs.

The program does the following:

1) Retrieve the search page and form from the DP site
2) Modify the HTML to add my own text and form elements
3) Display the modifed HTML page that you see
4) Upon submission, group the variables and send them as POST data to the DP search form
5) Get the results from the search from the DP site.
6) Parse the results and get the number of pages and game information
7) Send the POST data again for every "page" of results and append to a master list
8) When we retrieved all the game data from all the search result pages, create the PDF file and send to the user's brower

This simulates a user searching for something and copying the data by hand from every search result page, but much more effecient.

If you want a Playstation USA list, simply choose "PlayStation". "U.S. Game Releases", set PDF Title to "PlayStation USA" (or whatever you want) and press the "Generate PDF" button and wait. As you can imagine the possibilities are endless. It might break or do weird stuff, so please report any bugs.

NOTE: It takes a while to get all the data to make the PDF, _don't_ hammer the submit button.
NOTE: If the DP search form is down, this isn't going to work either, It absolutely requires it to do anything.

http://digitpress.slashbunny.com/

Since you can use this to select "All Racing Games for All Systems", outputting Name/Publisher by itself doesn't seem logical. It would at least need the system name as well, so you know what system each game on the list is for. But that's for another day. This should work fine for your complete system list needs.

[Sylentwulf]

unbelievable man, that is EXCELLENT. I use Foxit for a pdf viewer, no load times. The checkboxes are there now and everything looks great. A million thanx!

[tylerwillis]

Holy crap. That's a seriously nice piece of work.

[anagrama]

Wow, that's fantastic! Give the man a pat on the back, and get a link up somewhere on the site pronto!