You can now:
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/67?selectedTab=Table
Then type in 60 in the search box ...
www.techingames.net - A Game Feature Tracker and Comparison Database
- Thread starter Arwin
- Start date
You can now:
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/67?selectedTab=Table
Then type in 60 in the search box ...
This has turned out to be one of the most productive weekends in some time. The content management is now to a large extent complete, unless I decide to add more features (I'm considering adding tracking who worked on a game in what capacity, was employed by what publisher,developer or publication from when to when, etc.).
A few optimizations may need to be made here and there to the data model, but it is mostly ready and adding games, versions, reviews, feature values, and new features to track is all pretty smooth and fast, and workable on basically any HTML5 capable platform. I've been pumping in a dozen or so more Eurogamer reviews to test how smooth that works, and added features and reviewed bits and pieces of games that I own and played (and beaten) myself, and all that makes for a pretty smooth experience so far.
Hope some of you get round to testing it some time. There's very few things that are being tracked about games that you can't put into a database here now!
A few optimizations may need to be made here and there to the data model, but it is mostly ready and adding games, versions, reviews, feature values, and new features to track is all pretty smooth and fast, and workable on basically any HTML5 capable platform. I've been pumping in a dozen or so more Eurogamer reviews to test how smooth that works, and added features and reviewed bits and pieces of games that I own and played (and beaten) myself, and all that makes for a pretty smooth experience so far.
Hope some of you get round to testing it some time. There's very few things that are being tracked about games that you can't put into a database here now!
thanks arwin, ,the 60fps search working hgandsomely 
Alright, I managed to bring in some more big features that I am excited about.
First, I built out the whole review a feature for a game (version) aspect. In the backend, the scores are updated after each user review is added or updated so they can be queried properly. I also added an option for adding published review reviews of individual features. You can do this by reading the text that mentions a specific feature and take a rating from there, for instance, or take it from the plusses and minusses list if the review has them.
Then, I added a query that picks up individual feature values that have a critical or a user review and list the ones that score above 600 or below 500 as plusses or minusses against the game, and ditto for the 'casual' scores (which I've divided up into the typical five stars thing of aweful, bad, neutral, good, great) of above 2.8 or below 2.2.
Seems to work quite well! Will need a bit more tuning (some links, some additional checks), but it turns up results already very well.
In addition you can add reviews that have no scores (could already), give them a more precise score (translated to 0-1000) and now I've added the option to give them a 'causal' score (basically 1-5, you can map almost all of the 'casual' stuff onto that well enough).
I also updated some of the styles for different platforms (Vita, 3DS, Linux)
First, I built out the whole review a feature for a game (version) aspect. In the backend, the scores are updated after each user review is added or updated so they can be queried properly. I also added an option for adding published review reviews of individual features. You can do this by reading the text that mentions a specific feature and take a rating from there, for instance, or take it from the plusses and minusses list if the review has them.
Then, I added a query that picks up individual feature values that have a critical or a user review and list the ones that score above 600 or below 500 as plusses or minusses against the game, and ditto for the 'casual' scores (which I've divided up into the typical five stars thing of aweful, bad, neutral, good, great) of above 2.8 or below 2.2.
Seems to work quite well! Will need a bit more tuning (some links, some additional checks), but it turns up results already very well.
In addition you can add reviews that have no scores (could already), give them a more precise score (translated to 0-1000) and now I've added the option to give them a 'causal' score (basically 1-5, you can map almost all of the 'casual' stuff onto that well enough).
I also updated some of the styles for different platforms (Vita, 3DS, Linux)
Did some massive cleanup of a few bugs in the new functionality, and especially css layouting. Site keeps being a work in progress, but I'm really curious about what you think about it now.
Check out something like LittleBigPlanet 3 if you want to see some of the feature reviews in action.
Come on guys, don't play so hard to get.
Check out something like LittleBigPlanet 3 if you want to see some of the feature reviews in action.
Come on guys, don't play so hard to get.
D
Deleted member 11852
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I don't like it. Can you desaturate the colours, enforce a 2.35:1 ratio view and add some noise and grain filters. Basically I want it to look more like The Order 1886. You know, CGI-like.
Good idea! But those features will go behind the paywall.
(just to be 100% clear - I have no intention to ever make a paywall if I can help it)
I didn't think I'd let myself get dragged into this layouting thing because it's not my forte, but it's addictive.
(just to be 100% clear - I have no intention to ever make a paywall if I can help it)
I didn't think I'd let myself get dragged into this layouting thing because it's not my forte, but it's addictive.
A lot more work done on the website layout and some bugfixing. I also added some auto-loading, so that you get search results when you type.
Quite happy with the basic layout of the site now. Though I'm sure there's a lot more that could be improved, the layout is really clean.
Example of a game page as it is now:
A game details page that has individual features reviewed, which are then automatically highlighted as pro or con on the details panel:
And a close-up of how a reviewed feature gets an 'inline' score shown in the overview page.
(Building the overview is done dynamically each time now, so it's a bit slow, takes a few seconds typically. I'll cache that to a file eventually so it will be instantaneous)
Also, although I have examples of scores here, it's up to the user / reviewer to choose between a 'casual' review of anything or wanting to be more precise. The hardcore among us may want to be able to say that an implementation of a certain feature is better in game x than y (like me), but other people or at other times you may be happy with just assigning good or bad ...
Quite happy with the basic layout of the site now. Though I'm sure there's a lot more that could be improved, the layout is really clean.
Example of a game page as it is now:
A game details page that has individual features reviewed, which are then automatically highlighted as pro or con on the details panel:
And a close-up of how a reviewed feature gets an 'inline' score shown in the overview page.
(Building the overview is done dynamically each time now, so it's a bit slow, takes a few seconds typically. I'll cache that to a file eventually so it will be instantaneous)
Also, although I have examples of scores here, it's up to the user / reviewer to choose between a 'casual' review of anything or wanting to be more precise. The hardcore among us may want to be able to say that an implementation of a certain feature is better in game x than y (like me), but other people or at other times you may be happy with just assigning good or bad ...
I've now done a considerable amount of work on the reporting feature, something I've long looked forward to. I've decided to go for a two stage process - first get a good report result from any combination of features that you can filter further, and then add some way to create custom reports where you choose what featureids you want to query, and allow you to save and run that query with filter settings for each feature.
The first part is done, and I've used it for features that have child features in the feature tree. These features will show a new 'Report' tab, that instead of showing the current feature's values as the Table tab does, shows the results from its children grouped by game. You can see and filter a lot of information from here already, and you can link through to children that have children of their own.
For instance go here to see the various multiplayer modes supported per game per platform:
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/45?selectedTab=Report
And then if you click on 'Same Device' you'll go to that one where you can see what games support local Cooperative, Competitive, Same Screen, Split Screen, Hot Seat and Second Screen multiplayer.
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/46?selectedTab=Report
And again, all this is dynamic. So add a feature in the feature tree, add some values for one or two game versions, and it will be there.
I think it's nice to see that even though this is a generic setup, it's already catching up with some dedicated gaming sites in terms of this kind of functionality ...
But we're not done yet by a long shot. I've been at this for four months now ... pretty crazy, and I still never thought I'd get this far. But also not finished by a long shot.
I've decided to go for a two stage process - first get a good report result from any combination of features that you can filter further, and then add some way to create custom reports where you choose what featureids you want to query, and allow you to save and run that query with filter settings for each feature.The first part is done, and I've used it for features that have child features in the feature tree. These features will show a new 'Report' tab, that instead of showing the current feature's values as the Table tab does, shows the results from its children grouped by game. You can see and filter a lot of information from here already, and you can link through to children that have children of their own.
For instance go here to see the various multiplayer modes supported per game per platform:
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/45?selectedTab=Report
And then if you click on 'Same Device' you'll go to that one where you can see what games support local Cooperative, Competitive, Same Screen, Split Screen, Hot Seat and Second Screen multiplayer.
http://www.techingames.net/Features/Details/46?selectedTab=Report
And again, all this is dynamic. So add a feature in the feature tree, add some values for one or two game versions, and it will be there.
I think it's nice to see that even though this is a generic setup, it's already catching up with some dedicated gaming sites in terms of this kind of functionality ...
But we're not done yet by a long shot.
I've been at this for four months now ... pretty crazy, and I still never thought I'd get this far. But also not finished by a long shot.
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I made sure that critical and user reviews can now also link a video directly, which I thought would be useful in this day where everyone is going straight to youtube anyway.
Then I was thinking about adding some more old games from the ACE (Amiga, Atari, PC, MegaDrive, GameBoy) era of gaming, and then I came across another one of my favorite games of all time, Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, by Archer McLean. As it always strikes me how all-round talented that guy is, I thought I'd really want to be able to see on my site as well who worked on what. So I setup a 'credits' section where you can add who did what for a game, and also if other development studios pitched in and in what way, or what companies did, say, the CGI (one for you Laa-Yosh?).
So now there's a little imdb in the site too.
Then I was thinking about adding some more old games from the ACE (Amiga, Atari, PC, MegaDrive, GameBoy) era of gaming, and then I came across another one of my favorite games of all time, Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, by Archer McLean. As it always strikes me how all-round talented that guy is, I thought I'd really want to be able to see on my site as well who worked on what. So I setup a 'credits' section where you can add who did what for a game, and also if other development studios pitched in and in what way, or what companies did, say, the CGI (one for you Laa-Yosh?
). So now there's a little imdb in the site too.
I have made a test query where you can add a few featureIds and get results like below. I'll add it here for you to test.
I have made a test query where you can add a few featureIds and get results like below. So all I need now is a UI for creating a selection. I may just add something first where if you are logged in, you can just select your favorite features, and start expanding that to shared or custom reports from there. We'll see.
Today though I've first fixed an issue with the reviews I had already uploaded, and I've added the support for reporting on the UserValue type features (these are features that hold values only applicable to the logged on user, and are not properties of the game itself, like how much you paid, did you start it, complete it, how long did that take you, etc.)
So if you now choose details for the User feature category and go to Report, you'll see something like:
Well, that is, if you actually entered data.
This will later expand to show how your values compare to the values of the averages of other users, etc.
If you go to a feature detail page, you can see the feature tree for that feature if applicable, so you can easily browse it from there too.
I also made several improvements so you can add, update and delete feature values and user values from both the Overview and the Versions panels.
I have made a test query where you can add a few featureIds and get results like below. So all I need now is a UI for creating a selection. I may just add something first where if you are logged in, you can just select your favorite features, and start expanding that to shared or custom reports from there. We'll see.
Today though I've first fixed an issue with the reviews I had already uploaded, and I've added the support for reporting on the UserValue type features (these are features that hold values only applicable to the logged on user, and are not properties of the game itself, like how much you paid, did you start it, complete it, how long did that take you, etc.)
So if you now choose details for the User feature category and go to Report, you'll see something like:
Well, that is, if you actually entered data.
This will later expand to show how your values compare to the values of the averages of other users, etc.
If you go to a feature detail page, you can see the feature tree for that feature if applicable, so you can easily browse it from there too.
I also made several improvements so you can add, update and delete feature values and user values from both the Overview and the Versions panels.
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You can now set user filters on Features, and these will be used to generate your custom report in your control panel under Report (click your login name right top to get there). Currently it just selects the filtered feature value, but does not yet apply the filter on it - that will come tomorrow (no real time today, but I snuck in a moment or two )
I also looked at Giant Bomb api integration which seems interesting. May use it for something yet - at least I would like to auto-link a review. I already worked out the necessary api calls and fields for that.
)I also looked at Giant Bomb api integration which seems interesting. May use it for something yet - at least I would like to auto-link a review. I already worked out the necessary api calls and fields for that.
Ok, filter is applied now too, and will show only matches for all the filtered settings. So @AzBat, it's now possible! Now it's becoming more an issue of throwing insane amounts of data at it.
If you can replace Co-Optimus.com then cool!
Tommy McClain
I've updated the site so I (or anyone, really - will be interesting to see if I need to limit that at some point ) can post articles on the site. These are basically notes that are of the type Article. If you want to write something not related to anything on the site in particular, you can go to publications and add an Article Note to www.techingames.net - that's all there is to it currently, but I think I'll probably put some kind of experience points limit on that in the future.
I posted up an article of my own called Deconstructing the videogame.
) can post articles on the site. These are basically notes that are of the type Article. If you want to write something not related to anything on the site in particular, you can go to publications and add an Article Note to www.techingames.net - that's all there is to it currently, but I think I'll probably put some kind of experience points limit on that in the future.I posted up an article of my own called Deconstructing the videogame.
If anyone here wants to play around with consuming REST/odata from this site, just give me a shout. I've exposed almost everything on the site as odata read-only right now, so if iOS or Android development is your thing, or if you have a site that could benefit from data from this database and you want to try that out, that's possible right now. If you don't know odata yet, it's a more powerful version of RESTful/WebApi with loads of things like query, subobject expansion, filtering, paging etc built in by default, and you can also connect with full classes by setting up a webservice reference (which still just translates all activity to http requests as specified by odata).
It is pretty nice, powerful and easy to use.
It is pretty nice, powerful and easy to use.
