www.techingames.net - A Game Feature Tracker and Comparison Database

[Arwin]

Arwin's website database of game resolutions idea *spawn

Ah ok, no this is my third website, so no worries. And I'm using a Dutch hosting provider, so either you're seeing an advanced advert of sorts or my provider uses godaddy.

I have the db already created. I just need a few hours this week tonight or tomorrow to get the basic data entry going and tweak the user creation so I can manually approve members for now. I built a group based security feature twice now and also a rudimentary rep system that I might add to this. But I want the basic data entry in there first as a quick win over an Excel sheet, should hopefully be in there before the end of the week.

Pretty looks can come later.

 

[Arwin]

Sounds good. I will provide more data and sources during the week... and PM me any changes/adds made, so that I'm not backtracking or covering ground that you have already taken care of.

I'll give you full data entry privileges as soon as they're there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ah ok, no this is my third website, so no worries. And I'm using a Dutch hosting provider, so either you're seeing an advanced advert of sorts or my provider uses godaddy.

"Parked for free, courtesy of Go Daddy."

You'll need a front page with a clear description in every language of what pixel counting is and why a single metric is very, very far from the whole story, and why a lower resolution for some games is not indicative of lazy devs.

 

[rekator]

"Parked for free, courtesy of Go Daddy."

You'll need a front page with a clear description in every language of what pixel counting is and why a single metric is very, very far from the whole story, and why a lower resolution for some games is not indicative of lazy devs.

And low resolution is better than fluctuating framerate.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's subjective. People should look for what they want in a game based on their own preferences, whether that's higher res, more stable framerate, or more eye-candy. I do feel the numbers, whatever numbers are listed, need some explanation to stop them being abused. People take numbers and run with them with little understanding as numbers provide the most direct form of comparison possible, but that's stupid, naive behaviour. I wouldn't want the première numbers reference site for games to blindly support such action. I'd rather it was a technical site for reference and understanding, no matter how its abused in actual use, so some primers wouldn't go amiss. I'd like detailed values, such that KZ:SF has both a value for rendered pixels (960x1080) and a value (range) for unique, temporarily aligned pixels on screen (960x1080 to 1920x1080). That'd be something to work towards though. Start simple to get it working first!

 

[orangpelupa]

btw if you need someone to do the web design, i can help on free time

although dont expect someting super marvelous. i do web design on and off >_< sometime for government sometime local business.

 

[Arwin]

Thanks for that, will probably launch the site when it functionally works and then come for design tips . And yes, explanations per feature are in. Made really good progress today despite limited time!

 

[Cyan]

"Parked for free, courtesy of Go Daddy."

You'll need a front page with a clear description in every language of what pixel counting is and why a single metric is very, very far from the whole story, and why a lower resolution for some games is not indicative of lazy devs.

:smile::smile: I wonder if he knows Galician, I'd love to see that.

Many thanks for your idea and your work Arwin, and definitely something I look forward to, because days ago I was about to suggest in the Digital Foundry thread that DF could also write small articles about non AAA games, or a comprehensive list of details of new generation games.

For instance, the resolution of Defence Grid 2 puzzles me. I love that game and I wonder what's the actual resolution it has. Things like that now that our AI is on a very very long holiday, :smile2: not for a fortnight exactly... when it comes to resolution issues.

The webpage isn't running as of now, like zed I get to a godaddy homepage of sorts. Cheers, and thanks again.

 

[Cyan]

Thanks for that, will probably launch the site when it functionally works and then come for design tips . And yes, explanations per feature are in. Made really good progress today despite limited time!

I have a single design tip. What about reserving a little box with quick information on the resolution and stuff of 2 or 4 games or whatever.

Those games would be randomly listed. So the idea would be to have an algorithm showing the games and their resolutions for quick reference and for the sake of curiosity, showing the systems where the game runs on and the resolution of those games for every system.

 

[Arwin]

That'd certainly help in the fanboy wars

I've put a little more time in yesterday, and the building/maintenance of the feature tree is now working. The feature tree leafs have different types, like group (just another branch, basically), flag (true or false), select one (of the children of this branch) as value, select multiple (of the children of this branch) as value. I can also easily add types later.

This means that anyone (with rights) can quickly add anything that we'd wish to track, controller features, OS features, etc.

Most of the work that's still ahead of me is implementing the UI for adding/deleting more to more relationships. For instance, you can add a game, and then you add a version to that game, and that version is linked to a region, platform, etc. I still have to work out where to add things - for instance a release of a version should perhaps be separate from the actual version and its features to be really clean (like the 2.1 patch of Diablo that was released on PC a while ago, and just was released on the PS4 this morning).

And of course the data entry of the actual features. This means that for a game's version, I would show the feature tree described above, and then add a piece of UI for each of the node types (e.g. a checkbox for flags, radiobuttons or combobox for one item select, checkbox group for multi-select, etc.. Then everything you fill in should be saved as metadata to the game, while preserving the actual link to the feature dictionary.

From there on, it'd be a matter of selecting features from the tree to report / compare games on, and then we'd have a pretty feature complete site, I think.

 

[Arwin]

Small change of plan - all your comments about godaddy, turns out that domain had been registered already after all.

But fortunately www.techingames.net was still available, so that one is definitely mine now. It's already pointing to my provider, so looks like it's ready for me to upload a site.

 

[Arwin]

A bit of progress report. Here's my game feature-tree editor in action, with which I can build any kind of thing to track about a game version (I think I could also apply it to firmware, we'll see). I can basically build a feature tree that holds just about anything (currently I now support number, text, flag (checkbox), radiobuttons, and dropdownlists, including default values)

Next up is hooking this up to a game version and storing / editing the selected values, and then I'll have a first version that I can publish in 'beta'

 

[zed]

you will prolly also want to do a FPS measurement
30 or 60
& perhaps colored green if it hits it regularly red if its tearing/dipping

 

[DieH@rd]

There are so many combinations...

Perfect 30fps, 30fps with rare dips, 30fps with regular dips, unlocked 30fps [25-40], perfect 60fps, unlocked 60fps [50-60]...

 

[DieH@rd]

/accidental doublepost

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Statistically we should have range as well as averages, including more than just the mean. There ought to be a way to consolidate all that info into a 'score' as well, to aid the console warriors.

 

[AzBat]

Joe DeFuria where are you?

Tommy McClain

 

[Arwin]

Statistically we should have range as well as averages, including more than just the mean.

Yes, though a first start could be to see how we could for instance fit DF's data in there.

There ought to be a way to consolidate all that info into a 'score' as well, to aid the console warriors.

Errr, yes, let's call that a ... stretch goal?

 

[brunogm]

Also, as 60 and 30 fps are at different quality scales, the deviation range should be more strict as well.

 

[Arwin]

This would have probably been finished if not for DriveClub. Maybe tonight.