Online index of RetroGamer

[Bcubic]

Hi everyone,

as we already have 78 issues of the wonderful mag it's getting more and more difficult to keep an overview of what has been covered yet. Further, it isn't enough to know that something has been covered but having no clue in which issue the article is in; flickering through 78 issues isn't really an option anymore, is it?

Having had some spare hours left last weekend, I started a small project: the RetroGamerDataBase. The idea behind this site is to describe the featured articles by using tags. This allows to build a large, constantly growing index that can be used for searching through the various issues.

Please feel free to take a look at the first prototype, but keep in mind that the data included is only issue 78 as well as the functionality is still quite limited.

Before anyone asks: regarding the planed level of information offered through the RGDB, there won't be any parts of the articles themselves on the site; the sole purpose is to create a possibility for searching articles, not reading them

next point: there is also an interface for adding tags and articles, meaning filling the database up shouldn't be that time consuming.

so, I'm waiting for your feedback

[Antiriad2097]

Good start. Can you add a search function?

[Bcubic]

thx for the input.

Well, the only content searchable are the titles of the articles (as the texts aren't and won't be available in the database). Personally, I don't really think that scanning the titles would be that helpful.

Searching for specific tags could be done easily, but my approach is rather do display them in a large tag-cloud (searchable through the browser's functions) as seen in the prototype which allows us to combine different tags for specifying a detailed search. We'll see - the tag-cloud gets bigger and bigger with every issue added - if this approach is feasible.

[Uaithne]

Looks good so far mate.

This is something I was hoping would actually appear in the magazine at some point. I know a fishing magazine I also get (yes, I do get outdoors from time to time) had an index which appeared in the centre of the mag, each time covering about 10 issues - So that by the time it had been published in 10 mags, it had covered the entire series up until that point (ie, 100 issues).

[JD!]

This is a brilliant idea! Often I want to find a certain article but I have to go through each issue to get there. A search function would be a great addition though.

[djcarlos]

Wasn't someone already doing one of these a while ago? Did it fade away.........?

[Bcubic]

right, there was a sticky some years(?) ago, but as far as i remember the thread covered only a handfull of issues.
Don't really have the time now for diggig it up, but will take a look later today.

[merman]

Craig has an Excel spreadsheet covering a fair few issues, and there was a thread in Q&A where someone offered to update it.

The key things I'd like to see
- author acknowledgements (where possible)
- cross-referencing with the Anthology/bookazines

[RetroBob]

I was thinking about this the other day - wanted to go back to the issue that had the YouTube article.

[thesubcon3]

A few thoughts..

The only things I could think would be to make it a little more visually appealing.

You have the Mag covers so why not Box art for the games as well? They aren't too hard to hunt down high quality ones through google. You could even allow retrogamer members to upload them sort of like on listal.com

Also, everything being jumbled on the left side is weird to look at. I would suggest if you are making it 2 columns then center them both or make it one column and have a by console/article selection as a left column.

If you need any help, I would be more than happy to lend my assistance.

[Bcubic]

- author acknowledgements (where possible)
- cross-referencing with the Anthology/bookazines

Good ideas, inclusion of bookazines shouldn't be a problem. No idea of how to handle acknowledgements yet as I don't really know if there are that many, but I'm open for suggestions.

The only things I could think would be to make it a little more visually appealing. [...] Also, everything being jumbled on the left side is weird to look at. I would suggest if you are making it 2 columns then center them both or make it one column and have a by console/article selection as a left column.

It's just a functional layout right now and it will definitely change over the following weeks. The "articles found" section will be updated as well. I'm planning to show all article related tags at once by clicking on single one of the results.

You have the Mag covers so why not Box art for the games as well? They aren't too hard to hunt down high quality ones through google. You could even allow retrogamer members to upload them sort of like on listal.com

Mag covers are included as it makes searching the issue in real life a little bit easier.
Regarding box arts: there are already 148 games in the DB with only 3 issues covered so it would be a lot of work. I would say plain text is the better choice right now as it is way easier to use than graphics.

If you need any help, I would be more than happy to lend my assistance.

Input, critic and feedback is welcomed at any time; that's why I started this tread

[merman]

It would also help to put up the starting page number and size of article.

[Bcubic]

It would also help to put up the starting page number and size of article.

thx for the input (and sry for the late reply).

starting page could be done (but after knowing in which issue an article is in, it shouldn't be a problem finding it using the printed table of content); regarding the size of the articles i don't really know if it's needed as it's indirectly available through the article type (we all know that the retrorevivals are the big screenshots, making ofs are 'bout 4-6 pages etc.)

(status: 21 issues (58-78) indexed)