CPANEL - FEATURE - Weird values for some of the config data

[nguillaumin]

I saw some values in the game config data that are questionable and that I'd like to discuss.

1/ "Joystick + Keyboard" in the game control methods:

That sounds wrong to me because if a game uses both, then both values "Keyboard" and "Joystick" should be added separately instead:

(Not sure why Keyboard is in grey here, please disregard this).

If we don't do this, then we'll end up with a lot of redundant values: "Keyboard + Mouse", "Mouse + Joystick", "Keyboard + Mouse + Joystick", etc.

2/ Memory configuration with "ST" or "STE" in the name:

What is that for? I feel something is wrong here because ST/STE are a "System", nothing to do with memory, we have a separate table for compatibility with ST/STE?

[stgraveyard]

@stefanjl ?

[Brume-AL]

Also what's the difference between 512 kb and 520 kb? Do we have some examples? Thanks guys.

[stefanjl]

I added the controls "joystick + keyboard" as an option mostly for joystick games that require the use of keyboard also, so basically it means you need both joystick and keyboard to play it and it is not only a joystick game or keyboard game. A good example is Robocop wich uses the joystick but to actually be able to jump in the game so do you have to press the "space" key on the keyboard.

I don't mean "joystick + keyboard" option to be used when a game is totally controlled by joystick but keyboard is used for turn off music or soundeffects and such... only to be used when the keyboard is used for gameplay.

I think this was a acceptable solution to show how the game is controlled :)

I did also add "1 mb for ST" and "512 kb for STE" this is a workaround for the game Chaos Engine wich require minimum RAM 1 mb if played on an ST but only require 512 kb on an STE... this is the same release so it could not be split up as seperate releases, It is not the best solution but i have no other idea what to do?

Brume: i would also like to know where 520kb is used (and also 260kb) :)

[stgraveyard]

Robocop can jump??????? :-O

[nguillaumin]

Ahah yeah that's news to me too!! :joy_cat:

Hm, I'm not sure having a "keyboard+joystick" is the best option because it's not super clear what the difference is with a separate "keyboard" and "joystick" entry. It kind of make sense when you describe it, but no other users would know that off hand. Perhaps we should have a "mandatory control methods" field and an "alternative control method" one or something...

For the memory, it doesn't sound ideal to have this odd entry in the list of memory just for 1 edge case release... Not sure what the alternative could be though, perhaps just a mention in the release notes field?

If we don't use 520 and 260, we can remove them?

[stefanjl]

I am pretty sure 520 and 260 are mistakes and can be removed... unless there actually is a game that uses that?

No the memory solution was not the best as it can probably only be used for Chaos Engine... but on the other hand so does the data look very clear and understandable on the actual game page wich is a big plus in my eyes :)

The controls option i added works for me as i always want short and simple data... i am a gamer and when i look at a game DB and wonder if when i play with joystick is the keyboard used for any important game functions... in that case so does "joystick + keyboard" work perfectly as it gives a fast answer... maybe it can be renamed if it is not as clear for other people? like "joystick + keyboard combo"?

[stgraveyard]

OK, so I had a chat with Nico. We are thinking of creating super admins (myself, Nico and Mattias) and admins (everybody else). For now, the only difference COULD be that the game config section would not be updatable by admins, only super admins. This to prevent these kinds of 'weird' data. This would mean that the admins request a certain value, and we can discuss with the whole team. Keeping our data consistent, understandable and clean.

My question now is, do you think this is a good idea? Or too much?

[stefanjl]

I am not against more discussions.. i like doing that :)

I did bring up the Chaos Engine case several times at facebook messenger, and as a value in the config data it does look weird but it all makes sense when seeing it at the game detail page wich was why i went for it.

About the "joystick + keyboard" value... i might have getting carried away and was excited by trying the possibilities of the AL database system... i was just happy to be able to add more correct data than other databases, maybe not "super clear" as nico says but people will get used to this way of adding data after a while... why should not AL be a rolemodel? :)

[stgraveyard]

This is no criticism of your work Stefan, just to be clear :-) I love what you are doing. I am just not the person to discus this stuff with, as I don't have that deep knowledge. The whole team needs to know and agree what is added and how it should be used, so locking this section and making requests could be a good solution for this ... I will get back to this GIT issue at one point in time ...

[nguillaumin]

people will get used to this way of adding data after a while

That's true, but I would prefer if we could make it as obvious as possible from the beginning :smile: . For example another user may have put separate "keyboard" and "joystick" tags because they weren't sure what "keyboard+joystick" meant, without an explanation (such a myself, hence this thread!).

I think in that case it's just a use case we missed (some games need keyboard+joystick to be controlled), we should update the DB schema / screens to reflect that, although I'm not completely sure how. Your solution may be the right one, if we can make it more obvious (perhaps just an help text).

As @stgraveyard said, if we keep control over that kind of data, it gives us the opportunity to discuss it to find the best solution, so I think that's a good direction to take.

I've removed 260 and 520, and I also renamed "mb" to "MB" which is the correct abbreviation ("Meta" should be capital M, and "b" is bits, vs "B" which is bytes).

[nguillaumin]

I also wanted to discuss the Dungeon Master entry:

To me it would make more sense to name the release just "v1.2" for example, rather than "Dungeon Master [V1.2]". The "name" field on a release is intended to be used only when the name differ from the main game name. In that case it's only the version that differs but the name stays the same, so I think it shouldn't be repeated?

[stgraveyard]

Very good stuff. We need to constantly challenge eachother, that is the best way in delivering quality work. Please continue like this ;)

[nguillaumin]

Ah, something else too: I noticed that you can enter multiple values for "Minimum memory" in the CPANEL. That's weird, there should be only 1 value permitted, right? Either you need 1MB or 2MB minimum, but not both?

[stefanjl]

Nico... about "joystick + keyboard" (sorry don't know how to use the quote function in this forum)... you are correct that it is not super clear for new users and i have been thinking about to suggest a sort of guideline for each section you can edit in the DB... for example there will be a small questionmark "?" somewhere and when clicking that it shows the guidelines for each selection/value what the mean and stand for :)

Also it might not be super clear for viewers on the actual game detail page and it can probably be solved by using more visual data... or how to explain it? what i mean for the "controls" is to be shown as icon symbols and the "joystick + keyboard" value will be shown as a icon wich group these two symbols together, and when a viewer hover the mouse icon over them a popup window appear wich has text explaining more in detail what it means... and by popup window i mean like the questionmark in "the game info" tile works. example icon:

[stefanjl]

about the Dungeon Master... when i added these so was it just ment as a temporary solution to seperate the releases in a good way so we could work with the database better with less mistakes... i did not want to just type example "v1.2" since it then looked as the game was named like that and in fact "v 1.2" should not at all be used in the "alt title" field but it is the only way right now. We do need a new field for typing "release version" (or what makes the release a seperate release) or similar and thats where this kind of data should be... like "v 1.2" or just "alt. box" and such.

[stefanjl]

The "minimum memory" multiple values is there for Chaos Engine :) troublesome game is it not :D

[stefanjl]

Nico BTW could you change all "Atari STe" to "Atari STE" also :) Also wich games had the memory values 260 and 520 KB? good to know so they can be fixed with new data right away.

[nguillaumin]

• No game was using 260 / 520 (I couldn't have deleted it otherwise I think).
• STe, eh, I changed it from STE as I thought this was the appropriate styling (as on the label on the computer itself its STe, with the "e" in superscript though)? Not sure there's a "right" solution here, might just be a matter of preference, but perhaps we should ask more people?
• Minimum memory: Right ok, I see now... Annoying!
• Controls: I like the icons!
• Dungeon Master: I really think we shouldn't repeat the name here. I think it's incorrect since the name is the same, and it looks really weird on the game details page. I'm not sure I would create a separate field for the "version" in the database, I feel the alternative name is good enough for that. As for your example of "alt box", this is not intended to be in the release title, but instead the release notes. Here's how it should look as an example, I think:

At least, I had this usage in mind when I designed it... :wink: Some games seem to be putting the version number only:

• https://www.atarilegend.com/games/games_detail.php?game_id=5472
• https://www.atarilegend.com/games/games_detail.php?game_id=4607
• https://www.atarilegend.com/games/games_detail.php?game_id=5371

Maybe they were edited by someone else than you though :bear:

[stefanjl]

Version numbers are almost never part of the games title or box/manual... if it even has one you might need to read the dump in a hexeditor to see it :)

If i am correct so is the notes written in the notes field not seen on the game detail page? So if a game has 3 "alt. boxes" releases in the same year then there is nothing to tell them apart when selecting a release in the new design with tabs? thats why i wanted a sort of release naming function or sort of :)

The STE label on the computer do in fact say "STE" :) and Atari themself used "STE" in advertising.

[nguillaumin]

The notes don't show in the games details page currently, but they should, we'll add them.

I understand for the versions that they are not displayed, but still I think it makes sense to use the alternate title for these.

For STe, I was thinking of the actual badge, the "e" is smaller than ST:

Unfortunately there's no way to write the "e" in subscript, so STe is kind of the best approximation?

[nguillaumin]

For STE/STe, can we ask what other people think (On Facebook perhaps or whatever you guys are using)? Again I don't think there's a right answer, but there should be agreement with the majority.

[stefanjl]

The "E" on the badge is small is just a design thing (like a logotype), if you look underneath your ST/E/FM you can see how it is written with upper case "E" in text and as i mentioned earlier they used upper case for the advertising and never lower case "e"... so in this case there is a right way.

[nguillaumin]

Still keen to get more opinions on this. Even Wikipedia uses both variants (well, actually a slightly different one with the E in superscript), so I think it's worth discussing.

[stgraveyard]

Perhaps we can use CSS magic for this? : https://bytes.com/topic/html-css/answers/809852-adjusting-position-sup-sub-text

[nguillaumin]

It would be a bit tricky because the value "STE" is in the database, so everywhere we want to display it we would have to do {if $value == STE}ST<sup>e</sup>{else}{$value}{/if}

[stgraveyard]

That is only in the game detail page, why not?

[stgraveyard]

Bit of topic :

So it is possible :

But as @nguillaumin says, we need to add the CSS code EVERYWHERE and I don't think it is possible to style within a drop down or input field :

We would also need to style it here :

Conclusion : For me, that is way too much of a hasstle, so I would suggest solving it using a standard char. And even though I love the fact that you go into so much detail @stefanjl (I would have never stummbled upon this), if I had to choose between 'STE' or 'STe', I would go for the last, as it stands out more and to me shows a better difference between 'ST' and 'STe' compared to 'ST' and 'STE'. But that is just me, in the end, it doesn't matter to me much...

[stgraveyard]

I made a branch @nguillaumin , but I guess we won't be using it ...