Spaz Twit
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Posted - 2006.08.10 04:36:00 -
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Edited by: Spaz Twit on 10/08/2006 04:45:07
Okay I'll give you some feedback on your site.
First 2 things though. One, people are going to make their own databases no matter how awesome yours is. Don't let it discourage you from your work. Two, there is already a lot of public data floating around that you don't have. At a minimum card name type and rarity. It *should be* trivial to add this all into your database as you build up your site but unfortunately it's not, given your design. Which is a shame. But maybe you can modify things and save people some work.
OK now some feedback, positive things first.
+ It's a good start and the layout is decent as far as presenting the info. It might be better to break it into sections by card type (News, Ships, Locations, etc) as you have data that is only applicable to specific card types.
+ No advertising!
+ Props for taking a swipe at getting something out for the community.
Now the criticism..
- I don't see any way to query. List "all ships with cost of 2" for example. There's no sort ability, either. A database you cannot query is not very useful.
- Card input is rather error prone and very much open to exploits the way you have it...
- Dosen't seem you are actually creating a database at all just some text and HTML? Not sure what your back end is though.
- Having ability for users to enter data is worthless once all the data is put in. Guaranteed a complete spoiler list with all card data will be out in < 1 week. Game will be around for years. Sure there will be expansions but again spoiler list will be out within 1 week...
- Graphics need some polish. Race icons look rough, text on the command & assembly tabs, mineral value, etc is hard to read at least on my screen (Firefox browser).
I'm not trying to be harsh these are just my opinions. It's a great start and I know it's taken a bit of work to get it out there. I am looking forward to seeing your site evolve and mature.
Edit: I think the problem is, the things you are looking to provide that nothing else will e.g. "permanent longevity, tutorialised socket access, player-uploaded card images, exportation into a variety of different formats" are actually either solutions looking for a problem or something that WILL be provided.
I don't think socket access or player-uploaded card images are really solutions to anything as I just don't see a reason for people to use them. Either CCP will allow card images to be used and there will be a library of them, or it will be disallowed (copyright works as you know) I don't think it's been said either way yet. And noone will really use socket access when its too easy to copy and host a separate copy of the db locally.
And exporting to various formats isn't very useful when a simple CSV dump (excel spreadsheet) can be so easily manipulated & read into whatever format is needed. Its easy to do whatever you want with the data in a basic no-frills format.
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