#1
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Products - Phase II
So it's been over a year since I first implemented the product-linking system, and I've done very little work on it since then. I think we've got some solid answers to questions that I had back then, and it's time to push this feature to completion. First, I'd like to thank you guys for using the system so far, particularly Cedille, Seanne, and CHz, who really kept it rolling long after I got lazy. Anyway, I've put together a short design document for the next phase of this. Most of it is notional, and definitely open to discussion. A few things need to be hammered out, and any new ideas are welcome:
1. Linking to Releases We need to be able to optionally link an album through the product to one or more releases. This indicates that music on that album comes specifically from the specified releases.
2. Product link classification We would like to provide metadata that describes how an album relates to a product. This classification resembles the album classification. Quote:
3. Product-Artist Cross-reference This is the big one right here, adding something that people have wanted for a long time, and something that effectively closes the loop on our coverage. (Populating this table may also require some discussion with other sites.)
4. Product (and release) page design Mostly, we need to figure out what to do with the big space to the right of the logo.
5. Deployment
6. Long range future project: Cataloging technical details for game's music This is very long range, and difficult to plan for, but it would be very cool. It's also something nobody has ever really tried to catalog.
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#2
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I'd nice to be able to link product to companies, too.
Btw, have we ever considered changing the "Related Albums" section where currently only the albums sharing the exact same text are shown up? Because of this, if someone writes more than one product name in an entry, the section doesn't work well as intended. I've never wrote any server side script, but I think we could just separate the string at the product field by comma, assign each of them to an array, and run SQL commands to search the database. The possible issues with this is it might often return more than 10 results which seems to be the maximum one page can display, and how to handle a product which include a comma in its name (I doubt there are so many, but I know some) |
#3
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I hadn't considered that connection. We wouldn't be able to completely cover that, unless we permit addition of companies that have no publishing or distribution credits for albums
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I also forgot a few details above about distinguishing release-links and different classifications of product links on the album page. |
#4
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you can replace the comma by a CR
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#5
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I started working on things, but then I found a major SQL slow-down in listing the albums on the Franchise pages. The slowdown was caused by an OR clause that was there to display all the reprint albums. I figured out a way to rewrite the query so that it is more efficient. So, the Final Fantasy page used to take 6.5 seconds to load, but now it takes 0.11 seconds.
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#6
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Sounds good to me - the only additional thing I can think of at the moment would be to separate official and unofficial releases, like we do on artist pages.
Isn't it supposed to be used for various sound related credits? |
#7
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Actually, I hadn't considered making the album list look more like the artist page in style, but it might actually be cleaner. I've been using the same style as the org pages. I think the number of different roles we'll credit for a game could be much larger than we'd want for that box, so I was thinking about putting them in a separate tab that you could switch to (kind of like how we switch between tracklists without re-loading the rest of the page.) I'm going to add a short "Description" field to the box, and remove the two roles that are there. Maybe we should use Cedille's idea and listthe publisher(s) here too. |
#8
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So, which way to you like it?
http://vgmdb.net/product/182 http://vgmdb.net/product/182?exp Note, still notional, and I just copied how we do it on the artist pages, but some adjustment maybe needed. The "Original", "Fan Arrange", etc. classifications are just notional, as we don't have that data in the links yet. If you want to look at another page with the artist-style disco, just append ?exp to the URL. EDIT - I think I'm sold on the new style. |
#9
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I like the new style. I'm thinking perhaps we should just have the year in the date column as well and remove the year section dividers (so that we have a regular table).
Also, I'm wondering if artist discographies should be sorted by year descending as well. |
#10
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Thanks. I'll switch it over to use the new style tonight.
I still like having the section dividers though, particularly for long discographies. Maybe it's because I don't have the best eyes, but it makes it easier to find the year you want. I guess the artist page is now the only forward sorting list, so reversing it would be more consistent. On the other hand, I think people have come to expect discos to sort in forward chronological order (if Discogs is any indication). I could just as easily switch it to forward chronological order on the product pages. |
#11
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Next up is linking to specific releases. Could you guys give me some examples of some already-linked products that should be linked to releases? |
#12
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http://vgmdb.net/album/308 http://vgmdb.net/album/5659 http://vgmdb.net/album/5681 http://vgmdb.net/album/10164 http://vgmdb.net/album/15275 I had some little concern about linking a release, along with a suggestion for platform table abolishment, but I didn't have time and want to see how it's implemented first. Thanks for hard works so far anyway. Last edited by Cedille; Nov 16, 2011 at 08:18 PM. |
#13
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(Note, I used "Multiple" as a replacement for a large number (maybe >5?). Just an idea that can be discussed.) Note also that some of these may be linked to a title, and not a specific release, so that means that the platforms from all of that title's releases had to be gathered and listed. Generally, an album can be linked to zero or more releases. If it is linked to no releases, the assumption is that it contains music from all releases. An album should not be linked to a product when it contains no music that relates in any way (via the classifications) to any of its releases. EDIT - Of course, releases can have different names on different platforms. We might have to be even more clever about this, but I'm still lacking examples that I can use to define usecases.) |
#14
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Some thoughts.
- IMO products have big 'soft-requeriments' that should be lowered. Release dates, moby/ocr-links, etc. I'd have bare entries + albums links, and encourage other users to fill the product over time (plenty of English info out there, hard to screw up, not our priority anyway). There are some minor franchises I'd like to add but having to hunt and double check exact release days, logos and whatnot for stuff very few care is just too much. Even worse with old games with tons of releases. You could say "oh but it's just a few of minutes" but it adds up to hours... Sorry if I sound negative, nobody take it personally. I do like products and appreciate the hard work. - Linking to concrete releases would be nice indeed. - Platforms for anime please: series, OVA, movie. - Product page: album filters, even cheapo JS "clic and hide" stuff, would be appreciated (orange noooo). - Now that you can search products, alternate US titles in the album titles (for search purposes) could be dropped --cleaner albums, simpler to mantain, clear guidelines. See this. - For the products list I prefer linear rather than comma-separated list (looks bad). Some simple abbreviations +tooltips could work well. Quote:
What about adding some prefix searches like "a=final fantasy viii", "p=tales phantasia" to limit the queries to album/products and so on? (this would be useful in general too) |
#15
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We've been talking about the platform field going away once an album is linkd to products. Still, this would be easy to add, and probably wouldn't hurt anything. Quote:
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#16
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Did you break the line by comma? That doesn't work with products including a comma in its name (and that's part of why I had no idea how to separate and assign strings at the product field to an array adequately).
http://vgmdb.net/album/19579 http://vgmdb.net/album/15638 I thought we should ultimately stop separating artists and products names by manually added commas, but it might mean the total redesign of the submission system... |
#17
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Yeah, that totally breaks it. I think quite a few animes have commas, so we are probably going to have to think about finding the least painful way to transition this field to <CR> separated. At least the product field would be easier than the artist fields. They have much more that depend on them.
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#18
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I like the linear separation for the products...
Though i think it's not working as intended and too confusing without any separation character. As stated above, products with a comma in the title is causing problems.. AND it's confusing because you can't tell anymore what is the complete title of the game, it's becoming too confusing: Example here Doki Doki Penguin Land: Uchu Daibouken I do know that the complete title is "Doki Doki Penguin Land: Uchu Daibouken", but the profane might not.. Is a game "Doki Doki Penguin Land: Uchu" ? and "Daibouken" another one ? I hope you get my point. |
#19
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Holy cow, that has a lot of products.
I'm thinking the extra platform and classification info might help some. Quote:
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#20
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Consider old animes that were released in many countries in who knows which date. Original release is more than enough for me, and users from each country could complete the dates better than I'd could/would. A few alternatives you could use to keep the product page complete while I retain my sanity would be adding auto links if no exact links exist, using relevant sites' GET functions. Ex.- (if the releases' platforms include games, use generic links) * Mobygames (auto): http://www.mobygames.com/search/quick?q=okami * Ocremix (auto): http://ocremix.org/quicksearch/game/?qs_query=okami * Gamefaqs (auto): http://www.gamefaqs.com/search/index.html?game=okami (but if I add manual links, no need for the above) * Mobygames (PS2): http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/kami * Mobygames (Wii): http://www.mobygames.com/game/wii/kami * Ocremix: http://ocremix.org/game/537/okami-ps2 * Gamefaqs: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/920500-okami (also, if there are anime series/ova/movie releases) * ANN (auto): http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/search?q=naruto Quote:
Example - all releases are "unspecified". For the product list, maybe you could separate them by comma when no products are linked, and linear by linked entries when they are. This way the separation wouldn't fail, I think, plus the incentive to link the albums. About the problem Myrkul mentioned, if we make it a css bullet list? Code:
> Products Represented * Xenogears (PS) S,A * Chocobo Racing (PS2) F * Minesweeper (Multi) V,A * Doki Doki Penguin Land: Uchu Daibouken (AC) D,T,I * Final Fantasy VIII (PS/PC) D,T,I * The Pokemon Movie Soundtrack (Movie) This I completely agree with. Again not too sound ungrateful or anything, but synchronizing large fields can be a such pain. |
#21
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I think the comma-separated fields can be converted to <CR>-separated without too much major restructuring. The product field is probably easier to deal with than the others. Moreover, for Products I switched the old static textbox out for a resizable text area, and it seems to be working well. It makes editing the product list a little easier. These may help even if we keep separating by commas.
I've set it back to display the comma-separated products when there are no links, so that takes messing around with that out of the critical path for product work. Meanwhile, getting the products to display nicely on the album page is going to be more work than I thought. The release info we need spreads our SQL lookup across a couple more tables, and I'd like to do it in one query, so I have to stick this stuff in a data structure. Also, I have to abbreviate every product, put those somewhere accessible, and come up with some logic to display "Multi" whenver it's just too long. Then, there's making it all look good.... Anyway, the select-box for releases is up for comment, though it isn't activated yet. The search-links idea is an interesting one. We currently only have one precedent for it -- the google search tab that appears in the Simple Search results. I guess I'm really not a fan of those unless we are going to make it a consistent feature over the rest of the site (albums, artists, etc.) |
#22
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The mechanics of release linking works. You can select one or more releases, or you can select "All Releases" when the album contains music that is found on all releases. You can even select "All Releases" and another release, if the album contains music from all releases and music from a specific release.
Albums appear on the release pages now. I've separated the discography into 2 sections, one for albums that contain music specifically for that release, and one for albums that are common to all releases. Both of these are different than what you get up on the title product page. http://vgmdb.net/db/release.php?id=1161 http://vgmdb.net/db/release.php?id=87 You can follow the links from the product pages to the release pages now, but only for releases that have albums linked to them. (I didn't want to generate a bunch of new pages with no useful info.) Next, I need to work on how this stuff displays on the album page. |
#23
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Been playing with linking releases. Nice work.
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ANOTHER THOUGHT: I'm going to end up linking the Little Busters-EX and CE releases to a number of albums. Looks like 15. No big deal, has to be done at some point. Suppose the game is rereleased again later: another port, or a Best Edition or whatever. So I add another release. But now I have to go back through those 15 albums again and link them to the new release too. This is lame. Last edited by CHz; Nov 22, 2011 at 04:16 AM. Reason: added more content |
#24
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Thanks! And thanks for the thorough comments.
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Also, much of what we talked about in this post is applicable to the classification, which will be coming along shortly. |
#25
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I think other members could elaborate it better and can give you a constructive suggestion, so I'll just talk about this particular problem. In my understanding, regardless of how many releases are related to one album, we have to add and assign only one product name and then specify the releases. That's reasonable, but at the same time, I think it could be confusing in some case.
For instance, this album is a soundtrack for a PSP remade game Tacics Ogre: Unmei no Wa, which was originally released as Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together for SNES in the world, yet the remake was released under Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together outside of Japan. More complicated is this album also contains some tracks from the original SNES game. So the least misleading album page could be like below; I know, with the platforms selected (SNES and PSP), users could barely figure out these mess, but I don't expect much from the platform field especially if multiple consoles and system are selected. The remake FFVI page also depends on the platform field so strongly, and if a bunch of platforms are selected, we can no longer figure out it's the remake, even after clicking the name and visit the product page. All that being said, sorry if I'm missing something and we're just at the alpha stage and this issue will be later solved by an ongoing development. |
#26
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This definitely highlights that what we have so far doesn't solve all the problems.
One thing to keep in mind is: there will sometimes be cases where you want to manually create 2 separate links to the same product. Let's say an album contains the original soundtrack for the PSP release, but it also contains an arrangement of a track from the SNES. In that case, you would need two links so that you could get: - ProductName (PSP) Soundtrack - ProductName (SNES) Arrange There isn't any other way that makes sense to do it. Another tricky one, Okami. Since they removed the staff-roll for the Wii remake, there is 1 track on the soundtrack that doesn't appear on the Wii version. I wonder how we should represent this (if at all)... |
#27
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A couple of quick bug reports:
I'm trying to link up a specific release of Natsume Brothers! to this album: http://vgmdb.net/album/17926. However, none of the releases are showing up. Maybe because the data for the releases are incomplete? The catalog number field on release pages isn't working. This release should be showing SLPM-55203, but instead it's showing PCCA-90027: http://vgmdb.net/db/release.php?id=1769. That happens to be the catalog number of the last album displayed in the list, so my guess is a variable is getting clobbered. A thought: maybe adding a "reprint" flag or (more complicated) a way to add relationships between releases? Could be a way of clearing up some of the name linking issues. |
#28
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Thanks, both bugs are now fixed.
Will have to think about this idea of a reprint flag, which may make some things easier. EDIT: for the curious Bug 1 - Needed to change INNER JOIN to LEFT JOIN so that we don't exclude from the query albums that don't have the platform listed. Bug 2 - When I added the new code for querying and displaying the album list, I accidentally reused the variable containing the catalog number. |
#29
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Just getting ready to head over to my sister's house for Thanksgiving. The next thing I'm going to work on (most likely tomorrow) is the classification selection. I want to get the mechanics of this completed now since it looks like there's a lot more product linking happening. After that is working, I'll work on the album page display issues and maybe the reprint flag.
To continue, we need to discuss the list of classifications (this discussion may seem familiar): Quote:
Also, once we decide on these, I'll seed the current links using the albums classification, and then we will need to fix any mistakes that arise. |
#30
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Much as I hate to make things complicated or messy, I eventually conclude that we have to make album pages basically list every release name, since otherwise we can't understand what game(s) is behind the album we're looking at, until we click the link and visit the product page.
http://vgmdb.net/album/4061 http://vgmdb.net/album/18160 These albums contain music from expansions of FFXI, and rather than plain "Final Fantasy XI" alone, I think it would be clearer to everybody that all the related expansion names are displayed there. The biggest problem with this method is we have multiple releases to linkify and have to puzzle about which one to link; As we make a release entry per console, per region, and FFXI is released for PS2, PC, 360 and in Japan, US, Europe, Australia, we have more than 10 candidates to pick up! Perhaps we just link only one product while putting more into a link text, or use a menu, but I'm not sure either of them is ever possible with our linking system and language switch options (or is even worthy of consideration, to begin with). If you're going to solve this by hover text or such, mine can be easily neglected. Quote:
As for another usage for "Related Album" section; we now probably have better and more comprehensive way to provide product-based information (despite it being one click away from the album page), but rather than removing the section as a whole, we could display album-based relationship (e.g. Scitron 1500 series, SQ series, Club Nintendo gift albums, 'SQ' series, etc, none of them can be grouped by us). Quote:
http://vgmdb.net/forums/showpost.php...7&postcount=20 http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?p=22972 |
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