Opinions for MDB entry

[LB11]

I have been working on the PC MDB's and there are some extra thingas not found in consoles. Such as Construction sets, and Scenery disks for other games for example. I was planning to leave these without a category. But if anyone else has a better Idea please post it here.

[Nologic]

Well they can be left blank or assigned a cat...like "Assets", "Add-On", "Tools"...only thing that matters is that they stay constant...tho really none of those that I can see...will actually ever be used inside of GameEx...so blank is fine as well.

Tho others are more than welcome to chime in...as this has been a community effort. Hehe thank god.

[Stu1983]

I haven't had a chance to look at the PC XML yet but I'm wondering does it contain more than the MDB we currently have?

Would it possibly be easier just to replace the current MDB with everything in the XML?

I got myself a tablet PC to play with but I could possibly fire something together today or tomorrow if you've think it would be worthwhile... this would passably be useful for a few other MDB's that were a bit lacking

let Me know what you'se think

Stu

[Nologic]

Well it certainly would be faster...tho the question would more to the point of do we want a x86 db or a DOS\Win 3.x\Windows db's?

I really don't have any real feelings one way or another...maybe we should run a poll for a week and go forward based on those results.

[bkenobi]

Just a question/comment, but with over 68000 records in the PC database, wouldn't it be better to divide it up somehow? I'm concerned that Access is pretty slow as far as databases go and that many records might significantly slow down GameEx when it's dealing with a search. Either way would work though since this search would only happen when a new game is added to the system...which is only once.

[headkaze]

Just a question/comment, but with over 68000 records in the PC database, wouldn't it be better to divide it up somehow? I'm concerned that Access is pretty slow as far as databases go and that many records might significantly slow down GameEx when it's dealing with a search. Either way would work though since this search would only happen when a new game is added to the system...which is only once.

There is actually 16,245 games in the PC database. The way I had to scrape the PC games was to go through the entire Allgame database of ~60,000 records and filtering out everything except the PC games.

[bkenobi]

OHHHH, ok then. 16245 isn't SOOOO bad.

[LB11]

I think EVERY one of the PC games XML's are lacking compared to the mobygames stuff. I dont think there was one of the PC version xml's that filled up more than half of the database. In most cases I had to parse in 5 or 6 xml's from the same era to get half of the database filled in (just look at the sizes! Amstarad CPC xml is 250k while the database is 2.6MB). Thats mostly the reason I havent posted a new one in the last few days. They are all huge to begin with and they need much more work than the rest. Also, I think everytime I opened an game in allgame website there was no description for it. But on the other hand, if we made a new MDB with the allgame xml all the games would have a 100% no questions asked correct category. Im trying my best to get the correct info in there, but when filtering 1000 near matches something is bound to be wrong, or searching the web for info I might mistakes somthing, or type it in wrong. Who knows

I personally don't care about a win3.1, dos, and current windows seperate.

Also, now that im thinking about it. To make a new database would be kind of pointless if you ask me. Just parsing in the categories and leaving the rest blank would essentially get us the same results as making a new one category wise, but still contain all the info from moby for anything else they might have on there PC.

I think the MDB's will be ok sizewise, but I could convert it to access2003 MDB when completed. They are supposed to be faster and more reliable. We could keep an unconverted one around for future modification since I know not all of us as office03.

[LB11]

Oh, I forgot to mention, I parsed in the windows and dos databases last night and both are less than half filled.