Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

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ChristopheF
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Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Check what's new http://dmweb.free.fr/

There's more to come in the next days.
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Jan »

Wow! That's an amazing collection of scans! :D

I've only noticed that on the page with "Magazine scans added on 2011-05-22" the "Dungeon Master And Chaos Strikes Back Review published in Czech magazine 'Excalibur', Issue #4 July 1991, Pages 3-4" and "Dungeon Master And Chaos Strikes Back Review published in Czech magazine 'Excalibur', Issue #4 July 1991, Pages 3-4" are scans of the same article.
Finally playing and immensely enjoying the awesome Thimbleweed Park-a-reno!
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

You're right, I put the review in both the DM reviews and the CSB reviews sections because the article is about both games.
Currently all the magazine scans on the site represent about 570 magazine pages (the number of actual files is lower as some images represent 2 or more pages).
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

I have added more magazine scans to the site, check the details in the news here: http://dmweb.free.fr/
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

The Encyclopaedia has been updated again, probably the largest update ever. Check it out!
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Gambit37 »

Awesome update!!!!!

My goodness, how do you manage to host all this on a free site!?!?!?

BTW, I don't understand why you changed the scans to 300DPI versions -- that's not very useful on the web. The data is massive, and you can't easily view the images in the lightbox you're using, even when you click the "full size" option. Wouldn't it be better to create PDFs of these and let people download them? (That's actually what I've been doing for some of the stuff for Codex -- running OCR on the original scans and rebuilding them as proper searchable PDFs...)

I think there's some missed opprtuinities here with the way you're displaying the information -- pages and pages of thumbnails of scans is actually very unfriendly and not very usable. Do you have any plans to revise this in the future? I'd be happy to work with you on a better system for this if you like?

Also, I noticed that a lot of the new scans don't have credits (most of the older ones seem to have been contributed by others). Does this mean you've been buying this stuff up yourself and scanning/photographing it?
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ChristopheF
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

My ISP allows me to store up to 10 GB of data on my web site. Today's update included 670 MB of additional data (and also removed 77 MB). The total size is currently 1.65 GB so there's still plenty of space for future updates. The only major issue is that the site is slow at times...
Back when I started the web site, the maximum storage allowed was 100 MB (later increased to 1 GB and later again to 10 GB). I tried to keep file sizes minimal to save space. Now I'm not really limited anymore and because I don't want to store several versions of each image I decided to go with the best quality, even if the files are large.
I agree lightbox is cumbersome with the large images so I'm looking for a better alternative. I would like a viewer with the ability to zoom in and out and drag the image on screen. But I have not found the perfect image viewer yet...
There is so much I would like to change on the Encyclopaedia, it will take me ages to do all. So I decided to publish what I have in its current state, knowing there are imperfections that I will try to fix later.
I understand this is not the way you do things ;)
OCR is a great idea. When searching for magazine scans that I published in the past weeks, I found some PDF files that are fully searchable, like the first 100 CGW issues available at http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/. When viewing the PDF, you see scans of the actual magazine yet all the text was OCR so you can search for text and it will highlight the words you searched directly on the scans. That would be great for all the books and manuals on the encyclopaedia.
But this would certainly require a lot of work (I have not searched about how to make such PDF files). If someone wants to help and do this, the scans are now available, awaiting the necessary processing!
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Regarding your last question: all of the scans published today are from my personal collection. I bought lots of Japanese stuff:
http://dmweb.free.fr/Stuff/Misc-Photo-J ... Stuff1.jpg
http://dmweb.free.fr/Stuff/Misc-Photo-J ... Stuff2.jpg
http://dmweb.free.fr/Stuff/Misc-Photo-J ... Stuff3.jpg
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Gambit37 »

The problem with loading 300DPI images in the browser is that, well, you're loading 300DPI images in a browser! Not a good idea. What If I'm using a smartphone to view the site? That would kill my data allowance after a few images. I think this is a big problem. I can understand the motivation behind that, but it's not ideal for end users who may be viewing the site on all sorts of devices, and it's creating a sub-optimal user experience (I mean, I have to wait ages for the images to load even on a 20MB broadband connection)

It would be better to create a system that can create a screen sized image from the original 300DPI image, and then offer the large image for download if the user wants it. I'm building the Codex on WordPress and it does all that automatically -- can Drupal do that too? I'm sure it must be able to by now?

I originally had an Articles & Reviews section in the Codex and have been collecting actual magazines for years. I intended to scan them all, OCR them, and create PDFs of them all for the Codex. I gave up on that a long time ago as the Encylopedia got so massive -- it would have been pointless me having just a few searchable PDFs, when your site has hundreds more scans. So it makes more sense to have these on your site. I don't have any time to help with OCR PDFs at the moment, but it's something I can consider for the future.

Perhaps it's finally time that we seriously consider joining forces? As a professional web designer, there is a lot of expertise I can offer on improving your site. It might make more sense than me trying to launch the Codex -- especially as I've had to reduce its scope so many times (because your site gets bigger and bigger) that I no longer have much unique content to put on it anyway. The design for the Codex could be adapted to the Encyclopedia, or perhaps I design something new -- and then use the Codex design for the homepage of dungeon-master.com....

I'd be really keen on doing a full visual refresh of the Encylopedia, as well as updating the front-end code, and making recommendations on improving the site architecture and URL system. I think a lot more can be made of internal linking and referencing too. And of course, I could add all my unique content and give the whole site a more journalistic feel. My interest has always been in reporting the story of the development of the games and the people behind them, and making a human tale out of it -- while your focus has been more about collecting data and creating a repository of factual reference material).

It's just a thought, and I understand if you're not interested, but what do you think? One DM site to rule them all? :-)

EDIT: Wow, your collection is bigger than mine! :shock: Did you also buy that badge off eBay recently?
You know, looking at that --- you and I really should put all our stuff together for some kind of Retro Gaming show -- I wonder if any are coming up soon?
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ChristopheF
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Drupal can create images of various sizes (configurable) from large base images. But the images are too large and require too much memory to be resized automatically (php is limited to use 32 MB of memory on my free host). So currently, I just create the small thumbnails manually (well, using imagemagick for quick batch processing).
One DM site to rule them all?
That sounds good to me. You already proposed to merge the Codex & Encyclopaedia in the past and then decided to continue designing the codex. Are you quite sure about this?
I guess this would require you to first publish the content you have, and then start working on designing a shiny web site to present all the content we have. If we wait until the design is complete, well, you've been doing that for years :)

I don't how we should proceed, I guess starting from scratch might be the best way.

I've always favored adding content over designing a better web site. Two reasons: I don't have enough time to do everything I would like, so I do first what I prefer: adding content instead of improving the site design & usability.
I reckon the Encyclopaedia needs a complete overhaul: structure, navigation, design... And there are so many ideas of improvements and additions I would like to do, a few examples:
- I would like to build a database of scans (as well as all other content) to enable queries like: "show me all dungeon master floppy disks of any version", "show me all CDs of all games so I can compare their design", "show me all magazines from 1989", "show me all UK magazines about CSB", etc. I have started cataloguing all the content I have for that purpose, but this is far from complete. The catalog will list all the DM related objects that we are aware of, and list all the scans, photos, screenshots etc associated to each object.
- Interactive maps: with SVG and canvas support now in all browsers, it should be fairly easy to build vector based and interactive maps of dungeons where the user can choose to display each type of info (creatures, objects, hints, etc.). Writing a tool to export any dungeon to this new 'format' would be great.
- 3D: now that all major browsers support WebGL, it would be nice to export the Dungeon Master Nexus data to 3D objects that the user could manipulate directly in the browser: creatures & the dungeon itself.
- OCR of all scans like you suggested
- Create creature animations: I have anitmated gifs for DM/CSB creatures that I made ages ago, but it is missing for the DM SNES creatures and also DM2 creatures. This would be nice to use some HTML5/javascript to recreate the animations based on the images & sounds extracted from the data files
- Redesign the technical documentation section where some pages are far too long


What is this badge you mentionned? Never seen such thing. Do you have photo or a link to the auction?
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Gambit37 »

DM Badge:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 825wt_1139
I bid on it but didn't win -- I set practical limits on these things :-)

So about a new site.... there would clearly be a lot to discuss, plan, design and develop. One of the reasons Codex has continued to be delayed is that I've really struggled to define what the content should be. I wanted to do something to rival what you were doing, but as you got more and more content, it just got more and more depressing to try and come up with something unique. I know I failed here because I should have got something online years ago and added content the way you did. I really needed more content from the FTL guys to make a better story, but I couldn't really ask for more when I'd already failed to publish what they had given me.

As I mentioned before, I'm very interested in telling the FTL story in a more human way. This doesn't seem to match what your goals for the site are. Would you be happy to have this approach within say a History/Development/People section of the site? I'm also much more interested in user experience and usability now, as well as relevant visual design -- and I think we could do something great here with our combined interests and skills.

I'm interested in your plans for things like interactive maps and 3D although those are probably things for further down the line. I also think your searchable database is cool, though I don't have the technical skills to build something like that. But I think our skills complement each other -- you're a programmer who knows about those sorts of things :-)

I recently spoke to Doug Bell again after several years. I told him that I still intended to get a site up and running and he's still keen to see it. I would feel very bad if I never got at least the interview up and running, but I don't think there's much point in publishing those first if we're doing something new from scratch -- the whole thing has to be considered in a wide context.

I think we might be able to work well together because you are more interested in the database of content than I am, and I could concentrate on the design, structure, and experience.

I would be very happy to repurpose the Codex design into something that could be used for the Encyclopedia. I've PMd you a link to a screenshot of the homepage, let me know what you think... :-)

I don't really know the best way to approach this, but if you think it's something we could do together, I'll email you off site and we can start to discuss it.
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Thanks for the badge. I didn't know this existed!

The scope of the DM Encyclopaedia is simple: everything about Dungeon Master. Anything with DM written on it has its place on the site :)
The games and their versions, technical documentation & reverse engineering, fan made content like clones/tools/dungeons, magazine scans, other objects like hint books/audio CD/others, complete solutions with maps & lists, etc...
So adding a "history" section to the encyclopaedia would be great & welcome. If there is not one today, that's only because I don't have content for it. There are lots of tidbits of information scattered around in many pages & magazine interviews, it would be nice to have proper articles telling the whole story at once. And of course completed with the info you got from your own interviews.

The screenshot you sent is really beautiful, as were all the previous designs you came up with in the past.
Do you think you could create a drupal theme with a similar design?
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ChristopheF
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

The Encyclopaedia was updated again. Check it out!
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by rubjonny »

i was clearing out all my Amiga stuff the other day and came across one of the missing hint books: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1372

i have scanned it and put it into a pdf for you:
http://www.zen17496.zen.co.uk/dmh.zip

I did try to email the site via the email address given but it didnt work
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ChristopheF
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Great, thanks a lot for the scans!
What did happen with the email? It has worked fine for years and I have received other emails successfully in the past few days.
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by rubjonny »

came back with this message:
- These recipients of your message have been processed by the mail server:
[email removed to prevent spam]; Failed; 4.4.7 (delivery time expired)

hope you dont mind all the notes i made in there many years ago lol
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Ameena »

I don't think notes in your scan will matter too much - most of the maps in the scans I sent in are coloured in blue where my dad was highlighting his progress, attempting to have explored every area of the dungeon ;). And there's also, I recall, a minor note in my own (roughly six-year-old) handwriting where the word "Kath" is missed off a spell list and I've added it in :D.
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Gambit37 »

Turns out I also have that handbook in my collection. Man, I've even forgotten half the stuff I've collected over the years!
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by rubjonny »

i think im going to have to fire up the amiga emulator again soon :D
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

Strange issue with my mail... I guess there was a temporary issue with my ISP's mail server because I can still receive mails (I just tested it again).

Regarding your notes in the hint book, I would prefer if they weren't there, but I also much prefer having scans with notes than no scans at all :)
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by Gambit37 »

I can provide a note free version at some point -- OCRd and recreated as a real searchable document too :-) Actually, this would be a good one to test the process on...

Interestingly, my version has slightly different text to the one uploaded above. Line breaks fall in different places on some pages.
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Re: Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia updated

Post by ChristopheF »

I have added some more content to the Encyclopaedia today, including the DM handbook scans.
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