Sup Shmax! Thanks! Been looking for a good TF collection DB for awhile. Now all I hope for in relation to this is if I remembered all my TFs and put them all in right.
(Didn't feel like digging through all of the boxes, that's the hard part of keeping multiple collections!)
Anyway, here's what I mean. Go to the first page of the database, it's Argentinan Transformers. We get entries like:
Argentina > Generation 1 > Mini-Cars
Argentina > Generation 1 > Jumpstarters
And so on. Go to US G2, and we get > Team Leaders (for Onslaught and Silverbolt). And > Aquaraiders and > Gobots and whatnot.
My suggestion was to allow us to search for that last category. And universally so, not having to go through country and line first. An example of Exclusives below:
Japan > Generation One > Reissues > Exclusive > e-Hobby
I'd like to JUST search for Exclusives category. Not have to go through the Japan-G1-Reissues either. And be able to hit up all Exclusives, so results might show up as Exclusive > e-Hobby and Exclusive > TRU and Exclusive > Target. But all the store exclusives, regardless of country and line, would show up (and any subcategories would too of course, being the e-Hobby/TRU/Target/etc part).
As for searching by size, I'd go generally with the Hasbro way. Basics/Scouts, Deluxes, and so on. And have a catch all field for "Smaller than Basic" and "Larger than Supreme" - it's not perfect, but what can be? Takara does their own thing, Hasbro theirs (heck, Hasbro Europe even does their own compared to Hasbro USA), but we do have enough similarities that we can classify it that way. And being an English speaking site, I figure defaulting to Hasbro would be most universal.
But, after saying all that, I got to say this: TAGS. Everything I said can be done if we can put tags in, and we can search by tags. It's not perfect, since it has to rely on the users putting all the tags in correctly, but it's something that can be really useful, and has the potential to be done great. Now, I haven't coded websites past HTML, so I don't know how hard it is to code them in, but I can tell one thing: They're the way of the future! I love tags. But if it would be too hard to do or need a complete overhaul, then it's not something I'll be hounding you on.
But then we can search by other stuff too. Like blue people? Big guns? Have the ability to search for multiple tags and you got some great potential there. Check it, if I wanted to search for "Exclusives, Repaints, Big Guns, Autobot, Black, Name Reuse" I'd get Wal-Mart Exclusive Big Daddy, a black repaint of Cybertron Crosswise (with orange accents) with the same name as a G1 Micromaster. If I wanted, "Exclusive, Repaint, Blue" I'd get Movie Crankcase (and probably a lot more, such as Storm Surge from Target and so on). With tags we don't have to rely just on size category, faction, country, line, and so on (alt modes, colors, etc). I know your advanced search currently includes a lot of that but....tags...they make everything cooler.
If it's doable.
BTW, I'm a book collector too, and I use another website to track my book collection. It's
www.librarything.com. I'm saying this because, well, perhaps you can get some ideas from there too? Poke around, see if there's anything you'd like that is doable on here.
Also, by Dinobots I do mean indeed anything with a dinosaur alt mode. But that was just an example off the top of my head, forgot that adv search already had it.
So basically it boils down to: Tags would be awesome. If not, I'd be happy with an Exclusives widget, but really happy if we can search by that one category I mentioned above. The one that seperates the types of figures (though searching by another subcategory, such as Exclusives > Target, might be cool too). And of course, making it universal would be excellent, so someone who collects, say, Deluxe figures gets them no matter the country, or someone who collects Seekers can search for Seekers and get the G1, G2, Reissues and so on all on the same search, and all the toys regardless of country that fits Seeker gets put in.
About "Special Teams" - that's just a category I saw while setting up my collection, so I just used that as an example. As an aside, I hate the term gestalt. It's completely incorrect in usage. I'd love it if you just used Combiner, if you change the fields around some. That's a far more proper and universal term, and easier for the relatively new Transfan to understand. Though, I personally use the term gattais to describe them, but that's just me.
Gattai means combine in Japanese, you see, and it is also easier to write and sounds cooler. But Combiners would be most appropriate for here.
I do like the exclusives widget though, mind you.
Hi there Transfotaku, welcome to the boards!
A lot of the stuff you can do with the existing system. Here's all Micromasters:
http://www.shmax.com/Database/263
Here's all Spychangers:
http://www.shmax.com/Database/543
Granted, a lot of these same figures can also be found in the Japanese line, but then they're no longer called "Spy Changers".
All "Dinobots" is kind of fuzzy. What's a "Dinobot"? Do you mean any Transformer with some kind of dinosaurish form for an alternate mode?
No problem:
http://www.shmax.com/search/?searchTerm ... 1&browse=1
"Special Teams" are a bit tougher, if you mean any kind of figure that can combine with others into a "Gestalt" mode.
I suppose I could add a "Gestalt" field to the figure records, and then incorporate that into the search form. I'll mull it over on the way home this evening!
What's a "team leader"? Do you mean someone sort of designated as a leader in the fictional continuity, or the principle large figure involved in a combiner team? If the former, not much I can do about it. If the latter, hmm--wouldn't it be enough that they were also flagged as "Gestalt"?
As for the exclusives thing, what I can do is add a widget to the search form that lets you select all, some, or none of the known exclusive stores, similar to the color widget. Sound good?
SOmething like "legends" is a bit trickier, because I know what you mean by it, and other fans do, but it's difficult to quantify in terms of a database. Really, we're referring to a series of known molds that are of a similar smallish size, smaller than usual, but larger than mini-cons. They're spread across different countries in different toy lines, but the Japanese don't use the term "Legends" to describe their versions. So how do I group them together? I can think of three ways off the top of my head:
1. Add a "size-class" widget to the fun, with entries like "oversized", "normal", "legend", "mini", etc. I could always go with the terms we're all familiar with, such as "Voyager", "Supreme", "Deluxe", and so on, but not all countries use those terms. Maybe it doesn't matter?
2. Add size branches to the alternate form tree. Not keen on that idea, because it would mean duplicating huge parts of the tree for the differenet sizes.
3. Do a "keywords" type of thing, where you can tag figures with different keywords. This system would be general enough that you could use it for things like "combiners", "exclusives", "team leaders", and so on. Then on the search form there would be a list of these tags, and you could click the ones you wanted to search for. THe downside is that it would be fairly complex to code, and it could be difficult to maintain.
Maybe you can suggest something--any thoughts?
Just a quick suggestion on the search engine. Right now in Advanced Search, we got the ability to do it by country, years, alt modes, faction, and some other stuff.
And in the listings, we see types/categories of Transformers. Autobot Cars, Jets, Special Teams, Team Leaders, Dinobots, and so on and so forth.
How about a search by the types of TFs? I like collecting Spychangers, Micromasters, Dinobots, Microns/Mini-Cons, and Exclusives. Being able to click on Exclusives, or Dinobots, or so on, and see ALL of that type across ALL lines from all countries would be a great help to me. Otherwise to finish out say, Exclusives to add to my wish list, I need to go through Japan-G1-Ehobby, and America's various TRU, WMart and Target (and other) exclusives within each and every single line.
People who collect Legends or Teams or so on would I'm sure find it useful as well. I'm sure people who don't collect just one special type would find it useful. I store my TFs by line when possible, but all my Microns are in one box together, and I'm sure many others split their toys up by type.
