Open source VG print database now accepting contributions: A Few Games

[inasuma | 1,228]

First of all, hope everyone is having a nice holiday so far!

A Few Games, a tool I’ve been toying with for about a year, has become ready for public contribution to its database. This tool is for tracking print variants across any and all consoles. Share your treasures, insights, and unique finds for game collectors everywhere!

The best part? No account required and it’s open source. Collaboration and support of any kind is welcome, not just to the data side.

It’s still early days, as it’s relatively small,  but it has the power to grow into something truly useful for the print-sensitive collector.

Head to https://afew.games to view & browse the database, and https://afew.games/contribute to create a submission.  

Any questions and I’ll be here to answer!

Cheers  

PS for those interested in the source code, here is the project: https://github.com/geotrev/afew.games

Edited December 31, 2023 by inasuma

[inasuma | 1,228]

Chill, it pasted in dark text. That’s what I get for doing this on my phone.

[Gloves | 12,582]

1 hour ago, inasuma said:

Chill, it pasted in dark text. That’s what I get for doing this on my phone.

Fixed it for ya.

[Code Monkey | 2,237]

How do I look at the source code?

[inasuma | 1,228]

9 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

How do I look at the source code?

Link added to post!

[Gloves | 12,582]

29 minutes ago, inasuma said:

Link added to post!

I'd suggest adding the link to the site itself, else it's only really quasi-open-source, as one must work hard to find it elsewise.

[a3quit4s | 4,531]

The whole database is in one json file? 

Edited December 31, 2023 by a3quit4s

[Gloves | 12,582]

10 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

The whole database is in one json file? 

Looks like they're using Netlify CMS.

Which yeah... if so, a bit unwieldy IMO. I've used it before and was not a huge fan. The concept of a flat file with version history is fine, but it becomes a bit of a nightmare with scale.

Plus side, if scale happens they can pivot if they so desire. Loading and reading a single huge json file will slow the site eventually. But json is easy to work with and migrate. 

[a3quit4s | 4,531]

5 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Looks like they're using Netlify CMS.

Which yeah... if so, a bit unwieldy IMO. I've used it before and was not a huge fan. The concept of a flat file with version history is fine, but it becomes a bit of a nightmare with scale.

Plus side, if scale happens they can pivot if they so desire. Loading and reading a single huge json file will slow the site eventually. But json is easy to work with and migrate. 

I don’t love it, but I applaud someone for actually trying to create the database instead of talking about it for once lmao

[Gloves | 12,582]

2 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

I don’t love it, but I applaud someone for actually trying to create the database instead of talking about it for once lmao

Totally! 

[inasuma | 1,228]

40 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Looks like they're using Netlify CMS.

Which yeah... if so, a bit unwieldy IMO. I've used it before and was not a huge fan. The concept of a flat file with version history is fine, but it becomes a bit of a nightmare with scale.

Plus side, if scale happens they can pivot if they so desire. Loading and reading a single huge json file will slow the site eventually. But json is easy to work with and migrate. 

Something I plan to do soon is deliver the data from an api endpoint. Tbh it won’t matter at that point if the data is one file or not, since the client will only get what it asks for, and node can handle pretty massive data sets with relative ease (at least, the sizes required of this project in its current form). Currently just using an edge function to handle that type of work. Next js makes it easy at least.

im also under no illusion that this will scale perfectly forever either. It’s just a thing I do in my free time. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by inasuma

[Gloves | 12,582]

2 minutes ago, inasuma said:

Something I plan to do soon is deliver the data from an api endpoint. Tbh it won’t matter at that point if the data is one file or not, since the client will only get what it asks for. Currently just using an edge function to handle that type of work. Next js makes it easy at least.

im also under no illusion that this will scale perfectly forever either. It’s just a thing I do in my free time. 

Totally. It's a really good MVP, which I understand to be your goal at this time. Next is great (I use Nuxt with Vue which is similar). Since you're using Next, you could serve the site as a static site with SSR, works great on Netlify; that's the setup I use for my collection tracking site and load times are nil.

[inasuma | 1,228]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

I'd suggest adding the link to the site itself, else it's only really quasi-open-source, as one must work hard to find it elsewise.

Somehow after thinking I should do this for weeks, I still haven’t done it lol but I will 

Edited December 31, 2023 by inasuma

[inasuma | 1,228]

10 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Totally. It's a really good MVP, which I understand to be your goal at this time. Next is great (I use Nuxt with Vue which is similar). Since you're using Next, you could serve the site as a static site with SSR, works great on Netlify; that's the setup I use for my collection tracking site and load times are nil.

Oh yes - the site is mostly static already. Have had no issues and next makes all the right pages static or prerenders with the correct data by default. Have enjoyed the tool quite a bit!

Edited December 31, 2023 by inasuma

[inasuma | 1,228]

1 hour ago, a3quit4s said:

The whole database is in one json file? 

For now yeah. Eventually I’ll probably ingest the data into a real db and output json conversions for public consumption. But for now it works.

[inasuma | 1,228]

Link is on the site now  

[SilverspoonGaming | 367]

What region are you concentrating on first?  Going thru the NES page, its confusing seeing the Japan info for each game, and not knowing if Im looking at NTSC or NTSC-J.

 

[DefaultGen | 5,961]

Which games are these? Are these few games the Greg Games?

[inasuma | 1,228]

On 1/1/2024 at 8:30 PM, SilverspoonGaming said:

What region are you concentrating on first?  Going thru the NES page, its confusing seeing the Japan info for each game, and not knowing if Im looking at NTSC or NTSC-J.

 

You beat me to it - i'm currently writing up a summary of how to read the table.

These are all NTSC-U games unless otherwise denoted in the "Notes" column, where it might say "Japanese version" or "Canadian version." The "Country" column is the country of manufacture (many games are made in both USA and Japan, for e.g.).

I know that's confusing without any other context. I appreciate the feedback though - this will be a relatively easy thing to add explanations about, I just haven't gotten to it yet.

[inasuma | 1,228]

On 1/1/2024 at 8:30 PM, SilverspoonGaming said:

What region are you concentrating on first?  Going thru the NES page, its confusing seeing the Japan info for each game, and not knowing if Im looking at NTSC or NTSC-J.

 

Clarification added to the top of the page. Also info tooltips for each column heading so its clear what each is for.

 

 

 

Example of non NTSC-U entries:

Edited January 6, 2024 by inasuma

[inasuma | 1,228]

So some cool stuff happened after I got those ^ prints up for Pocket Monsters. A handful of people reached out and shared even more variant information on gen 1 & 2, so it's alllll been updated.

https://www.afew.games/?search=pocket+monsters&platform=Game+Boy&platform=Game+Boy+Color

I'll also be writing up a few blog posts on them. There's a lot more to it than what's written in the DB table - dates of when thing changed, context for why they happened, and all that fun stuff. Can't wait to post it. Just need to wait for physical copies to arrive at my home so I can properly take photos and present it well!

 

Edited January 12, 2024 by inasuma