Star Wars: The Galaxy Guide(formerly: Star Wars D6 Database)

[Alcon]

Hey folks, so I got this crazy idea yesterday that it'd be really nice to have an online searchable, and editable database of all statistics for our beloved D6 Star Wars system. Partly as a handy dandy tool for GMs who want quick access to stats for various things with out having to page through books or dig through .pdfs. And partly as a preservative measure so the stats don't get lost as the books slowly disappear.

Well when I get ideas like that I have this bad habit of acting on them, and that's just what I did. So I present to you: The Galaxy Guide.

Right now it isn't searchable and only includes Equipment and Weapons. You can browse it, add new items in and edit exiting items. I'm going to keep working on it, adding in Droids, Vehicles, Ships, Creatures, GM Characters, Planets, and anything else we can imagine to add in. Also gonna try and add the search feature soon. Hopefully it'll become a really handy dandy resource for D6 players everywhere

Course for it to become that it needs to actually have the stats. I've already started entering some in, but I could use some help on that score, if folks have the time and energy. It's currently wiki-style editable by all, no log in required. Enjoy!

Edit: Updated the galaxy guide's link to it's new url.
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The Galaxy Guide - An online d6 stat database.

[Gry Sarth]

That's a very nice initiative, Alcon, and one that interests me very much. I have long thought about eventually implementing such a site, so I could easily distribute and update all the stats I have gathered in my ever-expanding PDF Stats collection, without the need of constantly re-editing the books.

I'd be glad to help you anyway I can, since I happen to have here with me a collection of text documents with virtually ALL the stats in existence, with accompanying images, for Weapons, Equipment, Aliens, Creatures, Starships, Vehicles, Droids and Force Powers.

One thing though, I'd hate to see all this rich content in a bland package, so the look of such a site is quite important to me, both the site layout itself and the way the stats are presented (always with pics, when available).

PS. Hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I find it a bit weird that a wiki-style community effort site would carry your name in the title. Don't you think it might be more welcoming to use some in-universe term or something? (The Great Ossus Library? The Jedi Archives?)
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Ankhanu]

Have you thought about adding fluff text as well to supplement the stats? As nice as stat blocks are, the flavour text can be extremely important as well; the lack of fluff text is my one complaint of Gry's stat books; but if he were to include all the descriptive text, he'd never have finished them
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[Alcon]

[vong]

That is quite cool indeed.

Are you good with scripting languages - because if we can convert Gry's books into a database format with a script it wont take the entire world.

If you are looking for help in this project, I am a Computer Science Grad (well, almost, two more courses left) and more then willing to help you out wherever you need it

Vong

PS: When we get your database working, I would love to link it with my Character Generation tool, perhaps we can make a great combo tool for Star Wars Gaming
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[Alcon]

[Gry Sarth]

Sure I do. All the material you see in my PDFs, plus all the updates I made since, can be found in my neatly organized Word files. I can surely trust these to whoever figures a way to automate the whole thing.

Cool that you're open to suggestions, Alcon. You're right about getting it off the ground first and polishing it later, otherwise nothing mighy happen. We just have to make sure the base is right before starting to add all the stats. When I have some time, I'll see what I can do in terms of visuals.

A practical search engine is really imperative for this thing, as is the way all the entries will be presented. We'll be looking at an enormous amount of items when it's all done, so it has to be user-friendly.

I agree about adding some fluff text to the entries. I didn't include them in my PDFs more because of space than of work. Now space won't be a problem so I guess we'll have to get to work. Or maybe just rip it off Wookieepedia...

And we have to able to have images along with the stats, for me that's also imperative.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

I think we can do that - we have a lot of web space to work with

with the fluff text, we could even include a "WIKI link"...
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[Gry Sarth]

Yeah, I think we should discuss what the entry fields will be. Besides the normal ones, I'd include Affiliation, Era (drop-down menu), Sources, Description, Outside Links...
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

I also think we should limit who is able to actually EDIT the boxes. Perhaps have each page with an option "E-mail admin with updated information"

Too many hands in the pot makes the data go sour fast.
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[Gry Sarth]

I agree. Mainly because we already HAVE pretty much all the info we want. We just need to get it in there. I think a "suggest alteration" feature would be awesome, so anybody could correct and add to it, with no fear of vandalism or dissention.

One other thing, besides the division between Weapons, Ships, Aliens, etc, will we have subdivisions like Bulk Freighters, Melee Weapons, Medical Droids, etc. I know it sounds like I'm pushing for a format very similar to my PDFs, and I am! It's just a system that seems to work for me, plus all the info is already categorized like that...
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

oh, we probably are gonna go in that type of format at least label them in sub categories instead of entire different tables

ps Gry, check your PMs
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[Doomhead]

The Font looks all jacked up in Firefox, although I love the Idea and the concept of the database!

Here is a screen capture:

http://www.box.net/shared/ufhujbowsw

Its probably something as simple has Firefox not recognizing the font that you used for the Title and the Menu!

I'm usually not a stickler for design, but cross platform compatibility should at least be looked at! (The last thing I want to do is turn this into a flame war over web browsers!) Its just that I couldn't tell what was on the page when I accessed it from firefox, which at least for me meant that I couldn't use, understand the information that was presented. (Firefox holds roughly around 16% browser market share, depending on who you talk to) It wasn't until I opened the site in Explorer that I got to mess around and see what everyone was talking about!



Although, I love the what you've done so far, and keep up the good work!!!!
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[vong]

interesting, i use FF and it works perfectly for me...
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[Jamfke]

Alcon may have used a font that is not a standard on a typical computer. If that's the case, your browser will try to display the font in the closest font it could find to what he used. A simple fix would be for Alcon to change the font to Arial or Times New Roman (I'd use Arial), and things should work fine for everyone.

Here's what it looks like to me:



Looks cool, but the navbar is a bit hard to read. The database is awesome.
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