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2014-03-21 20:56

jailbird

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1576

The Pixelling Cow - Beta

In the last two weeks I was working on a personal web project in my free time. Hope some of you will find it interesting and/or useful. This is the first stable release, so expect a lot of changes/additions in the near future. I'll keep you updated.

--

ThePixellingCow is currently the most comprehensive database of Commodore 64 scene-related pixel-art.

At the moment, it hosts 6201 images, 1497 artists and 475 events.

It is basically a periodically refreshed mirror of CSDb's graphics related content, but with an accessible and clean UI more suitable for graphics-related content. So, for those who are interested in specific graphics-releases: now you could find them faster and easier.

It's still far from finished. Consider it's present state as a beta testing terrain.

TPC needs help!

At the moment, only one person is doing all the work, so any kind of support would be highly appreciated! Especially in the following areas:

- general functionality testing
- flagging/removing duplicates (there's a lot of them, as parsing CSDb wasn't always going smoothly)
- correcting data (same as above)
- adding missing artists, releases and events
- tagging (the collected data could and will be cross-shared with CSDb later, if it ever introduces the tag functionality)
- ripping graphics from various releases
- suggestions, ideas always more than welcome!

... 60 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2014-03-23 13:03

Cresh

Registered: Jan 2004
Posts: 354

2014-03-23 16:38

jailbird

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1576

Quoting Shine

Sometimes i wished that i could choose "Filter releases by achievement:".
Now you can choose #1, #2, #3 as fixed places.
But in some cases i know the place and the year. ( >#3 )
Maybe you can EXTEND this feature? (via Drop Down Box as example)

You mean something like [< or > or =] [place]? Quite a good idea and easy to fix. I'll drink a beer and do it.

Quoting Cresh

Just a quickie.
Handles to merged/deleted.
Crayon and Cybortech mirrors have "Number of images: 0"
(the same for "SIT" for example)

Combining handles was already mentioned by Shine, this will be definitely implemented sooner or later. The duplicates you've mentioned are now removed.

Quoting Cresh

And I guess there's some sort of encoding problem.

I can see:

BjĂ¸rn RĂ¸stĂ¸en

Yep. The baffling ISO-8859-1 charset on CSDb and my UTF-8 parser result funny stuff :) Noticed as well, these errors must be fixed manually.

2014-03-23 21:34

bepp

Registered: Jun 2010
Posts: 263

Great filtering options!

BUT... I was quite surprised to learn that only 1/6 of the page is used to display the actual graphics - and even then you can't see the whole pic? What's up with that?

If graphics are the focus of the site why not go all in and make a gallery overview, much like google's image search, or...

Or even better... http://c64pixels.com. Fuck! That's like the same site as the cow - but with proper display... But they haven't got the same deep coverage of older stuff :-|

After all, the graphics is the most important part of the site. Metadata and filtering is secondary. It should be there but never "in the way".

Also I think you should have a look at infinite scrolling. This is a typical site where you just browse a large number of images, and you don't want to have a pager as an obstacle.

2014-03-23 21:36

bepp

Registered: Jun 2010
Posts: 263

Funny. Everything from 1992 has got JSL dithering :)

2014-03-23 21:51

bepp

Registered: Jun 2010
Posts: 263

Edit: You can see the whole pic on hover. Still, want moar space for graphics. We're talking thousands of pictures here. Maybe even millions :)

2014-03-23 22:36

Kabuto
Account closed

Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 58

I really like this project :)

Small bug: Event pages (e.g. this one) have a non-working "CSDb page" link; the same links on the event overview pages are working fine, however

(edit: same problem on artists' pages)

2014-03-24 01:00

jailbird

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1576

Quote: Great filtering options!

BUT... I was quite surprised to learn that only 1/6 of the page is used to display the actual graphics - and even then you can't see the whole pic? What's up with that?

If graphics are the focus of the site why not go all in and make a gallery overview, much like google's image search, or...

Or even better... http://c64pixels.com. Fuck! That's like the same site as the cow - but with proper display... But they haven't got the same deep coverage of older stuff :-|

After all, the graphics is the most important part of the site. Metadata and filtering is secondary. It should be there but never "in the way".

Also I think you should have a look at infinite scrolling. This is a typical site where you just browse a large number of images, and you don't want to have a pager as an obstacle.

Actually, the focus is on the data/information. The images are of course very important, but secondary on the road the site is trying walk on. Starting as a CSDb clone, it's more a database/wiki than a gallery/showcase, but I am trying to find a compromise between the two. It's a give-and-take approach.

The main reason I did the site was (with all my respect towards Perff as he made something fantastic, but...): a) I've got fed up that I couldn't search and browse easily for images of certain properties and characteristic on CSDb, and then the existing search is a bit obfuscated anyway, b) there was no proper zoom option here, c) I wanted to cross-reference even more detailed info (f.e. tags), and d) I wanted more (graphics related) statistics.

At the moment I'm trying to focus on making the site fast, bug free, robust and reliable, and later on when everything goes fine, I'll introduce new (optional) functionality which would make the browsing even easier. I was thinking about a "gallery mode" too where the data would be out of way, but at the moment implementing it is not a priority.

Last but not least: I made it for myself and it mainly reflects my means of arriving to certain results (which are after all, CSDb pages of images). And the sole reason you could actually see and use the site is because I've voluntarily shared it in a hope that someone else will find it useful as well. I invest money, time and stamina into the development, and I will never have apparent benefits from it. Well, except the fame, stardom and immortality :)

So, take it or leave it ;)

Quoting Kabuto

I really like this project :)

Small bug: Event pages (e.g. this one) have a non-working "CSDb page" link; the same links on the event overview pages are working fine, however

(edit: same problem on artists' pages)

Fixed, thanks! :)

2014-03-24 01:59

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11108

Quote:

Or even better... http://c64pixels.com. Fuck! That's like the same site as the cow

veto focusses explicitly on hand picked images though - so kind of different approach

2014-03-24 02:31

jailbird

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1576

Quoting Shine

Sometimes i wished that i could choose "Filter releases by achievement:".
Now you can choose #1, #2, #3 as fixed places.
But in some cases i know the place and the year. ( >#3 )
Maybe you can EXTEND this feature? (via Drop Down Box as example)

Not the quick job as I thought initially, so at the moment it's not 100% what you've wished for, but from now on you could filter event/single releases. Leon specifically asked for this anyway.

Quoting Groepaz

veto focusses explicitly on hand picked images though - so kind of different approach

Yep, the two sites' only common set are the C64 images. So, one should look at TPC more like a hybrid inbetween CSDb and C64pixels. It's hard to fit everyone's needs into one single project (especially if it's developed by a lone person in his free time).

2014-03-24 02:39

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11108

btw, what i personally would love to see on such sites: links to original reference pictures, and also workstages (i find the process of creating often more interesting than the actual result)

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