[Lestrades.com] Nao 尚

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Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #720, on May 15th, 2019, 10:14 AM »
NEW: Added an 'owners' field to game details. If there are less than 20k users it'll say so. Otherwise, it'll be an average of the estimates given by SteamSpy. (Which is where I'm getting the data from, obviously. I know BVG also does it but I'm not sure if it's using SS data or using their own technique which they devised at some point but somehow stopped talking about..?)

NEW: Very minor, but games with a rating lower than 50% now show it in bold red, and higher than 84% now show it in bold green. This is only on the game pages now, not on game lists. I'm not sure it's a 'great' addition, so for now this is just an experiment. I care about layout and style!
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #721, on May 21st, 2019, 10:34 AM »
Again, many changes these last few days, but I just can't bother to detail them all. It's mostly about game pages-- I'm fine-tuning them, trying to make them look better than before (and frankly, they already looked good enough, but...), also store icon CSS was rewritten for simplicity and fine-tuned, I hopefully didn't forget anything (if you see a store icon out of place, even by a pixel, please tell me.)

FIX(ES): the search engine had become slightly slower (returning its first results in a couple of seconds, instead of less than a second), not because I'm a lazy coder, but because I insisted on searching intros right after you started typing. There is, really, no point in returning all games that include the word, I don't know, "you", in your search results. I'm currently starting to search for intros with a minimum longest word of 4 characters, but I may increase that amount later. (Or also take total search term length, not just the longest word length.)

This is now much faster (pretty much as it used to be), and additionally I removed the limit of items retrieved internally when the word is long enough. This is to make sure you get results on very generic search terms that should exactly match a game, but it's not retrieved because Lestrade's found too many games using the same search word before even reaching it. For instance, I couldn't find "Project One", even when typing its name entirely. Again, that 'no limit' trigger should be when you type of 4-letter word or more. Please don't try that 4-letter word. Actually, do try it. It returns the game 'brainf*ck', with the star, and shows that the word 'fuck' is used in the description. It also returns 'Journey of Life', because it's has an alternative name of 'Journey of Fucker'. Don't ask me why! But it's shown as such, clearly pointing out it's in the alternative name.

Lestrade's is slowly but surely becoming the best search engine for video games, lol. (Kudos to BVG for letting me use their database; although I could switch at any time to my alternative work-only Steam database, it's important to keep connections with that database, if only because I keep sending fixes to it. Also kudos to Lilly for patiently listening to my fix suggestions for the past couple of years, and continuing.)

I can't believe it's still stuck in that upper right corner. It should have a big search box right in the middle of the page, ahah.

Akylen

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Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #722, on May 21st, 2019, 01:30 PM »
If I may ask, what is the source of truth for the game search? lestrades db pulled from barter or steam?

[Lestrades.com] Nao 尚

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Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #723, on May 21st, 2019, 08:10 PM »
Source of truth? What do you mean?
- game list is taken from barter (so that IDs can match easily when importing and exporting)
- tags, publishers and prices are taken from steamspy API iirc
- descriptions come from the steam API
- most of the remaining fields are either taken from barter or from steam, or figured out by Lestrade's (for instance there are many errors that barter won't fix in game relationships, so I fix them myself and Mark these games as 'do not bother with barter Satan). I'm currently moving some of my barter imports to use steam imports instead, but I'll keep taking barter data for the foreseeable future because I appreciate how the site is progressing and without scraping its data I can't cooperate with them. (I get hundreds of weekly logs from my scraper that I carefully analyze by hand, lol.)

Akylen

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Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #724, on May 22nd, 2019, 12:39 PM »
I meant if Barter or Steam data were to diverge, who would take precedence? Generally Barter is more structured and has a community behind it. Steam, specially with banned or removed games can be a bit frustrating to get the information.

You ended up giving a much better answer than the question asked. Taking each details from the best source possible :)

[Lestrades.com] Nao 尚

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Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #725, on May 24th, 2019, 01:13 AM »
Yes, I see what you mean.
Barter data isn't always up to date. It's curated by humans (admin, theemu and Lilly, as far as I know), and sometimes they do things differently than I like. Sometimes they do things properly and I do it 'my way' (e.g. look at the Stanley Parable's demo, it's the only demo on the entire site you can actually add to your library, because I consider it a game on its own, rather than a demo of the base game), there is no "perfect" database for Steam, but I do my best to have one that's worthy of the tools I built around it.
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #726, on May 25th, 2019, 06:52 PM »
FIX/NEW: Can now search for exact expressions in the search engine. For instance, typing find your way would return too many entries from game descriptions (I tried to debug it, but it wasn't working well for me.) I figured it'd be simpler to simply allow you to type "find your way", with double quotes, and there you got, first result.

PS: as usual, I'm no longer documenting new features these days, unless it's something that can be useful and isn't self-explained, obvious or documented elsewhere.
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #727, on May 28th, 2019, 01:43 PM »
FIX: When force-adding to your library ("Add DLCs/Packages" button) and choosing to ignore at least one item in the import page, and any of the items before the ignored item is incorrectly viewed as not addable to your library, the whole thing would crumble and another game would be ignored, rather than the one you requested.

I know, it's complicated... Don't bother, it only happened to me anyway. I don't think anyone uses the 'ignore' checkboxes...
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #728, on June 5th, 2019, 08:43 PM »
NEW: A nice little feature for those who might be paranoid about their library being visible to everyone... I just added 'Sexual nudity' to my library for the sake of testing an internal feature for mass-adding DLCs to adult games (because they're not processed automatically by BVG), and figured out, well that's a stupid game to own. Then again, I don't care. But I added a flag to hide individual games from view. Just visit the offending game's page, go to 'Owners' at the bottom, and click on 'Hide my entry'. (Do the same if you want to un-hide the game from view, e.g. you did this by mistake, or just decided it was okay after all.)
The game will still show up in YOUR library, but it will indicate it's only for you. Other users won't be able to see.

A little game for you guys-- I've hidden Mermaid Adventures (https://lestrades.com/game/64048/) from my library. Can you find anywhere on the site where it says I own it...? I doubt you can, but might as well try now! (I'll mark it as visible later on, because, well, I don't need the feature myself.)
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #729, on June 6th, 2019, 10:47 AM »
NEW: The bundle list is now finally readable on mobile devices. ;)
It's no longer printing out the name of the bundle site (which is sometimes already mentioned in the bundle name, otherwise there's always the site icon to help you find your way in), replacing it with Wikipedia's famous 'external link' icon. Also tweaked the expiration stuff.
All in all, there are no changes to the desktop version, only mobile. If you like the mobile version better, feel free to discuss. (I like both.)
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #731, on June 7th, 2019, 11:15 AM »
NEW: Remember the icon that shows up next to your library games when you're reading through a list of games..? Well, there are now two different colors for it: the usual green for your usual library games that you've left to rot in hell, and a brighter (or darker, in night mode) icon for games you've already played. I needed this to be able to look for new games to play in my Hidden Objects tag page, considering I've already played most of the best rated games, and I didn't want to add a new filter to remove played games.

Obviously, it might also server as an incentive for you to actually mark unplayed games as 'farmed' if you've only farmed them. (Remember, you can do this from your Library page by simply pointing to a playtime and clicking 'Mark as farmed' when it shows up.) That way, you'll be able to find games to play more easily.

:edit: I'm a bit torn between showing the icon differently when it's been played a LOT, but also I'm currently not showing it as 'played' when it's been played from less than 3 minutes, just to account for games you farmed, marked as farmed (or not farmed at all), then later launched with the intention of playing them, only you changed your mind and decided to play it later. Please tell me if that's fine with you guys... Or if you'd rather have the icon shown differently even if played for just one minute.

(If it isn't already obvious, Lestrade's is no longer a simple "trading" website... It's mostly a place where you can deal with your libraries of games, tradables etc, in a more efficient way than within the Steam client; and future updates will probably keep that in mind, I guess.)
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #732, on June 13th, 2019, 06:02 PM »
FIX: The warning message for members in the sidebar had been there for months; I decided to move it to your Profile page, because it still has some important links, and I need to keep it somewhere anyway. But not on every page... Right?
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #733, on June 19th, 2019, 02:18 AM »
FIX: Because the BVG database doesn't have a generic entry for 'grab bags' (they instead include possible game names in bundle lists, but it's too annoying to keep track of by myself), I've deleted some random music album at groupees and replaced it with a 'Random key' entry that does what it says, indicate there's a grab bag/random game key in the current bundle.
Applied to most recent Fanatical and Groupees that had one.
Honestly, I'm not sure I'll keep it that way, but it's looking okay for now.

Also, I'm working on pagination for older expired bundles. Should be ready tomorrow, just a couple bugs to fix.
Re: What's up at Lestrade's?
« Reply #734, on June 19th, 2019, 02:52 PM »
FIX: Fixed incorrect layout in Firefox when creating new offers, more precisely next to the 'locked' icons. Apparently, this had been there for years with no one reporting it... (Probably thought it was normal..?)