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Kanakha

Search Scroll

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Searched suggestion forum, didn't find anything like this.

 

I think it would be helpful if we had a "Search Scroll" feature. Not only would it search names, it could have the option to search deeper in to each dragon page, such as lineage, children, and even personal description.

 

Say I wanted to find all of the dorkfaces on my scroll (which I do). I could select the "search lineage" and "search name" options. All dorkfaces, even the ones without "dorkface" in their names, would show up on the results list.

 

In my history playing DC, I've raised a few dorkfaces. I know of a few instances when I had forgotten that some hatchlings were dorkfaces, and thus didn't put "dorkface" in their name. It occured to me this morning that with the new renaming feature, I can now fix that error. However, with 400+ dragons now on my scroll, it would take time to research each dragon to find which ones I missed. So I thought of the search feature.

 

I'm sure there are other good reasons to have this feature implemented. Thoughts?

 

./Kan

 

Expanding on options:

 

I believe this would be really useful for breeding purposes; personally I have 700+ dragons and while I know a few of my best dragons by heart, a lot of the times I forget about 3rd-4th gen metallics or stripes or whatever and have to go through their pages one by one to find them. :c

 

I know some people just keep lists of these things, but for my part I'm forgetful and would probably just keep losing the stupid document in the void of my computer. Not to mention that a dragon I don't write down one day because I think it's useless might suddenly turn out to be exactly what I need a few weeks later!

 

The best arrangement would be to have the search also workable while selecting mates, as I imagine that'd be the most practical use of it.

 

Not quite sure how complicated the search would be, so I'm just throwing out some suggestions for now. You'd be able to search for multiple criteria at once (think a pokedex search!).

 

- Breed

- Alt Status

- Generation

- Ancestor Names (Thuweds, Dorkfaces) ?

- Lineage Type (Staircase, Even-Gen) ?

- Date Stolen/Hatched/Matured ?

Edited by SockPuppet Strangler

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If you remember what they are named, you an always use controll+f in order to do a search.

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If you remember what they are named, you an always use controll+f in order to do a search.

I was thinking that at first, too, but this goes beyond that. True, you can do that if you just need to quickly find a Dragon, or a Dragon near whatever you remember the name of (like I only need to remember the name of one of each breed, and I can find where I have them grouped easily), but this is something beyond that according to the OP.

 

I rather like the idea of being able to quickly search through lineages or descriptions for a name or other keyword without having to manually open up every single one, and then having to manually ensure that you are tracing the lineage back as far as it goes, like in the cases of 30th gen offspring or something. If it wouldn't be too much work to code, or put too much strain on things, I'd love to see something like this, especially now that we have renaming.

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It'd also be nice to be able to search your scroll for all dragons of a certain species, as long as we're doing a search. If I can't remember if I have any male Nebulas, for example, I'd like to just be able to search m scroll for all Nebulas instead of scroll through the whole thing.

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@KageSora & TCA: Exactly. Those are perfect examples of the usefulness of this feature.

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A comprehensive search tool would be awesome, but...

 

Any search engine with those options would place a huge strain on the server load. Each time a person searches for a piece of data, that request is being forwarded to the server, hitting the databases & being sent back to the requester - much like when pouncing on eggs in the Cave.

 

Think about the amount of lag we get on the Cave at the top of every hour, even when there are no new eggs dropping.

 

Now imagine what it would be like if people were not only trying to catch eggs, but all those scroll lurkers were running searches on their dragon information.

 

Personally, I use the free database tool from OpenOffice.org to keep my dragons organized, especially now that I've got so many. If I want to know who my dragons' parents were I run a query in my own database. Need a code? It's in the db. Want to link offspring to dragons? It's in the db. I'm also learning about how to build & manage databases that way, which is a nice bonus for my resume.

 

 

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I'm not gonna lie, I think I'm gonna check out that app. I had no idea it was even a part of OpenOffice. Even so, with 400+ dragons on my scroll and almost no database to speak of (except for a very basic, incomplete, and abandoned list of actions taken on my scroll), it would take an incredibly long time to build one manually. Though I admit, the challenge is tempting.

 

I wonder, would putting time limits on the search feature help with server load? 60-120 seconds in between searches?

 

 

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Any search engine with those options would place a huge strain on the server load. Each time a person searches for a piece of data, that request is being forwarded to the server, hitting the databases & being sent back to the requester - much like when pouncing on eggs in the Cave.

This is NOT true. All the required data are in the same table as the dragons or at least in a table that needs to be queried anyway in order to display the scroll. So it means no additional afford for the server to hand out this additional data in a hidden field which can be accessed by the browser using javascript. The searches can performed inside the browser so the serverload won't even slightly increase.

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I feel like all I can constructively say is that if this is possible and won't cause too much strain on the server, I'd support it.

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I keep a detailed listing of my dragons in spreadsheet form for that sort of thing. (Copy viewable HERE if you're interested.)

 

I do not think this would be all that useful in the long run. Your example as to how it would be useful to you is something that would only need to be done once - search for all your dorkface hatchlings, name them properly, all done. What would you use it for beyond that?

 

I can't think of anything I would need it for, or any query I would have that I wouldn't be able to find the answer for using something already present on the site - if I needed to know how many male nebulas I had (and my scroll wasn't already organized the way it is) I could always sort by breed and look that way and then restore my original sort type. I can probably do that faster than it would take me to choose all the right search parameters.

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@tiktokism: True. And since perzephone suggested the database app in OpenOffice earlier, I've been building a list much like the one you just showed. It was a good idea at the time, and perhaps may still be. If anyone is willing to discuss further, then by all means do. Otherwise, it's fine with me if a mod would like to close this.

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This is NOT true. All the required data are in the same table as the dragons or at least in a table that needs to be queried anyway in order to display the scroll. So it means no additional afford for the server to hand out this additional data in a hidden field which can be accessed by the browser using javascript. The searches can performed inside the browser so the serverload won't even slightly increase.

That's a careless assumption. Look, I don't know how TJ implemented the system, but I have a guess on how I would have implemented it. If he is in fact using a database to store the information, the indexes that would need to be used for searching like this would probably be entirely different from the indexes that are required for displaying a scroll. Every index requires more space in the database (and if the index is on something like a string, the space requirements are large, at least in comparison with what one usually tries to index on), and can, in fact, sometimes negatively impact the performance of other types of queries.

 

It's great to say "this would be easy", but... I really don't think it would be.

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This is NOT true. All the required data are in the same table as the dragons or at least in a table that needs to be queried anyway in order to display the scroll. So it means no additional afford for the server to hand out this additional data in a hidden field which can be accessed by the browser using javascript. The searches can performed inside the browser so the serverload won't even slightly increase.

I'm also taking into account what little knowledge I have about the equipment TJ uses to run the Dragon Cave - which is a single server. Load balancing, done right, involves multiple servers, not just multiple drives or partitions on a single server.

 

I just spent 2 years working in the IT dept. of a local government agency with maybe 1000 employees. We were attempting to implement a web-based case management system. The IT dept. head was a database administrator with many, many years in the field. Because of some shoddy coding on behalf of the company that built the system , if two people tried to run a search for the same file at the same time, the search would deadlock. It never even got to the point where we could implement load-balancing because if a system is going to go belly up if 2 people out of a thousand are running a query, imagine a full staff on a Monday morning. One of the program developers actually had the gall to say, "well, why not tell everyone 'I am searching x, please do not search x til I am finished".

 

Granted, TJ is a single person so his back-end databases and query systems are probably far more uniform than that running a program built by a team of people, but the concept is the same. Multiple queries against a back-end database can cause increased server load, especially if it is a detailed search. Searching a dragon by name might not cause any problems, but specifying lineage members, offspring, mates, etc. - all by what is it, up to 200k users at any given time - could end up being a monster in the making.

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Okay i was told that this thought would go in this near year old thread tho i think it doesn't really fit... but maybe that's just me... my original post:

 

While going through my pages and trying to remember what page number my Silvers are on I had a thought. Could we get the ability to have dragons be searchable. Even if there was an A-Z at the bottom of the page and I could hit the letter G and it would bring up my Greens ect. it would be helpful because i'm horrible at remembering where they are on my pages when i decide i want to breed a certain type of dragon or see how many more i need to reach my dragon goal for each species. Or make Alpha a type of sort with A-Z instead of page numbers. This could also help with the previously suggested BSA dragons link. If i know that i can click 'P' and get to my pinks that would solve the BSA issue. (tho i wouldnt mind seeing if the dragons are on cool down or available for BSA use)

 

So.... Thoughts?

 

Does anyone else think that this could solve the BSA issue or that this is a good idea? I figured a sort with then a A-Z search might help a lot of issues people have. and it would make it much nicer when looking for a particular type or specific dragon.

 

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Another forum I am on, a simple search of the forum for - say - Dickens (the author..!) is the kind of thing that really strains the server, so I would imagine it WOULD do so for this too.

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What I'm talking about is more of a simple sort order that would basically do the same as the breed sort now but instead of you having to remember your pinks are on say page 13 you could click the letter 'P' because instead of having page 1,2,3...200 you would have A,B,C...Z as your navigation. or even just having an A-Z Navigation without having the breed sort on. Simply click 'G' and you'd have a page with all youre Green dragon along with any other 'G' 's

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Just an idea I had: I think it'd be really helpful if there was a way to search through one's dragons by certain criteria. For example, say I'm trying to breed even-gen stripes. I'd run a search asking it to show only 2nd gen red stripes, or CB stripes, or so on and so forth.

 

I believe this would be really useful for breeding purposes; personally I have 700+ dragons and while I know a few of my best dragons by heart, a lot of the times I forget about 3rd-4th gen metallics or stripes or whatever and have to go through their pages one by one to find them. :c

 

I know some people just keep lists of these things, but for my part I'm forgetful and would probably just keep losing the stupid document in the void of my computer. Not to mention that a dragon I don't write down one day because I think it's useless might suddenly turn out to be exactly what I need a few weeks later!

 

The best arrangement would be to have the search also workable while selecting mates, as I imagine that'd be the most practical use of it.

 

Not quite sure how complicated the search would be, so I'm just throwing out some suggestions for now. You'd be able to search for multiple criteria at once (think a pokedex search!).

 

- Breed

- Alt Status

- Generation

- Ancestor Names (Thuweds, Dorkfaces) ?

- Lineage Type (Staircase, Even-Gen) ?

- Date Stolen/Hatched/Matured ?

 

Thoughts?

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It sounds as though this would be impossible, but, boy, I'd love something like this.

 

It may take me months to breed/find mates for various dragons, and I may very well not recall anything about where the heck the other 3rd-gen Black/Val is, or even what gender it was, when I'm Influencing the egg.

 

I may pick up an egg and think that I'm pretty sure I have something that would go with beautifully, but not be able to recall anything more than the gens and maybe some Holidays or whatever in the lineage.

 

I get called away frequently and all-too-often forget what the heck I was doing by the time I get back, lol, and wind up with a wrong gender because it took so long trying to look through my scroll for one particular Black or Pink, or whatever.

 

I have what I think are gorgeous dragons that I keep forgetting about until I come across them looking for something else and think that I thought I picked them up a mate...somewhere... and keep getting side-tracked.

 

Granted, I'm pretty disorganized and I know that other people manage to keep track of hundreds of pairings month after month, while they fail to produce an egg together to make them easily found - but an awful lot of us don't.

 

And I'm certainly more awful than some, lol.

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I still have a sick feeling about server strain...

 

I use a Word document for the criteria angelicdragonpuppy cites. It includes the dragon CODES, so I can always find one with view/9999

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I do not think this would be all that useful in the long run. Your example as to how it would be useful to you is something that would only need to be done once - search for all your dorkface hatchlings, name them properly, all done. What would you use it for beyond that?

Personally, I'd use it for lots of things other than the other person's example. I'm not one of those people who puts markers like Stairstep or 3rd Gen or whatever in names because it makes names look ugly, so even if I was looking for dorkfaces and named them all, later on I'd have to try to remember the lineage of every single dorkface I'd named when picking one to breed, which is a pain (again, people can just set up their own elaborate word documents, which is true, but the whole point of this would be to make things easier than that).

 

And, to be honest, I don't really care about dorkfaces. What I'd mostly be looking for are things like 2nd-3rd gen blacks and stripes, 4th-5th gen clean lineaged metallics, etc on my scroll. Things that definitely have some value in the breeding-n-trading game, but aren't as obviously memorable as knowing where your CB golds and trios are, if you know what I mean. Or let's say I get a really lovely tinsel that needs a CB skywing or something for a mate; God knows if I remember which of the dozens of common skywings I have are CB, so I'd have to go through each of their pages one by one to try to find one. Whereas with this I could just search 'Caveborn Skywing' and bam, done.

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I'm nutreal on this. While this option would be incredibly useful for me while I rebuild the spreadsheet I recently lost, I don't want more lag. And as I don't have much computer expertise right now, I don't know how useful a database will be to me. I would love it if this idea was implemented without much added lag, but I don't think it will really inhibit my DC-playing experience if it isn't.

Just my two cents. Please excuse any and all spelling mistakes.

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Bringing this back because the ability to search through the lineages of the dragons on my scroll (either searching names or searching dragon breeds - i.e., search for dragons with Hollies in the lineage, or better yet, be able to tell the function to search all White dragons with Hollies in the lineage who are 3rd gen) would be exceedingly useful in my breeding endeavors. I don't have time to maintain a spreadsheet (I tried and utterly failed) and I certainly haven't memorized the details of all 2400 of the dragons on my scroll.

 

DO WANT.

 

 

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I think this would be extremely useful, but I'm not sure how the complexity that people are suggesting could be implemented easily.

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I add on to my last statement. This would come in really handy right now. Searching a certain breed or a certain generation or both would be VERY nice

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