Sort By Code

[LibbyLishly]

I ran a search and found nothing for this (only a "Show codes" suggestion), so:

 

Can we have a "Sort by code" option? I name all my dragons, but sometimes I need to find a specific code but can't remember it exactly. The ability to sort my dragons alphabetically by code would be extremely useful in those circumstances.

Edited December 3, 2017 by LibbyLishly

[Silvynx]

I feel like this would by rather redundant because sorting by name already puts all unnamed dragons at the top alphabetically by code

[The Dragoness]

OP is asking for named dragons to be sorted by code though, so sorting by name wouldn't help. 

 

I support this suggestion, even though I don't really collect codes. It could be helpful for those who do.

[Fuzzbucket]

I actually occasionally need this - though I do it with my datasheets. And ALL mine are named Support.

[Silvynx]

Ah, I see. In that case I do agree it would be useful, as long as the codes are displayed along with the name.

[Ruby Eyes]

I would like this, too. Just one more temp sort option!

[Zeditha]

I see no downside to this being added as another temporary sort in the list.

Full support.

[TJ09]

This is an interesting one. It feels a little odd, semantically, to provide this. Dragon IDs are meant to be opaque identifiers—they are not assigned any special meaning within Dragon Cave as a game, just some random thing so that you can tell unnamed dragons apart and so URLs look a little nicer than dragcave.net/view?dragon=58299476 or something. Nonetheless, they've been given meaning because they use the latin alphabet and thus have a chance to resemble words and phrases, which is a pretty awesome instance of emergent behavior that I never would have seen coming at the time. That said, it's weird to have the site explicitly acknowledge that in some ways but not others—if the site is going to embrace the fact that IDs can be read and have meaning, then it's a lot harder to argue that they're just random sequences and interpreting them in ways that may be inappropriate is all in the eye of the beholder. It sounds like a bit of a slippery slope, but I think in this case it's actually kinda true.

[MissK.]

3 hours ago, TJ09 said:

This is an interesting one. It feels a little odd, semantically, to provide this. Dragon IDs are meant to be opaque identifiers—they are not assigned any special meaning within Dragon Cave as a game, just some random thing so that you can tell unnamed dragons apart and so URLs look a little nicer than dragcave.net/view?dragon=58299476 or something. Nonetheless, they've been given meaning because they use the latin alphabet and thus have a chance to resemble words and phrases, which is a pretty awesome instance of emergent behavior that I never would have seen coming at the time. That said, it's weird to have the site explicitly acknowledge that in some ways but not others—if the site is going to embrace the fact that IDs can be read and have meaning, then it's a lot harder to argue that they're just random sequences and interpreting them in ways that may be inappropriate is all in the eye of the beholder. It sounds like a bit of a slippery slope, but I think in this case it's actually kinda true.

 

I don't see why the ability to sort by code would be directly connected to codes having meaning. Codes are the site's way of giving dragons a unique identity; even if they were a random string of numbers instead of letters, a sort by ID feature still seems like a reasonable enough suggestion because people simply do use codes to identify dragons. For example when using fertility I remember the code of a dragon I need to breed starts with "kmn", so I type that in the search field and pick the right dragon. No special meaning to it, might as well have been 8326 instead, just a way to find what I'm looking for even now that the dragon is named. It's not about codes that resemble words necessarily, just about codes as IDs in general. 

 

On the other hand, one could argue the game already acknowledges that codes have meaning since we were allowed to pick custom ones when prizes were first released (not sure if that's still possible nowadays). And TJ, your own holiday dragons' codes are handpicked to this day. If codes having meaning causes problems with inappropriate ones, that should already be the case now, not just if this suggestion is implemented.

Edited December 7, 2017 by MissK.

[Ruby Eyes]

Codes are just providing another fun layer to the game. You can collect sprites, lineages, names - and codes. I guess their absolute randomness makes codes a slightly different hunting/collecting experience than sprites which will always look the same. Names can be swapped and exchanged between creatures, codes, much like fingerprints, cannot.

What I'm saying is they are part of the game, and have been for a long time already

[LibbyLishly]

@TJ09 Fwiw, if you can search for a named dragon by its code when selecting dragons to add to a group, I don't see how the ability to sort the whole scroll by code makes the codes any more meaningful than they already are.

Edited December 17, 2017 by LibbyLishly

[Yubelchen]

For me its simple: code = name and otherwise

The code is just the 'canon' name of the dragon unless you acually name it because, as you said TJ, each dragon has to have a name from the system to make it unique and to find it again like in a videogame each item has a certain number addressed to.

 

The fact that sorting by code is not an original option was strange, since as Libby said, you can enter the code or name of a dragon when adding to a group and find it with both things form the start.

[Ruby Eyes]

The code could just be the creature's "secret" name.

[Amazon_warrior]

1 hour ago, Ruby Eyes said:

The code could just be the creature's "secret" name.

 

This is actually my headcanon for codes - and I also pretend that the ones that look like or mean something in a human language in fact mean something else entirely in Dragon. 

 

OT:  I'm all for this, but for it to be any use the sort function would need to become case insensitive.  Right now if I sort my code groups they end up in odd clumps according to which letters are upper or lower case.