Adjusting the functionality of the Dragon Encyclopedia for breeds "owned"

[Ashywolf]

I think many of us hoped the Encyclopedia would give us a way to more efficiently see what we "needed", But since it operates on owning as much as just seeing dragons, it fills in parts of the Encyclopedia even if you don't actually own that breed. Currently the only way to do so is to make a manual spreadsheet of every breed, every gender, alt, hatchling stage, which is doable, but a huge time sink. I would like to propose the Encyclopedia better functions as a "pokedex" style database for users to evaluate their scroll "completion".

 

As part of this idea, I have 2-3 proposals for discussion.

Proposal 1:

Add an "I phyiscally have this" icon next to the dragon icons in the encyclopedia to indicate if you own an adult of this breed, regardless of how much that entry is "complete" on the Encyclopedia. This functions like the pokedex "caught" pokeball icon in our favourite collect-them-all game, and enables us to quickly see which breeds we do and don't have.

 

Proposal 2A:

A second viewing mode in the Encyclopedia, which operates *only* on what you have obtained, not seen. This would fill in the sprites as follows:

-faint silhouette (not seen)

-silhouette (seen-only)

-full sprite (owned an adult)

-full sprite with completion icon (owned all sprites?)

 

Proposal 2B:

A second viewing mode that just straight up shows us a complete spreadsheet view, showing specifically what frozen hatchlings and adults we *currently have* on our scroll. The completionist's greatest dream.

 

[Fuzzbucket]

It may be a greatest dream - but we know, I think, that it isn't that easy to add ion retrospectively all the dragons we had before it was started.

 

I have to say, as a fellow completionist, I am pretty meh on this one - I have a database with all my dragons in anyway; it wouldn't be a time sink to strip out duplicates to show - as you might say - one of each.

[Nakti]

Encyclopedia RN counts dragon that we ever owned, so it cannot reliably store both old or laggy data.

OP however proposes solutions that at least partially depend on what player currently has. While this could still be hard in unlucky cases, it sounds easier than adding retrospective data.

 

 

2a and 2b sound interesting. 2b would be highly volatile, but it's exact purpose of that idea.

[Fuzzbucket]

Encyclopedia doesn't show dragons we owned before it came into being in 2014.

 

My waterhorse encylopedia page:

 

 

My waterhorse group:

 

 

The difference comes from those I had before 2014.

[NightEagle]

 

9 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Encyclopedia doesn't show dragons we owned before it came into being in 2014.

 

My waterhorse encylopedia page:

 

 

My waterhorse group:

 

 

The difference comes from those I had before 2014.

What is proposed wouldn't depend on that, though, as far as I understood. The encyclopedia keeps released dragons in, for example, which this new idea would not.

[Fuzzbucket]

But it also doesn't have what we have in the way of older ones. And released ones count for unlocking.

[Nakti]

15 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Encyclopedia doesn't show dragons we owned before it came into being in 2014.

Because it doesn't count dragons, counters only increase a moment dragon is being added to scroll. I had two occasions of that counter glitching on site lags, and one hatchling/adult added not 1 but 5-10 to it.

 

You are talking about current approach, but at least proposal 2B is about adding a new different "counter" that works completely differently.

[Fuzzbucket]

Sure - what I am saying is that I'm not at all sure it can be done that easily.

[Ashywolf]

I obviously did not program DC, so I can't say for sure "it's easy", but data management shouldn't be that difficult to accomplish in this way. At worst, you'd need something to read your scroll to update the information, but we already have external sites that do this for other purposes (hatcheries and so on). These all seem very doable.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Ashywolf

[Fuzzbucket]

I have no idea and don't honestly care that much - but what hatchery counts everything you have on your scroll ?

[Ashywolf]

On 9/15/2023 at 12:31 AM, Fuzzbucket said:

I have no idea and don't honestly care that much - but what hatchery counts everything you have on your scroll ?

None, as far as I know.

 

I'm just indicating that other sites effectively read user data in a way that could be adapted for that purpose. So it should be possible.

[blah]

By comparison to some my scroll isn’t even that large but it has become so unwieldy and I have so much trouble sorting out my scroll goals that I keep coming back to DC and then leaving again after a couple of weeks. And I’ve been here more than 14 years now. Anything, absolutely anything that makes my dragons easier to administer (remember tabs?) gets my full support. 
 

And the encyclopaedia definitely does count things weirdly. It claims I’ve raised two adult Staterae while at the same time claiming I’ve only ever owned one egg and one hatchling (I only have one adult).

[Fuzzbucket]

Maybe you did. Maybe at one point you collected a stat hatchling in trade, for instance.

[blah]

28 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Maybe you did. Maybe at one point you collected a stat hatchling in trade, for instance.

But wouldn’t it show me as having owned two hatchlings then? It really says 1 egg, 1 hatchie but 2 adults. And there’s only 1 adult on my scroll.

[Fuzzbucket]

You're probably right - just we do sometimes forget about things like not having had something from an egg. The second adult is indeed very odd.

[notecardPasta]

Was about to make a similar suggestion to this!

As far as getting the "owned" data, I think simply searching for if a dragon with the breed's id (or name or however its sorted in the database) is currently under the user ID and then displaying the star, shadow, or whatever indicator that you have the breed would work? This would mean "scanning" for the breed stops at the first adult of the species and there'd be no need to retroactively do anything as it'd be updated based on now rather than any sort of records. Proposal 1 is similar to what I had in mind but I love the idea of a "stats page" as well!

Edited February 17 by notecardPasta