Template talk:MasterGameListCount/GameList

Template:MasterGameListCount/GameList last updated at: Mon Feb 19 00:30:37 EST 2007

How does this work?
The game list counter is updated by AlphaBot, a Java based client application that requires a manual trigger. The bot loads Category:Game_List and does a recursive search through all Game System Categories, keeping track of existing game pages. It then removes duplicates if one game title happen to be on more than one platform. The generated list of games can be found at Template:MasterGameListCount/GameList.


 * Note: This counter does not update automatically, it requires a user to execute the program!

The bot is akin to a pessimistic algorithm that will undershoot the actual number of game titles (IE. Donkey Konga, while having two different versions, will only be counted as one. IE2. If two titles are different, but have the same name, it will be counted as one, such as Sports titles that appear on handhelds compared to home console version). However, since it only takes the title as a mark that such a page exist, it does not ensure that the page has useful content, only that a page exist and can be tabulated.

Bugs
I just caught a bug that hinder it from reading "â�?�¥" as used in We â�?�¥ Katamari. Seems like Java doesn't like outputting that, I'll have to think of some workaround. If you see any occurances like that, please leave a line here/--AlphaTwo 22:27, 14 March 2006 (CST)
 * Fixed.--AlphaTwo 08:01, 19 February 2007 (PST)

Discussion
So...when new game pages are created, it will eventually add them to this list? Or do we do that manually?--Evisruc 03:00, 3 March 2006 (CST)
 * As long as the game is taged with Category:Nintendo DS games or some other similar Category for the systems (Any subcategory within Category:Game List will do), it will be picked up and written into this list.--AlphaTwo 05:48, 3 March 2006 (CST)
 * So far it hasn't done that, though. There were a couple of pages I made that were only recently categorized into what console they were on (Spartan: Total Warrior) that are not on this master list.  Does it simply take more than a day to update?--Evisruc 18:22, 3 March 2006 (CST)
 * I have to actually run a program to do it. I'll run it now.--AlphaTwo 18:49, 3 March 2006 (CST)

Things to do
Well, it's back up now. I've noticed that their is a new category: Nintendo WiFi games. We're definitely duplicate counting...--AlphaTwo 19:37, 18 February 2007 (PST)

64 Ōzumō and 64 Ōzumō 2
I hate these damn ascii titles. It's really screwing the parser up. I'll fix it eventually, but don't expect it anytime soon.--AlphaTwo 21:35, 18 February 2007 (PST)

NES Page Spillover
The NES pages exceeds 200 games, and somehow I'm counting the "previous 200/next200" links, which means the counter is 2 games more than it should. :P--AlphaTwo 21:35, 18 February 2007 (PST)

Optimizing page hits
Right now running the script on my computer talks around 2 minutes to traverse through all the list and saving it. I'd like to cut it down if possible.--AlphaTwo 21:35, 18 February 2007 (PST)