2007-11-17
The groups pages are now showing the 15 most popular characters, then linking to a page with the full characters list.
Next step is the ability to assign the "avatar" to each character, to be showed on that list.

2007-11-18
Almost done.
When creating a new avatar (and cropping a larger image) just select the character from the list and click the checkbox named "This is the character portrait ". The new avatar (read: small image picturing the face of a character) will become the official portrait.

When editing an already uploaded image (and that image is cropped as avatar), you can click on "character avatar" found near the list of character(s) assigned to the image, to make it the official character portrait.

The [[link:/characters/list/tekken characters pages]] are becoming more interesting now. :-)

note:I've done a lot of editings in many pages to handle all this, despite I'm testing it a lot, if you note something strange or missing, please report.

2007-11-18
Yay for progress! \o/

Oh, BTW, maybe switch the order of the character type and gender? It makes more sense to have "female beast" than "beast female". For some other types this works either way, but it's more often correct when the gender appears first. The unknown type is an exception to this, it works best if gender comes second, but either way it makes little sense with gender present.

Edit: There should be a little more spacing between the characters and the view all link. It kinda gets lost in the list now.

2007-11-18
I know, there are problems when cropping large images...

2007-11-19 (updated 2007-11-19)
Something bad happens when a character has a very long name (or lots of AKAs), see [[link:http://uvlist.net/characters/list/europeancomic European Comic characters]] - Gaston Lagaffe.

Plus, when you delete an avatar image from a game, if the avatar is set as "character protrait", the relation seems to be kept (see Obelix, European Comic again - I deleted the avatar because of the "cropping large images" bug).


By the way, the characters page looks great now that characters have their own portrait. Very good improvement again :)

-EDIT- : Well, I did not see the "remove character avatar"... I just removed a "character avatar" as I made a mistake on characters association (Kyle instead of Kenny - [[link:http://uvlist.net/characters/list/southpark South Park characters]]), but now I can't set Kenny's avatar as a portrait (nothing happens when I click on "character avatar" - see [[link:http://uvlist.net/editimages.php?l=en&id=110094 Edit images]] - edit Kenny).

2007-11-19
[[quote:nothing happens when I click on "character avatar"]]
I can confirm this. Looking at the source, the problem seems to be the double quote in Kenny's name. So htmlspecialchars() function to use here again.

2007-11-19 (updated 2007-11-19)
Fixed the "too long name" issue, the problem with name containing quotes when unlinking avatars, and Kenny.

I find difficult to fix Obelix as I should look all the Asterix games to find the correct image.
I should make this easier.

edit: We just added the Cammy avatar almost at the same moment, from the same image. Just removed mine. :-)

2007-11-19
Maybe this could be a good think to add a facultative sub-class to characters. Not really important for humans or robots, but for Beast / animal (Lion, Dragon, etc...), Monster (Goblin, etc...), Undead (Zombi, etc...) and especially Other (Fairy, or game-specifics as Moogle, etc...). This sub-class would not be selected through a drop-down box, as it is for class, but through a text box, allowing users to add whatever.

Principally useful for "Others", so [[link:http://uvlist.net/characters/info/3890 Tinker Bell]] (for example) would be "female fairy", not juste "female".

BTW, are Dragons beasts or monsters (or both) ?

-edit- : For Obelix, it's [[gameid:101973 this game]].

2007-11-19
If we just could add tags to characters... :)

2007-11-19
[[quote:BTW, are Dragons beasts or monsters (or both) ?]]
I think it depends on the world. Monsters in most cases, I think. E.g. in [[gametag:ashan Ashan]] they belong to Other because they're Gods (at least the real dragons are, the Pao Kai aren't dragons :P - the dragons in HoMMV belong to monster group, though). Other or Monster in D&D games. They tend to be "magical" creatures and generally otherwise "unnatural" so beast is rarely the correct choice.

2007-11-19
[[quote:Principally useful for "Others", so [[link:http://uvlist.net/characters/info/3890 Tinker Bell]] (for example) would be "female fairy", not juste "female".]]
Or we could add Fae (faeries, some more traditional elves, traditional goblins), Elemental, God, and few others to complement what we have.

And human was supposed to be renamed to humanoid, so it should fit well with Goblins and the like, even if it isn't particularly descriptive. But we can't search for character types anyway, so I don't see much use for this (yet!)

2007-11-20 (updated 2007-11-20)
Some avatars aren't showing in the [[link:/characters/list/xmen X-Men]] character list. Rogue does have an avatar for one (I tried re-adding it to no avail).
Also the character pages are missing images, like Emma Frost doesn't appear to have any but she does have them (at least if you look in the [[link:/editimages.php?l=en&id=161909 games]])

Edit: Similarly Bloom is missing the avatar in [[link:/characters/list/winx Winx club]] even though I [[link:/editimages.php?l=en&id=165082 just added it]].

2007-11-20
Fae has a blurry definition as it has been used historicly to refer to, or an alternate name or type of, amazons, angels, banshee, beings in purgatory, brownie, changelings, daemons, demons, elfs, elves, ethereal creatures, fallen angels, faeries, ghosts, giants, gnomes, goblins, hobgoblins, nymphs, ogres, pixies, pygmies, satyrs, sprites, will o' the wisp, an generically ans any fantasy or magical creature. This may be the definition you had in mind?

2007-11-21
[[quote:Fae has a blurry definition as it has been used historicly to refer to, or an alternate name or type of, amazons, angels, banshee, beings in purgatory, brownie, changelings, daemons, demons, elfs, elves, ethereal creatures, fallen angels, faeries, ghosts, giants, gnomes, goblins, hobgoblins, nymphs, ogres, pixies, pygmies, satyrs, sprites, will o' the wisp, an generically ans any fantasy or magical creature. This may be the definition you had in mind?]]
We don't have much anything better for any of those, except ghosts/banshees and demons which are obviously ndead and demons. I've never heard of [fallen] angels being categorized as Fae, but we have nothing better than "Other" for them either. Also the "any fantasy or magical creature" doesn't work particularly well. Most traditional fantasy creatures are Fae, but other than that it's case specific.
[[quote:Fae has a blurry definition]]
So is God. Popularly Gods are seen as omnipotent, all-seeing and all-knowing immortal entities, but if you look in non-Christian cultures, you'll see it varies much more greatly. D&D multiverse has a nice concept of Godhood since there it's more transient in some cases (Astral Plane being their graveyard and such).

2007-11-21
Adding avatars
I tried to add lots of avatars for [[gametag:kof King of Fighters]] games, but I don't know if it's the good way... (I just added four of them for now)

I screenshot 32 times the character selection screen to have portraits of every character, but I have to add the image, avatar-crop it, then delete the image (as I think it's useless to have 32 character selection screenshots for the game)... That does not bother me much, but I just wanted to know if it's not a problem, as the avatar is taken from an image which will not be seen in the game's pictures gallery, and more, to tell you not to worry if you see on the what's up page :

[[quote:image delete game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 9' 3''
new avatar game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 9' 57''
post image game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 10' 30''
image delete game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 10' 47''
new avatar game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 10' 53''
post image game:The King of Fighters '99 dandyboh 11' 19''
etc...]]

Also to ask you if there's a better way to do this but I think there is not.

2007-11-23
re: Adding avatars
[[quote:Also to ask you if there's a better way to do this but I think there is not.]]
Not really. I'd prefer the avatars were from character art (or game box art if they have good quality pics in them of the character), but that's difficult to find for some games. But tends to be the only way you can get decent quality pics (without pixel doubling) of some characters from older games.

You could reduce the number of image deletes by creating a collage which you upload and create avatars from, but that's probably too much work.

2007-11-23
[[quote:I'd prefer the avatars were from character art (or game box art if they have good quality pics in them of the character)]]

Agree. But avatars can be replaced later by better ones if needed.

2007-11-23
[[quote:Not really. I'd prefer the avatars were from character art ]]
Even if taken from screenshots, those KOF avatars are good quality and not pixelated, so it's not a problem to me.
[[quote:Also to ask you if there's a better way to do this but I think there is not.]]
No there isn't (beside the Sanguine idea, but it would be more work)

I've just added a popularity index beside every character (based on unique pageviews).

2007-11-24
There isn't a way of uploading "pre-made" avatars currently, BTW, which would be the "better" way. The only thing this would need is that the upload script detects the image size and either rejects it if it isn't what was expected (48x48) or automatically resizes it to correct size (only shrinking, stretching is bad idea).

2013-01-20
I just noticed that after renaming a group, the characters from this group do not belong to anything anymore. For example, "shiningforce" was renamed "shining-series", so now the "shiningforce" characters belong to "undef" and we can't list the characters from this series. See Melody (undef link links to the right page (Shining series), but characters list link links to "Group not found" page) and Shining series page.

2013-01-22
Good finding. I'll check this for the next renames and I'm going to fix the existing.

2013-04-23
Could those characters be relocated via script? Manually swapping them over is a bit too much work. I renamed some dupe tag to shiningforce to do that manually (since there's no other way to get access to the limbo'd characters), but there's over 50 of them, and moving characters from Aliens tag already wasn't particularly fun either.

There probably should be a page to find characters that don't have a group or are linked to non-existing group.

2013-04-28 (updated 2013-04-28)
I just noticed that after renaming a group, the characters from this group do not belong to anything anymore. For example, "shiningforce" was renamed "shining-series", so now the "shiningforce" characters belong to "undef" and we can't list the characters from this series. See Melody (undef link links to the right page (Shining series), but characters list link links to "Group not found" page) and Shining series page.

This still benefits from automation. Though anyone feeling like they lack stuff to do could also handle it, I don't personally want to bother.

2017-01-08
I want to bump this older topic, because I think that no one yet seemed to address one major feature that is IMO missing. When I would visit UVL for the first time and I click on a character I want to know which games the character appears in. But all you get is games that have a screenshot with the character on it as well as the info to what group/tag the character is related to.

Example: I want to know which games feature "The Joker", Batman's adversary, but there is no such information and currently there are no tools to add that information inside the character list feature. Of course I could make a group "thejoker" but thats not the way characters are handled currently.

2017-01-11 (updated 2017-01-11)
I totally agree with you. I already suggested that years before, not in this thread (don't remember which one), to have something like:

[chara_name] is the main protagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is a protagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is the main antagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is an antagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is a playable character of [game]
[chara_name] is a non-playable character of [game]
[chara_name] is barely seen / heard of in [game]

(To be discussed)

Of course, one character could have multiple relationships (can be the main protagonist AND playable, can be a protagonist AND (then turn) antagonist AND non-playable, etc...)

EDIT: here: http://www.uvlist.net/forum/thread/39733
And here: https://code.google.com/archive/p/uvl/issues/24

2017-01-13
Complex character relations with a game are more descriptive, and you could use that info to search for games where they appear in specific roles. Like maybe I want to play games where I get to play as Bruce Wayne instead of as his alter ego Batman, so I'd get at least Telltale's recent Batman game as match.

2017-01-22
Cool, sorry for the ten years delay on this issue :)
We need to clear the possible roles so that I can find the best way to store them and how the data can be edited.

We are talking about the game<->character not the character1<->character2 relation expressed in the last comment here: https://code.google.com/archive/p/uvl/issues/24 , that is quite cool but a bit overhelming imho.

To recap the relations expressed by dandyboh (that need to be treated as multiple selection flags):

[chara_name] is the main protagonist of [game] (this makes him/her a generic protagonist too)
[chara_name] is a protagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is the main antagonist of [game] (this makes him/her a generic antagonist too)
[chara_name] is an antagonist of [game]
[chara_name] is a protagonist ally in [game]
[chara_name] has an ambiguous allegiance in [game]
[chara_name] is a playable character of [game]
[chara_name] is a non-playable character of [game]
[chara_name] is barely seen / heard of in [game] (this is definitely for not playable games btw)
[chara_name] has no clear role in [game] (this is the default condition, in some cases the game has to be played to understand the role, and I expect some bulk editing in the first steps)

One descriptive text in some cases will be needed, I'm not sure if it is better to eventually have just one text, or one description for each character. (you should consider the editors effort too)


Feel free to add or modify the possible roles.

2017-01-23
I keep feeling the "has no clear role in" part can be taken as their appearance in the game is in doubt as well and is only guessed to make an appearance, but then that might be decent as pre-fill material for a game. I mean, if it's part of a series you could fill in some expected characters before confirming. But those should not be shown to normal users if such are allowed.

So, anyway, "has no clear role in" could be extended to "appears but has no clear role in", but that's probably unnecessary clarification. If it's listed, it should appear in the game in some capacity.

Besides that...
There's several questionable instances for adding. Such as references to a character who's never encountered. Maybe the characters talk a lot about another who was in a previous game but you never meet them, or maybe you only see a photo, drawing, statue or such of them. Maybe you see a doppelgänger of the character? Or someone who looks very similar to them (likeness).

People talking about a character should be really enough, since we do have text-only games here too and I think there's audio-only games too, so seeing them should not be required. Interacting with them would be better qualifier, but that leaves a lot of potential interesting instances out.

That kinda leads to "has a likeness in" and "is referenced in" or similar though the latter might need to be treated as less important than the rest if possible.

2017-01-24
How would you categorize lets say a Disney jigsaw puzzle game with Donald Duck themed pictures? Genereally I think this game should definitely appear under a "Donald Duck" character page. This is what I would assume the "has no clear role" part would be for.

2017-01-24 (updated 2017-01-24)
There's several questionable instances for adding. Such as references to a character who's never encountered. Maybe the characters talk a lot about another who was in a previous game but you never meet them, or maybe you only see a photo, drawing, statue or such of them. Maybe you see a doppelgänger of the character? Or someone who looks very similar to them (likeness).

People talking about a character should be really enough, since we do have text-only games here too and I think there's audio-only games too, so seeing them should not be required. Interacting with them would be better qualifier, but that leaves a lot of potential interesting instances out.

That kinda leads to "has a likeness in" and "is referenced in" or similar though the latter might need to be treated as less important than the rest if possible.


That is why I suggested "is barely seen / heard of". For instances where a character is not really, physically present in the game, but can be seen on a picture, or as a shadow, or in a flashback scene, or just discussed, etc...


How would you categorize lets say a Disney jigsaw puzzle game with Donald Duck themed pictures? Genereally I think this game should definitely appear under a "Donald Duck" character page. This is what I would assume the "has no clear role" part would be for.


I did not think about that. I agree with you, the "no clear role" could be used to categorize ambiguous appearance like that.

2017-01-28
That would also fit the "reference" relation I suggested, but both might be fine.

2017-02-01
I suddenly had the "brilliant" idea, that this should be made flexible enough that it could be leveraged to also cover the long ago planned author list rewrite, so we could find games where various people in the industry were involved in. No idea how to deal with people having multiple roles tho and the details about each role.

2017-02-01
Yes, there are many parts in common, so after doing one the other will need much less effort recycling many sections of the code.

2018-02-28
Want to bring up this topic again, now with an issue I have with the character pages that might even be fixed/added fast. When a popular character (take Spiderman for example) has lots of pictures, there is no way to scroll through them. Right now there is no reason to add further games/pics with Spiderman, because those pics would never be able to appear on the character info page. I request a "next" button, similar as in latest pictures, so the user is able to scroll through all games/pics of the character.

Similar issue with the main character page https://www.uvlist.net/characters/ -> Again only one page of characters and no way to go to the next popular page. I would expect to be able to explore more character from that point on when browsing that page. So here a next/previous link would be good.

And a third issue, well not really an issue, but more of a question about rules. How many pictures of one and the same game should be marked with the same character?
Lets assume there is a Spiderman game. It was released for 6 different platforms, all with the same gameplay and similar graphics. Each of the games has several images and of course Spiderman appears in nearly all images. Now there are three options and I want to ask which one is the best we should make use of.

1. Mark every image of every game where Spiderman appears with the Spiderman character, so that potentially each of the image appears on the Spiderman character page.
2. Mark only one image per game version, so that potentially six images appear on the Spiderman character page.
3. Pick only one game of the Spiderman versions and choose the best picture showing a typical Spiderman how he appears ingame, so that only one picture appears on the Spiderman character page.

At the moment I use method #3. Main reason so far, because as I said above the pictures can not be clicked "next" and I would rather have the space used for as many completely different games than images of different versions of games let alone a myriad of pictures from the very same game. When the "next" image option is available I could see a point in using method #2 as well. Method #1 I don't like at all, but I have seen it from time to time that it was used. What is best practice here that the majority of editors could agree on?

2018-02-28
To start, I have upped the number of images from 12 to 36 for characters pages and from 24 to 48 for the most popular characters. More scrolling should not be an issues in this kind of pages.

Adding pagination is not a problem too, and I should do it tomorrow, at least for the character-specific page.
About rules, well, the Spiderman page shows four identical covers of Ultimate Spider-Man, and doesn't look good.
Maybe only in-game images should be used, as seeing how the character was recreated on the game sounds more interesting, leaving the freedom to tag any image anyway as this data could/will be useful anyway.

2018-03-01
Character galleries are now pages (with 36 images per page, so it is not noticeable right now)

2018-03-01
I have found a character with > 36 images and it works. Page numbers are shown at the bottom right. Thanks.
Example: https://www.uvlist.net/characters/info/60/