Cross references

I've just added a "cross reference" feature to the games.

The idea is to store the reference of games on other gaming sites. I already did this with Amiga games and Lemon Amiga, sharing reciprocally the ID of each Amiga game, but the way the data was stored needed to be cleaned up, so I thought to expand it to other sources.

The data stored is not the full link, because links could change over time, for example when the site is renewed, but IDs usually are left unchanged.
IDs are sometimes shared too, like with Gamestats and IGN.
In some cases with the ID it is possible to extrapolate more data, like links to galleries, downloads etc.

To add a reference, just follow the link on the bottom of the page, pasting the full URL of the site. The ID is extracted and stored.

Here is the list of the first supported sites (more can be easily added), with an example link and the ID stored (the first 3 all point to the Terraria page)

Gamestats ( http://www.gamestats.com/objects/106/106846/ , 106846 )
Steam ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/ , 105600 )
Metacritic ( http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/terraria , pc/terraria )
Lemon Amiga ( http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=767 , 767 )

The iOs app store and Armor Games are the next.

Other type of cross references, (non site-related) could be added too, like barcodes or regional codes.

Android Market should be trivial since it just needs reverse DNS text.
That is... market.android.com/details?id={reverse-DNS}
There are some other Android distributors, but I'm unsure of their point.

Would also remind this related issue tracker entry: code.google.com/p/uvl/issues/detail?id=394

Could we get Dosbox links too? Something like http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=855

Not much information there, but considering Dosbox is pretty much the only way to get DOS games running on modern systems, it's an easy way to see if the games in question are supported by it.

Yes, I remember the related issue tracker entry. code.google.com/p/uvl/issues/detail?id=394
Upgrading to the new naming system is more troublesome than expected, because game names are use almost in any page of this site, so I need to in a "lagacy way" to not break things.
Meanwhile, the things proposed in that issue will be applied here.

Yes I'm going to add DosBox, I even have took a look at it, but the scarcity of info was flattering at first, but actually what they have is quite important.

done: /game-152653-Gobman

Now MAME is supported too, with two sites:
maws.mameworld.info/maws/romset/gng and www.mamedb.com/game/gng

[[quote:Could we get Dosbox links too? Something like http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=855

Not much information there, but considering Dosbox is pretty much the only way to get DOS games running on modern systems, it's an easy way to see if the games in question are supported by it.]]

DOS can be still be installed, dual boot installed, installed and run in virtualisation, installed within other emulators, and there are other DOS emulators besides DOSbox. But it is quick and easy for games.

DOS drivers for soundcards, CD/DVD drives, mouse, etc. are hardly out there anymore for modern hardware. And besides FreeDOS or other modernized DOS versions which probably have similar issues as Dosbox, I don't think they support S-ATA or SSD harddrives even, or whatever else that has significantly changed since.

Virtual machines work much better since they emulate much simpler hardware than what you actually have installed (in most cases anyway), but my experience with them is that they perform rather poorly in certain conditions, one of them being running DOS games.

Edit n++: not to mention CGA/EGA/MCGA and some other more exotic display support, which are so old that there's little point in emulating them, nor do modern graphics adapters have proper support for them. Not sure how much DVI/HDMI display connectors matter.

XBLM, WiiWare, PSN, etc. links are probably good idea to have too.

Cross-reference addition (and likely removal too) don't seem to be logged anywhere. Should be in game's own log if not the global log.

Just added iTunes and Android Store
Logging is not yet enabled...

Added the ASIN amazon code, in urls like this: http://www.amazon.com/Super-Mario-3D-Land-Nintendo-3DS/dp/B002I092MM/
Amazon uses a lot of URL formats, but I'm using a regular expression that should get all of them.

-edit-
And are finally logged!

As mentioned elsewhere, Android Market cross-references need to be converted to new Google Play references, and the Play references need to be accepted.

There is a new editors-only page under resources>cross references
It just lists the amount of entries for each reference.

Amazon ASIN codes seem to be accepted only from their latin-based sites.

Can't add the following to Ys 7
www.amazon.cn/%E4%BC%8A%E8%8B%8F7-%E8%B1%AA%E5%8D%8E%E7%89%88/dp/B006GL71GS/ref=pd_sim_vg_cnclic_1
The `B006GL71GS´ ASIN code recognition presumably breaks due to the Chinese text preceding it.

FYI, the text in the title that I didn't include in the game entry reads something about special edition and the stuff in parenthesis is even more about the special edition.

It actually checks for the .com domain.
I see that the item is not available in the .com site, so when recreating the link it will link to an inexistent page.
I hoped that Amazon was smart enough to redirect to another country or at least give some more info, instead of just showing this

Maybe add option to add the IDs themselves without the URLs? This could work with other sites too. Won't produce usable link, but the ID itself can sometimes be enough (e.g. for Googling), though could also offer a bridge to allow adding GTIN codes as well (such as UPC-A, EAN-13, ISBN, platform specific product codes, and such). I think this was suggested before, but since those existed plenty well in articles, it was probably seen unnecessary. However, having them in similar place as the cross references, they could be made better searchable (or just catch better on external search engines). Not really cross-references themselves, but IDs that can be used for cross-referencing (reference ID, so to speak).

I'm going to support UPC and EAN-13 as they together cover North America, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
They are formed by 12 and 13 digits respectively, so I thought to detect them automatically when entered as a cross reference.

If there are other useful codes sharing the same format, when entering the code a prefix should be used instead, like this:
upc:8717545402450

I'll look at JAN code in a second time...

JAN is just shorter Japan specific variant of EAN-13. EAN-13 and UPC-A are the longest and likely most widely used.

These were kinda suggested in the unfortunately neglected issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/uvl/issues/detail?id=33#c13

I'm not aware of any other similar codes except for MPNs which for PS2 for example were 10 characters long (e.g. SLES-52877 for Haunting Ground), same applies for PS3 apparently (e.g. BLES-00932 for Demon's Souls). The hyphen is not really required any more than spaces are in EAN-13 as far as I can tell.

For more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTIN

I have added EAN and UPC
The generated link points to a Google search. (that returns a lot of good results)

I have already looked at the PlayStation codes, and I have a raw list of codes to import too, but proper name matching need a lot of manual work.

It would be helpful if we could attach region codes (or PAL/NTSC style info) to the GTIN and MPN codes, but I don't think the current system allows that neatly. Not an issue always, but since games can have multiple instances of same kind of code (MPNs mostly, EAN possibly too, probably not UPC nor JAN), it would alleviate some potential confusion.


Allowing users to copy the code without going to Google search would probably be nice too.

PlayStation IDs contains the region code: SCES E=Europe, BCAS A=Asia, BCUS U=US
EAN has something like this, but not so useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GS1_country_codes

Now the code is showed beside the link.

Ah, didn't know about that.

Adding ability to find these via advanced search (or maybe even via global search) would be useful too BTW.

Logs should probably show what code they're identified as, the plain code looks a bit odd even knowing what it is.

Days ago I've digged a bit EAN and UPC codes, collecting data from shops catalogs stored in XLS format, merging and normalizing the data.
The tricky part was name-matching the games, and after a while became quite a nightmare because a perfect match had a very low success rate, while with more permissive rules there is the risk to have wrong matches despite I filter by platform first ...
But I managed to match about 500 PS3 games.
Anyway having EAN codes proves to be quite useful, because searching for it on Google gives a lot of good results.

I've just added gog.com to the list of accepted sites, btw.

You can probably get good results by dropping a/the and equivalent from titles and normalizing subtitle separation (-, :, and whatever else) and some other things like ` and ´ into '. And not padding searches with wildcards on both ends UVL's normal search enforces.

After an entire day of tweaks, adjustments and similar, we have a total of 5427 EAN, 8450 UPC, and 7272 SKU codes.
SKU is Stock-keeping unit ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock-keeping_unit ) and comprises the aforementioned PlayStation IDs, and similar codes for other platforms.

Despite the huge improvements, 13000 out of the 27000 entries didn't match, I will soon try to normalize the titles, as Sanguine suggested.

1500 more matches. We have now
6759 EAN, 8564 UPC, 8595 SKU

Done the "normalized" matched. Added 1840 new entries!

I had to add a new field with the normalized titles.
Now I could add the option to use this field on the regular search pages, as it will increase the chances to find a game.

The system isn't accepting Demon's Souls' code (BLES 00932) for some reason. I tried removing the space and adding a hyphen to no effect. There's just empty white page when I try.

Edit: Same problem with Golden Axe, which should have BLES 00391.
Edit 2: Multiple codes should be separated more clearly. That Golden Axe game has 3 EAN codes and it looks a bit strange now.

Sorry, forgot to enter in detail about this. (it is just hinted in the cross references page)
BLES 00391 is a SKU, but because these codes have no strict rules, to enter them you have to do it explicitly.
In this case would be sku:BLES00391

About the space/hyphen, I've seen three different cases used, just like those examples:
BLE-S00391
BLE S00391
BLES00391

For coherency (and avoid dupes) I would prefer to stick on using the hyphen.

The empty page that loads from "incorrect" entry should probably show an error and hints on how to fix it, like the prefixing of SKUs with "sku:".

There was also a problem with iTunes references: /forum/thread/44301/

Now there should not be an empty page anymore.
There is an alert page with a link back to the game, and a link to the cross references page where the example codes can be seen.

The iTunes issue was caused because of regional differences in URL, that should now be addressed.

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00844Q328 is supposedly not valid reference.

Multiple references to Steam are not handled very well, as can be seen with Sacred 2.

I see two Steam banners. A bit weird, but I don't know how to fix it, as each links to the proper page...
I'm going to check the Amazon issue. Maybe the uk was not supported.

Anyway, now the global search looks into the EAN/UPC/JAN/SKU codes.

I'm looking at the ~10000 unmatched product codes, to see how to further tweak the parser, but after randomly looking at some hundreds of titles, most of them are simply missing in UVL!

I'll take a deeper look tomorrow, maybe I should publish the list somewhere for you to look at.

There might be issues with full titles and such as well. Like for example a game in your list appearing as "A: B C" and we have it only as "B C".. or vice versa in case your title matching is very strict. Can't really say for certain.

I've picked 10 random games from the list, and looked how and why they don't match.
5 game missing, 4 with different syntax, not sure about the ms-dos one.

The first line is the title, the second line has the UVL title, and eventual notes:

Atari Anniversary Edition Redux (psx)
missing

Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2005 Adventures (gamecube)
missing

MDK 2 (dc)
MDK2

Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3: Groove on Fight (saturn)
Groove on Fight

Intellivision Lives! (ps2)
missing

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic (win)
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Simple 2000 Series Vol. 15: The Rugby (ps2)
missing

Jan Sangoku Musou (ps2)
missing

3-D Ultra Pinball: The Lost Continent (win)
missing - we have "3D Ultra Pinball - The Lost Continent" (that could match) but under ms-dos

Super Smash Brothers Melee (gamecube)
Super Smash Bros. Melee


Here is a list of 30 more titles, if you wish to try more examples:

Crash Bandicoot Advance: Wakuwaku Tomodachi Daisakusen (gba)
Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru (t16cd)
Atlantis (odyssey2)
MLB 2004 (ps2)
F1 Racing Championship (ps2)
Golf (ps2)
Yuuyami Toori Tankentai (psx)
Itsumono Shokuzai de Dekichau Suteki na Sweets to Gochisou (ds)
Wagamama * Fairy Milmo de Pon! Nazo no Kagi to Shinjitsu no Tobira (gba)
Meisha Retsuden: Greatest 70's (Fukkoku Ban) (psx)
Pok¦mon Box: Ruby & Sapphire (with GBA Link Cable) (gcn)
Arcade Classic No. 4: Defender / Joust (gb)
The Coven (3do)
Hanjuku Eiyuu IV: 7-Jin no Hanjuku Eiyuu (Limited Edition) (ps2)
Disney Golf (ps2)
Sharuui * Takoron (wii)
I-I-Na-Ri (win)
Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters GX Card Almanac (ds)
Kenka Banchou (Limited Edition) (ps2)
Ski Jump Pair Reloaded (ps2)
Kid Niki: Radical Ninja (nes)
Penguin and Seal (nes)
Spartan: Kodai Greece Eiyuuden (ps2)
Urban Strike: The Sequel to Jungle Strike (snes)
Idol Promotion: Suzuki Yumie (psx)
1500DS Spirits Vol. 9: 2 Nin-uchi Mahjong (ds)
Simple 1500 Jitsuyou Series Vol. 5: Kusuri no Jiten - Pill Book 2001 Edition (psx)
Tentama: 1st Sunny Side (dc)
WTA Tour Tennis (ps2)
MLB 06: The Show (psp)

Same game, Dreamcast version specifically I assume.


Same game. The "of" is missing from the box shot and title screen, but any documentation and articles (including official) speaking of the game used the "of". Could be added for sake of having all variants of the title.


I think we're missing quite a few of the SIMPLE series games.


3-D Ultra Pinball games seems to have been purely Windows games. DOS confusion may have come via Win3.1 support. Not sure of that though.


Same game.

And for the rest we have these at least...
Tengai Makyou II: Manji Maru (t16cd)
Pok¦mon Box: Ruby & Sapphire (with GBA Link Cable) (gcn)
Urban Strike: The Sequel to Jungle Strike (snes)

The point is that in many cases the titles slightly differ, but it is enough to fail the automatic matching.
There are other ways, like using soundex (that is already adopted for the fuzzy search), but it could get easily confused with similar titles, so it would need a manual check of the entries, bu we are still talking about 10K tiles...

Unfortunately there's no easy way around that since there's bound to be errors in naming in either place, the source of the codes or UVL. Or we just lack a variant of a title.

Thought I'd point out that above mentioned MPN is essentially same as SKU. I'm not really sure if there's any real difference except MPN can be used for smaller objects as well, like all the individual objects (manual, ref card, cd/dvd/bd/whatever, etc.) in a game box.

SKU has no a strict syntax and it is checked aver a simple "alphanumeric" pattern, so it can hold MPN codes, and it is actually working like this.

adding:
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/snorms/
instead adds:
https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/applications/

Cross-references should be stripped of repeated slashes before determining if they're valid or not. For example http://store.steampowered.com//app/223810 is apparently invalid just because of the double slash after the hostname.

WiiWare cross-references might be good idea to add. For example: Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancestors has www.nintendo.com/games/detail/9u5rYApQG7LfOeFJJK8OtTZNIZlX86Nq.

Similarly PSN links such as uk.playstation.com/psn/games/detail/item580061/The-Cave%E2%84%A2/

Edit: PSN links seem to have changed from the above now, but have a #something-or-other/cid=codestring that probably points at the individual game that looks easy enough to figure out. For example: [url]https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/#!/en-us/games/papo-yo/cid=UP2055-NPUB30620_00-PS3PAPOANDYOFULL[/url]

Some games have ISBN-10 numbers:
1-86381-015-3 Aussie Rules Footy
0-7845-4483-2 The Sims 3
0-87321-307-6 Zork
1-58189-562-3 Diablo
Some have ISBN-13 numbers:
502-6-10200-253-2 Planescape: Torment
501-5-83909-711-9 Populous
497-4-36563-724-8 Masters of Combat
978-0-78493-072-4 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

I know of no games that use SBN (equivalent to ISBN-9, if there were such a thing). If there are, I think we can almost ignore them since SBN converts to ISBN-10 simply by adding a 0 to the left. This presents no historical loss since there are no 'real' ISBN-10 products with a leftmost 0. All ISBN-10 numbers beginning with a 0 are converted SBNs.

The older ISBN-10 can be converted to ISBN-13 with no technical problems. ISBN-10 1-86381-015-3 becomes ISBN-13 978-1-86381-015-9 for example. But this presents an historical loss for games that were published with isbn-10 numbers if we have no indicator in the entry that the ISBN-13 was never actually used for the ISBN-10 product.

I just found out that the boxes for USA (NES-BF-USA) and European (NES-BF-ECC) variants of Balloon Fight use the the exact same UPC-A bar code on their different boxes. Each box has different artwork on the outside as do the carts themselves.That's kosher. I've seen this before, various packages with variously looking products inside that preform identical functions despite the paint jobs. However, these products do not perform the same function. One is for USA NES decks and the other for European Region-B NES Decks, THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. I've always thought of the UPC code as an end all means of positively identifying exactly which functions you are getting not matter what package you buy it in. Is this a one time fluke or is it common for functionally unidentical products to share the same UPC (or EAN) code?

UPC/EAN/ISBN are not required to be different, or even the same. Re-release of a game with absolutely no changes can have different one while altered release can have the same, it's pretty much up to the manufacturer to decide which. Part numbers are probably most reliable for detecting altered versions, but they aren't really required to be different either.

Edit: I think SKU can be used for the part numbers, though I think only one part should be recorded (usually the media itself if there's no "whole thing" number) as there's little purpose in recording each separate piece of feelies found in game boxes outside of articles (dvd cases, inlays, manuals, etc. usually have separate part numbers).

Giving individual part numbers is something collectors would be very interested in. But currently not doable at UVL in any standard way (description only). xref notes, akin to tag notes, might be adequate.

For now I'm going to use
sku:ISBN 1-2345-6789-0
and
sku:ISBN 978-1-86381-015-9

This however, doesn't necessarily make is easy to transition to something else later. It could if we had wildcards in the global search so the "ISBN%" would reveal every game with an ISBN in a "sku:" xref.

If % is used as a wild card, the following link should find The Legend of Zelda:
http://www.uvlist.net/fr/globalsearch?platformid=76&t=NES-ZL-%25&where=&x=-303&y=-13


And this would be the way to find ISBN entries:
http://www.uvlist.net/globalsearch?t=ISBN%25&where=&x=-304&y=-8440

Not sure what's the point of pushing ISBNs to SKU when ISBN is already recognized as is.

really? how?
isbn:0123456789
ISBN:0123456789
neither of these work

Enter just the number. Don't know about EAN-10 format ISBN numbers tho, but I'd think they work fine as well. The sku: prefix is a special case, everything else is without one AFAIK.

Some Japanese games seem to have some mysterious Lun or Lun Fan designation or some such, I can't figure out what it is. It appears with something + 倫番号 and a series of digits.
You can see quite a few of them listed at Wikipedia

Was wondering how to or if they should be recorded, since I found one for Onesuku (0021332) from the official product page, so I assume it's somehow significant.

Just typing in the numbers causes it to be shown as a UPC or EAN code. Which it is not. It is an ISBN code. Note ISBN is alpha-numeric, some ISBN codes use letters, while EAN and UPC are numeric only.

The mysterious number you mention seems to me to be the works' designations in a Japanese film certification system similar to Finland's Valtion elokuvatarkastamo, Hollywood's MPAA rating, or the UK's BBFC. This system seems to be an alternative system to 映倫 (Eirin).

I've never seen or heard of ISBN code that uses anything else than digits, even the specification for ISBN says it's numbers. And ISBN is compatible with EAN-10/13, so being labeled as such doesn't really do anything (it doesn't lose any notable information).

Technically they should be called GTIN here, since we don't distinguish them.

The ISBN numbering scheme allows for, and in some cases requires, a single digit to be larger than 9. In such cases, a letter takes the place of the number. For example, X is the substitute for 10.

Hadn't noticed, but that seems to be the only exception to it.

---
Unrelated to that, would there be any interest in adding magnet links to xrefs? Probably only useful for free/OSS games.

The only issue with magnet links is that could make UVL to be considered an "evil torrent site"... Please use it wisely.

About the X in the ISBN, I could edit the regular expressions that are actually used for EAN & UPC i.e. #^[0-9]{10}$# to accept the X


About using the "sku:" prefix, I could accept codes as being SKU as a fallback when there is no match (but in this way "typos" would be considered SKU instead of reporting an error)

This is why I said possibly only useful for free/OSS games.

I know :-)
After reading the wikipedia page I've noticed that there is no specific size for a magnet URI, because it can store (along with the URN hash) the url-encoded filename. I think I'll pick just the xt (eXact Topic) part, just like I do for all the other xreferences where all the extra and redundant data is removed.

Could you post here some magnet URI if you have them at hand?

Not official one, but this was converted from officially provided .torrent
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:0da890caa621114cee895f4e371618e7a7d239c8&dn=Allods_Online_LordOfDestiny_Official_gPotatoEU_torrent_EN

That conversion website seems a bit bad, so better tool should be used.

uTorrent is a bit overkill (includes all trackers even if there's huge number of them), but gives better results...

I have added support for magnet to the xreferences.

Also, when all the other matches fail and the code is made of just letters, numbers and hyphens, it is considered a SKU, so you can avoid using the sku: prefix in most cases.

You should keep the dn bit and show it along with the magnet link (display name and also the default). No trackers included means the magnet links require DHT to work, which isn't always reliable, but can be left as is. The dn also likely includes information about how old the link is and if it needs to be updated (may include version number or other useful information, the example one included the name of the last content patch).

Does the third bit of NES SKUs actually matter? They seem to be all NES-##-RegionCode, GameFAQs doesn't list the region code and I doubt there's much reason to, unless there's evidence something is lost with them.

Currently this at least does that users need to know the full SKU to find them via search, for example the recently added NES-DC-USA can't be found with just NES-DC which is used in some other databases elsewhere (e.g. aforementioned gamefaqs).

edit: example of this can be seen with Dr. Mario, none of the NES-##-RegionCode codes have variance for the NES-## part, so the region code just presumably shows in what region it really was published in, though I don't think it's that reliable since you can fill them with guesses (USA is always NES-##-USA for example).

I'm not putting in guesses and would hope other editors would not either. They show more than regeion, they also sometimes indicate language. ESP games, for instance, were published outside of spain. There is also NES-XX-CAN, NES-XX-CAN/FRA, NES-XX-SCN/SWE, NES-XX-SWE/SWE. And the middle numbers don't always match across regions. "NES-ST-AUS" and "NES-DN-USA" refer to the same game in different regions.

iTunes references are a bit too strict. For example, http://itunes.apple.com/fi/app/id365520480 is valid. Or rather was, the game has been removed from iTunes since. Anyway, UVL doesn't accept it as valid iTunes reference.

The instruction page shows http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id/[ID] as the only valid one, but it should be http[s]://itunes.apple.com/[REGIONCODE]/app/[RANDOM GARBAGE]/id[ID] and http[s]://itunes.apple.com/[REGIONCODE]/app/id[ID] and http[s]://itunes.apple.com//app/[RANDOM GARBAGE]/id[ID]. From which we can assume region code is optional, you can include any number of random garbage between /app/ and /id# (e.g. https://itunes.apple.com/app/d/e/a/t/h-w/o/r/m/id396669943 works as does https://itunes.apple.com/app/id388541990).

As examples, the following three are valid references: itunes.apple.com/fi/app/id365520480 and itunes.apple.com/us/app/super-mega-worm/id388541990 and https://itunes.apple.com/app/death-worm/id396669943

Some games are not listed in some regions though, for example Super Mega Worm is not available in the Finnish language version of iTunes website (if you swap out the us region, it won't find it anymore).

About the region code in SKUs, I've noticed that is it is quite common with Nintendo products, so we should stick to it, imho.

Days ago I've batch-add quite a lot of SKU codes for Sony platforms, I'm going to do the same with Nintendo ones, and looks like about 50% of them will have the region code.

These apparently allow duplicates to be entered for the same game. Same xref for multiple games is possible though via compilations.

For the part numbers, without being able to attach info for what part the MPN is for, it's not really that useful to add it.
Like, this article here describes the part numbers and what they are for, much more useful than series of unidentified SKUs: /forum/thread/26393

Space Hack has ISBN in EAN-10 format (EAN-10 would be correct, current 00 prefixed UPC is not): 3-8287-7745-7
Also, its Amazon ASIN code is derived from that: 3828777457, but can't be entered because it's only in the .de website and cross-references only allow .com.

Other legitimate use of magnet links exist. For demos of commercial games (rare, but both official and unofficial but legal torrents for demos are out there). Also for update patches. Some games exclusively use torrents for updates. Although the games provide torrent interface pretty much invisible, there are reasons one might use the magnet link directly. To transfer and install on an unconnected computer for instance. And there's unofficial (but legal) mods and fan patches available from torrent sites as well. A couple of the Ultima XI fan patches are particularly large. One is many times larger than the original game.
Editors please be cautious to verify they are in fact legitimate.

For region codes. Some of them actually have little to do at all with region or language. There are NES-XX-GPS games out there published in various regions. No one is quite sure what GPS stands for but it is known why they exist. In previous times, Nintendo would not manufacture less than 5000 copies of a game at a time (and they were kind of touchy about that low of a number as well). Some distributors in limited markets (smaller regions and/or post NES2) knew they could still make money but only with a smaller batch of carts. These orders were filled with -GPS copies. One must rely on the box to determine language and the box or label to determine regional lockout (though it seems they are all PAL-B).

Problem with Xbox references. Here's an example using Maison de Maou
This is valid reference URL: http://marketplace.xbox.com/ja-JP/Product/メゾン-ド-魔王/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550bfc
Unfortunately the URL that UVL gives back for it is not: marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/game/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550bfc

This is probably because the game is region restricted, but it unfortunately corrupts a perfectly valid reference.

This is the same when a Steam game is not available worldwide, I think.
Maybe the "region" can be deduced form the code itself? 66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550bfc

Steam IDs definitely don't have that, and I suspect the Xbox GUIDs don't either.

Anyway, GOG seems to have changed their URL format so http://www.gog.com/game/amnesia_a_machine_for_pigs is treated as invalid here. They they used to have /gamecard/ instead of current /game/.

ASINs seem to be stripped poorly, as seen in Demonicon. It shouldn't have the ?~ stuff left in it I think.

Still can't add GOG references.

I was trying to add a cross reference to The Visual Novel Database for the game "My sex slave is a classmate" but since it contained a 'v' instead of an 'r' before the number I wasn't allowd to add it.

Seems like the accepted cross reference format is wrong here. It should accept v~ only (since r~ is for releases, not games).

When I implemented the vndb xreference, I was quite sure that the "v" url was the container for all the releases (on multiple platforms too), while the "r" was used for the single releases, as in vndb.org/v4302
But now it is easy to see this: vndb.org/v13244
Not sure if the changed it recently... But it should now support both, I think.

-edit-
GOG fixed.

The r~ URLs seem to me to be universally wrong. They all (should) point to the actual game (the v~ URL).

Cross-reference removals are not logged BTW.

Windows Store should be added as accepted cross-references, for example McDroid is: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/mcdroid/6193f82e-5256-4097-80b4-f1339b5b8ef9

Source Forge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rigsofrods/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/stepmania/

Google Code
http://code.google.com/p/solitaire-for-android/
http://code.google.com/p/uqm-hd/

Freecode (was Freshmeat)
http://freecode.com/projects/neverball
http://freecode.com/projects/holdingnuts

Ohloh
http://www.ohloh.net/p/wesnoth
http://www.ohloh.net/p/unknown-horizons

Free Software Directory
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Battle_Just_Started
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Braille_Scrabble

EDIT:
Codeplex (Microsoft Codeplex)
http://sdlpal.codeplex.com
http://tubestar.codeplex.com

FreeDOS supports most everything including USB, SATA, SSD, CD, DVD, Blu-ray and probably others. In fact, many manufacturers now include or offer modified versions of FreeDOS to help customers change hardware settings and update the bios. Some HP products come standard with FreeDOS for dual booting. FreeDOS is not for running old software, its a modern operating system that can also run old software and run on older hardware.

Tried adding sku:SNS-5F-USA to Flashback. Page refreshes and nothing else happens. Same with trying to add SNS-EG-USA to Super Strike Eagle.

Was reported here already I think: /forum/thread/57759

IndieDB
http://www.indiedb.com/games/minecraft
http://www.indiedb.com/games/dragon

ModDB
http://www.moddb.com/games/one-late-night
http://www.moddb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-descent

Desura
http://www.desura.com/games/unsummoning-the-spectral-horde
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions

SlideDB
http://www.slidedb.com/games/dragons-dungeon-roguelikerpg
http://www.slidedb.com/games/baldurs-gate-enhanced-edition

IndieDB, ModDB, and Desura are run by the same people AFAIK, so any changes to those later likely happen at the same time too and in same manner.

itch.io currently offers 5,160 items, nearly all games, nearly all of them are indie and about half are exclusive (I'd recon). Some of them are re-releases of classics. They also host/sponsor game jams, the winning results often end up improved and sold on itch.io. It is geared toward pay-what-you-want, no-DRM, indie, any license, cross-platform. But there are no requirements for any of these. Devs can, for instance, use DRM, have minimum price or have a set price. Some game titles are not directly reproducible in UVL game entries.

itch.io game urls consist of a subdomain based on the developer identity and a directory based on the game title
http://[developer].itch.io/[title]

itch.io
http://wisdomtree.itch.io/s3dna
http://orange08.itch.io/maximus-cerebrum

gog.com doesn't have an icon like the steam one?

The problem arises with games that are on one or some of these sites but not all of these.

added:
apps.microsoft.com McDROID
www.indiedb.com Gang Beasts

moddb.com and slidedb.com have the same code as indiedb, I'll see how to handle another time.

Desura instead is missing games found in moddb.com (or vice-versa), so is treated separately: UnSummoning The Spectral Horde

So I have to store the entire URL for itch.io ... Can be done, goodl bye to smart id handling.BTW: Cube Trains

Now it does.

Yeah, that can't be circumvented currently because of developername.itch.io/gamename

All of our gamestats references seem to be broken, by the way. Could be left in for historical purposes, tho I'm unsure of the point.

Those ID's are used by IGN too. Now they work fine! :-)

could you save a few bytes by storing itch.to refs as
developer|name
they convert it?

Yes, but I prefer to not introduce a special case that needs extra code to put and get the data.

Wouldn't sprintf(baseURL, gameID, optionalID) or something work for all cases?
With base URL for itch.io being: http://%2$s.itch.io/%1$s ... just would require storing and splitting the stored data as necessary. Not sure if that's desirable, and it's just ~6 bytes saved per entry for 2-3 extra lines of code.

faqus ?

Desura logos <- updated
download image kit

It is possible to store woefully invalid itch.io urls. for example http://gtrwe---.ggde398-.itch.io/f43h78a/g984y3.html was stored (subsequently deleted)

There is possibly an advantage to the itch.io URL. You get the developer's itch.io page as well:
http://wisdomtree.itch.io/s3dna, developer page is: http://wisdomtree.itch.io/
http://orange08.itch.io/maximus-cerebrum, developer page is: http://orange08.itch.io/
Editors can look to see what other games the developer has made.

http:/www.ign.com/games/eve-online/linux-963042 is valid
http://uk.ign.com/games/eve-online/linux-963042 is not.
http://m.ign.com/games/eve-online/linux-963042 also is not.

PlayStation links might be nice to allow as well:
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/rogue-legacy-ps4 and/or uk.playstation.com/ps4/games/detail/item704531/Rogue-Legacy/

Seems WiiWare links aren't accepted yet either.

I think WiiWare is now Nintendo eShop: www.nintendo.com/games/detail/zzxhO3mhjdi2sYD_vvkFzQ0jwbm6im8B

Still can't add references to it tho.

Amazon seems to have new URL format for certain products, for example: www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.miclos.amazon.games.outthere for Out There.

And I still have problems adding some iTunes references, like: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id799471892 for iOS version of the same game.

- www.ign.com / uk.ign.com / m.ign.com now are all valid
- added www.playstation.com
- added www.nintendo.com
- added Amazon android apps
- added support for the shortest itunes url

Thanks :D

classes some of its games as mods and uses a different URL:
http://www.desura.com/mods/the-stanley-parable

Which is not recognized as a cross reference by UVL. This is especially frustrating since many of their mods use the normal URL.

Neither of the following URLs are accepted
* https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-gb/games/flame-over/cid=EP4132-PCSB00656_00-FLAMEOVERLLJ2014
* https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/flame-over/cid=UP4132-PCSE00566_00-FLAMEOVERLLJ2014

Ouya links might be worth having for games exclusive to that Android platform, for example Duck Game: https://www.ouya.tv/game/DUCK-GAME/. Duck Game is not available for other Android devices for some reason.

On Desura links. The owner of that service has filed for bankruptcy so I don't know if linking to that site should be paused until that resolves. It's easy enough to remove the links after if things go for the worse for them, but it might feel like wasted effort if that happens.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KA7JIII is not accepted for Monument Valley for some reason.

Indeed, they have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, complete liquidation. In fact, June 1st, the company officially ceased to do business. But, due to the nature of the web, it actually continued. New games are being added and purchases continue. Note, in many cases of Chapter 7, employees walk out of buildings with office equipment and even keep company cars. Preventing and prosecuting this pilfering is often not pursued, usually because the pilferers are owed money. These employees could file paperwork to get what they want (and would get it), if they don't, it doesn't make financial sense to pursue a legal case that will probably turn out in their favor anyhow. In the case of Desura, an employee could file paperwork, or not, and 'walk away' with the website. This person will of course be required to pay the bills (just as an employee would have to continue to pay for the company car, if they took one that was not yet paid for, this is legally pursued) If the hosting fees get paid, the hosting company won't care. If the devs get paid, they won't care. If the website pays other creditors, they won't care. I would not be shocked to see the webpage continue as normal. If July 2nd rolls around and the site's still updated, that likely means someone is still paying the bills and will continue.

EDIT: Lots of people arround the web are angrily demanding people at Bad Ju-Ju say something. But it is standard practice in Chapter 7 cases for the court to place a gag order on anyone in the company that actually knows the details of finances.

Following link is not accepted as cross-reference either: www.amazon.com/Barbie-Dreamhouse-Party-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B00DJYKB62

Edit: Amazon references in general don't seem to work lately.

July 1st saw the last game added to Desura's service. I have been unable to verify any human actions taken on the site since then. No verification that anyone's 'taken possession' of the site. No developers have spoken up to say they've received payment. Some have complained that their account is over due to send automated payments (every $500 earned is supposed to transfer immediately. This was broken before the bankruptcy. Staff was going to manually do the transfers, no one's doing the transfers post bankruptcy either. Under chapter 7, they probably are legally forbidden from doing so even if the can and want to) and the accounts just keep ranking up money as users continue to buy games (about 2800 per day). As of August 22 (in parts of the world currently), more purchases and no payments continue.

On a related note, the Desura client is GPLed. Theoretically any company could create a server, or modify their own, and have the technical ability to continue to serve Desura devs and buyers. But, they just can't do that; they'll need individual agreements with buyer and with each dev. This route does not get the current money form the dev's accounts to the devs. It could however, start taking new payments from buyers who agree and paying devs who agree.

The SparkyLinux distro/community is now supporting Desura based on available Desura source code. No news yet if any developers have signed on to continue selling games this way.

desura.com is dead, no one can use the website now. Yet the servers are still there and still functioning. Entering the following into your hosts file will allow programs to access all services:

54.186.210.232 desura.com
54.186.210.232 www.desura.com
54.186.210.232 static.desura.com
54.186.210.232 secure.desura.com
54.186.210.232 button.desura.com
54.186.210.232 rss.desura.com

So, still not entirely dead. And, the client is open source. And at least one version of Linux continues to offer support.

ISBN:0-7849-2337-X

PSN URLs are still invalid, for example:
https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/salt-and-sanctuary/cid=UP0613-CUSA02353_00-SALTNSANCTUARY00

I actually still can use it as before (not counting the client, I only checked the website) without any changes, unfortunately they still don't pay anything to devs yet the payment system seems to still work.

And people seem to be still using it: www.desura.com/news, tho no news from the Desura hosts themselves.

Difficult to verify what's actually going on with the Desura site. But poking around with some technical tools I found info to suggest that Amazon employees (operating from Amazon severs) are voluntarily doing minimal maintenance to keep the page on the web. Having it minimally maintained makes it a more attractive site in case another company acquires Desura and/or the site to start up the service again. Amazon customer service. Amazon hasn't gone so far as to claim to be the site's administrator though.

https://www.amazon.com/Kurechii-Tiny-Guardians/dp/B0199TQLIC is not valid reference for some reason

Desura's status has changed: www.oneplay.com/en/news/details/244_Desura_is_now_a_part_of_the_OnePlay_family_

References to GameJolt ( http://gamejolt.com/ ) might be good idea. It's a service similar to itch.io as far as I can see with simplified(?) way of making your games available.

Sure it's simple now, but there's no guarantee it'll stay that way. Gamejolt has a history of ditching everything and starting from scratch over and over. But, yah, we should add it.

Microsoft App Store might be decent to add. For example: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/the-incredible-adventures-of-van-helsing-ii/bw1wf4k45c78

I'd also like to point out that the region/language code should be saved separately and not be enforced in the various cross reference URLs. There's a lot of games available only in few regions and don't have the en-us store page available as such.

Now that Microsoft disables by default, anything not in the App Store, this would be of paticular interest to those who never jailbreak their platform.