Making a website

Altissimo

Altissimo

DHR-107 gave me permission to post this like 3 months ago so hopefully he hasn't forgotten and locks the thread lol

Anyway I am in the beginning stages of planning a Pokémon website! I know that's like saying I'm going to dump a bucket of water in the ocean, Pokémon sites are one of the most overdone things out there, and something something competing standards, but I've come to realize there's a dire need for MUCH INFORMATION collected in ONE PLACE about certain Pokémon things - keep reading.

The main focus of the site and if my early development is going to be on making a comprehensive resource for Pokémon spin-off games. In the process of doing some completionist runs of games such as Mystery Dungeon and New Snap, I find an awful dearth of useful information being collected in one place that I can use. For Mystery Dungeon, a lot of that information has in fact been compiled or mined by myself and a few close friends, but still lives in Gamefaqs guides and Google documents, neither of which I absolutely have trust for in the long term for availability (in Gamefaqs' case) or visibility (in Google Docs'). For New Snap, I mean, if you want information about where to find Pokémon in courses, your best bet is to flip around to a bunch of those clickbait sites uploaded shortly after the games' release and hope that they're accurate in spite of not being updated.

Bulbapedia exists, but you're not getting information about how to 100% a game from them. Serebii exists, but with spin-offs especially you're highly likely to get inaccurate, un-localized, or incomplete information that other, more dedicated players have access to, and Serebii is never going to update with that information. So what's left but taking matters into my own hands?

I also would like to do some main series work as well. Most Pokémon websites have the basics covered, so really what I'd want to do is more comprehensive information on locations and location spawn rates, various & sundry approaches to completing the Pokedex in an age where access to the right hardware & software for trading can be difficult to come by, and some compiled data about various side objectives like Battle facilities, Pokestar Studios, etc. But my primary focus is on the side game stuff, since that's where my "niche" so to speak is.

I have already purchased hosting and a virtual server. I am financially stable enough to pay for hosting on this site for a while.

I'm posting here because I want to send out a call to action for any interested parties. I'm not going to have time to begin work on this project in earnest until after the near year, but I'm recruiting best I can into a Discord server ahead of time. If you are interested in assisting in any of the following, please post in this thread or PM me and I can send a link to the Discord server:

  • You know much about web development, database development, or back-end development. I am currently employed as a junior software developer where I can do all of these things myself if no one steps up, so I'm not asking this to be an "idea guy", but anyone who has more experience than I do is of course appreciated.
  • You know how to interpret hex files and can assist with potentially pulling various bits of data from a game - for example, spawn rates in the original Pokémon Pinball. I have successfully pulled info from the Wii Mystery Dungeon games in the past, so again this is not something I'm incapable of doing, but I am VERY inexperienced (since I only ever did it for that game) so anyone with a little more knowledge is, of course, appreciated.
    • If dumps of data like this already exist, I'll take links to it instead. Some of the information can be difficult to find... hence the desire to compile it all in one place. But, I would also want to be able to gain permission from dumpers to use their work if there isn't an explicit notice about it being free-to-use attached, so we may need to reinvent the wheel anyway if we can't secure that permission.
  • You know a lot about Pokémon side games, especially the Stadium series, Conquest, and Legends Arceus (which I'm counting as a side game simply because the mechanics make it worth writing about imo).
  • You would be willing to write guides, take screenshots, or otherwise contribute information in such a format that it would eventually be posted up on the website. Of course you'd get credit for your contributions.
  • You have strong opinions about how such a website should be best formatted for accessibility, mobile devices, etc. I'm still struggling with my mental model of the site.
In the past, I have paid people one-time payments for contributing to research or projects I've worked on. I can't promise a payment to everyone who asks simply because I have no idea how many people would take me up on it, but I'm definitely willing to provide some compensation.

Please let me know if interested.

Thanks.
 
Altissimo

Altissimo

An update:
I overestimated my capability to complete the project. The "team" of people I was envisioning to collaborate never really came together, which left me as basically the only one working on actual site development (though a handful of people did contribute data) and it quickly became apparent my web design skills are sorely lacking, and also that I wasn't actually as enthused about spending many hours learning web design as I thought I may have been.

I switched to a wiki pretty quickly, but that also fell through as the collaboration from others still didn't really manifest as I was hoping, and my lack of familiarity with MediaWiki meant I was spending more time trying to figure out how to make things work than actually putting up any content. Again, I got overwhelmed.

However, the idea behind the project isn't entirely scrapped - just the scope has been decreased significantly. Since last year I've been maintaining some Legends: Arceus widgets I created on a GitHub page, so I decided instead that what I would do is use that page to host any further widgets, lists, tables, or guides I want to create, while simultaneously maintaining a "Resources" page to link to where other people with better web development skills than myself have already made certain resources... so that I'm not reinventing them from scratch. The resources page can be found at https://altissimo1.github.io/resources.html.

If you have suggestions for resources to add, I'll take them.

As you can see, my web design philosophy here is basically "there isn't one". White background, default text, most formatting coming from the browser/HTML defaults rather than any sort of stylesheet, no mobile-friendly implementation apart from setting the viewport property in the meta tag. As far as I'm concerned, I don't mind a barebones site like this. In fact, there should be more of them.

The homepage is https://altissimo1.github.io/, where you can see what I've already worked on that's on the site itself. Which leads me to a question I have for any readers who 'get around' more than me:

At https://altissimo1.github.io/Main Series/Kanto Locations/index.html you can find a listing of Kanto locations, and clicking any one brings you to a page which will display the Pokemon, items, and trainers available at that location. You can choose between displaying Western RBY and Japanese RGBY data (really the only significant difference is that RGBY includes Blue spawns and renames Western Blue to Green), and you can also choose to display only a single game's Pokemon (item and trainer tables display for all of your selected 'gameset'), in two different formats: "full", which shows each of the spawn slots for the encounter type and which Pokemon occupies it, and "compressed", which combines all instances of the same species into a single table row. Games are also color-coded.

Now, obviously, main series data has been done to hell and back by a gigantic number of sites. I think my content is a little more unique in what it gives the player, but ultimately I don't want to reinvent the wheel if there exists a better site (with better web design) that I can link too off resources instead.

PokeBip would have what I want if it wasn't in French: https://www.pokebip.com/page/jeuxvideo/oac/or_argent/index

So - this is an open question to any readers who have more familiarity with the resources out there - is there any site or tool that has the following:

- Pokemon, Items, Trainers, and HM requirements (and similar implementations)...
- for each main series set, or at least they're still actively updating even if S/V hasn't been thoroughly explored...
- that displays the Pokemon in at least one location using their spawn slots instead of just "compressed", but preferably has the "compressed" option too...
- that specifically marks which parts of an area require HM etc to access...
- that either uses different pages entirely or a toggle to swap between one location used in different games... (no Bulbapedia)
- that works on both PC and mobile...
- that is in English (I'm sorry pokebip my beloved)...
- that is complete and accurate (no Serebii) to the best of our knowledge?

If this exists, I'll gladly link it from Resources and move on to creating some of my other supplementary pages.
 
Altissimo

Altissimo

Update: I've gone ahead and posted my work for Gen 1 on my site. I'm intending to take each gen one at a time, chronologically, and I'll post random side game content in-between starting one gen and finishing another if I have content to post.

The site is located at https://altissimo1.github.io/ if you want to take a look.

A short list of what's on there so far:
  • Wisp and Pokemon location maps for Legends: Arceus (these have been up since last year)
  • QR codes for Wonder Mails in Super Mystery Dungeon, and a widget that allows you to choose a selection of them and go through them, to give you time to scan (created for the speedrunners)
  • Pokemon Pinball (GBC) facts, including: locations, encounter rates, Mew encounter information, evolution information, slots information
And for Gen 1, now that I've finished that:
  • A page for each location, its encounter tables (shown in a variety of different formats), items, and trainers. You'd think that somewhere else would have this, but surprisingly I've had trouble coming across a resource that's 1) accurate 2) English and 3) displays the encounter tables in the variable formats.
  • A list of areas in the game that require an HM to access something. I plan to make these for all games. It's something I've wanted to make since, like, 2015, with the idea being that you can get a new HM and check the list to see where you might need to backtrack to, instead of looking at every location's page individually.
  • A page with all Pokemon in a table and their locations displayed beside. Most other sites seem to prefer putting data such that each Pokemon has a page and then their location data for each game is listed. I prefer having all data about a specific GAME in one place.
  • Pokedex pages: A handful of pages where I talk about numbers and other assorted Pokedex completion facts, including: how many Pokemon you can get without trading; how many Pokemon you can get without trading and evolving; the minimum number of save files or carts you would need to complete the Pokedex (with articles for both no-gen 2 and gen 2); the same information but for a living dex. Since this whole project kind of sprung out of me wanting better sources for "100% completion", the Pokedex pages are some of the most personally interesting to me.
If you look at the site, especially on mobile, it's pretty apparent that the design is as minimalistic as anything. Part of the reason I grew frustrated with my previous attempts is because I'm not a web design person, I'm more of a logic person, and I found that I was spending far too long trying to figure out design aspects compared to the amount of time I was putting up data. The entire point of all this is that I have data, or I will have data, and I want to post it, and not in a Google doc/spreadsheet or YouTube video or what have you. I just wanted a place to throw data. This is the result. It's not pretty, it's kind of shit on mobile, there's not much color in the pages that don't have tables or images, and I don't really care! I'm perfectly fine with a stark white page with some info. If you want pretty, you can use the myriad other sites out there - my thing is that I don't want to use those sites due to problems with data presentation, so I made my own! Hopefully the data itself is what draws interested eyes going forward. If even one person that's not me finds this a reliable resource, that's probably enough.

THAT BEING SAID HOWEVER if anyone who does know web design wants to take a shot at fixing the mobile presentation specifically, give me some CSS styles to add to general.css and I'll implement them, or whatever. I have no problem improving the layout, I just don't want to do it myself since that isn't my priority.

Or, if you think for example the tables would look better with more space or a different text alignment or etc etc feel free to let me know - again, I'm not opposed to improving the design and I've figured out a few find/replace tricks that make it pretty easy to make certain fixes, it's just that it's not my priority to figure it out myself.

---

I update regularly, but don't often put any updates anywhere for anyone to see. For example, the pages with the individual locations have been up and accessible for a few weeks, I just haven't posted about it. I split my work between doing it at home and doing it at work, and sometimes find the easiest way to "transfer" data from one to the other is simply to throw it on GitHub and then put a link to it somewhere else when I'm satisfied. Going forward, I will post an update in this thread whenever I add a new gen or a new game, but even if I don't announce it, you can keep up with my progress by checking back and seeing if I've added links to things. Or, keep an eye on the GitHub (https://GitHub.com/Altissimo1/altissimo1.github.io) to see when I make uploads or edits, though keep in mind that pages I haven't yet made a link to are liable to have errors or glitches while I work on them from two places.

Feedback appreciated, though keep in mind what I've said about the minimalistic visual aspects. That said, if you think my data is being presented poorly and have another alternative, let me know.
 
Altissimo

Altissimo

Update: Johto locations are up, and Kanto locations updated with GSC data. I've also double-checked all the Pokémon data for both sets of games against my sources and corrected a couple small errors I missed when compiling the data (such as having one extra Staryu in Seafoam Islands which put all the percentages at 105% lol). I will be working on verifying the Trainer and item data (as well as updating some of the item locations to not be so vague) as I play through Silver and Crystal again, and I'll also begin work on making the Fun Pokedex Numbers pages soon as well.
 
Altissimo

Altissimo

I AM NOT DEAD

I know I haven't updated in 7 months but I'm NOT dead and I'm here to announce I won't BE dead

so I did basically give up on this for a couple months in the summer when I realized I was going to have a very difficult creating a program that can generate tables for games like DPPt and HGSS where there are stuff like swarms, poke radar etc to consider that change rates. However as with all unfinished projects I eventually did come back to it. The past couple months have been largely a process of working on table design, C# program coding, jQuery coding, and getting assistance from friends, while also working on a general redesign of the site's file structure & making sure each page is internally consistent (although not prettier). This isn't done yet, because I've just finally finished the program that generates tables and the jQuery script that updates them on the page, and I don't want to publish the new structure of the site until I can at least get all Kanto + Johto locations updated with the new table designs & various and sundry other minor changes, including data for all of FRLG, HGSS and LGPE in addition to RBY and GSC. This is a process I'm working on, it's just been slow as I have to keep troubleshooting my code and going back and editing pages I thought I already finished etc. But it is ongoing.

The reason I post here now even though I haven't started uploading yet is in case anyone wants to watch my streams in the meantime. I go by altissimo1 on twitch and I'm planning to do a series of streams where I play through each game in order to independently verify item and trainer data, as well as update some item locations to be more specific (currently I've just copied off Bulbapedia, I want to be more specific in stuff like hidden item exact tiles etc). Dunno when I'll first stream, it might be tonight, but if that's something you're interested in watching, drop a follow to get notified since I'm not planning to announce here when I'm streaming. Once the site goes back up I probably will make updates to some page about stream plans but again, that's not yet

Also reason I'm announcing here is in the hopes of building something of a base for both the site and streams in the process.

I've also said this around the site several times, but once I get the encounter tables/location pages up for all the main series games, I'm totally happy to make pages on stuff that people want to see discussed in a single place, and I'm also willing to host your content if you've made a resource and want to stick it somewhere - all credit given to the original creators, of course. Or, if you know of a resource you wish more people knew about, I'm also working on expanding my links to other websites to encompass as many Things To Know that I can think of.

I hope someone uses it lmfao
 
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