kai_desu

I'd love to have a japanese band database in the detail that f.e. metal-archives.com gives it. Are you inspired by it?

It'll be fairly similar, but its not an inspirational point. While there are websites like metal-archives, JaME, grassthread, etc. I've always felt that they weren't complete. They generally focus on one or two main areas and the rest just kinda gets shoved in to fill the cracks.

JaME is restricted to primarily major label bands, and is more of a general news site than it is a database.

Grassthread is a great resource, but it's in Japanese (which can feel daunting to some people) and can be hard to navigate and find information. There's a lack of inter-connectivity between some elements as well.

metal-archives is just too broad - they try to cover as many bands as possible. Which ya know? Kudos to them, as that's a huge undertaking - but it'll require a pretty flexible and robust system, as well as a large staff to maintain and build.

DS will be a bit biased in the sense that we're only focusing on Japanese music. Since this is being built from scratch, we're able to tailor the information and it's relationships with other elements to better suit the Japanese music scene. I say that because you'll notice there is a subtle difference in the culture/mindset around music in each country. And we hope to cover that niche for Japan.

"visual-butts"

It's temporary. I need to build up the label module to keep track of the label companies as well, which the bands and their discography information will be tied to.

Though, you do make a point. Should be tracking the name of the label for now.

It's been added! At this point it's fairly easy to add new fields to the database with everything built up. So if anyone else notices something like that, please let me know and I can add it in!

This is why I like things being more open 8D; I can get so tunnel visioned working on something and miss a subtle detail like that.

The band module slated for the initial opening of DS is complete. With this first version we'll be tracking the following information in regards to bands:

• Name
• Name [romaji]
• Name [translated]
• Label [Thanks @Biopanda]
• Label Type (indies, major, unknown)
• Date formed (month, day, year)
• Date disbanded (month, day, year)
• Current activity status (active, hiatus, disbanded)
• Biography
• Official Home Page link
• Official Blog link
• Official Twitter
• Official Facebook
• Official Myspace
• Official YouTube
• Last.FM profile
• Visunavi profile
• Grassthread profile

Band profiles also have a full featured gallery system, where multiple images can be uploaded per band, with the most current promotional image will be set as the profile image.

If available, a live twitter feed will also be present on the band profile page.

With that, I am working on the integration between DS and the forum - adding the ability to use your MH account details to set up an account on DS easily, keeping the two in sync with each other. This may or may not be available at the launch though - as it's not critical for anyone to be able to log in at this time.

The only thing we're currently waiting for is the theme. Manda has the theme designed, and is coding all the essential pages out. Once this is complete, we'll do a final run through of things and test everything out, and then get this puppy online.

As always, ask away if you have any questions!

Looks nice, I may try it out~

As Champ said! She answered spot on.

And yes, bacon ipsum. (Though I was tempted to use Fifty Shades Ipsum).

One of I'm sure many to come: Hyper Erection Mode posts will consist of simple screenshot(s).

Our first one consists of what the DS staff members (could be you!) will see in the backend when managing band profiles. This is from the current working version of the band module.

We should have a subforum for transcoded transcodes too.

First two seasons I really liked. This third season though, is just... horrible.

I loved the way the first two seasons left a bit of mystery. You really didn't know what was going to happen. This third season? Nope. Everything's laid out on the table, and you can easily predict what's going to happen and what the motives of the cast are.

Consolidating the questions that were brought up in the about thread and bringing them here. If you have questions or anything, don't hesitate to post here and I'll get back to you and keep this updated!

How extensive will the database end up being? Like, what kind of information will you cover?

When we start out, it'll be fairly small. It'll mainly comprise of a band profile consisting of a biography about the band - kinda how Last.FM is right now. We'll be building upon this though, adding new features and information blocks, including band member/artist profiles and complete discography information. This only touches the tip of the iceberg in what we want to do though. But, as Aion said - our goal is to cover as much as possible - especially when it comes to lesser known obscure/indie bands.

Also, will it involve user input etc. or will mods/specific people keep everything up to date and building the database?

In order to help maintain legitimate information, it'll be a sort of "closed" wiki type system. Basically, we'll have a set of trusted users to help maintain and build the database - there is really no limit to the number of people that can be in this trusted group. We'll have some sort of system to apply for this type of position after the site is launched.

How is it related to MH? I mean that I want to know in which ways the two sites will interact with each other. Maybe MH will be the future DS forum, or the community mentioned?

It's roots are not related to MH in any way. DS was a project that Manda and I had been working on prior to us coming here (DS started around 2007, and Manda ran it by herself even before then). When TW was in shambles and had no hosting, we stepped up to offer to host the forum. At the time we had our own small forum on DS, which we got rid of in sight of striking up a sort of... partnership with everyone here. With that, the plan is to integrate the user accounts here into DS - meaning you can log into DS with your MH account. But yes, the community I spoke of was the current user base on MH as well as the new members that join us all through DS.

Is there anything decided in terms of criteria for artists visibility on the page? In the visual example Kai shows a Plastic Tree feature which is news related. I understand this probably a placeholder but it got me thinking about if the featured bands would be based on news, database updates or any other factor.

There will be many placeholders for different parts of the website on the home page. The screenshot shown in my original post is a very very small portion of the overall page, with the intention that the slider will be featured news items. There will be no preference to what type of band or style of music is shown on the front page (if you were worried that it would be centered around visual kei).

There are also planned sections showing the latest additions to the database, latest updates made in the database, blog and articles section, and more.

What kind of database are you using? Relational database?? CAN I QUERY THE SHIT OUT OF IT?!?!!?!?

Yes, it's relational. I'm interested in building an API off of it to let others connect to and query the data in whatever ways they want, but this'll be much farther down the road and isn't really planned in any way at this point.

Would you just be sticking to a certain genre within Japanese bands? Or will you start off with specific genres and then try to expand out to ALL Japanese music?

This is a bit of a difficult question to answer. Our system will be open to a lot of genre's, but it's not built for J-Pop or the like. A good rule of thumb is pretty much anything you see being discussed or shared here on MH will be included in the database.

The following letter will contain a lot of developer jargon.

This letter will go over a couple of changes that have been made to how DS will be developed - a bit of a behind the scenes look at some of the tools we use.

Moving to Git

So one of the changes I mentioned in my last letter was the fact that the development will be more open to everyone here. While I'm not opening the code up to anyone to view/download, I have made the transition from simply running the code locally and uploading via FTP to the server, to hosting everything within a git repository - specifically Bitbucket.

This is an important change for many reasons. One, all my code and every single change/update I make, is all automatically backed up. If something breaks or doesn't work out, I can simply go in and revert the code back to an earlier working copy. Secondly, this opens the door to bringing on more people to help work on DS itself. They'll be able to download the code through the repository, work on things on their local computer, and push the changes back, updating everything and everyone all at once.

While not everyone has access to this, I have hooked it up to Twitter. Every change and update that is made to the code, is automatically tweeted to an account I created here: https://twitter.com/DS_commits. This'll also be featured in the footer of the website showing the last update that was made to the website in terms of development.

Project Management and Issue/Bug Tracking

Another addition I've made, is starting up a project manager / issue tracker. This will be open to the public to report issues, suggest features, and see the progress and next steps to be taken in the development process. I've settled on using Jira, which is created by the same people who run Bitbucket - so everything is nicely integrated with each other. If you're a Minecraft fan and have visited their issue tracker before, you'll notice that they're running Jira as well. Cool beans, no?

Once I've put in a little more data in the project tracker, I'll create a new thread here with links to everything if you wish to keep track of how things are going.

What kind of database are you using? Relational database?? CAN I QUERY THE SHIT OUT OF IT?!?!!?!?

You're such a nerd, haha. I love it. But yes, it's relational. I'm interested in building an API off of it to let others connect to and query the data in whatever ways they want, but this'll be much farther down the road and isn't really planned in any way at this point.

End of year stats and shit would be cool though.

Thank you all for the encouragements! You all bring up valid questions~

How extensive will the database end up being? Like, what kind of information will you cover?

When we start out, it'll be fairly small. It'll mainly comprise of a band profile consisting of a biography about the band - kinda how Last.FM is right now. We'll be building upon this though, adding new features and information blocks, including band member/artist profiles and complete discography information. This only touches the tip of the iceberg in what we want to do though. But, as Aion said - our goal is to cover as much as possible - especially when it comes to lesser known obscure/indie bands.

Also, will it involve user input etc. or will mods/specific people keep everything up to date and building the database?

In order to help maintain legitimate information, it'll be a sort of "closed" wiki type system. Basically, we'll have a set of trusted users to help maintain and build the database - there is really no limit to the number of people that can be in this trusted group. We'll have some sort of system to apply for this type of position after the site is launched.

How is it related to MH? I mean that I want to know in which ways the two sites will interact with each other. Maybe MH will be the future DS forum, or the community mentioned in OP?

It's roots are not related to MH in any way. DS was a project that Manda and I had been working on prior to us coming here (DS started around 2007, and Manda ran it by herself even before then). When TW was in shambles and had no hosting, we stepped up to offer to host the forum. At the time we had our own small forum on DS, which we got rid of in sight of striking up a sort of... partnership with everyone here. With that, the plan is to integrate the user accounts here into DS - meaning you can log into DS with your MH account. But yes, the community I spoke of was the current user base on MH as well as the new members that join us all through DS.

Is there anything decided in terms of criteria for artists visibility on the page? In the visual example Kai shows a Plastic Tree feature which is news related. I understand this probably a placeholder but it got me thinking about if the featured bands would be based on news, database updates or any other factor.

There will be many placeholders for different parts of the website on the home page. The screenshot shown in my original post is a very very small portion of the overall page, with the intention that the slider will be featured news items. There will be no preference to what type of band or style of music is shown on the front page (if you were worried that it would be centered around visual kei).

There are also planned sections showing the latest additions to the database, latest updates made in the database, blog and articles section, and more.

A lot of you have asked what Deadeyes-star is. In short, it'll be a Japanese music database. It's purpose is to close in the gap between english speaking fans and the Japanese music scene.

For years I've used JaME and other related websites to try and track down bands, stay up to date on new releases, and find information on their releases. There really is no definitive place to find all this information. There's Last.FM, JaME, Visunavi, grassthreads, and even YouTube. Deadeyes-star aims to combine the best of all these resources into one, and building a community around it.

Above you'll find a lovely screenshot of the first sneak peek at what the website will be when its first released. One of the problems I've made, is holding everything off until I had everything complete. Well - in reality this method will never work. So the plan is to release the website in stages, with each stage building up off the other adding new features and fixing bugs as we move along.

The second problem we made, was trying to keep everything a secret. From now on, everything will be announced publicly. I've even come to terms that this is a project I can't pull off by myself. Right now the team consists of me and Manda. I work on the actual develop and coding of the website, where manda focuses on the design and graphics. We'd like this to grow to help in development.

Soon, I'll make another post to recruit for help if you think you or anyone you know may want to join in on the development side of this.

For the time being, if you have any questions or anything, feel free to ask away!

Kai

Kaye you stole words out of my mouth on this matter.

In order to motivate my ass to work on this, I've created the following DS category/suforums here on the forum. The intention behind this, at least for the moment, is to continuously post updates on the development of DS as well as get feedback from every one here.

I want this to be a fairly open project moving forward - and am even open to anyone actually helping me develop DS. I've moved from using a custom developed CMS to using PyroCMS - which frees me up from having to code out core features which was eating up most of my development time.

Some of you may ask "Why not just use WordPress or Wikimedia?", and the simple answer is - control. DS will be more than just a database of Japanese bands and music. It'll be a community that revolves around you - the user. There are a ton of features and ideas that I'd like to push out that would be very difficult to do with WordPress (and especially Wikimedia, which I honestly feel is a horribly outdated platform).

So, I'll keep this first post short. I'll post more threads going over DS, provide screenshots of its current progress, and so on and so forth.

See you in the next post!

Kai

Nah it's definitely not a DDoS attack. If it were, the forum would be down completely until either our host or I blocked the culprit IPs.

I can't honestly say what it is at this point, could just be the connection Dreamhost has that's either slow or taxed during certain times of the day (like, moments of high traffic running through their servers). It doesn't matter what YOUR internet speed/connection is - especially if you say your connection is as fast as it is. You'll only be able to download/receive information from any server as fast as they can serve it to you within their allotted bandwidth (you have to remember they're serving thousands and thousands of connections at any given time).

Hope this clears your speculation up. We're aware of things and have done quite a bit to ensure the forum runs smoothly. We went through a period (I'll call it the dark ages) where the forum crashed every 15-20 minutes due to the amount of traffic we were getting before we moved to a cloud-based VPS server.

We have a dedicated VPS server through Dreamhost with 1 GB of RAM - it runs me a little more than $50 a month to keep it up (just the server - there's other costs for the chat (which is not hosted by us) and forum software as well), and can easily add more resources - but I honestly don't have the money to do that on my own. When we started out, we were hosted through their shared server plan which was an absolute NIGHTMARE after the forum grew in size fairly quickly.

I've been looking to move things to a different host though, as I've just had a belly-full of DH the past couple of years (been with them since 2006ish). I've come to settle on eleven2, but not in a position to migrate things to a new server at this point.

I'll look into lowering the minimum donation amount, but I think that's pre-set by Dreamhost. If I can though I will! Anything helps.

EDIT: Unfortunately I'm unable to lower the minimum donation amount - it's set by Dreamhost, but I'm not sure why it HAS to be a minimum of $10.

I think she means that free to play lets -anyone- with the right hardware requirements to join. If you've ever worked with the public, you will understand why allowing lots of people to join can cause problems with quality of life while playing. I don't think it has anything to do with the caliber in which they play, so much as it makes it much easier for people to join and fuck up the game for everyone else because, in a sense, they're not losing anything "real" aside from time.

 

I think "thirteen year olds" is just a generic term for "self entitled assholes who represent the bad sides of gaming," because the current stereotype of this kind of person is a preteen yelling into his mic while playing COD in between algebra homework and his next dose of Ritalin.

 

F2P, in theory, might reduce the odds of this happening since I don't think most people want to spend time making the game unenjoyable for everyone else unless they are misanthropic and have a lot of money. They could do that much more easily on games like League of Legends, which has a huge playerbase and is free (and prone to this kind of dickcunt mentality, but I digress).

This, 100%.

I'm not against F2P models for MMOs - it's just not something that suits this game. I don't know if you ever played FFXI, but it had a pretty damn mature player base - it was wonderful playing with people. F2P may seems like a win-all situation, but there are people like me who feel turned off by that fact for the reasons I've stated.

SE already has the next expansion story and features already planned (and 80% written), and have been working on them since the official launch (after the whole server issues). They have stated, and already have things set in motion to continually support, and add new content/expansions for the next ten years. Here's some things Yoshida talked about during PAX Prime (which I'm sad I missed because it was only a few blocks from where I live D; )

• Naoki Yoshida intends for the endgame content in FFXIV: ARR to be truly difficult and reward players who work awesomely together and employ perfect teamwork.
• Square Enix is already working on the next three updates for the game– 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3. The plot for the next expansion is even already written.
• 2.1 will include the PvP Wolves’ Den, player housing, daily quests, hardmode dungeons, and instance battles. All of these features are ready to go.
• Future updates are going to be meaty, each featuring a great deal of content that should satisfy both casual and hardcore players.
• The team plans to introduce Gilgamesh at some point. They want to make him part of a multiple-patch update or a broad questline in order to not make the introduction a “one time” deal.
• We’ll probably see more classes branch off into multiple jobs like the current Arcanist -> Summoner or Scholar setup. Dark Knight, anyone?
• He also mentioned the possibility of having new jobs that require multiple current jobs. A Red Mage, for example, might be created by obtaining both White Mage and Black Mage.
• Speaking of which, there’s a high possibility of us seeing new jobs before a future expansion.
• Server transfers will be available within two to three months.
• Daily quests will expand on the story behind the beast tribes in Eorzea. They will feature new rewards to encourage players to check them out.
• One of Yoshida’s goals was to make FFXIV: ARR accessible to both an MMORPG player and a pure single-player RPG gamer who’s in love with the Final Fantasy universe. The tutorials at the beginning of the game and the way the game slowly ramps up in difficulty help ease single-player gamers into an MMO world.
• Yoshida seems open to the idea of flying mounts, and even mentioned that the way the game is set up, the control systems would support such a feature.
• The team’s looking at how to give players the functionality of using the world map to travel to other Aetherytes instead of having to hassle with menus.

I don't see why you people think this game is going to go F2P - they've even stated that they will not be going F2P in interviews before. I honestly hate F2P, because as I've stated in another thread about this game - it filters out a lot of the players who just play to be assholes. Now granted, of course there will always be assholes who have money - but at least the game isn't full of 13 year olds.

I mean, jesus, FFXI is still P2P.

Via Reddit /ffxiv

So my friend asked me how FF:ARR was. This is what I told him.

 

Alex, the best way to describe FF14:ARR is to imagine Square Enix is a shitty Ex. They never quite put enough effort into the relationship and the last date they took you on was to an Arby's. Also, they asked you to pay for both meals.

 

That's when you decide you've had enough. You look Square straight in the eye and say, "Square, this shit ain't real. I'm leaving you." They suddenly start to cry into their fake Arby's cheese saying they will change, they can be better this time. But you've heard this song and dance before and you wont be moved.

 

That's when they do something crazy. Using two plastic knifes in a manner you haven't quite figured out, they lop off one of their arms.

 

"I'm doing this for you!"

 

"So you're shitty AND insane?" You think to yourself as you "nope" the fuck out of there.

 

The last thing you hear as the restaurant door closes behind you is, "I will become better!"

 

2 years go by and you've finally put this horrific event out of your mind. You're chilling at a party with some friends. The same group of friends you've had for a couple years now. You've all grown older, wiser, learned what it means to have some self respect. When around the corner comes someone oddly familiar.

 

You can tell from the way their shirt fits that they definitely work out, their posture is fantastic, and their style is straight out of Hollywood. You definitely don't remember anyone that sexy being in your life.

 

But when they turn around, you know exactly who it is. Your Ex. That fear you feel, and the need to run away are completely overpowered by your awe and surprise. They approach you with complete calm and confidence.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention, that nub of an arm? It's been replaced by a bionic arm straight out of the god damn future. Even the robotic arm is sexy.

 

They ask you out on a date. You say yes. For some insane reason you say yes. Oh shit, why did you say yes? Certainly this is only superficial change and you are in for the same old shit. Now it's safe to say YOU'RE the insane one.

 

But you go, and it is fantastic, it is glorious, and that arm has features in the bedroom that no human has had the pleasure of enjoying before you.

 

Sure, sometime the arm electrocutes your Ex and they pass out for a few hours to a day, but the doctor's assure you they will have that patched out within a month.

All in all, it has been the most amazing week of your life, and it's still too soon to say whether it'll last, but even with the glitches you don't care. You're gonna ride this one out.

 

I'm saying it's good Alex, it's good.

Server issues have been resolved per the maintenance from the other day.

You can't compare FFXI to FFXIV, as every aspect of the two games are so different. FFXI was slow paced, and a bit of a "grind" game. ie, sat in one corner of the world with a group where you'd pull one monster at a time to kill and gain what little EXP you could. It would take close to a year and a half, if not more, to even hit max level (if you were persistent and played often).

FFXIV is quite different. It's fast paced, highly solo-able, not a grind at all (play through the story line or take up one of the many MANY quests), and is so easy to find others to party up with (this include players from different servers) - The one thing it does have in common with FFXI is it's cross console (PC, PS3), and cross-continental (ie, English and Japanese players play on the same servers).

This game has been nothing but short of amazing.

Last night I leveled my GLA class from 5 to 10 in about 3 hours.

You console players are going to be the death of the game.

I joke.

Manda and I both play, on the Cactaur [NA] server.

Kai Matsuoka - Level 15 CNJ / Level 5 GLA

... I label Versailles as Symphonic/Power Metal, not Aristocratic Vampire Kei Metal.

LOL.

But to the topic.

(Unfortunately) you can't really define a band in it's entirety within a certain genre. I think the only way you can get away with this to some degree is defining each band album into a genre - which isn't a part of any music software that I know of.

As Arith said, do whatever works for you. There really is no right or wrong in this matter, it's something that will help you identify a bands sound and relation to others.

I personally tag 99% of my stuff as just "J-Rock" to keep it separate from my other music (which isn't that much honestly). I do this only because I like being able to listen to just Japanese music at times, and it's easy to just select the J-Rock genre and hit play.

But people, for the love of god please stop tagging the genre as visual kei. kthxbai.

lolwut, it's not $50, it's $30 (at least for the boxed version, digital may be cheaper but it's been suspended atm).I payed roughly $45 for my copy, only because I paid for next-day shipping.

They're not charging for the first month, and I'm pretty sure they're going to extend it a little. I believe the standard monthly fee is $12 (there's cheaper subscription options, based on how many character slots you want).

I don't understand the whole mindset behind the whole "every AAA MMO has gone free to play" / "they're milking us for our money".

• When an MMO does go F2P, it goes to absolute shit because they only introduce micro-transaction shops that unbalance the game in favor to the people who pay.
• Servers still cost to run every month (and they're fucking expensive). I'd rather pay monthly (as everyone else) and have a balanced and even game throughout the whole thing.

And I'm sorry, but I honestly don't want to play a game with a server full of 10 and 12 year olds (having to deal with adults who act like 10 and 12 year olds is enough), having to pay to play filters 99% of them out.