The end of an era...

michael.geier

michael.geier

CoG Affiliate Staff
CCGDB.com is done.

After 10 years (starting with manapool.net and later ccgdb.com), I have decided to call it quits due to:

1. The site robbing entirely too much of my time from my family (and being a contributing factor to my divorce; maybe I should be thankful for that one).
2. I haven't played a single card game in over 3 years, and I have no energy left for them.
3. It has never become profitable like I hoped (in the monetary sense; minimum of $1500 in, $300 out, not including all the time I spent developing and chasing cards/images).
4. ...and I just don't want to anymore.

So, while my hosting contract isn't up for almost a year, I will eventually be posting information on the website to let people know that the site will not be updated any more, and what the future doesn't hold (this is basically saying, if someone made me an offer ($$ or otherwise) for the domain, site code, and the data, I would seriously consider it!).

Michael, ccgdb.com
 
Wha~?

Oh, that's a great shame. I do hope someone can take it over and keep it going.
 
I don't know what to say. That's terrible news for a number of reasons. I hope everything works out for you, Mike. Let me know if there's anything I can do.
 
Hey Mike,

You've been an invaluable resource to me over the past few years and I have greatly appreciated your willingness to share card texts and images when needed. Heck, your XML export is still the standard I format things for when I do imports. I'm really sorry things have turned out this way.

There may be a chance here that I could take over things, or at least maybe get a copy of your data and pictures for import into the 2.0 TCR. I need to check a few things on my own front and get back to you shortly. If a better offer comes, by all means take it. I just wanted to thank you and let you know there is a bit of interest on my end.
 
Do you think you can handle nine games? hehe...

Actually, Spoils is completely finished, Vs. is all but dead (waiting on UDE to formally say it), and Duelmasters is only releasing in Japan, but they have been the majority of my user base.

UFS has always been a hassle, and I was only updating once or twice a year (when Two-Headed Dragon made their spreadsheet dump available.

Let me know if you are seriously interested. Probably one of the few people I would trust with the whole system.
 
Yeah, 9 games is pretty crazy, but you're right, a bunch of them are pretty much finished up and if you had some reliable sources that provide card data, that would be helpful.

I appreciate the trust you have in me. That means a lot. I've had some plans for a while now to expand out into new games, since the TCR is structured to handle things that way and it seemed like a logical next step with Deck Studio as well. I'm trying to get in early with UDE on Huntik and Dragon Seeker (their two new games), so it would be slick to have all of that in the repository.

I am seriously interested, I'm just looking at finances at the moment and making sure I can dedicate the extra time needed for the additional games.
 
I know that I don't have much monetarily to offer Dillie-O but I'll help with what I can. And I'm more then willing to offer the better part of my time to this if need be. Let me know what's up when you make a decision and hopefully we can make Mike's hard work not all for naught.
 
Work effort...hmmm...you are probably familiar with what it takes to get info from UDE, but that might help with three of the games (YGO, WOW and VS, if they ever make anymore VS).

Magic - I automated it, of sorts. Grabbing the Oracle and Text spoilers, updating code to include formatting tags (mana, tap, etc) and then I have a script that processes it all. Only thing to add is flavor text at that point.

Naruto - By hand, although I do a lot of cut and paste work after they get their card list up on bandaicg.com/naruto/cardlists.html. Once again, flavor text is the big pain.

Duelmasters - only released in Japanese, but the community on Pojo.biz has a translator they trust, and he has been really good about everything. However, the format he delivers in isn't really parsable, so cut and paste again.

Pokemon - all by hand. Pokebeach.com has been my resource.

I would gladly hand everything over to you guys (as a cogonline/dillie-o (or vice versa...) product, and certainly don't expect everything to be kept as is. Product is currently on a LAMP stack, using PHP for the whole thing. Layout is HTML and ExtJS.

If you needed some consulting, or a transition period, I would be happy to work with that as well. Let me know what you guys come up with. Maybe you can get some assistance from other members to help out with other games.
 
Having the online sources is a define help, since I can use those as "official" sources. Did you ever try to contact the developers directly for the data? I wasn't able to get card data directly from UDE since There were licensing issues, but there is a guy in Italy that has been really reliable at getting the texts and images fast. I'm trying to get some direct data for their new games coming out, so hopefully that will help.

The good news is that my hosting is dual LAMP / WISP (or whatever you call the .net stack) so we could easily transition things as is and then migrate things over. DJ and I were talking, and this might be a great way to revive the TCG Oracle project from long ago, or even relabel it CCG Toolkit to go with the new "branding" I have for the DS stuff.

Things are gift with me, and I'm sure DJ too, so what if I gave you some of the Google Ad revenue or something? It takes me a good 3 to 4 months to make $100 currently, but I'm sure the added games would increase traffic.
 
I think the idea sounds great. I can you get you a copy of anything you want (php code, mysql dump, etc.).

I was thinking, I could continue to maintain a few of the games for a few months (M:tG and Duelmasters are easy enough) until we can get a stable process together. Since you already have YGO, that is easy enough to export/share. Naruto and Pokemon are the problem children, but really don't have to be maintained (would be nice), and all the others are pretty dead.

Let me know how you want to approach it. I think I was making about $100 a year, just enough to cover hosting, but that is truly irrelevant to me. To see it continue would be satisfaction enough.
 
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