Turning a spreadsheet into an item lookup app
November 27, 2022 10:14 PM Subscribe
How do I turn a massive spreadsheet of in-game items into a workable app or website to easily look up info about each item?
I've been playing a lot of My Time At Sandrock, a Stardew-esque sim game where you play the local builder that makes things, structures, and machines for people in your town. The predecessor game had a number of checklist-style spreadsheets and I've been working on a version for this game (just as a personal fan thing, no one is paying me), but there is a LOT of information and the spreadsheet starts getting very unwieldly very fast (especially since the game is currently in Early Access so a lot of new items and information gets added every few months).
There are a few categories of things that are interlinked:
- End items (anything that isn't further processed into some other item, which can be obtained via gathering, shopping, treasure chests, gifting, events, combat, scavenging, processing, or construction)
- Materials (stuff that goes into making or acquiring the end items)
- Items that are functional both as end items and as materials
- Shops (not anything controllable by the player but a source of resources)
- Machines, which can be constructed (with their own lists of materials) and also be used to construct items
- Tools (usually requiring some construction themselves)
- Sources (e.g. specific trees for specific items, usually environmental)
- Recipes and Blueprints
What I would like is the ability for someone to look up an item on this database and figure out how to get the item and how to make the item (if needed). For instance:
Down the road I would like to incorporate trackers such as museum donation, quests, relationship levels, etc but I feel like this initial item lookup would be a good start.
I currently have a lot of this information on a Google Sheet, though as I said the size and volume makes this a bit unwieldly to manage. I did look at AirTable but they're a bit funky with anything requiring quantities. What I would love is some sort of app where I can just send in a big spreadsheet of all that information and it can spit it out into a usable database that can be easily accessible via a browser (not even nessarily a downloadable app), but the ones I've seen that come close are a little confusing. I have very basic knowledge of Javascript (and Pascal though that's useless) but am willing to learn some coding to make this happen. I feel like the general structure of this app would be applicable to other games, so am happy to adapt any options that already exist too.
I've been playing a lot of My Time At Sandrock, a Stardew-esque sim game where you play the local builder that makes things, structures, and machines for people in your town. The predecessor game had a number of checklist-style spreadsheets and I've been working on a version for this game (just as a personal fan thing, no one is paying me), but there is a LOT of information and the spreadsheet starts getting very unwieldly very fast (especially since the game is currently in Early Access so a lot of new items and information gets added every few months).
There are a few categories of things that are interlinked:
- End items (anything that isn't further processed into some other item, which can be obtained via gathering, shopping, treasure chests, gifting, events, combat, scavenging, processing, or construction)
- Materials (stuff that goes into making or acquiring the end items)
- Items that are functional both as end items and as materials
- Shops (not anything controllable by the player but a source of resources)
- Machines, which can be constructed (with their own lists of materials) and also be used to construct items
- Tools (usually requiring some construction themselves)
- Sources (e.g. specific trees for specific items, usually environmental)
- Recipes and Blueprints
What I would like is the ability for someone to look up an item on this database and figure out how to get the item and how to make the item (if needed). For instance:
COMFORTABLE CHAIRThe #1 wish from the game's player community is some sort of gifting management system. Sandrock lets you gift almost everything in the game to its wide character base, all with different levels of Love to Hate for each item, but finding out which items a character Loves/Likes/etc is very much hit or miss. So the ability to look up a character or item and see what their best gifts are, or look up an item and see who it would make a great gift for, is highly appreciated.
Recipe: Ernest (Writer's Block) Quest
Made at: Intermediate Worktable [this is linked or expandable to an entry about the Intermediate Worktable's details]
Materials:
Hardwood Planks (2) [linked or expandable to entry about how to craft or obtain this material, e.g. "made at Processor - Hard Wood (4)" and then Hard Wood would link or expand to "logging XYZ trees, Fine Wood Scrap" etc etc etc]
Hardwood Stick (4) [see above]
Rough Cloth (3) [see above]
Gifting: Justice (Loved) [linked to individual character's gift profile]
Down the road I would like to incorporate trackers such as museum donation, quests, relationship levels, etc but I feel like this initial item lookup would be a good start.
I currently have a lot of this information on a Google Sheet, though as I said the size and volume makes this a bit unwieldly to manage. I did look at AirTable but they're a bit funky with anything requiring quantities. What I would love is some sort of app where I can just send in a big spreadsheet of all that information and it can spit it out into a usable database that can be easily accessible via a browser (not even nessarily a downloadable app), but the ones I've seen that come close are a little confusing. I have very basic knowledge of Javascript (and Pascal though that's useless) but am willing to learn some coding to make this happen. I feel like the general structure of this app would be applicable to other games, so am happy to adapt any options that already exist too.
Response by poster: beyond_pink: AppSheet isn't free (past 10 prototype users) and it seems to be more about the app populating your Google Sheet with data, rather than being able to pull from an existing data source.
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:49 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by creatrixtiara at 4:49 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Elaborating a little on @brainwane's comment: Querki's my baby, a sort of hybrid wiki/database system aimed at "small data" problems -- systems with lots of complexity, but not a lot of records or users compared to commercial database standards.
LARP writing was actually its very first use case: it grew out of my frustration at trying to manage complex LARPs using wikis. (There is even a bespoke LARP App in it, specifically for the sort of LitForm games I write. Here's an example of a fully-worked game.)
Anyway, I'm not sure whether it suits your needs -- external integration is pretty haphazard, and has never been a high priority, so it doesn't currently match exactly what you're describing. But if you're curious about a tool that is designed for small communities sharing highly-customizable data, that's more or less what Querki is. Questions always welcome!
posted by jducoeur at 9:50 AM on November 29, 2022
LARP writing was actually its very first use case: it grew out of my frustration at trying to manage complex LARPs using wikis. (There is even a bespoke LARP App in it, specifically for the sort of LitForm games I write. Here's an example of a fully-worked game.)
Anyway, I'm not sure whether it suits your needs -- external integration is pretty haphazard, and has never been a high priority, so it doesn't currently match exactly what you're describing. But if you're curious about a tool that is designed for small communities sharing highly-customizable data, that's more or less what Querki is. Questions always welcome!
posted by jducoeur at 9:50 AM on November 29, 2022
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posted by beyond_pink at 2:39 AM on November 28, 2022