The Team Liquid Progaming Database is out!

PoP

France15082 Posts

July 27 2007 23:59 GMT

360 players...
124 leagues...
156 maps...
7526 games...
579 VODs...

Origins

Although TeamLiquid has always been an invaluable source of progaming-related information, I’ve often thought that we were still lacking a decent, dedicated tool which would gather and provide access to all the objective data in a natural, instinctive way.

Who’s this player? What’s his korean name? Does he have aka’s? Which team is he in? How old is he? How good is he on < insert map name >? Did he ever achieve anything? How long has he been around for?... Those are just random examples, and just a little fraction of what the Team Liquid Progaming Database can answer. Yet, this is precisely the kind of extremely basic data which often was a real pain in the butt to retrieve in the past— at least for us non-koreans.

Progamizer was the first step towards filling that gap. But despite being a handy tool and all, it had its obvious limits and could definitely not be used as the base for anything bigger. This is why, after getting promoted at TL, I knew that building something completely new would be the only way to go, as well as the most exciting thing I could do here as both a developer and a (big) SC/progaming fan in general.

The First Step

Today, a few months later and with the (sometimes huge) help of several fellows —whom I’ll give proper thanks to below— I’m finally proud to present you the first version of the Team Liquid Progaming Database which the staff has been calling TLPD.

You can also access it at any time using the right side of the site by clicking the topmost banner:

I won’t delve into details of what TLPD can do here— because it’s hopefully straightforward enough. I would like to point out one little thing though: this database is still far from complete. Literally tons of things could be added or improved in the future. A few relevant examples: the current version doesn’t store 2v2’s, doesn’t group games as series, and doesn’t handle “random” properly. It could also have its own ranking system for players, allow user voting on games/VODs, or even display charts and the likes. In short, let’s just say what you can use right now is TLPD 1.0 and that it still has a really deep potential for evolution.

A Team Concept

I’d like to thank all the people who’ve helped me out with this project. This includes (random order for most):
- SonuvBob, whom I bothered on MSN a whole lot. Bob kept giving me great suggestions and feedback on just about everything, while inputing tons of data to the database. He's always sounded just as excited as me regarding this project and therefore I’m pretty confident he’ll remain an invaluable help for the next versions ;
- VioleTAK, for basically updating more than 500 friggin’ youtube VODs in something like two days after being promoted. Just fucking insane ;
- our beloved Manifesto7, who has no equal when it comes to hyping things up. From the quiz challenge thread to the amazing preview news and including the writeup TL contest, he took care of everything ;
- KizZBG, aka the author of approximately 100% of the graphic stuff you can see on TLPD (TL's right side column excluded). Icons, banner, little arrows... it's all his doing ;
- Taiche, who sent us a whole pack with almost all the maps' pics (taken from his great RepASM software) along with their associated data, including size, tileset and start locations ;
- GTR-2-Go, who updated most of these map pics/data to the database, and who’s been submitting all the proleague games for two weeks now ;
- thedeadhaji, for adding the rest of the games from the last two weeks plus all the remaining VODs (about 50) ;
- zXk3, for creating the graphic stuff on TL's right side tab, i.e. the nice header button as well as the magnifying glass icon ;
- DJEtterStyle, for maintaining the Power Rank whose top-3 is now also displayed on TLPD's front page ;
- all the (rest of the) staff in general, especially Carnac, Klogon and Manablue ;
- and finally Kennigit and Jathin for their nice suggestions.

... I hope I didn’t forget anyone.

Feel free to leave your questions/suggestions/bug reports in the TLPD Feedback Thread.