Step Back Through Time...

[llnadmin]

A new feature on the LAN Link website is now ready for use! The Event Timeline is a graph designed to generate a snapshot of all games events that are stored in our database, over a particular period of time. Simply select the From date (starting date of the period of interest), and a To date (ending date of the period), and click on "Submit". Optionally, you may choose a particular state of Australia to filter the events by (the default is to show events from all states at once).

If matches are found within the selected range of time, a graph will be generated. For the time being, all events are displayed as rows of green circles, and are grouped by their respective game groups/communities. These groups are sorted chronologically by the *first events of each group currently recorded in our database, from the earliest events at the top of the graph, to the latest at the bottom, within the selected time range.



If you are on a PC or laptop, you can use your mouse to hover over the circles to show the name of each event. Clicking/pressing on a particular green circle will open up the Details panel, and display information about that event.

While the Event Timeline is quite basic, we plan to add further features to the timeline in the future. This will likely include the ability to zoom in and out of the graph, and add further options to filter events by.

We also have a very long way to go with regards to adding more events and groups into the database, to get a clearer picture about the history of public LAN events (and the like) in our country. Thus, the information that can be extracted from our database is only a small portion of one of our ultimate goals: to record all public LAN events (and the like) that have ever occurred in our country's history! Feel free to check in every now and then to see our progress with this endeavour.

*Note: This may not be representative of the first events that the games groups have ever held, as we have many more events to record, and many events will also unfortunately be lost to the "sands of time".

[llnadmin]

Update

The Event Timeline has been updated to display games groups that have changed their name over time, on one row, instead of separate rows. This makes it easier to see a group's entire event history, if necessary.

Given that we are still transitioning between our old database, and the new one, there is currently only one example that can be seen - Brotherhood of Network Gamers (BONG), which changed its name to FragFest LAN, of NSW. There will be several more displayed on the graph in the future.

[llnadmin]

Update:

The timeline has been updated to be a bit clearer / easier to read. It now shows games groups that are considered to be inactive to appear with grey name labels, while all other groups that have been running in the last 13 months (or have been declared as going on hiatus in the last 18 months) to appear in dark green. This is, of course, if there are groups with events in the selected time period.

Also, the very first and last events that groups have held in the past are now displayed with different shapes and colours. An event with a lime green triangle pointing right, indicates that the event is the group's first event that they have held, and that there are likely more events to the right / further in the future from the event. An event with a dark green square indicates a group's very last event.

Final events are harder to work out for groups, as quite often games groups will continue to run events, and then simply stop without word of closing down. Also, we cannot always get complete records of events that games groups held, so unless a group states somewhere that an event is their very last, then we can't be certain. First events are a bit easier, as we can judge them quite often based upon their titles, along with other events held thereafter.

Finally, we now have over 1,000 events recorded in our database! While that may be a milestone of sorts, there's still a huge amount of events left to record in Australian history (estimated to be more than 10,000 events), so we will be definitely looking for some volunteers to get this number considerably higher. Once we reach the 5,000 event mark, we can start to look at statistics and trends in depth, and paint a detailed picture of where games events have been, and where they are going.

[llnadmin]

Update:

• Year labels running across the top of the timeline's grid are now fixed into position
• Labels for most group names and events will now stay on the screen, being aligned to either far left or right to stop them running off the screen
• Group labels are now clickable, opening the details panel for each group

[llnadmin]

Update:

We have updated the functionality of the Timeline, to include Joint Events. Click here for more information (the link will take you to another forum page).