From time to time at Trion Worlds, we like to highlight players who go above and beyond with their fandom and create incredible art, fansites, videos, and guides. This week, we’re highlighting the folks at Telara DB!
Fan sites are an important part of any video game. They find and curate content that developers don’t give players directly. Often, they create these sites as labors of love because they are deeply invested in the games that they play. This holds true for Telara DB.
Telara DB
Telara DB is a RIFT fan site that holds item and appearance data from RIFT. You can search thousands of items and appearances and get the stats and descriptions for those items. What’s great about the Appearance section is you can see a full 3D view of the items. This is perfect for trying to figure out the appearances of items want for your character before collecting them. Later, the team hopes to implement the full databases for RIFT recipes, quests, NPCs, and achievements.
The Telara DB Team
This kind of massive undertaking couldn’t be done alone. The team includes data miners, tool creators, and database makers.
- JosuaLackhand is the site developer for Telara DB. He aggregates the data mining team’s data and presents it in the UI.
- “I was looking for an alternate way to search and explore the RIFTdata. I spent some time digging through the Discoveries XML files and brainstorming on what I could do with the data, and how I wanted to do it. I built and launched an early alpha version of the site, and shared it over at the Ghar Station’s Discord. From there, I got connected with Clowd, Deathbeams, and Imathrowback. Together we worked together to take the site in directions I couldn’t have foreseen when I…started. We do amazing things like extract and show 3D models with the help of Imathrowback’s Telarafly, display the iLvl and affix information based on the deep-diving math that Clowd has done, and have searchable appearances and links between equipment and appearances that come from Deathbeam’s hard work.”
- Clowd is the owner of The Ghar Station. On the Telara DB side, he data mines, provides formulas for the other data miners, as well as provides insight on how to read the data.
- “I had already resolved the iLvl calculations for RIFT and had been researching the affix system…to produce the final numbers on items…I pitched the idea of including the iLvl calculations into the site. ‘It’ integrated well into the site and gives extra info and insight into items that aren’t available…elsewhere.”
- Imathrowback is the lead data miner for RIFT. His modern tools are used to datamine patches from both Live and PTS.
- Deathbeams is a data miner and memory scraper. On Telara DB, he provides the connections between appearances and items, making it possible to view the items in 3D.
- “RIFT’s wardrobe system is the best in the industry in my opinion. I wanted to collect as many appearances as I could, but appearances and items weren’t connected which made it hard to figure out where to get them. I decided to find a way to connect them and share the data with the community.”
