sierrachest
patreon
🕑 Added 2015-01-30 13:24:39 +0000 UTC
Behind the scenes:
The Sierra Chest is (obviously) a database-driven website. It currently consists of 51 data tables. On one hand there are data tables containing large bulk fields (for walkthroughs, making of, biographies, articles, etc...), and on the other hands there are tables with just plain numbers, linking everything together and causing the data to be cross-linked throughout the entire site.
For instance, game credits: there is a table with all the names of all people who worked for Sierra and related companies, a table with the game titles, a table with developers (Sierra, Impressions,...), and a table with game functions (designer, art director,....). And finally there is one table with just reference numbers to all previous data tables to link it all up. The game credits is therefore not a list of people and functions typed manually, but extrapolated from a combination of all these tables combined (using a filter on the game's ID in the database).
As a result it is also easy to display a list of all the games a particular person worked on. When looking at a person's biography (say for instance Al Lowe), you'll see all the games he worked on, using the exact same data tables, but a different method to pull the data you need (using a filter on the person's ID in the database in this case).
Pretty much the entire web site works this way, making it unlimited in capacity and easily customizable.
For Sierra Chest 2, the current data tables are kept and expanded to support the new community features.
