Gorgon Explorer

[Tannin]

So, on the old forums I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be creating an account here, but it seems I've changed my mind. I thought it would be nice to have a forum thread for this again.

If you don't know what Gorgon Explorer is, it's a little website I created sometime last summer (or maybe it was late spring? but I digress) meant to make navigating all the publicly-available JSON data a bit easier, providing tools to do things like browse through mods or recipes, or plan builds. You can check it out at www.gorgonexplorer.com.

I'll be keeping this thread updated with news about upcoming features, and generally use it as a hub to take suggestions or bug reports if you prefer this platform over the contact page on the website.

The new version of the website is up! A detailed changelog can be found in this post

[Greyfyn]

This is great news Tannin. Your tool helps a lot! Thanks for keeping it going.

[ShieldBreaker]

Someone should get Silvonis to make this thread a sticky thread. Great site by the way, can't wait to see the new and improved version.

[kell.shepherd]

Yep I like the site too.. have it stuck to my faves bar.

[alleryn]

This has been an invaluable tool to me! I use it almost constantly. Thank you so much!

I submitted one minor suggestion a week ago through your site. If i think of anything else i'll send it in, but it already has excellent style and functionality; it's difficult to come up with suggestions. Keep up the great work!

[Hood]

Tannin, I still use this every single day....so thank you so much. It really brings me alot of fun and joy. And I know I would definitely be OVERjoyed with a mobile friendly version.

Seriously thank you for using your personal free time on us like this. You've always been awesome

[Tannin]

Thanks for all the support and encouragement, guys I do get a fair bit of enjoyment out of development (glutton for punishment, I guess) and hearing that people are still using this thing makes it worthwhile.

The basics of converting this thing to the next version of the framework I'll be using are done, but it's going to take a fair amount of rewriting to put everything back in order now. So, if anybody has any suggestions regarding improvements to current features - that is, if you think anything should be laid out differently or should work differently than it does now WITHOUT adding new functionality - now would be a good time to ask. If you've already submitted suggestions through the contact page I've still got them handy and will get around to them as soon as possible. Otherwise I have a few things in mind to improve, and I'll post here when I roll out the next version.

[Tannin]

Okay guys, I'm very excited to announce that the latest and hopefully greatest version of Gorgon Explorer has just been deployed. A lot of stuff looks the same because things use mostly the same style with a few tweaks here and there, but this was a massive overhaul. I would say 80-90% of the underlying code or more has been completely rewritten. That means there might be bugs I haven't caught. If anything seems weird, please do let me know and I'll make sure to fix it!

While a lot of things do work mostly the same as before, I've kept a bit of a changelog so you can know what has been revamped, which you can read below.

Changelog

• Complete overhaul of front end from Angular 1.4 to Angular 2.3. This should bring about performance improvements, making the website faster (both to load and to use) and more functional on more browsers. For example, as far as I know, things will be far more functional on Internet Explorer/Edge and older versions of Firefox now. It's also the driving force behind the rest of the changes and will make future changes easier.
  
  
• Navbar tabs are now highlighted in a less obnoxious way.
  
  
• In an attempt to move toward a less-cluttered and more user-friendly UI, relevant information about a page has been moved, when possible, to context-senstive places that make sense. For example, instead of throwing a block of information at you about what each column of a table means and then making you scroll through all of it or minimize it, each column now contains a small icon with a tooltip explaining that column a little more in depth.
  
  
• Switched from using an Angular port of Jquery Datatables to the PrimeNG library for tables, which means quite a bit has changed about tables
  
  
  • Columns in tables can now be resized by clicking and dragging the edges. Columns can no longer be sorted ascending/descending because I do not see the value of it for most use cases, especially given the filtering options available. If I'm wrong here please let me know and I will reintroduce sorting.
    
    
  • When viewing a lot of data at once in a table, the container in which the table resides will scroll instead of the entire page. This keeps the pagination/filters/options in the same place even if you choose to view more or less data.
    
    
  • Searching is now handled per-column instead of with the previous global search bar set up, hopefully this will allow for more intuitive and granular searches. The old way of filtering is still available, feel free to mix and match - you'll find that the various ways of filtering are now bound to each other, so changing a filter in one place also changes it in others.
    
    
  • Showing/Hiding columns is no longer super slow and no longer clears filters. These were annoying side-effects of how things worked in the previous version.
    
  
  
• The recipes table no longer has tooltips for each item. I'll probably put them back at some point, especially if people found them useful, but I would rather focus on features people find most useful like the build planner. Plus, I wanted to roll out the update ASAP.
  
  
• Due to the rewrite the build planner is saving data in a different format now. That means all planner saves made with the previous version of the website will not carry over, and will not load properly. I realize some of you have created builds as recently as yesterday and I'm extremely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Old build ids begin with "1b", new build ids begin with "iyr". If your build was precious to you, I still have the raw data and I could make some attempt to convert it to the new format if you give me your build id. That being said, it will probably take less time (and also help me test out the new internals of the build planner) if you just create a new one.
  

The Future

This update took many hours, and I realize that it really didn't bring all that much in terms of "new stuff" for you guys as users. However, please know that I intend to begin implementing new features again after I take a little break. Features that are planned for the future:

• The ability to see the cumulative effects of a build - that is, how your mods affect your DPS and other things once it's all put together. This is by far the most requested feature, and I don't know how complicated it will be just yet, but I'm open to suggestions.
  
  
• Listing level requirements in addition to or instead of mod tiers on the mods table
  
  
• The ability to export your build to something offline, maybe excel or similar
  

I think that's about all I got for now. We're coming up on 7am here and I haven't slept yet, so I'm going to bed. If everything is on fire when I wake up I apologize and I will put it out. Assuming that doesn't happen...please let me know how the new stuff is working

[cr00cy]

Wow, i really liek new look of GE. Greta job, as always.

[Wemedge]

Just wanted to chime in with my thanks as well. Every time I rebuild a set I use it. I like the new look, too. Your efforts are much appreciated.