[PSC 001] Fantastic Trainer Kits and How to Name Them
Opened this issue · 10 comments
Trainer Kits are a fun one to figure out. There are various methods currently being used - will take the Sun & Moon Trainer Kit—Lycanroc & Alolan Raichu as an example here:
| Deck | PTCGO External ID | RK9/PkmnCards | PokeGym Decklist | PTCGO name | Compendium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lycanroc | TK10A | TK10L | TK10L | TK-Lycanroc | TK10-Lycanroc |
| Alolan Raichu | TK10B | TK10A | TK10R | TK-AlolanRaichu | TK10-Raichu |
As you can see, TK10A can refer to either the Lycanroc or Alolan Raichu deck, depending on what code/abbreviation system is used.
A different situation occurs with the XY Trainer Kit: Latias & Latios:
| Deck | PTCGO External ID/PkmnCards URLs | RK9/PkmnCards sets | PTCGO name | Compendium |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latias | TK8A | TK8A | TK-Latias | TK8-Latias |
| Latios | TK8B | TK8O | TK-Latios | TK8-Latios |
Since PTCGO only has Trainer Kits starting with the BW Trainer Kit, TK-Latios and TK-Latias refer to TK8, but outside of PTCGO, these could also refer to the very first EX Trainer Kit, which was also Latios/Latias.
I prefer TK{NUMBER}{A-Z}. Doing something like TK8A and TK8O is a bit confusing to someone who doesn't know the Pokemon in those Trainer Kits.
I prefer TK{NUMBER}{A-Z}. Doing something like TK8A and TK8O is a bit confusing to someone who doesn't know the Pokemon in those Trainer Kits.
Aren't TK8A and TK8O using the format TK{NUMBER}{A-Z}? Or do you mean like TK8A and TK8B for "Deck A" and "Deck B"?
Yea I mean Deck A and Deck B rather than the first different character of the main trainer kit.
I prefer TK{NUMBER}{A-Z}. Doing something like TK8A and TK8O is a bit confusing to someone who doesn't know the Pokemon in those Trainer Kits.
Yea I mean Deck A and Deck B rather than the first different character of the main trainer kit.
I would counterpoint here by saying that if we use "A" and "B" there is no way to derive which one is A and which one is B solely by looking at the deck or product. This may end up being acceptable and we could still go this route... it's just a downside I wanted to call out.
(I once thought "oh, the left one should be A and the right one should be B, when looking at how the product was packaged." Unfortunately PTCGO sometimes chooses the reverse, e.g. for the Black and White Trainer Kit the Zoroark deck is TK5A, even though it's on the right in the packaging.)
However I accept that you'd have to make somewhat arbitrary decisions if you wanted to use single letters derived from the Pokemon Names (e.g. Alolan Raichu--do you use "A" or "R"?).
Ultimately the least ambiguous way ends up looking like what "Compendium name" is; if I say TK5-Zoroark, you know exactly which deck I am talking about, without needing to refer back to some table. The downside is the long identifier; it's a bit inconsistent to be using, say, three-letter abbreviations in some table or field, and then suddenly see an "abbreviation" that is "TK10-AlolanRaichu" when you get to Trainer Kits... it's not really an abbreviation at all!
I'd like to go back to the very first point I made, which I could paraphrase as "it is nice to be able to identify the product by its abbreviation alone, and not have to refer back to some table." The counterpoint to that is there's already a memorization/required lookup needed for "regular" sets anyway; sets like "Dark Explorers" vs "Dragons Exalted" could both be reasonably abbreviated as "DEX" and you just have to have a table at some point that says "DEX is Dark Explorers, and we're gonna call Dragons Exalted something else." So that's kinda my counterpoint to my own counterpoint :)
Anyway there is nothing stopping individual webapp logic from hardcoding additional mappings for convenience, regardless of what's in the dataset's "abbreviation" field. E.g. "someone typed in a search for set:TK5Z, they probably mean the Zoroark half deck from the Black & White Trainer Kit."
Yea I mean Deck A and Deck B rather than the first different character of the main trainer kit.
Japanese sets use the first different letter approach (e.g. S5R for S5 Rengeki, or S1W for S1 Sword), and while of course that's not tpci, it's still an "official" approach to resolving such cases and I think it would be nice to stay consistent with that when in doubt.
RK9/PkmnCards version looks the most useful for set abbreviation usage, they make it quite easy to figure out what product is meant (same as codes like "VIV" or "BST"), while still being clearly a set code, compatible with PTCGO and japanese abbreviations, which is nice for parser purposes (compared to "TK-Lycanroc" which is closer to a card name).
Japanese sets use the first different letter approach (e.g. S5R for S5 Rengeki, or S1W for S1 Sword), and while of course that's not tpci, it's still an "official" approach to resolving such cases and I think it would be nice to stay consistent with that when in doubt.
RK9/PkmnCards version looks the most useful for set abbreviation usage, they make it quite easy to figure out what product is meant (same as codes like "VIV" or "BST"), while still being clearly a set code, compatible with PTCGO and japanese abbreviations, which is nice for parser purposes (compared to "TK-Lycanroc" which is closer to a card name).
While this would be the most convenient & elegant way to do TK abbreviations for most of the TKs, you'd need some sort of solution for the Latias & Latios Trainer Kits (both the EX-era one and the XY-era one). "TK{some_number}L" would be ambiguous there.
I'd just use the first unique letter, which should always be possible I guess? Like with S1 Sword & Shield -> S1W & S1H. So "A" and "O" in this case.
Yet another thing to consider here is that the TPCi codes refer to sets in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese (for current sets, at least - Russian comes into play for XY-era, and a few others here and there during the EX-era and WotC-era). For Latias and Latios, we kinda luck out that they're Legendary Pokémon and thus identical across languages, but what about Bisharp and Wigglytuff? They're Caesurio and Knuddeluff in German, respectively. TK7B and TK7W might not be as intuitive there.
Maybe this is where set code vs set abbreviation ( #6 ) comes into play - it seems like, overwhelmingly, the set codes don't depend on the localized name whereas the set abbreviation does. Maybe TK#A and TK#B could be for the set code, and then a version using the Pokémon name for the set abbreviation? This could make the set code match up 1:1 with the TCGO's name field, and the set abbreviation would be along the lines of externalId (though it probably wouldn't be 1:1 due to the Lati@s issue).
I'm just spitballing here. I'm not sure if it simplifies or further complicates the issue.
One way to uniquely identify a particular Pokémon without language dependency would be to use the National Pokedex Numbers.
This would solve the language dependency for Wigglytuff/Bisharp thusly: TK7-40 and TK7-625.
However, different forms or regional variants of the same Pokémon would require a way to distinguish them from each other. Adding a letter to indicate region (ala 26 and 26A for Raichu and Alolan Raichu respectively) is easy enough, but different forms would likely still be language dependent (412P, 412S, and 412T, for the Burmy Forms, for example).
Currently, the necessity to differentiate forms does not exist in any trainer kit, but it could be an issue in the future.
I'm just spitballing here. I'm not sure if it simplifies or further complicates the issue.
One way to uniquely identify a particular Pokémon without language dependency would be to use the National Pokedex Numbers.
This would solve the language dependency for Wigglytuff/Bisharp thusly: TK7-40 and TK7-625.
However, different forms or regional variants of the same Pokémon would require a way to distinguish them from each other. Adding a letter to indicate region (ala 26 and 26A for Raichu and Alolan Raichu respectively) is easy enough, but different forms would likely still be language dependent (412P, 412S, and 412T, for the Burmy Forms, for example).
Currently, the necessity to differentiate forms does not exist in any trainer kit, but it could be an issue in the future.
National Pokédex number could be a way to do it, but... idk. That gets hard to read pretty quickly, cause then you'd have things like TK7-625_14; a bit hard to understand what it's saying. The letter for form(e)s brings us back to the localization issue 😅
We are already standardizing on English for most of the rest of the codes (HGSS, BW, XY, SM, SWSH, etc.), so I don't think language issues are as big of a concern as I was thinking.