THINGS WE WISH FOR... PART 1.

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Things We Wish For... Part 1.

RMN is still in its adolescent stages. There are a lot of features we have planned we can't wait to show off. There's a long way to go, which makes this phase so interesting. Things can change and transform into something better than we first envisioned.

As administrators, we sometimes get tunnel vision while looking at the site; we see what we want and not what users want. So, in an effort to combat that and to really bring members into the planning stages, WIP is letting me start a series of topics about specific parts of the site that I personally want to address. With your help, let's try and turn these ideas into actual coded, working systems!

_The Games Page

We're going to start with the beast, here.

How I envision RMN to one day work is most of the action will take place in a person's game page. Think of it as the equivalent of a person's myspace page.

*Everything should be comment-able unless the author desires it not to be.

I want to be able to go to a screenshot and drop a message if I feel I have something to say. Then, the author will be notified with a mailbox message saying, "You have a new screenshot comment!" and can view it.

This should include the game itself. Reviews shouldn't be the only way to keep in touch with a game.

*Games should have an additional Help Section

Think of this as a mini-forum for the game itself. If you have a gameplay question, or you're stuck someplace, this section will be where you can post a question. (**the obvious question is: why have this when we have the forums? I think it tidies everything by keeping it in the game page itself. The issue of more than just the author being notified about any posts here comes next:)

*A user should be able to subscribe to different games.

By subscribing, I basically mean adding it as a favorite. Along with the "Latest Submissions" portion of the front page, we should have a section about all the updates that are going on with our subscribed games. If I subscribe to say, The Frozen World or Ara Fell, and someone posts a help question, I should also be notified. Or, if there's a new download or a new screenshot, the system should also tell me.

*The text entry portions should be as sophisticated as the forum text entry portions.

Increase/Decrease size is nice, but I want bold, italic, and underline tags. Maybe even to add images.

More as I think of it. I think this is good enough for discussion right now.

Thoughts and comments?
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
There are a few things I want to bring to attention. The first being the separation of roles of the site and forum. Currently, all communication takes place on the forum. By moving game comments and screenshots and such to the actual game pages, that lowers the importance of the game forum.

In that case, how do things get separated?
Completely agree on the comments.

By moving game comments and screenshots and such to the actual game pages, that lowers the importance of the game forum.

By not allowing comments, you're making the main web page pointless. By your logic, if people want to comment on something, they need to make a whole forum topic for it. What's the point of that- if there's a perfectly good place to discuss it already. If a project, for example, has its own page- giving it a forum topic as well is redundant.

I understand what you mean, but comments aren't discussion. Comments are comments. The real threads and topics on the forum- some of the solid topics on game design theory, etc- wouldn't disappear into the main site in comments. That's really what the forum should be for. Allowing comments on screenshots, projects, articles, etc, on the main site would only heighten functionality.

I don't think it would lower the importance of the forum. If anything, it would make the forum more important for serious discussion, and would leave the shorter little comments elsewhere. I know that I've seen a few screenshots in the submitted games and would have liked to say a little something about them; but nothing worth starting a forum thread for.
Starscream
Conquest is made from the ashes of one's enemies.
6110
If it was up to me, it would work like this.

Everything, everything, EVERYTHING on the site should be comment-able. Games, reviews, articles, screenshots of games, etc. Sometimes I want to say something about an article or a screenshot, but making an entire thread about it on the forums would be silly.

This may lower the post count on the forum, but that is irrelevant. The strength of a community should be on the progress of the site, not merely based upon forum activity. There is a certain "rpgmaker" community out there that has hundreds of thousands of posts, but the site is a virtual ghost town because no one has any reason to go there (nor did they when they even bothered to update the site.) Besides, you will still be able to post "hype" threads, game discussion threads, polls, etc about the games on the forums. However, for something like this to be effective, the entire look and feel of the latest submissions tab would have to be extemely organized, and subscriptions to not only games, but to users in general would be important.

For example, I like Brickroad's articles. RMN lets me know through my subscription that Brick has had another article published on the site. I would also be able to see the article added on a "latest section" without it being drown out by 30 screenshot updates. This would mitigate the need for Brick to "double post" his article as a stupid thread on the forums so someone notices his article.
author=rcholbert link=topic=37.msg415#msg415 date=1181608831
For example, I like Brickroad's articles. RMN lets me know through my subscription that Brick has had another article published on the site. I would also be able to see the article added on a "latest section" without it being drown out by 30 screenshot updates. This would mitigate the need for Brick to "double post" his article as a stupid thread on the forums so someone notices his article.

Pretty much agree. However, I would do this even if the articles were commentable, simply because comments tend not to breed discussion. Comments tend to be reams of people saying, like, "Hey man nice article." I like to talk about the article with people, and the forum is the perfect medium for that, especially if the conversation starts to drift in another direction.
RMN needs a little icon that shows up in webbrowsers address bar and tabs. That is all. :-\
Thanks for the discussion, guys!

I agree--the forums should be more of an addendum to the site, not the other way around. Feedback should be able to come from all sorts of different directions, but consolidated into an easily-organized section for the users.

Also, kentona, we'll work on it! ;)
The Games section definitely needs a major overhaul. I should be able to search or sort by title, creator, engine, genre, filesize, etc.

Also, there should be some way to tell how much content each game has. Just by glancing at the list I want to know how many screenshots there are, whether or not there's a download and if so how big it is.

Then it should hop out of the computer and do my dishes and give me a blow job.
author=The Real Brickroad link=topic=37.msg442#msg442 date=1181669429
Then it should hop out of the computer and do my dishes and give me a blow job.
I second this.
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
Okay there are some site updates today.

  • Filtering on the game list. You can now click links for the engine and genre to view only those games. More advanced searching will come later.
  • Minor update. Screenshot viewer uses left-click to toggle between zoom and unzoomed.
  • Offsite download links. You can now submit an offsite download link for your game. Also with this update comes a few exploit fixes for download counts. Download count is now only incremented for available downloads and users who are not the author.
  • Submission panel upgrades. User submission panels now show the message an admin leaves when approving/denying. And the page is also paginated now, so it'll expand properly when you have more submissions.
It would be uber helpfull if you could edit the game's title and genre after submitting.
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
author=thedjt link=topic=37.msg634#msg634 date=1181916870
It would be uber helpfull if you could edit the game's title and genre after submitting.
That's actually the next thing I'm working on. You'll be able to edit pretty much anything you've submitted using the same form.
More general information about the different RPG-making engines. A page for RM2K3, RMXP, and maybe a few other major ones like Game Maker that attract attention, with a description a few paragraphs long and several helpful links (where to buy/download, support forums, etc.)

Game developer blogs where developers can post screenshots, upload downloads, and get comments from others.

More clutter on the frontpage. Just kidding :P.

EDIT: I just noticed you have a miscellaneous "Who Knows?" category in articles.. I thought you hated those, WIP!
The Games section needs work. The list of page numbers needs to be at the top of the page as well as the bottom. Perhaps a Alphabet list as well (0-9 A B C D E ... Z) to list games that begin with that letter. Sorting by different attributes would be useful, too.

The recently added games section is a good idea, but I second the idea for a random game being showcased. (can't remember where I read that).

*A user should be able to subscribe to different games.
*Games should have an additional Help Section

Both are excellent suggestions. I would also advocate an entry for a game's homepage (if one exists).
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
  • Progress update. I've done a lot of tweaking to the game management pages.

    You can finally update your game's information! Funny how someone might want to change their game status or title.
    • You can currently edit screenshots. Next up is downloads and update logs.
    • The whole layout is organized a lot better.
    • Text fields now let you know if you can use BBCode. The majority of them will let you.

    Next up after the download and update management, I'm going to be working on the games page. Sorting by title, rating, downloads, and other such stuff. I'm also going to be adding some more info to the list, showing if a game has a download or not. You'll be able to search on that as well.

    The bigger piece of the pie will be comments on things. I have a pretty good idea on how to implement it in the site's database. That'll come after.

    The site already has subscriptions to games inside it, but it's disabled due to not having an interface. I'll finish it soon.
I think this site is starting up quite nicely, and I congratulate the staff on everything they've accomplished so far. Here are some constructive nitpicks:

  • Make the RM.Net logo more dominant. It's a very nice logo it just needs a little tweaking. It should take up more of the upper left corner space, it should be as tall as the Google ads or it's losing its hierarchy.

  • Breaks in threads between posts. There's currently an alternating gray color to separate posts but I think there needs to be more of a break between the individual posts. Either a bit more of a real 'line' or a break to the background color. (See other forums for what I mean.)

  • Add a spell check option. The option would be nice for the forums, I've even seen forums where they do it automatically (takes you to a preview screen with the checks before you submit) which slows down the quick reply process but then again it's just one more click. I think if you want to establish a more intelligent standard for the forums I'd make it automatic along with forum guidelines as to use at least capitals, spacing, punctuation, and not chat speech.

  • I'm sure you're still in the process of ironing out bugs everywhere but I've noticed that alot of times the text seems to disappear into the background color, such as becoming invisible in gray both on the main site and at the forums. Highlighting it reveals it again and fixes the glitch.

So far great job though guys, keep it up!
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
The invisible text is an IE6 bug called "Peekaboo". It's harder for me to diagnose it since none of my computers actually have IE6 anymore.
author=Fish link=topic=37.msg1264#msg1264 date=1183101701
  • Make the RM.Net logo more dominant. It's a very nice logo it just needs a little tweaking. It should take up more of the upper left corner space, it should be as tall as the Google ads or it's losing its hierarchy.

We could make the background a large RM Network watermark (vs. the solid color it is now).

We could add a favicon to the site (which I think someone brilliantly suggested some time ago ;D

We could also have a RMN smiley for inside posts themselves.
WIP
I'm not comfortable with any idea that can't be expressed in the form of men's jewelry
11363
author=kentona link=topic=37.msg1270#msg1270 date=1183131177
We could add a favicon to the site (which I think someone brilliantly suggested some time ago ;D
Strangely enough, there was a favicon on here. Looks like something broke, though, so I'll check it out.
Does the download count increment if the game itself is stored offsite?
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