THE FEATURED GAME THREAD

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SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

The blue stuff keeps the site clean. If you have stuff all over the place it become distracting and loses some of its importance.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
It also looks great on phones, no blue stuff. And adding more crap to the sides is not a solution.
The image I showed, the bottom was considering a list of games that would be based on what you'd played in the past - similar to "other people who played this game liked" but more centric to the games you'd downloaded before. Basically recommendations based on your previous downloads. It's definitely a wip.

Frankly, I very much like the idea of having the tabs with scrolling options, and the feature taking up the full space of the column to differentiate it from the others and keep being prominent.
Make Featured Game Great Again

The Discover Queue sounds like a neat idea, if done right.
Tabs will work really well for Articles, Tutorials, Resources, Reviews, etc because those are things people deliberately seek out. Games and screenshots should maintain a degree of constant exposure though.
author=Liberty
I mean, it's completely understandable why that happens - a game goes into New and Notable when it's added to the site. There it garners some attention since it's a neat or interesting looking game. Then a download is added for the interesting/cool game. Then people download and talk about the game.


It's working as intended - showing off the interesting new games that are on the site and letting them get some time in the sun over older games that have been around forever. That's what it's supposed to do.

That said, we've looked at a few different visual changes to the front page. One thing we came up with was something like this:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/301093365183807499/411092555975884810/unknown.png
Where it'd be a bit like Steam with scrolling images (like we have with the featured bar) and title tabs allowing you to click through the different parts.


This is pretty nice, but I'd be in favour of inverting the sidebar there so random screenshot and pic of the moment are closer to the top. I've been on this site for ages and I have no idea what RMN TV is even supposed to represent so having it prioritized feels weird.

I also don't really think having latest blogs on the frontpage makes sense, since it sort of requires engagement with the game in particular- someone visiting isn't really gonna care about a patch update or what have you for a game they've never played or seen before. (I would make the same case for media and maybe downloads but that's just me being overly minimalist lol)
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Buzzing games are good where there. If you're a newcomer to the site, you're probably looking for something like pom or lisa.
But I wouldn't be against having two title pages and an option to switch between the two. This for regulars and a simplified version for newcomers.

I quite like changes on liberty's proposition with one exception -left sidebar. It breaks unity of the design and you can find it easily under games.
I like articles/tutorials/resources. These are great sections of the site not everyone knows about.
Videos are getting quite popular around here, so rmn tv might start making sense soon.
If you're really worried about the front page looking messy, make two front pages. One for the general audience, and one for the community.

Since most of the people that come here are really just looking for free games to play, have the front page feature buzzing games, new and notable, featured games, ect.

The community front page, which would be one click over, would feature the spotlight development, spotlight kickstarter, featured screenshots, ect. These things are great, but your average chum that's looking for a cool free game really doesn't care about them.

This also opens up options to add a lot more stuff when needed.

I don't see it as that big of deal how it is, honestly. It's a bit cluttered, but it works. If you're really worried about it though, two pages is the only way you're going to fix that without stripping things away.
Oh my lord are we really suggesting two front pages

Give everyone their own frontpage
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
We will call it rmnspace!

Seriously though, it's such an awful idea.
When I say "two front pages" I'm not literally suggesting two front pages. I'm not even sure that's conceptually possible.

It boils down to moving things off the front page, and putting it on another page, rather than removing them entirely.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
That's basically what the site is though already. There's always going to be rpgmaker.net front page. You can pretty much find everything on another page besides the front page. That's why it shouldn't be so packed.

author=InfectionFiles
We will call it rmnspace!

Seriously though, it's such an awful idea.

is it though? people have asked for a variation on this, and also asked if it was possible to follow certain creators...
customizing the front page is something I want to put in rmn.vNEXT. which i'm working on right now. alone. in my head.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Also, please purchase rmn.com.
author=Cap_H
Also, please purchase rmn.com.


Unfortunately rmn.com and rmn.net are actively being used. rmn.org and rmn.network are for sale.

I own rpgmaker.games and rpgmaker.network though.
author=ankylo
customizing the front page is something I want to put in rmn.vNEXT.

Sounds nice, but it's not exactly what people would like to see.
For us gamedevs, the ultimate goal is to have people play our games. So ideally, the front page should be designed exclusively to serve visitors looking for something to play. Latest Downloads, Random Images, Highly Rated, they all serve that purpose. Latest Blogs and Articles, a lot less so.
And Buzzing is busted. Can't we just be rid of it already? :|
It's not busted. It's working as intended. That said, perhaps a date check to remove games that are over a year old might help other newer games get exposure.
...If you pay attention, the Buzzing Game section rotates fairly frequently. Annecdotal assertions that it's "busted" isn't reflected by reality. Every game that is on there now wasn't there 3 or 4 weeks ago.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I agree with the idea of helping visitors looking for games to play, but it needs to be a little more nuanced than that. I think the front page should be displaying games that incite visitors to want to keep looking through RMN to see what else we have, not any random game with an updated download. Not only is that really easy to abuse, but subpar images covering the front page don't paint RMN in the best light. That's why I think the highly rated and new and notable sections should definitely be further up top, with buzzing maybe somewhere in the middle. We don't have a constant enough stream of submissions for RMN TV for it to be on top, so I think it should be moved down.

Personally, I think there are some neat ideas mentioned here that would make a great addition to a different page. For example: If you click on the Games tab, you'll see a list of games organized by latest activity. That kind of list would look great on the Community portal instead.

Also, this button right here:

would be great to add to the front page.

We can still make some additions even without messing with the pages layout. For visitors and members alike, functionality can be added to the header to help move them towards game pages:



Look at all that blank space between the recover password and google search options. And this is on my low res monitor. My main monitor has more than double that free space. These are functions anyone can easily reach regardless of what page they're on.
author=kentona
...If you pay attention, the Buzzing Game section rotates fairly frequently. Annecdotal assertions that it's "busted" isn't reflected by reality. Every game that is on there now wasn't there 3 or 4 weeks ago.

That's because, just last night, Liberty manually removed the ones that WERE there 3 or 4 weeks ago.
If something similar is done to prevent these instances of 3 years of Pom plus 2 years of Pocket Mirror and Lisa, then yeah, I'd agree that it's a pretty cool and useful function. But if not, then it becomes a permanent showcase for games that are advertised heavily off-site, defeating the goal of this site.