ARCHIVE: Snarkpit v6 Feedback Thread

Re: ARCHIVE: Snarkpit v6 Feedback Thread Posted by Riven on Sun May 31st 2009 at 5:51am

Riven

1640 posts

Posted 2009-05-31 5:51am

Post #206490

Riven

Wuch ya look'n at?

super admin

1640 posts 1266 snarkmarks Registered: May 2nd 2005 Occupation: Architect Location: Austin, Texas, USA

ooh! -Shiny! I like that new info pane! I also checked out the new form fields for the edit games page, seems easy enough!

I really like the Game Info Pane A lot, and I think we should use it. I'll have to get busy one weekend filling out all the info for each game and find out what information could be standardized for fitting into that quick info pane you have appearing on the right-hand side. Because I believe in what Yak_Fighter was describing. -Places to go for command lists, and what the player sizes are and limitations. This is all info that we could include in that space, but for some games it could get pretty lengthy, and push everything down quite a ways. -Would that technique look like tacky web-design? I'm no serious web-designer, but what do you think in your opinion?

So yea, I like the info-pane setup you made a lot, -really I do! -BUT... for the aforementioned reasons I don't think it would allow enough space for all the info to appear in a nice formatted way.

SOO....

larchy said:
I don't like that big long text list of all the games Lemme work some stuff up.

Well frankly, I would like to see an actualized full list of all our games in the database. I mean, it's nice to see them in the dropdown list box when searching for maps, but if they were spaced apart and perhaps organized via engine type or mod (now I don't mean to re-organize our database to setup which games are mods of others or anything like that because I know you went out of your way to consolidate them, and I like how they are all listed as games now) But a page kinda like the one I shop'd-up real quick with maybe a tree-style format to the games (and a little bit more space between lines) would make it easy to understand how these games fit into the Half-Life universe (along side the information displayed on that page).

I imagine the game selected would get highlighted and have double arrows pointing to the right to show you that's the game info you're currently viewing. I also wanted to use the "Welcome to the SnarkPit Content Database" page as a chance to explain our mission statement (without having to view a FAQ page. BTW: -I think FAQ pages should be for explaining common difficulties people come across when using the site, or wondering why things are setup the way they are...) I could use the "Welcome to" page to not only explain ourselves, but also point users to the nav links at the top and explain the site features and tools. Of course, the "Welcome to the SnarkPit Content Database" page doesn't have to say that exactly -that was a quick title idea... If people think it might become important enough, it could get it's own nav link at the top along the lines of "Game Info" or "All Content" or simply "Games". Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but I like the idea of the user being able to see a fully organized list of our games -A Lot.

-Some other notes: The new "ABC" for filters, is nice. I must admit though, at first I didn't understand how to use them. Maybe I'm just ignorant when it comes to this, but now I realize. They are all highlighted by default, and as you grey them out, they get "filtered out" of the list. -Genius, except I'm not one apparently, cause it took me a little playing with it to figure it out. Now I understand the simplicity of it for quick filtering for return users. But If others agree with me I think some ways to make it more obvious for someone like me, you could add green and red 'lights' or colored green and red hues of the letters, or checkmarks and X's. Somehow, I need to know that it was filtering to begin with, and that those buttons are indeed for filtering. The reason I included the default checkmarks in my quick mock-up, is because people are used to them, and that's how I thought it might work. After using it, I like your method better, but I can only blame myself for not 'getting it' at first. -Just tell me I'm dumb, and ignore this comment -It won't hurt my feelings.

Now, I understand that if you were to filter the games so that they could organize themselves dynamically on that game landing page in terms of games-mods, that's all the organization should be for. I still like the alphabetical layout for the drop-down lists that should stay like that. It doesn't need to be something that the user should be able to filter for or anything. It's just a technique for organizing them on the landing page, so it wouldn't need to be elaborate. -Perhaps (if you did make this landing page) the organization could be tacked-onto the existing database. All I'm saying is, if it's too much work, don't bother, because the organization wouldn't be seen anywhere else on the site.

A couple of other feature requests (that I think might have been already mentioned) To make it easy on users, -everywhere a game name appears, I want to see that game's icon. -This means for all drop-down lists (just like the map's search lists) and even the map, download and article edit pages. I want users to be able to associate the icons with the game names, because some users are familiar with just the icons before realizing the game name) -Also, those dropdown lists (on the map, article, and download edit pages) should be alphabetically organized as well.

-Oh, one more thing, -About the game banners: Whatever we decide to do about having an info pane or entire info page (or both), I want to be able to use the same game banner image that's used for the Map's featured game's list for the banner image for game info. Perhaps, (if it's too big for some places) -You could either add code to resize it for say the info pane, or add another upload box that asks for a re-sized version of it (I don't mind resizing a second version before uploading). -Again, this is for the ease of user association. If I were a new user to forums or databases, I would have liked being able to find my content without a lot of reading. If I can click a couple of icons or simply find my content without having to read anything, the better. -And if those same images start to appear in different places, I can freely (unconsciously) associate what they are and only worry about 'Why they're there' in order to understand that particular site's layout all the more better. Doing that for fly-by-night guests, who are only visiting our site cause they heard we have some older maps for download, would help them get in and out quite easily. -Now this may seem like dooming us to guests only, I imagine those guests would return in the future knowing how easy it was to search through our database, then we may be able to attract them via our community posts and forums. But with that said, that's the ultimate goal -To make our database the easiest to understand and search. To be better than 40 pages of forum threads with different headlines (like most sites do) for their user-created content. I want to standardize the content and it's organization very well so that ANY user noob or veteran alike can enjoy our site along with its wealth of information! Those last few comments reflect this, and I'm sorry for posting such a huge wall of text. -It's a bad habit, and normally wards off most everyone except the one concerned...

So, yea, those are my thoughts. I hope I'm being more constructive here?

Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Re: ARCHIVE: Snarkpit v6 Feedback Thread Posted by larchy on Sun May 31st 2009 at 6:17am