Topic: New website launched, domain name moved!

[Pumaman]

Finally, after 2 years of discussion, the new website has launched!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk

Sorry it's taken so long, and thanks to everyone for your help designing and testing the new site.

In the process, I've finally cleaned up the domain names -- previously both bigbluecup.com and adventuregamestudio.co.uk were pointing to the same server but only bigbleucup.com would recognise forum logins.
Now, I've changed it so adventuregamestudio.co.uk is the official domain and bigbluecup.com just redirects to it. Hopefully this should simplify everything (also also help the google ranking of the games pages, as their ranking was divided amongst two domains before).

Let me know what you think!

[Ali]

Looks great!

In Firefox 11 the last line of the Showcase and AGS awards text is sometimes cropped. Not all the game screenshots are showing up for me. Apprentice II and Journey down both have no screenshot.

Also, I see the boxed-number characters in place of apostrophes, which has been mentioned before. I don't know if it's quotable but...

[AGA]

Firefox 11 is so April 24th!  Upgrade to 12!

[Pumaman]

In Firefox 11 the last line of the Showcase and AGS awards text is sometimes cropped. Not all the game screenshots are showing up for me. Apprentice II and Journey down both have no screenshot.

The cropping should now be sorted. Unfortunately there's no easy way of putting the ellipses text cut-off at the right place on multi-line text, so it looks a bit of a mess now. If anyone knows a way to improve this let me know.

As for the screenshots, some of them are broken but it's up to the game authors to fix them, we don't host the screenshot images. I guess this is more prominent now that the new website makes a bigger deal of showing game screenies...

Also, I see the boxed-number characters in place of apostrophes, which has been mentioned before. I don't know if it's quotable but...

Ok, fixed Apprentice. Let me know if the apostrophe problem is anywhere else.

[Eric]

Unfortunately there's no easy way of putting the ellipses text cut-off at the right place on multi-line text, so it looks a bit of a mess now. If anyone knows a way to improve this let me know.

I feel as though I've worked on a web project where, somehow, a query was run, and the ellipses were -- I assume you're cutting off after a certain number of characters? Anyway, the query looked for the closest space before the cut-off and put the ellipses there. This may have also involved changing all spaces into  s in that div. I'm racking my brain trying to remember which project this was, but I feel as though I've discovered one of those brain cells that died from high school alcohol use.

[Tartalo]

Let me know if the apostrophe problem is anywhere else.

Character encoding problems:
http://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/1436/3

The name of the game is <3 (not 3)

http://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/822/Emma_Rodehttp://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/1417/Gear_BladeDXhttp://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/724/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Fountain_of_Youth_DEMO
http://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/257/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Fountain_of_Youth_ROLLING_DEMO
http://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/1515/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Passage_of_Saints
http://www.bigbluecup.com/Games.aspx/Detail/1121/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Spheres

Trademark symbol after Indiana Jopes in every case

[Wesray]

Great work on the new website!

One issue though: maybe it's just me being blind and stupid, but is there a way to show the most recently added games? I like to download and test every newly released AGS game, but with the current setup of the games DB I don't really see a way to do that? 

EDIT: Nevermind! Looks like new games are added to the end of the uncategorised list, as long as there are no votings yet. Still, would be great to also allow filtering or sorting games based on their release date.

[steptoe]

Hi

maybe this is still to do but in a recent game you can't edit the game info.

Good job so far 

[icey games]

I noticed that Qr quest and Tifa's ballad won't add themselves to my games list.

[tzachs]

Fantastic! 

Some few future suggestions that just occured to me:
- Allowing the game author link to more than one screenshot and having a gallery in the game page instead of one screenshot.
- Allowing to link to a trailer and have it embedded in the game page.
- Adding a 'talkie' checkbox when adding a game, and then allowing to search for 'talkie' games.

[Tabata]

I noticed that Qr quest and Tifa's ballad won't add themselves to my games list.

  They really didn't?! 

So you forgot to implement the newest "super-duper_does-all-by-itself-module" for sure
or didn't pay the "ferryman" ...


Sorry, but I couldn't withstand!     

[steptoe]

Hi AGA

Ref: maybe this is still to do but in a recent game you can't edit the game info.

In the Games Download section

If I go to a previous game of mine eg The Scared Tablets of Tibet I see a blue background option link to edit the game info, whereas if I go to my latest game Murder Most Grisly!! it has N0 blue background option link to edit info.

Also my latest game Murder Most Grisly!! is not listed under steptoe games when I view other games by steptoe.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1570/Murder_Most_Grisly

Also, you don't have search games by username.

[cat]

Do I just not see it or is there no length information on the gamepage anymore?

[monkey_05_06]

Just as a point of interest, was there any difference in the meta data between bigbluecup.com and adventuregamestudio.co.uk? I seem to recall that my work's firewall blocked the latter but not the former. Don't want to argue the ethics of circumnavigating work firewalls, just curious.

[cat]

Maybe it just filters for "game"?

[stepurhan]

One issue though: maybe it's just me being blind and stupid, but is there a way to show the most recently added games? I like to download and test every newly released AGS game, but with the current setup of the games DB I don't really see a way to do that? 

EDIT: Nevermind! Looks like new games are added to the end of the uncategorised list, as long as there are no votings yet. Still, would be great to also allow filtering or sorting games based on their release date.

To follow up on this, is there really no other way of seeing the most recently uploaded games? It sounds like if a game gets voted on before I see it then it will get lost in the general game list. In fact, if I set a search for only uncategorised games, it is coming up blank at the moment. Does this mean there are no recent uploads or not? It would be good if the browser options had a choice to search by release date to deal with this.

Given I write a monthly article over on Adventure Gamers about new releases in freeware, this is a major issue for me.

[AGA]

One issue though: maybe it's just me being blind and stupid, but is there a way to show the most recently added games? I like to download and test every newly released AGS game, but with the current setup of the games DB I don't really see a way to do that? 

EDIT: Nevermind! Looks like new games are added to the end of the uncategorised list, as long as there are no votings yet. Still, would be great to also allow filtering or sorting games based on their release date.

To follow up on this, is there really no other way of seeing the most recently uploaded games? It sounds like if a game gets voted on before I see it then it will get lost in the general game list. In fact, if I set a search for only uncategorised games, it is coming up blank at the moment. Does this mean there are no recent uploads or not? It would be good if the browser options had a choice to search by release date to deal with this.

Given I write a monthly article over on Adventure Gamers about new releases in freeware, this is a major issue for me.

The A-Z list allows you to sort by date added.  Hopefully CJ will find the time to add other search options at some point though.

[Frodo]

Is anyone else having a problem posting in the Forum Upgrade thread?   

[AGA]

Is anyone else having a problem posting in the Forum Upgrade thread?   

Define "problem".  I just made a test post there and it went fine (I then deleted it).

[steptoe]

Hi

Thanks for completing the tasks to the problems of my last post.

Except seeing games made by steptoe in profile. But this is not essential at minute.

cheers 

steptoe

[Frodo]

Is anyone else having a problem posting in the Forum Upgrade thread?   

Define "problem".  I just made a test post there and it went fine (I then deleted it).

Every time I post, I get a database error message.

"Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator." 

I've managed to post the word "test" now, but I can't edit it. 

Tabata is having the same problem, and she asked me to post in there for her. 

[icey games]

I noticed that Qr quest and Tifa's ballad won't add themselves to my games list.

  They really didn't?! 

So you forgot to implement the newest "super-duper_does-all-by-itself-module" for sure
or didn't pay the "ferryman" ...


Sorry, but I couldn't withstand!     

ahh you got me lol. Nah but I put my name in like I did the others and it just won't sync to my list. everything after Dreams -PMQ won't sync. But who knows, maybe I just misspelled my name or something.

[TomatoesInTheHead]

Is anyone else having a problem posting in the Forum Upgrade thread?   

Define "problem".  I just made a test post there and it went fine (I then deleted it).

Every time I post, I get a database error message.

"Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator." 

I've managed to post the word "test" now, but I can't edit it. 

Tabata is having the same problem, and she asked me to post in there for her.

Just tested it, this works for me. Maybe the database was somehow corrupted during the forum upgrade or the works thereafter?

[Knoodn]

Is it possible to see a people rating breakdown? Or is this gone with the new design?

(Apart from that I like the new look.)

[Pumaman]

the sync betwen the games page and forums was temporarily broken while we did the changeover, it should all be working again now. Let me know if you have any further problems with that.

As for the game voting detail page -- good point, I forgot about that. I'll add it back in at some point.

[Pumaman]

Oh also, we need a real replacement "Download Demo" button graphic for commercial games such as this:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1407/Gemini_Rue
Could someone whip one up that has a consistent look with the rest of the site?

[Ryan Timothy]

Only because I'm such a kind young lad, here you go:





I wasn't sure if you wanted to keep with the current style being "Download This Demo!" or just simply use "Download Demo!".

[tzachs]

It seems that big words ruin the text-wrapping:

[Pumaman]

Only because I'm such a kind young lad, here you go:

Thanks! That's been replaced.

tzachs -- thanks, that was actually a problem where the blog post had non-breaking spaces in, but that's now been corrected.

Also, I've done an update so that the game length is now shown in the game detail pages, as some of you noticed it was missing.

[SSH]

Yes, sorry, not sure how the nbsps got in there, but I fixed it.

[Tabata]

Sorry, this might sound stupid,
but is it intended that no current date and time is displayed somewhere on the page?

btw
When visiting the forum as a guest, this information is not shown here also. 

... or I am in need of new glasses 

[stepurhan]

The A-Z list allows you to sort by date added.  Hopefully CJ will find the time to add other search options at some point though.

Great, thanks for letting me know.

[Lt. Smash]

As for the broken image links, possibly this could help:
http://www.tech-evangelist.com/2007/09/15/missing-image-fix/

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I just noticed that the revamped games pages no longer provide links to the other games made by the author.  I hope this is just an oversight because it's extremely useful for tracking down sequels and so forth.  Perhaps you could add another frame directly beneath the Play Games frame with 'Other Games by this Author'?

[Bòógieman]

Hi there! 

I am trying to update my game information but I always get this error:

Forum verification failed. Your session may have timed out. (Auth=)

But on the edit-page it recognizes me as the game author

Current password:   Password not required, you are logged in as the game owner (Bòógieman)

And now after a few failed updates it does not recognize me as the game author anymore (but I am still logged in) 
Or at least the edit-link suddenly disappeared

[AGA]

I'm not dealing with the site upgrade (which is what this is, hence my moving your post into that thread).  However, I suspect it may possibly be something to do with the unusual characters in your username.  If you want, you can PM me the changes you would like to be made in the meantime, and I'll make them for you until CJ can have a look and work out the reason for your problem.

[Khris]

I fixed the reflections on the main page:



http://i.imgur.com/NS1C3.png

[tzachs]

If you search for AGS in google, you get some nice sub-links for:

Games? - AGS Forums? - Download AGS? - Picks of the month?

Out of of those, only the Games page is redirected to the new website, the rest of the links still show you the old website.

[stu]

In the Games database I can't seem to click on a screenshot thumbnail to view it full sized, instead I have to copy and paste the image URL (or drag & drop the thumbnail to a new tab).

Am I missing something, or has this been overlooked during the refurb?

[Afflict]

Seriously loving the new look guys Great job! 

[Mods]

Definitely want to re-iterate the most recent games thing, especially for the very front page of the site. Could we not have the most recently added 3 games say in a list like "Most popular last week" above or below that? Or a link in the top section leading to the Completed games forum or something?

[selmiak]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Games.aspx/Detail/1403/Beacon

I just came across this and see no filesize. Probably because it is hosted on a free filehoster. It's 6.4Mb btw.
And as there is no long description I cannot see other games by the creator (in this case pinback). A link to the creators gameslist right in the top under the gamename would be helpful in these cases.

and a shorter link is easier to read and even more search engine friendly:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/1403/Beacon

[AGA]

Fixed all that.

[selmiak]

The journey down could really need a screenshot not only because it is always shown at the bottom of the main games page as it won enough awards, but also because it won enought awards. I think it earned a screenshot!
And speaking of screenshots, the picks of the month list will also benefit from showing the screenshots there too.

So the style for the 'rate the game' page will be converted to the new style some time sooner or later? As will all other old styled pages? Or is it helpful to track down all the pages that are still in the old style? I didn't check yet if there are any other pages besides the 'rate the game' page in old style at all, just asking...

[selmiak]

it's cool that the game list is now in the new style. I think there should be a better way to browse the list, which means: more links. Under the prev page next page line there should be a line with ALL page numbers just clickable there, with only 15 pages this is not that space consuming and just use a small font and we are set for the next 20 years in AGS gamemaking and only one line of pagenumber links. And it makes browsing the list so much easier than clicking next all the time or fiddeling with the url.
And also a line for ever letter in the alphabeth that has a game starting with it and a link to the first game in the list. Don\'t forget about the # and the ever so popular @specialcharacters at the start of a game name.
and just a small thing (but probably a bigger code thing): would it be possible to sort the game normally by alphabeth when sorting by rating from best to worst?

keep up the good work on the page