New AGS Website

[AGA]

Ok, I finally had some time to try and finish this off. So:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Home.aspx

the Browse Games bit and the Post Comment have been implemented, so i think the new site is now nearing a state where it could become the new official homepage.

There are still some bits missing (such as Voting on a game which sends you back to the old site) but generally it's now looking good.

any comments?
(I know the download AGS link is broken but will work when the new site moves onto the main URL)

Ah, so I managed to guilt you into spending the rest of the night working on this then?  Excellent.

[Snarky]

It is nice. The site hierarchy is a little confusing, and I'm not keen on having the navigational items on the RHS, but aesthetically I think it looks a lot nicer.

One thing I noticed as I was trying to nominate games for the AGS Awards with the current site was that it wasn't possible to do a search for a certain category of game (e.g. short game, non-adventure), and then filter or sort it by release date so I could check out the ones from 2011. The new search seems to order results randomly (or by some system I don't understand) instead of alphabetically, but that's hardly an improvement.

So I would like to be able to sort the search results by name, release date, cup rating, etc. It would also be nice to have the ability to switch the results list between the expanded view you get when you do a search, and the condensed view you have for the A-Z list.

[AGA]

While you can't *filter* by release date, you can at least go into the A-Z list then sort by date.  Which with roughly two pages of games released per year isn't too much effort.  Filtering would be a nice touch though, I admit.

[Snarky]

Yes, but on the A-Z list you can't see which games belong in which category, so you have to go through every game and check its description.

Also, it's simply confusing to have two completely different ways to list games. If you start by "browsing" (which is really searching), you may never realize that the A-Z list offers completely different features. Ideally the two list styles should be unified, so that the A-Z list appears the same as a universal search of the database, and all the features of both versions are available however you've generated the list of results.

Of course I'm not saying this is a showstopper that has to be fixed before moving to the new design (especially since it's the same in the old version), just one rather important part of the site design I think could and should be improved at some point.

[SSH]

Also, not sure that we're still celebrating 10 years of game making. Maybe could auto-calc that from the date with a bit of PHP

[Dualnames]

*Checks date this topic started*

So, yeah, it's nice. I say go for it.

[SSH]

So, if we need another new design in 2015, we better start working on it now 

[Stupot]

I like it.  Couple of small niggles though, you may already be aware of:

On the Picks of the Month page, 'Ben304' appears where I'm assuming it should say 'April 2012'.

Also, in the 'showcase box'

The text is obviosuly set to wrap underneath the image, but there isn't enough text to make it look like wrapping. It just looks weird, a random couple of words just hanging there.  Maybe the text could be cut off earlier so that it's guaranteed to tail off before it gets to the bottom of the image.  Further still, I wonder if you could set it so that the mini-description given in this showcase box automatically ignores any breaks between paragraphs that occur in the main game description.  So that the 'Although the...' would automatically be told to follow the full stop after 'nanobots'. If you get what I mean? :-)

[Snake]

I'm a bit of a stickler, but this image...

...has 3 screenshots. 2 screenshots are of the same game. Shouldn't all 3 either be of different games or the same game?
Maybe showcasing a commercial AGS game, a freeware AGS game and a non-adventure would work.

I thinks it's a bit odd the way it is.

Other than that, I think it's great and let's release it already!

[tzachs]

Great stuff! 

A few comments:
1. Is there a way to not show games with broken images on the front page? It kinda ruins the look.
2. When you click on a developer to see other games from him/her, there is no separation between games which the developer is the author of, and games in which he/she contributed to. If no separation, I'd at least put the author's games first. Also I think that the highly rated games should be put first, so that at a quick glance I'd be able to get a taste of that dev's best work.
3. The dev team comments are colored in red. Maybe a different choice of color? The red makes it look like an error.

[Ryan Timothy B]

1. Is there a way to not show games with broken images on the front page? It kinda ruins the look.

Actually with AGS Archives already storing people's images and games, why not integrate the two?

I also agree with changing the color of the red text from anyone who is a developer of that game. Maybe bold and black? I'm not sure.

[Icey]

What is that game? The 2 from the screen shot? I've wanted to play it cause it look kinda cool.

[Ryan Timothy B]

I believe it's a nonexistent game by Loominous just to make a graphic example of how the front page should look.

[IndieBoy]

Wouldn't it be better if the screenshots were of well known ags games? Seeing something like a screenshot of Gemini Rue in the editor on the front page would do wonders for the promotion of the engine. We would need to get permission of course, but something to think about rather than 2/3 shots are of a game that isn't released and will be getting a lot of attention from new visitors to the website.

Also I am so glad that things are picking up again in terms of the next stage for AGS.

[Ghost]

Seeing something like a screenshot of Gemini Rue in the editor on the front page would do wonders for the promotion of the engine.

I absolutely support that. One commercial game, one well-known freeware game (we have a couple of prolific game-makers, so why not get some use out of that), and at least one of the shared-universe games (RON most likely). That should cover a lot of what AGS has been used for. Alternatively, I heard webpages are almost magical in their ability to be changed: Why not include the Pick-of-the-month as a constantly changing screenie here? PITM tends to be featured on blog sites, so it's cool to find a game, be linked to AGS, and see it there again.

[Tartalo]

There's a character encoding problem here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/616/Soviet_Unterzgersdorf

The new design looks really well

[Stupot]

Yeah, I noticed that too.  Like, Vince's "∞ bit" comes up as "∞ bit".

[Lt. Smash]

1. Is there a way to not show games with broken images on the front page? It kinda ruins the look.

Or/And create a default placeholder image.

There's a character encoding problem here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/616/Soviet_Unterzgersdorf

Encoding in UTF-8 should do the trick (instead of iso-8859-1)...

The new design looks very good.
Suggestion: On the games page it would be nice to click the screenshots to enlarge them. (like lightbox, highslide, etc.)

[Pumaman]

Thanks for the feedback!

When I click the whats new in 3.2.1 link it takes the viewer to the forum where alot of technical info is. To some this is great but to the average joe (who may never have come across AGS) this may seem a little confusing. Could there not just be a list of the upgrades or limitations of the version.

Possibly, but I'm not sure that someone who's never come across AGS would be interested in what's new in the latest version -- surely they'd be more interested in the general features of the program. We could do this, but it'd be just one more thing to keep up to date.

* Dont know where to post this bit but is someone gonna get rid of A Niggas Revenge 2 ?its broken, offensive and on the first page on the list of games. An outsider who happens to be Afro American could well cause bad press here.

Looks like that wasn't even a game and was just some offensive spam, so I've deleted it.

** There is no add your game link on the games page will this be implemented (or did I miss a memo somewhere) 

Good point, it needs a link adding to that.

It might be a good idea to open the "Coming Soon" and "Hints and Tips" links in a new window/tab since they navigate away from the main page.

That might be a good idea -- but we'd probably then get some people complaining about all the popup windows the site was opening as you browse around, so I'm not sure at the moment.

it's simply confusing to have two completely different ways to list games. If you start by "browsing" (which is really searching), you may never realize that the A-Z list offers completely different features. Ideally the two list styles should be unified, so that the A-Z list appears the same as a universal search of the database, and all the features of both versions are available however you've generated the list of results.

Thinking about it now, that's a great idea and would make more sense.
However, it's certainly not something to hold up the release for -- might be neat to do that later on as a follow-up feature.

On the Picks of the Month page, 'Ben304' appears where I'm assuming it should say 'April 2012'.

good spot, that was just a mistake with the latest pick (nothing to do with the new site) but I've corrected it.

The text is obviosuly set to wrap underneath the image, but there isn't enough text to make it look like wrapping. It just looks weird, a random couple of words just hanging there.  Maybe the text could be cut off earlier so that it's guaranteed to tail off before it gets to the bottom of the image.  Further still, I wonder if you could set it so that the mini-description given in this showcase box automatically ignores any breaks between paragraphs that occur in the main game description.  So that the 'Although the...' would automatically be told to follow the full stop after 'nanobots'. If you get what I mean? :-)

thanks, I'll take a look at this!

I'm a bit of a stickler, but this image...
...has 3 screenshots. 2 screenshots are of the same game. Shouldn't all 3 either be of different games or the same game?
Maybe showcasing a commercial AGS game, a freeware AGS game and a non-adventure would work.

I don't really see the big deal here -- nobody's really going to be inspecting that image in detail, and newcomers to AGS may not recognise any of the games anyway. Still, if someone wants to do a replacement image then we can always swap it out.

1. Is there a way to not show games with broken images on the front page? It kinda ruins the look.

unfortunately at the moment there's no tracking of whether the screenshot image URL is valid or not -- this would be neat to add at some point.

2. When you click on a developer to see other games from him/her, there is no separation between games which the developer is the author of, and games in which he/she contributed to. If no separation, I'd at least put the author's games first. Also I think that the highly rated games should be put first, so that at a quick glance I'd be able to get a taste of that dev's best work.

Nice ideas, would be good to do at some point.

3. The dev team comments are colored in red. Maybe a different choice of color? The red makes it look like an error.

Yeah it does look a bit harsh. I'll take a look at it.

There's a character encoding problem here:

Hmm yeah that seems to affect the current site too ... I think the database got restored at some point and the character set was set wrong, so now half of the data is in UTF8 and half of it is in ASCII... to make matters worse it looks like the current website has been saving some strings back to the DB in HTML Entity format. I need to sit down and clean this up at some point.

[Icey]

Might be too much work but I was wonder, for the forums would it ever be possible to give a member the ability to change the color scheme to what ever they wan't or to like some stock colors? It would also be cool if they could change the banner gif thingy to their games pic. It would give the user a little more customization and it'll be something new and different. I'm mean AGS and the forums it self could benefit from a lot of new things like maybe a FB like button. For some reason a lot of people think it's evil but I see it as a way of advertising your works or in some cases there's those times when you see a post and you don't know how to comment on it or maybe the post is just so old. All you have to do is hit the like button and bam.