AGS Game Ratings Drive

[cat]

I went though the list of my games today and added the thread numbers to them. It was not a lot of effort. I know, people like Ponch will have to do much work. Still, I think it's not too much to ask for.

On another note: Now that we are currently so active - wouldn't it be nice to add missing screenshots? On the mainpage, out of the three randomly chosen screenshots often only one is available. Is there a way we could collect them and upload them to the db? I guess most of the authors aren't active anymore. The same is valid for broken download links...

[Ghost]

I checked and found that RAM Ghost is marked as not yet rated on its database page, but doesn't appear on the unrated / not much rated pages either. So at least one game managed to slip through the security net! Alert!!!

[Andail]

Naturally, only the authors and the rating staff can alter/fix the screenshots, but if people would like to help by taking screenshots and uploading them to a reliable host, we could do the rest.

[Ponch]

I went though the list of my games today and added the thread numbers to them. It was not a lot of effort. I know, people like Ponch will have to do much work. Still, I think it's not too much to ask for.

I know, right? Gah! If only I had legions of minions to do these things for me. This is why I still don't have an entry for Barn Runner on the AGS Wiki. I need minions for my internettings. But who can afford to hire wiki-minions in this economy? (e-minions? iMinions?) 

Thanks, AGA, for doing all of this. It must have been a lot of work. I can only assume you have legions of minions. I'm very jealous.

[AGA]

Naturally, only the authors and the rating staff can alter/fix the screenshots, but if people would like to help by taking screenshots and uploading them to a reliable host, we could do the rest.

It's actually more straightforward than that.  If I'm given GAMEID.jpg and GAMEID_thumb.jpg for a game, I can just stick them in the right directory and the system will use them.  Much quicker than updating the database for dozens of games!

GAMEID.jpg should be the full size screenshot, and GAMEID_thumb.jpg resized down to 320x200.  So if people want to give me these for their own games, or any other games they see fit, I can do that.  We don't strictly speaking need the thumbnail either, it'll scale them in the browser if it has to; it just takes a lot less time to download a small thumbnail than a full size pic.  It someone ends up doing more than a couple, it'd probably be best to zip them up somewhere, rather than spending ages doing save as for loads of images.

Thanks, AGA, for doing all of this. It must have been a lot of work. I can only assume you have legions of minions. I'm very jealous.

Yes, they're named Me, Myself and I.  They're a strange bunch, but they get the job done.

[selmiak]

would png also work?

[AGA]

Nope!  The system converts all formats to jpg (because converting more lossy formats like jpg or gif to png would be silly), and as such expects local screenshots to be jpg.  png would of course be preferable, but there are already too many lossy images out there.

I might consider keeping pngs as pngs, but converting gif to jpeg, but the image rendering code is quite complicated, so it might take a while.  If you want to provide png AND jpg versions, I may use the pngs... eventually...

[Ponch]

But I have lots and lots of games in the database (and still no AGS Award! Curse you, AGS Community! When are you going to stop playing these games with my heart and let me love you?!? ). Do you charge extra for inserting all my screenshots? Or do you farm that out to your minions? Do you accept personal checks? Or do I just put money in my DVD drive slot? How does this work exactly?

[Igor Hardy]

Okay, the database will now show a game's GIP, CGA and Hints threads, if you edit the page to contain the thread ID.  There's no sane way of automating this though, so games' owners, or members of staff, will have to update it for each game.

That's great, but there's a small malfunction. The thread IDs are zeroed every time the game database entry is edited.

[Tramponline]

I have reworded the voting bit to be far more obvious.  I have vaguely considered adding some sort of context based AJAX thingamabob that lets users do certain things, but don't hold your breath.

Cheers, AGA. You really ARE on a roll!

[Radiant]

If you're editing the games page anyway, would you mind making the second line (e.g. "by Herculanean Effort Productions" on this page) to link to a list of all games by that particular producer? And I think the list of credits would look better if the lines "foo has worked on 743 other games" were shown in a third column to the right, rather than as intermediary lines under every username. Just my $.02.

[AGA]

Okay, the database will now show a game's GIP, CGA and Hints threads, if you edit the page to contain the thread ID.  There's no sane way of automating this though, so games' owners, or members of staff, will have to update it for each game.

That's great, but there's a small malfunction. The thread IDs are zeroed every time the game database entry is edited.

I just realised the edit page was accidentally returning the same value for all three thread types, because I forgot to update the variable names when copy pasting   Which meant if you only entered one or two thread types, the others may have been overwritten by the other blank entry each time.  Should be fixed now!

If you're editing the games page anyway, would you mind making the second line (e.g. "by Herculanean Effort Productions" on this page) to link to a list of all games by that particular producer? And I think the list of credits would look better if the lines "foo has worked on 743 other games" were shown in a third column to the right, rather than as intermediary lines under every username. Just my $.02.

I'll add these to my list.

[AGA]

If you're editing the games page anyway, would you mind making the second line (e.g. "by Herculanean Effort Productions" on this page) to link to a list of all games by that particular producer? And I think the list of credits would look better if the lines "foo has worked on 743 other games" were shown in a third column to the right, rather than as intermediary lines under every username. Just my $.02.

Okay, done.  Each game's page now has a link to a list of all the games by an author.  I also structured the credits list to be more clearly separated.

[selmiak]

looking good.

see them <<
could be renamed to
unsee them <<
or something less cheesy and more fitting

[CaptainD]

Just wanted to bump this back to the top because despite a few of us trying to rate more games, I don't think we've yet made much of a dent in the "Games with 5 or fewer ratings" list.



BE A MAN (OR INDEED WOMAN), RATE A GAME!

[Ryan Timothy B]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/notveryrated/

Would it be possible to have the AGS Panel cup rating in this list as well? I wanted to help rate a few of these, I just want to make sure I play the games that haven't been rated by the panel yet. Two birds, one stone.

Edit: There was also an argument ages ago about people complaining about the AGS Panel ratings vs User ratings. Quite a few wanted to be able to sort the games by user rating. A column realignment would be required. I'd love to see the orange cups side by side with the blue cups (perhaps a smaller cup graphic is needed).

[AGA]

I've injured my hand and had to have surgery (minor wound, but temporarily quite debilitating), so any feature requests may have to wait a few days, if not a few weeks.

[Stupot]

I've injured my hand and had to have surgery (minor wound, but temporarily quite debilitating), so any feature requests may have to wait a few days, if not a few weeks.

Oh, that old chestnut.
Just kidding.  Hope it heals quickly

[AGA]

I'll scan in the discharge papers if you don't believe me!

(thanks)

[Ponch]

Just wanted to bump this back to the top because despite a few of us trying to rate more games, I don't think we've yet made much of a dent in the "Games with 5 or fewer ratings" list.

I meant to do this over the weekend, but I never got around to it. I think I'll try to rate a game or two every day on my lunch break. 

BE A MAN (OR INDEED WOMAN)

Wait... are you giving me the option... I'm not sure I like the direction this thread has taken.