New AGS Website

Started by Pumaman, Fri 27/03/2009 22:37:25

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Jared

Awww, come on, ditch the characters? It's the sole cute-and-fun feature of the current page! Don't you people remember what this page is for?

SpacePirateCaine

I've been thinking, how difficult would it be to implement an 'If you liked this game, you'll also like...', or just a 'similar games' reference in the new games page? I think that it would help people find games that are of interest to them that they may not find through a word-based search.

Basically, my thought is to group games with a similar theme - medieval comedy with medieval comedy, sci-fi suspense with sci-fi suspense, etc. For example, someone who's played them both may draw a parallel to The Vacuum and 7 Days a Skeptic, since they're both sci-fi suspense thriller type games, but unless I knew about both, it'd be hard to know that one is similar to the other. It could help some less well-known games get a little more recognition.

I know that we already have games sortable by genre, but oftentimes people search for specific titles, and some cross-promotion could certainly help, I think. If not specific games, even a button to 'Find more Sci-Fi Horror titles', for example, may be handy. Does anyone agree with me that this might be a useful feature?
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abstauber

Another neat feature would be to make the characters dynamic  :=

So forum members could upload a character to a pool and the webserver creates a new banner on a per day base (or shorter if traffic and cpu-power allow it)

Maybe somekind of approval board would also be necessary, so we won't see tons of viagra pills on the banner ;)

JpSoft

Quote
Ops!
How the hell did this happen?

This page doesn't exist. If you just clicked a link on the official AGS-site, please post on the Forums to notify us about the broken link.

It is suposed to happen?  ??? i just clicked this links

AGS Engine Plugin API

AGS Editor Plugin API

Jp

Bob

Quote from: SpacePirateCaine on Wed 01/04/2009 13:23:49
I've been thinking, how difficult would it be to implement an 'If you liked this game, you'll also like...', or just a 'similar games' reference in the new games page? I think that it would help people find games that are of interest to them that they may not find through a word-based search.

Basically, my thought is to group games with a similar theme - medieval comedy with medieval comedy, sci-fi suspense with sci-fi suspense, etc. For example, someone who's played them both may draw a parallel to The Vacuum and 7 Days a Skeptic, since they're both sci-fi suspense thriller type games, but unless I knew about both, it'd be hard to know that one is similar to the other. It could help some less well-known games get a little more recognition.

I know that we already have games sortable by genre, but oftentimes people search for specific titles, and some cross-promotion could certainly help, I think. If not specific games, even a button to 'Find more Sci-Fi Horror titles', for example, may be handy. Does anyone agree with me that this might be a useful feature?

I love it!  To implement this, each forum member could maintain a checkbox-style list on their profile of their favorite games, which in turn would be analyzed by a feature similar to Amazon/eBay.  For each game profile, it would come up with a list of about ten or so games that appear most frequently in favorite game lists containing that title.

Dualnames

Some real legends miss from the character sprites but well..
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

..

#46
I realise I don't post much here any more but seeings as webdesign is my forte just thought I should offer some opinions.

I do like how it feels much more like the homepage for a piece of software (the current one feels a bit too much like a forum for me) and is very simple and to the point, but the overal aesthetic needs a little work, mainly the glows, the colours and the type as they have a bit of a tacky and dated feel.

Sorry, I hope I'm not sounding too harsh!  It's definately headed in the right direction, but might need a bit of a paint job before I could definately say it's an improvement over what we have now.

Stupot

Regarding the News page:

I think the right-hand column could be entitled "Industry News" and perhaps contain a small list of links to various RSS feeds from news sites such as AdventureGamers or GameBoomers.  Maybe even link up to the RSS feeds of developer's sites such as Wadjet Eye.

I'll just mention, in the <title> tags for the 'News' section it still says 'Forum'.

Pumaman

QuoteEdit: Upon looking at it with fresh eyes, the characters looked really washed out, so here's another version with a less bland effect, but where I crunched up the contrast of the logo instead, to retake some of the attention:

Thanks for trying this out. I'm really not sure about this -- the characters do look good like that, but I'm not sure if it draws too much attention to the right hand pane instead of the main page area that people should be looking at?

QuoteSo we have a list of games and one can scroll through them by clicking on the left or right button. Even better - without buttons. You can just move your mouse cursor to the left/right side of the flash animation an it'll automatically scroll to the left/right by showing other games.

That's certainly a possibility, but I think that would be better saved for the Games page. The first two of those screenshots are of the editor, and cycling round screenshots of different games being edited is probably not worth the hassle.

QuoteI understand your reasoning, and I still think it can work to show a sense of progress. But if they have to represent both lo- and hi-res art, I definitely think the middle one should be changed to a third game. Also, the left screenshot clearly has characters and GUI visible even if what we're seeing it in the room editor. This ought to be a plain background not to look obviously photoshopped.

I'm not sure if it matters that much -- people aren't going to analyse those images in great detail, but rather it just needs to be enough to get them interested in finding out more.

QuoteThe leftmost reflection doesn't match the graphic above it

Hehe yes, maybe the reflections should just be removed.

Quoteon the AGS page, it would be awesome if there was a "See changelist" link right below the version number

Good idea, thanks ... I'll give that a go.

QuoteAlso, I think the recent forum posts box would look better if "Posted by..." and "X minutes ago" was on the same line so there would be less white space between the headers

This was how it was originally, but each entry didn't quite look "beefed up" enough. Maybe putting the name of the forum it was posted in (eg. "Technical Forum", "General Discussion") might pad this out?

QuoteA small thing I noted was also that on the AGS and Forums pages the main text box is offset a few pixels vertically from the top sidebar box

Heh well spotted, the left column is 1 pixel higher, I'll move it.

Quoteplease put "current version" on main page

Ok, I'll try and see where this could fit in.

QuoteI've been thinking, how difficult would it be to implement an 'If you liked this game, you'll also like...', or just a 'similar games' reference in the new games page? I think that it would help people find games that are of interest to them that they may not find through a word-based search.

Yeah, this has been suggested a few times. The main question is how we would populate this data -- it would take ages for someone to go through and manually link all the games up like this.

QuoteAnother neat feature would be to make the characters dynamic 

So forum members could upload a character to a pool and the webserver creates a new banner on a per day base (or shorter if traffic and cpu-power allow it)

Hehe, now that's taking Web 2.0 to the next level  :=

QuoteIt is suposed to happen?   i just clicked this links

Yes, the links that link back onto the original site don't work at the moment, they will work when the site goes live and the URL changes though.

QuoteI love it!  To implement this, each forum member could maintain a checkbox-style list on their profile of their favorite games, which in turn would be analyzed by a feature similar to Amazon/eBay.  For each game profile, it would come up with a list of about ten or so games that appear most frequently in favorite game lists containing that title.

Interesting idea, I wonder if that would work...

QuoteI do like how it feels much more like the homepage for a piece of software (the current one feels a bit too much like a forum for me) and is very simple and to the point, but the overal aesthetic needs a little work, mainly the glows, the colours and the type as they have a bit of a tacky and dated feel.

Well if you have any ideas on improvements and can post a mock-up, that would be great -- but otherwise I think we're basically agreed on the overall design and colour scheme now.

QuoteI think the right-hand column could be entitled "Industry News" and perhaps contain a small list of links to various RSS feeds from news sites such as AdventureGamers or GameBoomers.  Maybe even link up to the RSS feeds of developer's sites such as Wadjet Eye.

That's not a bad idea, it could even serve as a replacement for the Links page on the current site.


Also, I've taken this opportunity to resurrect the Bug Tracker, which has lain dormant for quite a while. The sheer number of entries makes it quite hard to know how to take it forward, but maybe it needs some sort of voting system where people can back the suggestions that would be most useful to them?

Trent R

#49
Yay! The Bug Tracker will be nice to have again.. (after we prune it first).

Many of the previous mock-ups (in the lost thread) showed a "Welcome <user>!" sort of thing. Is logging into the main-site going to be a reality? If so, then you really could implement oddsea's suggestion, and a slur of other things that can be optimized for that.


~Trent
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Pumaman

QuoteMany of the previous mock-ups (in the lost thread) showed a "Welcome <user>!" sort of thing. Is logging into the main-site going to be a reality? If so, then you really could implement oddsea's suggestion, and a slur of other things that can be optimized for that.

Yes, well you can already log into the main site, which is how the games page lets you manage your games. For pages where it is useful, the site can integrate the forum login.

I've done a very rough mock-up of the main Games page, but I'm not very happy with it at the moment. There are lots of different potential things to take centre stage (Showcase, Pick of the Month, Award Winners, Search, etc) that it's hard to know how to lay out the page for best effect. Any ideas?

SSH

Ooops, thanks for reminding me that I'd forgotten to update the POTM! :=

12

mätzyboy

Quote
Yeah, this has been suggested a few times. The main question is how we would populate this data -- it would take ages for someone to go through and manually link all the games up like this.
Crowdsourcing. If people are logged in while voting for games in the DB you can build up interesting correlations between not only games, but users too. User A who has liked the same games as user B can be recommended games that the user B has already played and liked and vice versa... A way of making the results interesting from the start would be to harvest user ratings for some time before launching the recommendation functionality.

m0ds

And the AGS logo with characters on it? A point that seems to have been missed out completely...

passer-by

I'd like it a bit darker, this light blue it is not so easy to read, in my opinion.

m0ds

Hmm, something wrong with new.adventuregamestudio.co.uk ??  ???

Ishmael

Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 05/04/2009 19:21:23
I've done a very rough mock-up of the main Games page, but I'm not very happy with it at the moment. There are lots of different potential things to take centre stage (Showcase, Pick of the Month, Award Winners, Search, etc) that it's hard to know how to lay out the page for best effect. Any ideas?

I'm liking it, but I do feel it's a bit all over the place when compared to the AGS and Forum pages. Maybe it could use a frame like they have, too? That would then pose the problem of slightly limiting the amount of contents you can reasonably put in, though. In a way of thinking... Ofcource you could just tile everything vertically in one frame and be done with it but that might get a bit boring.
I used to make games but then I took an IRC in the knee.

<Calin> Ishmael looks awesome all the time
\( Ö)/ ¬(Ö ) | Ja minähän en keskellä kirkasta päivää lähden minnekään juoksentelemaan ilman housuja.

Anian

#57
I like the new font and the main page, the content is a matter of tweaking. Everything looks new and fresh, but just maybe a bit too fresh? Not exactly sure
what is trying to be said with the design, but personally I don't have any "retro" feel of what most AGS users probably try to achieve. Don't get me wrong, this is
great, and if what's trying to be said with the design is "look what modern looking games you can create it looks like it was made in Flash etc." (and you can, AGS
is great, but I didn't get the impression it was made for that, just like it wasn't made for fpshooters).
Somebody said something about it being "darker" so that's maybe close to what I'm trying to say in short.

Oh, and maybe a suggestion for the top banner, I'm a bit too lazy to make it now, but as a thought, make it more fluent with the rest of the site (that may even be
applied to the entire site, but it's not that important). It looks a bit empty (perhaps because it's a WIP, in that case nevermind), something to make a user think "I
wanna make some cool adventure games" with an athmosphere, something like the left part of the present banner but more modern.

Oh, and a  :) so you get that I'm not trying to be rude or too serious.
I don't want the world, I just want your half

IndieBoy

So what's happening to the re-vamp then?
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Stee

Hate to say it but its way, way too bright.

If my vote counts... darker colours, or less white. Its starting to look like a wordpress thingy (i don't like wordpress thingy's).
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