beautyget view "category"
Input:
• Swipe Finger/Stylus up/down (kinetic) or use analog controls to scroll.
• Move Finger/Stylus left on an item to scroll through available screenshots and videos ("showflor items", screenshots to the left, video(s) to the right) or use analog controls (left/right) to scroll the highlighted game.
• Tap a game's "More" button or use Pandora buttons to open the detailed view (opening view "game-showfloor"; The middle game is automatically highlighted at all times for button control reasons).
• Tap the rating bar of an item to immediately rate it.
• Tap "Back" button in navigation bar to get back to view "category-selector".
• Tap "Close" button in navigation bar to quickly fade to view "beautyget-quit" and close beautyget.
Guidelines for content developers:
• Ideally, screenshot 0 of your game should show a typical (usually main-) menu (if applicable), screenshots 1 and 2 should show typical ingame action (if applicable), screenshot 3 should show ingame action, either typical or uncommon (if applicable). Only EITHER screenshot 2 or 3 should show something different if necessary. (unless any of that doesn't make sense in your particular case, of course)
• Is your "game" a "utility" or some other kind of non-game? Use meaningful screenshots then. You should crop AND scale your screenshots so they reflect important "parts" of your software. Screenshots 0 and 3 should show parts which demonstrate what makes your software special (if applicable, otherwise treat them similar to screenshot 2), screenshot 2 should show a part that IN ADDITION shows the user what kind of software it is that you're giving her (text editor, emulator, media player, IDE...). Screenshot 1 should be focused solely on communicating what kind of software your software is (Any way to accomplish this is a good way in screenshot 1, as long as the user "gets the idea". Be creative and don't have fears to try out weird ideas in screenshot 1, but only do this if it's not a game or it WILL look silly!).
• Usually it is NOT a good idea to put the icon of your software in any screenshot or show it in any video over an extended period of time.
• Your game should have at least four screenshots. If there are no screenshots (or less than four), your game's entry in beautyget won't look nice. Of course, the more screenshots, the better (as long as they're not weird). There don't have to be any videos at all for your game, but having at least one video (video 0) for every game out there would be nice, wouldn't it?
• Ideally, video 0 should contain a good amount of ingame action and be no longer than 20-30 seconds to quickly demonstrate why the user may find your game interesting (unless any of that doesn't make sense in your particular case, of course).
• Any video except for video 0 should have a short description that is no longer than a yet to be determined number of characters (maybe 140 would be a good choice?). Video 0 will not have a description.
• Any game can have an unlimited number of screenshots and videos as this is not critical to traffic.
• I will create a simple, quick and visual overview of these guidelines to make it easy for developers to understand all of them so we can hopefully enjoy a mostly coherent experience throughout beautyget.
Thoughts on rating:
• Installing an item will automatically remember it as "to be rated positive (68/100) if not uninstalled within 24 hours, to be rated positive (85/200) if not uninstalled within 48 hours, to be rated positive (95/100) if not uninstalled within two weeks" if the user did not manually set any rating (50/100 == neutral rating; (< 50) == negative rating). When uninstalling an item, view "item-ratealot" wil be displayed, asking the user to rate.
Server-side(?):
• For every showfloor item there is for a game, the server will create a very low resolution version (202x121 Pixel, called "category view showfloor items") and compress them to further reduce traffic caused by the category view's features. Screenshots 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be compressed into one file ("category-view-showfloor-initial"), with subsequent screnshots being compressed in chunks of four (or less, if there are less left) which will be called "category-view-showfloor-" followed by a number, beginning with 1(screenshots 5, 6, 7, 8 will be compressed into "category-view-showfloor-1", screenshots 9, 10, 11, 12 will be compressed into "category.view-showflor-2"...). Videos will not be compressed to chunks but instead recoded by the server (with a yet to be determined quality) in the process of scaling them down.
• "showfloor-whenhasitlastchanged": Whenever a game is updated on the server, the server will check if any screenshot or video ("showfloor items") has changed. If so, it will update the showfloor-whenhasitlastchanged value.
Thoughts on loading:
• Screenshots and videos ("showfloor items") will be cached and always displayed from cache first. Whenever a showfloor item is determined to be displayed soon (see below), its game's showfloor-whenhasitlastchanged value from the server will be compared to the locally cached version. If they don't match, all of the game's showfloor items will be deleted from cache and all of the game's showfloor items that are determined to be displayed on the screen soon (see below) will be updated in cache, every finished file will then be updated in the UI as soon as it has finished downloading.
• How to determine how many (and which) screenshots of which games should be loaded so the user has a "fluid" and "snappy" experience that feels as if there wasn't any dependence on a server: Whenever a category view is being opened by the user, beautyget should first download screenshots 0, 1, 2 and 3 ("category-view-showfloor-initial") of games 0 to 8 (one after the other in order of appearance in list) to measure the average download speed and determine how many ms it takes to download one "category-view-showfloor-initial" (this value should be kept up to date from that moment on). By using this value and the current scrolling speed (downwards of course, as the user will see the top of the list at the beginning), we can on the fly update the number of additional category-view-showfloor-initial to download (again, one after the other in order of appearance in list) so that ideally the four main screnshots of games that are entering the screen from below as the user is scrolling along the list are already loaded the moment the user scrolls to the game (whether the files are already in cache or not should not be taken into account by the calculation). There should be a buffer (size yet to be defined, what about 6? I really have no idea here) of additional game's category-view-showfloor-initial that should be loaded in advance in case the connection to the server suddenly gets slower. However, in any case not more than 40 upcoming game's category-view-showfloor-initial should be loaded at a time. (Should downloading be stopped completely in case it is being detected that the user is "going crazy" with the kinetic scrolling?)