c4a.openpandora.org Website

[JePP]

Congrats to everyone involved in making c4a happen, it is obviously a brilliant addition to the Pandora library.

I also like the general lookout of the website for it, but there are these little things that I personally find a bit annoying - I guess feedback is allowed and wanted, so maybe someone agrees and it is changeable.

Let's say I've just submitted a Mr. Do highscore and want to check my rankings on the website. I open http://c4a.openpandora.org/ , hit Ctrl+F and enter Mr. Do... doesn't work. That means I have to scroll and search for the correct Image of the game, instead of simply being able to click on it with a quick and simple search. So maybe it is possible to write the names of the games under the image?

Secondly, for even quicker access, maybe a no-image and basic website alternative would be nice to have - I think skeezix had this set up, I don't know if it exists anymore?

Third, for newcomers, the title image "Insert coin - Download Comp4All Mame" might be a bit misleading, as it does not mention that now a lot of homebrew games can be played, too, and not just Mame games. IMO, download links for all games with c4a support at the top or anywhere else on that page would be great to have! That way, the user doesn't have to check up on each game individually whether or not it offers c4a, but can just download them all through links on the c4a website to the repo.

So much for my feedback, game on

 

[foxblock]

I agree with all of this

There is a "games" drop-down on every detail page, but it's missing from the home page. Also navigating said drop-down is awkward, would be better as a scrollable list of fixed height instead of creating a dynamically sized list with every game visible, imo.

Additionally games on the main page are ordered by the ident name, which is confusing since for example Space Invaders is called "invaders" internally and therefore shows up before "Ladybug", but one would assume it's just before Street Fighter.

Overall navigation could use a bit of work, but the site looks and works great otherwise. Thanks a lot milkshake

 

[_wb_]

C4A is a victim of its own success I guess - the list of games supporting C4A is growing rapidly, and the website is getting more and more crowded. The above suggestions are fine, but I'd like to add a few of my own:

- Browse by game genre

- Browse by category (MAME / Port / Original)

- Collapse the various variants of the same game to one item in the overview

- Show only the top score if there are several consecutive "recent activity" entries by the same person for the same game.

 

[foxblock]

Collapse the various variants of the same game to one item in the overview

Oh yes, great idea, having Super Hexagon 6 times on the frontpage seems hardly necessary

Guess there needs to be some kind of "mode" implementation in C4A's standard (I would rather have this solved in the C4A backend than just the frontend)

 

[skeezix]

I was thinking of adding a 'tags' field in the server; trivial to do, but the frontends could use it. ie: all the superhexagon games could be under tag 'superhexagon', or even a 'group: superhexagon' type of key/value. I've brought it up with milkshake, so its one of those things.. will happen down the road.

My thought is to show at the 'top level' default view, any ungrouped guys, and a group-level marquee (pick one at random from member of group, say); then if you pick one that is a groiupped guyl, redraw the page buyt onyl selecting ones that are a member of the group.

The server already passes down a genre (platform, shmup, etc.), and 'field' (indie, arcade, ..) and some other stuff.

So yeah, its one of those cases of.. we're growing and evolving, and each component has to wait for the others to catch up, etc

Bring this thread to milkshakes attention, and see if he has time.. or if he's off, summer time, riding boats or hanging at the beach

jeff

 

[skeezix]

For an unordered plaintext interface, see here:

http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/links_1

Still works; ugly as sin

jeff

 

[_wb_]

Tags or modes would be nice indeed. I would like to add another ranking to NubNub based not on the points, but on the highest level reached. I might also want to add extra rankings to Microbes for the community level packs, and maybe even for the default level packs individually. I'm not doing that because I don't want to clutter the website / the tournament hub with all those multiple instances of the same game.

Another thing:

In my games, scores only get submitted if you improve your personal best score. I think this is also the case for some other games. In NubNub I could change that to always submit a score if that is what people want, but in Microbes the "score" is inherently a kind of overall game progress status, that can only go up.

In these cases, it does not really make sense to have monthly resets. Or at least, the "All Time" ranking is a more sensible default than the "Current Month" ranking. The config files only make the distinction between having monthly rankings + all time rankings, or only monthly rankings. Maybe the option "only all time rankings" also makes sense. Or at least an option to select which ranking is the default.

 

[Neelix]

It occurs to me that another way to approach that would be to have include a  "reset score" option built in to nubnub itself..  I was already thinking of requesting one for that very reason.  

Another way around it might be to include a c4a mode that always submits the score even if it's not a local highscore.

- Neelix  

 

[Ziz]

Hm, doesn't seem, that milkshake read this thread...

However, I have two suggestions (in fact they are more like bugs), too:

• The sorting of the scores is not considered. But as it seems, that should be fixed by skeezix. He seems not to give the needed information (ascending or descending) in his API... Maybe he should sort descending or ascending depending on the setting himself.
• But the other error/bug is quite strange. Please compare this highscore http://skeezix.wallednetworks.com:13001/scoreboard_1/puzzletube_points/ALL (which is the same in Sparrow Compo4All Manager) and this highscore http://c4a.openpandora.org/#/puzzletube_points/all. Why are only 2 scores shown at the second link? Why isn't "jxv" or "ASDUser" shown at all? Or my other highscores?

greetings,Ziz

 

[milkshake]

Hi Ziz I have no internet at home and u can't access eds server from home, when this situation changes I'll have a look for you

 

[Mr_Loon]

Hi milkshake, if you get the time / internet connection then it would be awesome if you could look into adding a league table functionality to the C4A website. If this would be too much work / server stress / complexity then no worries but if it could be done without too much hassle it would be a major boon for C4A IMHO.

Here is how it could work :

Points would be awarded as follows based on the position occupied on each leaderboard : 10 points for 1st place, 9 points for 2nd Place, down to 1 point for 10th place in each game. Or however people want to see the scoring, e.g. could be 15 points for 1st, 12 for second, 9 for 3rd .... 1 for 10th etc.

The League table would total up the points accrued by each individual and sort them in order of points gained.

You could have an all time league table & a monthly table.

We could also have a league table dealing with specific games for competitions as per this post.

 

[Ziz]

Hi Ziz I have no internet at home and u can't access eds server from home, when this situation changes I'll have a look for you

Oh, that's pity. If you have connection, don't forget to have a look at the other suggestions too.

 

[levi]

I don't see why the website needs to be updated to support a tournament like you've suggested, especially while the details haven't quite been strapped down.


What's wrong with having a little crib sheet that says 1=15, 2=12 etc.? It's not like you need to make a running total or do anything especially taxing - just take a snapshot at tournament end and assign points accordingly.


It might be nice if the website generated monthly score tables based on user, instead of game - so I could look up all my top scores for this month, for example. That would speed up tournament scoring, if it turns out that recording scores from 10 different games is too time-consuming.


Edit: Hmm, oh, you did want running totals? Well okay then - but still we should settle how to assign scores before almost hard-coding it in c4a-dot-org, and probably have a trial month to sort it out.

 

[Mr_Loon]

I don't see why the website needs to be updated to support a tournament like you've suggested, especially while the details haven't quite been strapped down.

...

It certainly does not need it, but I think it would be a good addition if we could produce league tables based on all scores on C4A as well as ones for a competition, when the competition rules have been finalised.

As mentioned though, if this would be an issue in terms of difficulty to implement / server load then no worries.

My thinking is that it might tempt people to play a wider variety games / try for higher scores.

 

[Ziz]

I think, I found the error. If you commit a score and delete the account afterwards, skeezix server returns lines like these:

{"time": 1376509203, "dispunit": "points", "score": 117574, "longname": "", "shortname": ""}

I see, what you did there, milkshake. Maybe you should change your highscore output routine, that the loop doesn't breaks if longname or shortname are empty, but if time is 0.

 

[milkshake]

do you mean the output loop breaks if short/long names or empty?

 

[Ziz]

yes... seems so. however: it's your code. just break if time is 0, not if a name is empty.

 

[milkshake]

Do you have any examples?

 

[Ziz]

Yes


http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/13306-c4aopenpandoraorg-website/?p=273467

 

[milkshake]

If I don't have the long name or short name how/why world I display the score?