Idea - Pandora games showcase


Wow this is exciting.... this community is awesome.... I cant wait to get my pandora.... good job!!!
 
Steven Crafts old forum name was Rockthesmurf, I believe that was his gp32x forum name too, so it must be his repo username :D
What he said! Sorry for the confusion; at once point Rockthesmurf was my personal handle, but overtime my professional and personal life collided (doing games development for a living), so I ended up going into the same areas for in work and at home, and I didn't think it was so great to be 'Rockthesmurf' at work (trying signing a legal document with that doesn't get you very far)...  :)
 
Steven Crafts old forum name was Rockthesmurf, I believe that was his gp32x forum name too, so it must be his repo username :D
What he said! Sorry for the confusion; at once point Rockthesmurf was my personal handle, but overtime my professional and personal life collided (doing games development for a living), so I ended up going into the same areas for in work and at home, and I didn't think it was so great to be 'Rockthesmurf' at work (trying signing a legal document with that doesn't get you very far)...  :)
About repo usernames: I don't think they can be changed, so I'm stuck with "jonsneyers". I would prefer to have my stuff listed as "_wb_" though. Would it be much work to make usernames modifiable? Or at least to have a field "nickname" which defaults to the username but can be changed, and which is the name used publicly.
 
If you send me a pm and _wb_ is not already taken I should be able to change it for you. When I start work on a repo v2 I'll add that feature to allow username changes.
 
@milkshake, What even happened to the repo redesign you were planning and showed me some screenshots of (which I sadly cannot find any more). You know the one with the big banner spotlight at the top (including an excerpt of a PandoraPress review - now you could go for Pandoralive or a forum user review). It looked very nice and honestly the repo needs some kind of "spotlight" (think Steam Store main page).

It works well as a database, but you don't find much if you don't know what you are looking for.

New games aren't given very much showcase, same goes for commercial games, pandora exclusives, good but unknown software, etc.

Also what happened to open sourcing the website? Having access to the code would allow more people to add features like this, ask you or ED for a review and have them implemented on the main site. Same goes for the C4A website actually...
 
Nice idea and stylish website, this is how such sites should look. :) Could be a "big" thing if done properly to advertise the Pandora even more to the public. ^^
 Problem is, who is going to spend time advertising it? Having a website is very easy, doing promotion and attracting people to it is not.
"Build it, and they will come!" ;)

If there is a website, people will find it thanks to the magic of modern google-fu. ^^ And when such a site is linked in EDs shop, these forums, all open pandora pages like wiki etc... then it's more easy to find imho. People may also know Open Pandora but don't know what's possible with the Handheld. Then, such a nice showcase site comes in handy so they see instantly what's going on. The pix and the layout really help there, it's nicer to look at than just crawl the repo or the Pandora Wiki.
 
People may also know Open Pandora but don't know what's possible with the Handheld.
Don't they see the video on OpenPandora.org's main page? Of course, this video is a bit outdated, but still, it does the job well to explain what games can run on Pandora.

"Build it, and they will come!" ;)
Sorry, I beg to differ, unless you really do something to promote your website, you will get close to zero visits, and just linking to openpandora's community is not going to change thing very much. If you want it to go out there you need to promote it actively in other circles. It's just like if you open a hot dog shop in the countryside in the middle of nowhere, you get zero visibility and nobody will see it.

The pix and the layout really help there, it's nicer to look at than just crawl the repo or the Pandora Wiki.
Yeah, ok, but again, zero visibility. You guys need a clear strategy to communicate this to the outside world. And this needs to be frequently kept up to date, too.
 
ekianjo is absolutely right.

How much would it cost, to set up a small banner in some anime magazine or the like

and is there a chance to cause articles in japanese tech magazines?
 
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Cheers janvlug :)

Regarding ekianjo's comments, I totally agree in that unless you get a site out there, it's not likely to attract much new visitors, some might stumble across it via organic search due to keywords used, after all a site gets registered with Google just by submitting it or even without that their bots will index it in time due to external links...

...BUT...

As mentioned in my initial post, this site wasn't really about that. I wasn't considering a 'strum up new sales' type website. My intention was to offer a more visual site for us, the community, those with a Pandora already, to get a good quick overview of the types of games available on Pandora. Taking my own experience for example, I check the Repo and it's all good, but you don't see screenshots until you actually drill down to each games page, so checking 10 games' screenshots is what - at least as many clicks. This site allows you to immediately see a whole load of screenshots of games available for "you".

That was my thinking anyway.

That said, I might look at adding another page then, which explains bit more about the Pandora for new visitors who don't even know about it, with links to the official outlets to buy - Ed, Link and ekianjo's online shops.

In terms of getting it out there, due to my initial intention for this showcase, I hadn't considered that really, it was more for those that know. I will create a nice little banner for it to use on my email sig on other forums I sometimes use, couple of gaming ones and XDA Dev and the likes. Though not too active on other boards aside from here really.

I don't know what else I can do to promote it, I can slap stickers up around town easy enough but not sure how many hits that would attract. 

I just hoped that Pandora users would like it as somewhere to quickly scan their eyes over a load of screenshots then hopefully see something that catches their eye and go d/l it from the Repo :)
 
FWIW, on Firefox the mouseovers on the 'Repo Web Video' buttons don't seem to work on the first item on the page, i.e. they don't turn black when I hover over them like the buttons further down.


Oh, and it also seems to have that annoying feature where the mouseover and the link don't coincide - the mouseover activates anywhere in the orange (or grey) box, but to click the link I actually need to click on the tiny text.


Looks awesome though - great work!
 
Maybe you should put the link to the page in the first post of this thread.

Also I think ED would be glad to give you an account and some space on his server for this project, so you could get an url of the form <something>.openpandora.org. Just ask him.

Keep up the good work!
 
@Levi, Yeah that first issue I've noticed already, not sure why that's happening though ... I did assign them a different class which was aligned Left and they worked... strange... no idea why my current assigned class is behaving like this. I might just have to shift them over to the left some if I can't resolve it :)

Noted on the second issue, cheers. I'll span the link so works against the button area rather than just the actual text.

@_wb_, Will add link to first post soon, good idea. I've an old website host I don't really use now, not used in a few years but have some temp files on there still. I'll bkup those and use that hosting for this most likely, then just get a domain name for it.

Hopefully tomorrow, so will add the link then 
 
Has anyone got a few [perhaps 5 or 6] photos of Pandora I can use please?

Plan to use them up to 1100px width so not looking for small thumbnails as those would lose res when enlarging.

Can be of the device on your desk, or open playing a game, or showing an emu, don't really mind ... I just don't have any of my own to use.

cheers
 
Has anyone got a few [perhaps 5 or 6] photos of Pandora I can use please?

Plan to use them up to 1100px width so not looking for small thumbnails as those would lose res when enlarging.

Can be of the device on your desk, or open playing a game, or showing an emu, don't really mind ... I just don't have any of my own to use.

cheers
I guess ekianjo could (and sure is willing to) help out here.

Great work btw. ;)
 
Added an updated link to first post.

Here is the current state of play, I've made changes to the small link buttons, so they work now including the top row/game listing. Also the entire button is now the active link rather than just the text.

Cheers for feedback everyone and those who helped solve the annoying issue I had with the buttons. :)

http://www.playpandora.com/

It's still WIP of course, need to grow that list of games and the other page [About] is just placeholder text for now, I will add some proper information about the Pandora there, also link to the official stores of ED, Link, Linux-SWAT and ekianjo so if anyone does stumble upon it and is interested in buying from their respective countries they can
 
Quick one - The default sort ordering on the website indicates alphabetical A->Z; however Cocoa Doom and a few others appear on top of A7XPG. If you resort, then put it back, it's okay.

Also (in Firefox), as you scroll down Genre and Skill filters are overlapped by the banner, however, the mouse reacts to both sets of objects. I couldn't click About, the mouse went under to the Genre filter instead.

Otherwise, nice work! It looks good
 
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