missing screenshots in repo/pnd manager

[dibad0011]

Lately I have been browsing the repo page and the pnd manager and I have seen that many apps lack preview screenshots. In my opinion no screenshots equals less interest in people (like me) to try an app (specially if it's a game). How about if we help a little and use the snapsnap app. Not sure to whom should we send the pictures to? Evildragon? assuming he is the mantainer of the pandora webpage.or to the app developers?

Anyway I could help in taking some of those missing pictures. 

 

[Neelix]

I have a strange feeling of deja vu...

You'd need to send them to the PND maintainer.  

They'd need to have enough time and motivation to repackage and re-upload the PND with the new screen shots. (and in some cases they are no longer around)

I'm not sure how many takers you'd get,  though if you do try it I'd be interested to find out what kind of response you receive.

- Neelix

 

[ekianjo]

I have a strange feeling of deja vu...

You'd need to send them to the PND maintainer.  

They'd need to have enough time and motivation to repackage and re-upload the PND with the new screen shots. (and in some cases they are no longer around)

I'm not sure how many takers you'd get,  though if you do try it I'd be interested to find out what kind of response you receive.

- Neelix

A better solution would be allow for screenshot posts from Repo members. That would be much less work than repackaging the soft just to add screenshots. 

 

[Neelix]

I believe that feature has been requested before, though I don't know where Milkshake stands on the matter, and he'd have to be the one to implement it.   

If such a feature was implemented I would expect that the Maintainer would still have final approval on any screenshots actually associated with the package.

- Neelix

 

[mcobit]

I think milkshake wants to have the repo relatively self maintained. If you allow something like this, every screenshot uploaded by users needs to be checked before it is shown on the page or we could get in some trouble with copyrighted material or offensive contend somebody posted there "for fun"...

 

[_wb_]

I think user-contributed screenshots are a good idea. I propose the following:

- any registered user can upload screenshots for any PND

- these user-uploaded screenshots are clearly indicated as "community contributed"

- PND maintainers can "upgrade" a screenshot to "official" status

- the repo website and PNDManager have an option to not view unofficial screenshots

- PND maintainers and repo mods can remove inappropriate screenshots

Advantages:

- non-devs can contribute to improving the repo by making nice screenshots

- devs don't have to waste time to make screenshots of every aspect of their PND; instead they can just make 1 screenshot (the main one, which is included in the PND itself for launchers that show screenshots as previews)

- no need to put many screenshots inside PNDs, so the download/storage size of PNDs can drop a bit (most devs probably don't really care about this, but I actually convert some screenshots to lossy jpegs to save space, since I prefer my PNDs to be as small as possible)

- no need to re-upload a PND just to add screenshots

Disadvantages:

- this is quite a bit of coding work for milkshake, maybe also for B-Zar.

- potential spam (although if you make the effort to register a repo account, you can also spam by uploading bogus PNDs, which would be even more annoying and visible, yet it doesn't seem to be a real issue)

 

[DaMummy]

disadvantage:

- you'd have me uploading  pictures apparently from what some people think of me

 

[ptitSeb]

I think user-contributed screenshots are a good idea. I propose the following:

- any registered user can upload screenshots for any PND

- these user-uploaded screenshots are clearly indicated as "community contributed"

- PND maintainers can "upgrade" a screenshot to "official" status

- the repo website and PNDManager have an option to not view unofficial screenshots

- PND maintainers and repo mods can remove inappropriate screenshots

Advantages:

- non-devs can contribute to improving the repo by making nice screenshots

- devs don't have to waste time to make screenshots of every aspect of their PND; instead they can just make 1 screenshot (the main one, which is included in the PND itself for launchers that show screenshots as previews)

- no need to put many screenshots inside PNDs, so the download/storage size of PNDs can drop a bit (most devs probably don't really care about this, but I actually convert some screenshots to lossy jpegs to save space, since I prefer my PNDs to be as small as possible)

- no need to re-upload a PND just to add screenshots

Disadvantages:

- this is quite a bit of coding work for milkshake, maybe also for B-Zar.

- potential spam (although if you make the effort to register a repo account, you can also spam by uploading bogus PNDs, which would be even more annoying and visible, yet it doesn't seem to be a real issue)

Sounds good to me. But that's mean more work for moderator... Or it's the maintenair job's to review the screenshots ?

 

[Neelix]

I would do it this way:

• Add Upload screenshot button to package details page.
• When screenshots  are uploaded maintainer is sent an email. (perhaps scheduled for max 1 per day rather than 1 immediately per uploaded screenshot)
• Maintainer visits site,  evaluates screenshots submitted and approves or rejects them - no screenshot is posted without being approved.
• Maintainer has option to disable screenshot uploads on a per PND basis.

- Neelix

 

[EvilDragon]

If the screenshots are really marked as community screenshots, it would be a good idea.


Maybe also allowing adding community YouTube-Videos as well, as that could easily show games in action.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

It seems feasible to me that a script could be written that allows screenshots to be inserted into an existing PND (extract/mount, add screenshots, modify PXML, repackage), if this was the case, it might convince maintainers to quickly repackage the PND up. Much higher chance than if they need to locate source, get their build environment fixed back up, find out something doesn't work right, etc. It is also nice to have everything embedded into the PND as when you download it, the screenshots can be shown in preview panels of launchers etc.

If you wanted to be forceful, the repo could reject PNDs that do not have embedded screenshots, but that possibly crosses the line of being ungrateful (hey dev, you may have spent 6 months painstakingly making a great new game for us, but if you don't follow our rules we don't want your work!) on the flip side, if a dev is spending time to make a PND, adding screenshots really isn't much work, and does make it more likely that more people will see the title. Do we know how many PNDs are currently on the repo with no preview pictures vs ones that do?

Hmmm, more questions than answers from me

 

[ptitSeb]

It seems feasible to me that a script could be written that allows screenshots to be inserted into an existing PND (extract/mount, add screenshots, modify PXML, repackage), if this was the case, it might convince maintainers to quickly repackage the PND up. Much higher chance than if they need to locate source, get their build environment fixed back up, find out something doesn't work right, etc. It is also nice to have everything embedded into the PND as when you download it, the screenshots can be shown in preview panels of launchers etc.

The PND doens't have to be repackage. The community screenshots can be server-side only, as you only need them to "choose" a PND. Once you have them, the single one embeded is enough I think. I see the Unpack/Pack as a risk a corruption of the package.

 

[_wb_]

One screenshot embedded in the PND is a good idea (for preview panels etc). I don't see any use for more than one screenshot inside the PND though - if you have already downloaded it, you can just launch it to check it out. When you're browsing the repo to find things to install, multiple screenshots (maybe even 10-20 or so) can be very helpful, as well as movies. But I wouldn't want to have a 58MB big PND consisting of a 3MB game, 5MB worth of screenshots, and a 50MB movie

The PND modification script sounds like a good idea, not just to add a screenshot to a PND without any, but also to modify the PXML. The script would have to be server-side, and it should basically just allow you to upload a file (or a .tar.gz with files) that then gets added to the PND, overwriting existing files if needed.

 

[Neelix]

I actually like that idea for another reason.   Many of the PND's on the repo have descriptions in the PXML that assume you already know what a program is and does by its title. It would be nice to have a way to update those descriptions.

- Neelix

 

[milkshake]

Much higher chance than if they need to locate source, get their build environment fixed back up, find out something doesn't work right, etc.

The author wouldn't need rebuild an app from source just to add screenshots they could use unshashfs or 7z if its in iso format to extract the contents of the pnd and then re shashfs is back up remembering to append the pxml and icon to the end of the archive.

Alternatively foxblocks app PNDTools can add screenshots and edit the pxml its really easy to use.

The problem with allowing the community members to upload pictures is maintenance and moderation of the uploads which would be a bit if a pain queuing up screenshots ready to be accepted or rejected by the author.
Also a side affect which may happen would be that devs would become lazy with pnd packaging and not bother with screen shots assuming people will just upload them.

It could be done if really needed but those are my reservations.

 

[crow_riot]

a little late to the party, but I'd welcome a possibility at least for the maintainer of a package to upload screenshots to the repo.

Screenshots are not needed within the PND and are just making the download unnecessarily bigger.

 

[gp32rich]

Two things.

A. I'd prefer not to have to search through loads of pics so can we limit uploads to 20 per pnd. Maybe not enough for some multipacked games.

B. How about just having a link to a thread on the forum for posting uploaded pics. That way everyone can review the pics and less coding on the repo