Pandoralive.info is... Alive !!


PokeParadox said:
I don't think you are being particularly fair there - You can take a look at unpolished games or seemingly abandoned games and give positive criticism on what they are.

  • Devs need/love/want feedback. Sometimes the idea is good but no one seems interested so a PoC stays a PoC instead of being polished for the masses.
  • In cases where the artwork and/or music suc... um... is not very good - This is a perfect opportunity to call on the community, there are plenty of talented people here.
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Well as a veteran gamer I have very high expectations when it comes to games and it is hard for me to see some homebrew games in a positive light because they are lacking in all areas.

This is the reason why I do not talk about them usually, I feel it would be mean to criticize such efforts since I know how difficult and tedious it is to make a game.

That's why I am not the right person to review such games, but I welcome Dredd if he can do it in an interesting way.

As for "community call" to make a game better, this is rather theory than reality. Apart from Paper Wars there are not so many examples out there or successful collaborations. I'd like to see more of them, honestly.
 
I remember during the earlier development of Super Geometry Wars, there was certainly a lot of community interaction with the developer, I know one of my suggestion was taken on boards and implemented :)
 
BTW I didn't want to mention only the homebrew games(there are quite some of them which are pretty darn awesome) but I  also wanted to mention the ported games wich are the majority of games avaiable in the repo 
 
New guest post from Levi on Pandoralive, comparing the quality of several "mobile" keyboards on different devices... including the Pandora. A recommended read!

onkeyboards.png


Continue Reading --->
 
Imagine now deleted post as being pointed to


[...]
 
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ekianjo said:
It's cool to review homebrew games but many of them are not exactly... very good.
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Yeah, well "90% of everything is crap" ... but I can be a kind reviewer, be constructive, and dwell on the good bits!

As far as I'm concerned, if someone can make any sort of game at all that's a big achievement.

 

I guess first step is to troll through the boards and repo, check which games and projects are homebrew or ports ... unfortunately we don't have data on that.
 
Yeah, agree with you Dredd, any kind of game is a big achievement in itself. It's just so much work. 

I'll probably review one port or two in the near future. I have a Duke Nukem article waiting to be finished :)
 
Interesting read.  :)

Is there any chance of showing the number of comments an article has on the front page? (preferably with a direct link)

- Neelix
 
Neelix said:
Interesting read.  :)

Is there any chance of showing the number of comments an article has on the front page? (preferably with a direct link)

- Neelix
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GOod timing. I need help for that. I have been though the wordpress docs but something I dont know how to apply the function to the theme I am using. Theming is still a nightmare with wordpress. 

If anyone is experienced with wordpress and willing to help... please PM me. 
 
I don't visit PandoraLive generally - because I fear what images might pop up with when I'm at work - but I did have a look at your last article.

I get the impression from point 5 that you think I'm rather unprofessional. Did I act unprofessional to the people posting bugs and issues? Does it make me less professional having an open beta instead of a closed beta? Maybe I should have waited for Jeff to finish off some of the extra data bits on the server, but that was only execution information anyway. The other issues were either logged (or had already been logged), or completely new to me that I couldn't replicate on my Pandora.

I fail to see how this was either "untested" or "unprofessional".
 
I think ekianjo was a bit too harsh in that point 5. We have been pushing you to release an early beta, so I don't think anyone should blame you if it had some issues. That's the nature of beta versions.

Anyway, there is nothing wrong with open beta testing instead of closed beta testing. People are free to wait for the stable release. Meanwhile, it's nice if everybody can try the beta if they want to. Before you report a bug, you should check if it is a known issue, and when you give a rating on the repo based on some issues, you should check back later and change your rating when the issues are fixed.
 
pmprog said:
I get the impression from point 5 that you think I'm rather unprofessional. Did I act unprofessional to the people posting bugs and issues? Does it make me less professional having an open beta instead of a closed beta?
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I think you are just focusing too much on the title.

What I wrote in the paragraph is more important:

It does not give a good impression when you download something and it does not work
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I don't think you can argue with that.

Users download stuff… and if it does not work, you may get a single star in the repo, marking your application with a stain forever.
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I've seen this stuff happening several times when a PND was not functional.

Whereas it would be so easy to send your PND to a couple of people around on the Pandora boards (via PM) and ensure it works as intended.
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Several authors usually do that and release something either via PM or via a forum thread in order to reduce the exposure before putting it on the repo. I don't think there is much to argue there either.

As a counter example, I’d take The Tournament Hub here again. Many issues of the initial public release could have been avoided with a closed beta release to a few people.
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I still stand on my point here. It was released too early without being tested enough. It didn't work for most people right at launch. And look at my comment after :

In the end things went well and bugs were ironed out, but the issue with releasing something HIGHLY expected with not enough testing is a flood of comments/feedback that you may not be ready for.
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I'm not saying you did not handle the situation well, on the contrary you were very fast to correct the issues and I commend you for that. But the "launch phase" was not optimal for something where you did manage to raise the expectations very well (your communication for pre-release was an example I cited in point 1).

My point is not that you were not professional (nowhere did I write : "Pmprog is not handling this in a professional way") but rather that it could have been launched in a better way, no matter if you call this a beta or not.

Now, if you feel this was great, and exactly what you expected, feel free to ignore my comment. This is just my opinion :)
 
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If a title is launched with a beta tag and the description indicates it is a beta release,  then it makes sense to expect that it may not work for you, and it has been uploaded for the sake of getting feedback from the community.

If you expect that "the software is in the repo, therefore it should just work"  then you are going to be disappointed a lot.

- Neelix
 
Neelix said:
If a title is launched with a beta tag and the description indicates it is a beta release,  then it makes sense to expect that it may not work for you, and it has been uploaded for the sake of getting feedback from the community.

If you expect that "the software is in the repo, therefore it should just work"  then you are going to be disappointed a lot.

- Neelix
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Read my previous post again.

I am not saying it's forbidden to do that, I am saying there are better, more efficient ways to get feedback before putting stuff on the repo :) I don't see what you are trying to argue about, especially if your application is expected. Why do you think there are closed alpha, closed beta, before open betas in the Software industry in general?

And yes, I expect stuff in the repo to work, or at least work in a reasonable way (it does not have to be perfect). I don't think it's unreasonable. I don't see stuff in Linux distros repos that does not work, usually. 
 
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