Improving the "Current Games" page of Running Game
- Hannibal
- Commander
- Posts: 886
- Joined: Sun Sep 21, 2003 7:00 am
- Location: London and The Vulkings Clan.............(started in Valn Ohtar, then jointly founded The Vulkings)
Improving the "Current Games" page of Running Game
IMHO, the current format of the page for "Current Games" (the one you reach if you click on "View Running Games") is ripe for revision, before we go on a major recruitment drive.
Main problems:
1) The last column, "Next Turn" must currently be a real turn-off to new visitors. Current games? At the time of writing, there are 19 games listed. 16 of them are listed as "Turn Overdue" (hardly an advertisement for an active site). Of the 3 that actually have hours and minutes as the entry, instead of "Turn Overdue", 2 are in fact finished, and the other is a practice game for Advanced Wok. We look dead and non-playing. More than is the truth, since Duel games may be "Due" but are never "Overdue".
2) The penultimate column. "Turn no.". Obviously it helps slightly to say how far on a game is. But it does nothing to tell you whether the game has moved on, worth viewing, since you last looked. Me, I scan down it, half-remember whether a game was at turn 3 last time I looked, and is now at Turn 4, so might be worth looking at for new progress. IF I remember what turn it was at last time I checked. This is a missed opportunity, as well as a pain.
SUGGESTION:
The current 8 columns are:
1. GM
2. Name of Game
3. Version (WOK Duel, Standard WOK etc)
4. Open to (All. all, all all and all)
5. Type (Normal, normal, normal normal and normal, etc.)
6. Status (Running, Paused, Finished etc.)
7. Turn No. (4.15,3 etc.)
8. Next Turn (mostly Turn Overdue; sometimes XX hours and YY minutes).
I suggest we disengage this screen from the "Games to Join" screen, since they have different things they can say and can drop.
Here, we can drop "Open to" and "Type", since they are primarily info for sign-up, and are not needed in "Running". It leaves space for another, more important column for Running Games. And are no great loss. And are nearly always "All" and "Normal" anyway! As a Running Game, any special nature eg. "Kor's X-game", can and should be captured in the NAME of the game, not requiring a seldom-used column in Running Games. IMHO.
We NEED a column that says "Last turn ran", with the answer being a date. So that we can see which games have moved on, take a look at the update, rather than trying to remember whether "Turn 4" means it HAS moved, or it hasn't, depending on your memory of this column lst time you looked.
SO, the alternative screen (for Running Games, not same for Games to Join) would have the following columns:
1. GM
2. Name of Game
3. Version (Standard, Advanced, Full Duel, Duel-Lite, Quartet, Qintet, Sextet, Special - why not build in these future options if you are re-coding the options?)
4. Status (Running, Paused, Finished etc., as now)
5. Next Turn (this a Turn Number, 3,7,15 etc.) Same as current "Turn No.", except that "Turn No." was always ambiguous as to whether it meant no. of last turn or number of next turn (The answer is no. of NEXT turn). "Next Turn" makes it clear.
6. Last Turn Ran. This is a date. It tells you when a last turn ran in that game. So you can more easily see whether anything has happened since you last looked, instead of having to memorise whether it was already at Turn 5 last time you looked a week ago ... Might take some coding.
7. Next Turn Due. As current "Turn Due", except that the answers will more often be Turn Due rather than Turn Overdue, since all Duels etc. will be listed as Turn Due rather than Turn OVERdue.
Technical and detailed. But the effects will be that everything looks less OVERdue, and newbs and vets can more easily see which games have had a turn since they last looked?
Han
Main problems:
1) The last column, "Next Turn" must currently be a real turn-off to new visitors. Current games? At the time of writing, there are 19 games listed. 16 of them are listed as "Turn Overdue" (hardly an advertisement for an active site). Of the 3 that actually have hours and minutes as the entry, instead of "Turn Overdue", 2 are in fact finished, and the other is a practice game for Advanced Wok. We look dead and non-playing. More than is the truth, since Duel games may be "Due" but are never "Overdue".
2) The penultimate column. "Turn no.". Obviously it helps slightly to say how far on a game is. But it does nothing to tell you whether the game has moved on, worth viewing, since you last looked. Me, I scan down it, half-remember whether a game was at turn 3 last time I looked, and is now at Turn 4, so might be worth looking at for new progress. IF I remember what turn it was at last time I checked. This is a missed opportunity, as well as a pain.
SUGGESTION:
The current 8 columns are:
1. GM
2. Name of Game
3. Version (WOK Duel, Standard WOK etc)
4. Open to (All. all, all all and all)
5. Type (Normal, normal, normal normal and normal, etc.)
6. Status (Running, Paused, Finished etc.)
7. Turn No. (4.15,3 etc.)
8. Next Turn (mostly Turn Overdue; sometimes XX hours and YY minutes).
I suggest we disengage this screen from the "Games to Join" screen, since they have different things they can say and can drop.
Here, we can drop "Open to" and "Type", since they are primarily info for sign-up, and are not needed in "Running". It leaves space for another, more important column for Running Games. And are no great loss. And are nearly always "All" and "Normal" anyway! As a Running Game, any special nature eg. "Kor's X-game", can and should be captured in the NAME of the game, not requiring a seldom-used column in Running Games. IMHO.
We NEED a column that says "Last turn ran", with the answer being a date. So that we can see which games have moved on, take a look at the update, rather than trying to remember whether "Turn 4" means it HAS moved, or it hasn't, depending on your memory of this column lst time you looked.
SO, the alternative screen (for Running Games, not same for Games to Join) would have the following columns:
1. GM
2. Name of Game
3. Version (Standard, Advanced, Full Duel, Duel-Lite, Quartet, Qintet, Sextet, Special - why not build in these future options if you are re-coding the options?)
4. Status (Running, Paused, Finished etc., as now)
5. Next Turn (this a Turn Number, 3,7,15 etc.) Same as current "Turn No.", except that "Turn No." was always ambiguous as to whether it meant no. of last turn or number of next turn (The answer is no. of NEXT turn). "Next Turn" makes it clear.
6. Last Turn Ran. This is a date. It tells you when a last turn ran in that game. So you can more easily see whether anything has happened since you last looked, instead of having to memorise whether it was already at Turn 5 last time you looked a week ago ... Might take some coding.
7. Next Turn Due. As current "Turn Due", except that the answers will more often be Turn Due rather than Turn Overdue, since all Duels etc. will be listed as Turn Due rather than Turn OVERdue.
Technical and detailed. But the effects will be that everything looks less OVERdue, and newbs and vets can more easily see which games have had a turn since they last looked?
Han
There are two ways to write: Short-hand, and Long-Han'ed. ~ Han
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs"......... it's probably just that you're the last person to appreciate the enormity of the catastrophe about to
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs"......... it's probably just that you're the last person to appreciate the enormity of the catastrophe about to
- Lardmaster
- Commander
- Posts: 690
- Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 8:00 am
- Location: The Big Smoke
- korexus
- Moderator
- Posts: 2829
- Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 8:00 am
- Location: Reading
- Contact:
Rune has designed and I have implemented an alternative game search page. You can test it out at http://www.kaomaris.com/phpNuke/modules ... amesearch2
The layout is not perfect yet, but feedback would be appreciated.
Chris.
The layout is not perfect yet, but feedback would be appreciated.
Chris.
With Great Power comes Great Irritability
- TBert
- Veteran
- Posts: 279
- Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2002 7:00 am
- Location: Denver, CO
- Contact:
TBert likes the new page. Visuals are always good. Maybe automatically sort the list so the active games are at the top, with published games after that, then all the random broken/test games under that.
pro libertate eos occubuisse - "they died for liberty"
Clan Head - Valn Ohtar
SGT - US Army
23-year-old father of 3 - really needs a beer
Clan Head - Valn Ohtar
SGT - US Army
23-year-old father of 3 - really needs a beer
- korexus
- Moderator
- Posts: 2829
- Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 8:00 am
- Location: Reading
- Contact:
Ok, I've played around a bit more.
The layout now has two columns of games (in my browser) to save space. If you have a small screen resolution, you may get one long list. People with very big screens may get 3 columns.
Running games have the time for the next turn mentioned. Paused, etc don't so we can hopefully cut down on "Turn Overdue" messages.
Games are ordered first by status (Open, Running, Finished, Paused, Pending, Published) Then by next turn (descending, so more recent turns come sooner) then finally by game name. Players can, of course, narrow the search options by choosing specifications from the select boxes.
With this layout it might be appropriate for us to change the naming conventions slightly. A visual of the map means that it's less important to mention it in the title and the GM's name is pulled out automatically so that's not needed. - Basically, if a name goes over onto a second line then it messes up my layout, so shortish names would be nice!
Chris.
The layout now has two columns of games (in my browser) to save space. If you have a small screen resolution, you may get one long list. People with very big screens may get 3 columns.
Running games have the time for the next turn mentioned. Paused, etc don't so we can hopefully cut down on "Turn Overdue" messages.
Games are ordered first by status (Open, Running, Finished, Paused, Pending, Published) Then by next turn (descending, so more recent turns come sooner) then finally by game name. Players can, of course, narrow the search options by choosing specifications from the select boxes.
With this layout it might be appropriate for us to change the naming conventions slightly. A visual of the map means that it's less important to mention it in the title and the GM's name is pulled out automatically so that's not needed. - Basically, if a name goes over onto a second line then it messes up my layout, so shortish names would be nice!
Chris.
With Great Power comes Great Irritability
- Tinker
- Veteran
- Posts: 375
- Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:00 am
- Location: Canadian Scholar
- korexus
- Moderator
- Posts: 2829
- Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 8:00 am
- Location: Reading
- Contact:
Well, the pictures are the full sized ones from the game page squashed into a smaller box, so a large list of games could make for a lot of image to download I guess. We could have a smaller picture for the game search. It'd up the server load a fair bit, but I'm sure the new quad cores can handle it...Tinker wrote:My only criticism would be that it's a bit of a heavy loadtime,
Chris.
With Great Power comes Great Irritability
- korexus
- Moderator
- Posts: 2829
- Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2002 8:00 am
- Location: Reading
- Contact: