Issues with ModdB Version 4 Thread

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Issues with ModdB Version 4 (Forums : Site Feedback : Issues with ModdB Version 4)	Post Reply
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Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb	Nov 18 2007, 2:25am Anchor
Version 2 was the best out of the 4. Simple and minimal. Minimalism in a layout is good, especially when you have a ton of articles, engines and mods sorted. I loved the ease of searches and ratings. I'm a 4th year media arts/digital technologies student, indie video game designer and doing a little bit of html so I know what I'm talking about. Some of you may like this version for it's looks but the layout and function are horrible and awkward. For the links, News should be first, Features should be on the front page, then a link to a mod advance search page, Reviews and last - Community for members, groups and forum. Downloads is unnecessary, since it's pretty much the same as Mods. If you want to download a mod, you may as well search for the mod, then have an option on that mods' page to either download from a moddb.com server or from the Mod creators' website. As this is the mod database, well a mod is going to be 98% of what is going to be downloaded. Other downloads would include graphics or other very few items. As for PC and "other" links (consoles)... Most mods are going to be PC, so you may as well almost have a seperate database for the "other" mods which again will be few. Who's going to make a mod and what for Nintendo DS? Yes they do exist, but the only way to play any modded material on a DS is through the use of a flash cart. They are used by a certain few. Now I didn't even click on that link... but being that this is Mod Database.. I'm assuming that that link will point to DS mods. So 2 tabs only is fine. PC mods. Other/Console mods. I know you guys are doing your best maintaining a website that is free for all of us interested in mods or modding. I commend you and respect you for that. But, this website is a very rushed design and a poor design. Some mod articles on the front page that I clicked on went to the mod page, but there were no pictures, no links to the creators' website (despite that the ones I looked at had sites) and no rating. Well, why the hell am I there then. I'm going to download some mod based on some text to read, which isn't even a description, but only a progress update? No. Exit. Now, I've only been testing this layout on a Mac with Safari explorer, which tends to omit links sometimes... so it could just be Safari. Even then however, I still have to search for more information about the mod and really, the only way to find the best info is from links offsite - usually the creator's site or fansites. You need more guidance from the community and especially from mod makers/teams about how to do the best layout. For one thing, in my opinion. When you click on a mod name and go to that mod's page.. it should be a one-page website style layout. Links to information relating to that mod on the left - each link goes to an anchor in the page and goes to the title of whatever document/link. Website links and rating just stay on the left. An example: Links: News: About Under the news header, you have 3 latest posts... blog style (rest are archived or deleted History - creator can have full archive on their own site Media Downloads Project Website <-- link to website here About: Rating <--Here in BOLD History: Media (either on page or link to seperate gallery of vid/pic) Downloads (again either on page or own page) That's it, that's all you need. Oh, and I forgot, live commenting under rating. The above is perfect. Easy to navigate. Everything you need is on one page. As much as commenting is valuable, if you have a small live commenting column to the left under the links, you free up the rest of the page which can then be dedicated to info for the mod. In face each mod page could be done fully wiki style. I find a well designed wiki page... well for instance a wikipedia article is a perfect entry and perfect for info on all aspects of a mod. All commenting and discussion can be on the same page or hidden behind a tab. Done. So yeah, on that note, take a lesson from Wikipedia then. Tons of information... minimal design. All important aspects are focused on, resulting in clear and easy navigation and very easy to read/navigate articles with FULL information on the subject - About, Recent news, History, Versions (also history but for bug fix info, comparisons... if mod) and Official/secondary links. So, yes, I know I said a mouthful and my idea may be more work to redesign the site from this point, but it's well worth it I assure you. Less visual clutter and better navigation improves any website. Also, one last note is that frees up room for important stuff like having a round table area on the front/main page where either important forum posts can be highlighted or it works like live commenting, where a moderator posts a serious question or issue and members can right there openly discuss and debate it. One very important issue I can think of at the moment (and one of the reasons that this site REALLY needs to be simplified and better organized) is the state of modding. You all know the story: Back in the day of Doom and Quake 1, it was easy. One person could make a mod and it could fit on a floppy. Now that games are getting more complex, it takes a team to produce a mod which can take months to complete. As games get even more complex, it may be at a point where it would take an actual videogame company type team with resources to produce a decent mod. Crysis is one of the most complex games and I'm sure mods for it are going to be coming out a heck of a lot slower than those for say Half Life 2 did. Anyway, you all know, I needn't explain further I'm going to stop typing now and sleep. Have a good weekend all. --Snow.
BlueWolf72 WooF WooF	Nov 18 2007, 2:27am Anchor
nice read snow.. -- Aaron "BlueWolf72" Molloy code: Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb	Nov 18 2007, 2:28am Anchor
Crap, stupid formatting screwed up my layout example... some of the text was centered. Well, I'm sure you can decipher it.
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 4:41am Anchor
I have never posted on this message board and frankly don't intend on being a regular but I have been out of commision for a month and could do nothing on my compy. I have returned and the whole site is messed up. Please someone tell me I have come back mid roll out and this is not the final state of this site?!?!
Dimebog The Enlightened Florist	Nov 18 2007, 5:01am Anchor
It's fine just when you get used to it. And I don't think Snow has a point (News tab on the first place and no Downloads is retarded. Did you check how many mods have news at all? So the first page should be a blank one. That'd be fun). And I don't want another "redesign". What is the point of the hit counters and everything if they reset every time. And to have to change the descriptions of all screenshots, re-organize all the team members, come up with more pics, stuff like that. Just leave it be for goodness sake...
Karuto	Nov 18 2007, 9:29am Anchor
Yeah, just like with any major redesign, it's something you have to get used to. Fortunately, you have a great creator like Scott (INtense) who is quite flexible and more than willing to hear out changes you want made to the site. If enough people clamor for it, then he goes about doing something that all sides can agree on. Not to mention, this version only went live a few weeks ago, so it is obviously something that will still be under development for several months into the future. There will be plenty of time to adjust to the new layout. -- "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
TKAzA LvL 1 Elite	Nov 18 2007, 10:04am Anchor
@Snow: I think you will find the design very aesthetic and far from rushed if you take the time and effort to look around the site. As karuto stated INtense the site designer and coder is working on updates and is tailoring the site to peoples requests, i would however note a full redesign well out of the question being v4 took over 9 months to code. @Smoth: The moddb site you see is very much final, theres major features missing like the pm system and v4 forums, however 99% of the site is up and running, what don't you like about the new site? Edited by: TKAzA -- TKAzA moddDB Content Manager Portfolio
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 11:52am Anchor
sighs blood firefox tabs I deleted my origonal post going back and forth. Ok enough whining about my inability to use firefox. Alright, first and foremost, I think the new look is pretty but very cluttered. The colors are high contrast and they hurt my eyes. Red, and any neon color scheme are going to be an eye sore and draw attention away from the text. It is very distracting. An optional muted, black and indigo theme might help with this. Now to specifics. I hope this helps. I prefered the old mod watch section. It was good to skim over fast and see if an update was one I wanted to see. there was a small thumbnail and a brief note about what was updated. Now it has a large thumb of the mod, sometimes just some random w.i.p. model. Which often times tells me squat. The game icon + modname was ample. The pictures just confuse things. In my watch list, which has to be dug up now and not cleanly displayed, we again have the large sort of random thumbnails that mean little to us making less mods visible per page. It does not really help as we see oh look some random game screen, which often times without a description will tell us little about the game that the mod is changing. Even so, the size of them is mainly what destroys my ability to skim through large list and find what I am looking for. Is there an option to just display the game icon? Even in my own mods, the images that were chosen to represent them were meaningless. Mod and user profile editing. When I want to modify one of my mods or my user profile the control panel is gone. This is disorientating but I can get used to it. So I go and click my name, go to mods, pick the mod I want to modify.I have to then click on images then manuever through the filmstrip to get to the image I want to modify. I miss the old gallery style view. Also news going under the general information of the mod is horrid. I post nice long news posts and some times just minor ones but there is a lot of news. which hides my user comments, which to me, is the most important thing. When I go to a mod, I like to read the general and the user comments. The news is only important to me if I am watching the mod. If I needed to know how often the mod was updated the site already told me. News and the general description being put together also have a wall of text effect for me as a user. I don't mind reading the general discussion about a mod but christ that is a lot of text. Also that giant grey header is unnecessary, the weird shape right above the mod name taking up 1/8 of my screen. However, to me this is all a minor loss compared to the main page. Ok, firstly the old news format is gone, again we see some meaningless image of a mod, the name but wait.. less information. The news section now only shows a short blurb of information. No nice pictures to entice me, no more text then a sentence or two. This tells me very little so I now have to click on the mod news to view it. Of course this is after I scroll past the adds and giant moddb bulletin board which takes up 75 percent of my screen. I can understand adds but that giant billboard is too much. you could just reduce it to the rectangle with text and that would give us just as much info. I am not running at a terribly low resolution either, I am on dual 1440X900 screens which is pretty average if not a bit above average these days. To me the site requires more of my time to get anything out of, between stopping and having to figure out what the picture of a mod is supposed to tell me. between digging up my mod section to updated it I find myself tempted to just update my mod site rather then moddb. Frankly my instinct is to just stop browsing moddb for mod news and spend more time on other things. I do love all the new features, video uploads, a blog and many other things are very nice but I do not feel that the way mods are presented is very good for the user or very good for the modder when it comes to promotion of their mod. I am not trying to be ungrateful here, this site is free after all for us. However, I wanted to speak my peace.
Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb	Nov 18 2007, 11:55am Anchor
Aesthetic is fine and perhaps I was a bit harsh in saying that the design was poor and rushed, but that's how I feel because that's how it looks. It looks that way because everything I may want to look for or want to see as soon as I come to the site, I have to look all over for. As far as a professional site, the look and layout of this site can work as long if you have proper categories, clear navigation and all that you seek is easy to find. As long as all information pertaining to one mod is on one page and you don't have to search all over to get extra information of that mod. Everything related to the mod, rating, history, download, etc, well basically everything you need to know is right there. Dimebog, news can cover anything. For instance say Valve decides to host a modding competition: the best modders get to work for Valve or something. I think many would want to know about that. Also, no hit counters are needed, especially if you have a good rating system. Lastly, no extra pics, descriptions or reorganization of mod material is needed - everything there is is simply found on one page. Simple.
Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb	Nov 18 2007, 12:00pm Anchor
Whoops, heh, another goof. I was talking about News on the mainpage... not on the mod page. News on the mod page would be recent work/ updates on a mod. That can be optional too, if you simply want to use mod history for update information.
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 12:25pm Anchor
btw, your site says: Cs.selu.edu is not a valid site. That is my homepage.
Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing	Nov 18 2007, 1:56pm Anchor
To be fair, it probably isn't a valid site. The only content related to mods is a few links to your projects. If you submitted the relevant page about the mod it probably would be valid. -- "lets say Portal is a puzzle game, so its a rehash of Tetris" - Wraiyth points out the craziness of stereotyping games by their genre
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 1:58pm Anchor
this is in my user profile, under my homepage so yeah, it is correct and relevant. My mod sites are sub sections of this page and my homepage talks about my mods. You should have clicked the link before you criticized.
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 2:08pm Anchor
yep I just checked it and this site does tell my my MOD HOMEPAGES ARE INVALID. So this is very relevant.
Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing	Nov 18 2007, 4:26pm Anchor
Hey, no problem. I did check the link - that's how I knew it contained the links to your projects, yes? I thought they were rejecting it as the page for your mod, and the reason I gave is the reason a lot of pages are rejected. Now we've cleared that up maybe one of the site admins can help you out. -- "lets say Portal is a puzzle game, so its a rehash of Tetris" - Wraiyth points out the craziness of stereotyping games by their genre
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 18 2007, 6:22pm Anchor
I hope they can. With the current system I cannot update my profiles without remove the links to my mod profiles. Not a good thing. While we are talking about site stuff why do I have this in my profile: Influence: 33% negative What the devil is that from? We have a Karma system? I often times find karma systems people will often only bother if you have something they dislike, seldom do you receive positive karma as people are not riled enough to make an effort. Can I at least see what it is that people are all upset about? I have only made 7 posts and have a 33% negative karma, 2 of my posts were offensive or something?
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	Nov 19 2007, 2:46am Anchor
The karma system doesn't appear to work on a simple up-down basis. You get karma for making a contribution to the site, and generally being active.
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 19 2007, 3:23am Anchor
odd, so a period of inactivity has me marked as negative? Also any word on a fix for the site registration? the Url is sound I assure you guys and you can check it yourself.
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	Nov 19 2007, 3:40am Anchor
Probably more a distinct lack of being particularly active. The number swings all over the place anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.
TKAzA LvL 1 Elite	Nov 19 2007, 8:34am Anchor
Influence is your comment and posting and how people rate you and that influences the karma. -- TKAzA moddDB Content Manager Portfolio
Erykgecko Something Witty Here	Nov 19 2007, 9:01am Anchor
Like most it seems I prefered the old v3 to the new v4, but again I suppose it's just a case of getting used to the new layout, it's doesnt seem quite as intuitive, still, my main concern is the fact that members of a mod team for each mod seem to have been dropped, ie, only the member that created a mod is still set up to be able to manage it, and unless they create a group that the other members then join, other members are unable to update a mods profile, now thats all well and fine, but what do we do if like in our case, the person that created the mod profile is no longer about/works on the mod. In our case, sniper x created the mod profile, however he no longer works on the mod as far as i'm aware, and has not been online for months, which leaves us, the other team members, in a bit of a bind, since none of us are now able to log on and update the profile... so are we basically screwed and need to create a new profile, or can something be done about this? -- starletgirlie says: thats a damn scary picture! Erykgecko says: youre the second person that said that i dont see how starletgirlie says: u just look like ur planning something evil. Erykgecko says: rape... pillage... burn... The usual
declinsion Wall Scibbler	Nov 19 2007, 2:53pm Anchor
I'm having a problem with my moddb forums profile. When I chose to the edit my profile after taking a look over it, it did not seem to change. I uploaded a new avatar as well as deleted my signature, but when I post, it's still the old pictures and signature. Is it just me?
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	Nov 19 2007, 2:58pm Anchor
The forums are not integrated into v4 yet.
Smoth Zeonic Loyalist	Nov 19 2007, 5:31pm Anchor
TKAzA, any idea about the website issue is that getting fixed/wip/not getting looked at?
ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks	Nov 20 2007, 3:01am Anchor
In a very stupid move, you can only write code tutorials that are 'server' or 'client'. A lot of tutorials could be both, a lot of tutorials could be neither. Some games don't even use the standard client/server architecture - for example Unreal Tournament uses a replication technique instead. It would be nice to have these categories abolished, and just have 'coding' instead, since most code would affect both, unless singleplayer.

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Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb

Nov 18 2007, 2:25am Anchor

Version 2 was the best out of the 4. Simple and minimal. Minimalism in a layout is good, especially when you have a ton of articles, engines and mods sorted. I loved the ease of searches and ratings. I'm a 4th year media arts/digital technologies student, indie video game designer and doing a little bit of html so I know what I'm talking about. Some of you may like this version for it's looks but the layout and function are horrible and awkward.

For the links, News should be first, Features should be on the front page, then a link to a mod advance search page, Reviews and last - Community for members, groups and forum. Downloads is unnecessary, since it's pretty much the same as Mods. If you want to download a mod, you may as well search for the mod, then have an option on that mods' page to either download from a moddb.com server or from the Mod creators' website. As this is the mod database, well a mod is going to be 98% of what is going to be downloaded. Other downloads would include graphics or other very few items.

As for PC and "other" links (consoles)... Most mods are going to be PC, so you may as well almost have a seperate database for the "other" mods which again will be few. Who's going to make a mod and what for Nintendo DS? Yes they do exist, but the only way to play any modded material on a DS is through the use of a flash cart. They are used by a certain few. Now I didn't even click on that link... but being that this is Mod Database.. I'm assuming that that link will point to DS mods. So 2 tabs only is fine. PC mods. Other/Console mods.

I know you guys are doing your best maintaining a website that is free for all of us interested in mods or modding. I commend you and respect you for that. But, this website is a very rushed design and a poor design. Some mod articles on the front page that I clicked on went to the mod page, but there were no pictures, no links to the creators' website (despite that the ones I looked at had sites) and no rating. Well, why the hell am I there then. I'm going to download some mod based on some text to read, which isn't even a description, but only a progress update? No. Exit.

Now, I've only been testing this layout on a Mac with Safari explorer, which tends to omit links sometimes... so it could just be Safari. Even then however, I still have to search for more information about the mod and really, the only way to find the best info is from links offsite - usually the creator's site or fansites.

You need more guidance from the community and especially from mod makers/teams about how to do the best layout. For one thing, in my opinion. When you click on a mod name and go to that mod's page.. it should be a one-page website style layout. Links to information relating to that mod on the left - each link goes to an anchor in the page and goes to the title of whatever document/link. Website links and rating just stay on the left.

An example:

Links: News:
About Under the news header, you have 3 latest posts... blog style (rest are archived or deleted
History - creator can have full archive on their own site
Media
Downloads
Project Website <-- link to website here About:
Rating <--Here in BOLD History:
Media (either on page or link to seperate gallery of vid/pic)
Downloads (again either on page or own page)

That's it, that's all you need. Oh, and I forgot, live commenting under rating. The above is perfect. Easy to navigate. Everything you need is on one page. As much as commenting is valuable, if you have a small live commenting column to the left under the links, you free up the rest of the page which can then be dedicated to info for the mod. In face each mod page could be done fully wiki style. I find a well designed wiki page... well for instance a wikipedia article is a perfect entry and perfect for info on all aspects of a mod. All commenting and discussion can be on the same page or hidden behind a tab. Done. So yeah, on that note, take a lesson from Wikipedia then. Tons of information... minimal design. All important aspects are focused on, resulting in clear and easy navigation and very easy to read/navigate articles with FULL information on the subject - About, Recent news, History, Versions (also history but for bug fix info, comparisons... if mod) and Official/secondary links.

So, yes, I know I said a mouthful and my idea may be more work to redesign the site from this point, but it's well worth it I assure you. Less visual clutter and better navigation improves any website.

Also, one last note is that frees up room for important stuff like having a round table area on the front/main page where either important forum posts can be highlighted or it works like live commenting, where a moderator posts a serious question or issue and members can right there openly discuss and debate it. One very important issue I can think of at the moment (and one of the reasons that this site REALLY needs to be simplified and better organized) is the state of modding. You all know the story: Back in the day of Doom and Quake 1, it was easy. One person could make a mod and it could fit on a floppy. Now that games are getting more complex, it takes a team to produce a mod which can take months to complete. As games get even more complex, it may be at a point where it would take an actual videogame company type team with resources to produce a decent mod. Crysis is one of the most complex games and I'm sure mods for it are going to be coming out a heck of a lot slower than those for say Half Life 2 did. Anyway, you all know, I needn't explain further

I'm going to stop typing now and sleep. Have a good weekend all.

--Snow.

BlueWolf72 WooF WooF

Nov 18 2007, 2:27am Anchor

nice read snow..

--

Aaron "BlueWolf72" Molloy

 code:
 
Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.

Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb

Nov 18 2007, 2:28am Anchor

Crap, stupid formatting screwed up my layout example... some of the text was centered. Well, I'm sure you can decipher it.

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 4:41am Anchor

I have never posted on this message board and frankly don't intend on being a regular but I have been out of commision for a month and could do nothing on my compy. I have returned and the whole site is messed up. Please someone tell me I have come back mid roll out and this is not the final state of this site?!?!

Dimebog The Enlightened Florist

Nov 18 2007, 5:01am Anchor

It's fine just when you get used to it.

And I don't think Snow has a point (News tab on the first place and no Downloads is retarded. Did you check how many mods have news at all? So the first page should be a blank one. That'd be fun). And I don't want another "redesign". What is the point of the hit counters and everything if they reset every time. And to have to change the descriptions of all screenshots, re-organize all the team members, come up with more pics, stuff like that. Just leave it be for goodness sake...

Karuto

Nov 18 2007, 9:29am Anchor

Yeah, just like with any major redesign, it's something you have to get used to. Fortunately, you have a great creator like Scott (INtense) who is quite flexible and more than willing to hear out changes you want made to the site. If enough people clamor for it, then he goes about doing something that all sides can agree on. Not to mention, this version only went live a few weeks ago, so it is obviously something that will still be under development for several months into the future. There will be plenty of time to adjust to the new layout.

--

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

TKAzA LvL 1 Elite

Nov 18 2007, 10:04am Anchor

@Snow: I think you will find the design very aesthetic and far from rushed if you take the time and effort to look around the site.
As karuto stated INtense the site designer and coder is working on updates and is tailoring the site to peoples requests, i would however note a full redesign well out of the question being v4 took over 9 months to code.

@Smoth: The moddb site you see is very much final, theres major features missing like the pm system and v4 forums, however 99% of the site is up and running, what don't you like about the new site?

Edited by: TKAzA

--

TKAzA
moddDB Content Manager
Portfolio

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 11:52am Anchor

*sighs blood firefox tabs* I deleted my origonal post going back and forth.

Ok enough whining about my inability to use firefox.

Alright, first and foremost, I think the new look is pretty but very cluttered. The colors are high contrast and they hurt my eyes. Red, and any neon color scheme are going to be an eye sore and draw attention away from the text. It is very distracting. An optional muted, black and indigo theme might help with this. Now to specifics. I hope this helps.

I prefered the old mod watch section.

It was good to skim over fast and see if an update was one I wanted to see. there was a small thumbnail and a brief note about what was updated. Now it has a large thumb of the mod, sometimes just some random w.i.p. model. Which often times tells me squat. The game icon + modname was ample. The pictures just confuse things.

In my watch list, which has to be dug up now and not cleanly displayed, we again have the large sort of random thumbnails that mean little to us making less mods visible per page. It does not really help as we see oh look some random game screen, which often times without a description will tell us little about the game that the mod is changing. Even so, the size of them is mainly what destroys my ability to skim through large list and find what I am looking for.

Is there an option to just display the game icon? Even in my own mods, the images that were chosen to represent them were meaningless.

Mod and user profile editing.

When I want to modify one of my mods or my user profile the control panel is gone. This is disorientating but I can get used to it. So I go and click my name, go to mods, pick the mod I want to modify.I have to then click on images then manuever through the filmstrip to get to the image I want to modify. I miss the old gallery style view.

Also news going under the general information of the mod is horrid. I post nice long news posts and some times just minor ones but there is a lot of news. which hides my user comments, which to me, is the most important thing. When I go to a mod, I like to read the general and the user comments. The news is only important to me if I am watching the mod. If I needed to know how often the mod was updated the site already told me. News and the general description being put together also have a wall of text effect for me as a user. I don't mind reading the general discussion about a mod but christ that is a lot of text.

Also that giant grey header is unnecessary, the weird shape right above the mod name taking up 1/8 of my screen.

However, to me this is all a minor loss compared to the main page.

Ok, firstly the old news format is gone, again we see some meaningless image of a mod, the name but wait.. less information. The news section now only shows a short blurb of information. No nice pictures to entice me, no more text then a sentence or two. This tells me very little so I now have to click on the mod news to view it. Of course this is after I scroll past the adds and giant moddb bulletin board which takes up 75 percent of my screen. I can understand adds but that giant billboard is too much. you could just reduce it to the rectangle with text and that would give us just as much info. I am not running at a terribly low resolution either, I am on dual 1440X900 screens which is pretty average if not a bit above average these days.

To me the site requires more of my time to get anything out of, between stopping and having to figure out what the picture of a mod is supposed to tell me. between digging up my mod section to updated it I find myself tempted to just update my mod site rather then moddb. Frankly my instinct is to just stop browsing moddb for mod news and spend more time on other things.

I do love all the new features, video uploads, a blog and many other things are very nice but I do not feel that the way mods are presented is very good for the user or very good for the modder when it comes to promotion of their mod. I am not trying to be ungrateful here, this site is free after all for us. However, I wanted to speak my peace.

Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb

Nov 18 2007, 11:55am Anchor

Aesthetic is fine and perhaps I was a bit harsh in saying that the design was poor and rushed, but that's how I feel because that's how it looks. It looks that way because everything I may want to look for or want to see as soon as I come to the site, I have to look all over for. As far as a professional site, the look and layout of this site can work as long if you have proper categories, clear navigation and all that you seek is easy to find. As long as all information pertaining to one mod is on one page and you don't have to search all over to get extra information of that mod. Everything related to the mod, rating, history, download, etc, well basically everything you need to know is right there.

Dimebog, news can cover anything. For instance say Valve decides to host a modding competition: the best modders get to work for Valve or something. I think many would want to know about that. Also, no hit counters are needed, especially if you have a good rating system. Lastly, no extra pics, descriptions or reorganization of mod material is needed - everything there is is simply found on one page. Simple.

Snow Nexuiz, Doom2, Earthbound modding/coding newb

Nov 18 2007, 12:00pm Anchor

Whoops, heh, another goof. I was talking about News on the mainpage... not on the mod page. News on the mod page would be recent work/ updates on a mod. That can be optional too, if you simply want to use mod history for update information.

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 12:25pm Anchor

btw, your site says: Cs.selu.edu is not a valid site. That is my homepage.

Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing

Nov 18 2007, 1:56pm Anchor

To be fair, it probably isn't a valid site. The only content related to mods is a few links to your projects. If you submitted the relevant page about the mod it probably would be valid.

--

"lets say Portal is a puzzle game, so its a rehash of Tetris"
- Wraiyth points out the craziness of stereotyping games by their genre

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 1:58pm Anchor

this is in my user profile, under my homepage so yeah, it is correct and relevant. My mod sites are sub sections of this page and my homepage talks about my mods. You should have clicked the link before you criticized.

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 2:08pm Anchor

yep I just checked it and this site does tell my my MOD HOMEPAGES ARE INVALID. So this is very relevant.

Gibberstein Generic Coder Type Thing

Nov 18 2007, 4:26pm Anchor

Hey, no problem. I did check the link - that's how I knew it contained the links to your projects, yes? I thought they were rejecting it as the page for your mod, and the reason I gave is the reason a lot of pages are rejected. Now we've cleared that up maybe one of the site admins can help you out.

--

"lets say Portal is a puzzle game, so its a rehash of Tetris"
- Wraiyth points out the craziness of stereotyping games by their genre

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 18 2007, 6:22pm Anchor

I hope they can. With the current system I cannot update my profiles without remove the links to my mod profiles. Not a good thing.

While we are talking about site stuff why do I have this in my profile:
Influence: 33% negative

What the devil is that from? We have a Karma system? I often times find karma systems people will often only bother if you have something they dislike, seldom do you receive positive karma as people are not riled enough to make an effort. Can I at least see what it is that people are all upset about? I have only made 7 posts and have a 33% negative karma, 2 of my posts were offensive or something?

ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks

Nov 19 2007, 2:46am Anchor

The karma system doesn't appear to work on a simple up-down basis. You get karma for making a contribution to the site, and generally being active.

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 19 2007, 3:23am Anchor

odd, so a period of inactivity has me marked as negative?

Also any word on a fix for the site registration? the Url is sound I assure you guys and you can check it yourself.

ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks

Nov 19 2007, 3:40am Anchor

Probably more a distinct lack of being particularly active. The number swings all over the place anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.

TKAzA LvL 1 Elite

Nov 19 2007, 8:34am Anchor

Influence is your comment and posting and how people rate you and that influences the karma.

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TKAzA
moddDB Content Manager
Portfolio

Erykgecko Something Witty Here

Nov 19 2007, 9:01am Anchor

Like most it seems I prefered the old v3 to the new v4, but again I suppose it's just a case of getting used to the new layout, it's doesnt seem quite as intuitive,

still, my main concern is the fact that members of a mod team for each mod seem to have been dropped, ie, only the member that created a mod is still set up to be able to manage it, and unless they create a group that the other members then join, other members are unable to update a mods profile, now thats all well and fine, but what do we do if like in our case, the person that created the mod profile is no longer about/works on the mod. In our case, sniper x created the mod profile, however he no longer works on the mod as far as i'm aware, and has not been online for months, which leaves us, the other team members, in a bit of a bind, since none of us are now able to log on and update the profile...

so are we basically screwed and need to create a new profile, or can something be done about this?

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starletgirlie says:
thats a damn scary picture!
Erykgecko says:
youre the second person that said that i dont see how
starletgirlie says:
u just look like ur planning something evil.
Erykgecko says:
rape... pillage... burn... The usual

declinsion Wall Scibbler

Nov 19 2007, 2:53pm Anchor

I'm having a problem with my moddb forums profile. When I chose to the edit my profile after taking a look over it, it did not seem to change. I uploaded a new avatar as well as deleted my signature, but when I post, it's still the old pictures and signature. Is it just me?

ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks

Nov 19 2007, 2:58pm Anchor

The forums are not integrated into v4 yet.

Smoth Zeonic Loyalist

Nov 19 2007, 5:31pm Anchor

TKAzA, any idea about the website issue is that getting fixed/wip/not getting looked at?

ambershee Nimbushfish Rawks

Nov 20 2007, 3:01am Anchor

In a very stupid move, you can only write code tutorials that are 'server' or 'client'.

A lot of tutorials could be both, a lot of tutorials could be neither. Some games don't even use the standard client/server architecture - for example Unreal Tournament uses a replication technique instead.

It would be nice to have these categories abolished, and just have 'coding' instead, since most code would affect both, unless singleplayer.