Upcoming game submission functionality
After much discussion with the BYOND Staff and the BYOND guild leaders, we're about ready to roll out some new guild functionality: The ability for any guild member to submit a game to the guild's list. As part of this, we've started expanding the hub pages to include guild information.
Here's how it works (subject to any refinements before we roll it out):
Guilds will have two additional options:
And when you go to a hub page you will see a couple of new things. On the left side of the Version box, there is a list of guilds this game is listed in:
On the right side is a new link for submitting the game to a guild:
Because it's a somewhat expensive hit on the database to calculate which guilds you can submit the game to, we wait until you click the link to figure that out, and give you a list like this:
After you've submitted to a guild:
The guild staff sees this:
If you have game management privileges for the guild, or if the guild auto-approves games, then it goes right onto the list.
The first draft of this functionality is in place and we should have it out shortly. We hope it will encourage guild membership and for games to be added to guilds.
We have several more ideas for how to add Member/Guild functionality to the hub pages, and of course we're interested in any ideas you might have.
Here's how it works (subject to any refinements before we roll it out):
Guilds will have two additional options:
And when you go to a hub page you will see a couple of new things. On the left side of the Version box, there is a list of guilds this game is listed in:
On the right side is a new link for submitting the game to a guild:
Because it's a somewhat expensive hit on the database to calculate which guilds you can submit the game to, we wait until you click the link to figure that out, and give you a list like this:
After you've submitted to a guild:
The guild staff sees this:
If you have game management privileges for the guild, or if the guild auto-approves games, then it goes right onto the list.
The first draft of this functionality is in place and we should have it out shortly. We hope it will encourage guild membership and for games to be added to guilds.
We have several more ideas for how to add Member/Guild functionality to the hub pages, and of course we're interested in any ideas you might have.
Posted by Deadron (BYOND Developer) on Monday, March 12, 2007 11:21PM
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#16 Jtgibson:
Yeah, lots of things look nice, but beneath that thin candy shell lies a heart made of pure evil.
Friday, March 30, 2007 10:07AM
#15 Gotrax:
Macs look nice for buttons and stuff >.>
Friday, March 30, 2007 06:37AM
#14 Keeth:
I think I'll stop worrying (atleast, I won't publicly announce my dismay for the modifications) about BYOND's game handling functions until changes are complete and I can see how it all works for myself.
It doesn't look to bad from the way it's represented in this post, but I still did enjoy the simplicity found in the original navigation system for the games section.
Do your worst, and we'll see how it turns out.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:16AM
(Edited on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:27AM)
#13 Deadron:
Not to sound negative here, but I think the links are inherently more complicated on the back end than is a text box, because you have to do a lot more pre- and post-processing to ensure that all of the data is right.
Actually it was quite simple to implement, and the checks you describe have to be done in any case.
However, when we provide the links ahead of time, we also keep you from wasting your time. You don't have to spend time typing in a name and submitting, only to find it's already been submitted or that guild isn't accepting games.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 10:26AM
#12 Jtgibson:
Deadron wrote:
> However, I do think we should just have a "submit to guild" with a text box, not with a link. If people are really serious about submitting to guilds, they should at least be able to look up the submission name of the guild.
>
> We may eventually support a text box for the author on the hub editing page -- but given that we only want people who didn't create the game to submit to guilds they belong to, and that we can provide convenient links for them that avoid all sorts of error checking and extra UI, we're likely to stick with links on this page.
Not to sound negative here, but I think the links are inherently more complicated on the back end than is a text box, because you have to do a lot more pre- and post-processing to ensure that all of the data is right. With a text-entry, the actual input is more complex, for sure -- a POST method -- but not that much more complex... there are only four conditions you need to track, in relative order of frequency, that I'm aware of:
1) The Hub entry does not exist (user made a typo or it really doesn't exist),
2) User is not a member of the specified Guild,
3) The game in question has already been submitted to that guild, or
3) Unable to access the database; try again later.
That would work out to six contexts -- one for the submission page, one for the "awaiting review" or "accepted" page, and four for the different possible errors.
Then again, I don't know Perl, so what seems trivial to me in DM could be a pain in the butt in Perl. =)
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 10:18AM
#11 Deadron:
However, I do think we should just have a "submit to guild" with a text box, not with a link. If people are really serious about submitting to guilds, they should at least be able to look up the submission name of the guild.
We may eventually support a text box for the author on the hub editing page -- but given that we only want people who didn't create the game to submit to guilds they belong to, and that we can provide convenient links for them that avoid all sorts of error checking and extra UI, we're likely to stick with links on this page.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 01:16PM
#10 Mikau:
This is slightly off topic, but still has to do with the Guilds. I've noticed on the BYOND Games page, that they show the official guilds, then the "More Communities..." at the bottom. The more communities always shows the top communities though. Shouldn't they show random ones so that the smaller communities get recognized as well?
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:44PM
#9 Jtgibson:
Mikau wrote:
> I think it would be best that the official guilds(RPG, Action, Strategy) be listed. And the semi-official(Dungeon Crawlers) be listed as well. The rest of them should just be a text box.
That'd be the last thing I want, myself. I want BYOND to become decentralised.
However, I do think we should just have a "submit to guild" with a text box, not with a link. If people are really serious about submitting to guilds, they should at least be able to look up the submission name of the guild.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 12:23PM
#8 Deadron:
If you have every guild listed
We only list guilds you are a member of, and that are currently accepting game submissions.
If you are a member of official guilds, those are listed, unless an official guild already has the game.
I know some random jerk is going to just scroll down the list, and submit their game to every guild in it.
Probably a good way to lose guild privileges...
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:32AM
#7 Evi of au:
Regardless, one guild isn't going to get 100 submissions due to one random jerk. It would be as simple as clicking 'deny' for any game that doesn't suit the guilds category.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:29AM
#6 Mikau:
I think it would be best that the official guilds(RPG, Action, Strategy) be listed. And the semi-official(Dungeon Crawlers) be listed as well. The rest of them should just be a text box.
If the name isn't spelled correctly, shouldn't it just return a "guild doesn't exist" of some sort?
If you have every guild listed, I know some random jerk is going to just scroll down the list, and submit their game to every guild in it. We may have a mature community, but there's an immature one on the other side of the hill.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:19AM
#5 splattergnome:
I would go with a hybrid solution - the semi-official genre-based BYOND guilds directly listed, and the rest in a scrollbox.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:00AM
#4 Deadron:
We can add a text box if necessary, but then we have to deal with misspelling the name, etc. It is the sort of thing we'll look at if people start having that many guilds -- another option is providing a scrollbox listing the guilds.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 08:16AM
#3 Lummox JR:
Android Data wrote:
> Isn't that list of guilds going to become huge?
Like the wise man said, those are good problems.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 01:43AM
#2 Android Data:
Isn't that list of guilds going to become huge?
If so, I'd suggest an option at the bottom w/ a textbox. You input the BYOND Members' key of the site to sign it up to and hit OK (or press enter or something) and it'll go on that page instead.
Only official guilds (the official BYOND guilds and the guilds listed by them) will go on the list for checking.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 01:12AM
#1 Audeuro:
Whoo! Looks really good thus far. Keep up the good work. :)
Monday, March 12, 2007 11:24PM