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Hi All,

I *finally* pushed some of the changes I've been working on for a while. Unfortunately, most of the changes are "behind the scenes" and in preparation for the big new look. This means that some changes will surface as bugs... hopefully none too bad... since I couldn't do a whole lot of testing.

I ended up having to completely rewrite that new storygame page listing, as the performance on my prototype was absolutely terrible. Anyway, it's much more functional now... please let me know what you think.

http://chooseyourstory.com/newlist2

I think there are some other minor bug fixes, but to be honest I've forgotten since it's been so long since I've updated the site last.  But, with this push out of the way, I'm going to try to start making more frequent updates once again.

Alex

UPDATE -- I knew I forgot something! Sorry, this was big.... and JJJ can explain a bit more, if you're curios. There was a change to the "storygame rating" algorithm. It now takes into account the number of Experience Points that the rater has... so, the more points you have, the more weight your rating is given. As a result of this, many games were downgraded (especially those with lots of high ratings from non-registered members), while some were upgraded.

It looks great! I love the new icons for featured games; they're so fancy and cool. (Advancing from creamy felt floppies to leather-bound hardbacks! Woot!)

I also like that it's 8 stars now instead of 5 stars divided into 8 parts - it looks like a much cleaner design. It's very appealing to the eye, and the colors blend nicely with the text.

Do the green check marks mean the game is featured? If so, they seem a bit randomly placed on the star ratings - is there a system or just a bug?

Overall, the design is classy yet still simple, not too simple (such as the large white spaces we have currently) - but simple enough that the attention is still concentrated on the games.

Alphabetical order seems good as a default, although in my opinion it makes the games look unorganized (even if they are the rest of the stats are too random) I suppose that's what the "Sorted By" options are for, but the default setting (just my opinion) should probably be highest rated - lowest rated.

The medallion on the right side means it's feature. The green check mark shows the games you played, and what you rated them.

I actually dislike putting all the storygames in a single list though. It just doesn't feel very welcoming and it makes featured storygames seem less featured.

I agree. It makes the games look too overwhelming. Though I thought tag categories should be there?

I agree, completely, though I think the best way to solve it is to allow for filtering by tag.

Clicking on the [Tag] is *supposed* to take you to a page that's like, "TAGname Storygames", but you know, it's broken now.

But say that worked... I wonder if we should put a list of popular tags (i.e. the old categories) at the front of the All Storygames list?

We need a lot more tags before I'll consider them a valid way to sort storygames. We're also going to need to go through every storygame (that's worth reading that is), and add proper tags.

What do you mean by "at the front", though? Personally, I think putting a list of them at the side (that you can activate and deactivate).

Like in the red box here

Would look nice. I also don't think saying "TAGNAME Storygames" is a good idea, because it means (or at least implies) they'll only be able to search for one tag at a time, rather than being able to look for a story that has multiple tags.

I think I can summarize the one thing the site needs in a single sentence:

We need a Moderator Queue.

There should be a whole bevy of buttons around the site such as 'suggest for deletion' or 'suggest a tag' or whatnot. When that's pressed, it should send a notification to all moderators/admins and then they can either accept or decline. If they accept, the user who suggested it is auto awarded a point amount and the change is automatically made. Once a suggestion has been attended to, it's removed from all of the moderator's notifications. (Marked as read)

Darn it, I had a quite a bit written up but when I clicked post message it suddenly redirected me to the post page new look style...

Anyway, I was saying that a error pop's up when I try to load a storygame..it complains about some plugin missing:"indojk.framedialog".

The rating system update is nice.

Posts that go too much to the right still look weird and the mystuff is inaccessible, but storygames are playable now, so that's nice.

The formatting's weird in user pages.

The "storygames displayed" count is not updated unless you refresh the page. And when I click any of the page links the rating filter seems to go as I suddenly see other games than 8 rated ones(which was what I selected).

In difficulty reverse and newest sort, they sort by recommended order.

Weirdly, some poorly rated game pops up at the top of my "recommended" list. Every other game on the first page is featured. If I put rated only filter, some other poorly rated game pops up on the top with the rest of the page again all featured..

And so it came to pass, that the order of the midnight sun lost its perfect rating.

Does it take the points into consideration at the time its rated, or does it change based on the member's points over time?

What happens when people with broken points, like you and madglee, rate a storygame?

Then the story game with reflect whatever they voted. Duh. 

Good! That storygame doesn't deserve an 8. Though, neither does Homo Perfectus, IMO. I'd say that Ground Zero, does.

Admins have a set rating strength (and the three creators have an even greater rating strength). Users with 5500+ points will also have the same rating strength as admins (but not creators). As your points increase, you'll see diminishing returns in rating strength. Up to your first 500 points, your rating strength increases dramatically, and then in your next 5000 points, it increases steadily but not dramatically. I designed it that way because I think that a user with 500 points doesn't have a significantly less informed opinion than an admin does, but they have a much more informed opinion than a new user does.

Basically, the gap between someone with 500 points and an admin (or a user with 5500+ points) is not extremely large. The gap between a user with 500 points and a user with 0 points is very large. The gap between a user and an unregistered guest is very large.

So, to answer your question, madglee and I have the same rating strength despite the fact that he's crazily abused his power and added a bunch of points to himself, while I haven't. Alex has a greater rating strength than either of us because he made the site :P

Sounds good.

Nice to see the point system getting some attention.

Yeah, it was a priority for me.

Hahah, I didn't add my points because I wanted points. The number 23232323 is very important for the sequel to Mommy.

I think it'll be a user preference for a while, and *eventually* it will go, but that'll probably be after most everyone forgot about it. For example, did you know there used to be a "MyAdventureGame.com theme?" I think that was from 2005 :)

I just thought it'd throw it out that the double space error is still occurring when you write storygames.

Writing this:

Hello
Yes
No

Becomes this:

Hello

Yes

No

Once it's read.

Does this new text editor help at all?

Can't check. I can't access anything in my storygames for some reason. I can click on them to edit them, but when I click "Pages and Chapters" or other options, nothing happens.

Can u check if there are JAVASCRIPT errors? You can do like, "F12" to open tools and then look for "Debug" or "Console" or osmething.

No errors or anything according to the console. It just doesn't acknowledge anything is being done.

This is happening to me too, but only on certain games.  I click edit, and go to the page where you can see the tabs of "storygame properties" etc, but nothing happens when you click on any of them.  link to that page below.

http://chooseyourstory.com/My/adveditor/default.aspx?10235

This happens to me too, sometimes. When I click on links such as the Chapter, and pages, it sends me to an error page. 

Wow, this text editor is a lot prettier! Thanks Alexp!