New Board - Props and Slops

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Thanks again for your responses Mindi. Just one small clarification:

Sorry, I meant the bit just below the poster's name, rather than the bit above it. That seems only to contain the bit of paper.

Ahhh, basically taking that away would take away a poster's ability to post a seperate title to their response. The reason you are only seing a piece of paper is because no one who has replied has titled their response differently than the OP.

[archaeolept]

animated icon at the side was a pair of clapping hands. The flashing game ads were previously at the top of the page, and so could be gotten out of the visual space just by scrolling down a bit. the ads now at the left cannot be.

also, thanks for upping pms to 300, but now the sent and recieved seem to have been duplicated... i'm now at over 200 of my 300 used ;p

[Mindi]

Those of you who are being auto logged out, are you clicking the "remember me" box when you log in? As long as you have clicked that box, you should not be logged out.

[Endoperez]

It seems that the forum update mostly improves the moderator side of things. I was expecting something that helped on the user side, not something that totally changed the look. This is made worse by the fact that the new look is horrible, especially the current shrapnel games from page, and especially the bland, BLUE cd in the middle. It's like a hole in the middle of a page, not an eye-catcher, and a blank cd certainly doesn't give a good image of your games. Other problems I have with the current Shrapnel Games frontpage. I understand it's still under construction (link to free games doesn't work), but IMO that's just more reason to point these out now when people are still working on it.

- The cursive titles It's what we do and Buy it! Buy it! are horrible. Please replace them. Defining your publishing as something you do feels bland, and the buy it! line seems way too direct, even desperate. IMO, even something like what we do best and order today! would be a vast improvement. I'd also like to see It amuses us and take it! take it! (blog and free games, respectively) changed. I don't think your blog (from which I've only read discussions about the niche game economy) is supposed to be amusing, and Take it! again goes way above my comfort level.

- The title images (Our games, Our blog, Our forums etc) should link to the page in question.

- I really hope the images under "Our games" are temporary. They make it look like all your games were sold either in dvd cases or in boxes, but at least Dominions 3 isn't.

- Ordering your games alphabetically by category doesn't work. The current way starts from BOARD games, and ENDS in STRATEGY and WAR. This doesn't work for "publisher of permier war and strategy games".

Being able to edit first posts of threads is important, but preferably there should be some way to set any post as always-editable, because there are mods (e.g. Conceptual Balance for Dom3) that have several different versions that are made downloadable as different attachments. When a version changes, all of these should be edited.
Perhaps making all posts with attachments always editable?


Color scheme of the new forum is bland. The old brown gave the forum most of its feeling, IMO. Please bring it back, if possible.

Graphic ads on the side of the forum are really distracting. Text ads on the side are fine, and image ads on top and on bottom are tolerable, but breaking the color scheme with off-color ad is really bad. If you need an image ad on the sidebar, please put it to the top of the bar, to where the main menu is currently located.


The new forum software doesn't jump to the first unread post of a thread when the thread is opened normally. You have to click the tiny arrow-icon next to its name. This is counter-intuitive. Most people don't want to read the whole thread again every time even a single post is added to it, and the first page could still be opened by selecting the '1' that's after the title.


As said before, the poster's name on top of each post takes huge amount of space. I really liked the old system, but I understand you aren't changing back to it. Still, could some vertical space be saved by moving some of the info to the center of the name/avatar line? Perhaps the new activity indicator bars? Also, it might be better to limit the avatar size so that large avatar won't strech that space any further. Changing it now, before new, bigger avatars are uploaded, would be better.


The size of text in the reply box is tiny when compared to the actual text size. This might be due to my personal settings, but I haven't been able to find an option for changing text size in the new software. Is there any way to change the size of the text in text field, or the the size of the text on viewn posts?

EDIT:
As some other people, I was shocked when I first saw the new forum. Color scheme and look were a big part in that. I even felt like this wasn't the same forum at all, and that I might leave it just for that, and the small things yet to be ironed out.

[llamabeast]

Minor thing on the front page: It says "Please bare with us". This should be "Please bear with us", lest it appears to be an invitation for some group stripping.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

It seems that the forum update mostly improves the moderator side of things.

I won't address the site design as that wasn't my portion of the change over but I will say although there is a great addition to moderation there is also a great amount of new features for users. Read my "PLEASE READ" stickies, I posted some of the new features in there although I only touched on a portion of the new features. Also additional features will be coming.

Being able to edit first posts of threads is important, but preferably there should be some way to set any post as always-editable, because there are mods (e.g. Conceptual Balance for Dom3) that have several different versions that are made downloadable as different attachments. When a version changes, all of these should be edited.
Perhaps making all posts with attachments always editable?

Asked and answered as to why we don't want all posts to be always-editable. We've had a good suggestion about allow OPs to edite first posts, I'm going to investigate that option.

As said before, the poster's name on top of each post takes huge amount of space. I really liked the old system, but I understand you aren't changing back to it. Still, could some vertical space be saved by moving some of the info to the center of the name/avatar line? Perhaps the new activity indicator bars? Also, it might be better to limit the avatar size so that large avatar won't strech that space any further. Changing it now, before new, bigger avatars are uploaded, would be better.

Umm, we've posted for 3 weeks that the new avatar size is 80x80m and that no one CAN upload bigger avatars, so this is not an issue. As to why things are on the right or left and not in the middle, I think I answered the reasoning for that in an earlier post.

The size of text in the reply box is tiny when compared to the actual text size. This might be due to my personal settings, but I haven't been able to find an option for changing text size in the new software. Is there any way to change the size of the text in text field, or the the size of the text on viewn posts?

Let me check and see if something was changed. This is probably caused by existing users not being switched to the standard editor. I can probably do a mass update this evening to do this, but you can do this yourself by going into your usercp, edit options and near the bottom where it says editor, switch from basic to standard or expanded.

[llamabeast]

I was on Standard before and switched to Basic, which I prefer. However, in both cases the text size is very very small. If you fix the glitch with the Standard setting, would you mind fixing it for Basic as well? The current text size is definitely too small. (Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Quick Reply box here, and I think the main Reply box is the same).

[Sniper23]

i'm sorry to say i agree, the writing is to small and the on old board it was way better in telling if there's a new post or not,i have to agree with most thing's they have said but this new board does have the potencial to be better.by the way now i have to download spellcheck?

[Gandalf Parker]

I havent looked into it (distracted at the moment). But other options on the OP and MP thing...
Can we attach a text file and make it viewable?

From some of the comments it looks like some people need to remember that the purpose of these forums differ slightly between Shrapnel, and the users. Not much, but some.

Edit:
OK that seems to work all right for me. It allowed me to open it in NotePad.
So the first post can include a text file with all the changing info that used to be in the first post of the MP games. That is, if we are allowed to over-write the old one with a new one even after the editing time-out. That wont be any harder a routine to get used to than the idea of having the changing info in the first post was to get people used to doing.

[llamabeast]

Gandalf, while that is a solution (assuming you can edit the text file), it will be markedly less user-friendly than being able to edit the post directly.

I should say being able to edit the first post only would be reasonable. Not ideal by any means, but okay.