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Blog
Grinds You...
- April 20, 2008 - 3:42am
Blog Code
- Mood: Inquisitive
- Playing: Napalm Code
- Watching: Airwolf
- Listening: DI.fm Vocal Trance
- Reading: Robots and Empire
- Drinking: Cold Coffee
- Eating: Nothing (I'm starving)
So I am about to ask a serious question, and I want you to answer it honestly. Don't worry about hurt feelings or anything like that. Your feedback here is important.
What grinds your gears about Napalm Riot? What really annoys you about NR? Something we currently have which you don't like? Something you feel we should have, but don't? Lay it on me.
Just try to keep in mind the stuff we have already commented on in the past. If we have already said something is coming, no reason to bring it up again. Tell me what you feel is missing, wrong, or just plain 'ew'.
Hit me..!
Comments
ɤKlink258
Has The Flag
Maybe that's because we don't know what to expect...
What is Napalm Riot? What is its focus?
If you want to think of features, just ask yourself that question. Because I'm not sure I know the answer
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
However relying on that only is dangerous, and since most people are not as motivated to say something sucks as they are to praise you for your hard work, I wanted to ask bluntly!
I, Gamer!
ɤKlink258
Has The Flag
I'm a bad person to ask, I really don't spend as much time here as I should...
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
And yes, you _should_ be here more.
I, Gamer!
ɤKlink258
Has The Flag
my.napalmriot.com has just empty boxes for each section
Users can't contribute to certain game facts. Halo 3 says engine unknown, but it says Havok right on the box.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Well that is not difficult to do, but do you really want us automatically changing up your stuff so much when you post something?
When I can find a graphic artist who can meet my standards for quality, that will be fixed.
That is coming with the CCS (Community Contribution System). Honestly we don't have enough coders right now, so things are a bit slower.
I, Gamer!
ɤKlink258
Has The Flag
Here's one: I have no idea if/where there is a guide to all of the formatting used across the site.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
http://forum.napalmriot.com/formatting/
It's linked to from anywhere that you can use it, except for the comment popup (yet!).
I, Gamer!
ʊchalkley3
I go where I please, and I please where I go
The fact that the forums are stagnating.
And the fact that some people just aren't "getting" the napalm vibe.
Also, I think you should make poor grammar a bannable offence
I don't know, these things are pretty minor when you consider all things, but you asked
Prince Phillp to a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: "You look as if you’re ready for bed."
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
:B
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Ah yes, this is due to two things primarily:
1st. We need more coders badly. One of the problems about a development team on any project which is not funded is that you only get the time that they want/can give you. Therefore I have some coders that put every ounce of free time they can muster into the site, but they have also have day jobs, and school, etc. I have others that could put in a lot more, and should have motivation to do so, but instead choose to go party most of their free time, and give us a little dribble here and there. Those will be sorry in the end when Napalm is huge and they realize how much they threw away. The point being that it's about manpower.
2nd. We are hitting bigger systems lately, meaning that the things we are working on take more time to implement, and therefore it appears like less it getting done, mainly because there is nothing to announce until you have most or all of the large project complete. Perhaps we should start announcing that we are starting on something, and about progress. However, along with the first reason up there, it is next to impossible for me to actually estimate.
The endgame being that we are getting stuff done, but it's slower that I would wish, and its big stuff so the interval between releases is longer.
It is interesting that you bring this up. There is a term... 'critical mass' ...which originated with nuclear fission, but has come to mean many different things. Concerning social platforms, it is the smallest amount of people needed to maintain constant growing interaction, without specific and intent 'seeding'.
Napalm is not there yet. The thing is that we need to continue to 'seed' the forums and create, maintain, and enrich conversation so that there are topics to discuss. Eventually we will have a big enough community that it will be self-sustaining. However, that is growth, and to get growth we need things like active forums.
We're working on it, and one of the ways is to build more things for the community to do, and take part in. The more there is to do, the more people will come, and the longer they will stay.
I am thinking that this is closely related to your complaint about the forums, but can you define this one more specifically for me?
And cut away 99.99999999% of our possibly audience?
I, Gamer!
ɤWeapongod
Owned A Dreamcast
Theif: Your GP or your HP!
Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt...
Be careful of the new Wonderflu bug thats going around!
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
I don't like that I can't mark all the forums as read when I want to.
I can't add desktop screenshots without having to select a game title. :> I don't want to submit them as "pictures". :B
I'd like to be able to reply to things without being led away from the message center to do so. I'm lazy, you know. Stop making me work so much to do things! :B
Terry smells. Make him bathe. :[
Interviews. We should have them in the News area. Pick a volunteer staff and interview staffers/rioters so everyone gets to know all the dirty little secrets you have buried in your closet/dungeon/porn folders. :>
I think we should have silly little on-site games (not now, but eventually) to challenge each other in.
Lastly, we are missing a Cookie button. I demand cookies when I want them. D:<
(Yes, I had to interject stupidity in between my serious answers. It's the way of the Sangue. But, seriously, if I think of anything else, I know where to go to hound you. D:<)
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
What can we, the people that are the reason the place will stay in existence, do to help? Tell us what you may need from us. You know I'll help (as will most of the others) in any way we can. We love this place. :B
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Well this is something we may add in the future. Right now the forums are kind of a mess on the backend and due to the person working on them, I have ZERO CLUE as to when they will be fixed. It is _literally_ a situation where I have to beg god or whatever higher power there is that I might get a trickle of information, and it might actually turn out to be true.
Aware of this, and it's on the list to be fixed.
You can reply to comments from your message center. You cannot however reply to Forum posts from your MC. This is somewhat intentional, and someone due to the fact that (as stated) the forums on the back end are a total mess.
We have planned on doing interviews for quite some time, but there is not much use until we get more people visiting the site.
Or are you specifically talking about doing interviews with the staff?
This has been in planning for a long time. Again, this is all about having the coders to do it. In the words of the Death Star commander: "I need more men!" (yeah that was nerdish)
I, Gamer!
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
Good to know I'm not just a 'tard talking out my arse about things that make no sense (well, most of the time >_>).
Interviews! Well, I didn't mean about just the staff and members here. I meant anyone - people from this site, developers from various games, people from game-related magazines and/or shows, really just anyone that has something to do with the gaming industry, even down to the people who play on teams in tournaments.
I just think it'd be interesting to question people about these things and be able to read their responses.
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
I, Gamer!
ɤWeapongod
Owned A Dreamcast
<.<
>.>
Spot, magic beer making skills, now!
Theif: Your GP or your HP!
Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt...
Be careful of the new Wonderflu bug thats going around!
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
Brilliant!
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
¤Sangue
Is laying mines for the good of all.
Napalm Riot's News Babe.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Concerning the tab issue, can you define for me exactly what you do and exactly what happens and exactly what you expect to happen. I can then get this information over to zikes and possibly get this fixed.
I, Gamer!
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
I'm going to look into this some more and talk to zikes about it as well.
I, Gamer!
ӝrotane
Retro Gamer
"The heat of the decomposition from an explosion of rotane is quite substantial (3426±87 kJ/mol ?)... So yeah, i think i can be suspicious of you" -- ɤswordhorder
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
I, Gamer!
ɤLume
Artist
The ability to go to somebodies page, see that they are currently playing a game and then to join their server. Limited to certain games of course and all that good stuff. I'm sure you know all the technical stuff that I don't and if this is even possible or not. I know my Xfire account has a "join" button on the website by my friends names when they are in game.
Again, sorry if it's been brought up or if it's in development. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
The reason that xfire gives you that ability is that it is piggybacking on your display drivers and watching your running processes, which it is able to do because it is installed on your computer. Therefore it knows what game you are running, and what server you are connected to, because it is more or less sitting there with you.
My point being, that in order to do what you are asking, we have to be able to know what Game->Server you are connected to. Which requires your computer somehow telling Napalm that very information.
So is this possible, yes. However it is going to require a Napalm Riot application be running on your computer, which we have planned already, but getting a desktop app written, debugged, tested, etc. in a manner to ensure it does not interfere with your gaming experience takes a while, and is difficult to get done with only stock as payment.
So yes, this is coming, I however cannot venture to remotely guess on when.
I, Gamer!
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
In that situation, how many times would you actually go find a server and then alt-tab out, load up NR, and paste server information into a form?
You would never use it, and probably neither would anyone else.
If it's not automatic, it doesn't happen. Unfortunately.
I, Gamer!
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
ɤdedredhed
Gamer Chick
Otherwise, I like the site. It's thus far like an interactive fan-mag. I think there should be more news reviews of games as they come out, maybe a little section of comics, discussion of upcoming games. That's a bit more on the news/reporter side and I know that's not what you guys are all about, but the more to get people interested, the better.
Undefined, unusual, unrestrained.
non-conformist:not conforming to some norm or socially approved pattern of behavior or thought.
ɤArchaicStigma
Won The Internet
-AS
Moar - The provided level of material relevant to my interests is insufficient to meet my personal required needs
1418-7083-1244 Mario Kart Wii
ɤKirielson
General Rioter
Also, the forum coding concerning paging is a mess the Merchandise thread should explain some of the flaws.
I also agree that we need games to challenge people in.
One thing that somewhat irks me is that you don't have a staff that reviews gaming gear or games. Granted we have our own review sections but it would be nice to have others review games for NR.
Finally we need gaming developers on here so they can give us some info on these boards on new and up and coming games.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Can you define this a little more? Are you talking about something akin to dA's devwear division?
Hmm, can you link me to that thread, so I can look into it?
Define this more. You think we need ways for people to list games they are playing, or actual games built into the site?
Please look at the thread of comments started by djh2048 on this same blog, where I answer his same question.
Getting game devs on here is all about it being worth their while. Right now there is not enough people to be a big deal to them. As we grow in size, it will become easier to get them on-board.
I, Gamer!
ɤKirielson
General Rioter
The second question: http://forum.napalmriot.com/topic/4755/ here's what I'm talking about. When you get a super list of comments that should be condensed when four or more messages show up.
Third quesitons: We need arcade games. Kind of like the flash games you see people and save on the same server exceot have exclusives to NR.
Fourth and fifth question: I see where you're getting at.
Finally, is it possible to get somekind of podcast going on here, on like a weekly/bi-weekly basis if people are interested in one?
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
Sure, that would be great. That however took a long time to do at dA, and it takes considerable expense up front to get it off the ground. Also, if you are going to do it at all, you need a big enough audience to keep it going. Right now NR does not have a big enough audience to start an entire clothing division. And unfortunately, even doing one run of a shirt would be a tab beyond our finances (at this moment), and we would sell quite a few, but then that would be it for a while.
So in answer to your question, we are going to do this in the future for sure. It is actually a big plan for us, but right now it is difficult.
Now concerning the route of getting a Napalm shirt up and available etc. We have a place that we believe may be high enough quality, and do one-off printing, meaning that we would not need to pre-order a batch. However, as funny as this sounds, haven't gotten the cash yet to order a sample so I can see it, and verify the quality. That will be fixed here soon however.
Ah, you must be referring to the long sub-conversations that get started and keep going. This has been addressed several times so far, I'm surprised you have not ran across one of them.
This honestly comes down to a current technical hurdle. The paging currently takes into account the number of 'root' comments on the page, meaning replies to the actual first comment in the thread. At the threshold, the paging system will break the page. The issue you are talking about happens when there are strings of replies to the root comments.
This is actually a common problem for any paging system. It is two-fold:
First, there is the database issue. That is because the system does not see the thread of comments/forum posts how you and I do. It seems only the root comments, and then it has to go to each one of those and look for replies. This means that getting those counts up-front can be kind of hectic.
Second, is the real issue. Even after you get all those reply counts, where do you break it? Do you always move a comment with more than X replies to the next page? What if the first comment has more than X replies. Do you break it in the middle of a reply chain? That is very confusing for the user, to move on to next page and think they are looking at a root comment, but in fact they are looking at the continuation of a reply chain. Etc.
It's hectic, but yes, we are working on it.
I will be honest with you on this one. I absolutely want to see us supporting the classics (Go, Chess, Checkers, Card Games, Etc) but we really don't want to see NR turned into a casual flash games site.We have a lot more higher quality stuff than that coming up.
But yes, we will be supporting classics, just because we can. But we do not want to turn into kongregate.com. Just to be clear: We love Kongregate, but they do what they do very well, we do not need to try and do it also.
Cool.
Funny you should mention this. nirach and I were just discussing this the other day. The answer is yes, but I am worried about overhead. When I produced a multi-person podcast a few years ago, editing took up about 18 hours a week. That is a lot of time, which no-one here really has free (or the expertise except myself). And it's also a job that gets old real fast.
So yeah, I want to do that, we just need to work out some complications.
I, Gamer!
ɤKirielson
General Rioter
For the podcast, do you think it's possible we do something like G4TV.com?
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
G4TV has like 2039478209834029384 podcasts. When you said 'like them' which one are you referring to?
I, Gamer!
ɤKirielson
General Rioter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4tv.com
Here's what I'm talking about. We could do that in a podcast version doing the talking live.
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
I, Gamer!
ɤKirielson
General Rioter
ӝspot
Chief Instigator
I, Gamer!