I didn't know this thread existed. I'ma turn this in to a Kaion AMA
- The lack of avatars actually threw me off at first, it makes identifying a poster at a glance a little slower as you have to read a name every post. I feel the lack of them takes away from a persons character a little. Kinda makes everyone words on a screen, instead of some personality identifiable as a picture.
- There's a lot of white space on the website. There's nothing wrong with empty space like that, but it's hard on my eyes. (wah baby scoot) When I first joined I looked for a style option to make it more like the bottom of each page, kind of like a style reverse, where the white is at the bottom of each page and the black is the background everywhere else kind of like smashboards.
04/21/2015 09:46:34
Oh hai Scott.
Avatars
The choice not to use avatars is deliberate and multifaceted:
* When I was researching competitive gaming at uni I found that fight game community players identified more strongly with their character choice than anything else in the community such as age, race, gender or sexuality. The secondary axis people identify each other on is their region, so that's why these two angles are the main way to identify people on the site (I'm a Megaman main from QLD etc)
* Avatars have people associate themselves with an image which is as you say, but this detracts from their identity as a player of a character in a region. This website is meant to be as much about Smash as possible
* Avatars are not actually needed for a website with many users to be successful. See http://reddit.com
* Having a premium feature where users who have been to a tourney can have alternative versions of their main display encourage people to go tourneys. This effect is diminished with avatars.
* Avatar cause some level of barrier to entry when people sign up - it's nice for users who have been there for a while but when someone is signing up if they don't choose an avatar they look like a scrub. I don't show things like post count or join date so that everyone feels more equal
The only people so far who have requested avatars are Aero, Toki and Scott who are all former Brawl players / power users and I'm not convinced having an avatar would affect how these users use the site significantly enough to warrant all the time required to implement them (probably about a two week job) as well as the additional barrier to entry.
I do however recognise that at some point there will be too many users for this to be a sufficient identity (lol oh so you're a Falcon main from QLD? how original) and when the site hits that level of activity I may consider it as a premium feature, but for now I have more important and valuable things I want to work on.
Dark theme
This is actually something Blade suggested. How many people would be interested in a dark alternate theme? It's actually a lot of work and doubles the amount of work I have to do for any style updates moving forward so I need to be sure worth the time. I do generally like black though, so I understand this along with the whole white is hard on the eyes at times train of thought.
Optimisations
There's currently a few slow pages on the site which are being worked on:
* Forum thread pages aren't running at their optimum speed so I need to work on that
* ELO score are generated on the fly but this is becoming unviable as the amount of data in the site is growing. I'm working on a persistence layer whereby the results are calculated once and stored instead of generated on the fly each page load, but that's a massive risky task so I'm slowly adding to that bit by bit. This is also the reason player pages are taking so long to load, especially if you have played a lot of different smash games competitively because they all need their ELO calculated on player page load.
04/21/2015 22:22:27
Avatars
The choice not to use avatars is deliberate and multifaceted:
* When I was researching competitive gaming at uni I found that fight game community players identified more strongly with their character choice than anything else in the community such as age, race, gender or sexuality. The secondary axis people identify each other on is their region, so that's why these two angles are the main way to identify people on the site (I'm a Megaman main from QLD etc)
* Avatars have people associate themselves with an image which is as you say, but this detracts from their identity as a player of a character in a region. This website is meant to be as much about Smash as possible
* Avatars are not actually needed for a website with many users to be successful. See http://reddit.com
* Having a premium feature where users who have been to a tourney can have alternative versions of their main display encourage people to go tourneys. This effect is diminished with avatars.
* Avatar cause some level of barrier to entry when people sign up - it's nice for users who have been there for a while but when someone is signing up if they don't choose an avatar they look like a scrub. I don't show things like post count or join date so that everyone feels more equal
The only people so far who have requested avatars are Aero, Toki and Scott who are all former Brawl players / power users and I'm not convinced having an avatar would affect how these users use the site significantly enough to warrant all the time required to implement them (probably about a two week job) as well as the additional barrier to entry.
I do however recognise that at some point there will be too many users for this to be a sufficient identity (lol oh so you're a Falcon main from QLD? how original) and when the site hits that level of activity I may consider it as a premium feature, but for now I have more important and valuable things I want to work on.
Dark theme
This is actually something Blade suggested. How many people would be interested in a dark alternate theme? It's actually a lot of work and doubles the amount of work I have to do for any style updates moving forward so I need to be sure worth the time. I do generally like black though, so I understand this along with the whole white is hard on the eyes at times train of thought.
Optimisations
There's currently a few slow pages on the site which are being worked on:
* Forum thread pages aren't running at their optimum speed so I need to work on that
* ELO score are generated on the fly but this is becoming unviable as the amount of data in the site is growing. I'm working on a persistence layer whereby the results are calculated once and stored instead of generated on the fly each page load, but that's a massive risky task so I'm slowly adding to that bit by bit. This is also the reason player pages are taking so long to load, especially if you have played a lot of different smash games competitively because they all need their ELO calculated on player page load.
04/21/2015 22:22:27
Perfect response Kaion. This was exactly the type of answer I was looking for, great explanations in context/reasonings for your choices.
04/22/2015 08:05:34
04/22/2015 08:05:34
I agree avatars would be cool, but aren't necessary. Plus any forum where users use anime girls as their avatar instantly repels me.
The only thing that confuses me is the why is there an "update online status" option, instead of some kind of javascript users online counter? I think its safe to say that the wifi thread is the most popular thread on the site. And I often log on to see somebody request games 20 minutes ago, and aren't sure if they'd still be on/if I should bother replying. The "currently online" thing works well in theory, but seems to be unused.
04/22/2015 08:21:13
The only thing that confuses me is the why is there an "update online status" option, instead of some kind of javascript users online counter? I think its safe to say that the wifi thread is the most popular thread on the site. And I often log on to see somebody request games 20 minutes ago, and aren't sure if they'd still be on/if I should bother replying. The "currently online" thing works well in theory, but seems to be unused.
04/22/2015 08:21:13
GIRL said:
I agree avatars would be cool, but aren't necessary. Plus any forum where users use anime girls as their avatar instantly repels me.
This makes me like GIRL more XD
There's a couple of things I need to sort out with having a more beefed up "who's online" section, but I am considering it.
Opt in / Opt out
This concerns whether the site shows if you specifically are online by default (opt out) or if you have to choose to allow others to see you online (opt in).
Opt out - users can feel like they don't want to be seen online and may avoid the site at times to avoid being seen
Opt in - if nobody chooses to or even knows to opt in to show their online then the site can look dead when there's really heaps of people online
I'm more inclined to just not give people an option so it's just always accurate, but I'd have to know this wouldn't make people feel like their privacy is being violated.
Performance
There's been quite a few issues with site performance which I'm prioritising right now over newer features. Since installing server monitoring tools I've found the search pages in the videos section can be quite slow so I'm focusing on rewriting how the video library is stored.
Ideally for an online feature to work, I'd like something like an online status light next to each user's username in the forum which could toggle in real time whether they're online or not. This has the potential to hammer the server frequently, so I need to be sure everything else is really optimised before I even start this.
Web design is hard mmkay
05/03/2015 07:33:16
Unsure if this is implemented and i just can't find it, but is there a "Search Players" sort of thing which will lead you to their profile and show you their competitive data? so say if i wanted to look at aero's data, i could go to the search bar and type in Aerodrome and everything will pop up?
also the dark theme would be cool, changing with a click of a mouse C:
05/04/2015 04:17:27
also the dark theme would be cool, changing with a click of a mouse C:
05/04/2015 04:17:27
I'm going to like Jon's post because he mentioned me.
05/04/2015 05:08:35
05/04/2015 05:08:35
I'm done with some optimisations for the videos section.
http://qldsmash.com/Videos/ByGame/SSBU
This page used to take 24 seconds to load, it's now down to under 3 seconds and the rest of the video section is much faster so I'm happy with the results there.
@Jon I had a search feature, but it was hard to maintain so it's hidden for the time being. I've found success by doing this in Google say if I was searching for Aerodrome:
site:qldsmash.com Aerodrome
I still would like to implement a detailed search feature.
05/04/2015 13:25:56
http://qldsmash.com/Videos/ByGame/SSBU
This page used to take 24 seconds to load, it's now down to under 3 seconds and the rest of the video section is much faster so I'm happy with the results there.
@Jon I had a search feature, but it was hard to maintain so it's hidden for the time being. I've found success by doing this in Google say if I was searching for Aerodrome:
site:qldsmash.com Aerodrome
I still would like to implement a detailed search feature.
05/04/2015 13:25:56
Wii U: NoticeMeKohai
not sure if this has been suggested, but maybe a 'find user by character main' feature for people wanting to practice specific matchups?
05/30/2015 10:32:44
05/30/2015 10:32:44
Also, Nin*Rose's page is unreachable because of the asterisk.
05/30/2015 11:57:51
05/30/2015 11:57:51
There have been problems with not only some players' pages (& was another player like Nin*Rose) but also some results, like anything with a hash in it.
I've changed the format of the URLs of players and results pages to handle any character, but this now means any external links to results or player pages will now break. Please understand.
You can also now search users by main. Thank you deepblue and AzureWolf for this. LOOK AT ALL THE FALCON MAINS
http://qldsmash.com/Users/ByMain/CaptainFalcon
05/31/2015 11:02:49
I've changed the format of the URLs of players and results pages to handle any character, but this now means any external links to results or player pages will now break. Please understand.
You can also now search users by main. Thank you deepblue and AzureWolf for this. LOOK AT ALL THE FALCON MAINS
http://qldsmash.com/Users/ByMain/CaptainFalcon
05/31/2015 11:02:49
Shitashi said:
You can also now search users by main.
Sweet. I think it might be better if they were sorted by most recent post.
05/31/2015 12:12:56
Is this your ploy to get me to change my character icon? Well it's not going to happen.
05/31/2015 12:19:46
05/31/2015 12:19:46
The ability to summon people.
This will give the ability to 'tag' someone in a thread/forum and they will receive a notification(different to pm) and they will receive a link to the thread/forum.
ie; a tourney match needs to be played.
invite someone to play wifi that is 'online'(goes with the online status thing)
05/31/2015 13:38:03
This will give the ability to 'tag' someone in a thread/forum and they will receive a notification(different to pm) and they will receive a link to the thread/forum.
ie; a tourney match needs to be played.
invite someone to play wifi that is 'online'(goes with the online status thing)
05/31/2015 13:38:03
I went to bam7 but theres nothing on my competitive profile to show it.
I want people to know I went; even if I didn't make it out of my stacked pool.
05/31/2015 23:03:12
I want people to know I went; even if I didn't make it out of my stacked pool.
05/31/2015 23:03:12
You should be able to sort users by most recent post, join date, as well as alphabetical now in the users section.
The summoning people thing emery I like that idea it reminds me of what you can do on Reddit, but it's a little tricky, so Imma put that one in the back log for later.
Regarding contacting users who set their status to ONLINE, you have private messages for that and should be able to see anybody who sets their online status on nearly any online page so it should be easy.
Looking at what Dean did with the Melee and PM results for BAM makes me think we need to recreate the BAM SM4SH tourney as a single event. This way people would be shown as coming 25th / 100 or whatever for BAM, but it's just gonna take time I guess.
06/09/2015 21:32:46
The summoning people thing emery I like that idea it reminds me of what you can do on Reddit, but it's a little tricky, so Imma put that one in the back log for later.
Regarding contacting users who set their status to ONLINE, you have private messages for that and should be able to see anybody who sets their online status on nearly any online page so it should be easy.
Looking at what Dean did with the Melee and PM results for BAM makes me think we need to recreate the BAM SM4SH tourney as a single event. This way people would be shown as coming 25th / 100 or whatever for BAM, but it's just gonna take time I guess.
06/09/2015 21:32:46
http://imgur.com/jsQUWHC
As far as dark themes go i think you'll find this is more than appropriate. posting that refreshed the page reverting it back to normal.
I'm actually upset.
06/09/2015 22:59:13
As far as dark themes go i think you'll find this is more than appropriate. posting that refreshed the page reverting it back to normal.
I'm actually upset.
06/09/2015 22:59:13
I meant by main and by recent post at the same time. Although it's not that big a deal anyway.
You seem to already have this sorted by recent post: http://qldsmash.com/Online/FriendCodes
06/09/2015 23:46:02
You seem to already have this sorted by recent post: http://qldsmash.com/Online/FriendCodes
06/09/2015 23:46:02
There's been a major update to the site which will only affect users with competitive accounts. These users now have the ability to manage their own character data. The link to this page can be found throughout your profile page or you can directly access the page through this URL:
http://qldsmash.com/Profile/Results
What this means is that on that page you will be able to see a list of every tournament you have been tagged on for QLD Smash, with both the results and match by match breakdown. Here you are able to attach character data to either the match or the results. There are some slight nuances on how this works:
* Results data only appears next to results (eg: Aero got 1st at BAM with Charizard) and are intended to represent the main characters you used for the entire event. Note that the order in which characters can't be controlled, nor does it affect anything on the site.
* Matches data can be set match by match. If a match has both results character data and match character data, then the match data takes precedence. It's also important to note that only match by match data will affect the character usage page.
This update allows you to add character data in for every match you have recorded on here (even pools matches!) and if you wanted to help show that your character is being played in Australian Smash Bros tournaments then this is the way to show that. All updates will be reflected in the Character Usage page and please remember that this page's data only updates once a week on Thursday.
http://qldsmash.com/Characters
I tried a few times now to fix this bracket so it was as you described but it's appearing like this is impossible. The problem seems to be that people who get knocked into losers in pools then have to reappear in winners bracket for the final segment, and this type of bizarre format just isn't supported in Tio and I can't figure out a way to bend the matches so that they are. Unfortunately these results will have to stay as they are, despite me not being too happy with them.
07/12/2015 06:27:00
http://qldsmash.com/Profile/Results
What this means is that on that page you will be able to see a list of every tournament you have been tagged on for QLD Smash, with both the results and match by match breakdown. Here you are able to attach character data to either the match or the results. There are some slight nuances on how this works:
* Results data only appears next to results (eg: Aero got 1st at BAM with Charizard) and are intended to represent the main characters you used for the entire event. Note that the order in which characters can't be controlled, nor does it affect anything on the site.
* Matches data can be set match by match. If a match has both results character data and match character data, then the match data takes precedence. It's also important to note that only match by match data will affect the character usage page.
This update allows you to add character data in for every match you have recorded on here (even pools matches!) and if you wanted to help show that your character is being played in Australian Smash Bros tournaments then this is the way to show that. All updates will be reflected in the Character Usage page and please remember that this page's data only updates once a week on Thursday.
http://qldsmash.com/Characters
Aerodrome said:
I went to bam7 but theres nothing on my competitive profile to show it.
I want people to know I went; even if I didn't make it out of my stacked pool.
I tried a few times now to fix this bracket so it was as you described but it's appearing like this is impossible. The problem seems to be that people who get knocked into losers in pools then have to reappear in winners bracket for the final segment, and this type of bizarre format just isn't supported in Tio and I can't figure out a way to bend the matches so that they are. Unfortunately these results will have to stay as they are, despite me not being too happy with them.
07/12/2015 06:27:00
Hey guys. Don't forget we want your input. 
09/16/2015 22:39:12
09/16/2015 22:39:12
Add more badges, specifially a badge for being in Googers' Sonic fanfic.
:^)
Ye
09/17/2015 01:34:32
:^)
Ye
09/17/2015 01:34:32
A rant thread
09/18/2015 05:38:05
09/18/2015 05:38:05
Create a Googers Sonic Fanfic badge please.
10/10 would donate to site if it gets implemented
09/18/2015 09:39:03
10/10 would donate to site if it gets implemented
09/18/2015 09:39:03
Googers for admin or riot
09/19/2015 08:44:52
09/19/2015 08:44:52
I really like the website, but I was wondering if there could be a search bar to search for forums and/or users. It'd be handy to have, if it's not too much to ask.
09/24/2015 09:30:57
09/24/2015 09:30:57