Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
AshJoined: Dec 10 2011 |
Hahaha don't be so kind. Everyone knows I've been less than half-assed! I'm glad the community finally has something to get excited about :) |
Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
scarecrowlolScarecrowlol Location: New Zealand Joined: Jul 06 2012 |
Awesome! (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ i have lots of popcorn ready, looking forward to seeing what comes!
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Hey B0ss |
Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
By the way, I've set up a Slack channel for us. If you'd like an invite to join, post your email here (or PM it to me if you don't want to post it)
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DANG |
Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
SpiderTemplariusMusic hunger Location: Poland Joined: Oct 22 2008 |
This is fantastic! |
Pop pop poppa corn
MechaKrauserJoined: Sep 04 2014 |
Howdy, Mr. Chairman! I don't understand all the technical stuff but this sounds cool. I'm looking forward to the updates. How is private messaging going to work with Slack though? Will we have to make a Slack account or will it be integrated into the site somehow? Just wondering because I'm not familiar with Slack at all... A couple little things I've noticed: There's no longer an "Add comment" button at the bottom of the threads; you have to scroll back up top to click it in the top post. Also when you're typing up a comment the "Post button" is removed and you have to click on Preview and then Save to post things. Took me a minute to figure out @[email protected] lol I thought new comments might have been disabled for site maintenance or something. Before, I only ever used the Eye button preview to make sure links looked okay and just hit post.
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Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
Basisti94Location: Turku, Finland Joined: Aug 18 2012 |
This is great news. I got really worried after the recent domain expiration incident. Speaking of that, I have a slight request. It seems to be sometimes bit unclear what is actually allowed to be uploaded in site and what is not, so would it be possible to establish some clear rules for that so that there would not be ambiguity regarding that anymore? |
Re: Get yo popcorn ready ppl
PeanutReaper486Mercenary Location: Oregon Joined: Sep 27 2011 |
Omg hype train rolling, Gametabs is alive and well, and here to stay. Why phase out private messages? What if users don't want to deal with a middleman such as Slack? Just seems unintuitive. Oh yeah, you know you have a Twitter/Facebook right? https://www.facebook.com/Gametabs-236081166587217/ Iunno who's running the facebook page, but they've been a trooper. |
A couple little things I've
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
I'm not sure what happened there. I fixed it but I have no idea why it was happening in the first place.
Good question. I think it's important that we have some well defined rules for submissions and I will make sure we come up with something very clear. And yes, I agree that the 5 star system has got to go. A general score system is totally meaningless, but I don't want to add more ratings for specific aspects of the tabs (like accuracy, readability, etc). That gets messy very quickly and the goal here is to simplify. I think something like a thumbs up button is the right way to go.
Wow! I'm happy to see that someone has been running a Twitter and Facebook for GameTabs. Good show! About private messages. I'd like to simplify as much as possible to make things easier to maintain in the long run. Private messages is one of those features that used to be really popular and useful back in the day, but I feel like is better suited to a service that deals specifically with that. I'd like for GameTabs the site to be a place that specializes in making it easy for you to find the tabs you want, and features that aren't directly involved with that to be delegated somewhere else rather than try to make the site a one-stop-shop.
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DANG |
Re: A couple little things I've
ChooglyJoined: Jul 01 2010 |
I actually greatly prefer 5 star systems, but I can see how they are swung by very high or very low votes. I think they allow a much greater degree of specificity than "good" or "bad". I understand your reasoning behind removing the PM feature, but I think the "one stop shop" nature of gametabs is what made it such an enduring community. In the same vein, I think the requests section of the site is one of its strongest features. Granted, the majority of requests are ignored, but some of my favorite tabs on the site were responses to requests. I really have to advise caution in the process of trimming down the functionality of gametabs. The site's multi-modal nature is part of why it's survived this long. |
Re: A couple little things I've
Basisti94Location: Turku, Finland Joined: Aug 18 2012 |
Choogly said
True. Most of them are never responded to, but there have been times when I've seen something interesting pop up in the requests section, decided to give it a go, and gotten a decent arrangement out of it. I think it has value being somewhere where it's easy to notice without having to pay too much attention to it. |
Hey i have no idea who ran
hashelLocation: Liège (Belgium) Joined: Mar 04 2008 |
Hey i have no idea who ran twitter but i'm the guy taking care of the facebook page, i'm going to share this it's such a great news, glad to see you back :D If you want a moderator status or want me to change/share anything let me know! About new features, maybe adding a tab with "community works" i'm especially thinking about the albums we did in the past (ff7, NES, Zelda, Boss Battle, FF8) and maybe .rar files with the entries form the original tune contests ? I've stopped organizing albums here because of the site problems and the "death" of the active community, but if things are going back to life here, making small albums with the community could be fun :)
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I do VGM covers and stuff at https://www.youtube.com/c/hashel |
Welcome back home, buddy ! If
TheDoomOfAllFiresVG Maniak Location: France Joined: Aug 26 2008 |
Welcome back home, buddy !
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Check out my VGM cover channel ! :p |
Welcome back :)
RanulfI will not join your gametabs. Joined: Oct 15 2009 |
Welcome back :) |
Fantastic news! This all
BhaelLocation: Newcastle, UK Joined: Feb 18 2010 |
Fantastic news! This all sounds excellent, welcome back archard (y)
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also having the mini of the
hashelLocation: Liège (Belgium) Joined: Mar 04 2008 |
also having the mini of the youtube/soundcloud recording on the main page would be really cool!
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I do VGM covers and stuff at https://www.youtube.com/c/hashel |
Shit, has it really been 5
Davetrve kvlt Location: Ohio Joined: May 22 2011 |
Shit, has it really been 5 years? Has it been 4 years since I last logged into the forums instead of leeching tabs? Apparently. Is the IRC still long since dead after being abandoned by space jam? that room expired and i had ownership of it for awhile because i had no life at the time and saw when it expired and quickly registered it again >_> I then gave it to Laon and he probably left too because...fuck irc
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Yay! Congrats and moving
KougeruJoined: Aug 07 2009 |
Yay! Congrats and moving forward and life and it's great to see you back! Looking forward to the future of this site :) |
YAY, make GT great again :D
gudzLocation: Italy Joined: Nov 14 2012 |
Really excited to read these words, GT is one of the best site I follow and by far the most complete and useful for gaming tabs (I almost only play GT tabs on classical, I wouldn know what to play on it without this site :P) |
Welcome Back Archard, glad to
BigHeadClanJoined: Jan 20 2012 |
Welcome Back Archard, glad to hear life is going well for you! It's also nice to hear the site is going to get it's overall finally. I personally would like to see Private messages and a chat stay integrated with the website to help maintain the community but I guess most of those discussions can take place on the forums so not a huge deal. If you need some hardware support/procurment let me know as I'm a Data Centre technician and my clients like to throw Shout out to Ash for stocking the fire all this time as well. :) |
Re: A couple little things I've
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Choogly said
Fair points about trimming down the gametabs functionality. I think you are right that that is part of the reason why the community has remained strong this whole time. The problem is, though, that the replatforming will be a lot more difficult if I have to port over every single feature that is currently available. I really don't want to have to write a new private messaging system and then migrate all the old messages over to the new system. That's a lot of work for what is, in my view, not much payoff. Same with the personal file browser. The rating system was constantly debated back in the day, and I think it's time a decision is reached about it. I think we either have to make it VERY specific (i.e. make a 5 star rating for every aspect of the tab) or make it very simple. The middle ground that is having one general rating introduces a lot of ambiguity and doesn't add any more value than, say, a thumbs up feature would. I am determined to stick with the simplify-as-much-as-possible policy. So, I am leaning toward thumbs up.
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DANG |
Re: Hey i have no idea who ran
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
hashel said
I'd really like to be a mod of the Facebook page. I'll take a look at it and see how it can be improved. I would absolutely love to see a community works section flourish. That was a goal of mine from the beginning.
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DANG |
Re: YAY, make GT great again :D
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
gudz said
We can actually leverage Slack for this type of thing. Stay tuned.
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DANG |
Nice, welcome back (long time
ZaecheWord-puddle Joined: Jun 02 2015 |
Nice, welcome back (long time lurker, only registered last year but old habits die hard). I wasn't aware of your situation but I'm glad it's all sorted! And of course, updating the website to current web standards would be super useful. I've been messing with web development on my own recently, and it's ... different from what I'm used to, to say the least (my background's in embedded software, go figure). I'd like to offer a helping hand but I'm not sure I know enough of all the different little things to do so (basically haven't explored anything past HTML5/AngularJS apps). So. For now, best of luck! And hell, I'll keep an eye on the updates (feel free to PM me if you ever need a hand).
Forgot to add a couple of thoughts/questions regarding the design changes, might as well list them here: i) ii) iii) iv) |
Re: Nice, welcome back (long time
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Zaeche said
Right now there is just a plain link to the resource, and I don't see much need to change that. Sometimes it's midi or mp3 file, sometimes it's a YouTube video. I don't think it makes sense for me to tell people how they should consume the audio.
I have a pretty solid idea of what the user interface is going to be like. I made a React app not too long ago that lets people search GitHub repos, and I'm planning on just cloning what I built for that because I think it translates extremely well. get yo popcorn ready
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DANG |
Re: Nice, welcome back (long time
ZaecheWord-puddle Joined: Jun 02 2015 |
archard said
Fair enough! You make a good point.
That should save you some time--intelligent code reuse +1.
they p-p-poppin'! |
I have no idea how hard it
scarecrowlolScarecrowlol Location: New Zealand Joined: Jul 06 2012 |
I have no idea how hard it would be, but in regards to the rating system i definitely like the idea of a thumbs up kind of system, maybe even making it like the rating system on steam where it compares the thumbs up and down's and gives an overall rating, like overwhelmingly positive/ positive/ mostly positive/ mixed/ mostly negative/ negative or so on.
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Hey B0ss |
Re: I have no idea how hard it
SpiderTemplariusMusic hunger Location: Poland Joined: Oct 22 2008 |
scarecrowlol said
I love this idea! |
This is literally the best
karathrowJoined: Oct 26 2010 |
This is literally the best thing that has happened in the ever of everness. Please re-enable linking images so I can post my hot memes, kkthx. We missed you Archbro <3 |
I'm in favor of simplifying
Good to hear your life has
Enneahumhum.. Location: Germany Joined: Apr 09 2010 |
Good to hear your life has been going upwards since then. Congrats on marriage and all that other stuff. Also good to know you want to put some work into this site again, the domain expiration last week was a scary occurence. |
Re: Good to hear your life has
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Ennea said
Good idea. We can make it so you can filter it by time frame.
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DANG |
Assuming we go to a thumbs up
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Assuming we go to a thumbs up system, we will have to convert the current five star ratings into thumbs-ups. I was thinking we could make it so that anything 3 stars and higher is considered a thumbs up. Sound fair?
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DANG |
Sounds fair to me!
hashelLocation: Liège (Belgium) Joined: Mar 04 2008 |
Sounds fair to me!
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I do VGM covers and stuff at https://www.youtube.com/c/hashel |
It's fair, don't think
Enneahumhum.. Location: Germany Joined: Apr 09 2010 |
It's fair, don't think anything else would make much sense. |
Sounds fair to me too. Also,
TheDoomOfAllFiresVG Maniak Location: France Joined: Aug 26 2008 |
Sounds fair to me too. Also, what about the forum ?
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Check out my VGM cover channel ! :p |
Re: Sounds fair to me too.Also,
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
TheDoomOfAllFires said
Certainly a possibility, Doom. I'm not sure yet what to do with the forum. Part of me just wants to remove it altogether and just have all discussion occur on a platform like Slack.
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DANG |
Re: Sounds fair to me too.Also,
ZaecheWord-puddle Joined: Jun 02 2015 |
I second Doom's suggestion, Discourse is actually pretty neat. It's pre-optimised for mobile as well, so one less thing to take care of. As far as removing the forums entirely goes, I think a good compromise might be to instead have one big general forum (no sub-forums at all). I think that'd work better as sub-forums tend to wither away (leaving behind a few that're still active?). |
Re: Sounds fair to me too.Also,
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Zaeche said
I've been looking at Discourse and I like it a lot. I think we could leverage it for the Requests section as well. I'm not gonna get rid of the forums. On further reflection I can see that that's not a good option. This is a community oriented site and there needs to be an easy way for everyone to collaborate. As limited and painful to manage as forums may be, they are the only real solution. Being able to sort of drop in a solution like Discourse is appealing. It significantly reduces the overhead involved in managing everything.
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DANG |
Well well, im suprised and
ClanverPixelfingers cant play Location: Germany, Kiel Joined: Jan 03 2009 |
Well well, im suprised and happy~ I dont want to bind myself to anything (bringing up help and doing nothing is kinda a thing on the internet) but im pretty sure i could give you a hand with things. Just as you are, i am a "professional" web application developer (mostly extensions for the typo3 CMS) who currently writes his Master thesis in IT and works part time as a web application developer for about 3 years~. If you need a hand, ive got a lot of time between this september and january next year (I start full time in january and finish my thesis end of september). But of course, i have no problems with just looking at other working :3. I wish you good luck~ |
Re: Well well, im suprised and
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Clanver said
Once I get the new site set up I plan to make it available on GitHub and let other devs like you contribute. Hope you know React ;)
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DANG |
one of the websites thats
Jacob31593Location: Tampa, FL Joined: Jan 04 2009 |
one of the websites thats been taking up much of my time lately ( https://www.predictit.org/Browse/Featured ) uses disqus for its messages, each market has its own discussion |
Re: Well well, im suprised and
ClanverPixelfingers cant play Location: Germany, Kiel Joined: Jan 03 2009 |
archard said
Not really react.js, but i used angular.js, though i mostly dont use frameworks for my Js applications. But i see no problems, each new project = learning new technology in our kind of work ~ and i have a lot of experience using JavaScript for advanced applications (lots of node.js programming). But now onto some ideas: Like the ones above said, offering Tabs and Requests are 2 of the biggest visitor magnets but i want to add the recording section as well. There are a lot of leechers here (like me) who do not have a single tab but like to record things and take part in the community. Currently we have the most recent recordings on the front page and a subpage which let us search through recordings. What i would want here is a more connected and rewarding experience. And who does not want rewards?
Oh and how about Subscriptions to specific Tabbers? Im sure a lot of people waiting for their favorite people to publish something new. So we can enable email notifications (or frontpage messages) if something new has been uploaded / edited.
There are actually some nice open source players for midi and mp3/wav/ogg which i have used for some of my projects. A lot of them use html 5 though. So older browsers are a no go. |
Re: Well well, im suprised and
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Clanver said
Some tabs do actually have a "Video example" link which goes to a recording of that tab, either on the site or YouTube. It's underutilized and not prominent enough though. We should definitely do that more.
I'd rather the frontpage stay clean and simple (which means having less info than it does now, or at least presenting it more nicely). But having some way to make sure older tabs and recordings are commented on is good idea and I will look into it.
Email notifications for specific tabbers is a really good idea.
Over that last 6 months the browser breakdown for users who come here is like this: And the remaining ~10% is a combination of Internet Explorer, Opera, Android Browser and UC Browser. Older versions of Android Browser, non-Edge Internet Explorer, and Opera Mini are the only ones where we'd run into issues with the client not having the capabilities we need, and I estimate that makes up about 1-2% of visitors. I am of the mindset that devs shouldn't have to cater to all possible user edge cases anymore; assuming you have free choice of which browser to use, there are prominent browsers available on every platform which auto-update to the latest web standards. If your browser doesn't fully support all HTML5 elements by now, I don't have sympathy for you. So I am okay with essentially ignoring that 1-2%. Plus, our user base swings heavily toward young, tech-savvy individuals. I am gonna use the latest web standards whenever it makes sense, without considering older browsers.
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DANG |
Re: Well well, im suprised and
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Also, any experience with Redis?
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DANG |
Ive actually never heard of
ClanverPixelfingers cant play Location: Germany, Kiel Joined: Jan 03 2009 |
Ive actually never heard of it before . . Ive only used mostly Mysql (together with php applications), postgreSql (for geospatial applications) and MongoDb (together with node.js applications). archard said
Haha, i wish i could do the same at work ~ |
Re: Ive actually never heard of
archardJoined: Jan 11 2007 |
Clanver said
It's like a database but it keeps all its memory in RAM instead of the hard drive. It's a key-value store, unlike SQL which is relational, so you can't do complex joins, etc. So essentially it's just a big hash table that you can access very cheaply in terms of computing power. You can use it as a database like SQL, but I don't think it makes sense most of the time. What it's often used as is a caching layer for SQL databases. You operate your SQL database as normal, but when a SELECT query is made for the first time you map the query string to its serialized results in Redis. Then the next time you run that query you just grab the cached results from Redis instead of doing a potentially expensive database operation. I'd like to implement that for GameTabs.
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DANG |
Sounds overkill for me but
ClanverPixelfingers cant play Location: Germany, Kiel Joined: Jan 03 2009 |
Sounds overkill for me but whatever tickles your fancy ;D. |
It's weird, I don't really
kage25130Joined: Aug 02 2011 |
It's weird, I don't really know any of you..but this makes me really happy
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Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery! |
archard
Joined: Jan 11 2007
As most of you know, almost 5 years ago I left gametabs.net. At the time I did so because my personal life situation was not amenable to running a large site like this. I didn't have the time, energy, focus, or enthusiasm that was needed to keep this site going strong. I wanted to see the site go into the hands of someone who was capable of giving it the love that it deserved. So I decided to sell it to Ash, who stepped in and did an admirable job. And although the site has had its share of issues recently, I can tell you that things would've been worse if I was still in control.
However.
I'm in a place now where running the site makes sense again. When I left I had just finished university, was broke, single, and unsure about what to do with my life. Since then I have obtained a clear career focus, gotten married, gotten financially stable, and travelled the world. So when the recent performance and stability issues of the site started, I got in touch with Ash and we both agreed that it would be a good time for me to take over again. Although I'm still fairly busy, I now have the energy and motivation to run this place again.
And I'm so excited! It honestly warms my heart to know that after all this time, after all the downtime issues the site has had, many of you are still here and still actively contributing. I want to thank you all for that.
I want to revitalize this place, so here's my plan:
First and foremost, assure that performance and downtime are not issues anymore.
Second, and just as important. This site was created in 2006, improved slightly in 2008, and hasn't seen much, if any, real upgrades since. The web has changed A LOT A LOT A LOT since then, mostly for the better, and I really believe that it's time to modernize gametabs.net. I now do software development for web and mobile applications professionally, so this is right up my alley. I want to put this thing through a full replatform, which is rather ambitious for one guy with a full time job to do by himself. So, it will happen in stages. The first thing I want to do is modernize the user interface. For those of you who are inclined, right now the site runs on Drupal. I am gonna turn it into a REST server, basically, and build a modern front-end in React and Redux. In doing so I want to make the user interface mobile friendly, more beautiful, and easier to use.
After that I plan to do some simplification of the site as a whole. There are some features that take up time to maintain that I would rather spend toward more important things. Some of them will be gone temporarily when I do the replatforming, while some be gone permanently. Some that I have in mind.
- Private messages: I plan to phase these out by moving toward a third party messaging platform such as Slack.
- Requests: these are not really being used, and I can see Slack being a good place to put these anyway.
- Personal file browser: cloud storage services are everywhere these days and I feel like this is not necessary to keep around. I will provide a download link in everyone's profile where you can download everything you've uploaded there in a nice zip file. But I will remove the uploading feature soon.
For now, I'd love to hear from you all and maybe get some feedback on the direction we're moving now.