Get yo popcorn ready ppl

Ash

Joined: 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 :)

scarecrowlol

Scarecrowlol

Location: New Zealand

Joined: Jul 06 2012

Awesome! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ i have lots of popcorn ready, looking forward to seeing what comes!

SpiderTemplarius

Music hunger

Location: Poland

Joined: Oct 22 2008

This is fantastic!

Basisti94

Location: Turku, Finland

Joined: Aug 18 2012

This is great news. I got really worried after the recent domain expiration incident.
It would have been such a shame to lose this site when it is, as far as I know, by far the best database of classical guitar arrangements in the internet. It is valuable if you wouldn't specifically care about video game or anime music.

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?
For example, are my arrangements of Fly Me to the Moon or the old Russian war song Katyusha okay in the site if they were obviously not written as anime or video game music but were used as part of an anime soundtrack?
Also, I'd like to see some sort of thumbs up system rather than a score based rating system because scores are basically meaningless. Any playable fingerstyle arrangement gets pretty much automatically 5 stars.

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

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.

I'm not sure what happened there. I fixed it but I have no idea why it was happening in the first place.

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?
For example, are my arrangements of Fly Me to the Moon or the old Russian war song Katyusha okay in the site if they were obviously not written as anime or video game music but were used as part of an anime soundtrack?
Also, I'd like to see some sort of thumbs up system rather than a score based rating system because scores are basically meaningless. Any playable fingerstyle arrangement gets pretty much automatically 5 stars.

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.

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?

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.

Basisti94

Location: Turku, Finland

Joined: Aug 18 2012

Choogly said

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.

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.

TheDoomOfAllFires

VG Maniak

Location: France

Joined: Aug 26 2008

Welcome back home, buddy !
If this place is going to flourish once again, count me in, I'll be there, ready to give a hand, just like in teh old dayz ! #oldfart

Bhael

Location: Newcastle, UK

Joined: Feb 18 2010

Fantastic news! This all sounds excellent, welcome back archard (y)

Dave

trve 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

gudz

Location: 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)
Since you ask, there is a thing it may be done to improve the site.
The moderators who usually approve new tabs could pick some "favorite tags" (like fingerstyle, arrangement, trascription etc etc), the ones in which they work best. The newly uploaded tabs could be tagged and redirected directly to those who work best with that kind of tab. This it would be easier for them to quality-check tabs and it would be faster and smoother :)

BigHeadClan

Joined: 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
away fairly new gear occasionally.

Shout out to Ash for stocking the fire all this time as well. :)

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

hashel said

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 :)

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.

Zaeche

Word-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).

Edit:

Forgot to add a couple of thoughts/questions regarding the design changes, might as well list them here:

i)
I agree the five-star rating system could stand to be improved. I can see where folks are coming from with the thumbs-up/like/favourite idea (after all, Facebook/Twitter are almost ubiquitous now). I'd suggest instead just having ... musical notes? (it could be anything) as a counting system (really just a visual thing, but I think it's better than doing it with stars, or thumbs, or hearts ... not super important, but I thought I'd mention anyhow).

ii)
What're your plans for the 'listen' button for each tab? In terms of dealing with the varied encodings, are you thinking of giving the website its own player of sorts? I know I've run into issues with getting that to work reliably across different machines (regardless of whether I've VLC/foobar/what-have-you installed). React has this: React Audio. Downside's that it doesn't support midi (just ogg/mp3). *shrug*

iii)
I think you can execute on your 'simplify everything' design philosophy without sacrificing the current, modal nature of the website ('branch choices/options only when absolutely necessary' is a good heuristic). I think having a lucid and strong landing page will do a lot for making Gametabs more accessible and easier to navigate.

iv)
Tag system's a fantastic idea, would make sorting a lot easier too (theoretically). Would also tend towards simplifying the 'Browse Tabs' navigation menu--all one need do would be to specify the tags they wanted, et viola, everyone's happy. So, say, you'd have two choices: browse entire catalogue of tablature or filter by tags (broad categories which link to more specific tag-filters). Kind of sketchy but I think that should work?

Zaeche

Word-puddle

Joined: Jun 02 2015

archard 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.

Fair enough! You make a good point.

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.

That should save you some time--intelligent code reuse +1.

get yo popcorn ready

they p-p-poppin'!

SpiderTemplarius

Music hunger

Location: Poland

Joined: Oct 22 2008

scarecrowlol said

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.

I love this idea!

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

I'm in favor of simplifying ratings too.

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

Ennea said

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.
As for the rating system, I thought the 5-stars was fine but what I always wished for was an option for a specific time frame. Most upvoted tabs of the last week/month/3 months etc. would be nice. Seeing the same stuff on the top for several years gets kinda boring.

Good idea. We can make it so you can filter it by time frame.

hashel

Location: Liège (Belgium)

Joined: Mar 04 2008

Sounds fair to me!

TheDoomOfAllFires

VG Maniak

Location: France

Joined: Aug 26 2008

Sounds fair to me too.

Also, what about the forum ?
If you revamp the whole design of Gametabs, you'll probably want something more modern than that.
I've heard a lot of good things about Discourse, for example (https://www.discourse.org/).

Zaeche

Word-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?).

Clanver

Pixelfingers 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~

Jacob31593

Location: 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

archard

Joined: Jan 11 2007

Clanver said

A lot of recordings are using a specific tab, and we can choose a tab in the recording upload.
But on the tab specific page, we cant see recordings for this specific tab. Thats such a waste. Why not honor the best recordings on the tab page as well? It could even help other people learn the song by watching the fingering.

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.

Frontpage presentation: The only time a recording and a tab is commented on is when its new. It would be nice to have a new section with "current activities" or something which is not solely reliant on comments only. Like having an activity counter for clicking,rating, listening which resets after some days. I know this is a tough problem, since it might end in an activity loop . .

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.

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.

Email notifications for specific tabbers is a really good idea.

There are actually some nice open source players for midi and mp3/wav/ogg which i have used for some of my projects.
Look at wavesurfer for example.

A lot of them use html 5 though. So older browsers are a no go.

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.

Clanver

Pixelfingers cant play

Location: Germany, Kiel

Joined: Jan 03 2009

Ive actually never heard of it before . .
Reading the summary leaves me still unsure what it actually is?
A database technology is my guess?

Ive only used mostly Mysql (together with php applications), postgreSql (for geospatial applications) and MongoDb (together with node.js applications).

archard said

Over that last 6 months the browser breakdown for users who come here is like this:

Chrome: 62.39%

Safari: 15.39%

Firefox: 11.41%

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.

Haha, i wish i could do the same at work ~

Clanver

Pixelfingers cant play

Location: Germany, Kiel

Joined: Jan 03 2009

Sounds overkill for me but whatever tickles your fancy ;D.
If you build the whole thing from scratch, why not ~