Plans for new OHR Gamelist

Okay! I was originally going to start this thread after releasing my game in development, but I feel it's better to start this thread now. As there seems to be a large amount of activity on the GoM thread, which should be filtered out into a separate thread.

Firstly, let me explain the skills I will be bring to the table when creating this new awesome game list.

I plan on hosting it on RedHat's OpenShift platform, I currently host 2 other websites there completely free, and I have one more free site I can deploy using their service. And I choose to use that last free site as a donation for this community... Or... If say James or TMC would like to create an account there, and I can upload the codebase, please PM or Email me directly to discuss that. I will guide you through the App creation process to get the correct specs I need for the website. OpenShift apps are automatically revisioned using Git as well.

I have lots of past experience in building data-centric web applications, here are some more recent sites I built and deployed:

Uarica.com - An Idea collaboration website, which takes ideas from Git, such as the ability to fork ideas. It has several custom built features, including a Wiki, Bookmark management, and others.

Sandbag Manitoba - A website I built for a client of mine, whom needed a custom website to assist in volunteer efforts for sandbagging in the Canadian province of Manitoba.

Cinima Nick - a DVD collection management website, someone has a really large DVD/BluRay collection and wanted an IMDb like way of managing their collection. It actually pulls data directly from IMDb's database.

Hacker's Edge - An online hacking simulation game, which is near completion, but just not done yet. Source Code

Most of these websites were built in only a few days, the last one was built in a single night, with newer features being progressively added after.

The websites are also built using Python, which could technically enable the use of Nohrio the Python-based toolkit for OHRRPGCE. This could be implemented in the future to enable metadata to be extracted from the games. I am already able to extract a game's title screen from an RPG file, which could enable an automatic title screen to be displayed along with the game, no uploading of a title screen required. Rather you just upload in-game screenshots. These are just ideas.

I'd prefer if the website was hosted by James or TMC, either on Redhat's cloud for free, or another server which is compatible. This way, the game list will survive for as long as James lives, and will not fall the way of other game lists. I am not saying that I would remove it, but I just feel more comfortable if it was under the hosting of James or TMC. This will give the community more confidence that the game list will remain for all time. The hosting of the actual games should be on either Amazon S3 or even Rackspace Cloud to ensure that the hosting remains free. RPG files can become very large and incur lots of bandwidth and space. Cloud storage allows them to be stored as cheap as $0.22/GB, both storage services are essentially the game price. This is a monthly fee, so paying only a quarter a month to keep all of our awesome creations available for eternity isn't much.

And that's that, let me know what you guys think, and I'll even see if I can pump out a basic prototype site sometime soon to show you. If the community likes the prototype, then I'll continue and either host it myself or have James or TMC host the site in their own account.

Oh, and one last thing I should mention... A features I want to implement section:

Game filters(By genre, completeness, custom version used, etc...)
A browse by screenshot page
External API, for external websites can obtain metadata about a game
Game reviews and comments
Credits(Scenario writer, Tilesets, Sprites, Music, SFX, etc..)
Soundtrack list(directly extracted from the RPG file, if author permits)
Auto archives(author only uploads RPG file, website bundles correct GAME.EXE for player's OS, making the game accessible to anyone)
Content submissions(so we can see all games that relate to a particular contest)
Game of the Month management(keeps record of previous GoMs, and allows voting. API access to be used to obtain screenshot and metadata for external websites)
API accessible via JSON, so JavaScript can use it too.
IMDb-like Cross referencing of a game's metadata, with separate author pages, which shows various games the author was credited for in some form.
Ability to upload and share various assets, like tilesets, sprites, and plotscripts.
Ability to cross-reference these assets with upload games, so authors can be properly credited for what they contributed.
Game collaboration project management, which should allow the community to better organize a collab project.
A help wanted board, where authors could post various assets they may need, and perhaps suggest a price for such assets.
Game idea collaboration, where you could suggest a story for a game and let the community contribute to it's efforts.
Game dev diaries, for game authors can blog about their game while under development.

The prototype will include the data-centric and cross referencing features. I am also thinking of placing the project on BitBucket, so anybody with Python experience can contribute to it's efforts.

I may or may not take a breather from my game development and build the prototype. So this weekend, you will either see more news about my current game, or a prototype of this game list available for your viewing pleasure.

Update: Bitbucket project URL: https://bitbucket.org/kveroneau/indie-community
Update 2: Uarica Project URL: http://uarica.com/+10
Prototype is live: http://rpg.iamkevin.ca/

You seem to have a lot of ideas, but i think you're over doing things.

The plan isn't to make a new OHR community website, but to make a main gamelist. Now, I'm well aware that this isn't my OHR Arcade project, and that you're free to do what ever you'd like with your project however, let me just share my views on things to you and let you come up with a plan on your own.

Right now, we have Slime Salad, the Hamsterspeak wiki, Castle Paradox, and a couple other random outdated sites.


Slime Salad serves as the heart of the developer community. The forums here are the main source of communication between OHR developers and generally acts as a place where we all get to know each other and have fun. ( or as close to one can get to a place like that on the internet )


The wiki really serves to instruct new people how to use things and is generally accessed by new engine users ( or so the plan for the site seems to go ).


Castle Paradox serves as an outdated shell. It's main purpose is to host some of the older games that aren't on slime salad and for older or some what lost new comers to post stuff and eventually be directed to slime salad. However it mainly remains relevant because some people feel more inclined to use castle paradox then to switch over to slime salad.

The other random sites serve only to host the few games that have not been transferred over to one of the other sites that also host OHR games.


So having considered all this, the question becomes why do we need a new site and what would it be for?

Right now, it seems like your new site would be mainly aimed to replace ALL the sites on this list. This wouldn't be a bad thing and might even end up helping the community as a whole. Here's the reasons I think it would be a mistake.


First, it would likely just create yet another random OHR site where a scattering of games would be hosted.

Second, it might cause something like what happened with castle paradox and slime salad and serve to only decentralize the community further.

Third, filling a site with dozens of features could over load a site and make people less likely to use it. For example, which site do people use more? Yahoo, or Google? Now ask yourself why? ( try to ignore googles current trends of adding features and look more towards the past when yahoo might still be considered googles rival)

Fourth, if the only reason for this new site was to make a complete list of ALL OHR games then it might be easier to just upload the games that aren't currently on CP or SS to CP or SS.


With all this said, I think the new site would more useful if it served as a presentation website for OHR games. In this way we could have a site with a complete game list and one that serves a purpose that has yet to really be addressed for the community. Currently, Slime Salad is the go to game list for potential players. However, it's forum like interface doesn't exactly scream professionalism.



Sorry if I rambled at all there, and again I'm completely of the opinion that this is your project and you can do as you'd like.
Anyways, I think the site should be a site designed solely for potential players of OHR games.

Spoonweaver's right on here. I don't really want to maintain my games on four different sites, three is overkill already. A complete games list, with links to download those games from CP and SS and the option to upload your game there if you choose, would be best I think. I do think a tagging system would be great, but it should be as concise as possible.

I'm personally 100% against rehosting people's games without their permission by the way, even if the game's obsolete and its author gone. You can have a page for a game if it has historical value without actually hosting the game; track down its author and ask permission if you really want to have the file. Until then just link to its download link on SS/CP/wherever.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

The site isn't aiming to replace the community site here, I rather like Slime Salad. It's not going to have a forum or a vast amount of community features.

I am creating it under the Indie Community name, so that other community's on the Internet may use it for their own purpose. I am making the components modular, so if a community only needs a game list, and not the other community integration features, then it's easy to only use that single model. So, the OHR game list, will not use the other modules I am building, it will solely depend on the gamelist module, nothing more.

I am developing this tool with a very broad audience, and don't want to limit who can or will use this software. Development is currently going good and I should have a screenshot ready within the next hour, which I will post here for all to criticize.

As for maintaining your game on multiple lists... You shouldn't have to. The wiki should say which game list has the more recent games available, and which list has older historic games. Castle Paradox should link to Slime Salad and note that newer games should be posted there.

Oh, and that's actually a great idea to make games able to have external links. This way, you can still upload your game to Slime Salad, but place it's metadata on the other list. As this list will allow easy filtering and tagging.

That's never going to happen nor should it. They're two separate sites and it's important to keep files up to date in multiple places in case one does go permanently down. Two places is enough for that, though.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

I agree that something similar needs to happen. I tried browsing the games to make a suggestion for the game of the month, but gave up out of frustration. So many of them are short contest entries or incomplete demos, and tower of heaven which was going to be my suggestion turned out to be a game maker game. I also wish I could sort the results by ratings, by number of reviews, by date, etc.

But I also feel like having another site is just a pain in the ass. I'd like to see these features implemented with plugins either on here or the wiki.

As much as I like this community, the "silly" theme might be a bit offputting for some. My initial impression was that this was going to be a site for 14 year olds, before I read some of the threads and realized you are all just insane.

I'm sure if that was my first impression that I'm not the only one, and while that is perfectly fine for a developer forum, it might make it harder to get your game exposure (if that's what you want.)

Would there be a good way to do this on the wiki??

First screenshot of the game list in development:



I have the viewing of a game working now, tell me what you think so far.

Note: The game shown is fictitious and used as a placeholder while developing.

I like the "feel" of it. It manages to be fairly plain, but still easy on the eyes and not sterile, which is perfect.

I do have a few criticisms, but I realize this is just something you whipped up quickly.

Anyways...

The spacing seems weird. Take the first part. Dragon Warrior is so close to Game Type that I associate it with that instead of Game Title.

I also feel like the larger title should either line up with "Game Title" vertically, or be aligned left.

I don't think having comments in that small section will make them very readable, I would rather them in the middle on the bottom. A rating system (or "likes" like spoonweaver suggested) would also be cool.

Thank you for your input. I agree on everything you mentioned, and will be fixed up in due time, it's still a rough copy. The ratings system is already in the backend, since it takes a little extra to get working, I didn't implement it in this draft. Tagging like spoonweaver mentioned is definitely being added, so no worries there. Tagging is super easy, and works like any other site that would use it.

suggestion

actually, in addition to the above suggested lay out, I think there should be a thin top bar for navigation.

There is... The screenshot I posted is a cut from the entire page. There's also a left navigation bar as well.

I may upload the prototype to my server so that everyone can see what is done so far.

Update: I put the prototype live, as I am heading to bed and won't have time to work on it much tomorrow. You can see it here: http://rpg.iamkevin.ca/

At the moment, it's all read-only, you cannot sign-up(although the registration system is there, no link is provided). Since this is only a prototype, I don't want people to upload anything, as the database structure will be changing before the final product and I have not yet enabled Database migrations to make updating tables a cinch.

Update 2: Thought I'd quickly add, that the URL may not work just yet, depending which internet provider you have, you may need to wait for DNS replication. Source code for everything you see is available on my BitBucket account, which you can find in the very first post.

This is a minor thing but it should be "RPG" not "RPG game." The G stands for Game.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Thank you for noticing, I will fix it this evening when I continue work on it.

Cool! I'm especially pleased that this is in Python, as I did want to play around with nohrio for gamelist features, in particular automatic repackaging of games with the right build of the engine for their OS. Recently I starting writing some code to determine the engine version given a game.exe file for this purpose (not as trivial as you might think). So I would definitely like to be involved. I haven't used Django previously though.


There are different options for running this gamelist:

1) People may register and add their own games. Used by CP, SS, Op:OHR, ...
2) Anyone may add and edit information for any game, like a wiki. Used by imdb (I think), etc. TIGdb?
3) One or more editors curates content, adding games submitted to them. Like old OHR game lists such as RPG Online.
4) One or more editors curates all the content, adding games as they please. Like The Hamster Wheel.

I think quite a few people are hoping for the second or fourth options, and focus on being a directory rather than a host: a replacement for The Hamster Wheel to bring together everything already available. That doesn't mean it can't act as a host too; it could be quite appealing if it's more flexible than CP or SS, which don't allowing changing the presentation at all.

But lets say we list every OHR game on CP, SS, RPG Online, etc. What would be fair to rehost without asking, and what wouldn't? (But ask IM and Moogle first anyway.) Screenshots and game descriptions? As Surlaw pointed out, that would be bad, as then those screenshots and descriptions would need updating when they change elsewhere. So if practical I would favour only caching that stuff from other sites if at all, and periodically reimporting. But that's not to say you couldn't add content to a game listing manually instead... that's the whole point of a gamelist after all.