Spring RTS Engine

1) tags must be visible when you view an image.
So that you can look for similiar images, isnt that excactly the point of having tags? This list on the right is useless.
Same images are tagged with the name of the game/map, at the moment you can not see those:
People look at an image but do not know where to get that game/map, do not even know the name.

2) All images should be retaged to include name of game + mod.

3) Maybe make it possible to add description and links.
Like "to download this game go to [link]"

4) Define a list of standard tags so that more images are linked with each other in a way that makes sense

I think we may wish to get rid of some of the older content, particularly images and videos bound to titles no longer in production.

if i was given access id do it

Remove ba welcome images. Give every game the same amount of 'front page time'. Get a list of the amount of games that have pictures, randomly find a game and then randomly find one of it's pictures.

hoi, most of the time i hate you. but lately you've been kind of making sense. stop it. embrace the annihilation, even if it is self destructive.

knorke wrote:if i was given access id do it

I believe knorke would do the job, give him a shot!

smoth wrote:

knorke wrote:if i was given access id do it

I believe knorke would do the job, give him a shot!

+1

FLOZi wrote:

smoth wrote:

knorke wrote:if i was given access id do it

I believe knorke would do the job, give him a shot!

+1

Knorke also has my support.

Vote Knorke! Secretary in Charge of Media in Public Relations in 2011!

I'm fine with this based on his recent behaviour (aka hasn't PMed me to whine or posted anything offensive to me personally). Just don't let him write copy... he doesn't seem to know how to capitalize.

since when did this become a democratic decision?

bobthedinosaur wrote:since when did this become a democratic decision?

It's not. I just thought it was a good opportunity to make fun of knorke's inconsistent use of capitalization.

bobthedinosaur wrote:since when did this become a democratic decision?

Talk for months and nothing happens. Seems pretty democratic to me.

trololo, noticed i can edit stuff now.

But as it seems, we are stuck with this gallery script/plugin or whatever it is.
So some things that would be nice are not possible.
Anyway, I thought about how it can be made nicer:

What should be in media gallery?
I think the purpose is to give an overview on what can be done with the engine, and not to showcase how nice game XY is.
Games have their own sites with galleries for that.
The gallery should also not be used to "attract players" to the homepage of specific games. It should appeal to game makers not attract players.
Thus it is also fine to have "broken" or unreleased content in the gallery, ie E&E or Imperial Winter if they show something worth noticing, ie a good model. (=shows that the engine can handle high polycount, textures etc)

For the same reason I would also suggest to limit the amount of pictures per game to 3-6 or so.
Goal should be to have an diverse overview of the engines features and not to show every unit of game XY.
Screenshots should be chosen to reflect that, ie a screenshot of zeroK should showcase the unique features like GUI, terraform instead of a generic battle picture.

Might even want to include a "modding screenshot", with Spring, Upspring and Notepad opend or something.

Also screenshots of Spring running on different operation systems.

How should it work?
It seems that thread title = the text that gets displayed under the image.
That is why some pictures say "Jaz's Screenies" if you click them which is obviously fail.
Right now if you edit that one caption, it changes the text for all pictures in that thread -> fail.
So to make it easier to maintain, I would suggest that per thread there is only post with one picture.
Also makes it much easier to add/remove a single picture or change the caption of pictures.

Tags
Pictures can be given tags that display at the right side, so you can find similiar pictures. Of course that only works if the same tags are used every time. At the moment the list of tags is way too long, it is practically useless. It should be condensend to around 10 words or so.
Suggested list of tags:
generally: tags are case sensitive, so always short Uppercase.
always include name of the game like this:
Game: Balanced Annihilation
that is Game: then a space, then the full name of the game.

No GUI - screenshot has GUI hidden
GUI -screenshot shows GUI

<probally needs some more>

Tags not to use:
names of units visible in the screenshot.
ie RGM79(G), Sumo, Morty, those do not really hold any meaning for somebody viewing the gallery. Most likely there would also be one picture using that tag.

version numbers of the game, ie "The Cursed alpha"

So, thoughts on that?

Agree on all counts. Maybe CEG and LUPS for tags, perhaps Chili? i.e. Both engine and de facto standard lua features Spring provides - and importantly differentiation between the two.

No point labelling a shot from ZK showing off Chili UI as 'GUI' => implies it is engine gui.

Of course for noobs, this also results in 'those do not really hold any meaning for somebody viewing the gallery'

I disagree. http://springrts.com is also about attracting players, not just modders.

instead of "CEG" and "LUPS" maybe "particle effects" or "lua scripted particle system"
But yes, something along those lines.

I disagree. http://springrts.com is also about attracting players, not just modders.

its for both I think.
I don't mean that all nice gameplay screenshots should be replaced with ugly, "techy" images.
Even for players the gallery could be better.

Features wrote:Many different Games, made just for Spring.

The gallery should reflect this diversity at least. (inb4 BADSD)
For example one flaw with the gallery is how latest images are always at top. That means not a single picture of S44 is visible even though several are uploaded.
Yes, you can see them if you click on Spring 1944 (2) or 1944 (1) orInfantry (2) but why would anyboy click on that random tags out of the hundred others?

I think every project that uploads a screenshot should have a chance to show up in the gallery.
As of now, the only way I see how that is possible with this gallery is to limit the number of pictures per game.