spring replay site - Page 8

spring replay site

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knorke
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02

Re: spring replay site

Post by knorke »

in #xta topic was link to: http://replays.springrts.com/game/XTA/
Such style of url still possible?

chatlog with some feedback:
<[2up]knorke> hm and replay page news design broke http://replays.admin-box.com/game/XTA/ link
<somenub> oh
<somenub> yesterday it worked
<somenub> omg replay site is terrible
<somenub> text is too small
<somenub> and no "show xta replays" button
<[2up]knorke> try ctrl-f5
<somenub> ah now it's bigger
<[2up]knorke> needs more clicks to find xta-replays
<somenub> yh :/
<somenub> also you can't use "return" button
<somenub> of firefox
<somenub> or you have to select "xta " again
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Jools
XTA Developer
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Joined: 23 Feb 2009, 16:29

Re: spring replay site

Post by Jools »

I really like the new replays site. It looks professional, it has a nicer font than the last one, and it also works better. In the previous site I had sometimes errors to log in: I would log in but then it would not show me as logged in anyway. Now it works perfectly and the layout is very modern and tables are clear. 10/10!

About the xta awards. I wish I could help somehow. I had the idea to show two tables, one for the kill score in games where the unit survived (hero), and one where the unit was killed (lost). The tables could have for example 5 best awards. That's my idea, but maybe the community has some more ideas?

But basically like a league table like in previous images I uploaded. Here are my awards images, but again, people can suggest better ones...
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Lagerkrans
Lagerkrans
award3.jpg (7.14 KiB) Viewed 8208 times
Award 2
Award 2
award2.jpg (12.18 KiB) Viewed 8208 times
Award 1
Award 1
award1.jpg (5.57 KiB) Viewed 8208 times
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Jools
XTA Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by Jools »

Here are also the ones used in-game:

They are from http://www.clipartbest.com/, with permission to download and use for free.
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Lost - Rose
Lost - Rose
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Hero - Trophy
Hero - Trophy
trophy.png (4.14 KiB) Viewed 8207 times
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
Posts: 1203
Joined: 29 May 2010, 23:40

Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Thanks for the feed back everyone :)
Jazcash wrote:An API would be awesome.
Sure - the data is public (excluding exact TS values) - but API for what purpose exactly?
knorke wrote:Personally I was okay with the simple old layout, but of course if players are to use it a bit more fancy design like the new one is better :)
I like simplicity too, but I had a feeling it should be more like what gamers are used to. Expanding on that, I'd like to make game specific sites... like evo.replays.springrts.com with only Evo-replays and a greenish theme :)
knorke wrote:But it seems to break in Firefox [..] Text really tiny in default zoom [..] above two things just magically fixed themself? site update or cache maybe? Other things still there.
Ah yes... I had some trouble with wsgi and cache and also simply changed content of files marked as static with a long-time cache tag, instead of versioning them... Some reload-clicks or cache-purges should fix that.
knorke wrote:Long map names overlap
Oh... right.. hm? Oh lol: When developing that on my notebook the numbers were shorter, as I have less replays in my dev-DB :D I guess I'll just remove the 30d-numbers, and leave the totals. (#59)
BTW: do you think anyone actually cares about those numbers (excluding us nerds)? Maybe I should just make a dedicated stats-page and remove those numbers for less UI clutter. (#60)
knorke wrote:Are the page numbers supposed to be like vertical
No... strange... at home it's horizontal with bootstrap buttons... some css doesn't work on the server or has different version? Will investigate. (#61)
knorke wrote:Old layout required fewer clicks, at least how I used it:
I liked how to see latest replays of one mod, it was only one click on the modname on frontpage.
Now it is three clicks: 1) Browse Archive 2) Game-button 3) select gamel
Your bookmark is: http://replays.springrts.com/browse/game=7/
You can find those links on the replay page/overview, they are cumulative: /browse/game=7/gameversion=248/ or /browse/map=66/game=7/gameversion=205/tag=45/ ... for no apparent reason the order is important.
What do you think of a dropdown from the main menu (still 2 clicks) that lets you select the game, for now redirecting to /browse/game=7/ , and when we have the domain, redirects to xta.replays.springrts.com? (#62)
knorke wrote:At the moment recently played matches take up most space on frontpage, but think for most players those are not so interessting and pretty random.
Maybe have only one row of "recently played games", another row of "currently popular" (based on downloads, comments) and then there is still some space to have the game-selector on frontpage?
[..]
There is already "Most popular replays" but it is only text, not nice images like the recent ones. (and the difference between "most popular" and "currently popular")
I like the idea. I'll try it. (#63)
knorke wrote:For the search results:
Maybe have small map-thumbnail beside the mapname? Think especially for new players easier to recognize by picture.
I had thought about that too, but they'd be really really tiny - or the table would have to have bigger text, and thus be longer or have less rows.
I have no idea what it is people like... I like high information density :D, but granted - that doesn't really help with orientation. I'll try it out, and we'll see. (#64)
knorke wrote:In the list on http://replays.springrts.com/browse/ it would be nice if it also showed game-name. So that one can for ex. click "yesterday" and scroll through the list until one finds an interessting game-map combo.
Absolutely - and noone really cares for the uplader. That's historic - when players uploaded themselfs :) I'll replace that column with the gamerelease string. (#65)
knorke wrote:I would assume when players log-in to site, many do it to find their own replays. Atm one has to click own name topright, then scroll down past the stats/ranking.
Seems trivial but users miss such things all the time..Maybe at top of playerpage button/anchor-link thing named "My recent games"?
Could also show that right after login.
I'll place a button in the main menu between "Hall of fame" and "Upload" (which also appears when you login). (#66)

Thank you for the extensive feedback and suggestions knorke!!
<somenub> also you can't use "return" button
<somenub> of firefox
<somenub> or you have to select "xta " again
Yeah... I have no idea how to save the selection state, when using ajax instead of page-loads... maybe in cookies? Anyone knows how for example shopping sites where you can use filters do that? (#67)

Jools: I'll start with the awards soon.
"award1.jpg" and "award2.jpg" have some kind of water mark. Do you have permission to use these?
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Jools
XTA Developer
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Joined: 23 Feb 2009, 16:29

Re: spring replay site

Post by Jools »

Ok, I investigated more:

hero-trophy:
------------
Image
http://openclipart.org/detail/120343/trophy-by-netalloy
license: Public domain

lost-rose:
---------
Image
http://wallpaperszoo.com/love-rose-wall ... ve-rose-4/
license: http://wallpaperszoo.com/about/

"We provide a variety of wallpapers such as iPhone, animals, wildlife, your favorite cricketer, favorite personality, cars and much more. Here is a collection of HD wallpapers so you can get wallpaper of your choice fluently as well as can download if you want to, because it is free to download..."

award 3:
---------
Image
http://www.wpclipart.com/education/awar ... d.png.html
license: a public domain PNG image

awards 1 and 2 are royalty free but not free to download, my mistake. use these instead:

award 4:
--------
Image
http://openclipart.org/detail/174086/aw ... ek2-174086
licence: Public Domain.

award 5:
--------
Image
http://pixabay.com/en/cartoon-free-gold ... phy-31909/
license: Public Domain CC0

You don't obviously need to use all of those, just as many as you feel is nice.
Last edited by Jools on 13 Apr 2014, 16:39, edited 2 times in total.
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Silentwings
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Re: spring replay site

Post by Silentwings »

New site looks great. Only spotted one thing wrong - some of the "most popular replays" are very old!
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

search results:
Maybe have small map-thumbnail beside the mapname
What do you think?:
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Silentwings wrote:New site looks great. Only spotted one thing wrong - some of the "most popular replays" are very old!
Ah yes... these are the most downloaded from "all times" :)
What time range to you suggest? Last 30 days or 2 month?
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Floris
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Re: spring replay site

Post by Floris »

or based on game version
dansan
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Floris wrote:or based on game version
What do you mean? Only consider replays from the current [and previous] game version? Makes sense.
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Jools
XTA Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by Jools »

I think better from last 30 days. Gameversions are not always consecutive and can have jumps, for example xta people are afraid to hit version 10.0 (it would maybe be called dekaphobia), so versions approach it asymptotically.

Games also have different logic with versions. For xta the logic is in principle that each version with two decimals (like 9.73) is a stable one, and those with three are betas. But it's not followed because of dekaphobia as mentioned earlier. :)
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knorke
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Re: spring replay site

Post by knorke »

Absolutely - and noone really cares for the uplader. That's historic - when players uploaded themselfs :)
I think rarely players upload replays manually, but if they do then those would also often be the more interessting replays to watch.
Many of the "Most popular replays" are manual uploads. (ok, another reason for them being "popular" is also how long ago they were uploaded.) That principle still applies I think.
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SinbadEV
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Re: spring replay site

Post by SinbadEV »

the word popular assumes that things are also current... pop-music is the music that is playing on the radio the most this week... pop-psychology/science/mechanics are the new things and ideas that are getting the most attention and are the most exciting...

As such I would say that you should pick whatever period is likely to give a statistically significant indication of current interest (I'd say 30 days sounds like a nice place to start)... the other way to go would be start with "most popular this week * 1, most popular this month * .75, most popular this year * .5 and most popular all time * .25 so you get a mix of currently pretty interesting replays along with a few replays that were so interesting in their day that they remain pretty interesting today.
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Thanx for suggestions. I think I will go with 50% this month and 30% forever or so. The only problem atm is, that there is little statistic, because very few downloads. I'll add voting-system like IMDB-stars one day, that'll make for the best user-xp and will hopefully be used by users.
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Server crashed at 00:30 CEST, and I noticed at 07:30 CEST.

If you played any match you want on the site that was not uploaded, you can simply uploaded it yourself. Process is painless: login, press "upload" button, select replay file on disk, press "submit". You can upload 5 replays at the same time.
gajop
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Re: spring replay site

Post by gajop »

I'm completely new to your site (and haven't really read this thread much, so I'll just report issues as seen by a new user).
1. FFA games show "Team -1", this is confusing:
http://replays.springrts.com/replay/c91 ... b79b8f899/

2. "Satellite" map image is much smaller than "Metal" and "Height".

3. Height could use colors, and metal should probably be overlayed over the satellite so it looks more pretty.

4. From a UI perspective hall of fame "tabs" function odd, sometimes clicking on a different tab has no apparent effect (since the linked table is on the same y-coord as the one you clicked is, e.g. TeamFFA and FFA). Would be better if you implemented this as a single "table" with tabs (a tab view of multiple tables I guess).

5. In the Hall of Fame tab I'd move those tables before the Awards, they are more important I think. Awards should also probably be structured so it doesn't look like a mess. Maybe do them like those tables, or by giving each award a single line, e.g. :
==================
[award1-name]|
[award1-img] | player1, player2, ... playern
==================
[award2-name]|
[award2-img] | player1, player2, ... playern
==================
.
.
.

6. There should be a separate top-level link where you can browse games, to get replays only for those games.
7. Browse archive should have its filter options sorted by importance: Game, Player, Tag, TrueSkill, Time, Map, etc.
8. What does the "search" option do? Most people would probably search by player's name there.
9. What does "D" and "C" mean? I guess it's 'Downloads' and 'Comments', but that should probably show as a tooltip when I mouse over the column names.
10. Why is a "Map image not available": http://replays.springrts.com/replay/5ad ... 5c0802f04/ embedded in a Hungarian flag look-alike? (Even the guy commenting there mentioned it). Sometimes the image isn't shown (as if the URL is bad): http://replays.springrts.com/replay/8b7 ... 91cdf4421/

PS: Otherwise it looks professional, keep it up.
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jamerlan
Balanced Annihilation Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by jamerlan »

new design is fucking sexy! How you did that?
I love "Find a player" quick search field. REALY GOOD JOB!!!
dansan
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

I concur on most of your findings - some are just bad luck though.
gajop wrote:1. FFA games show "Team -1", this is confusing:
http://replays.springrts.com/replay/c91 ... b79b8f899/
Oh - this one is from 13.01.2013 and seems broken. Replay-analysis has gotten much more robust and complete since then. I ran a reparsing on it, and it looks good now.
gajop wrote:2. "Satellite" map image is much smaller than "Metal" and "Height".
That's also historic. Before the UI rewrite (13 Apr 2014) all map images had a fixed height of 170px. I was to lazy to run a recreate on all map images ^.^ I shall do that (#69).
gajop wrote:3. Height could use colors, and metal should probably be overlayed over the satellite so it looks more pretty.
Won't fix: Both images are from api.springfiles.com. I won't go into map parsing. I had thought about the overlay too - it's b/w, so that would be easy, but the questions is: will you be able to see those dots on the satellite map? ...hmm... what do you think of an animated gif, 1 frame w/o metal, 1 frame with metal -> blinking mex :)
Oh... but gif will look very ugly... not an option...
hmm... any idea how to do this overlay thing?
gajop wrote:4. From a UI perspective hall of fame "tabs" function odd, sometimes clicking on a different tab has no apparent effect (since the linked table is on the same y-coord as the one you clicked is, e.g. TeamFFA and FFA). Would be better if you implemented this as a single "table" with tabs (a tab view of multiple tables I guess).
Good idea! (#70)
gajop wrote:5. In the Hall of Fame tab I'd move those tables before the Awards, they are more important I think. Awards should also probably be structured so it doesn't look like a mess. Maybe do them like those tables, or by giving each award a single line
This will make for a very long page. I'm the keeper of space-efficiency and hate scrolling :D
I'll try with each on line - we'll see :) (#71)
gajop wrote:6. There should be a separate top-level link where you can browse games, to get replays only for those games.
That's what I'm currently working on (#66). I will try to make that selection a site-wide preference, so a pre-filter where appropriate (index, browse and halloffame).
gajop wrote:7. Browse archive should have its filter options sorted by importance: Game, Player, Tag, TrueSkill, Time, Map, etc.
I don't know if that is really the right order... I think it depends on how you are looking for something. I'd use the order you suggest to look for matches a specific user has played. But that purpose is better served by visiting that users player-page. What search-scenarios do you have in mind?
gajop wrote:8. What does the "search" option do? Most people would probably search by player's name there.
It searches through the columns "titel" and "game". I'll add a tooltip to clarify it. (#72)
gajop wrote:9. What does "D" and "C" mean? I guess it's 'Downloads' and 'Comments', but that should probably show as a tooltip when I mouse over the column names.
Yep (#73).
gajop wrote:10. Why is a "Map image not available": http://replays.springrts.com/replay/5ad ... 5c0802f04/ embedded in a Hungarian flag look-alike? (Even the guy commenting there mentioned it).
Hehe :) That's coincidence: The colors show where the startboxes are. The guy "root" is me :) and for very few maps, there is no image available from api.springfiles.com. Why that is - no idea.
gajop wrote:Sometimes the image isn't shown (as if the URL is bad): http://replays.springrts.com/replay/8b7 ... 91cdf4421/
You found a broken name in the database... hmm... there are more... arg... fixink needed (#74).

Thank you for the thorough review! :)
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

Wonders of modern browsers and notebooks that never shutdown (just suspend): I wrote this message 2 days ago, and it seems I forgot to hit "Submit" and forgot it in one of the many open tabs :)

Tim successfully fought with the DNS entries, and now we have *.replays.springrts.com and *.replays-test.springrts.com. I will use that for site specific landing pages "nota.replays.springrts.com", "evorts.replays.springrts.com" etc. plus filtering (like from the top-menu).

I won't start to work on it before June though. 1st thing will be to get theme support in place. All themes from Bootswatch should be interchangeable and be saved in the users profile. Then game specific themes are possible.

If game devs have a wish for CSS changes for their site, please send them to me.
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
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Joined: 29 May 2010, 23:40

Re: spring replay site

Post by dansan »

I finally got myself to code on the XTA awards detection. The messages are easy to parse :)
I tried it on a different replay (http://replays.springrts.com/replay/3e6 ... 01cdf4421/) and it produced:

Code: Select all

 'xtawards': [{'age': 24,
               'isAlive': 0,
               'kills': 47,
               'name': 'Upgraded Commander',
               'team': 4},
              {'age': 12,
               'isAlive': 0,
               'kills': 46,
               'name': 'Gaat Gun',
               'team': 4},
              {'age': 4,
               'isAlive': 0,
               'kills': 30,
               'name': 'Viper',
               'team': 4}]
Which fits well with:
Image

I'll write some view-code soon.
I have a question: By what criterion are the two award lists sorted? Kills?
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