New Turbo Sliders website (2015)

[stummihouse]

dede explained he meant that there are several pages still in progress, such as "hof", "players" and "ranking".
I can create a list of users registered on site (players), and hide the pages under construction.

Tijny already given me a log file, thanks

[Whiplash]

Player list is a great new thing. I've always missed it on the old site. And it's nicely done!
I've created a simple image for the "Download also:" tracks section. I guess it will be good enough for now (LINK).
I tried to combine more different images to one, but that always looked too tiny and bad.
I'll try to make some image for "cars" and "others" too.

Don't forget to make that small change that I've mentioned you before:
View detailed standings - positions aren't the same there yet if players have the same number of points. You can't know how many wins each of them had, so you don't need that extra rule there.
And for some reason order of days is broken (Day 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 4).

EDIT:
Under the "Check out the server list!" you could add the live info about the number of servers and players like:
~ 7 public servers | ~ 0 public players

[stummihouse]

thanks for the image and the other notices.
All fixed!

About the live stats: to look for that information at every page could be expensive for the server.
However for now I put it among the "things to do"


edit
we could put a clearly visible ad on the official website that says something like "try the new site"

[Whiplash]

Try this GIF for "Cars" image:
Link

And one of these for "Other":
Link 1
Link 2

EDIT:
- Where is Facebook disappeared? If it took too much space earlier, you could just add an icon for it on top of the site.
- Current website has the live activity info. So, I guess the new one can too. It's a quite needed thing since it can prevent you from extra clicks very often, especially if it shows ~ 0 public servers | ~ 0 public players
- Why Feoli7 isn't recognized on FCC stats?

[stummihouse]

I will add your new pictures as soon as possible. Thank you!

>> Current website has the live activity info. So, I guess the new one can too.
Sure, you are definitely right. I'll do soon!

Facebook: there is an icon at the bottom of the site. Facebook is a shit, and I would not waste the site space for it.
Maybe we could put the social icons in the header, but then there would be a lot of stuff there, since we are also adding the servers stats...

>> Why Feoli7 isn't recognized on FCC stats?
fixed

State of play
I guess that through useful suggestions by users we could keep on improve the software for centuries.
Actually i think we could consider a web software as a "permanent beta version" since the community every day finds something to add, improve or change.
Also, I would like to work on a software to allow Tijny and the other "tournament organizers" to automatically interact with the site.

However before we go further I'd like to see the fruits of our hard work.
If there's something wrong, please report it. Otherwise I would like to have the final approval by dede to go online.
Experience teaches me that we might run the risk of working another 6 months and, in the end, having a website already old but still in the test area.

Thank you all, greetings!



edit:
the last New of the site says "You can upload some of your contents (cars, tracks etc.)". But it is not so.
at the moment only the "community managers" can upload items, edit pages and manage users.
Maybe we can add a new "Role", as "Trusted user", to allow trusted users to just upload cars and tracks files. Then a Community Manager can assign that role to a specific user, when needed.

If we want, we can allow a "Trusted User" to enter a News Article too.
Or we can create another special "Role", as "Journalist", which can ONLY post news.
We can play with "Roles" and "Permissions" as we want!
I await your reply before doing something, but I've already updated the first post with information on Roles and Permissions


edit2:
about images: in the future it will be better to find 3 pictures that have the same graphic style.
3 images with 3 different styles are not very professional.
(preferably flat images)

[Whiplash]

- You're right about images, But it's quite hard to get something unified and still unique for TS. This is what I've ended up with:
links deleted

- Yeah, Facebook can stay as it is then. I hardly noticed it though. Good thing about it is that it's quite nice for spreading the news related to TS, because it's damn popular.

- You should move Multimedia on the semi-last place (in between of Chat and Newbie guide).

EDIT:
-The text on the homepage should be changed a bit to:
Turbo Sliders is a 2D racing game with top-down perspective. You can play it offline or online with up to 20 players. It also allows you to create your own tracks, cars, competitions and much more.
Download the game, join the community and compete against your opponents in single races or organized tournaments. Experience the addictive gameplay of Turbo Sliders!

- Newbie guide could contain "Tips and tricks" section.

- Images edited again. These will probably look much better:
Tracks
Cars
Other

- An idea:
It would be useful if you could make that players subscribe to a tournament without using the forum. You will easily achieve that if you create option inside of editor just like you did for tournament "State". This time you would rename that to "Tournament state" and add new one named "Subscription state" with options: opened, closed. If it's opened, you will show a button on the tournament page that says "Subscribe!". Players would click on it and by doing that their nicks will automatically show up on some subscription list. Maybe you can use detailed standings for that. Subscribed players would be listed before Day 1, Day 2 etc.
And once a player is subscribed to a tournament, live info about the time of the next event (the square you've created on tournament page) should be also showed on top of the homepage (in between of logo and clock) for him. If he subscribes for few different tournaments, the event that is coming next should be displayed there.
You should forbid tournament organizers to set a two or more different events at exactly the same time.
By implementing this idea you will make all subscribed players to be constantly reminded about their tournament(s). They will hardly miss any event again, which has been a quite common case in the past.

- You can download TS logo font HERE. I believe there is an easy way of integration new and custom fonts to Drupal.
Of course, TS's font color style will not be usable without creating icons/images for each word, which we want to avoid. But, even if you use clear colors for it (white, black, red etc.), it will still look cool and give some more of TS style to the site.
Use italic version of the font and use it only for some strong parts of the website like tabs and maybe article titles. Maybe even that text on the home page about the game could be written by it, but I'm not totally sure. You need to test it.

[stummihouse]

They are all excellent suggestions. Without your effort this site would not be so cool.
Indeed I added you without delay in the "credits" page.

But before adding new features and options, in my opinion it would be better to consolidate the work done so far and to send the site into production.
Then, slowly, we can develop all we want.

Meanwhile sometime I work on the server log files.
But I did not understand a thing about it:
when I open a TS server I can get a log file in the log folder that is something like this:

Code: Select all

Wed Aug 05 17:39:15 2015
Log started

Wed Aug 05 17:39:43 2015
Server cup started

Message: Digita /help per ricevere info e comandi.
Message: Informato il master server.
Message: AntiSlider
Message: Giri: 1
Message: La pista 1/3 è Minileap (di Ande).
Race starting: 1 laps in minileap with 1 players, non-ghost race
Message: Nuovo giro più veloce: 12.889 di stummihouse

Stats for the race in Minileap:

RaceStats, 1 laps, 1 players, first finished
stummihouse pos 1 (time: 12.889,  1 laps), best lap: 1 (12.889) AntiSlider 9bc1a14
  Lap times: 12.889 
Best lap was made by stummihouse

Graph for the race in Minileap:
(Cut'n'paste to a spreadsheet program to get a graph)

Graph data:
Winner laps: 1, total time: 12.889, average lap: 12.889
"stummihouse" 0 0.000 

Cup Stats:
----------
1. 	 stummihouse 	 11

Message: La pista 2/3 è Sandslid (di Ande).
Race starting: 1 laps in sandslid with 1 players, non-ghost race
Message: Nuovo giro più veloce: 23.134 di stummihouse

Stats for the race in Sandslid:

RaceStats, 1 laps, 1 players, first finished

but Tijny sent to me a log file like this:

Code: Select all

RaceStats
Date 2015 6 21
Time 21 8 1
Track J_Burst
TrackMaker Jarno
RaceNo 6
RaceNumber 12
LapNumber 3
CarMode 1
StartOrder 2
Ghost 0
Pro 0
StartMode 1
Car AntiSlider-Hunter
Points 0  25 22 20 18 16 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
GivePointsForAborted 0
Drafting 1
DraftingMaxDistance 120.000000
DraftingCloseDistance 20.000000
DraftingMaxAngle 20.000000
DraftingViscosityFactor 0.800000
DraftingGripFactor 0.900000
DraftingSteeringFactor 0.900000
DraftingSpeedForMaxEffect 242.000000
DraftingSpeedEffectPower 3.000000

Aborted 0

Player
Name [PahaJori] Ender
Id 1929270342
Type Human
Car AntiSlider-Hunter
StartPos 16
Pos 6
TotalTime 80256
Laps 3
BestLap 3 21897 c
Lap 35630 c
Lap 22729 c
Lap 21897 c
End

Player
Name [fS]Hevonen
Id 1625515064
Type Human
Car AntiSlider-Hunter
StartPos 14
Pos 5
TotalTime 79572
Laps 3
BestLap 3 22164 c
Lap 34350 c
Lap 23058 c
Lap 22164 c
End

Player
Name [iR] kikiriki
Id 1956862677
Type Human
Car AntiSlider-Hunter
StartPos 4
Pos 4
TotalTime 78538
Laps 3

The question is:
how to get this kind of report?
what i have to set on turbosliders settings?

[Tijny]

That type of log file will be created only if ScriptsOn is enabled in sliders.ini. You can read about it in doc/README-autoserver.txt.

[stummihouse]

thank you! I'm really noob

ok, please flag as solved the question that I addressed in private.

[Whiplash]

I'm not sure why you've rotated "Cars" images for 90 degrees. When doing it, shadow rotates to. That's bad because it's supposed to be at the same angle for all 3 images. If you insist on rotated image, then use THIS one with the corrected shadow angle.

[stummihouse]

Thanks! I rotated it because we have more horizzontal space than vertical

[Whiplash]

Some small changes:
- Show the total number of players on the player list. It will be useful once we get more players logged in/registered. It's already hard to count them manually.
- You gave a bad E.g. for date of "upcoming event" and "end date" (08/10/2015). You should write like 08/30/2015, so we can know what number is for days and what for months.
- I guess you can delete that example for "upload results" now that says:
Upload a CSV file with following columns:
Player, Day 1, Day 2, Day N...
I guess that first row of those columns is automatized now.
- Presented info "Number of best results counted: 5." should be without that "." sign at the end, and the number should be bold.

[stummihouse]

Thank you Whiplash,

But before adding new features and options, in my opinion it would be better to consolidate the work done so far and to send the site into production.
Then, slowly, we can develop all we want.

I guess that through useful suggestions by users we could keep on improve the software for centuries.
Actually i think we could consider a web software as a "permanent beta version" since the community every day finds something to add, improve or change.

However before we go further I'd like to see the fruits of our hard work.
If there's something wrong, please report it. Otherwise I would like to have the final approval by dede to go online.
Experience teaches me that we might run the risk of working another 6 months and, in the end, having a website already old but still in the test area.

Unfortunately my time is not infinite: I can not work indefinitely on many small changes, not until I see consolidated the much work done so far.

P.S.
Meanwhile, I'm still working on the server log file in order to build, with the help of Tijny, an automated online standings for the Weekly Hot Lap Competition.

[Whiplash]

Meanwhile, I'm still working on the server log file in order to build, with the help of Tijny, an automated online standings for the Weekly Hot Lap Competition.

Oh, make my dreams come true! Can we see somehow what's done already and how it looks? Will that be some kind of official ranking with a lot of statistics?

[stummihouse]

You can see the public side of that software: ie the two test competitions I created.

But it will not be functional until Tijny have developed his small piece of software, that is the one that sends the log files to the site.

I am totally inexperienced with the development of "client softwares"; otherwise i would done already by myself, without disturbing and occupy valuable time of other people.

This small software can open up new and beautiful scenery about competitions because, besides the Weekly Hot Lap, we can handle various types of calculation of points, rankings and so on.

September is coming in , and the site is still in the test area.
Maybe it's also why contributors like Tijny not have enough enthusiasm: because they rightly fear of wasting time for a job that will not be published.

I too am beginning to fear that i have thrown away so many days of work, and that the site built with so much love will never be published.

Dede - holy shit - where are you?

[Tijny]

To me, competitions are a secondary feature, the main goal of the new website is just to have something that looks clean, gives information about the game and doesn't scare people away at first glance. Which it does infinitely better than our current website.

You are right that I haven't had much enthusiasm in recent... years even, but I will try to develop what you asked of me in the coming week or so. I just don't see how the success or failure of the website as a whole depends on this little feature, though.

[stummihouse]

sorry, I did not mean that the site does not go online because of you.
I meant: because the site is still offline, you rightly you could have little enthusiasm.

I'm grateful you are developing this software, with the times that you feel necessary.

if anything, is the fault of dedeculo (just kidding)

[Whiplash]

Yeah, I believe that implementing the small changes I've listed you would make the site look more "ready" than T's software. But, sure, the success of the website will not depend just on its looks, but also by by its power of generating more activity. And that's where I'm seeing T's work useful. It could be an important new content on the site for the future.

[Whiplash]

I managed to contact dede somehow by some secret communication paths. This was our dialog:

Whiplash: wtf mang, come back - we need you
­dede: come back where
­Whiplash: o boy
­Whiplash: Can't you read Facebook?
­Whiplash: Or Forum?
dede: forum not
Whiplash: stummi and I are looking for you for days
dede: I'm in holidays
Whiplash: Yeah, as I predicted.
dede: what do you need?
Whiplash: stummi needs you to allow him to release the site
dede: ok but is the site complete?
dede: last time i checked it, there were various things missing
Whiplash: The site is complete enough. He wants it released before he makes few more changes.
dede: but if you decided to release it already, then do it without my consense
Whiplash: First read his PM. I think he sent it to you.
dede: after all I've been away for a while and I won't be present like in the past, so you don't need my permission
dede: yeah ok, but if I don't reply in near future, then go ahead for the good of the game
Whiplash: ok

[stummihouse]

this is great news.
I think I will work on it next week

thank you!


edit 2015-08-24
done!
you can view the old version here, but several links lead on www site: http://old.turbosliders.com

[Whiplash]

Nice! I'm already missing info for "View unread posts". Can you somehow add it showing the number of them directly too (like you did for "new messages")?

EDIT:
I've also noticed that very often number of active players aren't matching well with the number of them listed on the server list. Numbers matching each others only when I'm logged in.
Ah, seems like it's problem with server list updating when a visitor isn't logged in. The live stats info on the top of the page seems to work well.

[iBlaze²]

Really nice job stummi (and Whip too). Thanks for all of the hard work you've put into this, awesome job so far!

Just one point I would like to raise:

- As well as Whip's suggestion about number of new posts, can we have the Personal Messages section moved to the top of that column, above User Menu? Makes more sense to be there so you can instantly see if you have any new messages or if there are any new posts without having to scroll to the bottom.

[stummihouse]

Hi!

* About "Personal messages" section: we haven't so much control on it: it's part of the mangy script that combines Drupal with the old forum. i can just put the entire section on the top of the right-side... but "user menu" is important too.
maybe i can move it over the donate box.

* Server list: it was a cache trouble. now it should work.

* About this suggestion: "Newbie guide could contain "Tips and tricks" section."
What to write in this section?

I collected all the suggestions in a to-do list, I hope I did not forget anything. I tried to put them all, but not necessarily I will do all
See the to-do list on Trello.com
some things, especially the "management section", can be made by users of Turbo Sliders.
anyone can contribute!

[Whiplash]

"Tips and tricks" section."
What to write in this section?

We could use it to write about some special (but "hidden") options that TS has and that can be useful. These come to my mind right now:
- Shrink to fit always for PunaBall tracks
- How to disable automatic prediction for network and make the best set up to avoid lags and achieve low latency at the same time.
- Using parameter -p <n> to get more than 4 local players.
- GhostAlphaMode that can make other ghost cars totally invisible or totally visible.
- Somebody also could describe things like "braking with AntiSlider" is. That's one of the most common questions that newbies ask about driving techniques.

[stummihouse]

good! when the page is ready, send it to me and i'll add it on the newbe guide.
i cannot help you to write it: i know nothing about it

How to disable automatic prediction for network and make the best set up to avoid lags and achieve low latency at the same time

i can't wait to know how!