Mahz

Weird Thing - Making a Thread

@Jig Thanks for the report.

Edit: Before you try to answer the questions below, can you first try to create your Advanced topic but instead put some placeholder text like "Testing..." in your first post? (You can always edit the post once the topic is created). Basically, there's a bug where the forum silently fails if you trigger a validation error (like "too many tags" or "title too long") and if your post is past a certain length. By putting a little bit of filler text into the post when creating a topic, the forum will show you what you need to fix instead of silently failing. It's a known bug that I need to fix, so let's first try to rule out this case.

- What page are you getting the "automatic cache" message on?
- What actually happens when you try to create a thread in Advanced? Do you see "INTERNAL ERROR" or something else? Is it when you go to the "New Topic" page or when you actually submit the form to the server?
- Do these things happen every single time or does it sometimes work and sometimes break?

Need some help narrowing down the issues to the right pages for me to take a closer look at. So far I'm unable to reproduce the issue. It's definitely an issue with the guild, it just apparently doesn't affect everyone.

Arena Chat Thread

@Rilla Once I finish creating the "Arena Mod" usergroup. Trying to wrap it up tonight, but it's getting late.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Currently wrapping up a quick rankings/stats system for the Arena forum:

http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/2830887

Arena Chat Thread

I'm totally against betting points. The ranks are supposed to show the participants' skill in textual combat, which includes a variety of things - from knowledge of combat to analysis of your opponents strategy to forming one of your own - and allowing to bet points will skew the results, as a lucky bet based on simply the reputation of a fighter, and not an independent evaluation of their skill, could bring one higher up into the ranks than they have earned.

Betting anything else? Fine by me, that could actually be pretty fun.

@Vordak

I'm holding off on any sort of wagering/betting system from the initial release anyways since it adds complexity. I'd rather open up a discussion on that topic once the basic ranking system has been live for a while.

Here are some screenshots of what I've got working so far locally:

Users can opt-in to displaying their arena stats in their userbit:


Ranked games clearly stand out when viewing the Arena:


An Arena mod can update a ranked roleplay's outcomes (one for each participant).
They can make these changes on the "Edit Roleplay" page of a ranked Arena roleplay:


Added Ranked vs Unranked setting to the "New Roleplay" page when creating a roleplay in the Arena forum:


Thoughts?

I figured the simplest implementation would be to require Arena mods to manually update the outcomes of ranked games. Maybe there's a stickied Arena thread where GMs enqueue their their ranked roleplays once they're ready to be judged, and the Arena mods can work through the queue. It's the opposite of "nice and streamlined", but I can improve that in time. My goal right now is to build a starting point that is easy for me to change in response to feedback and better ideas.

So far I've implemented the point system that Rilla explained in his PM proposal:

- Everyone starts with 1,000 Arena points
- Wins = +100 points
- Draws = +50 points
- Losses = +0 points

It's something we can always change (and recalculate for everyone) in the future.

Companion System and Background/Friend Stuff.

@TimeToRP Good ideas.

The guild could use a friend system even if all it does is give you a sidebar that sorts them by the last time they were online (showing those online first).

Improving Interest Checks

I like this idea.

Maybe the simplest implementation would be to add an "I'm Interested" button to interest checks. You get added to the public list of interested users for that interest check. And maybe it can lead to players contacting each other like: "Hey, I saw you were interested in X. Want to start one with me?"

For the interest check creator, I can then create a message box below the list of interested players that lets them send a message to the entire list. It can be used to announce the roleplay created from the interest check and perhaps any future roleplays spawned from it in the future. Though I'm not sure how I want these sorts of messages to piggy-back on top of the current system. For instance I don't think the message box should create a big group convo. Maybe I can introduce a new notification type that encloses the attached message.

Finally, players can see a list of all interest checks they're interested in and remove themselves.

Maybe there's a better idea, but the above is at least doable and not a massive undertaking.

Can't View Threads

Should be fixed now. Thanks!

Can't View Threads

Wow, thanks for the report.

I can reproduce by opening incognito window, going to the guild, and trying to read topics/profiles.

Investigating...

Mahz's Dev Journal

Don't actually mock that up.

If I implemented this, I'd just enforce minimum image resolution and aspect-ratio restrictions.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@LegendBegins
Just a quick play around to see how a few things worked out. My suggestion for placing an image within the text box area just looked bad. Some other designs may work if it was a bit more specific with borders and possible text formatting (ie: Fantasy RPs could have their usernames in a stylish font, eg: [Link], however getting that to work on computers without font files may be an issue)

<Snipped quote>
As a quick throw together, These don't look too bad. A concern we would have to address would be the text that happens to be light and where it would be positioned above certain images. With some images possibly containing varying colours and the requirement for a few different designs to suit the GM's vision, I'm guessing readability of would be high on the list. It's mostly with the lighter shades, but it will depend on the image.

Images x3

Anime Street


Fantasy Landscape


Neon Future City

@NuttsnBolts

I think it looks cool. The guild's styling would need some tweaks of course like translucency/transparency on backgrounds and strokes on text.

It's not a feature I'm against implementing, I'd just let people opt-out.

Though I'm afraid your taste in good-looking, high-resolution backgrounds makes the idea possibly more palatable than it might be in reality.

For a taste, can you create a mockup that stretches this small shitty image?