An SDA Decline...

2015-12-12 11:14:32 am

DS Dictator

Quote:

I wrote some. And 2 months is fast enough.

It's much better than 4+ months, I still remember late 2009 being just under 2 months.
NSMB DS 100% from early September to 1st November.

I was pointing out inconsistency where some runs are published 2-4 times faster than others after submitting final encodes, that's all.

Ispil

2015-12-12 12:17:26 pm

Quote from Ewil:

1. You could speed up the verification process by getting rid of the required video/audio qualities and MULTIPLE videos. It's 2015, nobody downloads speedruns anymore. Everyone just watches them on youtube/twitch and don't really give a crap about videos, unless you want to study them for your own run in which case anything worse than best quality is absolutely pointless imo. Just let the verifiers judge the video quality. Videos were good many years ago when youtube had only shit quality and 10 mins lenght restriction. Now they offer HD resolution and 60fps. Is that not good enough? If anything, SDA could simply download these runs as a backup.

2. I don't think these forums are the reason for SDA being a "ghost town". The thing is, speedrunning community simply moved to RTA runs, even more now with the rise of speedrun.com. SDA doesn't accept RTA runs, so here's your problem. Vast majority of runs here are long obsolete, including the most active games since communities have found new tricks since then. People simply don't want to do segmented runs anymore. I used to be a supporter for segmented runs since they're always faster than SS/RTA, and have been active on SDA for more than 10 years, but the way how runs are handled on speedrun.com is just WAY better, so unless SDA finally does some big changes, I fear this site will die.

Pretty sure SDA allows single-segment runs as well as segmented, so that shouldn't be too much of a thing here. I think most of the problems stem down to verification time, given the posts here.

[quote="Ewil"]1. You could speed up the verification process by getting rid of the required video/audio qualities and MULTIPLE videos. It's 2015, nobody downloads speedruns anymore. Everyone just watches them on youtube/twitch and don't really give a crap about videos, unless you want to study them for your own run in which case anything worse than best quality is absolutely pointless imo. Just let the verifiers judge the video quality. Videos were good many years ago when youtube had only shit quality and 10 mins lenght restriction. Now they offer HD resolution and 60fps. Is that not good enough? If anything, SDA could simply download these runs as a backup.

2. I don't think these forums are the reason for SDA being a "ghost town". The thing is, speedrunning community simply moved to RTA runs, even more now with the rise of speedrun.com. SDA doesn't accept RTA runs, so here's your problem. Vast majority of runs here are long obsolete, including the most active games since communities have found new tricks since then. People simply don't want to do segmented runs anymore. I used to be a supporter for segmented runs since they're always faster than SS/RTA, and have been active on SDA for more than 10 years, but the way how runs are handled on speedrun.com is just WAY better, so unless SDA finally does some big changes, I fear this site will die.[/quote]

Pretty sure SDA allows single-segment runs as well as segmented, so that shouldn't be too much of a thing here. I think most of the problems stem down to verification time, given the posts here.

TheMG2

2015-12-12 12:19:09 pm

Quote from Ispil:

Pretty sure SDA allows single-segment runs as well as segmented, so that shouldn't be too much of a thing here. I think most of the problems stem down to verification time, given the posts here.

No, verification is relatively quick now, it's the rest of the process that people want to speed up.

zewing

2015-12-12 12:25:01 pm

just( •_•)>⌐■-■ ..... (⌐■_■)wing it

if you really want to speed up the process you could just hit up the admins on this site and request to volunteer as a PRC person, I'm sure they'd take the help

IsraeliRD

Edit history:

IsraeliRD: 2015-12-13 12:40:50 pm

2015-12-13 12:37:57 pm

Dragon Power Supreme

Quote from Greenalink:

Quote:

Honestly, I can at least agree to the "No Lower Quality" Encodes anymore. Anything less than HQ should be thrown out when submitting. It speeds up the post verification process a lot.

I agree with DS/3DS games because the output from LQ/MQ is way worse than LQ/MQ on other consoles.

This is something the admins can agree on as well. Half a year ago I wanted to push a rule to drop LQ as a requirement and I forgot all about it, until now.

While the rules/submissions/etc will be a while before it updates, LQ is no longer required for these consoles when submitting a run:
PS2/3/4/PSP, XBOX/360/XB1, GameCube, DS/3DS, Wii/U, PC

The N64's LQ will be a runner's choice (and nate's) as to whether to encode it or not.

Greenalink: atm MQ will be required for DS as well. Roughly 80% of the 3 million downloads on the site from August 2014 until June 2015 were MQ, and it's likely due to the flash player. That one needs a code update, and hopefully that will happen. I'm not sure whether it can be defaulted to HQ, but I hope it does.

Regarding post-verification problems: this is something we are aware of as well and has been discussed a few times this year. AGDQ is right around the corner which does not help to implement anytime soon.
New people is one thing, but actually getting them to do their job is another. Then again, this is a volunteering job done on our own spare time and when life hits, it hits hard.

A bit about the backend work from my PoV:
Timing speedruns is definitely what can take a while, and PC games without in-game timer (and with plenty of loading screens) are the hardest and of course take the longest to do. Console runs are fine though (unless heavily-segmented). There is not much that can be done on that front except for me to churn them consistently.

I am pushing on the PRC front as well. One of our steps is the StatID which moooh makes and checks the step off, but it is actually not required for self-encoded runs. Last weekend we decided that I'll take care of checking off that step and push the run to PRC, leaving only gamepage as the last real step before the run can be posted.

Runners can also help us out and save big chunks of time as well, and it's simple too.
Contact us though the submission PM when they upload the final encodes. This can really help a run if the runner does not wait for me to provide the official timing of the run.
If the runners do wait for me, then a simple note that they want the final time will get a reply from me when the run has been timed. A follow-up reply when the final encodes w/ final statid were uploaded will ensure the run is pushed in a timely matter instead of waiting for weeks before I realize that it has indeed been done.
Note that runs with a different time on the StatID than what I timed will get an immediate notification so that the runners can fix and re-upload if they so wish.
Likewise, letting us know when Audio Commentary was uploaded (and/if it was integrated (or not) to the final encodes you sent us [this is really important too]) and whether run comments were finished can also help.
Note that PRC/myself can find mistakes, so don't rush to delete your original video files just yet.

If you really want to help out, then PRC is always welcome, guest-posting works too (no guarantees I'll take you on though) and maybe even just timing a speedrun expect near-frame-perfection requirement. Just drop me a line and we'll see if we can figure something out.

At the end of the day we all want to see the time a run spends in the queue be cut down by a lot and it is something I'd like to put as a goal coming to 2016 Smiley

[quote="Greenalink"]
[quote] Honestly, I can at least agree to the "No Lower Quality" Encodes anymore.  Anything less than HQ should be thrown out when submitting.  It speeds up the post verification process a lot.[/quote]
I agree with DS/3DS games because the output from LQ/MQ is way worse than LQ/MQ on other consoles.[/quote]

This is something the admins can agree on as well. Half a year ago I wanted to push a rule to drop LQ as a requirement and I forgot all about it, until now.

While the rules/submissions/etc will be a while before it updates, [u]LQ is no longer required[/u] for these consoles when submitting a run:
PS2/3/4/PSP, XBOX/360/XB1, GameCube, DS/3DS, Wii/U, PC

The N64's LQ will be a runner's choice (and nate's) as to whether to encode it or not.

Greenalink: atm MQ will be required for DS as well. Roughly 80% of the 3 million downloads on the site from August 2014 until June 2015 were MQ, and it's likely due to the flash player. That one needs a code update, and hopefully that will happen. I'm not sure whether it can be defaulted to HQ, but I hope it does.

Regarding post-verification problems: this is something we are aware of as well and has been discussed a few times this year. AGDQ is right around the corner which does not help to implement anytime soon.
New people is one thing, but actually getting them to do their job is another. Then again, this is a volunteering job done on our own spare time and when life hits, it hits hard.

A bit about the backend work from my PoV:
Timing speedruns is definitely what can take a while, and PC games without in-game timer (and with plenty of loading screens) are the hardest and of course take the longest to do. Console runs are fine though (unless heavily-segmented). There is not much that can be done on that front except for me to churn them consistently.

I am pushing on the PRC front as well. One of our steps is the StatID which moooh makes and checks the step off, but it is actually not required for self-encoded runs. Last weekend we decided that I'll take care of checking off that step and push the run to PRC, leaving only gamepage as the last real step before the run can be posted.

Runners can also help us out and save big chunks of time as well, and it's simple too. 
Contact us though the submission PM when they upload the final encodes. This can really help a run if the runner does not wait for me to provide the official timing of the run.
If the runners do wait for me, then a simple note that they want the final time will get a reply from me when the run has been timed. A follow-up reply when the final encodes w/ final statid were uploaded will ensure the run is pushed in a timely matter instead of waiting for weeks before I realize that it has indeed been done.
Note that runs with a different time on the StatID than what I timed will get an immediate notification so that the runners can fix and re-upload if they so wish.
Likewise, letting us know when Audio Commentary was uploaded (and/if it was integrated (or not) to the final encodes you sent us [this is really important too]) and whether run comments were finished can also help.
Note that PRC/myself can find mistakes, so don't rush to delete your original video files just yet.

If you really want to help out, then PRC is always welcome, guest-posting works too [size=2](no guarantees I'll take you on though)[/size] and maybe even just timing a speedrun [size=2]expect near-frame-perfection requirement.[/size] Just drop me a line and we'll see if we can figure something out.

At the end of the day we all want to see the time a run spends in the queue be cut down by a lot and it is something I'd like to put as a goal coming to 2016 :)

Elipsis

2015-12-13 02:09:57 pm

IsraeliRD, sending you a PM about some timing business.

moooh

2015-12-13 03:12:52 pm

Exoray

Some quick notes regarding some things people wrote:

Game page code format not being changed: This is incorrect. Game pages were changed to be automatically generated for all new games and for pages containing only runs submitted after October 2012. Pages with mixed old (pre-oct-2012) and new runs still have to be updated manually though. This, until all the old data has been migrated.

Site re-design: We are pretty much tied down when it comes to this. We can't really do a re-design until all runs are migrated and migration is a pain (see below).

Migrating old runs: This is a huge block of work that remains. Runs from before October 2012 only exists on the game page, so they are not in a database. Since pages were done manually, there are tons of variations to the templates unfortunately which would make scripting imports of this info a very very time consuming thing to construct. The migration will likely require a lot of human help who can match unstructured data way better than a machine.

Adding human help: We've wanted to crowd source the migration process for years now but have always been stopped by the fact that the way the backend is set up, a user would have to have full trust in order to use it. Recently UA made work to have the backend support split privileges which has enabled us to add more news updaters without giving full access. I'm hoping this feature can be expanded enough so that we can start adding people that has the time to work with and oversee migration as well. This requires UA's time though, and his availability has been low for quite some time now unfortunately.

Time: This year, several staff members have seen their available spare time drop slightly due to various reasons not only related to GDQ events. We've had barely enough time to maintain daily operations but still not in the pace we would like. Since almost all of our available time has gone to daily operations, no one has really had the time neccessary to screen for, add and teach any new people for some of these parts. This will obviously not work in the long run so I wish I had time to appoint someone that could appoint other people Cheesy

I hope we can free up some of IsraeliRD's time with all of this (because he's doing a huge amount of work atm) so that he can help me free up some of my time so that we together can start working with all the various things that can make this site better and allow us to work with more people. There's really not a lack of visions or ideas, I've got plenty of those.

Some quick notes regarding some things people wrote:

Game page code format not being changed: This is incorrect. Game pages were changed to be automatically generated for all new games and for pages containing only runs submitted after October 2012. Pages with mixed old (pre-oct-2012) and new runs still have to be updated manually though. This, until all the old data has been migrated.

Site re-design: We are pretty much tied down when it comes to this. We can't really do a re-design until all runs are migrated and migration is a pain (see below).

Migrating old runs: This is a huge block of work that remains. Runs from before October 2012 only exists on the game page, so they are not in a database. Since pages were done manually, there are tons of variations to the templates unfortunately which would make scripting imports of this info a very very time consuming thing to construct. The migration will likely require a lot of human help who can match unstructured data way better than a machine.

Adding human help: We've wanted to crowd source the migration process for years now but have always been stopped by the fact that the way the backend is set up, a user would have to have full trust in order to use it. Recently UA made work to have the backend support split privileges which has enabled us to add more news updaters without giving full access. I'm hoping this feature can be expanded enough so that we can start adding people that has the time to work with and oversee migration as well. This requires UA's time though, and his availability has been low for quite some time now unfortunately.

Time: This year, several staff members have seen their available spare time drop slightly due to various reasons not only related to GDQ events. We've had barely enough time to maintain daily operations but still not in the pace we would like. Since almost all of our available time has gone to daily operations, no one has really had the time neccessary to screen for, add and teach any new people for some of these parts. This will obviously not work in the long run so I wish I had time to appoint someone that could appoint other people :D
I hope we can free up some of IsraeliRD's time with all of this (because he's doing a huge amount of work atm) so that he can help me free up some of my time so that we together can start working with all the various things that can make this site better and allow us to work with more people. There's really not a lack of visions or ideas, I've got plenty of those.

TheMG2

2015-12-13 04:09:42 pm

Thanks for the updates

kirbymastah

2015-12-13 04:34:01 pm

<(^_^)>

Quote from TheMG2:

Thanks for the updates

Yep. Strongly appreciated

Sonikkustar

Edit history:

Sonikkustar: 2015-12-13 10:04:32 pm

2015-12-13 10:03:40 pm

The Great Farming Empire

Quote from moooh:

Since almost all of our available time has gone to daily operations, no one has really had the time neccessary to screen for, add and teach any new people for some of these parts. This will obviously not work in the long run so I wish I had time to appoint someone that could appoint other people Cheesy

Sounds like we finally found our place to start. If the site re-design cant happen until all runs are migrated and migrating old runs takes a large amount of time which would be minimized by adding more human help, but people haven't been taught how to work with run pages due to the the way they are set up, then the first thing you guys should do is to teach people how they work so that they can help.

I don't know how your guys schedule is set up, but at some point if people are interested, one of you guys should teach them how this whole thing works. Then that person should be in charge of teaching other people how to also work the runners page. Staff members specifically shouldn't have to teach every person that is interested, otherwise that would defeat the point of freeing up your guys time.

Also...

Quote from kirbymastah:

Quote from TheMG2:

Thanks for the updates

Yep. Strongly appreciated

Agreed. I can't possibly imagine the grueling pain you updaters have to fathom through to get things up. Big thanks to you guys! Smiley

[quote="moooh"]Since almost all of our available time has gone to daily operations, no one has really had the time neccessary to screen for, add and teach any new people for some of these parts. This will obviously not work in the long run so I wish I had time to appoint someone that could appoint other people :D[/quote]

Sounds like we finally found our place to start. If the site re-design cant happen until all runs are migrated and migrating old runs takes a large amount of time which would be minimized by adding more human help, but people haven't been taught how to work with run pages due to the the way they are set up, then the first thing you guys should do is to teach people how they work so that they can help.

I don't know how your guys schedule is set up, but at some point if people are interested, one of you guys should teach them how this whole thing works. Then that person should be in charge of teaching other people how to also work the runners page. Staff members specifically shouldn't have to teach every person that is interested, otherwise that would defeat the point of freeing up your guys time.

Also...[quote="kirbymastah"][quote="TheMG2"]Thanks for the updates[/quote]
Yep. Strongly appreciated[/quote]
Agreed. I can't possibly imagine the grueling pain you updaters have to fathom through to get things up. Big thanks to you guys! :)

Fed981

2015-12-14 01:21:13 pm

You guys are awesome. And this thread proves it clearly: so much positive criticism, everyone agrees with what happens and what has to be done. Let's give SDA its past glory!

Ewil

2015-12-17 10:47:36 pm

Quote from Ispil:

Pretty sure SDA allows single-segment runs as well as segmented, so that shouldn't be too much of a thing here. I think most of the problems stem down to verification time, given the posts here.

I'm talking about RTA runs, not SS runs. Even though they're technically same, the timing is not the same.

Quote from Freezard:

Hmm, odd, I always download the videos Tongue Even if there's something interesting I want to watch on YouTube I download the video through an add-on. You just have more control in your favorite media player and it won't take up space in the memory. Also what Greenalink says, most runners today can't actually stream at something like 720p/60 fps in a good bitrate, including me. The requirements for that are still pretty high in both hardware and bandwidth.

But you download it from Youtube, right? Smiley

My point about downloading videos was that hardly anyone downloads them from archive.org or so. As for the streaming, if you're on PC and can't stream, you have a REALLY old PC. I have a 4 years old PC that was mediocre back then and 5/5 mbit unstable wifi and can easily stream 720p/30fps at 3000kbps, probably could do 60fp as well. You don't need latest i7 CPU with GTX980 and 100/100 fiber optics. Some people stream with even worse connection, so I'm sorry, but I totally disagree that most runners can't stream.

[quote="Ispil"]Pretty sure SDA allows single-segment runs as well as segmented, so that shouldn't be too much of a thing here. I think most of the problems stem down to verification time, given the posts here.[/quote]

I'm talking about RTA runs, not SS runs. Even though they're technically same, the timing is not the same.

[quote="Freezard"]Hmm, odd, I always download the videos Tongue Even if there's something interesting I want to watch on YouTube I download the video through an add-on. You just have more control in your favorite media player and it won't take up space in the memory. Also what Greenalink says, most runners today can't actually stream at something like 720p/60 fps in a good bitrate, including me. The requirements for that are still pretty high in both hardware and bandwidth.[/quote]

But you download it from Youtube, right? :) My point about downloading videos was that hardly anyone downloads them from archive.org or so. As for the streaming, if you're on PC and can't stream, you have a REALLY old PC. I have a 4 years old PC that was mediocre back then and 5/5 mbit unstable wifi and can easily stream 720p/30fps at 3000kbps, probably could do 60fp as well. You don't need latest i7 CPU with GTX980 and 100/100 fiber optics. Some people stream with even worse connection, so I'm sorry, but I totally disagree that most runners can't stream.

TheMG2

2015-12-17 10:51:48 pm

Timing methods are 100% arbitrary for the most part. I really don't see the deal there.

penta

Edit history:

penta: 2015-12-18 07:08:20 am

2015-12-18 07:08:01 am

Quote from Ewil:

As for the streaming, if you're on PC and can't stream, you have a REALLY old PC. I have a 4 years old PC that was mediocre back then and 5/5 mbit unstable wifi and can easily stream 720p/30fps at 3000kbps, probably could do 60fp as well. You don't need latest i7 CPU with GTX980 and 100/100 fiber optics. Some people stream with even worse connection, so I'm sorry, but I totally disagree that most runners can't stream.

You're completely forgetting about people who don't live close to the streaming servers. Also, almost nobody can watch you if you use 3k bitrate on twitch if you don't have partnership, it's useless.

Serris

2015-12-24 05:26:22 am

Well, there's SDA as an archive site, and SDA as the primary hangout for speedrunners. I don't think there's any hope for the former, and the ship for the latter apparently sailed when SDA failed to live up to the expectations of speedrunning community 2.0. I say this as someone who vastly prefers the way it was back then, when you could pretty much only speedrun for yourself as an expression of "love" for the game, and speedruns were little more than recordings for peer review.
I don't enjoy most of the changes streaming and an explosion in exposure carried with them, but ironically the GDQs are probably largely responsible. I certainly knew the game was changing when I was first exposed to thousands of viewers chatting away mindlessly while watching someone play on stream. As someone who's looking for exchange with fellow runners, a casual audience you have to interact with is just pointless noise to me that contributes nothing, at best. At least it used to, but now it can contribute immediate attention and real money, which is bound to attract people who would never have chosen this hobby ten years ago, when your failed attempts would never see the light of day and no one was there to cheer you on while you told yourself "one more attempt" just because you could.
I'm not arguing that was better or more "true", but it was a different environment that attracted people of a different mindset. The occasional casual viewer who made it to the forums back then, maybe with a complaint about cheating because of glitch abuse or whatever, was often greeted with the phrase "it's about speed, entertainment is secondary or incidental". Nowadays they often seem to be of equal concern, in an environment where streaming is the norm. No one in their right mind would consistently stream a run that was technically demanding but boring to watch, because in a way, the viewer dictates what happens if having an audience is at least part of your motivation.

Well, there's SDA as an archive site, and SDA as the primary hangout for speedrunners. I don't think there's any hope for the former, and the ship for the latter apparently sailed when SDA failed to live up to the expectations of speedrunning community 2.0.  I say this as someone who vastly prefers the way it was back then, when you could pretty much only speedrun for yourself as an expression of "love" for the game, and speedruns were little more than recordings for peer review.
I don't enjoy most of the changes streaming and an explosion in exposure carried with them, but ironically the GDQs are probably largely responsible. I certainly knew the game was changing when I was first exposed to thousands of viewers chatting away mindlessly while watching someone play on stream. As someone who's looking for exchange with fellow runners, a casual audience you have to interact with is just pointless noise to me that contributes nothing, at best. At least it used to, but now it can contribute immediate attention and real money, which is bound to attract people who would never have chosen this hobby ten years ago, when your failed attempts would never see the light of day and no one was there to cheer you on while you told yourself "one more attempt" just because you could.
I'm not arguing that was better or more "true", but it was a different environment that attracted people of a different mindset. The occasional casual viewer who made it to the forums back then, maybe with a complaint about cheating because of glitch abuse or whatever, was often greeted with the phrase "it's about speed, entertainment is secondary or incidental". Nowadays they often seem to be of equal concern, in an environment where streaming is the norm. No one in their right mind would consistently stream a run that was technically demanding but boring to watch, because in a way, the viewer dictates what happens if having an audience is at least part of your motivation.

Caveberry

2015-12-25 12:21:56 pm

trepidation

I think that sums things up nicely. I totally agree. I think you have just convinced me that speedrunning has changed forever, and not necessarily for the better.

I guess the best SDA can hope for, is to be THE authority on archived WWs.

slowbro

2015-12-25 06:50:27 pm

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but if I were to feel the urge to speedrun again, my #1 goal would still be to try to get my run accepted onto SDA's main site. Smiley

Unfortunately I haven't attempted anything like speedrunning in years.

mrprmiller

Edit history:

mrprmiller: 2015-12-25 07:52:01 pm

2015-12-25 07:51:42 pm

Everyday is puppies and sunshine...

Quote:

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but if I were to feel the urge to speedrun again, my #1 goal would still be to try to get my run accepted onto SDA's main site.

I set that goal for myself over five years ago, and that exact thought kept me coming back until I finally made it happen this year. Cheesy

Sonikkustar

2015-12-28 04:04:12 pm

The Great Farming Empire

So umm...What should we do then?

Ispil

2015-12-28 11:25:16 pm

Volunteer to help with the processing of runs.

Deuceler

2015-12-29 03:35:21 am

SPEEDruns not SAFEruns

I would love to have more affiliation with the side on a moderation level. I've been super active here for a couple years and just think it needs some sprucing up to be a viable site. It's roots would probably only help. The biggest issue I see from the outside looking in is that the mindset from most users is different than a majority of the community. I say that with a grain of salt because the site has so many users, but SDA is heavily clumped in with the "old boy" mindset I'm sure many of you are familiar with. The only thing that is going to save SDA from being another "joke" site (a la TG) is getting some new blood in.

In all honesty a majority of the community is familiar with many of the people who run the site and have been here for a long time, and that's the reason many of them turn away. If I wanted to become anything more than just a casual user it's not very intuitive how to do that, and I'm not in the correct social circles to heavily pursue it. Until that changes I don't know that the site ever will. I'd like to say I'm a very active member in regards to posting and staying current on most of the sites threads, but aside from a source of entertainment and seeing what community marathons are being hosted, I have no reason to ever use SDA.

I would love to have more affiliation with the side on a moderation level. I've been super active here for a couple years and just think it needs some sprucing up to be a viable site. It's roots would probably only help. The biggest issue I see from the outside looking in is that the mindset from most users is different than a majority of the community. I say that with a grain of salt because the site has so many users, but SDA is heavily clumped in with the "old boy" mindset I'm sure many of you are familiar with. The only thing that is going to save SDA from being another "joke" site (a la TG) is getting some new blood in.

In all honesty a majority of the community is familiar with many of the people who run the site and have been here for a long time, and that's the reason many of them turn away. If I wanted to become anything more than just a casual user it's not very intuitive how to do that, and I'm not in the correct social circles to heavily pursue it. Until that changes I don't know that the site ever will. I'd like to say I'm a very active member in regards to posting and staying current on most of the sites threads, but aside from a source of entertainment and seeing what community marathons are being hosted, I have no reason to ever use SDA.

Sonikkustar

2016-01-14 02:41:41 pm

The Great Farming Empire

Welp, Now that AGDQ is over I think it's about time we start to take steps to try and move things forward.

One thing though. I remember talking about this with someone at AGDQ that knows about site coding and stuff (not sure if they want to post here about it though) and they said that it might just be better to build a new site design from scratch and then just switch once it's ready. I don't know how difficult that would be since I dint know code lol, but it would seem much less of a hassle as opposed to trying to migrate every single game page to a new format.

I just want to ask, would this approach be more reasonable? I was just wondering so that maybe we can come up with a plan down the road...

Alko

2016-01-17 01:14:06 pm

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

Quote from Sonikkustar:

Welp, Now that AGDQ is over I think it's about time we start to take steps to try and move things forward.

One thing though. I remember talking about this with someone at AGDQ that knows about site coding and stuff (not sure if they want to post here about it though) and they said that it might just be better to build a new site design from scratch and then just switch once it's ready. I don't know how difficult that would be since I dint know code lol, but it would seem much less of a hassle as opposed to trying to migrate every single game page to a new format.

I just want to ask, would this approach be more reasonable? I was just wondering so that maybe we can come up with a plan down the road...

For personal (i.e. non-SDA or -speedrunning related) reasons, I would be very interested in the answer. Although I'm leaning towards a 'unfortunately yes'.

Radix

2016-01-17 04:47:45 pm

I'm addicted to games

That's essentially what's happening already. Some of the game pages are being generated via scripts because all the runs on that game are in the database. Others are still manual html.

Sonikkustar

2016-01-20 12:32:07 pm

The Great Farming Empire

Care to give us people an update on how that is going? Or is that something that would rather be kept under wraps?