Although I'm not done, a few days ago I made live what I had been working on for over a week with the game pages of the Retro Game Room and the Video Game Room. Since then, I've continued to work on those pages and I'm going to continue to work on those pages a little while longer. In this thread I'll go over what I've done so far and I'll update it when I make additional changes. For information on things I've done with the RGR and VGR index and search pages, go here: https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=89054



What's Changed
Here's a few of the things which have changed.

Navigation Links
There are now obvious links that help you navigate the page. The links can be found at the top of the page and also in the left Navigation menu which floats with the page. This will definitely help make it so that users can easily find what they're looking for on the pages beyond just playing the game. Also, when you click a link, the content of the clicked link will appear toward the top of the page so that you don't have to scroll and look for it and that content (in most cases) expands itself)

Graphic Area
The area that shows screenshots has been altered. The title screen made bigger, the 2nd screenshot made smaller and the 3rd screenshot made smallest. This layout was the only solution I could come up with to fit all the screenshots in there and still have the ad to the very left. You'll also notice the boxart graphics in there (more about that below).

Play Game Area Organized
The Play Game area is far more organized now in my opinion and I've also made it pretty clear what each type of emulator requires to play.

Sections of Page Rearranged
The different sections of the game pages have been rearranged. The stuff I thought was more important or thought needed more recognition I brought closer to the top of the page and the things that don't need as much attention I pushed further down the page. Most users are visual and respond to images better than text so it made sense to make the user screenshots one of the highest things up on the page hoping that it draws the interest and attention of the viewers of the page.

Updated Titles and Descriptions
In order to get the pages ranked higher in search engines like Google, I need to optimize the titles and descriptions of the search pages. I've edited the titles so that they make more sense and also so that the better keywords are positioned better. I've also made it so that each page has its own description which briefly says what's being searched for. You can find examples of this here:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/pokemon-light-platinum-gba-online-game-boy-advance-37346-game
https://www.vizzed.com/games/xbox-one-1tb-console-forza-motorsport-6-limited-edition-bundle-xb1-xbox-one-88993-game
https://www.vizzed.com/games/mario-party-10-wiiu-wii-u-87958-game
(take note of the generated description of the 3rd link)

Game Characters
Game characters now have their own area on the page. When click, it brings up a full list which is easier to look through than before. An example of this can be seen here:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/super-mario-world-snes-online-super-nintendo-8616-game-characters#game-characters

Faster Pages
Most of the RGR game pages are around 3-4 times faster than they were before which is just insane. I'm seeing some pages of the RGR and VGR with render speeds of up to 0.300 seconds and even as high as 0.200 seconds as a guest!

Lightweight Pages
The pages have a lot less strenuous code on them which should make the page loading and scrolling way better and it should also take up a lot less resources. The HTML and Javascript of the pages is cleaner and has less errors and by the time I'm done. it'll probably be around half the size of the old pages.





What's New

Box Art Front and Back
Before you were able to see a small image of the front boxart graphics but were unable to see the back. Now you can see both the front and back (if available) and can get a bigger view of them when you hover over them. These appear in the screenshot area toward the top of the page.

More Emulators Available
I've made more emulators available for some of the game systems. Any game that can be played in Mednafen and/or MESS now has those options available. In the future I also plan to add more Java, Flash and Silverlight emulators to vizzed so that users have many options (which will be great for those who can't use the RGR Plugin).

Custom Game Themes
I saved the best for last and this is something I'm most excited about; custom game themes. What does this mean? It basically means that any qualified staff member has access to an easy to use menu that allows you to completely change the look of a game's page. In other words, we can give certain game pages their own theme based on the game.

It may not sound that exciting until you see it in action so here you go:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/super-mario-bros-nes-online-nintendo-nes-478-game

That was a custom theme I put together for Super Mario Bros to show off what we can do with game pages (and eventually profiles). The benefit of doing this with games is that it really draws draws the user to the page. If you're into mario and you landed on this page, you'd take interest instantly!

Another cool thing about the custom themes for various games is that eventually I'll make an option where a user can take a theme from a game and apply it to their own profile if they don't want to create a theme them self for their own profile (or if they want a good starting point). Another thing I'll eventually allow users to do is to make a theme their personal theme which means that's the theme they'd see on most of the site. Custom themes is a future feature and customizable profiles are something I want to get added before the month is over.

So who gets to make custom themes for games? Well for now I'm going to say no one until I find a good system where we can figure out which staff members should be able to and which shouldn't be able to (it would require graphic design skills to put together a good theme). However, anyone who has made a rom hack already has access to editing the theme of their game's page (simply click the 'Edit Page' link at the top right). Those same users also have access to adding custom content to their page (from the 'Add Content' at the top right) but custom content will appear toward the bottom of the page. Please be sure to only use images that are hosted on vizzed so either upload your images to the photo album or to the vizzed hosting (in an underground thread if you're a trusted member).



Feedback Time
I'm sure I forgot to mention a lot of things but I hope I covered all of the big things I've done with game pages. Right away you'll notice a huge difference and a lot of these changes are for the future of vizzed since it'll encourage new users to stick around, the ad placement should increase site revenue and the usage of keywords and titles should increase incoming search engine traffic.

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, please let me know.

I just wanted to remind you that Chrome will stop supporting Silverlight in the future. You said Vizzed didn't use that plugin, but this post says otherwise.

Chrome support was one of the options on the poll about new features for the RGR plugin, however this is out of our reach. Seems like Chrome will soon have to be ditched out as a possible navigator in Vizzed.

EX Palen : We don't currently have any silverlight emulators but I'll probably eventually get 1 or 2 added.

I've asked Tom to add Chrome support to the RGR Plugin but he's been taking a while so it's completely out of my control at the moment. Literally nothing I can do about it except wait.

Davideo7 : like almost all of the changes all good stuff...


but, I don't think having a page with orange text over an orange background is a good thing to hype people xD


that worried me more than hype me uhuhu, but am sure the talented people of Viz will do miracles.



in the time I had been using firefox I had been editing website colors myself

EDIT: I previewed this with firefox http://postimg.org/image/xsyu7gvo3/ (didn't actually saved the edit)

DrRM : I tried using the same exact colors that the game used. Green links on an orange background is kinda hard on the eyes so that's why I chose orange. I lightened up the links, does that look better?

I honestly didn't put a lot of time into that page, I just put something together within like 10 minutes to give users an idea of what can be done.

Davideo7 : is ok, my "concern" (more like poking) was that some things might become invisible or hard to read... but that isn't the case here

DrRM : I think switching back to Arial font would make things more readable, the only reason I chose a different font was to show that even the font can be changed.

At first, i wasnt sure how i was going to like the changes when i first heard about it. Now that i see the changes in effect, I am loving the new look. And to top it off, the functionality of the site is improved? David, you never cease to amaze me. i thought the site couldn't possibly get any better, and you proved me wrong. I can't wait to see the over all finished product, that way you aren't completely bogged down with work all the time and can actually enjoy it for yourself.

Davideo7 : I like the new layout in the RGR a lot. The only real issue I see is that when using a computer there seems to be a lot of wasted space between the pins, and the actual game content on the page. But I assume this was done to streamline things for mobile.

I enjoy the new look of the screenshots/box art below the larger primary screenshots. That was a nice touch that I actually didn't notice right away. Great job on that. Looks great!

Darthdaishi : Thanks. And this is only the beginning of all the things I've envisioned

Jordanv78 : Yeah this new design was made with mobile devices in mind. I personally like having that extra space but I could look into maybe eventually making it so that the pinned content stretches to fill that area.

Davideo7 : Yeah I understand where it might just be a personal preference to me, but in a high resolution desktop environment the game images are small on the index page and there's a lot of space that's not really used. I would prefer the game selections/images to be bigger rather than having that extra space, but I know only so much can be done while still having it be mobile friendly.

On a side note, one feature that I always thought was cool on the old layout was the game suggestions the site gave you when on a game page.(The ones for same developer/genre/etc) I feel that this feature helps users find games they normally might not have played. Kinda sad that it's not there anymore but maybe some users didn't fully appreciate it. Just a thought anyways.

Jordanv78 : Keep in mind that you can hover over the images for a larger view and you can also switch to a 2 column display if you want larger images as seen here:
https://www.vizzed.com/p/?view=columns2

Actually I'm working on adding the game recommendation back. I think it's a great way to introduce users to games that are similar to their current game and is ultimately a great way to get someone to game longer which results into them sticking around on the site longer. I haven't decided on how I want to go about it yet though but I definitely want it closer to the top of the screen so that the average user notices it.

Davideo7 : Glad to hear that you are intending on bringing back the suggested game feature back. It's a great way to introduce people to games they might not know about.

On a different note, I've noticed some issues with the live streams.

1st being that the stream tab on the index page does not seem to be updating very frequently. It often shows streams as being online, when they've been offline for some time.

2nd, I've noticed that I won't get credit for my stream until I go back to the stream tab, click on my stream, then when it goes back to the netplay stream page, it then will give me credit. No notification though.

I don't think people are getting proper credit for their streams either as I did a quick 30-40 min stream yesterday and it's not showing in the CP logs even though streamers.php shows that It recognizes that I did a stream at 11:18pm 8/17/2014

Davideo7 :

I have a question.

Thosr who have a hack submitted to the RGR, can they remove unrelated/off-topic screenshots/videos that are on their game page?

And will it ever be possible to remove your own screenshots/videos on any game?

If these 2 is possible or will be possible, you may have made the RGR pure God. I look forward to editing the game page of my hack, I'll certainly make use of it. Love the update!

Davideo7 : Also, I thought this would be a good time to bring back the subject of the games users "Own" on their profile and the issue where if users own the item to make these games "free" these games no longer show up on their profile (except under recent games played list)

A lot of users like this feature (including myself) but are somewhat disappointed when they purchase the item and these game boxes no longer show up on their profile. Is there any way you can look into this again and see if there's a way that this can be re-worked? This is especially an issue for those that purchase the PS1 item.

Also, the live stream stuff I was talking about before seems to be resolved now. At least with the past couple streams I've done.

I think I've found a rating display bug. On the game page for Bee 52 - https://www.vizzed.com/playonlinegames/game.php?id=91 - it showed a score of 1. I rated it a 9, but the new average was 9.5, meaning that its previous average was 10, not 1. The page must have been cutting off the 0 in 10 somehow.

Edit: Strange, I just changed my vote to a 10 to test it and the score actually showed up as 10 this time. I might have been wrong before.

awesome stuff anyways can we also have the game theme layouts as a choice like the default and x-mas ones

Yea I just started coming back on vizzed after a long hiatus and the RGR does seem a lot smoother.  I thought it was my new computer, which I'm sure is helping too as my old one was from 2004.  I can even use the dreamcast emulator now!  It is nice to see that you are still as committed to making vizzed as great as possible.  Thanks.

I'm just surprised that there ARE emulators designed in Silverlight. Does anyone even still use it? Not to mention the fact that Chrome completely dropped support for it.

Also, it's nice that you're making the site a bit more modern. From what I've heard, a major reason why some people are driven away from the site is because it doesn't look especially modern. I'm fine with the look, but apparently some of these people aren't.

I really like the new format for the Retro Game Room. Only thing is, I wish I could use a format like that on the rest of the site.

I've noticed that game pages used to show boxart, the title screen and three top-rated screenshots at the top of the page, but now they show boxart, the title screen and only two top-rated screenshots. There's always a space to the right of the title screen and the smaller screenshot. Is that deliberate or a bug?