I've "remastered" the content area that displays on the index of the Retro Game Room. This has been a secret little project that I've been working on for a while but one that I've been planning to do for a long time so I'm excited to have finally implemented it. It's actually been up for about 2 days now and I've been slowly updating it since I launched it.

The old content area just had too much stuff in too small of an area and it just wasn't very appealing. This new one I think grabs the viewers attention and is far more organized. I also removed the vertical content boxes that appeared on both sides of the page since the content in those boxes have now been placed into the new content area.

I'll break down each content area (and I plan to possibly add another page in the future).


Featured Games
This area will show the box art and the featured review for the Game of the Day and for the Game of the Week. I might do more with this area but I like how it looks currently.

Latest
This shows the latest activity of the RGR. It shows the latest screenshot, video, review and comment. It shows the latest searches and it also has a list of the top searches (this is not automated). It also introduces a new piece of content: A list of the top 10 games being played right now with a count of all the users playing each game.

Leaderboards
This shows the last 5 high score submissions and the last 5 speedrun submissions.

Contests
This shows the current competitions of the month. This is basically the same thing you'd see in the monthly announcements but since not everyone views the announcements, maybe they'll take interest because of this page.

Streams
This is the area I'm most excited about. It shows all of the current streamers. It shows a snapshot of their stream, the name of the game they're playing, and the name of the user who is doing the streaming. It only has room to display up to 6 streams so the users who are currently streaming RGR games have the highest priority and users who have streamed the most RGR games have the 2nd highest priority. I hope this page gets more users interested in the streams.

Netplay
This is a list of all the currently active netplay sessions. I plan to make more modifications to this page in the near future.

News
This shows the last 5 threads that I've made in the 'News' forum under the 'Retro Game Room' subforum. This is another great way to get users to see what's going on with the site who don't view the announcements page.


Hopefully this new area is more appealing. I still have some more updates for it but it's mostly finished now. If you don't touch it, it automatically scrolls between the multiple pages so hopefully that grabs the attention of the users. Below is a screenshot of all the pages as of 10/11/2014



Fun fact: Each page has a unique background and the backgrounds I created by distorting screenshots of various popular RGR games.

This. I like this. I like this a lot. 

How long did it take your to do all of this? I mean, I just now noticed it, now that you have said something about it, but then again, I don't go in the RGR that much anymore. 

I think this is the best " looking " update in awhile, David. 

ooooooh, I noticed that over that past few days!!!! I thought about creating a thread to ask about it, but I also figured it must be one of the updates I had missed or overlooked. I kept thinking "Man, that looks so great!I wish I knew where that was announced so I could compliment David on it!"

Haha... well here it is...

David, it's amazing!!!!!!

I didn't actually notice this until now, bit it looks really cool. Its more organized and neat, and ota a lot more dun just to look at.

That looks really cool. I'll definitely have to check this out, as I rarely visit anything but the forums... I will head over there in a few minutes.

Also I must say that it does look much better!

I noticed this yesterday, but thought nothing of it because I don't regularly use the RGR. But, it looks great! I'm definitely loving all of these new updates!

Cool! I really like how you can check Net-play sessions and Streams without having to head to the individual page (helpful on my bad XP computer) . The old one was getting a bit...well, old. Also, just to let you know, in featured games it doesn't show which one is the weekly and which one is the daily game. Great job!

thing1 : I'd say I have around 10 hours invested into it. I basically would work on it for few hours every few days so it took longer than if I would've tackled it all out in 1 or 2 days (which I was too busy to do).

Singelli : Thanks

thelastrequim : Yeah it's fun when I'm able to find the time to implement things like this. It's frustrating for me to have 100s of ideas but only limited time to implement it all.

awsome888 : Yeah the streams page takes a while to load so this is pretty convenient. I'll find a solution to the 'Game of Week' and 'Game of Day' label.

Is there a way to view more than the 5 most recent high scores (or speedruns)? I miss being able to view more than that. A little view more button or something similar within that tab that takes you to a page with the latest 50 (or however many) would be kinda nice.

madison : I think it was only 10 before but I can see about making it possible to view more. I could possibly just make a separate page for it.

Wow! It looks absolutely beautiful! That's some real quality work that you've done.

thephantombrain : Thanks Actually when I put together that image to show all the pages, it almost reminded me of something you'd see in an old video game magazine lol.

Davideo7 : That looks awesome david! I have one tip though


Instead of showing a bit of the review show the description of the game, Non the less, It looks great and well done,

imamonster : I originally was doing that but then I realized that not all games have a description. I kinda like that it shows the review though, I think it's rewarding for those who write these reviews.

Davideo7 : But then again, a lot of games don't have a review for it. 

I see what you mean though, It would be rewarding. Do what you like the best.

imamonster : The games of the day and the games of the week are selected games which have a featured review.

Davideo7 : Great job. Looks very nice. A lot more clean than the previous look.

I noticed when you first rolled out this update that the auto "scroll" seemed a little quick, but it seems like you may have tweaked it a tad. Either way, great job man.

Jordanv78 : Thanks. I think it was originally 2 or 3 seconds but I changed it to 5 seconds.

Davideo7 : I've noticed with the "streams" area of this redesign that the games being currently played is not displaying correctly. It will show multiple streams playing the same game, when that's not the case.

Jordanv78 : I found out the problem. The script only knows what game you're playing if you're playing a game on vizzed. If you're not playing a game on vizzed, it then displayed the last used name from another streamer. This is sorta fixed, if you're playing a game but it's not a vizzed game, it now doesn't show anything. I'll eventually make it so that it shows what game you're playing if you're not playing an RGR game.