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As I'm making a future hub area for games I find some WikiDot features to be easy to implement and some hard to work around
I don't want any part of that to go to waste. Does anyone have some suggestions for http://musicgames.wikidot.com/hub:game ?
The set up will make it easier to scroll for when the library gets bigger. I would make the fonts for the titles bigger. And the hyphen between the players seems confusing. Great work so far!
It's shaping up nicely.
Do you think that we could have it default alphabetically?
I think it would be useful to identify "new" games. Or, games added since you last checked.
Thx for the idea, Jonathan. (and also for good edits)
I added sorting by time to the list.
unfortunately wikidot doesn't allow to work with cookies, cause your exact suggestion would be better.
Thanks for the quick response to my last suggestion! I have another for you to consider too.
The different colored smiley faces denoting difficulty initially confused me. While the color rating makes sense, I found the emotional expression to be misleading. I thought it was a rating indicator when I first encountered the images. I imagine this might mislead or discourage new users from investigating games which aren't smiling.
Maybe one option is to change it to a blank color with no facial expression, if that's fairly easy technically.
Sure thing.
We can try that or also making them all smile more ;).
Check out. Not great, but faces are funny…
But anyone can do it actually, it's just changing name of current files and uploading new ones to: http://musicgames.wikidot.com/game:_template
(you can see that there is still older option attached, it didn't work well with width of the table)
I have an idea, that we could divide our games in two:
- games of strict rules
- free-form games
I can elaborate, but do you have any thoughts?
As long as we keep the original 'everything-in-one-place' library as the main.
I don't see why we can't simply label games as "games of strict rules" and "free-form games." I often use both.
I also know a lot of people, me included, often modify games to our needs. A popular job of a music game director. If I need a free-form game, but really like a certain game using strict rules, it only takes a bit of "game surgery" to change it to a more free-form based game.
I'm thinking of two columns on the library page: Free-form and Well-defined
That ease of modification could be a way to recognize these. On one hand every guest authored piece (SyndaKit etc) is well-defined - better not to mess around with that ;). And for some more typical games it's not that easy to "change" something and keep the game inself. You usually have to add something on the top of current rules - it's an expansion for a well-defined game then or just a different game (for experience) with some similarities in rules.
On the other hand free-forms are usually easily adjustable for many numbers of players, time and often difficulty so they don't fit well to the sortable list (or maybe something to stay? difficulty? min players? not sure).
To free-forms group would go open and simple stuff probably, whenever the idea matters not the exact rules: Event games template, Djent (I always end up with a smaller mod at meetings), Fairy tale (expanded for sth like "follow a story" template), 15 Cards (expanded), Entitled Piece, Remote, Two-headed soloist maybe.
I would also add "cue-cards template" and "pass the sound template" that we do always but when being such a rule-blob they are not worthy to get to the current lib imo.
Wonder about Impersonating/mimicking games. They could form a "mimicking template" which would embrace them as options. The impersonator of animals etc… We could also put some games as "suggested versions" of a free-form or keep links between two sides of a library like if free-forms were kind of genres.
You seem to really want to do this.
I see what you're saying, and how it could be helpful.
If it's not too much work we can try it.
But, still, I usually prefer to keep things as simple as possible. Especially for new users.
It's up to you. Let's see it!
Here is a sketch, how new library could look like:
http://musicgames.wikidot.com/hub:game-new
(sorting doesn't work for now, but it's gonna be there if this passes)
One of the side gains from "free-form" category would be easy and straightforward adding of new titles there (they wouldn't require a form to fill, like well-define games do). They will not be able to be sorted as a list though and we would need a workaround to let them appear in "feeling lucky" section and alike, but it's not a lot.
Good option we will have is to put links between free-form template and a well-defined balanced and tested example based on same mechanics.
I wonder if we should get rid of a longer text (maybe just give a link "Learn more about tags" article of sort).
I like the idea, but honestly, it looks busy and confusing. I'm especially thinking about newcomers who might be interested in music games but know nothing about them. I don't know if the separate columns are necessary. We could make a new category; similar to how we have PLAYERS, TIME, LEVEL, and LATEST. When clicked on the games will then be divided as Free-form and Well-defined.
After reading your idea about this I agree that it can be useful to some people, myself included. But, I think it can be implemented in a less obtrusive manner. Thoughts?
Gave it more space - for now still with two columns.
For me our long list is already starting to be too long to be useful - I have hopes for that additional stage of focus.
I'm glad that we are both focused on discoverers ;).
But surely, not changing the official for now, let's have more opinions.
The simplified one looks much better.
The more I think about it the more it makes sense to do this. And the idea of this kind of categorization has potential to even influence the creation of more games.
Personally, I might have trouble determining which category some of my games would fall under. I tend to think of all music games as being free form.
I will do that transition soon. Sorry for the delay.
(There will be work with converting current descriptions of free-forms to the easier standard template).
Right now, when sitting down to music games, I tweak with a music card game of opposing colors for it to be ready at the gaming festival this weekend. We'll see how board gamers' interest in music will turn out.
The transition seems like a lot of work. Let me know if I can help with anything.
One by one, we need to change the category for free-form games. You do that by renaming the page. Now it starts with "game:" and then it should start with "activity:" (rename link is under "options" in the bottom). Then you need to clean up the result because all the content of the page is now after the line fulldescription: " […]
and in the content stuff happens e.g. all breaklines are changed to "\n" and all quotes are doubled, but you can quickly restore the natural looking wikidot code.
Try first with something short, and see how it goes for you.
I'll do some (they will disappear from current library) and soon will change library to new version (but with some functions disabled).
When everything is changed the first paragraph of the page will serve as a short description, and everything will work as in the example provided before.
…and done! ;) [edit] please check if you see some flaws
You're too fast man :)
I was useless!
It looks great. No problems yet. I'll report if I find any.
