This is the place where you complain about the site.

SpindleyQ's picture

So, hey, after the Klik of the Month Klub #9 event page got sidetracked with "hey the site is broken" postings, I figured it might be a good idea to have a place where you can talk about the site itself. This is that place!

If you look at the forum description, it also mentions things like suggesting community projects and starting up collaborations. You can do those things here, too! The Steel-Drivin' forum is all about figuring out how to make our little nook of the internet a more rhinoceros place to be.

I seem to be having trouble

I seem to be having trouble logging in. Logging in the usual way doesn't bring up a wrong password error, and I'm added to the 'who's online' list, but I'm not actually logged in. I've tried logging in multiple times so now there's a whole bunch of me in the 'logged in' list. The only was I was able to log in was by changing my password, which logs me in as part of the process.

Edit: All the duplicate me's have vanished.

Edit 2: Crap, the thread title had me thinking I was supposed to post about problems in this thread, not in this subforum. If only there was an option to delete posts...

SpindleyQ's picture

I just encountered this same

I just encountered this same problem! What appeared to be happening in my case was that I had cookies for both glorioustrainwrecks.com and new.glorioustrainwrecks.com, and PHP was grabbing the one for glorioustrainwrecks.com, which was expired or something.

This may or may not have been your problem, but it's definitely worth checking for those of you having trouble logging in!

qrleon's picture

Error when uploading an animated GIF avatar

* The selected file /tmp/tmp_iEN2np could not be copied.
* Failed to upload the picture image; the pictures directory doesn't exist or is not writable.

(KNPExtract is marvelous and/or glorious btw)

SpindleyQ's picture

OK, I'm pretty sure I fixed

OK, I'm pretty sure I fixed this. Try it again.

For the curious, I think what happened is that when I moved the site to its new server, some of the avatar image files became unwriteable by the web server (the owner was set incorrectly). Avatar image files have predictable file names -- picture-{user ID}.{image type}. When you upload a new avatar, it attempts to delete the old one; since your last avatar that was a .gif was on the old server, the file had the wrong owner, and so it couldn't delete the old file, or copy the new one on top of it. A .png avatar would upload fine, however, since there was no picture-141.png in the way.

SpindleyQ's picture

Also I am glad you are

Also I am glad you are getting some mileage out of KNPExtract! It was a lot of fun to write. I kind of wish it saw more use.

Danni's picture

I used it to make

I used it to make Gorillaflop during KotM #34.

If you don't mind, I'd like to make a feature request. Either have an option to choose the transparency color (say, RGB(0, 128, 128)), or to export as an alpha channel PNG (as opposed to indexed color). Construct's multi-frame import liked to be a PITA about transparency.

Also, I couldn't get it to accept the LIBS folder when I tried it from the terminal. It either displayed the command info or went to console standard input.

qrleon's picture

I've been using it quite a bit lately

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Blueberry Soft's picture

Games list

So, I wanted to link people (via my wordpress blog) to my profile, particularly my games list, but it's only available to members? It would be nice it that could be changed.

Also, two of my games don't appear in my games list, do I have to manually add them via the form? No hassle, but if so there will be doubles of the files on the server. Perhaps there could be a way to link to game and screenshot if they are already up. One's from a KOTM, the other from the blog.

SpindleyQ's picture

I completely hadn't thought

I completely hadn't thought of that! Profiles are now visible to anonymous users.

There's no possible way for games attached to comments to show up in that list, sadly. You're probably better off submitting a proper game page for them. Unfortunately for the blog post game, there's currently no way to post a game that's not attached to some game-making event; it's a problem I'm aware of but don't have a fix for yet.

I'm planning on adding the ability to embed game lists into wiki pages / forum posts / etc with a bit of special markup; I wonder if a personal "profile" page that you could edit like a wiki page would help out with this problem. (Then you could add links manually to the games that don't show up in the list.) Any interest in such a feature?

Blueberry Soft's picture

I like the sound of a

I like the sound of a customisable profile page. Thanks for sorting out the other thing.

thesycophant's picture

This is a really old thread!

This is a really old thread!

And we're in the middle of GDC!

And I know that SpindleyQ has a lot of changes he'd like to implement!

But one thing I'd really like was external contact information for the users here (mostly website/blog/twitter links). There are some people whose non-trainwreck work (if they have any) I'd love to check out, but if they use a different handle here (or a common handle), I really can't figure out how to track them down.

leilei's picture

The first "Recent Posts"

The first "Recent Posts" link on the left side panel is actually RANDOM posts

sergiocornaga's picture

Yeah, this should really be

Yeah, this should really be fixed!

SpindleyQ's picture

"Recent posts" is a page

"Recent posts" is a page that Kirk pestered me to add because he felt that the "Recent changes" page was an unmanageable firehose of content, which isn't unreasonable. "Recent posts" instead shows the list of forum topics, game pages, event pages, and blog entries, sorted by when the post was last commented on. So if a bunch of people comment on a single post, it only shows up in the list once.

Not random! But I personally don't use it at all.

EDIT: oh wait I see what you're saying

Danni's picture

I actually prefer "Recent

I actually prefer "Recent changes" since I find "Recent posts" kinda hard to mentally parse.

kirkjerk's picture

I still dig Recent

I still dig Recent Posts!

Or wait what was the edit about?

SpindleyQ's picture

There were two links in the

There were two links in the sidebar that said "Recent posts", one of which was near the top and didn't actually go to the recent posts page.

Specifically, it went to this page, which I'm not even sure why it exists? Except to be awesome?

Noyb's picture

I Give This Game a One out of Five

So, voting. It's on a 1-5 scale. On occasion, I have seen games get initially low ratings, only to have a flood of people like me vote it back up to the 3-5 range.

Do we as a community feel that scores of 1 and 2 are too discouraging on a site meant to encourage all types of games? Should the voting system change to reflect this?

If so, how? Pull an IGN and restrict voting to the 3-5 out of five scale? Replace it with a "like" that would act as a weaker alternative to favoriting a game? Something else?

sergiocornaga's picture

I Give This Comment a Five out of Five

Perhaps ratings should be obliterated. The system is a bit buggy; different ratings are displayed in list and page view and your own ratings seemingly influence list order when you are logged in. For instance, when I tried to have a look at the lowest rated games on the site I got the impression that the list view only displays the first rating a game received, as a lot of great games that have been victims of trolling have much higher ratings when you click into them. Given that it is a system in need of fixing, I think we should decide whether it's valuable keeping it on the site.

Most of the times I've actually remembered to rate games here, it's because I've enjoyed them so much I felt they deserved a 5, or because they made me uncomfortable enough that I felt the need to vote 1. While this is only how I've personally used the system, I feel that neither scenario is especially useful as feedback, compared to something like a comment. If we were to modify or get rid of ratings, Noyb has suggested a few alternative systems, but I'm not yet sure if we need one at all.

That's my two cents, I look forwards to seeing how others feel about the matter.

SpindleyQ's picture

Yeah, I've kind of been

Yeah, I've kind of been wanting to kill off ratings for a while in favour of a more functional "favorites" system. I really like having the list of "games I think are especially awesome" attached to my profile; I just would want a way of querying on how many favorites a particular game got.

I do think it can be useful to be able to flag games that the community is uncomfortable promoting; 1-star reviews have been used by others for that purpose in the past, but I don't think it's very effective. Such an option would have to be clearly and carefully labelled. I don't want a button that can be interpreted as "this game is bad", for obvious reasons.

I did look into the bugs with ratings in the list view a while back, but couldn't figure out the problem.

avery's picture

Couple of things

I've mentioned these on the IRC channel but i'm gonna list them here anyway:

1. When submitting a new game with tags in, I get re-directed to a page which a whole bunch of errors, all the same ones. I'm not entirely sure what it says and i cant really remember either. But it is somewhat annoying. However, when I go to the games list via the link at the top of the page, my game is all there and nice submitted and all that.

2. It'd be nice if that "Made For" box wasn't mandatory. Also if there was an option for "Nothing". OH and remove those old events from that box too :)

SpindleyQ's picture

I worked with linhat on IRC

I worked with linhat on IRC to try to resolve the issue, and I think I did?

Anyway, if the site ever spits out gobbledygook at you instead of working right, PLEASE copy and paste EXACTLY what it says into a PM! Sometimes it doesn't get logged properly. All information helps.

Re: "Made For", it's not used for anything anymore; someday I'll get rid of it entirely (and port the old games that used it over to the new system). 20 minutes of scripting to take on someday.

Smedis2's picture

Could you remove the author

Could you remove the author name thing on the submit game page?

-----------------------------
An Excellent Comment/Thread/Post

thesycophant's picture

I like it.

I like it.

thesycophant's picture

And by that I mean I'd like

And by that I mean I'd like to keep it.

ExciteMike's picture

It was important (well to

It was important (well to me) that people be able to be credited as something other than their Glorious Trainwrecks username when we did the GDC Pirate Kart.

I do see the value in simplifying the submission process, though. Maybe there could be some kind of extra options section that is easier to skim past or ignore or you need to click something to make it show up or something.

Danni's picture

Or perhaps only make the

Or perhaps only make the field appear for certain events... somehow?

leilei's picture

How's "Ray2x" going to work

How's "Ray2x" going to work otherwise?

It should stay.

Smedis2's picture

WHY WILL MY AVATAR NOT GO

WHY WILL MY AVATAR NOT GO AWAY

And now it goes away.
What

Danni's picture

Caching.

Caching. Also Drupal not replacing your avatar immediately after you upload it.

Danni's picture

Bumping this. Is there a way

Bumping this. Is there a way to make Drupal save each new avatar as a unique filename so that browsers don't rely on the cache of the old avatar? As it stands right now you have to hit Reload on a page with the user's avatar in order to see the new one. Either that or wait for the cache to expire (heh).

Smedis2's picture

GT is dead RIP

GT is dead RIP

I can never do klik of the

I can never do klik of the month klub anymore because i work weekends now :(

Smedis2's picture

Argh, I'm really started to

Argh, I'm really starting to get the urge to leave this site.

thesycophant's picture

It's a little sad to see the

It's a little sad to see the site this inactive, true, though it's not a wholly new phase for the site. A big surge of activity is likely forthcoming at some point. I, for one, hope to be able to make more games in the near future. I just haven't had time. I've long thought that what's chiefly missing is interaction on what's posted here. I often don't know if my games have been played, let alone enjoyed. I try to engage in more feedback myself, but I haven't been doing so well lately, especially as the contributions have been increasingly decoupled from events (my recent contributions don't align with those either, due to time).

On another note, I know you're not that into the whole Twine scene. I'm not either. But the beauty of GT has become in part its diversity of what people do here. You're really into creating really bombastic trainwrecky games with a sarcastic edge. I'm mostly interested in making and playing games that experiment with classic gameplay ideas and level design. Others do other things. Some have embraced Twine storytelling. Calling this pretention is something of an insult. It doesn't have to be a love-in where we blindly celebrate everything posted, but I think detracting is fruitless and does more to erode the community atmosphere. Not to be overly negative to you, either. But I know some have really felt enlivened and inspired by L's tutorials for Twine. GT is foremost about creation and the encouraging thereof. I think there still plenty of that to come.

Hey this subject comes up a lot.

The site and channel is as active as you want to be.. Gimme time and I'll post links to other recessive times. It's not a bad thing ever. And you might have spoke too soon, there were lots of games made this month and I'm not one of them.

I'm having trouble keeping up with it all. We've got a polished 2d good vs evil game made in unity of all things that is unique and so polished looking that a user wasn't sure what site he was on that the world outside here probably will not get, there's a couple nice polished mno games that are great, there might be some revivals.. There's a new series of Professors that like to spot differences I need to check out, and there an outside source continuing the storyline of Zecks's Motzart series and made something so big it needs passwords. Who knows? I might be making another big release pretty soon. It may not be checked out at first as I like to put my games in obscure events because I feel like an event entry is as important as a comment and I'm willing to take the bullet time to time for an event.

But what's important comes to me. For me it's about starting a project and then making one level for it and dropping it for MONTHS.. then picking it up and not wanting to stop adding to it, like a manifestation and the ongoing battle of making a game better than hillbilly bongo school, which still to this date I think hasn't occurred. But I'm gonna keep trying, and making the snowball bigger.

It's really not a big deal either way, because this place has a tendency to pan out and river without me. I think it's cool I'm replying to this and I just checked out your platformer with the penguins you control with mouse clicks only. I dug that game so much and the entire event that went with it. If the now doesn't compare to THEN I can understand why, but people like me that are still fairly new, we're still looking at it like it just happened.

But yeah, I didn't come here for that really.. I came here to try to post an image/file and get an error and printscreen it and show it to SpindleyQ cuz he wanted me to report it or something, cuz that's what he does. Surveys it and stuff. Here, you made this one famous right? In fact, anyone that I see I'm gonna see if I can convince them to play it.

Edit: changed you to me on the second last paragraph, since I myself took a hiatus to play Sleeping dogs 5 times in a row. I love flowers. And I note the whole thing was written on a semi-positive note on your side as well, but that's the 2 sides one story thing goin on.

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This is old.

And still uploads as planned, but I get this:

but after pressing okay it works just fine and uploads without a hitch. I'm using opera. I'm not sure if that happens in krome and the fox. It might just be opera, but you get used to that kinda stuff sometimes in opera because people like to intentionally exclude it out of reindeer games.. The rule I go by is if it works and is readable, I don't fuss.

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jan_strach's picture

Damned spammers

Any way to report fartbrains like this guy?

http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/postsby/23663

Bots like this pop up

Bots like this pop up occasionally and get dealt with fairly quickly. I wouldn't worry about it.

SpindleyQ's picture

Yep, we have multiple

Yep, we have multiple trusted people who regularly clean up spam from the site. It's not perfect, but it's the best system I've found so far.

wibi's picture

Search errors

searching something that starts with a full stop (.) will throw a 403 Forbidden at you
(e.g. glorioustrainwrecks.com/search/node/.bin)
also, pound signs (#) are automatically converted into "%23", and so are slashes (/), but if you have two slashes (//) only one of them is shown, and if you have three or more slashes then only some of them will be converted to %23.