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Post by spiff on May 10, 2008 8:16:01 GMT -5
Hello All, I am in the process of re-working the DTV games repository, and post this as a heads-up, but also to ask if anyone have suggestions for additional features. Hopefully, with the new features, more people (including myself) will get some more games patched. Also, I know that expertsetup has patched a lot of games for the hummer user port joystick, and I hope these will be added to the repository as well. Here are the things I'm working on: - Restructuring the database, getting flags for what has been patched, and what limitations there are. This will allow the games list to be filtered based on games playable on a DTV without keyboard, or games that require a second joystick.
- Modifying the download script to get statistics for the most popular (e.g. most downloaded) games.
- Web interface for registered users to upload (and update) games without my involvement. (Registration will still be manual).
- RSS feed of the latest games added.
I have the framework for the RSS feed working (after playing with it last night), so all I need now are a few additional fields in the database to generate the proper feed. So if anyone has suggestions for additional stuff to include, either in the interface, or in the database, please let me know, since getting it done while I am at it will be more efficient (and once I'm done, I'll probably put further updates at a low priority). If other people want to encourage me to work faster, start patching games and send them to me
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Post by 1570 on May 24, 2008 4:05:27 GMT -5
Some ideas: - Remove or rework paginating the list. It's not like browsers can't handle 137 lines of text, and breaking the list in pages makes search difficult (no CTRL-F). If the list absolutely must get paginated, don't just say "page 1, 2, 3, 4" but "1942-Cham..., Chop...-Gree..." so that the user roughly knows where to click. Letting the user choose how many games to display on one page would also be an option.
- Letting users add comments to games would be cool.
BTW I got a DTV-fixed D64 file of the game "Wizard" here (running fine using SD2IEC but I don't know whether I'll ever make a flashable version of it). If this could be included this would also be good.
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Post by spiff on Jun 4, 2008 2:41:12 GMT -5
Sorry about the delayed response. Some ideas: - Remove or rework paginating the list. It's not like browsers can't handle 137 lines of text, and breaking the list in pages makes search difficult (no CTRL-F). If the list absolutely must get paginated, don't just say "page 1, 2, 3, 4" but "1942-Cham..., Chop...-Gree..." so that the user roughly knows where to click. Letting the user choose how many games to display on one page would also be an option.
As for a search using Ctrl-F this is getting less important as I am adding a search box to the page. But if an option allows selecting the number of lines on each page, you can have all on one page. I like the idea. Considering the possibility to show names instead of page numbers, and interfacing this to the database is perhaps not so easy, because a lot of extra database queries are needed to get the information. This also conflicts with the idea of sorting the list (search results) in a different order than by name. One option that should be fairly easy it to have the ability to select the first letter, either as A, B, C, D, E... or something like A-E, F-J, K-N, O-R, S-W,... - Letting users add comments to games would be cool.
I will take that into consideration. Problem is I think this needs people to log in or have a captcha. I was getting a huge amount of spam in my web forms until I added recaptcha. Should people who are not patching games log in as well? (Of course there is no need to log in to download). BTW I got a DTV-fixed D64 file of the game "Wizard" here (running fine using SD2IEC but I don't know whether I'll ever make a flashable version of it). If this could be included this would also be good. Actually, with the search feature I am adding, I have a bunch of flags that can be searched. Currently the flags are: - DTV Extensions (extra op-codes, sid- and vic capabilities).
- Flash filesystem
- DTV joystick (joy2)
- Extra joystick (joy1)
- User port joystick
- DTV buttons
- Full keyboard
What I hope to accomplish is a way to filter games that will run on a DTV modded to various extents. Possibly a few flags should be added telling if the game runs on PAL/NTSC. I am considering a flag for games that do not run from the flash, but this changes the archive structurally, since the games currently in the archive are dtv-packed, which doesn't make much sense for games that cannot run from flash. Also, demos and programs could be added, but so far there are not many demos that run from the flash anyway (not that there are that many DTV demos anyway ).
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Post by nojoopa on Jun 4, 2008 8:07:34 GMT -5
How about: - Size in Flash (kB)
- "Works only from Flash" flag (unless "Flash filesystem" is for this)
The latter is useful for those that want to test the game with a DTV before flashing it, even if it means some fiddling with dtvpack. Determining the size in Flash could probably be automated with dtvmkfs, grep & such.
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Post by spiff on Jun 5, 2008 4:36:15 GMT -5
How about: - Size in Flash (kB)
- "Works only from Flash" flag (unless "Flash filesystem" is for this)
The latter is useful for those that want to test the game with a DTV before flashing it, even if it means some fiddling with dtvpack. Determining the size in Flash could probably be automated with dtvmkfs, grep & such. The size-option is a good idea. I have thought about this previously, but had forgotten about it. "Flash filesystem" means the game REQUIRES the flash filesystem, so I think that is the same as you mean by "Works only from flash". The way I have made the search, you can match games that MUST have the flag set, games that DO NOT have the flag set, or don't care. So if you select "not allowed" for flash filesystem, you will get only games that can be tested without flashing.
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Post by Espen Skog on Jul 2, 2008 14:42:52 GMT -5
Hello All, I am in the process of re-working the DTV games repository, and post this as a heads-up, but also to ask if anyone have suggestions for additional features. Hopefully, with the new features, more people (including myself) will get some more games patched. Also, I know that expertsetup has patched a lot of games for the hummer user port joystick, and I hope these will be added to the repository as well. Online rom cooking would be awesome: Just tick the games you want, press a cook-button and ...voila: download file and flash it to the DTV :-) Also, how about doing a weekly auto-cooked-rom based on the top most popular files. Plus one mega-romfile which holds "all" available games in the repository. Keep up the brilliant work, ppl. Espen
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Post by spiff on Jul 2, 2008 15:37:00 GMT -5
Online rom cooking would be awesome: Just tick the games you want, press a cook-button and ...voila: download file and flash it to the DTV :-) I have thought about this, but so far there have been a lot of other things to work on. Also, how about doing a weekly auto-cooked-rom based on the top most popular files. Plus one mega-romfile which holds "all" available games in the repository. An image of the most popular games would be possible, but I really think that individual taste will mean you would rather have your own favorites. Also, the number of downloads from the archive is pretty low, so that is not a good thing to rate the popularity by. A mega-romfile is not possible, since not all the games fit in a single image. If what you mean is the ability to download a single zip with all the roms, this is easy. Otherwise, you can just use some HTTP grabber like wget or teleport pro: symlink.dk/nostalgia/dtv/fixed/files/
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