Beta site - seeking content.

I am proud to announce the first public beta of our new web site, we are actively seeking your content prior to public launch.

www.pjio.com

"pjio is a video game website where the community controls the content by uploading, sharing, reviewing and playing the games. Video game developers are encouraged to upload and share their latest creations and have pjio members give them creative and constructive feedback, and perhaps even purchase a copy or two. Where else can a developer try out new ideas, showcase their latest creation and get feedback within minutes of release. Virtually any game uploaded to pjio.com be delivered as a web browser embedded game."

"We want to help you sell more of your own games. In exchange for a small affiliate fee we will place direct download, website and purchase links on your game page. Every penny of revenue earned from the affiliate program is credited straight back into your advertising account. Use your advertising credit to purchase further ad-impressions. We want you to decide what affiliate fees you pay to us, experiment with economies of scale - it's your choice."

Please Note that community features such as Messaging, Group creation, Channel creation and loyalty rewards are not implemented in this release - hence some of the hyperlinks will fail. Expect implementation within 2 days of this post.

Please let us have your thoughts, comments and ideas - preferrably via the site contact form.

Looks good. I hope it works out well for you.

Minor niggle - the activation link in the email isn't clickable.

Fixed - Thank you Si.

Looks nice. Good luck!

Minor niggle - Some text boxes have the title bar inside the grey-ish box, others just at the top (for instance on the about page). Would look nicer if it was consistent.

Major niggle -

What is that Fredborg? Did the game not embed or did it not run correctly? And was it just that game?

It didn't embed and it did not run correctly (at all). It seems it fixed itself, but it wasn't the best experience on the first try :)

Nice idea, don't really like the design tho. Seems too much like a blog but there is no actual written content. So it kind of seems like a faceless portal. Not very erm whats the word, homely.

Can't realyl put my finger on it,.. but the design does look a little too sparse, just doesn't give the correct feel for a community site. You kind of have the web 2.0 look.. but not fully, needs tweaking :)

The idea is great though. I will bookmark it.

One thing that is missing are details of what keys etc... you need to play the games or instructions if not included in game.

Poor old soundless Tanx :( Hopefully someone will upload a worse game soon ;)

Stevie

@Stevie G, instructions can be put into the description but you have a valid point and I will see what else can be added.

Sorry for this, but:

The fact that it makes program folder shortcuts really makes me not want to use it. And uninstalling doesn't remove the folders either, that's downright disgusting.

I got that recently when I tried igLoder for the first time on Miniclip. Took 2-3 attempts before it would work.

That's an option in the user preferences, it will be off by default in the public release.

{EDIT} I've forced it to be off for the time being.

Oddly enough it's mainly Blitz3D apps that have this odd behaviour - something to do with the small window that launches before the main window. Anyway, that should be fixed now but I'm unsure if Miniclip have uploaded the microupdate.

That there is definietly a good use for igLoader :)
Seeing some real full-on computer games instead of Flash games is very nice, and there's a better chance that they'll get played this way. Lots of people don't like the downloading/extracting/installing stuff for little mini-games, so having all that done automatically solves the problem.

Tanx without sound, eh?
That's happened to me when I was testing Grasshopper; is it perhaps being launched from the wrong place?

well Indiepath, you got my email about the games I ran. Seems I'm not the only one...

Hi I had a little test of your website and here are the bugs that I found.

When I want to upload my IGL files the 'submit' buttons dont appear in IE but they do in opera.

When i remove a game, it works, but it redirects me to a page full of php code instead of a normal page.

When I edit my game the 'update game' button doesnt work, I cant update my game to publish it!

none of the games work,they crash whatever browser im using,
I remember playing geom online a few months ago and that worked though

anyway its a great website and will be very sucessful

@ slunkar? you have javascript enabled?

yes,

That site looks awesome, looks like it could be the next youtube, but for games

@slunkar, should be more IE friendly now :)

whatever you did fixed it. Thanks!

Maybe when the server realizes that igLoader isnt installed it would be a good time to tell the user that igLoader isnt spyware and crap? 3-4 Lines with a nice link to explain why he should ignore his firewall warning?

Like it much..

well I mean it fixed the 'update game' button.
But whenever I try to play a game it crashes the whole PC and I have to restart.
Each program shuts down by itself with a dialog box.e.g.
"Opera has run into a problem and has to shutdown"
"Explorer has run into a problem.....'
"MSCVR has run.....

etc. etc.

Not sure if this is a bug or not: In Firefox (maybe others too), if you move your cursor over someones comment, it highlights the entire comment. I just find it wierd that it should highlight when it's not a clickable thing.

FYI: You might want to mention to the guys over at Previx that IGLoader is *NOT* malware.

http://fileinfo.prevx.com/adware/qq710636354477-igbr16507161/igbrowse.exe.html

They seem to think that you are one of the bad guys.

@Dustin,

Our filename must have been confused with something else, I'll make sure it's changed. And if it was our software then I am really interested to now how a simple Internet Explorer wrapper could be labeled Malware - AND igBrowse.exe was not even compiled until June 2006!

Update - No More Firewall warnings and igBrowse.exe is being wiped from that site.

So this is for finished games? Should I not put my little games on it? Cool idea, anyway.

{EDIT} Site messaging in now implemented (90%)

Please upload anything you think that people might like.

I mean :

- Proof of concepts
- Demos
- Completed games
- Crazy Ideas
- Screen Savers!

Let the people tell you what they think and help you to develop your ideas.

Don't suppose you can submit GUI app type games? (buttons and sliders and stuff made in Bmax)

So I would, but:
1) the plugin just plain crashed on firefox
2) in IE for all of the games but cBubble it loaded completely then played sound but no graphics.
3) Because I'm odd, my games are in 800x800 windows, which you don't have an option for. I understand why you wouldn't want to have to have one, but I'm not that bothered about uploading my stuff to change them. I've fixed trenchant to work in 800x600 anyway, so see how that goes.

I'm using a Tablet PC, so that's probably why the b3d games won't work, but bmax should work fine. To fix b3d, disable 'advanced text services' if you can.

edit: Oh, I've just uploaded trenchant, but I'm not sure if it worked, because the progress bar only got to 91% and the main window reported a MySQL error. But the uploader thing won't let me reupload because it says there's already a file by that name, so is it there or not?

Indiepath: I updated BattleTanks II for Igloader's requirements (640x480, <10MB, etc.), uploaded the archive files, but when I click "Your Games" in my account, it says I haven't uploaded any games. But when I tried to upload it again, it said a game by that name was already uploaded?? Is this normal?

@warpy & John J,

Some people have been having upload issues, we can't replicate them here - I have your files but no game information in the database! Would either of you have a screen dump for me to look at?

Thanks for your help guys, guess that is what beta is all about :)

Seems to be because it isn't escaping the apostrophes in the description text.

EDIT: got rid of the apostrophes, and trenchant3.igl worked! There are two others - trenchant.igl and trenchant2.igl - you'll want to delete now.

Oh, and could I suggest some less generic (literally) categories - my game isn't really a simulation, but something like 'experimental', or 'silly' or 'half-baked' would fit perfectly.

Nice one! So the SQL injection protection is not working well :(

This is invaluable information - Thank you!

....But yet again, no graphics in the box. It worked perfectly in the dev loader.

Fixed! Nice one Warpy.

indiepath - what's your email or msn address? I'd like to see if I can get it to actually play my game!

@ warpy you can Skype me : indiepath.tim

I don't have skype, it doesn't work through my uni net connection.

Apparently, despite being a local admin on my PC, I have insufficient rights to install Bullet Candy. Other games I've tried worked okay.

Edit: Well, apart from Mothership MAVing while loading.

@Happy cat, actually the error is "Can not launch the application, please ensure you have sufficient rights to install softaware on this machine"

@Warpy, visit the site and grab a Beta of igLoader - you'll be prompted.

So, I assume the "rights" part is a red-herring. Anyway, just thought I'd mention it as no one else had.

Well the error comes about from two things

1) The game could not be installed
2) The game could not be installed

This generally means that the folder has insufficient rights :P

How does one go about wrapping a screen saver?

indie - did that, got version 2.0.1.6, still get the error message in firefox: 'plugin caused an illegal operation'

edit: ... and it crashed IE

@warpy, can you email me the log file, it's in the root of c:

Don't know your email address, email me at christianperfect@...

Thanks warpy, you can delete that now :)

Indiepath: It's working fine now! The version of BattleTanks 2 I uploaded seems to run perfectly, and the configuration even gets saved. Currently, the options allow you to set a resolution of 640x480 (default), 512x384, or 480x360. However, even 640x480 looks too small to me. Would it be okay if I re-uploaded a version with 1024x760, 800x600, or 640x480, as long as 640x480 is the default?

For some reason it looks like there are two copies of my game showing up on the main page, even though the links of each are the same.

Edit: It's appears to be fixed now.

I've not made a loading screen for 1024x768 yet but I will soon. You can upload 800x600 now, it's in the options - is here anyway :)

Don't know why I thought of this, but: I had IE set to open pop-ups in a new tab, so I changed it to opening like it should in a new window to see if that would help.

It did! Wow!

So I can play my game online now, and I hope this info helps you :)

I'll have to investigate this, are you using IE7? perhaps tabs in IE present different data types to the plugin ?!?!? Anyone care to shed some light on this?

Yeah, I'm using the proper release version of IE7. Given that I was getting sound but no picture, I think it'll be something to do with your plugin not being sent the right canvas to draw on or something.

Oh, and (temporarily, no doubt) my game's #1 on your site! Hurrah!

Okay, a few bugs with the signup process for now...


-If I enter nothing for Web Site, it won't let me submit the form even though that field is optional.

-"Screen Name is incorrect" is not a very helpful error message. Would be nice if it explained what characters I used that I can't use.

-I like how it automatically checks if a username is taken, but if I have entered nothing in the field and it checks to tell me that the username "" is taken, it can be a bit annoying.


I seem to be sent an installer for igLoader every time I enter the site.
Not sure if that's meant to happen...
I'm running Firefox 2 RC 3.


This thing is really well done :)
I'm willing to bet you've created the next YouTube.

Edit:
Now that I bother to completely read the entry message, I see why.

Anyway, account creation is not working for me!
I created an account, got the confirmation message, confirmed, was told by a popup that it was confirmed, but I can't sign in. (Bad Username / Password).
My username is Picklesworth... maybe you could check if it's in the database somewhere?

@Mr P.

Yep, still a few Interface things to make better :)

Your account is active and has been validated by you. Btw "Picklesworth" is your screen name and not your login name, could that be the problem? Again I need to make that clearer.

Tim.

Hehe, `my bad :/

Hm... I think there may have been a final "what you have done" thing somewhere that told me my screen name more prominently than my login name.
I'm not sure, though... but maybe.


Are you planning to add RSS support?
It seems a bit weird that the very cool chat room thing has an RSS link, but the actual main site does not.


For the final site, I suggest you kill off some of those Javascript alert boxes. (Like the "You have not uploaded and games yet..." one).
Some writing in a red box somewhere on the page can be just as effective, and half as 'annoying'.

Hm... I'm tempted to stress test this thing with that Nuclear Reactor simulator. Lots of seperate windows hidden within the main window... may be interesting. (Probably will work, too!)

Done already :)

Yes and it will be replicated by bitfeeder.com so it'll be available everywhere.

Not sure what you mean?

Can others try the chat stuff, I need some stress testing on that also.

Quick note for BMAX gamers, don't compile with a console window :) The console will get embedded and your game will remain hidden.

Groups will be online tomorrow, our first group the has been setup is http://www.pjio.com/groups/?shumpdev - Who's gonna own the Blitz group?