It's back

ish...

Just needs some CSS tweaking for IE, a few textual pages and then it's go for launch. The site is functional so please visit and upload, tag, share and play.

www.pjio.com / www.playindy.com / www.blahblahblah.com

Flash and Mobile games are coming soon.

By the way, if I'm already selling your game via the affiliation system and you'd rather I send the traffic direct to you then let me know and I'll make the changes.

Are these all indie games?

You sure like that brown footer!
How about use the brown as the page's background colour, and then fill in the rest of it, via a div, with the gradient and white that you have at the moment?
That way the footer doesn't need to be arbitrarily extended. (I am of course guessing that this is done to avoid the problem where it ends before the bottom of the page).

I really like the fading / smooth loading effect. It makes everything look really snappy and solidly proves: You don't need Flash to look nice.
Probably people without broadband won't be trying this web site, but still have you made sure it doesn't feel too clunky on slower connections?

I still think the littler (colourful) monkey guy looks out of place in the banner and could maybe be well used instead within the page content to draw attention to things. Then again, losing the colour from the banner would be a shame as well so you probably know what you're doing.

The majority of the games will be indie, I'm not going to complain if a big studio want to upload something though :)

Re: Broadband. The site is designed using Ajax technologies to minimise impact on the server and download requirements. In the majority of cases the page will only download/transact the parts of the page that need updating. Dial up's will be okay.

I just noticed something on the signup page:

If I do not validate my screen name by pressing the button, then it will tell me to press the button if I try to submit. Can't it validate without me having to press the button?
It hurts the nice smooth flow of it all.

Also (though this is really just my weird tastes that nobody else cares about), I think the signup page should indicate that Screen Name is not the name people log in with, but that they log in with their email address. No real reason, but I did miss having such information.

(And as I've already mentioned it's a bit annoying that I am forced to immediately have a profile image / description).


More little things I have noticed:

The Join link for groups is hard to find. Perhaps the link could also be placed where it says "Please Join this group to participate"?
Lots of links are placed in those spots, so maybe some styling changes could be done so they are more obvious.

The "Bookmarks" thing opens up a whole thing on top of the page (whatever that's called), though I have not noticed this behaviour much elsewhere except when playing a game. It would make more sense if that happened more often, like with the log in box.

Clicking the bigger version of a screenshot in the screenshot viewer makes it open again in the viewer. (I expected it to close the viewer).

The "Highest Rated" section's title on the home page has an extra >.

Er... "Rate this rating"? Makes sense I guess, but a bit odd to see (especially under Democracy).
I see why it is needed, but having a number like -1 under a game may confuse someone into thinking the game is bad, when in fact only its rating is bad.


I like the happy mood of it all :) It isn't glaring, but it is definitely there!

well good luck with this. I'll watch it with interest.

The first thing I wanted to do was hit that monkey, but he just winked at me <sniffs>

It validates automatically when the field loses focus.
Done.
Granted, I'll work on finishing up and then I'll tidy up.
I'm open to suggestions on that one.

Ah, in that case it goes back to not being validated if I submit the form and have something wrong (thus have a few fields like screen name re-entered).

Anyway, it's nice to see this shaping up; these are all tiny details :)

As for the rate this rating bother, perhaps the games' rating could be separated from the rest of the description, with a title?
That, or the rating could be kept in plain sight (which is good), but a Rating tab (Rating could be a bad word to use) could be added below where one can vote for or against the current rating, or perhaps vote specifically for a rating for the game. (Then a rating would be community-selected). This could also be in an already existing tab, I guess, such as Comments.
Voting for ratings would make more sense in the end. With the current 'I like that rating, or I don't' system, there is no explanation as to why for example a Teen rating has a rating of -24. Why do people not like it? Is it too high, or too low?
If people are saying instead what rating they think something should be, there is no confusing 'Danger, 54 people did not like this rating!!! It may or may not be safe for family viewing', but rather a more clear 'the community says that this game has teen content'.

Unsure if it's supposed to be a joke or something, but blahblahblah.com doesn't exist here. ;/

I'm surprised that it is completely unclaimed. Go for it and register that domain!

When the rating hits a negative threshold it's flagged to review - it just helps me keep tabs on incorrectly rated stuff.

Indiepath please shoot me an email, I have a question for you.

@markd, thanks for the email - I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Ah ah ah!

Those rating graphics all have the same style for their borders. You could stick the rating in a box that fits with the black border, and have the ratings of ratings within that box. That way the rating and the rating's rating look very closely associated.
Of course, on the other hand, it may look awful and clunky. Worth a look, maybe?

I just noticed that I can rate a rating more than once. You may want to look into that...

A few minor things:

When I'm logged in and I click on 'Inbox()' at the top right it brings me to my account page and not directly to my inbox. Minor but it doesn't make much sense.

I can endlessly rate ratings and probably games (havn't tried).

I can click download on any game then cancel, and get 1 karma, although don't know if it matters.

Oh, and I cheated by clicking refresh while uploading Apes on that badge error message and got an extra 50 karma :)

One more quick thing: Why is merely rating a game worth the same karma as writing a review? A rating could be anything, while a good review is fair and informative.

Also, any chance of rating reviews?

Reviews are now 10 points - thanks for reminding me. I'll also add review ratings.

I should change the terminology since there are a number of message folders.

You can't with games/groups or comments - I did not build this into ratings since I want the general public to be able to rate the ratings. Multiple clicks are really not a problem - at the moment (especially as you have to refresh the page).

This really does not matter, if someone wants to try and increase Karma by clicking buttons then they can try but they won't get very far.

I got an email telling me that the game got posted twice in error - I made the changes manually but let you have the Karma as a show of good faith :)

just an idea,

What about a service like youtube, where all you have to do is upload the ZIP file and it automatically gets converted into the right format etc.
Then you just answer an online questionare and the game is setup to your specifications

@Chunkations, you never tried to upload a game then?

I downloaded the PDF file that contains the instructions on how to package and upload the game and it was a bit overwhelming

The new tech is very easy - ignore the current PDF, pjio is super streamlined with the majority of work done on the fly by scripting.

Anyone with IE5.5 or IE6 care to test the site for me. I've fixed the majority of CSS problems but I'm sure I've missed a few.

ah it's buggered in IE6!

yeh I tested it in IE6 and it doesnt let you get off the main screen when you press the upload button

It's likely that you did not log-in first.

yep thats what happened

When viewing screen shots, the viewer gets overlapped by the banner ad at the bottom. And you can scroll a bunch more than you should be able to.

This is in FF2.0.

*Gasp*
You're in full release now? (Or is that just the final version of the Help page?)

http://www.pjio.com/help/

!!

I see that all the links work, and I haven't noticed any spelling errors yet...

You're footer looks a bit weird again; big white space under it.

Edit:
Aha! The footer looks right in Internet Explorer 6, with ads and everything. However, in Firefox 2 it has the big white space and the Google ads are not visible.


Oh, I found an error!
Help page under Uploading Games: "480x360, 512x384,640x480 or 800x60"
Missed a 0 in 800x600. (I assume... unless you want some ultra wide side-scrollers).


Also, a quick feature suggestion for the future: Right now, seeing if my game works as an embeddable game seems to be a bit complicated. It would be cool if I could upload it and test it via pjio without having it visible at any time. (Perhaps a Preview button in the Upload form? I'm guessing it could get igLoader to run from a local file so it wouldn't have to be uploaded)

When dealing with lists of things such as a list of gamers, Safari mangles up the list. You can scroll down the page then back up and it will show fine.