99 replies to this topic

[LinktheMaster]

Last year I announced that PureZC would be getting updates. After hours of work, procrastination, laziness, work, and testing, the new site is nearly done!

Help Wanted for Testing and Labeling

The thing is, though, we need some help. Basically, we need people to help test the site and help label content for the new site. So, we're asking for people to volunteer to help! For those who are potentially interested in signing up, I just want to mention a couple of things.

1. Just because you sign up doesn't mean you'll be picked.
2. We're not asking for help just to allow people to play around. Basically, be prepared to help out with helping us label stuff. I'll admit it may be a bit tedious, but the staff will be helping out too.
3. We'll want you to be as thorough as possible with testing to make sure there are no bugs!

If you're okay with that and want to help out, please sign up by making a post in the dropbox.

Also, with the new site coming on the way, there are a few announcements that have to be made.

Hosted Quest Project Forums will no longer be given out

The new site has a quest project feature on the home site. Because of this, HQPFs are outdated and honestly have a lot fewer features. And they're a bit of a pain for the staff. So they won't be given out anymore. People who currently have HQPFs won't lose them. It's just no new ones will be handed out.

No new site submissions will be accepted after April 7th

Pending submissions are not compatible between the current site and the future site. And, because there are some things that have to be assigned for current database entries, we'll have to close off new submissions to make sure everything gets taken care of before the new site goes live.

The notepad feature will be removed on the new site

If any of you use the little profile notepad, that option doesn't seem to be in the new version of Invision Power Board. If you have anything important in there, you'll want to save it now.

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If things go well, I'm hoping to release the site on April 13th. Just a bit of a heads up, the site may have a default IPB blue skin rather than a customized skin when it first comes out, but I promise we'll get a skin eventually.

If you all have any comments or questions, please let me know!

[Ventus]

Glad that the new site is almost done, at least soon we can leave this old version of IPB. :D
And I'll wish you guys luck on doing the final testing and labeling.

The notepad feature will be removed on the new site

If any of you use the little profile notepad, that option doesn't seem to be in the new version of Invision Power Board. If you have anything important in there, you'll want to save it now.

This saddens me, I always used that notepad more then the one that came with my computer. :V (Being completely sarcastic)

[Koh]

Glad to hear it's reached a beta phase =). I'd love to help with the labeling, but I probably don't lurk enough to know whose thing is what, so I'll leave that to the pros. Thanks for keeping us abreast!

[Mero]

I wasn't aware the forums were being scrapped and updated to the new version of IVP. Will we still have access to the old topics and post?

[The Satellite]

Yes. Everything will be converted into the new system. Other than notepad and possibly a few minor negligible features, we won't be losing anything.

[Haylee]

Nice to hear this is happening, but alas, I wont be able to help, as I am not too good at testing things O.o.

[LinktheMaster]

Sorry for not clarifying more about what the labeling was going to be. Someone asked about it, so I figured I'd elaborate.

Basically, the new site offers two new things: quest genres and tile tags.

Quest genres are something that are intended to categorize quests based off of their gameplay and style. Some of these include "NES-style", "Dungeon Romper", "Story-driven" and "Miniquest".

Tile tags are meant to be a more specific way of grouping tiles. The current four tile categories will be changed over to tags, but we'll have a lot more tags as options, including "enemy", "mountains", "greenery", etc. You can have more than one tag associated with a tile. It's basically meant to help people find the precise tiles they want to see.

So the staff and the people who are selected to help out will be tasked with going through all tiles and quests to apply these things so that all current content will be updated and ready for the new site.

If anyone else has any questions about the beta, please let me know! We still need at least a few more applicants.

[Thomas G. House]

: D

I'm really looking forward to this! Good luck with the testing!

[justin]

Tile tags are meant to be a more specific way of grouping tiles. The current four tile categories will be changed over to tags, but we'll have a lot more tags as options, including "enemy", "mountains", "greenery", etc. You can have more than one tag associated with a tile. It's basically meant to help people find the precise tiles they want to see.

what about tags for the intended Tileset?

[Moosh]

Quest genres are something that are intended to categorize quests based off of their gameplay and style. Some of these include "NES-style", "Dungeon Romper", "Story-driven" and "Miniquest".

Can we have a non selectable quest genre "Classic" to put on quests like Hero of Dreams, Link's Birthday DX, Lost Isle, and even Ballad of a Bloodline for those quests that are generally considered by a large number of people to be a notch above the rest? Basically something to mark the quests that have a significant role in PureZC's history. Feel free to slap me if this is a terrible idea.

[Nathaniel]

Can we have a non selectable quest genre "Classic" to put on quests like Hero of Dreams, Link's Birthday DX, Lost Isle, and even Ballad of a Bloodline for those quests that are generally considered by a large number of people to be a notch above the rest? Basically something to mark the quests that have a significant role in PureZC's history. Feel free to slap me if this is a terrible idea.

Isn't that what ratings are for? While the two of us probably agree for the most part which of the quests are "classic", it's still a very subjective tag. It also might get confusing in the sense that people might misinterpret it as using the classic tileset or classic based graphics.

[Theryan]

what about tags for the intended Tileset?

This seems like a good idea. Or at least what tilesets it can be ripped into without recoloring.

Isn't that what ratings are for? While the two of us probably agree for the most part which of the quests are "classic", it's still a very subjective tag. It also might get confusing in the sense that people might misinterpret it as using the classic tileset or classic based graphics.

I agree with Nathaniel on this. Even though the previously mentioned quests are among the most popular (and in my opinion, along with others', some of the best), its too subjective for them to be put into a definite category of classic quests. Also, "classic" makes me think of more NES-styled LoZ clones.

[ShadowTiger]

Aye, I would think there might be conflicts between authors if someone's treasured quest wasn't selected to be a "classic" while a quest they think is slightly lesser known is selected. I say, let the quest players decide. That quest author is one of the voters as well, surely.

[LinktheMaster]

I agree with Nathaniel and ST about the "Classic" quest idea. It's a good idea in principle, but I think some people may get upset. I think some people may honestly take offense to some quests being put on the same pedestal as others or may hate that quests they like are left out, as silly as that may seem.

what about tags for the intended Tileset?

I'm actually not a fan of this idea either. Like Moosh's suggestion, it sounds good. The problem is, there's a lot of tilesets on PZC, and I don't want to put them all in the list of tags. But if we limit it to just things like "Pure", "DoR", "EZGBZ", etc. then any of the other tilesets would get left out of that list and it would sort of seem like we're pushing people to use certain tileset. Plus, even in those categories, things aren't always consistent. Any tiles for the Pure tileset don't work on Pure Remembrance, and EZGBZ version 1 had a different palette structure than the following two. I think there's just a lot of room for confusion there.

Plus, with the "recolor" functionality working decently, it's not that hard to import tilesets from different tilesets anymore.

I really do appreciate the suggestions, though.

[Moosh]

I agree with Nathaniel and ST about the "Classic" quest idea. It's a good idea in principle, but I think some people may get upset. I think some people may honestly take offense to some quests being put on the same pedestal as others or may hate that quests they like are left out, as silly as that may seem.

I feel like if the kind of people you're worrying about aren't getting upset by the current rating system they wouldn't get upset about this. I also feel like I didn't describe what I was thinking in my first post well at all. Like for example I'd consider Mario Quest a classic even though it doesn't fit my original description. The classic tag wouldn't exactly indicate a good quest necessarily, only a significant one. So scratch the "notch above the rest" thing.