93 replies to this topic

[szecs]

It is still a forum..... So you've never been on any other forums because they werent exactly like gamedev's old layout

Well, that's almost the case. I'm on only 3 forums, and I'm the most active on this one, and another one (similarly simple layout). The third one was necessary. I'm a fucked up caveman I guess.

[Moe]

Here's my deal:
- Active Topics. I too have had to bookmark http://www.gamedev.n...earch&do=active but it just isn't the same. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people that browsed the active topics do not now browse the forums simply because the Active Topics button is missing from the top of every thread view.
- The threads/posts seem bloated with unnecessary colored bars, etc. I like the simple, clean look that classic GD.Net had
- De-emphasis of the forums. Maybe it is just me, but it seems like there is now more emphasis on the articles. The forums is the only real reason I stuck around GD.Net all these many years (of which there have been many!)
- Having to click twice on the editor to get it to work. Clicking the first time expands it, then you have to click it again to start typing. Is it possible to ditch the fancy CSS type stuff, and just always have it expanded?
- No more IOTD. I know we can go to the forum software's maker and complain about this, and I imagine people have. That still doesn't fix the fact that it isn't there right now.
- No more survey on the front page. If there was, at least I haven't been able to find it yet.
- Having to click through to see the full GDNet daily
- Bloated space around every heading and every section on the main page. I know this can be fixed as well, but it just seems like everything is so much... bigger than what it was before. Again, keep it small, clean, streamlined.

Personally, I've also taken up a few other hobbies that have taken me away from game development (photography and woodworking), so I haven't been spending as much time here. I'm not going to go away any time soon (heck, I've been here almost since the dawn of GDNet), but still, it'd be nice to see a few of the things back that we are now missing.

[magic_man]

Yes because what a forum needs is the ability to post question and be able to reply to it, clearly the old forum software was not capable of this. Therefore the requirement was to add a load of crud such as twitter messages which have nothing what so ever to do with the site and even better still to release it in a half arsed state. I am sure a lot of people appreciate the unneeded invalidating of many bookmarks for no good reason besides adding cool new non features.

Yes because that's what a car needs is the ability to move you places quickly and without expending much phsyical energy, clearly the Model T ford was not capable of this. Therefor the requirement was to add a load of crud such as air conditioning and seat belts, which have nothing what so ever to do with the site and even better still to release new cars without the fuel flexibility of a model T! I am sure a lot of people appreciate the unneeded invalidating of many Model T used parts for no good reason besides adding cool new non-features.

You will have to give me a hand here as I fail to see the correlation between the first commercial vehicle using a assembly line and a forum, plus do you really think the seatbelt is crud?

[et1337]

I still spend way too much time lurking on this site. Please change the default theme to bright orange and reinstate the blink tag.

[dpadam450]

- No more IOTD. I know we can go to the forum software's maker and complain about this, and I imagine people have. That still doesn't fix the fact that it isn't there right now.
- No more survey on the front page. If there was, at least I haven't been able to find it yet.
- Having to click through to see the full GDNet daily

IOTD is broken not abandoned as far as I know. Though they should have it fixed by now. Can we get it fixed?
How many internet links do you click per-day? gamedev,youtube etc. If you want to read a news article on google,yahoo, you read a headline and click it because you want to read it.
Not sure what your complaint is about active topics. If you visit daily, you know whats new. If you visit weekly, then basically the whole page of a sub-forum is within 0 days to 1 week old.

[freeworld]

things are still active, it just seems there are a lot less "retarded" posts. I just assumed more people are using the search feature first.

I just wish they would put the recent post back at the top of the page.

[nilkn]

The only reason I might send less time on the site is because other people also are spending less time, giving me less to read.

[owl]

I know quite a few of the more active posters had real life events hit them recently. For instance right now I'm in China studying Chinese (and my brain is steadily turning into mush).

China? I'd like to hear that story if you don't mind telling it!

[MrDaaark]

The forums are broken. The threads I am participating in disappear from the active topics list, and from the MY CONTENT page, so I forget about them. Also, the blatant product placement and advertisements being poorly disguised as informative articles is embarrassing for all involved.

[RivieraKid]

the new site annoys me aswell. Its cluttered and slow. Im not going to leave tho.

[swiftcoder]

The primary way I used to interact with the old site was to just pull up the front page. This would give me immediate access to the 4 elements of GDNet that I have any interest in: the Active Topics, the IOTD, the Daily, and the Featured Journals.

As it stands, the IOTD doesn't exist, the daily and featured journals are consistently pushed far down the page, and active topics also requires significant scrolling. Net result? I haven't participated in more than about 10-20 threads since the changeover.

[Yann L]

I find the new site highly irritating. GDNet was and still is the only forum I actively participate in, and the old forum system was an important part of that. It was minimalistic, functional, data centric and efficient. That new IPB stuff is the exact opposite. Now, I fully understand the technical, logistical and financial needs to move on to a new system. And I also realize that we're still in a startup phase here, with many issues still in to-be-fixed status.

Still, the site looks like freaking Facebook. I hate Facebook. Icons everywhere. Menus fading in and out when you move the mouse over stuff. Space inefficient and cluttered layout. Completely unnecessary 'social media features'. Without Benryves' black CSS override I wouldn't even be visiting the forums anymore (thanks a lot for this hack btw, much appreciated !). And I experience a fair share of technical issues as well.

I'm still optimistic that things will get ironed out eventually. But as of now, the new system is very offputting to me and has considerably reduced the frequency of my visits on the forums.

[SiCrane]

Are you studying to keep ahead of the curve (business reasons) or just for general interest in then language and/or culture? How is it like out there compared to Western Europe or the US?

Personal reasons. I'm an American-born Chinese, and definitely skewed more to the American side. As I got older I began to regret not really exploring the Chinese side of my heritage. And since business has been bad lately, it seemed like a good time to take a break and go study abroad. Other than the language and the bat-shit insane driving, it's been depressingly similar to western society, down to blond haired Barbie dolls in the supermarkets. Obviously there are differences, especially beer being cheaper than water, but it seems a little weird to see Caucasian models in half the ads. But, yeah, both drivers and pedestrians are completely insane here. Traffic lights and lane markers all seem to be more like suggestions than anything else; the only law they seem to respect is the law of superior tonnage. It's like one giant game of chicken. On the plus side traffic is so congested no one can get up to high enough speed that an accident is likely.

Silliest miscommunication error so far: going to McDonalds and ordering a number three value meal with a Coke and getting three Cokes. Weirdest miscommunication error so far: going to a Chinese food vendor and ordering what I thought was beef noodles and getting a meatless rice dish. Biggest WTF moment so far: walking into a building with the English word "Masks" on the outside, expecting a mask store and getting ushered through a metal detector, then escorted into an elevator by a woman in a fur coat and taken to a room with Hennessey's in glass cases on the wall. This was followed by a very awkward conversation with a guy at a counter. Later found out that it was an upscale karaoke bar.

[EricRRichards]

I guess my biggest peeve is that the recent threads box is moved WAY down the page. I used to pop in 3-4 times a day, and it was right there at the top of the page, so if I saw something interesting it was easy to click in and either try to help somebody, or find something interesting to read. Now that spot is taken up by spammy looking job postings...

Also, the GameDev Dailies are always spammed out by middleware advertisements (2-3 screens worth today) in the news section.

The article system is now much less easy to browse. I thought for a while that all the old (admittedly, sometimes really dated) but useful articles were gone, but I realized that they're just buried several layers deep. In many respects, the newer articles seem to be very tied in with particular technologies, where many of the older ones were more general and conceptual.

The flickering, Steam-like panel at the top of the page bugs the crap out of me. And the dropdown menus that disappear when you move the mouse off of them make the site agonizing to navigate with a computer that's got a flaky touchpad.

In general, the new site just seems very busy and cumbersome. There's a lot of wasted space, and bells and whistles that only serve to derail me from finding the programming information I come to the site for.

[Hodgman]

The thing that shits me the most is that active topics returns cached results. I can go to the active topics page twice in an hour, and have it show me the same results each time (even though there's been activity on the site).
This makes it seem really "dead", even when it's active.

[owl]

lol@sicrane

[ranakor]

I find myself visiting it less and less (i think i visited it like every single day for the past years pretty much before the change!)

Now it's whenever i think of it.

The one change that's causing this is the lack of grouping. I just don't get the "technical upgrade", to me it's a downgrade, first forum i ever saw for forum groups and that was the 1 reason i came here, because i could just middle click those few grouped forums and the top and access all i wanted without all the clutter. Now i don't even remember which all of them were! i've like never browsed that whole list.

[ApochPiQ]

You do realize that the people who have left aren't going to actually respond to this thread, right?

[zedz]

the number of posts in the lounge decreased heaps (eg compared to 5 years ago say) way before the site redesign

[Moe]

The thing that shits me the most is that active topics returns cached results. I can go to the active topics page twice in an hour, and have it show me the same results each time (even though there's been activity on the site).
This makes it seem really "dead", even when it's active.

Exactly! 90% of the reason I hang out at GDNet is the Active Topics... which still seem screwed up. Yeah, the old GDNet wasn't perfect, but at least having a decent Active Topics would be great. I knew there was something wrong with it, it was just hard to put my finger on it.