TS centralised website (turbosliders.com) - Features Request

[dede]

yeah but is a good way to start the TS HQ project thinkin to this in-game feature so create an appropriate DB system or something else

No, we can't think about in-game features because Ande told he isn't going to implement it in "short times". So we have to abandon this completely. Sorry.

[wazaari]

This is pretty a bad news for me. Why a normal player that doesn't receive money for this project is motivated enough in order to make a website like this (it will require a lot of work and months to be completed, this is for sure) and game's creator isn't motivated enough to add the features requested by the community?

If I completed every feature request I have got for the game, that would keep me busy for the rest of my life. Really, even the seemingly smallest features can take lots of time to implement, test, debug, re-implement, test again, fix another thing that got broken, test, document etc., and we are definitely not talking about small features here.

I know there is a massive amount of work involved in making a site like you are planning. I am not expecting anyone to do it but I am of course happy if someone does, for the passion of it. And I am of course willing to give support if I can.

I know that what we ask could be a medium-big work for you, Ande, but this news is not a good way to support my crazy project (crazy = an incredible amount of hours behind a PC only for passion).

New demo and profile system are both much more than medium-sized tasks. First of all, one would need to define exactly what is wanted and find good rationale for that. Many people have made different kinds of contradicting suggestions but there is no general concensus about what should really be done and why.

I have several times described what potential problems there are in different kinds of demo modes. There are unsolved technical problems and I am doubtful of the real benefits for the massive amount of work I would have to put into it, not to mention that backward-compatibility would be lost and some 1.0.x players would not want to upgrade.

When talking about the profile system, it is also not very clear for me what is wanted and what it would require to implement. Always, when external servers are needed, the complexity increases a lot. In addition to that, I am not an expert on database programming and I would have to spend lots of time just to learn things before doing anything. And I don't really know how the profile system should work in LAN games etc. And of course, it would break the downward-compatibility, too. In addition to that, it would require an unknown amount of maintenance work.

Maybe TS was just an hobby for you, and now you haven't time anymore due to your work. But what about the passion?

Yes, passion is definitely what has driven me over three years in making TS and just to make it clear: it has not ended yet.

But the joy of developing a game can easily turn into a burden when the huge pile of feature requests grows and players become more demanding in their requests. Yes, there are lots of nice things that should be added but if I start promising anything or if I feel that I MUST do something because players are asking it, it just is not fun any more and I might start thinking about what I really benefit from all that stress.

Ande is the problemm related to money comeback???
I perectly understand you...at the moment money u earn aren t sufficient to dedicate too much time...
Do u think that anyone could help you in game development?

[Ande]

Ande is the problemm related to money comeback???
I perectly understand you...at the moment money u earn aren t sufficient to dedicate too much time...

The main issue is time and like I mentioned, there are several technical issues. For example, about the profile system some players are talking about, no one has defined very well what exactly it would mean. And many people have very different views on it. It is easy to say "make a profile system" but it is far from being a medium-sized job as Dede suggested, especially if it is not even clear what it means.

So if someone would like to increase the probability of it going forward, I would need to hear better specification of it. What is the exact list of features that would be needed? What are the real benefits from it? What does an average player get from it? What game modes are affected? How many profile related screens etc. are needed in the menus? How are profile related data shown in the game? And for more technical side, what data would move between the server and client? What would happen if the server is not available? How is authentication done? How much maintenance work would be needed? How complex would the server be?

Do u think that anyone could help you in game development?

I don't think it would be feasible to give the source to anyone else believing that he could actually do anything productive for a long time. However, this web page project is definitely something that could help the game in general. Also, people can and have already done systems using the server scripts etc.

[Ahsen]

What I would like to see is a feature called 'Track Of The Day/Week' which might be on the main page or somewhere else. The idea of this is that every day/week the staff chooses a new track to be featured on the main page/some other page and then people can easily download it. What I want is this to serve as an easy way of new track makers publishing/advertising their tracks. So that's the main purpose. Of course there'd have to be a way to submit new tracks. What you do you think, dede ?

[dede]

Thanks for the suggestion Ahsen, I already thought about things like this (player of the day/week/month). But are we sure that someone posts 1 track a day? I think it will be easier implementing a "radom" thingy: random track, random player review etc.

[mikko]

Thanks for the suggestion Ahsen, I already thought about things like this (player of the day/week/month). But are we sure that someone posts 1 track a day? I think it will be easier implementing a "radom" thingy: random track, random player review etc.

How about a track of week or month in combination with a car of week/month? No need to limit to standard cars, which would promote car makers. The lap times of 10/20 best drivers would be shown next to the picture of the track. After each week/month the 10/20 fastest drivers would qualify for an online cup. The tracks and cars could also be selected in random.

[Hatu]

Why not use this forum? We all have used to this and it has worked wery well.

Uhm.. I don't know if this is possible: it depends if Hatu can share members' informations and database.. but I'll speak with him.

Dragonstar - are you talking about moving this forum to the website?
It may not be such a bad idea to just keep the forum right here, and just put a link on the new page. It will take a lot of work to move it, when it may not be worth it.

i agree with several of the above posts, but there's no reason to move the forum. it would be too much work ultimately, IMO for really no difference or benefit. just have the "forums" button on the ts central site to the address of this forum and link it up... i see nothing wrong with that!?

[dragonstar]

Dragonstar - are you talking about moving this forum to the website?
It may not be such a bad idea to just keep the forum right here, and just put a link on the new page. It will take a lot of work to move it, when it may not be worth it.

Yeah, that was the thing I ment to say. Just link it here.

[dede]

Yeah, this forum is fine, but I also would like to have the same accounts in the turbosliders.com: it should be a nice thing having a common subscription service and log-in area (same cookies and sessions for example). Maybe when someone wants join in the other website, the form is posted and processed here, and then it comes back there. I know this is possible, but at least I need some help implementing this by Hatu.

[Ahsen]

Thanks for the suggestion Ahsen, I already thought about things like this (player of the day/week/month). But are we sure that someone posts 1 track a day? I think it will be easier implementing a "radom" thingy: random track, random player review etc.

Well maybe if the community grows. But then again, I believe there might be just an option to showcase your tracks, just like here in the forum, only you put it on the main page. Maybe it should be called 'Featured Track (of the moment). So then people who make tracks can randomly submit and if they do, you post it on the main page. And if you have to choose (people send many tracks), you choose one and leave the rest for times when you receive no tracks. So it would be 'Currently Featured Track'. Hope you get what I mean.
Now another idea came to my mind. Weekly interviews with either new players or veterans! From newbies you can ask how they got the game and why they like it and their first experiences and what not. Just need to be creative with the questions. Tell me what you think.

[dede]

Now another idea came to my mind. Weekly interviews with either new players or veterans! From newbies you can ask how they got the game and why they like it and their first experiences and what not. Just need to be creative with the questions. Tell me what you think.

As I said, this is already in my mind: it will help a lot the community seeing what players think about the game. This idea was originally suggested by me for TheDude's website and it's actually in his to-do list, but I think it would be a good feature for us too.

[dragonstar]

Things I would like too on this new page could be something like this:

-news on the frontpage of course
-race calender
-somekind of an article about ts each month (maybe from different player each time)
-something like mikko suggested: "track of week or month in combination with a car of week/month, lap times of 10/20 best drivers would be shown next to the picture of the track. After each week/month the 10/20 fastest drivers would qualify for an online cup.
-interviews with different players (maybe monthly)
-track (and other stuff) uploading/downloading
-lap records
-as good player profiles and statistics as it is possible
-page for different guides (about trackmaking, skillful driving, pb tactics etc, wrote by some professional on the thing on question)
-for newbies: "ask and get an answer"-column
-official ts-leagues, with good statistics and reports

These came to my mind now, maybe more later. But one big thing about the site imo should be, that new players see that there are things going on in the game. This is the way we get more players, when they see all the things the game has to offer.

[dragonstar]

couple things more:

-reviews (weekly/monthly) of famous/not so famous tracks
-maybe same thing for players (wrote by some other player of course )
-history of ts. maybe the one Z wrote ages ago, but with some updates

[Hengari]

Things I would like too on this new page could be something like this:
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Excellent ideas.

There are lot of ideas gathered but maybe there also should be some ideas what CMS system to use as a backbone of the site and who are going to group to do this site.

About CMS' I tested Drupal with Sliderpoint and it seemed almost ok, but just almost. I don't think it is a good idea to build the entire site without support of some CMS or to code an own CMS. Those who have experience with different CMS should give some tips what to use. Atleast e107, mambo, geeklog, xoops, typo3 and *nuke for example are not flexiple enough.

[Hengari]

-history of ts. maybe the one Z wrote ages ago, but with some updates

I would like see those materials which Z had atleast to be archived somewhere. I tried archive.org but there was nothing about Z's site. There was a good piece of TS history and analysis.

[dede]

Thanks for the suggestions, very very nice posts.

I would like see those materials which Z had atleast to be archived somewhere. I tried archive.org but there was nothing about Z's site. There was a good piece of TS history and analysis.

Actually writing a story of TS was in my to-do list before thinking about this project, but I noticed Z's story isn't online anymore. If anyone has it, please send me via e-mail -> aDOTsquizzatoATmclink.it

Thank you

EDIT:
Ups.. I mean the ranking made by Z time ago, not the story. The story is available on Ippon website @ http://www.ippon-team.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33 . If anyone has the ranking by Z, please send it to me at the same address!

[dede]

Am I supposed to start with 2-3 suggestions only? Not really. I would ask to dedicate 10-20 minutes to think about this and to write down all what you want to see in the project. Otherwise I don't want to be criticised if the project won't be like you wanted (so explain your ideas NOW)!

[dragonstar]

Am I supposed to start with 2-3 suggestions only? Not really. I would ask to dedicate 10-20 minutes to think about this and to write down all what you want to see in the project. Otherwise I don't want to be criticised if the project won't be like you wanted (so explain your ideas NOW)!

Oh man, this is only third day after you posted this topic. You have to give it some time.

[dede]

Oh man, this is only third day after you posted this topic. You have to give it some time.

I know Dragon, I am just referring to the ones that already read these topic and that don't say their opinion here. They know what I mean .

[dede]

Sorry...


Due to Jollygood Games' support of Turbo Sliders (or lack of support, to put it better), I've become completely discouraged to have any involvement whatsoever with the game. Their inability to run a high-class, first-rate organization has finally disgusted me beyond hope. I wish Ande, and the game's remaining players well in the future, but as for me, the time has come where I no longer have any desire to be involved. Thanks a lot, JGG.

Good luck everyone else,

-Ed

This is not my goal. What happened with ts-central.com is actually not caused by JGG (totally or partially), but it's also a community's problem: we didn't support them enough to motivate the creators of that website to end their work. Well, of course, Fasteddie and Mouse were too isolated from the community and wanted maybe to do what they thought to be necessary for the community, that probably wasn't the main thing that the community actually needed. I think it's a pity that Fasteddie wants to close completely with these type of projects on TurboSliders, also because he was one of the guys I wanted to contact in order to help this new project. Let's see if we can convince him coming back

[Jeffrey]

Now that TS-Central Website is down, its very important that we take this project very seriously.

It is also important that jollygoodgames and Ande are part of this project.

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Yes I agree 100% + with track and car of the month.


The idea is not "competition" but motivation for more tracks and cars.

The game lacks track makers.



and this forum works 100%. So i think that there is no need to start a new forum. Linking this forum with this new project.

[Jarno]

Okey we all know that some players like very much records and drive only for that purpose. So how about record ladder. If race ladder is impossible to get work now without profile system in game, how about record ladder then. All tracks, maybe default cars only, but anyway you get poins for position of record list. This way those who like lap wanking would like that even more.

[Hengari]

Okey we all know that some players like very much records and drive only for that purpose. So how about record ladder. If race ladder is impossible to get work now without profile system in game, how about record ladder then. All tracks, maybe default cars only, but anyway you get poins for position of record list. This way those who like lap wanking would like that even more.

Oh yes, although hmmm how could I say it, there is also possibility that people start wanking lap times with cheating but I guess it's their problem. That kind of ladder could be relatively easy to implement with database and php. Who will do it for the now available records

[dragonstar]

Another idea:

Players could send different kind of 1vs1 challenges to each other, like private messages, and then upload the results back to the site. Player's profile could show personal challenge history. Public challenge-ranking could also be made based on these races. Then, for example on the front page, could be a little box that shows results of last challenge raced. One problem in this idea is, that all can't host a server. So those players could challenge only players that can host.

[Jarno]

One nice thing for newbies would be "ircpage". There everyone could join #turbosliders channel. This would be good for newbies who dont know how to use irc-things.