Forums > News > v2 Beta Update (Sep 16th)
MobyReed (389) on 9/19/2022 4:42 PM · Permalink · Report
v20220916 update log for beta.mobygames.com
- Added search as you type functionality (results now appear below the search bar as you type). By default the dropdown displays trending games, companies and developers.
- Added slash commands to search:
/g to only search games (e.g., /g mario)
/c to only search companies (e.g., /c atari)
/d to only search devs (e.g., /d romero)
/gr to only search groups (e.g., /gr animals) - Added Frequent Collaborators section to developer pages (example)
- Added a snippet of company overview and developer biography to search results (example)
- Added highest rated game of developer or company to search results
- Added forum search
- Added ability to add and delete lists (via the Collection page on your user profile)
- Added list of galleries to screenshot pages (example), so you can see which gallery you're viewing and easily move between them
- MobyScore is now a combination of user score and critic score
- Search algorithm tweaks
- Bunch of UI tweaks, polish
- Backend platform updates
robMSX (2162) on 12/31/2022 11:38 AM · Permalink · Report
TBH, currently not a fan of the new interface. But perhaps it just takes some getting used to...
When a game is highlighted that was released on multiple platforms, on the old site, you can select a release and everything will be focused on that release. There is no way it seems to have the same effecton the Beta site. The links on the game main page just take you to a generic platform page.
e.g., for https://www.mobygames.com/game/simcity clicking on DOS will take you to https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/simcity with a focus on the DOS release for all tabs. While for the Beta site you need to go to a sub-tab and select the DOS release. This is not only in my opinion less intuitive, but also has no effect on the main tab.
For the attribute browser, things seem particularly barren. e.g., https://beta.mobygames.com/attributes/attribute/42/
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No mention of page numbers (other then in the URL bar, which is offset by 1)
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No mention of number of games that have the attribute.
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Only the ability to go to the Next and Previous page.
Also, is there now a possibility to link a Cover set with a Release? Likewise for tech-specs, they may be specific to a release. e.g., for DOS games, a floppy release may have different requirements compared to a CD-ROM release.
Tracy Poff (2095) on 1/3/2023 5:44 PM · Permalink · Report
While for the Beta site you need to go to a sub-tab and select the DOS release. This is not only in my opinion less intuitive, but also has no effect on the main tab.
The main tab is meant to be a summary view, so we indeed don't filter it by platform. But if you do filter a subpage down to a particular platform, e.g. just DOS screenshots, then if you visit one of the other tabs it'll automatically be filtered to that platform as well.
This is a little different from how it works on the current site, but I don't think it's worse. A lot of external links to the current site end up going to the game sheet for a particular platform, probably by accident (or because google incomprehensibly decided to do that), so a user visiting the site from somewhere else will see a limited set of information, including perhaps something like "There are no Symbian user screenshots for this game.", even though we have shots for other platforms, which the user might be interested in seeing. Similarly with credits--I often find myself clicking back to the combined view to see the credits, because I was on some platform that we don't have them for yet.
For the attribute browser, things seem particularly barren
Yeah, that is sort of a placeholder. Most likely you'll instead browse games per attribute using the game browser--that page is just getting a little crowded, so we're working out the right interface for adding all the extra possible filters. Probably then those attribute pages will work more like the genre pages, with the description and probably the top X games, and a link to the game browser to see the whole list.
Also, is there now a possibility to link a Cover set with a Release? Likewise for tech-specs, they may be specific to a release. e.g., for DOS games, a floppy release may have different requirements compared to a CD-ROM release.
I agree that this would be useful, and I want to do something along these lines--also with alternate titles. The biggest issue with this is that we have a lot of cover sets that we'll want to go back through and link to releases, once we're able to do that--definitely a long-term project, but one that will make things much better in the long run.