New GarageGames.com Feedback

#41 All of the resources seem to have lost their download link. Would be nice if we could get into the old site while this transition takes place... it's really hard to work when you can't get to anything enymore

#42 *Minor Requests
- Require a "tested with (insert game engine here)" tag on all product descriptions.

- Somehow add offsite products to the product store. Such as, 3D Digger's Horse Pack, or 3DGA's Knight Character, or etc.

#43 Founded by 4 anonymous dudes :(

#44 Overall scheme seems too impersonal and "cold". Definitely don't like the new forum layout -- takes too long to get where I want to go and is too easy to get lost in. Too much of the good from the old site is gone -- most of which has already been pointed out.

#45 The merging of the differing sub-forum section seems to "clutter" things up. For example: The old "Submit Bugs" sub-forum for TGE and TGEa was a handy means for the community to keep track of bugs and their solutions (if provided) that haven't yet and even never did get rolled into the respective engines (and there were more than a few), and it's now almost impossible to find them amongst the many many threads. You now have to sift through pages and pages of the forums in order to find specific threads that were once generically categorized. Maybe once the new search comes fully online it will simplify this process.

#46 I like the new look a lot. Even though it might still feel unfamiliar, it looks a lot more professional. Unfortunately, it also provides less information.

Ok, my nag list:

- Broken links, please make a htaccess rule for forwarding the old links, takes about 1 minute and solves all the problems
- Author's recent blogs and threads: I'd really like to be able to see more of the author's own stuff, please include a more link to a filtered list
- Editing blogs and threads under Chrome is not possible, because the pencil icon is not clickable. I could edit my old posts for old links though via changing the view url.
- I'm not able to ask for notification for a blog post or resource for that matter, that's very important to being able to keep resources useful and not putting code into the forums just so we're able to keep it up to date at all times
- I can't find help about what tags are usable in a comment - I won't be able to include videos, cuz I can't remember the syntax, except by editing my older resources and checking there. Can you please include that old list with each comment box?
- I don't like the new what's new page. I'd like a more compact place where blogs and forum posts are gathered. I'd also like to see right away who did a new post, because that was a very important filter for me when I had a little time to read only.
- Since you kind of merged resources with plans, I think you should not try to keep these separated on the what's new page.. there should be blogs and threads only as far as I'm concerned. It's unnecessary. They have a common view anyway.
- I want to be able to see who's an Associate and who's an Employee besides Torque Owners. I'm not sure if you need the Commercial tag back, though I did pay more attention to people who were doing gamedev for a living, so yes, I think that I'd like to see that tag again as well.
- I understand that paging blog comments is good for the server load, but I just hate to shift through pages. This will result in people not wanting to click through a resource's comments, and the same questions that have been already answered on page 3 will be popping up at the end of the thread with a bigger likeliness.
- How am I to get my blog post on the visible screen area on the what's new page anymore? I feel left out.

Alright, for now, I think that's just enough, let me tell you about what I like about the new site:

- The clean easy to read look. Really good work on the design and the source - just taking a look at which dtd you set says a thousand words. :) Great!
- I like the new menu bars - both the site bar and the menu bar.
- I like that my downloads' titles are a lot more comprehensible.
- I love the idea of having resources and plans come in as blog posts - please don't separate them! Just add a notification option.
- I liked that the login let me use my username. Obviously there's a new login system in place as well.
- I like featured blogs, though I said that I don't like it that I'm not able to post there, it certainly saves me from the one-liner questions. I still think though that specific members should also be allowed to show up on the featured blogs list - I'd hate to miss a Guimo report!!!

Ok, I'll shut up for now, great job overall!

-- Konrad

#47 Oh yes, I forgot to add: it'd be great to sort search results by date and/or rating (where did the ratings go anyway?) I'd like to see ratings for the blog posts again, where the author could check if the blog post could be rated or not. It'd help us filter the better resources.

#48 Despite initial impressions I think it will grow on me -- like all change it sometimes takes a little time to get used to the new. Despite the criticism and personal annoyances I find it nice and neat, if only a little too "clean".

#49 Overall I like the new site better.
It'll take me a lot of time to get used to the new forums. Seems a lot have been merged, which is a shame (like, I assume, 3D forum and 2D forum have been merged in Artist corner, too bad).
Biggest problem so far, as far as I'm concerned, is the HTTP/401 error when tring to log on TDN, but I'm sure you guys are already working on it.
I second Mike opinion when he says it looks a little too "clean", but it's a matter of taste...

#50 The notification emails are missing a few things:

- no link to the thread!! replying takes some hunting :(
- sender is Apache
- tries to be in html format, but gmail renders it as plain text

Why not make everything (even the link) plain text? That way spam filters will let it go through as well, and the link is parsed by the email clients anyway. Don't forget to add a strip_tags and html_entity_decode maybe. Best would be if you could strip even the custom bb tags too.

#51 Same as other people:

All my watchlist disapears

Need of unread forums link

Where are all the sub-forums (like engine for TGEA...)?

Resources download link unavailable

#52 Few mores

How to edit our post

How to have a watch on blogs

Where is the doc for all meta-code for forums (to link image, youtube...)?

#53 Some of my downloads are missing.. so do some of the product descriptions under My Account. When can we expect these to be back up?

#54 I'd like to see the profile images come back. Profile pages seem very empty without them.

#55 Are the old private pages still private to a certain group of licensees?

Some threads in there rely on this. License and update threads. The posts with sensitive information can't even be edited in case these threads are not private anymore. Can you please let us know?

There's no indication one way or another about required authentication to a certain thread.

#56 Nevermind, found the private flag, it just wasn't where I was looking right away.. :) Sorry.

#57 1) Snapshots being gone is VERY disappointing.

2) I like that we use our own emails as opposed to usernames

#58 Hi,

The new website is very clear and I like the new architecture. There's one thing that lack into for me. There is no "archive" topic where you can find old versions of your engines (like TGE or reaction engine). Maybe it could be useful for a lot of developpers to still get it.

#59 This has been mentioned, but I would like to re-emphasize that access to TDN is currently non-functional. All links lead to a 404.

#60 The Whats New link I think should be compacted to just show the basic info - and also latest forum posts as many have said.

The old site had this done brilliant as you could see a lot of data in a small area.

I also seem to have access to the private AFX forums (might have done before the move I guess) - I do not own AFX.