New GameLizard Ready for Testing!

General Discussions
#1

http://test.gamelizard.com

Go to the Developers area, and try out uploading some games.

To do it, click “Create a new game” at the top right of the black heading bar there, and follow the instructions. Left link is Flash, right link is Applet. Sorry for the cheap styles… I’ll get to that later :stuck_out_tongue: Right now I just want people banging on it to see if it works.

I warn you, however, this is my first time using this web language (Ruby on Rails) as well as my first time hosting anything with Dreamhost. I’ve heard (a bit too late) that they are pretty bad at running Ruby on Rails apps, but we’ll see how it goes.

My only warning right now is that you should try to upload reasonably small files since there’s no progress bar and that can be discouraging. Maybe it’s just my slow connection as at home I can typically only upload at like 30kb/s.

At any rate, please try it out and tell me what your results are! I’ve managed to successfully upload Flash and Applet’s so far so things seem to be ok at first glance.

Thanks for your time! :slight_smile:

#2

seems to have worked well with my applet ;D http://test.gamelizard.com/games/5

Easy to upload and choose main applet class.

I think the web sites templates should be improved though.

#3

will it be able to list games hosted else where?

#4

Not yet. I don’t know if that’s something I’ll want to add. If GameLizard gets more serious, I know I’ll want to rely on my own servers and not have my impression reliant on whether or not someone else’s server is working properly. Additionally, right now the code reads your Jar file and lists all .class files inside of it. I don’t know if that’ll work if the file lives elsewhere. If I just stuff in the URL it would probably download the file every time you went to the edit screen… I’d have to think of a better solution.

However right now I’d prefer you just upload it. Perhaps if someone can give me good convincing reason to do otherwise I’ll consider it :slight_smile:

#5

Oh come on people! The other thread that was all talk got so much attention and so many posts. Then I go and actually build the thing and hardly anyone is perking up. That’s so backwards!

#6

Anouncing something and requesting testers are two very different things :wink:

Anyway, at school, with IE6, the layout is all messed up.

So much for my feedback :wink:

#7

im guessing people would be more likely to add their game if they can just submit a screenshot/link/description, instead of having to maintain the uploaded file in 2 different places(if they already have their own hosting, and would rather use it, because they have it). (I know i would, at least)

to give some more feedback, (heopfully constructive):

  • developers should give a list of developers? the are your game section could be labelled sth like “My games”
  • i dont really like the whole slidy applet/flash uploader thing - it breaks if javascript is off for one thing
  • the front page lacks a little something, maybe the featured game could have a bigger image - showing gameplay or something?
  • robotank didnt load here “could not load game, please refresh and try again”
  • maybe games could have tags or something, eg to enable sorting by genre etc
  • there needs to be a forgotten password link
  • maybe link to some developers sites/forums/ircs ?
#8

Hosting games visible on your site, at unknown servers, is totally wrong. Think of all the 404s. If you host it on 1 server, you’re at least sure all games remain available as long as the site is available.

If a dev really wants to host it at their own server, why would he need GameLizard?

#9

for publicity?

you could also test for dead links and leave them out of the listings

#10

Then if it becomes as popular as Kongregate, you spend too much bandwidth just testing dead links.

#11

Nah, that bandwidth is almost zero, compared to 1 download (few MB) of a game.

#12

Additionally, like Kongregate, this will run with site-integrated API’s. So in the end the games that will be popular will be the ones that use them well. This means developers will want to modify their games to get better traffic through GameLizard, since the game will actually do more for the gamers than the originals did, meaning they’d want to play it on GameLizard more than the original site where there is no extra integration.

In the meantime, I suppose I can play around a bit with that. It can’t really hurt me in the short term to allow externally hosted games, right? I can always remove it later.

As for the other site feedbacks, thank you! I’ll see what I can do :slight_smile: In terms of the more bug-related comments, I’ll definitely work on those. As for the feature enhancements, most of them are already on my list, but I want to get some developers at least testing the current functionality before I start adding much more.

#13

[quote=“Riven,post:6,topic:31231”]
That kinda put me off a bit too…

#14

Ahh I forgot to test in IE6. Sometimes I forget people still use that :wink: I’ll get right on that one for sure!

@g666: Lot of good feedback I’ll want to take, thank you! As for the Javascript thing, Kongregate relies heavily on it. Stats/Achievements/Badges updating is done through Javascript, favorites and voting and comments (and paging through them) are all done through Javascript. Basically as a developer, you bank on the users having Javascript so that the API features do stuff good. As a user, you miss out on like half the site if you don’t use Javascript. They seem to be doing just fine so I’m not too worried about that :slight_smile:

#15

Most users don’t turn off Javascript, since it comes defaulted on in most browsers. Besides you can put a disclaimer on the front page saying that JavaScript is required.

#16

[quote]It can’t really hurt me in the short term to allow externally hosted games, right? I can always remove it later.
[/quote]
Removing functionality is very bad for your reputation and goodwill of users.

You end up keeping those features you want to get rid of!