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Posts posted by djpretzel

    Minor Site Changes - Report Issues Here

    in Announcements

    Posted

    Links in the remix comments seem to be broken. See Larry's post here:

    http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02852

    The link URL seems to be appended to the /remix/ path, like so:

    http://ocremix.org/remix/"http://hunz.bandcamp.com/track/draw-the-line"

    And nice upgrade. Feels like the remix reviews/comments are a full fledged part of the remix page now.

    Should be fixed now, and thanks for the feedback!

    I'm having an issue with Judganator, I upload my song and it gets judged but the ones that are passed are not being posted to the site. Also there's no change to the judge process thread which I would assume is updated automatically now :cry:

    SHADDAP STRADER! Err, I mean... I'll get right on that. Tomorrow.

    Clicking on "Latest Feedback: Workshop ReMixes" links on the workshop page (http://ocremix.org/workshop) leads back to the workshop page itself.

    Firefox 26.0 on Xubuntu 13.03.

    --Eino

    Should also be fixed now.

    Again, thanks for the attention to detail!

    JUDGANATOR Feedback, Bug Reports, and Your Judgements (April Fool's!)

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    Thanks everyone for your bug reports & feedback!!

    Initial results, while promising, do clearly indicate that there's still some major work to be done. It is with a heavy heart and eyes toward the future that I reluctantly announce the retirement of JUDGANATOR and the immediate reinstatement of the judges panel.

    The judges have been... uncanned...

    I suppose this makes them uncanny, not unlike the X-Men...

    HUGE thanks to JUDGANATOR lead developer & cool guy Wesley Cho, who made this brief foray into automated music critiquing possible!!

    We'll be working on JUDGANATOR 2.0 for some future year, and will put the existing beta somewhere you can play with it in the meantime.

    Minor Site Changes - Report Issues Here

    in Announcements

    Posted

    I found a random bug, I'm not sure if it's at all related to the changes.

    When I click on any game, select a song, then click back on the game name, (not the orange hyperlink, but the one below it) I get the following error:

    "http://ocremix.org:59383

    Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/ocremix/public_html/includes/config.php:101) in /home/ocremix/public_html/redirect.php on line 36"

    Here's a screen shot.

    I've tried 4 or 5 different games and songs, same result.

    Another excellent & detailed bug report - love you guys!

    Should be fixed!

    Plans for Expanding Workshop & Offering "Instant Upload/Feedback" Functionality to OC ReMix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The answer is obviously a scrolling marquee. Remember those? :lol:

    But yeah I mean Sir_NutS's mix has origins from like 2007 and it feels like it didn't get much love.. sure it got a facebook and twitter post, and a write-up and all that stuff. I honestly don't know what the answer is to improve visibility or anything.

    We do have some ideas to increase exposure for recently posted mixes; we'll be doing SOMETHING with the next minor site update that should help. As Andy says, though, from time to time we like to highlight something different, and "Bubble Dragon" was certainly that. We feel it is to everyone's advantage that we have a certain degree of flexibility and freedom to promote things outside of regular processes.

    Plans for Expanding Workshop & Offering "Instant Upload/Feedback" Functionality to OC ReMix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Would be great if there was a level of anonymity when songs were posted. Or even if that was a search option for displaying songs. That way listeners just listen to the song for what it is, and not for who wrote it.

    I think the real celebrities, from a visitor filtering perspective, are the games :)

    I think far more users ignore anything that isn't Chrono Trigger than anything that isn't zircon, for example. Even though I love me some zircon.

    Having a dedicated page that offers randomized tracks, and options to NOT show artist OR game might be kinda cool... but we are getting a little outside the original scope, which was just the functionality/integration being added to the workshop, specifically.

    To answer Ab's question, my intent with this discussion is to gather both ideas and concerns and help crystallize what I think the best & most pragmatic initial plan for this should be. Step two would be putting together something more concrete, based on actual technical capabilities TBD, and then letting folks poke holes at it - with the understanding that the INITIAL version of this won't be perfect, and that some things will have to be deferred.

    How long does it take?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The right answer is "too long". XD

    It definitely is.

    We've discussed this a bit internally today and have some ideas. I do want to mention a couple things:

    1. We keep posting more mixes each year than the previous, so at least we're moving in the right direction in that regard.
    2. We need to do more themed floods.
    3. Larry is going to get some help tagging mixes to be posted, as that tends to lag behind and probably has a trickle-down effect.
    4. We're going to handle DPs a bit differently for more internal transparency which should give me more to work with on writeups.
    5. We need to get over some humps before we can really dig in. Specifically, we need to close out the FF6 kickstarter once and for all. We also need to make some minor modernizations to the site.

    Minor Site Changes - Report Issues Here

    in Announcements

    Posted

    The thread replies on the remix page, show empty avatar boxes for me (I haven't got one), and djp (maybe because it's a custom avatar?) http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02855

    Firefox 26.0 on Xubuntu 13.04.

    --Eino

    Known issue. Yeah, custom avatar not working... I can probably fix that, but we ARE going to move to a new forum and it's likely we'll be doing profile photos instead of avatars, so it's not super-duper high-priority.

    Minor Site Changes - Report Issues Here

    in Announcements

    Posted

    Finally! Thank you thank you thank you thank you. And also now the page for Square indeed lists FF7 (formally published by Sony), and…

    Oh noes. I just found what can arguably be called a showstopper: the artist page for Uematsu-san (at http://ocremix.org/artist/3/nobuo-uematsu ) reads: "Fatal error: Call to a member function fetch_array() on a non-object in /home/ocremix/public_html/includes/php/classes/lists/GameList.php on line 146"; this is the entirety of the page (Mac OS X 10.7.5, Safari and Firefox).

    Confirmed. Not actually an issue with the code, per se - not happening on other artist pages, just Nobuo, because his queries generate the largest tmp tables on the MySQL side. Looking into it, obviously need to fix ASAP.

    Album covers for ReMixes that are part of albums don't seem to be showing up anymore. For example, "The Impresario" no longer has the balance and ruin cover art.

    Checked in Safari and Firefox, OS X 10.9.2.

    Should be fixed, thanks for mentioning!

    Minor Site Changes - Report Issues Here

    in Announcements

    Posted · Edited by djpretzel

    Pushed out some minor site changes tonight; please report any issues!

    1. Use of font awesome for icons
    2. New photo-based icons for game systems e.g. ps1-135.pngsms-143.pngsnes-144.png (still missing a few)
    3. Slightly redder color for orange link text
    4. Addressed URL trailing slash inconsistencies described at http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46272 - ReMix links now default to no trailing slash, and will redirect to remove it if present
    5. (up to) 20 mixes listed on homepage, artist pages, system pages, org pages, etc. (increased from 10)
    6. Reformatted embedded forum comments on mix pages, album pages to more clearly separate user name, include user avatar, and also process more BBCODE tags (e.g. http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02833 - see comments)
    7. Process game developer associations for organizations (previously just publisher) - this field still needs to be added to game detail pages, but we now have developer associations in place. This means that for a game like Mega Man 6, which has a US publisher of "Nintendo", it'll ALSO show up (as will mixes assigned to it) under the much more intuitive developer - Capcom. Another good example of this in action is the page for Rare, which now lists mixes for all the games published by Nintendo but developed by Rare.
    8. Announcement threads (like this one) on homepage now link to THREAD, not latest reply.

    There are a couple geekier under-the-hood changes, but that SHOULD be all of the meaningful forward-facing modifications. So, nothing major, but some hopefully some nice stuff that makes people happy. Should be the tip of the iceberg as we role out more incremental changes. V6 of the site is still on the agenda for 2014, but it's just going to be much easier to roll certain things out one-by-one and make sure they are thoroughly tested.

    Feedback welcome, and also any reports of issues/problems! If you're reporting a problem, the more info you can provide - timestamp, browser type/ver, OS, screenshot, etc. - the better!

    Plans for Expanding Workshop & Offering "Instant Upload/Feedback" Functionality to OC ReMix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    In contrast, another rating might be "how much did you enjoy this product?" I can find a technically low quality product very enjoyable (e.g. the Snakes on a Plane movie) or a technically high quality product unenjoyable (e.g. Transformers 2). This is a purely preference-driven rating, but also worth knowing. Multiple rating systems may be in order. Just figure out what should and shouldn't be mandatory, because people like me who know nothing about music may want to avoid evaluating on the technical stuff.

    I hear what you're saying, BUT... this is where ideals tend to collide with human psychology. It's often tough enough just to GET ratings/feedback at all, and while I hate to sound pessimistic about human nature here, generally speaking the more involved you make a feedback process, the less likely folks are to participate in it.

    Plans for Expanding Workshop & Offering "Instant Upload/Feedback" Functionality to OC ReMix

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here, in your code-typing arms: an EXP and leveling up system within the OCR site. You gain EXP for posting, maybe a little more for posting WIPs, for reviewing posted mixes, maybe a whole bunch of other things you can do to get EXP.

    And when you level up, you get some neat perk. Like you can change the color of your name or something. I dunno I haven't thought of the perks I just like to grind :-D

    Maybe a bunch of quirky achievements too

    Ultimately, while fun, stuff like this is lower priority than simply getting a functional & improved system in place. Once we get our shit in order and the dust settles, I'm not opposed to adding some incentives & achievements/reputation systems that track different activities, but it needs to be secondary to getting the basics working, and working well.

    Maybe the forum for posting finished remixes and posting WIPs should be separated into 2 separate subforums, one with rating, and one without. :-o

    We want to keep things as simple as possible, for artists AND visitors; I'd prefer to handle this in a single, filterable interface, but we'll see.

    D'oh, that was my bad reading.

    'Certified' is probably too close to 'Official', I'd guess. 'Showcased'?

    You could always use DJP'd. Then the judges really would djp.

    "Showcased" isn't bad.

    One OTHER idea we had was to refer to approved mixes as "OC ReMixes" and everything else as "Workshop Mixes" but we felt that could get confusing, too.

    Just had some thoughts on how compos could be integrated into this system.

    In general, there should be a system for tagging mixes with various attributes, but with compos, you could do it like this:

    Participants upload their entries but mark them as private, and PM the compo organizer with the link. The organizer would have the ability to un-hide the mixes and flag them with the compo name, round, bracket, season, etc.

    Another use of tags would be that producers of official albums could tag remixes as belonging to an album. Or this privilege could be reserved for the OCR team and applied only when an album is released.

    Speaking of albums and compos, another consideration is versioning. Sometimes the album version or compo version of a mix aren't the ones that get posted. Having multiple versions is handy to see the progress of WIPs, too. This could be as complex as a full VCS-like system, or as simple as a tag saying "Other versions of this remix: A B C"

    At least initially, we want to keep things as simple as we possibly can while people just learn the new system and transition from the status quo. Eventually, I agree the benefit to compos & projects should be considerable, ALTHOUGH, other improvements at the forum level might actually better address some of the stuff you're describing.

    I believe it would be "bonafide"

    Also, question. Would these changes have any effect on #ocrwip?

    Nope. I guess it'd be nice if they had the effect of increasing activity, but nothing beyond that... did you have ideas?

    that's completely clear dude. and again, i think it's necessary to make it work as intended. my point was you either need none of the two (likes&rating) or BOTH.

    i guess i could live with the featured mixes having likes, they're featured after all so exposure is already there.

    a little idea that i expect to not be very popular with you, but i'll post it anyway:

    one thing that was fun about Overlooked Remix was the personal top 11 every user could make to feature his most beloved mixes.

    the fact that it was an ordered list isn't important at all;

    if you view it as a way for everyone to do a little feature list of especially noteworthy mixes of a limited number, in no particular order, i could see it being a nice enhancement. it might even be a valid alternative to extending the 'likes' system to featured mixes.

    think of it as a mixtape that every user can compile in his profile, and you can click on it and stream through his picks like an actual album.

    note how i went to great lengths to not use the word "favorite" lol

    We'd actually already internally discussed PERSONAL top ten lists, or other types of playlists, as being fine. We'll also have blogs, which would provide a less structured way of doing the same thing. The key thing is that we wouldn't aggregate everyone's top ten into an OVERALL top ten. The idea has merit and could increase exposure without devolving into a popularity contest, so we've been considering it and will continue to, but it's also lower priority relative to just getting the workshop off the ground in a more automated/integrated fashion.

    Not a fan of likes for "featured" mixes. Not a fan of popularity contest systems. I never thought I'd see the day something like that would be added :cry:

    The only way I could see it working is if it added the mix to the user's list of liked mixes rather than being a part of public data.

    I think # of likes and who liked would be visible/public in some form when looking at the specific mix, but NOT when listing ALL mixes... it's a compromise. We need a balance between the community providing feedback on mixes and enhancing exposure through that feedback, and, as you say, avoiding popularity contests.

    I thought about this system:

    - WIP Workshop subforum (VGM)

    - WIP Workshop subforum (originals)

    - Showcase (Finished VGM)

    - Showcase (Finished originals)

    Once again, the problem of the quality would appear, because people have different opinions on what is finished or not. But it'd be simple to avoid this. For instance, posting in a SHOWCASE subforum will engage your own responsability about the quality of your products.

    Not a bad idea. Ultimately, if versioning the mix in place is too complicated, we could do something like this. But wouldn't it be duplicate data entry if you had a WIP and then wanted to mark it as finished to have to post it again? Wouldn't that annoy people?

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