SpaceSimCentral

I will probably make a new forum 'miscellaneous' to put posts that don't really fall in any category and to talk about topics outside of space games. Thanks everyone for the feedback on the site and it will all be included in the next update, promise

Darkone wrote:
-snip-
Remove the Arcade?Or perhaps I misunderstood, (mod)?I hope you wont remove the arcade but it could use some trimming and cleaning up.Well, it is your site of course ,) so I shan't tell you what to do.I will just go and cry a bit in the corner for a while, then return as usual.

Bouitaz wrote:
I hope you wont remove the arcade but it could use some trimming and cleaning up.
What do you mean by this Bouitaz? Can you give me some specifics on this? I just looked at stats, which was 388 total plays in 1.5yrs. That's not even on game play a day. but I can keep it and add to the game pool. I just didn't even bother with it because no one really seemed to be playing it all that much and got no feedback on it at all. So if people really want it in there I will keep it and update the games in it.There has been no updates to this arcade (mod) since i installed it so any issues I might have to custom code something. But I have used this before and the arcade itself usually runs fine.But please post your thoughts on this.

Darkone wrote:
What do you mean by this Bouitaz? Can you give me some specifics on this?
What I meant by cleaning is that at least one game does not work (rescue someting), and others are perhaps a bit crude or, how to put it, less than stellar work.
Darkone wrote:
I just looked at stats, which was 388 total plays in 1.5yrs. That's not even on game play a day. but I can keep it and add to the game pool. I just didn't even bother with it because no one really seemed to be playing it all that much and got no feedback on it at all. So if people really want it in there I will keep it and update the games in it.
The Arcade is usually played when one first arrives I've noticed,and adds to the whole "flying thing" you've got going here.It could perhaps be modified to work in a community with competitions and such,but would probably involve way to much work, so that is a no go.However, when one has read all there is one can always relax with some casual games.Unless it takes too much to maintain, space, or integration problems, then I see no harm in letting it be?I am of course only one voice, and as I said earlier,you can go ahead and delete it (if no one else feels like me),I will just morn some, then move on. They usually say that if no one complains, then you are doing things right, you know. ,)

Bouitaz wrote:


Darkone wrote:
They usually say that if no one complains, then you are doing things right, you know. ,)


Or, don't care ..

micmanos wrote:
Or, don't care ..
Well, yeah ok, that too. ,)

More than likely Bouitaz you will see the Arcade mod after the upgrade. I just wanted people to step forward and let me know they use it I will look to add new games before the upgrade when I get the time to search for them. If you have a list of the games that do not work please post them so I can remove them.I don't have the bandwidth to try all of them out so I depend on the community to let me know when stuff in the arcade needs fixing

I believe Rock Face Rescue is the only one that doesn't work;http://www.spacesimcentral.com/arcade.php?mode=play&g=23

Did a bit of spring cleaning last night in the forums and moved some attachment pics from the forums to the gallery and relinked. If people spot any bogus posts or posts you think should be moved just let me know.
Bouitaz wrote:
I believe Rock Face Rescue is the only one that doesn't work;http://www.spacesimcentral.com/arcade.php?mode=play&g=23
Took car of it

More than likely unless something comes up between now and this coming weekend. I will probably be doing the site update then since it will be a long weekend for me here in the states (Memorial Weekend - Remember the troops). I am hoping that it should only take a few hours, but you never know with these things. Moving a database that is several releases old to something new always seems to have some issues.Here is the tentative schedule for it all:- Friday: Disable user registration and lock the forums (about 9-10pm) this will stay this way until I think everything is working. I have to install something during this process after the database is migrated over and all new files are FTP'd to the server.- Sat: Mainly testing and last min tweaks and I hope to have the site running by the evening. So basically a 24hr downtime. So I hope you can survive until I have it all running :)I have been trying to do the small things to help speed the process up but there is still a lot to do once I re-upload everything. If all goes well everything should look generally the same but there will be a few new things and all the programs and scripts have been updated to their latest versions. I have done so much custom stuff to the site that its hard tracking it all down.

Going to enable gzip on the server and see if that helps with page load times. Google is complaining that some of the pages take up to 3 sec to load and they recommend I turn it on. Your damned if you do and damned if you don't because when you enable it the server has to extract the contents to display it anyway so I guess i'll try it and see how it goes for a month. So if anyone notices a degrade in the performance just let me know.

Update 11/1:Been a little while since I have done a official update of what has been tweaked and added, so here it is:- Updated the gallery to the official release version, now running 3.0. I will look into personalizing it a bit more when I get time and there is a phpbb bridge that is being worked on that could tie into your site login credentials (stability will be the issue with this bridge).- Tweaked the Knowledge Base to have the layout look correct, had some alignment issues.- Fixed the issue by adding a mod to fix issue of the style getting messed up when linking in a large img using the bbcode IMG tag. Still the favored method is using the HSIMG tag.- Added a post ranking system to the forum area (request from Geraldine)- Updated the links and about pages.[/hr]Things that I will be working on... and hopefully implement by the end of the year.- New store link layout and maybe with some help get some designs for some actual SSC merchandise Some free stuff could be given to the members that their art is picked.- Add at least 20 games to the KB- Customize the gallery (if possible) to look like the rest of SSC.Anything people want to have fixed or have some ideas please post them and I will see what I can do.

Darkone wrote:
Update 11/1:- Added a post ranking system to the forum area (request from Geraldine)
Thanks Darkone! Also nice list of other updates too

The anti-bot question during registration for these forums is bizarre and difficult to use. It asks a question like "What planet in our solar system has rings?" Three of the options are correct (Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune), but adding them in the order they exist in our system doesn't satisfy the question. Same with the question "Which Star Wars films starred Mark Hamill?" If you add episode 4, 5 and 6 to the box in that order, it's still wrong? Then of course it locks you out for a period of time because you missed the questions too many times. Just wanted to bring this up, because I doubt I'm the only one that got frustrated with it.

Thanks BaggerX for the feedback on this.It is probably because the mod isn't intelligent enough to know you have the right answers but just in different order. Hmm, because I have to put in the answers and I think it is only accepting the default order I had them in. Maybe i will refine all the questions to only one answer to solve this issue. You are the first person to bring this to my attention so thanks and I will look into fixing it with adding/refining the questions.Have to admit, I don't get any spam at all with all the measures I take :)If anyone has a question and answer they want to see in the registration form just let me know. It should be space/scifi specific.

Fixed it BaggerXReplaced those two questions with:In what movie SW movie did Obi Wan die in?Which Apollo mission put humans on the moon?All questions I believe have one answer now so that should fix the registration question problem.

:DI could not answer either of those questions, DarkOne!What's wrong with captcha? (And not the impossible-to-read kind.)(PS: I think obi-wan died somewhere between Episodes 6 and 1, but I wouldn't swear to it.)

I had captcha for a while and noticed a lot of spammers signing up and it was a task to keep them in check. There is captcha reading tools out there for automating this task. I do the registration this way, so I know your not a bot and that most of these questions are really easy to the scifi gamer. C'mon you didn't know Obi Wan died in Episode 4 or that Apollo 11 mission put humans on the moon :)I can gladly make it easier I just need some questions and answers thrown my way and i will gladly add more or remove the hard ones.But I have to admit since putting in the sortable captcha I have had no spam at all. But I am open minded about other alternatives.

How would I know which of the Apollo missions made it to the moon? There were quite a few, and a couple of them did not work out so well, as I recall. The mission numbers would be quite difficult to sort out, without looking them up. Oh, and they all happened before I was born. ;)I had to look up Obi-Wan to be sure... He died in 2000, which was after the release of Episode One. However, he appeared in all six episodes, due to odd twists in the space-time continuum.OK, so there was that scene in Episode Four where Darth Vader vaporized Obi-Wan, but that did not slow him down much. :)It's a question that does not have a single, clear, answer (even if you look it up). That's all I meant. Like the question about the number of planets with rings. :)You might as well ask Princess Leia's favorite card game. Or the number of planets in our solar system. Or the name of the nearest star. ;)And, by the way, Star Wars questions tend to screen out anyone under the age of 40. Is that really your goal?I understand the problem, but I think you are trying too hard. There are a wide variety of knowledges and experiences here, so it might be difficult to ask any one question that everyone could answer. To be fair, you would probably have to ask several questions, and allow a miss or two, which makes for a complex quiz.

simple maths equation written as words ieten plus twenty = thirty or 30