development
November 17th Release Notes
This latest release was a pretty big one for us. It introduced another major system that will lay the foundation for gamerDNA as we move into 2009. I have mentioned it in the past, but this new system allows us to start getting at the "WHY" behind what you like as a gamer. All games are not created equal. Just because you and I play the same games and like the same games, does not mean that we like them for the same reasons… and when it comes to your gaming identity, this is an important nuance that we as gamers want to recognize.
Read on for the full release notes. We will be producing some more blog posts and materials through the week that call out many of these new features and give you specific help in using them.
November 10th Release Notes
This week we worked on some new features at gamerDNA, most of which we will deploy NEXT week. We want to run them on the live site for a week to tweak them before we unleash them on everyone… so everything else is more of a bug fix.
I will say that the new features next week are about breaking down why you like the games you like. Just because you and I play the same game, does not mean that we like it for the same reason. As you build your gamerDNA, this nuance is important so you can accurately convey your gaming identity. We also hope it adds a fun dimension to your game list and provides all new ways to explore games played and enjoyed by people like you.
So look for that next week… this week, here is the full list:
Group Hosting Enhancements/Changes
- Added a new "HELP" link on the group management tab to help members with functionality. The docs are hosted on the company blog.
- New AION theme for group hosting!
- Added new documentation for lots of various parts of group hosting. Go check it out.
- Images in the group forum have a max width supplied so they do not break the layout.
- Made some tweaks to the filmstrip gadget for groups to be clearer when images are approved or not.
- In the Home page configuration of group hosting, when you configure an order for the homepage gadgets, they will now display in the correct order.
- Fixed an issue where guild applications were still pending, even when the user has applied.
- Fixed some IE7 cross-browser issues with the group recruitment configuration page.
- Trying to create a group event will now prompt you to enter a game, if you attempted to create a game event without one.
- When you remove yourself from a group, you are now redirected to the homepage after confirming, instead of refreshing the same page.
- When we display the games that your group plays, we now show the platform.
- Renamed the tabs on the group management interface so we could fit more of them.
Profile Enhancements/Changes
- All quiz behavior trait widgets are now shareable to various social networks sites. Click the "get & share" link in the widget for a list of networks.
- [next week] Built out a new homepage for gamerDNA that focuses on discovery.
- [next week] Built a new page for adding games to the system.
- [next week] Built a new page for helping you explain WHY you like the games that you do.
- [next week] Created a discovery page that runs off why you like the games you do.
General Enhancements/Changes
- Build a query that inserts traits and pre-populates the system.
- Tweak some settings that will allow caching of javascript and css to work properly.
- The most anticipated section on the games landing page shows the games by individual game/platform combinations.
- Adding some new caching configurations to make things go faster.
- The quiz results all use caching now, which is a big performance boost.
- Added new content to the results of the RTS quiz that better explains the buckets.
- Full caching put in on the Message of the Day component.
- Visual tweaks to the DNA panel pages with the new game type-ahead.
- Converted the games landing page to use lots of caching to increase speed.
- Fixed some CSS issues for the game typeahead on the games landing page.
- There were some strange redirect issues with the DNA panel pages. This has been repaired to behave correctly.
- Fixed a performance issue with the first step of group hosting due to the new game data.
- Fix the game type-ahead so that it handles ":" properly and provides better match results.
- Added some data to the individual game pages for platform in the game title, other platforms, and release dates.
- when adding a game using the type-ahead you will get a cancel link when you are entering platform in case you made a mistake.
- Cleaned up some CSS issues on the guild recruitment pages. Most of it was IE7 issues.
- Cleaned up some spacing in the gamerDNA panel around the game type-ahead.
- When clicking the Add Game button from a specific game page, it now jumps your directly into adding the game.
- Fixed an issue where the home button on the nav bar was not clickable in some instances.
- Fixed an issue that was preventing preloading of backgrounds in Css that was contributing to performance issues.
- Fixed issues where the nav bar was still wrapping due to some lengths of user names.
- When you are picking a game using the type-ahead and the game is selected, the platform now displays to enforce your selection.
- There were some errors being created by spam bots trying to submit the give-respect form. They have been blocked.
See you next week with all-new and improved stuff!
November 3rd Release Notes
This week’s build was pretty massive. We expanded our game data to include over 40,000 titles plus all sorts of game information that you will begin to see trickle into the product over the next few weeks. We had to go through some pretty old code and change how we relate everything to games… so if you see something weird, let us know! Here is the full list of changes:
Member Profile Changes
- Adding games using the gamerDNA panel now uses a type-ahead.
- Changed the game selection when adding a new character to use the type-ahead.
- Changed game selection to a type-ahead when adding or editing an image.
- Changed the game selection to a type-ahead when adding an experience.
- When using the game type-ahead in certain places, such as your gamerDNA panel, you can add games that we don’t currently have in our database. Type in the game name, and select the "Create ???" option. Then a select box will appear that invites you to choose a game platform. Choose a platform, and bam! Your new game is created!
- Fixed a bug that was causing logout requests from the profile pages to throw a 404 error.
- The LFG (Looking for Group) functionality for individual users has been removed from the site. It was never utilized, and the feature never lived up to expectations. We will revisit this in a much lighter-weight method in the future and focus on guild recruiting in new ways shortly.
- Fixed the DNA Panel profile like to point to the correct new profile location.
- Fixed the badges page layout to show the badges at full size in your member profile.
- Changed the social media feed link for adding a game to go to the user game page instead of the user profile homepage.
General Site Changes
- In the news section, you now choose the game filter, by typing in the game name of the game you want to check out news for, and then choosing the game from the dropdown that appears. If no news exists for your game, you can submit the news you find interesting!
- The games landing page has been updated to reflect some of the new awesome games data. Of note, anticipated games, and new releases are highlighted. Expect to see more in future builds!
- When filtering groups by game while in the group directory, choosing a game is now done via a type-ahead. Enter the game name you want, then choose it from the list that appears.
- All manually entered games have been merged with the new games… if you see duplicates, let us know and we can correct them.
- gamerDNA is busting at the seams with a massive influx of game data. This data has been integrated with current games, and we have added thousands of new games. We also have added platform, and genre classifications to the data model, and in the coming weeks you will see this data manifest itself more on the site.
- Added caching to the first page of the quiz to speed up the user experience and reduce load.
- Caching has been added to the quiz API that displays results to reduce load.
- Now preloading the background image for various menus to make appearance/hiding smoother.
- Now preloading large background images on the front page of the site, for smoother transitions.
- Caching the summary of the company blog where we show it, to improve page loading speed.
- Switched the individual game pages to use box art where we have it.
- Documentation added about the Curse WarDB content that can be added to the group forums.
- Fixed a small CSS bug in the forums that was the result of another hotfix.
- Fixed issues where the type-ahead for games was bleeding through some of the backgrounds on the pages.
- Fixed an issue with launching the DNA Panel from the navigation.
- Removed some duplicates from game type-ahead
- Fixed an issue where caching was preventing the avatar and other quicklinks items from displaying. they should now appear correctly despite the cache.
- Fixed the company blog summaries to pull more consistently across the site.
- Cleaned up how the login pop-up box renders for some browsers to clean up the design.
- Cleaned up some CSS design on the registration page.
- Added better caching to quiz, trait, and guild signature badges to reduce server load.
- Fixed a broken image on the homepage.
- Fixed an issue where some Javascript libraries were not loading correctly.
- Added some missing Javascript files to the header as required by some site features.
- Added back some missing content from the quiz landing page. It no longer causes performance issues.
- Made more changes to the global nav header to prevent wrapping for really long names.
- Fixed the case of gamerDNA on the dev blog call to action.
Group Hosting Changes
- New guild theme, Gears of War! Get it while it is hot!
When creating a new group, the game selection now uses a type ahead to properly pick the game and platform. - When managing your guild(or clan)’s games, you now choose the games you play by entering them in a type ahead. Enter the game name, then select the game from the list that appears.
- Cleaned up the invite form a little more to differentiate between the two options of inviting people via email or using a join link.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Shaiya theme to appear blank.
- When creating new guilds, the custom pages were being set to UNDEFINED preventing them from being edited.
- The games tab of the group management now uses the new type ahead for picking from all games.
- Fixed an issue on the guild image pix strip that was preventing scrolling.
- Changed the text on the group creation confirmation page and corrected a typo.
- Fixed issues where certain games were not working for recruiting.
- Cleaned up some styling that was conflicting with the button colors for certain guild themes.
- Fixed an issue where you could nuke your entire guild site by resubmitting a request from a browser that was closed right after a POST comment.
- If you have been invited to a guild, but you have not accepted the membership, you can now go to the Group’s page > Settings and there is a link at the top that lets you know you were invited but not a member and a link to remove yourself or respond to the invite.
- The group HTML editor no longer allows script blocks/tags in the editor. It converts them all to comments for security reasons.
- Fixed an issue where the guild story gadget was not displaying content when the shortname was in use instead of the guildID.
- Fixed an issue where removing Bartle score from the group signature images also removed the recruiting text.
- Added a caching message to the group signature configurator for leader and members. It can take up to 10 minutes for everywhere your signature is used to properly refresh any changes.
- Fixed image scrolling on group pages.
As we like to say around here… this is only the beginning. The first step was getting all of the game data in… now we have to add the special sauce! Look for that in a couple weeks.
October 22nd Release Notes
Here are the notes from Monday’s build. As always they are a little delayed because we had to clean up a few things (and continue to clean up a few things). Funny enough, during the build day we were published on WoW Insider which made it double fun dealing with new features and new amounts of traffic! Never a dull moment over here!
Profile Changes/Enhancements
- All games played over Steam now appear in your profile if you have the AKA added.
- FriendFeed is now supported for publishing your gamer activity automatically!
- If a game is marked as ANTICIPATING in your game list and we see you play it off a network, we reset the status so that it appears in your QUEUE for you to mark if you liked it or not.
- If you have your Sony Playstation Network AKA added, the PSN card will now appear on your profile at the bottom of the right column.
- Fixed an issue where the social media feed was truncating when it saw a & or =.
- If a user tried to click "upload" without adding an image to the field it will properly validate and no longer throw an error.
- If a social media feed had only one item, it will properly use a singular or a plural.
- Repaired some missing text from image upload activity sent to the social media feeds.
General Changes/Enhancements
- Made some edits to the registration confirmation to better explain some new features.
- Updated the initial private message users receive when joining to showcase new features.
- Added a new Tools drop down to position the Developer API and the Warhammer sig generator. Anything new we put together can live here for more visibility.
- Made performance improvements to everywhere that we display experiences, speeding up counts for things like paging.
- The Alliance co-branded registration is complete. It will allow sites in the alliance to link into our registration system using OpenID.
- We moved one step closer to having over 40,000 games in the system for use in your profile and in groups.
- Groups link was taking users to the wrong page. Routing fixed.
- Fixed the quiz results to only return 5 games instead of the dozens it was returning in error. This was due to an API change that altered the count default.
- Solved a bug where registration would let you submit even if the validation did not pass. The Registration did not complete, it would simply refresh… but it was unclear what was happening. This is now much clearer.
- Corrected an issue that was causing errors in some cases when trying to log in from the member sub domain pages.
- Added Sorcerer class to Warhammer game information.
- Fixed a scenario where the global nav header was appearing on the wrong side of the page for some users.
- Added a min-width to the nav bar to prevent it from collapsing when the browser is re-sized to be too small.
Group Hosting Changes/Enhancements
- New customizable signatures launched for use with your guild/clan/group!
- Permission system extended to the image gallery for guilds to give guild leaders control over image posting.
- Curse WARDB support for Warhammer Item markup added to all forum pages in the site (public and group).
- Cleaned up some CSS bugs in the group layouts.
- Changed the functionality for managing the time that you play and ensuring that it appears correctly in the guild directory. Also fixed the time zone popup.
- Fixed a long standing issue in the Age of Ownage themes where it was not using rounded corners correctly.
- Made some more tweaks to the guild editor so that it is showing in IE7. We added a show/hide button so that if it doesn’t load, users can at least manually load it.
- Fixed up the roster to work better with IE7.
Our next big goal is to work on more performance issues… do some clean up on the group invite process… and complete the roll out of our new game database which impacts many places in the site
Are you a Ninja Developer?
It also takes discipline, and when I think of a fanciful character who combines both agility and discipline, I think of one thing…
Ninjas.
Ninjas are agile, but they’re also disciplined. If the first pillar of modern development is agility, they add three more categories of expertise: learning, knowledge and confidence.
In computer gaming, a “ninja” is a pejorative term for a quick-to-act player who steals an item out-from-under the group they’re with. For gaming this is a Bad Thing, but for development organizations—this is good. There’s a wealth of Open Source code, and most problems have already been solved. Sure, every ninja has their secret move—and every great development organization has some special mojo they use to dominate the competition… But people have already mastered and made available the things you’ll need to know. That’s where the learning comes in. A good ninja needs to look outwards, know how to search, know how to be a good student of others. If you’ve read the Cathedral and the Bazaar, that means accessing the bazaar of readily-made components—because today that bazaar is hella big. Maybe it should even be renamed the Dojo.
Knowledge is about knowing both your enemies as well as your friends (your customers). It means being data-driven. It’s making metrics, analysis and a deep understanding of your users a central part of the product development process. It’s using things like A-B testing to help you know what works best, about partnering with users up front to have them guide you to better decisions and then developing the measurement systems that tell you whether you’re enhancing the stuff that people really care about.
Confidence is about integrating QA into the process. Most people will tell you that test-driven development is an important element of Rails (or agile development in general). Yet with most RoR shops that I’ve seen, QA and testing are still more of the old-school, reactive method. Great QA includes unit-testing and mechanized, functional testing as part of the up-front process. The advantage isn’t just better quality. This gives you the confidence you need to deploy ideas and changes rapidly without the level of worry this would normally entail.
Lastly, and this isn’t a pillar of ninja development—but rather a fact. Anyone who has watched a ninja movie knows that a small team of inspired, highly trained ninjas will defeat a near-infinite number of clumsy ninjas who might wear the right costume but don’t truly pursue the righteous path.
(GuildCafe is hiring. We’re looking for bright, energetic people who love games and want to be part of the development organization I’ve described above. If you aspire to some of the same ideals—and whether you’re a Master or a dedicated student—we’d love for you to talk to us about becoming part of the future of social networks, gaming and ninja development. Drop us a line at: jobs AT guildcafe DOT com.)
