#67661 - expos1994 - Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:32 pm
Here's a link to a new website I put together for homebrew games. You can rate games and write reviews of other games.
http://www.homebrewreview.com
It is a site for all homebrew systems, but as of now there are only 11 GBA games listed. Feel free to use the Submit A Game tool to add more games to the site. In order to do that you'll have to create an account, but that's a pretty simple task.
There's a link at the bottom of the homepage to submit comments/suggestions. It would be great if you guys could help me iron out any bugs you see. I tried to be thorough and get them all, but I'm fairly new to this whole web development thing.
Also use that if you are the author of a game and want me to change some detail about it, like the description (I might automate that in the future).
Just let me know if you have any problems.
Thanks,
Chris
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Homebrew Review.com
#67746 - gauauu - Fri Jan 20, 2006 2:45 am
Looks great!
One thing I'd recommend is adding the total rating score on the browse games page. So people looking for a good game can see at a glance which ones have been rated as good games, without clicking through each game (which could take awhile once there are a lot of them).
Another suggestion might be a one-sentence super-short description or tagline for each game, to display on the browse page as well. Something like:
ClacQ - Etage97 - Try to build a bridge to protect an egg - 8/10
Tetanus on Drugs - Damian Yerrick - A tetris clone with a drug-induced display - 10/10
Also, what's the difference between action and arcade categories?
#67758 - expos1994 - Fri Jan 20, 2006 3:33 am
gauauu,
Thanks.
I'll try implement your ideas. I'm going to wait a little bit until there's some more ratings on the games. So they scores can average out a little.
I guess there is a fine line between action and arcade. I suppose it's up to the person submitting the game. I kinda thought... 'oh crap. I forgot arcade.' But somebody came along and submitted a game with arcade as the genre, so I didn't have to add it. Action games...I don't know. All games have to have some action or they wouldn't be any good.
Thanks for your advice, I'll add that in there.
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Homebrew Review.com
#67790 - keldon - Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:17 am
My suggestion is to state other games which each game is like. This would make it easy to find a game like gunstar heroes without having to search through every shooter / platform, or games of a similar description to find it.
#67870 - expos1994 - Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:45 pm
Keldon,
I will add your suggestion. I'm going to wait until I get some more games on the site and I'll put that on there as another way to search.
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Homebrew Review.com
#68723 - sumiguchi - Thu Jan 26, 2006 3:15 pm
Very nice site indeed!
On nice feature would be an RSS feed to show the most recently added games (like you have in the bottom right of the main page.
#69067 - Darkflame - Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:37 am
Ok, I adding a suggestion, but I'll repeat it here anyway:
A seperate section for mb roms,aka roms that would work on the gbamp :)
Its so annoying trying out all the (small-sized) roms and finding ones that work by trail and error.
#69957 - gauauu - Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:44 am
Also, when rating games...if I rate a game once, then leave and come back to the same game, it still offers me a chance to rate the game....
Does this mean I can vote repeatedly, or does it change my previous vote?
#69988 - expos1994 - Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:42 pm
Good question. The answer is it changes your vote. So you can vote over and but it will keep on changing it.
I didn't want people to be able to stuff the ballot boxes, but I didn't want them to be restricted in case they changed their mind.
Also, I didn't forget your suggestions... :)
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Homebrew Review.com
#70008 - Palamon - Fri Feb 03, 2006 6:50 pm
Definitely need to display the rating and a short description of the game when you search. Otherwise, browsing will be a pain when you are faced with 100 games you don't know about and only want to find one interesting platformer to play for awhile.
Also, a sort by rating would be good as well.
Possibly putting the newest, unranked games at the top of the list (ie ones that have less then 5 votes or something.
Then putting the highest ranked ones in alphabetical order, then next highest, and down the list for each genre.
I know these suggestions have been said elsewhere on the post, I just wanted to reenforce how important those features are to a good review site, a site that homebrew games really needs.
Especially since in just about every other homebrew site, you have to weed through tons of tech demos and half done games and demos just to find that rare game that is actually finished to a fun playable level.
#70089 - shen3 - Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:53 am
Hi;
There seems to be a bug in the rating system.
Currently sushi the cat has a score of 9, with 1 vote.
It also has 1 review, which gives it a 7.
So shouldn't the score be 8 with 2 votes?
Shen
#70149 - expos1994 - Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:40 pm
Yeah,
I know it's kind of silly, but the review scores are independent of the ratings.
Since you can change your rating over and over, I would have to update the review score each time in order to keep them matched up. Instead I decided to just have the review scores not factor in to the overall score.
I know it's silly. I figured if there were more votes for Sushi the Cat, it wouldn't be noticeable that the review scores weren't factored in.
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Homebrew Review.com
#70201 - Palamon - Sun Feb 05, 2006 12:28 am
One thing you could do is when the user submits the review, do the normal review stuff and also submit/replace their rating for the game with their review score.
That way the people that write a review don't have to vote twice, and they can still change their rating, but not for the review they wrote.
Plus I don't think many people will be changing their rating for a game. I mean I know after I decide on a rating, it sticks unless I clicked on the wrong button.