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Retheme Update to the LaunchBox Games Database - January 2024


faeran

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Hi Everyone,

We just deployed an update to the LaunchBox Games Database website that's been brewing behind the scenes for quite some time. This is the first of many updates to the Games Database that we want to get to in the future.

The main change that you will instantly notice is a brand new theme that has been applied site-wide. It showcases a more modern design, while providing us the flexibility in the foundation to make future additions to the UI easier.

We've also made a number of smaller changes across the database, including:

  • New genres have been added: Pinball, Compilation
  • A new release type has been added: Early Access
  • The following platforms have been added: PICO-8, VTech V.Smile, Microsoft Xbox Series X/S
  • Removing duplicates from the platform list and the clean up a few other platform related issues

In the short-term we'll be hard at work converting over the Collections page to the new theme, which should be the last piece of the retheme puzzle. We will also be looking into cleaning up bugs, and polishing up the site where we can.

Moving forward, we have a lot of long-term and short-term plans with the LaunchBox Games Database website that we can't wait to share. In the meantime, enjoy the update, and expect more things to come in the future.

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15 minutes ago, faeran said:

New genres have been added: Pinball, Compilation

In case it's not clear. The new genre "Compilation" should be used for games that have multiple games within them. 4-in-1 packs for example, or "Anthologies" that allow you to play several games within that same master game. This should cut down on the need or desire to add every genre under the sun on a title because it has 4+ games in it with wildly different genres for each game.

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1 hour ago, Rlad said:

Existing titles list looks like this in Firefox Android.

Screenshot_20240131-201305.thumb.png.e2a6b55c9641a5ffebfc724e65fcf45d.png

Interesting, I use Firefox on Android and don't see happening in either card or list view. What version of Android and what version of Firefox are you using? Are you using any Firefox addons?

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Thanks for the update LB team. One thing I noticed when moderating: there's no mention of the game's platform on the moderation page; you would have to click the game and figure it out yourself. It could be helpful for when some media gets added for the wrong platform/version

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14 hours ago, faeran said:

Interesting, I use Firefox on Android and don't see happening in either card or list view. What version of Android and what version of Firefox are you using? Are you using any Firefox addons?

Android 9

Firefox Latest

Add-ons Disabled

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10 hours ago, Rlad said:

Android 9

Firefox Latest

Add-ons Disabled

Maybe you can tell me the specific device you are using, and what that game list is.

9 hours ago, Thanatos_Prime said:

Is anyone else having issues changing releases from Year to Month-Day-Year or am I just not figuring it out?

I also cannot review past the previous pages in pending changes, I can only see the first page there.

Yes, this looks to be a bug, thanks for finding it. We'll put it on the short list.

On 1/31/2024 at 6:43 PM, TheNewClassics said:

Thanks for the update LB team. One thing I noticed when moderating: there's no mention of the game's platform on the moderation page; you would have to click the game and figure it out yourself. It could be helpful for when some media gets added for the wrong platform/version

Noted, we have that on the short list.

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Very nice, happy to see nice progress on the database and big future plans ahead! :)

One question that came into mind right away: Why are games titles and platforms in capital letters now? It's quite hard to see if a title is correctly written. For example: The Secret of the House in the Cave. Might be written "The secret Of The house In THE CAVE."  I was also wondering what does the database say about the SNES game "Ballz 3D: Fighting at Its Ballziest" shouldn't it be "at its" instead of "at Its". Yes, I know I could just remove the LB ID and search it again and see if there's any change. T
here is one way I can see the letter case of the game title directly from the website database: from the browser tab, but it's not a very practical way, especially if you have multiple tabs open you can only partially see the title. I would still recommend prioritizing practical ways of displaying information from a database instead of prioritizing modern visual look. And I also noticed the list view doesn't remain in memory when switching into the next page.

Edited by kurzih
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello. I'm submitting changes and noticed that the changes status now only goes back to 10 entries rather than the full history of requested changes (or at least I can't see any control to go back a page). Is this intentional to lower resource usage? It'll impact my submissions because I'd like to be able to see whether my submissions were approved or not and make adjustments or corrections if they weren't, i.e.- limit # of submissions to 10 active at any time.

image.thumb.png.323463bdb8700adc9a6631ae80885e5a.png

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16 hours ago, Rlad said:

@faeran Using a '+' in search gives a server error.

We will look into this and hopefully get it fixed before the next deploy.

On 2/18/2024 at 8:44 AM, k_rollo said:

Is it possible to optionally revert to the old theme?

Unfortunately, this would not be possible at this time. The theme would need to be reworked to fit into the new backend, and then we'd have to create a theme system that would allow users to switch between multiple themes. Then, moving forward, we'd have to remember to support any new features in all themes we end up creating.

It's not out of the question, but at this time I think we are mostly themed out and ready to start adding new DB features :)

 

Thanks everyone. We've read all the constructive criticisms about the database up until this point, and we will be making an update that will address as many of them as we can, which should get deployed either this week or next.

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