Ok, not as much restructuring per se as it is optimization.
After having cleaned up some of the "orphan" topics in "Other games" and "Other emulators" I realized just how messy the board list is. These suggestions will hopefully help parsing it (both there and at the main forum page) at least visually.
1. Rename "<Emulator>" boards to "<System> emulator: <emulator1> (<emulator2>, <emulator3>)"
Example: "Gens" becomes "Genesis emulator: Gens".
Rationale: uniformity.
2. Merge all emulators of the same system into one board.
Example: "Snes9x" and "ZSNES" become "SNES Emulators: Snes9x, ZSNES, bsnes".
Rationale: some of these boards are effectively dead, while other might pop up in case we get alternative rerecording emulators for existing platforms. This will, at the very least, reduce the clutter. I can append relevant tags to all threads to help discern them in merged boards, like it is done with hacks in game boards.
y/n?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Yes, although I fear that either the organization of the subforum will be compromised due mixing of emulator topics (famtasia vs. Fceu vs. Fceux), or that there will have to be sub-sub forums, leading to extra clicks.
FCEU and FCEUX are already mixed together and there seems to be no problem (also considering it's one of the most actively discussed emulator). Famtasia has only a few threads, all of which can be tagged, and they're all so old they will be buried deep in the topic list without being an eyesore. A subforum might be an interesting idea but I don't know how warranted it is.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
The issue would also arise with the snes emulators, but you're probably right in thinking it's a minimal problem. I say that it probably can't hurt anything to do a bit of cleaning up.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe also add a guideline for posting on those emulator forums: If your post is related to a specific emulator, your thread subject should start with "[<emulator>]". For example: "[gens] Some subject line here". Or something along those lines.
(Of course there will always be people who won't follow guidelines, but it could still help. And some admin could always rename threads if necessary.)
phpBB2 is very limited in regards to searching/filtering, so the best thing you can do is restrict the search to <system name> board and put <emulator name> in the search string together with whatever you're searching.
On the other hand, that's exactly a sufficient means to filter by tags.
At least I don't expect anyone to code additional functionality into it like Bisqwit has already done over these years. (I wonder, though, when will the time come to upgrade our forum software…)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Where shall we put VBA Rerecording and Mednafen Rerecording if we use subforums?
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days
<adelikat> no doubt
<adelikat> klmz, they still do
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
adelikat wrote:
Sounds good to me. Get a forum admin to change the names or any other reorganization, and you can use your mod powers to do the rest.
Bad...
If we want to go through with it, we should make the new forums / rename existing forums, and write some SQL to transfer all the existing threads where they need to go. Then we delete the old forums if applicable.
I'll go ahead with it if we have a decision on how to handle emulators which span multiple systems.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Sounds good. However we need to know how to handle Mednafen or any other emulator like it that we may use in the future.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
write some SQL to transfer all the existing threads where they need to go.
beware of phpbb. IIRC just changing a thread's forumid can cause weird side effects.
Such as?
Tub wrote:
Using the moderation functions is a lot safer.
If it means reusing their SQL, that can be done.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Things like "last post" dates and read notifications can get out of sync. While the former should fix itself over time, the latter can be disastrous. I've had a small personal board where every user saw new posts in a certain subforum every time, despite there being none. That was phpBB3 though, so I don't know how much of that applies.
If you wish to pry the whole SQL updates from the mangled bowels of the phpBB source, that'd work too. I haven't looked at that particular code, but knowing phpBB it'll be a few hundred barely commented lines operating on an undocumented database structure ;)
Sorry for taking a week too long. Assuming the largely arbitrary system order is kept intact, this would be the board list together with new names and descriptions.
PlayStation emulators: PCSX, pSX
Emulators for the original Sony Playstation.
NES emulators: FCEUX, FCE Ultra, Famtasia
Emulators for Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom Disk System games. Note that Famtasia is considered obsolete on this site.
SNES emulators: SNES9x, ZSNES, bsnes
Emulators for Super Nintendo Entertainment System games.
N64 emulators: Mupen64
Currently the only option for making TAS movies on Nintendo 64 is Mupen64.
GameCube and Wii emulators: Dolphin
Dolphin is an actively developed emulator aimed at both systems.
Gameboy family emulators: VisualBoy Advance
VisualBoy Advance emulates Nintendo GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, and Super GameBoy.
DS emulators: DeSmuME
DeSmuME is our current Nintendo DS emulator of choice.
SMS and Game Gear emulators: Dega
Dega emulates Sega Master System and Game Gear consoles.
Genesis, Sega CD and 32x emulators: Gens
Emulates Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Sega 32x, and Sega CD games.
Saturn emulators: Yabause
Our currently favored Sega Saturn emulator is Yabause.
TurboGrafx/PC Engine family emulators: PCEjin, Mednafen
Multi-platform emulators that support the entire TurboGrafx/PC Engine family of consoles, as well as Atari Lynx, WonderSwan, and Neo Geo Pocket Color.
PC emulators
Tools allowing to TAS PC DOS and Windows applications are also being developed.
Arcade emulators: FinalBurn Alpha, MAME
Emulators for arcade hardware, including CPS and Neo Geo families.
PlayStation 2 emulators: PCSX2
TAS support in PCSX2 is in the works.
Other emulators
Discussion of emulators for other systems.
This makes for 15 boards, compared to the current 16 (which don't include PS2 emulators yet, but likely should). Not as much of a quantity optimization, but at least it's easier to read now.
Note 1: I decided to make Mednafen's/PCEjin's board name as simple and generic as possible in regards to the emulated systems and expand the description to be sufficiently informative. It's been the only compromise so far, but I don't see it doing any harm.
Note 2: I decided not to include WinTASer/Hourglass/WinTAGE in PC emulators' board name because the name hasn't been decided upon yet.
If we are to change the system order, there are three non-arbitrary options:
1) systems' chronological release (most recent one for multi-platform emulators), descending
1. Wii + rest (2006) -- not accepted yet
2. NDS (2004)
3. GBA + rest (2001)
4. PS2 (2000) -- not accepted yet
5. N64 (1996)
6. PS1 (1994-12)
7. PC-FX + rest (1994-12)
8. Saturn (1994-11)
9. Sega CD + rest (1994-11)
10. SNES (1990-11)
11. GG + rest (1990-10)
12. NES (1983)
13. Other
--- ARC (????)
--- PC (????)
2) rerecording capabilities usage, descending
1. Saturn (1st submission: 2009-06-08)
2. ARC (1st submission: 2009-06-02, rerecording capabilities added in ~2004)
3. NDS (1st submission: 2009-04-30)
4. PCE (1st submission: 2009-04-06)
5. PS1 (1st submission: 2009-01-20)
6. SMS (1st submission: 2007-11-16)
7. PC (1st submission: 2007-03-24, 1st unofficial publication: 2003-12, no accepted emulator yet)
8. N64 (1st submission: 2005-11-16)
9. GBA (1st submission: 2005-04-11)
10. Genesis (1st submission: 2004-0x-xx)
11. SNES (1st submission: 2004-0x-xx)
12. NES (1st submission: 2004-01-15)
13. PS2 (no submissions yet, first complete TAS made in 2008?)
14. GC (no submissions yet)
15. Other
3) alphabetical order.
Alright, I hope my work in this thread is done. Time for admins to make their final decisions and commit changes.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
1) systems' chronological release (most recent one for multi-platform emulators), descending
In deference to the fact that this site used to be called nesvideos, I think if this option is used it should be ascending, so NES can be on top (until we get Atari 2600 rerecording)
IIRC, adelikat's reason for placing PSX on top was to minorly promote the fact that we're so cool to have rerecording on such advanced systems. :)
So I thought we might go a bit further with that, considering NDS, Wii and PS2 are still "current" systems.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3598)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4738
Location: Tennessee
moozooh wrote:
IIRC, adelikat's reason for placing PSX on top was to minorly promote the fact that we're so cool to have rerecording on such advanced systems. :)
So I thought we might go a bit further with that, considering NDS, Wii and PS2 are still "current" systems.
Yes
I it should be newest to oldest. Old farts like us already know there is our old fart NES rerecording available. This USED to be nesvideos. But our demographic isn't NEScentric anymore.
I like how the forums name would be renamed. I prefer older first, because it will be confusing I think. The order on the emulator board will be different than the order of the runs board.
In any case, I prefer older first.
