The Ren'Ai Archive (renai.us, RAA) all-in-one thread

[PyTom]

I decided to throw some time at renai.us today. For a limited time, you can see the result at:

http://www.renai.us:8008/all.shtml

The new "all games" page. It's not done, by any means... but it should give you an idea of the new look of the website. I kinda merged the various designs into one, to come up with the look.

[mikey]

Excellent, nice to see this is moving forward.

It would probably be good to rearrange the items of an entry, mainly the webpage of the games looks a bit messy and breaks the really neat and clean feel of the whole page. Maybe something like this...

Sailor Moon Dating Simulator: Moon Maid
This is a Sailor Moon fan game. The goal of the game is to win love of Usagi Tsukino by asking her out on dates, giving her gifts or playing mini-games. You have a certain amount of days with one possible date per day. Answers selected during dialogues on dates will eventually affect Usagi's feelings.
Anton-P • 2007-04-17 • DatingSim • BxG • 13+ • 30 minutes • Permalink
Home: http://sailorvgame.org/mg/smds/smds_maid.htm
Download: Windows/9.8MB/v.1.1 • Mac/9.8MB/v.1.1 etc,...

Otherwise, it's really nice, the colors are especially well chosen. Maybe the top of the page could use some form of refinement, graphically - or maybe not. Logo, I don't think it's really necessary. The layout of the additional subpages on the top bar is also fine.

I think what the new site should be is cleaner and simpler. And this design is going the right way.

[monele]

Random thoughts : bigger game titles and some margin under them.
I'm also having a hard time finding the info I need when looking at each game block. Maybe having the genres/age/length in a table would help (you could scroll the page without moving your eye and catch a characteristic you're interested in). Also, there's no reminder of what means what... When I see : "VN • BxG • all • 1 hour", I wonder what "all" means. If I compare to another block, I understand it's the age, but otherwise... ^^;...
I wonder how feasible it would be to use sort of... icons for this.

[DaFool]

Yeah, just put more whitespace to unclutter it a bit.
And clues to the various classifications.

Very nice.

[mikey]

And clues to the various classifications..

Maybe these could be in the form of clickable (i) mini-icons on the sort/filter bar when it's done.

[PyTom]

Okay, I added a little more whitespace to the page. Just a little big, but hopefully it feels a little less cluttered.

I also changed the website links to the word "website", on the grounds that most people don't care about the actual URLs, and the ones that do can just look at the status bar.

The green tagbar will be changing to have slightly more verbose names for the various tags. For example, "16+" will change to "ages 16+", VN will become Visual Novel, and so on.

Hm... I'm trying to figure out what to do about Monele wanting the tag information in a table. The problem that I have is that a table would take up a lot of space vertically, which I think I want to avoid. The plus side is that the current design will start wrapping when we have too many tags, which may also be a problem.

renai.us has the problem that we're presenting a lot more information the other, similar sites, such as mikey's EBG list and visualnews's download site. The problem is, I don't see any way to remove that information... if anything, we may be adding a little more to each game.

I hate websites.

[Twar3Draconis]

Well, the one that you have running on port 8008 looks nice, although graphically lacking. The top navagation bar is at a different size than the main content, with ruins the overall appearence.

[monele]

I might have an idea. I see a lot of lost space under the screenshot. Why not keep the title + description + link on the left, and put all the detailed information under the screenshot? It could then appear as a list (ul, li) or, if icons are made, as a table of fixed size. It would need to be in a smaller font size though, I think. And maybe it would make the right column a bit larger to fit everything.

Good catch about the link turned to "website". People who want to know can always look in the status bar anyway (and those for whom this matters *know* where to look I think ^^)

[mikey]

I might have an idea. I see a lot of lost space under the screenshot. Why not keep the title + description + link on the left, and put all the detailed information under the screenshot? It could then appear as a list (ul, li) or, if icons are made, as a table of fixed size. It would need to be in a smaller font size though, I think. And maybe it would make the right column a bit larger to fit everything.

Not to fight you or anything, but actually, from my perspective, the site looks fine as it is - all the little unclear things like VN (means visual novel means [insert definition]) could be answered in the FAQ, that's what it's for. Actually, I'd structure the FAQ into:
- submission
- staff/site info
- glossary
And we'd be there. It would get rid of two buttons on the top bar, and allow us to keep using those short forms (VN, RPG, DS, etc...) which make the entry look rather neat. Not to say the column under the picture isn't a good idea though - I used it in the older versions of my Encyclopedia ^_^. But for the RAA I think the simpler the better.

One remark to the "website" solution, maybe renaming it to "game homepage" would be more clear, since the maker's name is usually linked with the maker's homepage (which in several cases includes his other games), while the "website" is the site of the specific game, that's why I'd think "game website" would be somewhat better.

[papillon]

mmm, random request - can I ask that Abigail not be listed as 'hanako games'? Because it's NOT, it's nothing to do with Hanako Games, it was made by me as an individual rather than me as a business concern, and there are a million and a half reasons why they shouldn't be officially associated.

'sjust papillon, that.

[mikey]

'sjust papillon, that.

Fixed.

[PyTom]

I've stuck a new version of the website up at:

http://www.renai.us:8008/

This version has most functionality working. I still need to go and add in redirections from old pages to new ones, and tweak some of the static pages. But this will likely go live fairly soon.

[mikey]

I've stuck a new version of the website up at:
http://www.renai.us:8008/
This version has most functionality working. I still need to go and add in redirections from old pages to new ones, and tweak some of the static pages. But this will likely go live fairly soon.

Hmmm, my comments on this, (or rather my suggestion) would be:

SORT this list by:
- name
- release date

FILTER (VIEW) by gameplay type
- Visual Novel
- Kinetic Novel
- RPG
- Simulation
- Other

FILTER (VIEW) by release year
- 2007
- 2006
- 2005
- 2004
- 2003
- earlier (as not to forget the YnM games)

FILTER (VIEW) by relationship
Boy pursues:
- Girl
- Boy
Girl pursues:
- Boy
- Girl

FILTER (VIEW) by other criteria
- all games
- macintosh games
- linux games

Not having the GENRE (romance, mystery, drama, comedy, etc... ) and SETTING (contemporary, fantasy, sci-fi, etc... ) is fine by me.

I'd of course prefer the VN and VN-linear terminology (as discussed some posts above) instead of KN in the GAMEPLAY, but I won't lose sleep over it if KN feels more appropriate and common.

And one final suggestion, I really think the font is generally too big, especially in the sorting and filtering columns, they take up a huge amount of space.

Also, "all games" should probably be at the top of the side column (and not in the special view), since that's going to be the most common options (e.g. I want to see everything the site has - it isn't very intuitive to scroll down to find this option).

So, my comments. Whatever can be done with it, I'll be happy about

[EwanG]

FILTER (VIEW) by relationship
Boy pursues:
- Girl
- Boy
Girl pursues:
- Boy
- Girl

I don't know about anyone else, but Camp Handiba will have Boy pursues Girl, Girl pursues Boy, and Girl pursues Girl. So would it come up under all three, or do you need a multi-POV filter?

[PyTom]

mikey>>> I flipped the ordering around a bit.

I think it should be "View" rather than filter, because (right now) it's more of a view then a filter operation. I expect a filter to always reduce the number of games I see, which isn't the case here.

I prefer KN to VN-linear. (We may want to put tooltips on these, to define them better.)

Can you give a screenshot of the font problems you're having? We don't set the font at all, so we should just be respecting the font sizes you have in your settings.

The "All Games" setting is at the bottom, because I want to discourage people from using it. With 60+ games, I'd rather people browse in a more specific way.

EwanG >>> My current idea is that a game with multiple relationships will be listed under all of them. See Cell Phone Love Letter for an example of this.