New Website Ideas

Hey everyone,

I'm working on the new website for Scirra. It's going to be a lot more interactive, lots more content, and a real emphasis on resources/tutorials/articles etc. Me and Ash are also going to have an integrated blog, so you can keep up with the bleeding edge of Scirra developments which we think will be a valuable and genuinely interesting feature for all of you.

Anyway, if you have any ideas of what you would like to see on the new website, now is a good time to suggest them! It's going to be a long running project, I'm spending a lot of time getting everything absolutely right. No matter how ambitious or mundane (eg, simple usability features) your suggestions are, I would love to hear them so the website will steer in the correct direction.

So feel free to post your suggestions and feature requests, and if people like them and they are feasible I'll do my best to put them on the roadmap.

Tom

Edit: We are also hopefully going to be moving to a much more powerful server when the site is ready for launch, so consider there to be no technical restrictions on your suggestions.

Edit: We are also hopefully going to be moving to a much more powerful server when the site is ready for launch, so consider there to be no technical restrictions on your suggestions.

Ok, how about a webchat like http://gamejolt.com/ ?

Got a stackexchange.com - like community driven Q&A system?

First one, might be a bit ambitious but super nice:

1. A searchable list of plugins (look at how the Firefox project did it). I would love to see this included in the actual program as well with automatic install but great to have it on the web page as well to "show off"

2. Simple download. The download button should stand out more in my humble opinion since if not the main feature of the page at least one of them. When clicked the download page should basically tell you exactly what to do from when you click the download link to when you enter the program + give you links to "getting started / first time user" tutorials. This to show new potential customers how easy it really is. Needed if this is to become a paid application. It would also be nice to be able to easily access a list of previous releases.

3. Large fonts. With tutorials and general help sections readability becomes important. Design for easy reading. Big fonts but not too big.

> Edit: We are also hopefully going to be moving to a much more powerful server when the site is ready for launch, so consider there to be no technical restrictions on your suggestions.

>

Ok, how about a webchat like http://gamejolt.com/ ?

We already have a chat room (see top menu on this page), but expanding this to be more integrated on the new site is definitely a possibility, but probably will be considered in more depth once we have most of the really important functionality down.

Got a stackexchange.com - like community driven Q&A system?

I love Stack exchange/stack overflow, amazing resources A Q&A system again would be something to consider, but execution is incredibly important with such systems so would need to be designed very well and not detract too much from the purpose of the forums.

Have you seen http://area51.stackexchange.com/ by the way? It lets you propose a new stack exchange site, if enough people wanted a Construct 1 they would launch it, might be a better option when we have enough users!

game gallery?

1. A searchable list of plugins (look at how the Firefox project did it). I would love to see this included in the actual program as well with automatic install but great to have it on the web page as well to "show off"

Excellent idea, at the moment it can be quite hard to find a list of plugins, a more user friendly library is definitely on the to do soon list.

2. Simple download. The download button should stand out more in my humble opinion since if not the main feature of the page at least one of them. When clicked the download page should basically tell you exactly what to do from when you click the download link to when you enter the program + give you links to "getting started / first time user" tutorials. This to show new potential customers how easy it really is. Needed if this is to become a paid application. It would also be nice to be able to easily access a list of previous releases.

Also a good suggestion, I'll try and make the flow from finding Scirra.com to downloading it and using it a short and user friendly as possible. We'll be hosting the downloads ourselves so there is not need for external hosts on this, should be a lot better.

3. Large fonts. With tutorials and general help sections readability becomes important. Design for easy reading. Big fonts but not too big.

I've already done the design, I think it's very user friendly and easy to read, but when the site is out I'll definitely welcome any comments/suggestions on how to make it more readable.

game gallery?

Yes, I would love to have this on the new site. There are a lot of technical reasons why this is harder to execute than you might think, but all the limitations can be overcome. It's a big feature that we want to have on the site for sure.

One idea I had people might like, is allowing users to pick subdomains. So for example, Tom.Scirra.com will point directly to your profile which eventually will be extensive and link to all your games and websites etc. It could be optional, you don't have to have one, but generally do people like this idea?

It's a good idea, but without a "game section" type of functionality I have hard to see what the use for it would be. Maybe focus on it later on?

I'm not sure if C2 will ever have a multiplayer option (I'd love one!), but you could rent out a small amount of server space and bandwidth for users to test out the multiplayer options.

Users who don't have a server can create a game or try out the function without having to rent a whole server and setting up the whole thing. (And for testing purposes, they don't need a lot of server bandwidth and space and probably don't need to connect more than 2 computers).

In return, you could ask for a monthly fee or something like that.

The profile idea sounds pretty good. It'd also be a good idea to show off a few awesome games made with C2. To give people an idea of what they can do with the engine.

Server software hosting (+ client management) could be a killer feature but sounds seriously hard to pull off well and secure. Hats off if you find a way to do it

Made the whole site with Construct 2!

Or, at least, the frontend

That'll be an awesome promotion for the engine ^^

I think easy multi player games are one of the most exciting potential features for C2. A service to rent out multi player, or even host services for multi player requests, is one that we will consider when multi player is more supported by C2.

I don't like the idea of charging people to test it out, so if possible we will have some tools so you cant test it for free (think of an exe you can just run on your home PC that acts as a very simple server). I'll talk to Ash and have a think about that!