Important: While the DB is put up for feedback and some testing, I basically know what needs to be done and in the process of doing it. The current system should not be spammed with random testing, upload and fill out data as you would if it was 100% launched. As in, keep it real. It will all probably be earsed, but pretend like it's not. At the end, we will do limitation / hack / etc tests. Hoping official launch of real, non-test version in the next 2-3 days.

Still needs to be done / bugged / working on / etc
General
- Overall code and html clean up
- Overall visual improvements
- Permissions / security / etc
File Data
- Handle images better
- Upgrading files (eg: new versions)
- Find and do all the colors in map names (w/ more closer color codes)
- Authors
- Block title edit on uploaded maps
- NEW: Unability to mark file opensourced
File View
- Reporting (inappropiate, unplayable, wrong info)
Splash page
- Make it sexy with more relevant data
Comments
- Pages (atm display limited last 15)
- Reporting (ie: inappropiate, spam)
Favorites
- Add session code to prevent spamming links
- Go back to last real page after marking
- Notices sent to all people that favorited the file upon upgrade
File upload
- There's a problem with a certain type of protection that corrupts player force data
- There's another problem with titles being unlisted upon upload...
- Hopefully, eventually make screenshots automatically upon uploading
Search
- Code it
Rating system
- Code it
Admin side
- Code it
Site stuff that affects DLDB
- Special characters... I will lessen the security to allow korean and other characters
- Characters in the url... ATM, white space will crash the script (%20), I will change that as well.



Intentions / Concept / Features
Learning from v4's failure, the drive behind v5's database was to be more user friendly and be less tedious on the admin side. From the crappy third party code that eventually ate up tons of bandwidth, v4's system was hacked into ugliness. So here's a list of things that haven't changed:
You can upload stuff.
Now a list of what has changed:
Tags, similar to like all video and image sites, are meant to be searchable terms where the content can not provide it itself. As no script can listen to a video or look at an image and equate words with the content, tags are meant to solve the problem. The tag system will replace categories to almost all extents. If the community as a whole takes care of said tags, it will be a beautiful system. Essentially, we will still have our traditional categories, one click away, with tags such as "Bounds", "Arena", "Movie" and so forth. Melee will benefit the most, I would assume, with labels such as symmetrical, asymmetrical, micro... etc...
Mods, sounds, and tools should all fit in very nicely as well.
This really depends on the community because, like i said, it could be beautiful with upkeep... or it could be a complete failure. Hopefully the community as a whole establishes some type of tag etiquette for certain types of files. With tag and search tracking, hopefully showing tag statistics will help out.
Community editing, while there still will be a DLDB team to check file reports, scan for viruses, and clean out the crap, the community can edit any file that isn't locked. Anyone can lock any file, effectively saying, for whatever reason, they will be responsible for and manage the file's data (though this might change if abused). Anyone can upload a screenshot or change the tags. So because of such, it won't take much to get banned from the dldb and possibly the site for screwing around. If you don't know exactly what to do, stick to your own uploaded files and ask for help.
Automatic map data, with a lot of thanks to clokr, the DB will grab map title, desc, tileset, dimensions and player setup.
File linking, some files will have practically indentical versions. Such as, some maps (team arena) are the same map with different speeds. So now they can be easily kept together.



Some ideas I'm still considering:
Major projects area. An idea from the possible merger of other sites, this was supposed to close the gap between SEN and CC. Basically, a production thread turned into a production workspace. It's own forums, page with user html, etc. I'm not sure how practical this would be.


SEN's Policy:
We are pro-whatever-the-author-wants. We encourage open source maps, and there is a tag to label your maps as such. SEN will not automatically unprotect your files.


There was a lot of good features discussed in various v5 database topics. If I'm missing something important, let me know. A bunch of people had great ideas on how things should work and I think I have forgotten them.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jan 27 2008, 11:33 pm by isolatedpurity.

Well, at least it's up, GJ, IP!

EDIT: Dang, I think I just broke it... I tried to submit a map, and I got this message:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /home/starry/public_html/scripts/database/database.php on line 76

Nah, that was me making a change...
That might happen a lot in the next couple days. I didn't put SEN on this computer, so I'm editing it directly.

How come I can't get rid of the name Blah? And why does it always uncheck the open source?

Tags are seperated by enters, not commas.

You want open source, you make the map and do it yourself. We don't claim the authority to release your map into the public domain for you. You've heard our stance on these things and we've debated them through OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAND times.

Since the file is protected with something I haven't seen yet, the title name came up as blank. I saw this, edited the title to blah.
Along with this, it wants to keep original titles that it got from the map. I disabled that until I fix the problem. So you should be able to edit it again.

Uh, why does it make you download the map when you submit a comment?

lol i forgot to change that

You ever need some lima beans I got the hookup

It won't let me mark my own map as open-source.

The note says marking the map as closed-source is considered theft, so frankly, could I either have it fixed, or have the map deleted? Thanks.

The description should support some formatting. I cant even make paragraphs.

Mark yourself as author and the map as open source. It's the only way to mark something open source is if you are the author.
I don't get what you are saying about the "note".

ATM though, it won't display an open sourced notice... it does work though.

Nude: Aye, and some bbcode... coming soon.

Love it to be honest, hella sexy.

Moose, I did make the map

And I protect it with Uberation3's password protection, so it's not that unusual..

EDIT:
Okay, the title changing works now, but I still can't say it's open source..

What I got when shouting while in DLDB. Otherwise, fantastic job! Not very sexy yet, but I think that'll change.

I advise removing the icon and all from 'latest uploaded' and making five maps across the top of the DLDB (under navigation) with the icon.

I don't understand.



Also, I haven't even looked at it in IE or opera yet. So... forgive me if it looks horrible.

Err.. You know how the 'latest files' or whatever has a lot of information about the map? Delete some of the information, most of all the icon that comes with the map (minimap, in most cases). Make it a smaller part of that page. Most people don't really look at the latest uploaded, and it takes up half of the page.

Second, make a 'most popular' section that shows the top 10 favorite maps. Five of those should be shown on the front page, horizontally, right under the navigation bar, complete with the icon/minimap and basic information like name, genre and creator. Tags and all that really aren't necessary to be shown on the front page. These are just suggestions, but it would clean it up a little.

Sweet. It looks good, the tag system seems like a really good idea.

But as for the major projects idea...


this is a cool concept, but I feel like this would start fragmenting SEN. People would go mad with making project spaces, go all out on the project space and not work at all on the map. Of course, this is their problem, but I feel like each project space would be isolated from the rest of SEN. I think it'd be good to force mapmakers to publicize and discuss their map within the realm of the regular SEN forums. Right now you can't talk about your project idea unless you make it interesting and something other people WANT to read and play. Otherwise, I have a feeling people will start to lose interest and eventually SEN will start to break apart, at least in the projects area. Almost feels like coming out with an entire action figure series for your favorite movie -- it just dilutes it.

what happened to the funky buttons ?

I keep a author's note in all my maps pretty much saying "Don't ever mark this map closed-source".

You say you need to make a map yourself to make it open-source, but what about maps in which the creator (who isn't you) already marked it this way somewhere else?