Am I the only one who thinks that this page is... well... a big mess?

I mean, half the time I find something I really like and download it only to find it's a windows plug. Also there are no seperations between plugs for EVN and plugs for the EVC/O ports. The four categories are nice (cheates, guides, tools etc) but apart from that there appears to be no organisation whatsoever.

Would it really take that much effort to make a couple of pages for different things? It would certainly make it easier to find what you're looking for, and would probably increase the amount of people who download it. Even just a mac/windows seperation would be nice.

Gav

Plugs are easily converted between mac and windows, so platform isn't a problem (Mac Plug-in Converter). But yes, I do think it's a big mess. I can imagine a far better system, tied to the boards so your username would be attached to things you upload and much more besides. David mentioned the ambrosia website upgrade may include improvements to the addons system so I guess we'll see when the time comes...

@pistgavin, on Feb 3 2008, 04:01 PM, said in Add-ons page:

Am I the only one who thinks that this page is... well... a big mess?

Now that you mention this it is pretty messy.... Hopefully David Arthur, if what Guy says is true, will add a search box. It is very hard to look for one plugin.

A search engine would be great, but even then finding a specific plug could be difficult if you don't know what it's called. All that's needed is a simple category system- broad to start with (i.e. windows, mac) and then getting more specific.

I've never had much to do with web design but I did dabble a little bit a few years ago, if I remember correctly it shouldn't be too hard to split up different links and add them to seperate pages.

Gav

Plug-in Search Engine

Since it's so easy to convert from Windows to Mac (and slightly less simple but still easy to go the other way) there's no need to separate Windows and Mac plugins. Doing that might force me to throw around dirty words like "apartheid". Plugins designed for other ports, maybe, but considering there's maybe three or four for each port, that's harly worth the effort either. I don't really see how you can separate things more finely than "cheats" and "not-cheats", and that's already been done. Maybe "Plugins that add weapons", "plugins that add mission strings", "plugins that add planets", but what do you do when one plugin does several of those things?

Edit: As for your suggestion that a search engine would be great, try having a closer look at Guy's post. Maybe try hovering your mouse over the underlined words.

This post has been edited by Belthazar : 03 February 2008 - 08:19 PM

@belthazar, on Feb 4 2008, 02:18 PM, said in Add-ons page:

Edit: As for your suggestion that a search engine would be great, try having a closer look at Guy's post. Maybe try hovering your mouse over the underlined words.

We posted at the same time, so he can be forgiven for missing that

I see what you're saying, but seriously- anything is better than just a big random list. Even the thing of listing different types of plugs, and what they add, would be nice. Right now you have to trudge through hundreds of ''this is my first plug, it adds 1 planet and 2 super duper weapons'' and ''this adds a missionw here you get 10 million zillion credits'' before you find anything worth downloading.

Separating plug-ins based on the file format in which they were saved would be counter-productive — the last thing we want to do is suggest that this actually matters. Converting from one format to the other takes only a little thought on Windows, and is positively trivial on a Macintosh.

@king_of_manticores, on Feb 3 2008, 07:28 PM, said in Add-ons page:

Hopefully David Arthur, if what Guy says is true, will add a search box. It is very hard to look for one plugin.

My powers over the directory go only as far as adding and removing files, but I’ve been assured that the add-ons directory is one of the things upon which work is being done as part of a broader redesign of ambrosiasw.com. As Guy has suggested, though, SpacePirate’s Google interface is often quite useful for searching.

@pistgavin, on Feb 3 2008, 08:41 PM, said in Add-ons page:

Even the thing of listing different types of plugs, and what they add, would be nice.

How could anyone possibly define meaningful ‘types’ of plug-ins beyond the distinctions already present?

@guy, on Feb 4 2008, 12:35 PM, said in Add-ons page:

We posted at the same time, so he can be forgiven for missing that

Pssh, that's no excuse. :rolleyes:

So I've been trying to think of some way the plugins could be further sorted, and I'm still coming up with nothing. That said, gav, your last post suggests to me you're not making use of the categories already there, and you're just looking at the list of all uploaded plugins, rather than the list of non-cheat plugins. Any other sortings I can think of - such as sorting by size, or ratings, or number of downloads - are already available by clicking "View More..." then clicking the links at the top of the resulting page. Mind you, the Rating sort function is faulty, as it doesn't put my plugin in first place.

This post has been edited by Belthazar : 03 February 2008 - 10:10 PM

I think if there were a check-box system where when you upload a plug-in you check all that apply, then sorting by true/false in each category could be useful.

For instance, imagine a box titled "This plug-in has been proofread and spell-checked."

Right... and how reliable would such a category be?

I've never had a problem with the current addons directory, actually. I do really like the plugin search engine, though, although I hardly think that I wouldn't be able to find anything without it.

I know this may JUST HAVE to be the RED & BLACK web site but what about separating section by color. Then when you go for the big long list of everything, each item has an icon. That icon has a color and that color is related to the section above. Let's say Cheaters are Red, Utilities are Blue and TCs are Yellow.

On the big long list, you would immediately know what was what even after a search.

Of coarse it could only work if the website could implement specific color schemes

The first thing that came to mind when I saw your avatar Qaanol was "This is AMBROSIA!"

Ahem, the only likely worthwhile additional distinction I see would be a separate TC section. However, considering the very low number of TCs, I'm not sure it would be added.

How about 'TCs and TC Addons'? That would be a slightly larger category.

Still, it seems a little small to worry about, at least at this point.

Although, for larger plugs with multiple versions, installations, or data files, it would be nice to just have some sort of "folder" that one could put multiple plugs into, somewhat like the member's gallery section of these forums.

Josh: That's what DE captioned it when he made it.
Guy: "TCs and TC addons" would be larger than "Has been proofread"? Yeah, I guess you're right.

It would be nice to Sort By Author.

@qaanol, on Feb 3 2008, 07:52 PM, said in Add-ons page:

I think if there were a check-box system where when you upload a plug-in you check all that apply, then sorting by true/false in each category could be useful.

For instance, imagine a box titled "This plug-in has been proofread and spell-checked."

I was just thinking this. Say if your plug contains new ships, graphics, and missions, you could check those three boxes when you post it. And if someone was looking for a plug with new graphics and ships, they could select those check boxes and click search, and find your plug and any others that apply. I like searching for new sounds and graphics, but it is really hard to read through every description to find the plug I'm looking for.

The check list system would be a perfect example of what I meant by sorting plugs by ''what they do''. I usually only go for plugs that add missions, char's etc so I wouldn't bother downloading if these boxes weren't ticked.

Gav