Konrad   kondz.io public   https://thiefguild.com

May 31, 2020, 1:49 p.m.  

Hi folks!

Since I regularly work on improving the portal functionality, including new features, I thought it might be a good idea to announce such changes to everybody systematically, too :)

This month brought a lot of changes. I usually introduce something new each month, but there are also months where nothing new is added, sometimes. These posts will help you stay up to date.

Anyway, since now, FM pages have their own page backgrounds, separately. Since more and more FMs have their own true covers (having a text written on it), it is kinda annoying to see such cover resized, duplicated in the background.

Starting now, admins and FM authors can choose the background picture from screenshots gallery. So, creators, choose wisely! And you players, keep uploading your atmospheric screenshots, descriptive photographs or just funny shots. Maybe one of them will perfectly describe the mission atmosphere or title?

Second, more functional change, is grouping of download links. Now hosting mirrors are grouped to release version and language. This will make it possible to keep which translations are available for which version, and from which mirror. Eventually, older versions are available under "other versions" button.

There is still a lot of work regarding download links, and the work is two fold. First part should be finished next week or two: multilingual FMs are usually released as single archive. This produces duplicated links at the moment. While download links are grouped by release version and language, another level of grouping is needed. Languages need to be grouped per download links, when one package includes a few of them. That won't be a big effort task, but it requires some careful updates in the underlying database itself, so I will give it some time.

I also forgot that translations are usually released standalone (as a patch archive) and such info should be visible near the download link - this will also be addressed in upcoming updates.

Second part of download links update will be adding more entries to the database (which FM can be downloaded in which language from where). These needs to be done manually, but as always I'll think about some semi-automated solution.

The rest of improvements and fixes made May 2020:
- Visual fixes of rating links on the front page
- More functionality regarding forum topics and FM reviews, admin side
- Better display of mission series: now mission series is displayed below the title, followed by a list of acronyms of related missions, in order of the plot of the series
- Review subject displayed on the latest posts page, not only for "commented a topic" entries, but "created a topic" entries too (yes, strangely it was missing)
- More convenient conversation list in chat, on mobile devices
- "Add official screenshot" and "Add official video" buttons visible for FM authors and FM managers, even when edit mode is turned off
- Removed possibility to message yourself in chat window
- Non-activated e-mail address accounts are now notified on the front page and reminded to re-send the activation links
- Front page "More" button redirected to 2nd page of FMs, which was confusing
- Fixed problems with custom categories rating - sometimes custom category ratings were not saved