If you missed it, I posted a 2019 Recap over the weekend. We had one more item before the end of the decade, though:
New Project / Publishing System
@PsychoGoldfish just released a big overhaul of our Project System! This update applies to Movie, Game and Audio projects. Art uploads already use our new layout but we’ll be migrating them to this system for features like co-authoring and software / equipment crediting.
A lot of things have changed and there could be bugs; please pm me with reports of any bugs or confusion you come across. You’re also welcome to reply in this thread with general thoughts and suggestions; we’re curious to hear what everyone thinks.
Known issues so far: Pre-existing thumbnails are showing up off-center in the thumbnailer at the moment.
What changed:
When creating a new project, you now start directly on the project details form, rather than a page that asks for a new project name. Your project will auto-save details as you fill out the form.
The left navbar has been removed and secondary options such as “Users & Credits” are now options at the bottom of the page.
The “Users & Credits” tab merges three previous pages: Project Members, Credits and Revenue Sharing. This is also where you credit music and whatever products or equipment were used (e.g. Adobe Animate, Unity, FL Studio).
If you credit music from the Audio Portal, the musician will now be notified via their notifications when you publish (note: a script is running to prep for this and it may take a day).
A “Team Tools” tab is where your team fileshare can be found, for collaboration during development.
Game projects include an “API Tools” tab, for adding medals and high scores that integrate with NG. The API section is still on the old layout at the moment.
Finally you will see links to Preview and Publish your project, as well as a link to View your live project if it has already been published.
Both the preview and public view pages have been updated to allow in-page editing; you’ll see pencil buttons next to things such as Author Comments, Credits, Genre, Tags and Equipment. You can click the pencil in the top right corner to go to the complete project details form.
The preview page now supports NG Player, if your project requires Flash.
We’ve updated the Ratings selector to show what the final content rating will be. Keep in mind that while some mild artistic nudity is allowed in Mature entries, please avoid nudity in your thumbnail unless your work is rated Adult.
We’ve added ratings to Audio and future site updates will apply these filters in places where audio is browsed. If your audio is adult-themed please mark it as such!
For game or animation submissions with multiple files, we’ve made the file-specific options visible at all times rather than hiding them behind an edit link. Examples include setting an MP4 file to loop, or setting a game as touch-screen friendly. You no longer need to click a “Replace File” link to replace a file; simply drag the new file to the upload box and it will replace whatever existing file is of the same type (e.g. MP4 replaces MP4, SWF replaces SWF).
Your upload progress is now easier to track and we’ve fixed some quirks where the old system didn’t fail gracefully when an upload was dropped. A future update will introduce resumable file uploads, at which point you could drop internet or leave the page and your file will pick up where it left off.
The thumbnail tool has been updated and is mobile-friendly. While the site still displays small thumbnails, we expect your thumbnail to be a minimum size of 480x270 for games and movies, 300x300 for audio. Future site updates will increase the size of thumbnails while browsing, as we did in the Art Portal this year.
Also like the Art Portal, the author commentary box now uses a rich text editor so you can include images and embeds. If you want to link other content from NG, simply paste the URL on its own line and it will become a fancy link with thumbnail when you view the preview or published piece.
Finally, your Projects hub has been updated for more streamlined browsing of your projects and beta tests.
Have a look around and tell us what you think! This was a big overhaul and the culmination of lots of individual changes that happened around the site over the past few years.
As always, if you enjoy the ongoing site updates, please consider becoming a Supporter or gifting a Supporter upgrade to someone you like on NG! We’re planning to drastically reduce the ads for everyone in January and while this change may only be for one month, we’re hoping enough people become supporters that we can ease the site further and further from an ad-supported model in 2020.
