New artists: Read this welcome post!

We've been getting a big influx of new artists as a result of Tumblr purging NSFW art. It's been so big I've even included it in the Newgrounds history page, also recommended reading.

With the impending release of the Smash Collab upon us, some changes to the project system were in order!

The Smash Collab has an interactive menu by @IvanAlmighty but NG didn't have an option to publish HTML5 projects as movies, so that was changed in recent weeks (invite only).

However we want to have an MP4 fallback for the Smash Collab so we set up a test project and found that if an MP4 exists, it always defaults to MP4 (like it does when both an MP4 and SWF exists).

This lead us down a rabbit hole with how NG's system works and how it saves preferences when you toggle between MP4 and an alternate file. A bunch of changes were made so now when you toggle between MP4 / SWF / HTML5, it no longer saves as a preference. Instead if you want content to always default to SWF over MP4, you will need to check a new box under the Content Display Options in your account settings.

The update for this went live yesterday but this morning I'm noticing my account defaults to SWF over MP4 despite my Display Options so there is still a quirk in there. I can't recreate it with an alt or while logged out so I'm curious, is anyone else experiencing this? When you visit Metal Gear Awesome do you see a video player with scrubber or the SWF file with a play button title screen? If you see an SWF, can you confirm the box to default to SWF isn't checked under your display options?

Other News

If you're looking to do commissions, we have a new feature to help you!

Jim made a fix in tag search where for example if you search Himiko Toga, results now include items tagged Himiko-Toga, which weren't showing up before (Example). Whoops! Our system replaces spaces with hyphens when you submit tags. Some image boards replace spaces with underscores. I'm not sure if we'll ever change that one but our goal is for tag search to be as useful as possible for both casual users and people who know all the fancy syntax rules.

Speaking of Tag Search, it's an option under "Advanced" search. We're planning ways to increase its visibility and make it the default result page when you click the tag words on individual submissions; it needs visual upgrades before that happens though. We also want to add the ability to remain in tag search mode vs having to set it in Advanced options each time you search. My brain will drip out of my ears if I keep going into this now though.

We hit our December Support goal! Our monthly goal is based on what we think is achievable, vs what NG actually needs to be fully funded. It's awesome that we hit the goal so early but it would also be awesome if people kept becoming supporters! The Daily Goal is based on the monthly goal spread over 31 days so that will keep showing daily progress despite the monthly goal being met. Thank you everyone who has been stepping up to support NG!

Pixel Day is January 23rd!

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

Thanks for the commissions tab..that is an awesome feature, I can't wait to try it.

Yeah, I saw that the goal was met. Hopefully we can also get to the amount NG actually needs. Also cool about the toggling option, more customization is always good. Great to see you're hard at work on so much stuff and are actually doing it!
As they say in France "Parlez vous Francais".

Confused about your wording, so you're telling me I can upload an mp4 on newgrounds?

At 12/14/18 08:22 AM, tobufi wrote: Confused about your wording, so you're telling me I can upload an mp4 on newgrounds?

Yeah as long as it’s animation. We’ve had mp4 support for a long time now!

I was interested in how you were doing on the yearly supporter goal now that you've made the last couple of months.

Wow so congrats on turning these old files into MP4 files. So what happen to old flash games, especially with medals. Is there some progress going on with that?

2019 is going to be so god damn exciting. Even now it's still exciting seeing new artists trickle in, and hopefully become supporters too heheh. Even though it's just a number its cool as shit to see the supporter count go up so fast. It wasn't too long ago when every 100 supporters felt like a major victory that always took months to achieve. Now it seems like we're blowing past a new milestone every few days. Even if, for whatever reason, this is just a short term thing, I still believe in Newgrounds. I believe all the effort put into the site through all the hard times will pay off, for both the NG crew, and the creators on the site. This is only the beginning.

At 12/14/18 11:07 AM, StickmanMarkinson wrote: Wow so congrats on turning these old files into MP4 files. So what happen to old flash games, especially with medals. Is there some progress going on with that?

Games will either be browser-based emulation or a desktop player. If we had managed to get Nightmare Cops out by now I would have been investing in browser-based emulation development already but as it stands it's more of a wait and see project.

At 12/14/18 11:18 AM, ninjamuffin99 wrote: 2019 is going to be so god damn exciting. Even now it's still exciting seeing new artists trickle in, and hopefully become supporters too heheh. Even though it's just a number its cool as shit to see the supporter count go up so fast. It wasn't too long ago when every 100 supporters felt like a major victory that always took months to achieve. Now it seems like we're blowing past a new milestone every few days. Even if, for whatever reason, this is just a short term thing, I still believe in Newgrounds. I believe all the effort put into the site through all the hard times will pay off, for both the NG crew, and the creators on the site. This is only the beginning.

We've actually been keeping pace where 3,000 supporters by the end of the year is possible HOWEVER after December 20th, all the one month supporters from the first wave Tumblr migration will begin to expire, so we'll also be dropping a decent number. We could make up for it though if we get a few more boosts before the month is over. Stuff like the Smash Collab, new forums and whatever Tumblr does on the 17th might help there.

Bless your heart ;w;

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote: Jim made a fix in tag search where for example if you search Himiko Toga, results now include items tagged Himiko-Toga, which weren't showing up before (Example). Whoops! Our system replaces spaces with hyphens when you submit tags. Some image boards replace spaces with underscores. I'm not sure if we'll ever change that one but our goal is for tag search to be as useful as possible for both casual users and people who know all the fancy syntax rules.

Wouldn't it be good to include other search parameters, as well? (e.g. Himiko_Toga or Himiko.Toga) It's entirely possible that folks from other image boards might just use those instinctively, and you'd want to get the most bang out of your search engine as possible.

At 12/14/18 07:45 AM, AdventVoice wrote:

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

Thanks for the commissions tab..that is an awesome feature, I can't wait to try it.

It aint fixed, im still seeing swf only even when i click or unclick the options

also first post, but fix.

At 12/14/18 12:36 PM, Luis wrote:

At 12/14/18 07:45 AM, AdventVoice wrote:

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

Thanks for the commissions tab..that is an awesome feature, I can't wait to try it.

It aint fixed, im still seeing swf only even when i click or unclick the options

also first post, but fix.

Yeah thought it was fixed because for some reason it's fine on my work computer and not my home computer.

At 12/14/18 12:13 PM, ChronoNomad wrote:

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote: Jim made a fix in tag search where for example if you search Himiko Toga, results now include items tagged Himiko-Toga, which weren't showing up before (Example). Whoops! Our system replaces spaces with hyphens when you submit tags. Some image boards replace spaces with underscores. I'm not sure if we'll ever change that one but our goal is for tag search to be as useful as possible for both casual users and people who know all the fancy syntax rules.

Wouldn't it be good to include other search parameters, as well? (e.g. Himiko_Toga or Himiko.Toga) It's entirely possible that folks from other image boards might just use those instinctively, and you'd want to get the most bang out of your search engine as possible.

We plan to work with as much of that as possible, just haven't dived in with those changes yet.

At 12/14/18 11:21 AM, TomFulp wrote:

At 12/14/18 11:07 AM, StickmanMarkinson wrote: Wow so congrats on turning these old files into MP4 files. So what happen to old flash games, especially with medals. Is there some progress going on with that?

Games will either be browser-based emulation or a desktop player. If we had managed to get Nightmare Cops out by now I would have been investing in browser-based emulation development already but as it stands it's more of a wait and see project.

How along is that coming now, Nightmare Cops? I'd love to hear about an update soon! Can't wait to play it on Steam.

Also, cool that you refined the search engine! Was kind of hard finding stuff on there, it seemed more clunky than other sites like tumblr and DeviantArt.

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote: The update for this went live yesterday but this morning I'm noticing my account defaults to SWF over MP4 despite my Display Options so there is still a quirk in there. I can't recreate it with an alt or while logged out so I'm curious, is anyone else experiencing this? When you visit Metal Gear Awesome do you see a video player with scrubber or the SWF file with a play button title screen? If you see an SWF, can you confirm the box to default to SWF isn't checked under your display options?

Checked my account settings - I should be getting mp4 by default, but the Metal Gear Awesome project auto-loaded the swf for me as well.

Aside from that little quirk, I'm loving all the updates rolling out lately. I'm happy to see NG doing so well.

At 12/14/18 12:42 PM, Knights wrote:

At 12/14/18 11:21 AM, TomFulp wrote: Games will either be browser-based emulation or a desktop player. If we had managed to get Nightmare Cops out by now I would have been investing in browser-based emulation development already but as it stands it's more of a wait and see project.

How along is that coming now, Nightmare Cops? I'd love to hear about an update soon! Can't wait to play it on Steam.

Always moving forward, always a while away. What a day it shall be though!

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

More and more users are becoming supporters,and that's good for NG,I hope it keeps going like this.
By the way Tom,aren't you exhausted from working at the same time on updating the site and developping Nightmare Cops ?

The commissions tab could be useful as an update.

At 12/14/18 01:34 PM, Hesiolite wrote:

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote:

More and more users are becoming supporters,and that's good for NG,I hope it keeps going like this.
By the way Tom,aren't you exhausted from working at the same time on updating the site and developing Nightmare Cops ?

@PsychoGoldfish and @liljim do the actual NG programming so on the programming front I just have to worry about NC. NG can still be really time consuming with everything else though, especially these past few weeks!

At 12/14/18 07:36 AM, TomFulp wrote: If you see an SWF, can you confirm the box to default to SWF isn't checked under your display options?

Can confirm. Checked the submission before I checked that box under display options. Not sure what I had checked before, though, so it's possible this confirmation is highly irrelevant and/or misleading...

Other News

Awesome news overall! Regarding the hyphen/underscore thing I personally prefer hyphens. That's how things work online to me, it mimics the way you write everything naturally with URLs and such. Underscores seemed more common back in the day, with files as well, but I thought the balance shifted. Interesting to hear that's actually common practice on certain other sites...

Also curious what happened to the stretch goal bar? Saw it appear for a short while too.

At 12/14/18 11:21 AM, TomFulp wrote: Games will either be browser-based emulation or a desktop player. If we had managed to get Nightmare Cops out by now I would have been investing in browser-based emulation development already but as it stands it's more of a wait and see project.

And this! Awesome to hear there's a plan there.

At 12/14/18 02:02 PM, Cyberdevil wrote: Awesome news overall! Regarding the hyphen/underscore thing I personally prefer hyphens. That's how things work online to me, it mimics the way you write everything naturally with URLs and such. Underscores seemed more common back in the day, with files as well, but I thought the balance shifted. Interesting to hear that's actually common practice on certain other sites...

I agree on this one. I also tend to think we should avoid syntax that isn't good as a URL. I know you can't have an underscore in a domain prefix and when I searched on it found this recommendation:

"The recurring question in SEO URLs is whether to use a hyphen, or dash, (these-are-hyphens) or an underscore (these_are_underscores) to separate your words. ... The short answer is that you should use a hyphen for your SEO URLs. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, but does not treat an underscore that way."

So if Google (as much as I like to rag on Google nowadays) considers hyphen to be the way to separate words, I think we're right sticking with hyphens. I do see how underscore adds some flexibility with hyphenated names but meh.

Also curious what happened to the stretch goal bar? Saw it appear for a short while too.

I added that when I realized the monthly goal capped at 100% but then I realized descriptions weren't showing up anymore so it felt out of place and I yanked it. It still wasn't a clear indicator of how much over 100% we were.

At 12/14/18 07:45 AM, AdventVoice wrote: Thanks for the commissions tab..that is an awesome feature, I can't wait to try it.

All the new artists will have to explore it and check it out.

At 12/14/18 07:55 AM, TheReviewTrickster wrote: Yeah, I saw that the goal was met. Hopefully we can also get to the amount NG actually needs.

We are always reaching goals. That is how we do it.

Also cool about the toggling option, more customization is always good. Great to see you're hard at work on so much stuff and are actually doing it!

The more the merrier.

As they say in France "Parlez vous Francais".

As we say in America " America, hell yeah. "

At 12/14/18 02:12 PM, TomFulp wrote: "The recurring question in SEO URLs is whether to use a hyphen, or dash, (these-are-hyphens) or an underscore (these_are_underscores) to separate your words. ... The short answer is that you should use a hyphen for your SEO URLs. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, but does not treat an underscore that way."

Handy info!

So if Google (as much as I like to rag on Google nowadays) considers hyphen to be the way to separate words, I think we're right sticking with hyphens. I do see how underscore adds some flexibility with hyphenated names but meh.

Reason over whim, yeah! :) In situations where you'd have a _-_ you can simply use a --- instead, too. It works well both for spaces and... longer spaces. Suppose it may not work as well that way in searches though.

I added that when I realized the monthly goal capped at 100% but then I realized descriptions weren't showing up anymore so it felt out of place and I yanked it. It still wasn't a clear indicator of how much over 100% we were.

Aha. Thought it might've been an automatic feature now manually removed! Good to know. I suppose stretch goals are a currently scrapped feature then? They seemed useful too, if only with some incentive or goal with that final stretch.

At 12/14/18 02:17 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote:

As they say in France "Parlez vous Francais".

As we say in America " America, hell yeah. "

These cultural clashes. XD

At 12/14/18 02:40 PM, Cyberdevil wrote: Aha. Thought it might've been an automatic feature now manually removed! Good to know. I suppose stretch goals are a currently scrapped feature then? They seemed useful too, if only with some incentive or goal with that final stretch.

I'll say they're probably gone for now, especially if we just end up going with a daily goal like Reddit to sustain overall active supporter growth.

Awesome to see so much active development! Keep hustlin!

At 12/14/18 03:17 PM, TomFulp wrote: I'll say they're probably gone for now, especially if we just end up going with a daily goal like Reddit to sustain overall active supporter growth.

Good to know! It does seem to work.

When watching videos I get the video player with a scrubber so I'm just going to go ahead and assume I always see the mp4 viewer.

The commissions option seems like that could be very useful for this site! I might have to try and do that early next year.