21 replies to this topic

[Dia]

It's our pleasure to present to you the all-new, completely redesigned Devmaster. This marks a major milestone for Devmaster and we hope that you are thrilled as much as we are. Devmaster is barely 7 years old and yet so much has changed. It is our hope that this major update brings the site back to the forefront in serving the game development community.

We encourage you to browse around the site and explore the new features, design, and organization. One of the defining features of Devmaster is the 3D engines database, which has become the most comprehensive engines resources on the web. For that reason, it was one of our main focus for the new site. We've completely revamped the 3D Engines database to include game development resources beyond just 3D engines. We're calling the new database: DevDB. Now, we support libraries, tools, books, companies, and people. You can help grow our database collection by contributing more items.

Keep in mind the site is currently in beta mode and as a result, expect some issues and broken links. Nevertheless, we believe that by releasing the site early, we can iteratively improve on it based on the community feedback we receive.

We're eager to hear your feedback, so please do let us know what you think!

[.oisyn]

I like it! Great job creating the new style.

From a more technical standpoint, I especially like the "view new content" button on the forum and how it remembers your settings. The old "Today's posts" and "new posts" were particularly annoying - I couldn't revisit topics I've already clicked on using the "new posts" screen, and the "today's post" with a limit of 1 day was usually simply too short.

.edit: I don't seem to be able to update my avatar. Not by uploading a picture (I've tried all sorts of picture formats and sizes) and not by entering a URL.

[Reedbeta]

I was able to update my image by using my Gravatar.

[fireside]

Like it so far. I already saw a book I might pick up. The expanded database is much better. The forum posts will look better once people choose avatars. The silhouettes, I'm not stuck on. I think nothing would look better to be honest. I don't know if the screenshot of the day is still around, but I didn't see it. I kind of liked that feature even though it didn't seem to get updated often enough.

[TheNut]

Congrats on the new site Dia. It looks great. I've briskly looked over the site and have some suggestions.

1. The fluid article main image is a whooping ~700 KB PNG file, despite the link saying it's a JPEG.

2. I noticed a mobile app notification column in my profile. Are there plans to release a mobile app version of this site?

3. When I looked though the DevDB Books, I instinctively clicked on the image to navigate to the details page. That didn't work, you currently have to click on the text link below the image.

4. The new engine DB is off to a good start. One thing I would put focus on is the presentation of the engine features. When you expand multiple sections it gets very "busy".

[Mihail121]

Contrags on the new look, it's modern and frankly quite awesome Welcome to a better DevMaster.

P.S.
Just one small thing, the text in the signatures (TheNut above) is unreadable due to size.

[.oisyn]

I think that's because of specific markup in TheNut's signature. All the others are very readable.

[touch_the_sky]

Visually - for what the site is - awesome. Clean. Fresh, not annoying in any way.

In terms of mobile version - I am just browsing on my iPhone and it's very good. Slick, big chunky finger-friendly buttons, good font size. Well done!

Finally I don't have to zoom in billion times to try hitting a link with my fingertip;) in terms of mobile experience this site is IMHO much better than the big competition (not need to name them, right?)

Noticed the twitter and I'm following now - there was only 9 followers including me though last time I checked - come on devmasters! There's clearly more people active here? Show some love!

[touch_the_sky]

Ok just checked the competition they're good on mobile but devmaster is not worse now;)

[necroside]

BRAVO.
Looks so clean.
And the Db option is very nice too.
Thanks...

[Jks]

Hello, I decided to sign up after this new layout.
Imo better and very cleaner than before!

But.. I followed "Introduction to C++ with Game Development" before this new layout and now i cannot find it anymore.. any help for a newb with this newlayout eh

[Reedbeta]

I've noticed a few more minor issues.

1. There's no favicon for any of the pages anymore.
2. It's not very easy to get to the first unread post in a thread. Clicking on the thread title (e.g. from the "View New Content" page) always goes to the top post. There is a "view first unread post" button at the top of each thread, but that appears always to go to the last post, not the first unread one; and it also adds an extra click and page-reload (since it's not just going to an anchor within the current page, for some reason).
3. I'd like the author of each forum post to be a little more prominent. Right now it's way at the left edge of the post; I'd rather it be lined up with the post text so I can read down the list without my eyes skipping left and right. It would also be nice for it to be bold, and maybe a notch bigger in font size. Something like this.

[.oisyn]

About point 2, there is actually. Click on the icon before the thead

[spiroh]

Nice design but I still can't access the old articles.....

[roel]

Great!

[Dia]

Great feedback and suggestions, guys! We'll be tracking them to incorporate them. Keep 'em coming!

TheNut, on 28 November 2011 - 05:55 PM, said:

4. The new engine DB is off to a good start. One thing I would put focus on is the presentation of the engine features. When you expand multiple sections it gets very "busy".

Fair point. So, how do you suggest improving the presentation?

[.oisyn]

The avatar stuff appears to be working now

[TheNut]

Dia, on 02 December 2011 - 08:55 AM, said:

Fair point. So, how do you suggest improving the presentation?

How about using a similar tab layout like you have for screenshots? A user clicks on the tab and views information specific to that category, keeping the layout clean and simple. The other thing I would suggest is adding hyperlinks to common terms in the features. If someone doesn't know what "SSAO" means or what "Bullet Physics" means, since these are common terms and/or software you can hyperlink to somewhere in Devmaster that points to an article, points to a product listing, or link to the homepage of the library. Some sites display a bubble popup (a tooltip of sorts) explaining what the word means and that's another approach you can take.

[ThelowerCase]

I like the new lay out, it seems to me that, due to the increase in filter options, one can have more articles on the site without it becoming cluttered. I do have one question though concerning broken links. It has been quite a while since I last was here, but the last time I was following a tutorial 'introduction to C++ with Game Development. However, when I wanted to continue where I left off, I found that the second half of the series seems to have disappeared. I can still acces some of the articles through Google's cache (links redirect to the articles main page though), but I can imagine it's kind of annoying for other people following the tutorial, and the caches will probably vanish in a while. I have copied the rest of the articles to word docs for the time being (though part 15, 19 and 20 were already missing). If there is anyone who wants these docs as well, or wants to reupload them, please contact me.

[fireside]

I find the recent topics column on the front page to be pretty useless. As a result, I'll be bookmarking the forum page instead and possibly checking the front page once in a while.