Anybody play Rock Band still? DLC review site help needed

[ChrisGrenard]

Hello everyone. Long time reader of Anandtech, first time poster. But that's not important right now. </Airplane voice>

So I've set up this site for allowing Rock Band players to create reviews for songs and a bunch of other little things. At this point, the site is getting fairly solid, but I felt I needed a fresh set of eyes, particularly from people who are rather tech savvy and know what makes a website work well. So I figured I'd ask you find gentlemen (and women, if applicable) to try out the site and give me suggestions and ideas.

The site is: www.rbdlc.com

Oh, one feature I should tell you about right away is that if you create an account and log in, there's a control panel button right under where the login box would've been. From the control panel, you can change your site theme to whatever site theme suits your fancy. Or, if none of them suit you, let me know and post an album cover you'd like turned into a theme! (That's my creation process: Sampling album covers for color schemes)

 

[Auryg]

I like the overall idea for the site but the color scheme hurts my eyes Red on red isn't all that cool.

 

[TheUnk]

Reviewing songs?

 

[CKDragon]

I love Rock Band and still play it at least once a week. With the DLC I've purchased, I currently have 111 songs.

I can appreciate your efforts, but honestly, I don't see a big need for your site. If I want to see a guitar or drum run before I buy it, I'll just type the song title into YouTube. If I need to learn how to perfect a song or would like to know the gold star cutoff score, I'm going to scorehero.com.

I'll look again after work to see if I can come up with any suggestions.

 

[Modeps]

NOTICE:
This entire site is completely optimized for Firefox, either version 2 or 3. Safari seems to work well too. But Internet Explorer... yeesh. Seriously, do yourself a favor, go get Firefox.

That right there removes credibility. You shouldn't force your users to get a browser. My site, for a while, didn't look so hot with IE either, but I put the time in so it worked. This isnt 1999 where you can say "Site best viewed in..." anymore. There's standards to follow.

That being said, the color scheme is not good. The layout is ok.... and it really just looks like you're spamming, considering you just joined.

 

[ChrisGrenard]

First off, I actually have gotten quite a few mixed reviews on the color scheme. A few people like it, and the other batch of people really don't like it, as is your reaction.

That's why I implemented the deal that if you log in and go to the control panel (in the upper right corner) you can select a different theme for the site. I personally like Aenima, Doolittle and Push the Button. Give that a try and see if it's easier on your eyes.

CKDragon: That's a subject that's been discussed a lot, which is why I've been getting a few people who are volunteering to be contributors, and they can actually adding all the videos in together.

Here's the results of what I think all the pages ought to look like within the next 2 week

Finally, with regards to the Internet Explorer thing. Well... since my entire thing is a one-man deal, I've been having to hand-draw all the site graphics myself. I was having a few problems with gifs in particular, and their lack of support for semi-transparent, so I put the files into PNG and it looked much better. But of course, this in turn causes the old IE 6 to make the pngs look horrible since it doesn't support the transparency, and instead just fills the area with gray. If you have any ideas as to how to correct this, please let me know, as it bugs me as well that I am sucking with IE.

 

[ChrisGrenard]

"just looks like you're spamming, considering you just joined."

I can understand that, but I can honestly say that I'm looking for feedback. Three points, if I may:

1) Anandtech is one of the few forums I can think of that's not overrun with kids, but at the same time still talks about Rock Band on occasion. (This is VERY good in my book)

2) If I were a spammer, I would've come up with the worst scheme ever, as my site has no ads whatsoever and actually I'm footing the entire bill for the site myself. It's kinda like an *un*money making scheme in that regard!

3) So I've already gotten feedback from this site from the official Rock Band forums and on Scorehero. But I've run into a problem with this: Almost all of the people helping me out on those sites are *really* good at the game. As in, they throw around the phrases, "sightread" and "fc" like they were candy. If you can believe it, I actually had one of the people who was complaining about my review of Joker and the Thief on expert as I thought it was too hard, and he basically called me a wimp. That sorta thing. So I really wanted to get some more normal opinions on the site.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard
First off, I actually have gotten quite a few mixed reviews on the color scheme. A few people like it, and the other batch of people really don't like it, as is your reaction.

Anyone who says they like it is being nice. Its ugly man. Its minimalistic, which is fine, but its not an attractive use of being minimalistic. I don't want to have to log in to get a better scheme. If I don't like what I see when I first go to a site, I'm not going to bother signing up.

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard
Finally, with regards to the Internet Explorer thing. Well... since my entire thing is a one-man deal, I've been having to hand-draw all the site graphics myself. I was having a few problems with gifs in particular, and their lack of support for semi-transparent, so I put the files into PNG and it looked much better. But of course, this in turn causes the old IE 6 to make the pngs look horrible since it doesn't support the transparency, and instead just fills the area with gray. If you have any ideas as to how to correct this, please let me know, as it bugs me as well that I am sucking with IE.

What in the world are you using partial transparencies for on that site? I can't see anything that calls for it at all. If you're referring to the little feathering thats around your logo, well... do something else. Seriously.

PS: The browse tab takes far too long to render... you're probably doing too much work on the back end... too many queries or something... and I just got this error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.' in /hermes/web06/b230/pow.joanngrenard/htdocs/zzChris/Rock_Band/quicksearch.php on line 33

 

[ChrisGrenard]

Yeah, that parse error was me fixing a bug. Expect it pretty often, as I'm pretty much working on making upgrades probably 2-3 time a day and I'm *always* breaking something

The partial transparencies are pretty much in three places. Up in the logo, which is set to 80% transparent so that if you select a color background the colors will bleed through; the the instrument icons when you are searching, which for some reason looked *really* jagged if I had them as just gifs (Which I have no idea what I was doing wrong on those) and on the little review stars themselves. Again, jaggedness due to lack of ability to feather stuff off, particularly since I can't just taper it off to black since most of the color schemes don't use black as a background.

As far as the ugly initial look goes... if you guys are in agreement about that, I'll actually take that color scheme off. I just need to know which one to replace it with. You tell me which one you like, I'll change it out!

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard
1) Anandtech is one of the few forums I can think of that's not overrun with kids, but at the same time still talks about Rock Band on occasion. (This is VERY good in my book)

You clearly haven't been here long then.

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard
2) If I were a spammer, I would've come up with the worst scheme ever, as my site has no ads whatsoever and actually I'm footing the entire bill for the site myself. It's kinda like an *un*money making scheme in that regard!

Spamming doesn't have to involve making money.

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard
3) So I've already gotten feedback from this site from the official Rock Band forums and on Scorehero. But I've run into a problem with this: Almost all of the people helping me out on those sites are *really* good at the game. As in, they throw around the phrases, "sightread" and "fc" like they were candy. If you can believe it, I actually had one of the people who was complaining about my review of Joker and the Thief on expert as I thought it was too hard, and he basically called me a wimp. That sorta thing. So I really wanted to get some more normal opinions on the site.

I don't live and breathe Rock Band, but I know what those terms mean... and I dont play on Expert, but I do develop as a hobby and profession. So, well... take my comments for whatever you'd like.

 

[ChrisGrenard]

I don't live and breathe Rock Band, but I know what those terms mean... and I dont play on Expert, but I do develop as a hobby and profession. So, well... take my comments for whatever you'd like.

See, this is exactly the kind of person I want on the site! What I meant my complaint to mean is that everybody on those sites is godlike in the game, and I really wanted people who were not in the same league. I love that you're not playing on expert, we have too many damn experts on the site right now as it is.

Regarding kids: Really? But... everything seemed so normal...

Regarding spam: This is one I hadn't realized. :S

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenardSee, this is exactly the kind of person I want on the site!

You really don't want my critiques.

 

[ChrisGrenard]

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenardSee, this is exactly the kind of person I want on the site!

You really don't want my critiques.

Well, at the very least I am still very interested in knowing what you think about the color schemes.

 

[oznerol]

I always enjoy seeing (and moreso criticizing) independent sites (ask Modeps). Your site seems like a bit too little too late, but I can appreciate the effort. Hopefully you don't have your life savings invested in it or anything.

First some suggestions:
- List the difficulties for each instrument for each song as listed in the Rock Band store
- Don't load all of the Youtube videos in one shot - it's death to a browser that can't handle it. I'd suggest maybe an image link and then doing an AJAX load of the video if clicked on. If you don't know that, then just make them independent pages.
- Sorting by difficulty in both listing and review
- Rate reviewers as well as review - not just songs
- Take the Youtube design and just copy it
- Facebook app - make one - immediately - I suppose listing "my favorite rock band songs"
- Include in-game songs as well, not just DLC (I know it's called RBDLC, but a complete list of all available songs would be more useful - especially the "Bonus" tracks).

Some criticisms:
- Big pet peeve of mine - you have an add review link prominently displayed on the top of your page which requires a login to access. Don't show links to content you can't access unless registered to non-registered users.
- Your site is designed for hardcore players. You said you want non-"godlike" players to contribute to it - but really, if you aren't playing on expert, why would you care?
- I suppose the point of the site is to help someone decide whether or not to purchase a song for Rock Band, but realistically, it's not the difficulty or "funness" that will ultimately affect the majority of purchases. It's how much a person likes the song, plain and simple. In that case, Harmonix basically made your site irrelevant to the everyday player by adding the Rock Band Store.

Christ, I am bored at work.

 

[warcrow]

I can appreciate what you're doing here and I think it's a pretty good idea if you're into RB DLC, but I've gotta agree with what everyone is saying about the color scheme. The colors arnt very friendly and after viewing the page for a few minutes I found my eyes strained a bit.

You're obviously doing this for fun, so just be sure to keep that in mind even when people are nothing but down on you about something you've put a lot of work into. Once you get everything up to your standards do you think you might widen things to various DLC? I know the url is rbdlc.com but that can always be redirect to a new domain.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: ducci
- Your site is designed for hardcore players. You said you want non-"godlike" players to contribute to it - but really, if you aren't playing on expert, why would you care?

I didn't think of this, I was just looking at it technically and not in terms of scope and audience. This is a very good point. I think if I were to buy rock band songs, I wouldn't bother looking at a list of best songs to play, I'd look at which songs I liked.

Originally posted by: ducci
I always enjoy seeing (and moreso criticizing) independent sites (ask Modeps).

:thumbsup:

 

[RandomFool]

You should probably rethink your focus. Being a decidedly non-hardcore RB player this is what influences my decision to buy DLC:

1. Do I like the song?
2. Does my GF like the song?
2a. Does she want me to get it?

None of those are covered by your site. I'm happy enough with just knowing what songs came out.

Other Stuff:
- Let people sort by individual difficulties.
- Too many videos load on certain pages.
- Support IE, I never understoood why people decided to skip IE support. It might not be standards compliant but telling 80-90% of the users on the internet to shove it doesn't seem like a good plan to me.
- As for the colors they are too dark for my tastes and don't really work well.
- I'm not a fan of the general layout of the site.
- Support IE.

+ All the other comments.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenard

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: ChrisGrenardSee, this is exactly the kind of person I want on the site!

You really don't want my critiques.

Well, at the very least I am still very interested in knowing what you think about the color schemes.

I created an account and logged in... I tried several of them and none of them appeal to me. Sorry.

Also, you may be a one man crew, but you're headed down a bad path... you're using tables for layout design. Learn CSS.

Here's a nice starting block: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/

 

[ChrisGrenard]

Awhelp, I pretty much blew off my homework for the day, but I think at this point at least some bit of progress has been made. Of course, now a lot of the remaining themes don't look quite right, along with other little oddities, but whatcha gonna do?

Also, Modeps, I removed a large amount of the tables in there, but not all of them as I found a way to use Javascript to highlight alternating rows, which I'm gonna impliment later. But I did kill it off for the majority of the general layout stuff.

Oh, and today is Jimmy Buffett day!

 

[Modeps]

Chris,
Tables should only be used on a website when displaying tabular data... so many of your lists like when displaying all the songs for a particular band, are fine. Its actual layout that you shouldn't be using tables. Yeah, its easy to use them but its just bad practice.

I just went to your site, and its all messed up now. The content is moved over to the right.

 

[blurredvision]

Damn, you guys are rough on anybody who comes in here with custom sites or reviews. I think we all need to sit back and think about if the hate we're throwing back and forth is really worth it.

Personally, I think the site is a really good idea and could be useful if enough people use it. However, I see some problems. These are MY OPINIONS, so don't go crying in a corner if you don't like them.

- I fully expect GH4 DLC to try and match what RB is doing (plus, GH2 and 3 still have a little bit of DLC right now), so I'm wondering if you should've made the site into a general music game DLC. Then you could've made a kick-ass design that would split between RB and GH....
- I think the circular icons to show the rating is pretty clever to match in-game RB.
- Overall, regardless of color scheme, I don't like the site design one bit. It's unpleasing to the eye, looks like it was built by a Myspace teen or somebody stuck in pre-CSS times. I thought maybe it was because I was looking at it in IE7, but it's still no good in FF.
- I agree with what someone else said, you have to make this work for at least IE7, don't make people get a particular browser. People don't read FAQs, they won't know why your site looks like shit. It doesn't matter if it's a "one-man-band" kind of site, if you expect people to visit it, you have to put the time in. You can't half-ass it....well, you can, but don't expect people to sign up.

 

[Modeps]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Damn, you guys are rough on anybody who comes in here with custom sites or reviews. I think we all need to sit back and think about if the hate we're throwing back and forth is really worth it.

I actually thought everyone was being pretty nice to the little noobie. I've personally been trying to be helpful and not too much of a jerkfaceloser.

 

[Injury]

Site looks like dog shit in Firefox

 

[ChrisGrenard]

"I just went to your site, and its all messed up now. The content is moved over to the right."

What browser? And did you force a refresh? It could be that your browser is somehow trying to view the new page with the old CSS.

Edit: Interesting. Firefox 3 make it look normal, as does IE 6. I'll work on it here.

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: Modeps

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Damn, you guys are rough on anybody who comes in here with custom sites or reviews. I think we all need to sit back and think about if the hate we're throwing back and forth is really worth it.

I actually thought everyone was being pretty nice to the little noobie. I've personally been trying to be helpful and not too much of a jerkfaceloser.

Eh, maybe I read too much into it since this was one of the first posts I read this morning . I guess between this one and the absolute beating VIAN took yesterday for posting an opinion piece, I'm just a little on edge with "you people".