Suggestions

[AkumaTh]

A small suggestion about the Sonic Custom Sprites Section. The Modern Genesis Sprites are a popular style. I feel they should be kept in a separate section like the JoshR Pokemon sprites.

[Ton]

How many do we have on the site? I know we have 2 Sonics by them. Is one just a demo sheet? Do they plan to make more? If not, are there lots more incoming?

Josh got his own section because if we had left them in their own sections they would have become unwieldy. We're not at much risk of that with Sonic yet, but if they plan to do more I could see it becoming a possibility.

[AkumaTh]

How many do we have on the site? I know we have 2 Sonics by them. Is one just a demo sheet? Do they plan to make more? If not, are there lots more incoming?

Josh got his own section because if we had left them in their own sections they would have become unwieldy. We're not at much risk of that with Sonic yet, but if they plan to do more I could see it becoming a possibility.

One sheet is just Sonic 1 Poses while the other one is the more complete version. By my count, including the two Sonics, there are 12 sheets of them so far. Not sure if there is going to be more but Xeric has all of them so far. Not sure how many other sheets are done.

[The Lord of all Games]

Can someone add Yo-kai Watch, I really want 3D models!

[daemoth]

Some little things i thought might be useful:
1. In the big games like Nuga Cel or Pokemon, the page ends up being pretty heavy and slows navigation. An index with links to each sections and a "Click to expand" button for sections that have more than X sheets could help with that.

2. How about each user get a spriter reputation value depending on the amount of sheets he or she submitted with a little "+" if he or she has submitted in the last week and this would be displayed in the forums like the social links. Same for Models, Textures and sounds.  Mods could also rep up some members since some submissions takes a lot more times than others. For Dazz, it should just be written GOD  
It would make it a lot easier to know who does what and if someone has recently submitted. Downside is, its a slippery slope for the new member who might try to do a lot of sheets of lesser quality and the not-automated part of rep. management would also be an additionnal work charge for the mods.

3. We have millions and millions of sprites.... and none of them are used in the sites UI, except the mario mushroom in the background. In consoles pages like this one, Dazz's sprite is pretty nice but we could replace it by a collage of sprites from the 20-30 most popular games for that console with "SELECT A LETTER" as if it was displayed by that console. We could make a contest and then vote on the best. We have tons of ppl that are good with image editing software, that shouldnt be hard for us :

Edit
4. Like i talked about in my sudmission thread, it would save the mods some time if , when a new sections in a game is created, that section is placed in a predetermined order based on their name. 
For example: "Playable Characters" and "Pcs" should be first,
"Npcs" should be second, "Enemies" third, "Bosses" forth and "Miscellaneous" last.

[Ton]

I generally try to keep sections sorted like this:

Top: Playable Character(s)

If it's a fighting game or racing game I put them under "fighters" or "racers" even if they're not playable. This could also be "Units" in the case if tactical games.

Next: Non-Playable Characters

In an RPG this is self explanatory. In a side scroller this might be Peach or Protoman. If there is only one npc sheet, this may be relegated the the Miscellaneous section, as one sheet may not warrant a whole section.

Enemies etc.

This could also be split into Minibosses and Bosses if there are enough sheets to warrant it. Some games, like the Megaman series, have a Robot Masters/Mavericks section, because they're a special subset of characters.

Stages/Backgrounds

This is tricky. Stages generally includes both back and foregrounds. If there are layers, there could be separate back and foregrounds sections. This could also be called "Stages" or "Levels" based on the game and how it's presented. Map sprites may be here, or in their own section if there are enough of them.

Special effects

Again, if there are only a few of these they could be in Misc. Could be magic, spells, etc.

Miscellaneous

Things that don't for anywhere, or just categories that don't necessarily warrant a whole section (see the note in NPCs). Could be items, cutscenes, menus, introductions, endings, beta sprites, etc. If any of these categories are large enough, they could be spun off into their own sections. (Beta sprites, Cutscenes, etc.)

Tiles

This could go after backgrounds if they're background tiles. I generally out them at the very end because of the technical aspect involved. Casual users aren't going to care about this, especially if they're zipped.

[Random Talking Bush]

Pretty much what Ton said, though I feel it makes more sense to have the tilesets directly below the backgrounds and above the miscellaneous things.

[Ton]

Works for me.

[Petie]

Some little things i thought might be useful:
1. In the big games like Nuga Cel or Pokemon, the page ends up being pretty heavy and slows navigation. An index with links to each sections and a "Click to expand" button for sections that have more than X sheets could help with that.

2. How about each user get a spriter reputation value depending on the amount of sheets he or she submitted with a little "+" if he or she has submitted in the last week and this would be displayed in the forums like the social links. Same for Models, Textures and sounds.  Mods could also rep up some members since some submissions takes a lot more times than others. For Dazz, it should just be written GOD  
It would make it a lot easier to know who does what and if someone has recently submitted. Downside is, its a slippery slope for the new member who might try to do a lot of sheets of lesser quality and the not-automated part of rep. management would also be an additionnal work charge for the mods.

3. We have millions and millions of sprites.... and none of them are used in the sites UI, except the mario mushroom in the background. In consoles pages like this one, Dazz's sprite is pretty nice but we could replace it by a collage of sprites from the 20-30 most popular games for that console with "SELECT A LETTER" as if it was displayed by that console. We could make a contest and then vote on the best. We have tons of ppl that are good with image editing software, that shouldnt be hard for us :

Edit
4. Like i talked about in my sudmission thread, it would save the mods some time if , when a new sections in a game is created, that section is placed in a predetermined order based on their name. 
For example: "Playable Characters" and "Pcs" should be first,
"Npcs" should be second, "Enemies" third, "Bosses" forth and "Miscellaneous" last.

I'm going to quickly go through point by point:

1. I feel like this is already easy to alleviate with the text mode option. While certainly not the same as you're suggesting, the instances where this is an issue are relatively few and far between and don't necessarily affect everyone the same way so I'm not sure implementing this is entirely necessary and I certainly wouldn't want to force it on people (the pages load just fine for me, for instance). That said, if there's enough demand for something like this, perhaps it's something that can be added in as a preference at some point.

2. This isn't going to work for the same reason direct ties between submitter and forum profiles don't work - they are two separate entities. This was an unfortunate oversight in the way the old system was coded (before I took over) and was too well established for me to change. Additionally, I'd rather not introduce additional ways to play favorites or discourage new users from contributing by setting up some sort of arbitrary barrier they feel they need to meet or exceed.

3. This idea could work if done correctly. It would take a little bit of set up and we'd need to ensure all of the images were exactly the same size but it likely wouldn't be overly difficult with enough community participation. We'd need to keep something generic (Dazz or otherwise) to fill any spot that didn't have an image made for it yet though.

4. This, on the other hand, isn't possible. There may be quite a bit of overlap with section names but not all of them apply everywhere and trying to come up with a full list of standard section names to pre-sort them would not be fun to set up or maintain. The system that creates sections would also need to be significantly overhauled given that, right now, order is calculated and sections are inserted based on the order they're created. To implement this, I'd have to re-calculate the order for every single section change during the submission process.

Suggestions are always welcome though, even if they turn out to be too difficult to implement or deemed unnecessary in the end. We obviously can't think of everything so this thread winds up being one of our most useful!

[daemoth]

I'm going to quickly go through point by point:

1. I feel like this is already easy to alleviate with the text mode option. While certainly not the same as you're suggesting, the instances where this is an issue are relatively few and far between and don't necessarily affect everyone the same way so I'm not sure implementing this is entirely necessary and I certainly wouldn't want to force it on people (the pages load just fine for me, for instance). That said, if there's enough demand for something like this, perhaps it's something that can be added in as a preference at some point.

2. This isn't going to work for the same reason direct ties between submitter and forum profiles don't work - they are two separate entities. This was an unfortunate oversight in the way the old system was coded (before I took over) and was too well established for me to change. Additionally, I'd rather not introduce additional ways to play favorites or discourage new users from contributing by setting up some sort of arbitrary barrier they feel they need to meet or exceed.

3. This idea could work if done correctly. It would take a little bit of set up and we'd need to ensure all of the images were exactly the same size but it likely wouldn't be overly difficult with enough community participation. We'd need to keep something generic (Dazz or otherwise) to fill any spot that didn't have an image made for it yet though.

4. This, on the other hand, isn't possible. There may be quite a bit of overlap with section names but not all of them apply everywhere and trying to come up with a full list of standard section names to pre-sort them would not be fun to set up or maintain. The system that creates sections would also need to be significantly overhauled given that, right now, order is calculated and sections are inserted based on the order they're created. To implement this, I'd have to re-calculate the order for every single section change during the submission process.

Suggestions are always welcome though, even if they turn out to be too difficult to implement or deemed unnecessary in the end. We obviously can't think of everything so this thread winds up being one of our most useful!

2. Isnt it the same thing as the same thing as the social sites? Dont we link the submitter and forum account to have those icons on the left?

4. Well, there could be a predefined list of Section name when you create a sheet. This way, the names of the sheets created thereafter will be more coherent with each other, and we wont have situation like : "Pc", "Pc(s)","Pcs","Playable Character","Playable Characters","Playable Character(s)". This would fix 90% of the problem.
Another solution to this would be to give the power to move and rename section to the "trusted" submitters.

[Petie]

2.  Isnt it the same thing as the same thing as the social sites? Dont we link the submitter and forum account to have those icons on the left?

4. Well, there could be a predefined list of Section name when you create a sheet. This way, the names of the sheets created thereafter will be more coherent with each other, and we wont have situation like : "Pc", "Pc(s)","Pcs","Playable Character","Playable Characters","Playable Character(s)". This would fix 90% of the problem.
Another solution to this would be to give the power to move and rename section to the "trusted" submitters.

It's not the same as social sites. The social sites plugin lets users enter their submitter name directly. There is no 1:1 link going on here and you could enter any submitter name you wanted. What you are suggesting requires actually having a 1:1 link between a member and a submitter for the tracking to work which can't be done.

As for your pre-defined list, the issue, again, is that not all games share the same sections. I realize that many do but having irrelevant sections displayed for all games would not be user-friendly. All users can already edit sections via revisions and for larger changes, a quick post to the errors thread is enough to fix the problem (as has been seen a few times recently).

[DarkGrievous7145]

1.
Dang... that kinda sucks...
I can relate to being unable to change or forced to work around "how it was already established"

2.
Ok, so there's the sections drop-down menu's, why not do it like:
section: default/common: [dropdown: prefabs] in-game: [the existing dropdown goes here]

You'd probably need to add some instructions somewhere, and even then, I admit there'd be confusion.
In fact, I recently updated the CAC Unit Editor I've been making.
There's an issue that got me several times when testing.
http://crystalien-redux.com/uploads/ETX/...ditor.html
I probably could have done this differently, and I chose not to.
Those bottom two fields for 'file' and 'unit' only explicitly apply to the "load" button.

That said, this suggested feature probably would be useful if everyone understood it, but tbh, I doubt that a lot of people would. I amended it so that at least the default/pre-fab section names don't clutter the main section select menu. However, it might be better to not do it that way.

What about creating a database so that when it's processing to fix this?
so, say I upload "Npc" "NPC" , "nPC" , all to different games, the system detects "OH, NPC!" , and thus for each game,
the section is called "'NPC's" ?

There's my $1 - $0.98

[Virt]

Not sure if this has been said, but is there a way to show what system a game is on when you're browsing by genre? Like, as a part of its icon or something, akin to the Zip icon added to a sheet's icon?

[Petie]

The console is listed at the bottom of the page with the game's genre and eventual developer list. I realize this doesn't help you pick the game if you're looking for one in a specific genre and on a specific console but you can at least verify. I'll also see about adding genre to the search system so you can do cross-searches easily.

[Ton]

For the Genesis/32x/Sega CD section, should we go throught and add a (32X) or (SCD) for games for those systems like we have in the "Other" section? Just for consistency's sake?