News / Welcome to New Element v5.0

Those errors are currently a safety mechanism that has been put in place by Gee.

 

Currently, the server we are on is a shared server. On launch day, as many people will know, we had server issues and many people were locked out of the site by our host. This is because this new site uses a lot of resources. When it gets too much, the host shuts people out of the site until Gee sorts it out with them.

 

There are two ways of fixing. The optimal way is to switch from a shared server to a dedicated server. This is something we aim to do in the long term.

 

The other way is the way that Gee has recently implemented. If the server becomes extremely busy, the site will inform you of this, and stop your action (the error you see). By doing this, the site only using the maximum resources the server offers. And thus, the host won't shut our site down for a long period of time.

 

Basically, those errors are currently helping to keep the site stable. If you get one, a few seconds later you will most likely find you can continue what you were doing (by refreshing the page).

 

We know this isn't ideal, but for the time being, it has to happen.

hmm... in one way I like it and in another way I'm completely swamped by it. It will take some time to get used to this style I suppose. Then again I am coping with a lot of change atm anyway with a new computer and W8.

Also I'm not sure I agree with the way parks are released right now. Takes away the surprise (and controversy which can be quite fun sometimes ). Ah well, great job though Geewhz, great job.

 

btw, a link on homepage to the old stuff would be nice (even if it is read-only), oh and the reply area seems to miss the emoticons

Fisch, I added General Chat back, I never noticed it was missing but it should have been there.

c'mon guys, go rate all the spotlights or something, not just the few recent parks you like!! grrr

This is a huge step, and seeing the site evolve to stay relevant is an incredible feeling.  I'm not a fan of all of it, but I don't want that to discolor the facts:  Gee and others have invested huge amounts of personal time serving the community with this project and that contribution deserves to be recognized.  

 

 

The tag system and the streamlined frontpage are very fresh and incredibly useful.  The tags are going to be the backbone of the place for years and allow intuitive connections between styles , coasters - great work.  Everything is just easier now with the additional layer of filtering.  Finding all of the purple suspended coasters in NE history is (theoretically) just as fluid as searching accolades. 

 

Setting the screenshot up as the base unit of NE interaction is a decision that could be debated, but I respect the work that went into carrying that idea to full realization; the screen gallery is much more engaging and up-front than the AD district, and it definitely sets the tone for what NE is about for visitors.  

 

Very excited to see how the ratings system plays out, since I'm unsure about it right now.  Minimizing the amount of overhead should hopefully make things more enjoyable for the admin team.

Thanks for the explanation Louis, I hope it can be fixed soon. On another note, think I found a bug. I get notifications now, thanks for fixing, but when I want to go to a screen I follow, it sends me to the home page. It's only with screens, no problems with following forums, parks, projects...

quick question about screenshots- how does the top rated system work? when I scroll through the pages, around page 3 the ratings spike again with a ton of really highly rated screens. does it only list the 'top rated' per day on page 1? (how about top rated of all time?)

 

also, you should totally put beast trainer in the utilities, I use it way more than 4 cars (but maybe they do identical things, for all I know)

Um, that's weird, it shouldn't do that, ordering by top rated should order it specifically by all time rating. That is a bug that needs to be fixed.

beast and son of beast trainer explicitly state that it cannot be posted on any website. go figure.

Isn't beast originally hosted on a nothing site (at least now)? That's sort of silly

Was it rctgrotto or something?

Yea, rctgrotto, it's still there http://sob.coastergrotto.com/

Phenomenal achievement by a phenomenal person. Gee, I'm proud to be your partner.

 

NE shall rule even more than it already did for years. There's never going to be another place for RCT and you better live it while it lasts. On to many more years of RCT excellence.

Site looks awesome, guys. Congrats!

and now the problems post, since I wanted to keep it separate from the (very deserved) high-fives and backpatting post

 

I'm very concerned that the new system is going to negatively impact the way projects are advertised.  The screen gallery gives very little room for context - just a title, really.  If I want to post some text with my screen, even a few sentences, I have to choose between the description - which appears below comments in my browser - and adding it in my own comment, which could also be buried.  Videos and GIFs aren't even an option?  There's also the question of non-rct work; where do I showcase concept art, music, or other media associated with the project?  Screens may be the bread and butter, but even the most screen-centric AD topics tend to include flavor text or "sorry for the unfinished corner, that's going to be X" which lends meaningful perspective.  So far it looks like overviews and concept art will go up right alongside other images, which seems fine, but I worry that the system is limiting the potential for great AD storytelling. 

 

Less serious complaints - 

 

I'm not sure about having no hotbar link to the forums; I would put the place where tutorials are hosted above the Members page in terms of needs-to-be-easily-accessible hierarchy.  If nothing else, I would think a link somewhere to go back to the top forum from this (and any other) discussion page is a basic necessity.

 

It seems strange to me that screens are set up to require as many clicks as they do to view full-size.  I've already seen the thumbnail version once in the gallery page, why do I need to see it again?  In fact the process right now is fairly deceptive- I go from Thumbnail >Bigger Thumbnail, which could easily be mistaken for Thumbnail > Full Size.  Sometimes I forget to click again for full-size if it seems like everything is already in-frame.  Most importantly, there is no prompt to click for full size anywhere, how would a visitor know?

 

The tag system is outstanding, but I worry about the janitorial aspects of it.  Who is going to clean up tags, make sure they apply, tag everything that fits but isn't tagged, etc?  That sounds like re-naming the old database labor, not fixing it.  I don't have a solution here, just stating my worries.

I'd like to see some policy layed out for tag use enforcement; the Use Guidelines are very handy and will help if followed, but I'm curious what the tag manager policy will be on whether or not something is, say, Realism, or if an unfinished project intended to be submitted for a contest gets the contest tag.  I'm pretty sure this is common sense stuff, but having an official clarification can't hurt and could avoid trouble later on.

 

Are the group project forums returning, or will that sort of thing be encouraged to use the PM system from now on?  The role of the site is at least partially to encourage community activity, so I'd like to see group work, h2h team communication, etc. be as accessible as possible regardless of what system it uses.

 

Likewise, the dump-place is gone; if I have something I want comments on that isn't ready for prime-time, how does that fit into the screen gallery system?  

 

How are the ratings going to be back-dated, if at all?  I would suggest using accolade scores (where available) as a base rating for older releases to avoid an inherent front-loading of The [Top Rated] List.

 

Finally, I hope this doesn't send the message that I'm not a fan of the revamp or the effort that went into it - just calling what I see as I see it.  I know we all want the site to be awesome.

^I think you raise some decent points here. When I first started using the screens instead of a topic, my first thought was to That Guy's excellent story-based thread and whether that would transfer over in any meaningful way- even if it was all put together in one project, you would miss out on every piece of text unless you clicked each picture individually (gallery view only shows screens, no text), and made sure to view in order. There also is not really room for the often-used list of what percentage of completion different parts of the park are at (a staple of rctnw's work) as part of an 'update'. essentially, a lot of the freedom of your own AD topic is lost.

 

maybe a solution could be to have, within a project, a blog-ish sort of update system, where one could update followers on their progress in little posts. If a screen is associated with that update then it gets listed in that post as a thumbnail- essentially, its like a forums topic but only updated by the creator/s. and underneath that the regular comments section (or comments for each update? Idk). And if you're following that park, or just browsing new content, it shows up as 'cocoa posted an update to DisneyEarth' instead of just a screenshot. pretty much, each project now is just a collection of screens with a small description- but it could be a hub for showing off progress, thoughts, etc.

 

also, just a minor suggestion- I would love to see who originally posted what content in the 'new content' tab. I keep clicking on things like "entrance- post by Fisch" only to be dismayed when he is the only the last poster and not the creator of the screen.

 

but yeah, just like intamin, I don't want this to make you think I don't love ne5, because its super great and I've been doing so much more rct since it came out

you guys did a nice job already. now lets see if I can finish my part so you can focus more on other stuff then the boring things.

This point may have been raised already, but, as pretentious as it may sound, I don't feel like reading all of these pages back to see if someone already posted it.

 

Let me start of by saying, GREAT SITE! Good job! I love it for the most part of it. The site already looks great and I keep finding new things.

 

There's just one point that I feel like you didn't improve. The banner that NE4 had. I feel like accolade winners aren't given the prestige anymore, like they used to. Instead, unfinished projects and screens get more attention which I feel is a shame. Starpointe won the highest score ever given by the AP and it feels like it will be forgotten in less than a week because it's pushed to such a small place in the site.

Wow. Astonishing work Gee. I really like everything about the site at this point, and with a little more exploration I'm sure I'll love it even more. Being able to just get right on to the site and see everyone's screenshots put all into one place is just great. When you get to see all of the amazing content this site produces all together it's very inspiring. Truly love the new design, though I agree with chorkie on bringing back the old NE4 banner images, that was pretty cool.

 

Anyway, great work on this. This is the most excited about RCT2 I've been in quite a while!

][ntamin22,

I think you're blowing this way out of proportion here. You're talking about a very small minority who have gone out of their way to advertise in a unique way. I think it is a very bad idea to spend a lot of time designing complex system for the minority. I had nothing to do with the dump-place, it took off on its own, it was in demand. I took that concept and expanded it and made it a much better platform than it was. You cannot argue that point, it's a fact.

As for screen gallery giving little room for content, let me say the proof is in the pudding. The screenshots speak for themselves, what more do you need than a title for the screen and a brief description? How often did people really post gifs or videos? The dump place was what was popular and I'd argue that the dump place attracted a lot LESSER quality screenshots than this new site has screen already because I think this platform that we are on now encourages people to have a finished well presented screenshot to upload because it is a nicer context to display it on than the dump place.

As for other media associated with the project, I can add an attachment feature and all files attached to the project could be display in a nice way, that is something I could do. Nobody said this is 100% final and not expandable. This is just what I came up with after spending a few years trying to figure out the best direction for everything to go in.

I will never understand everyones complain about there not being a link that says "Forums" It's the homepage! just click on the logo at the top or the bottom to go to it, it's that simple!

This has been here since the site launched btw:



It is very hard to design something around a variable size screenshot uploading, this is why it is the way it is and you click to see the full size. I'm sure I could find a way to add a quick-fullsize view on the index pages for screenshots.

We announced in the original post that there is a tag managers group who will have access to managing and adding tags. Things have been going very well with the tags since the site launched in my opinion.

Group forums never seemed to be used, I never understood why they were necessary every since the re-map of the PM system in NE4 where members could add anyone to a conversation.

You can upload unfinished stuff to the screenshots page, it's up to you what you upload, there aren't any strict rules about this or anything. But like I said, since everything is saved and attached to a member's account, it does encourage users to have well presented content before they add something, which is a good thing I think, not a bad thing.

Like in the original post here, the Accolade Panel will be giving a score to all the previous accolade winners with no score. This score will be used in parkmaker determination if applicable.

Cocoa, the projects page itself is a fine place for a member to update the status. Why can't he just reply to the project itself in a comment to notify everyone what he just did, or what percentage it is?

I'll look into making the new content function better so it will show a bit more information like you're saying.

chorkiel, I don't think there is a big problem with the accolades the way they are. People didn't miss Starpointe or anything and it got plenty of exposure. I actually thought it was cool how Starpointe came out and people buzzed about it, then when it finally got awarded an accolade there was more buzz about the score it got and accolade it won, almost like there was twice the buzz than it just coming out with an award and that is it. the banners are gone, yes, but that's not to say that they can't return in the future, as I have an idea I'd like to try out in regards to them.

How are the forums sorted?

It seems like the topics with the newest posts aren't on top of the page?

 

"MFG"

  the banners are gone, yes, but that's not to say that they can't return in the future, as I have an idea I'd like to try out in regards to them.

This was actually my only concern and I'm glad that they may return!