I thought it would be a good time to discuss whats happening with SlashQuit.
The Website & Development
The website is old. As much as I think the design is still modern, if it doesn't impress me, I can't stand the sight of it. To rectify this problem, I have designed a new SQ interface. Based around the same concept as the current site, which uses a single background image & transparency for containers.
You could argue whether the new interface is 'new' or just an upgrade, but it makes everything more neater & easier to work with.
Along side the old website is the old backend. The backend is basically the functionality of the whole site.
Adding to this backend has been such a problem, that its halted our development. Considering all our good ideas rely on communicating with the website, nothing has changed in the past year.
To get back on track, we needed a new backend & now its almost complete. In a week or two you should see the upgrade.
What to Expect
The majority of this upgrade is to enable me to work on SQ projects again. There will be some features that are missing, as it takes time to write all these smaller options.
The big change you should notice is the functionality of the Interface & the speed in which pages are delivered. I think the fastest page has gone from ~34ms to ~9ms.
When it comes online, life will be as usual, though after a few months you should see more & more features appear.
The Future
The big project that I've already started working on is a Tournament Manager. The old one that we had running a while ago wasn't designed for users to run their own competitions, nor did it really cater for a lot of things. The new one we're building should fix all design faults of the previous.
The other things that are in mind are user based features. We have access to servers & can host large files, so we'll start coming up with a few ways to give you more access.
Clarification
I am the owner of SlashQuit in every way. I want SQ to provide Australia with professional gaming in a high quality. We don't pack too many servers onto each machine so you should get the best pings in the country (we're in Sydney). We do everything ourselves & don't download some packaged piece of shit which plenty of other randoms already have.
Ryan (incognito) helps me by managing all our servers (5), and with that hes got my permission to do whatever he wants.
The Games we Play
The games we run are the games we play. I am playing TF2 so once the TF2 Linux Binaries are out, we'll have quite a few servers up for it.
All other games (including Q1/Q3/Q4/Warsow) are going to be depreciated. If you would like to run one of these games, which includes updates to the community & running tournaments, please do!
We will support any tournaments that you run. If you fellas want to run a Quake 3 ring while we're doing our TF2 thing then you can. You ask for XYZ servers & we'll see what we can do.
Ok..
I need to go now. I have the Flu & staying up this late typing out bullshit is annoying.
If theres anything I've missed, reply & I'll post answers.
as always Alex, love your work
your commitment to this project is awesome, i eagerly await the future of SQ
pfft, hard life working normal hours :)
nice and sunny on the drives in the morning... get to see all the girls going into work with skirts!
[QUOTE_HEADER]Quoting Loz[/QUOTE_HEADER]
as always Alex, love your work
your commitment to this project is awesome, i eagerly await the future of SQ
ditto loz!
sometimes its easy to take sq for granted, but honestly, thats prolly cause how good it is. really love the whole slashquit idea and its implementation.
cant wait for the new tournament manager thingo, though im never holding another tourney again (haha, doubt anyone wants me to XD :D)
thanks for your work :) same goes to incog and wch
damn flu, get well soon!
Gardian, the idea for the Tournament manager is so anyone can run a tournament.
It has to be simple enough to require a person to set it up & then it runs by itself. Anything lesser won't be used.
less q3 servers would be fine if mode voting was unlocked on all of them
we were callvoting mode x with optus osp
yup, i know noetix D:
sounds mad
and i think 2-3 unlocked modes cpma servers should be enough. no real need to cater for ra3 and ufreeze, mostly nowadays its duel, a bit of ctf. dunno, just my opinion
change armour for clan arena -_-
100/100 isn't enough, 100/200 or 200/200
quality over quantity.
any change in frequency for news posts? feeds?
What would you like to see as news on the front page besides general news about the site / servers?
i liked the columns idea. the whole CS scene / pro scene news on right side is sorta hrm'ish, dunno if anyone even reads that stuff. its like a celebrity magazine or something.
even if results from ongoing/recent sq comps were posted instead of that, it'd be cool imo
The feeds will be as usual. I'm surprised people still use them.
They did get a full upgrade a few months back since it is a standalone project, but theres a bug within PHP that I can't debug. It causes the script to hang & take up the full processing power of this web server. Not a pleasant thing.
As for News Posts, I personally would like to see community & scene news. That would require some staff members posting stuff. If anyone has the time, I'll give them proper access & probably its own little spotlight so they can go nuts.
I've got nothing but time at work on a nightshift, i can probably crap on about some bullshit if you want.
i also have lotsa time, but tbh, id only know whats happening in the q3 and tf2 (after i start anyway) scene
btw, another thing that would be useful, imo, would be stickies in the forums. like, remember how wch made that thread on setting up q3? it was heaps useful, but it always got lost. if it had been stickied, woulda been so much easier to find. thats just one example, but yeah, stickies in forums.
i liked the columns idea. the whole CS scene / pro scene news on right side is sorta hrm'ish, dunno if anyone even reads that stuff. its like a celebrity magazine or something.
When I start a "session" of web browsing, the first site I load is SQ. I think the feeds are fantastic as it means I don't HAVE to load ESR / GotFrag to check for any new content (I still normally visit ESR for the forums anyway, but its nice to know that I don't have to focus on the front page news).
A problem with getting staff to do community / scene news is this: It's easy to find people who are keen to do it, but this enthusiasm normally only lasts for a few articles - and then they stop posting.
another thing that would be useful, imo, would be stickies in the forums. like, remember how wch made that thread on setting up q3? it was heaps useful, but it always got lost.
I have requested this before... and tbh, I can't remember why it hasn't been implemented? (Alex, can you shed some light on this?) - But anyway, if you google: "slashquit quick q3 setup guide" - the setup guide thread is the first hit.
yah, but in general, stickies would be useful, that was just one example
and the feeds, i guess it could be useful to someone who's interested. the majority of the items seem to be overseas CS team changes though :S
It will be done in the new version.
I'll get it going tonight.
Oh.. and another thought :O
On the original SQ, you could actually post comments about a specific item in the news feeds (Having a discussion about the article on this site). I thought that was cool *hint hint* :D
[quote_header]Quoting wch[/quote_header]
I have requested this before... and tbh, I can't remember why it hasn't been implemented? (Alex, can you shed some light on this?) - But anyway, if you google: "slashquit quick q3 setup guide" - the setup guide thread is the first hit
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=quick+q3+setup
I don't really have time for forums, so it's always good to see a bit of substance on the RSS however small.
A succinct review/scene columnist would be welcome...
... but as you've already stated: dedicated writers are rarer than gold dust.
the columns section was an awesome idea. Im genuinely surprised nobody has posted a single one in ages. That sort of thing would keep my coming here, at least. Some sort of discussion people could get into that might inspire a newer generation of gamer *lolcheese* :)
On that note, i have time coming out of the demon hole, and no way to use it. If someones keen, i could be a columnist.
About the news section, and that its sporting details specific to the site only, would it be beneficial to post news about LANs or online events in the news section? Perhaps even a scheduled duel time for some players in a Warsow, or even Q3 server, so that they can skrim as if it were ye olde dayzzz?
