3 suggestions... this any good you think?

[Photon]

HOL seems PHP/SQL based, so I could help out and implement these if you'd like (I'm a webdev at avia.se), even though other devs may do it faster since they know the database etc.

Let me know if any of the features are already in place

I enjoy Amiga gaming occasionally, but I think like most of us I only ever got to see 1/100th of all games released. So how to discover the other nice games out there?

1. To find something nice: Gallery view (160x128 in-game thumbnail with game name only), alternate viewmode for the search results page list view we have now. As it is now, basically you have to click every thumbnail to see what the game is like at all, and you don't really care about the title screen or the detail info when you're just looking for what to play.

2. To find something I can/want to play: Easily filter out PAL & WHDLoad & non-PD only. I can't believe this would be some esoteric filtering that only I would want

3. To find something good: Sort by rating. Rating systems seems to be an infected issue, but I think most would be happy simply to be able to mark a game with "I played this and liked it/was okay/disliked it".

(I really don't think we need anything but a 1-year cookie with game IDs and a captcha. It's a stretch to see someone warp the ratings by every time they access a new computer they go through a list of games and vote for all of them. And by reducing the vote-options to 3, extreme votes from individuals are automatically have reduced effect.

I wouldn't be as happy with "mag review percentages" for 3 reasons, a) some games weren't reviewed or the review isn't found yet, and which mag is right? b) someone has to put them in, drastically reducing the number of rated games, and c) mags give near 100% in unison for the blockbusters we all already know are good and famous and sometimes don't "get" gems, or succumb to trends of the time. They played the games long ago in a different world, making their opinions outdated and less relevant. We play the games now and it should be our voice that counts, I think. It could be really easy. "Hey, that was a decent game. I'll go to HOL and click a rating.")


My main reason for writing this suggestion was point 1. I'd be happy with just point 1. and 3., or just 1, and I think it would make it easier to wade through the impressive amount of games being made over the years

(A reasonable compromise could be to write a script to rattle through the screenshots that replaces the thumbnails with 160x128 ones, they don't really show anything you can see right now - and filtering could be done with advanced search already perhaps. Adding the rating field and modifying the details php page would be a piece of cake for me, if you want it.)

Feel free to respond to points 1/2/3 or make suggestions, if they are good I'll offer to help implement them too, if the HOL team agrees.