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Posted By

Csabo
on 2015-01-28
10:01:02

Re: Site matters

I agree with this as well. As it is... the tapes section is almost useless, and I suspect it gets very little actual use.

I'll think about it a bit more when I have the time. At the very least, it should not have more than one icon for the same game.

Posted By

MIK
on 2015-01-28
02:46:47

Re: Site matters

Any software that you might suspect to be pirate and was sold is not commercial, it's a bootleg.
Splitting the word "commercial" up between software, hardware, books and magazines might be a pain any way.

The media format our machines used makes no difference be it tape, disk or cartridge. A software page normally has everything there is or was.

Having a commercial section is not stating one side is better than the other or vice versa even though home brew will always be more valuable. Think of the commercial software side as a Comic Book, Postcard, Bubble Gum Card, Stamps, Matchbox covers, Toy Car, Toy Dolls of the software genre. One big tick list.

Posted By

MMS
on 2015-01-27
13:20:35

Re: Site matters

I think MIK is right.

On the other hand >95% of commercial games was released on Tapes, as Plus/4 was on in real focus, and it does not worth to have multiloader C16 games, right? So software houses did not put too much effort on that. (There could be some exceptions (C16 with disc realase), but not too much).

OFF I do not treat myself a real collector, but from my point of view the homebrew converted games are sometimes more valuable that the commercial games. Why? Because commercial releases were made to generate some profit by a professional SW house, while converted games were purely made by few very active "plus/4 fans" for the scene without the chance to have any profit out of that. The amount of work probably not on the same level (eg. designing art, sprites, the map, levels, sound/music for original game while 90% of gfx, music and 80% of code can be reused ), but the efforts to convert a game from C64 or Spectrum should not be underestimated too. There are a lot of challenges on music, sprites (Tass Times), gfx format and color, adjustment VIC/TED conversion.
As ZX Spectrum had very big games as converted (?) one (Rainbow Island, Bubble Bobble, Myth - History in the Making, Robocop, Battle Axe etc), it proves that with certain effort ANY game could be converted to Plussy too, with a certain level of playability/quality.
It is too sad, that Z80 code is so far from 8502 one, as Spectrum games could be otherwise a great source of potential conversion games (no sprites, no SID and no special (not reproduceable) gfx trick like in CPC or Atari).

Posted By

retroscener
on 2015-01-27
13:07:38

Re: Site matters

Would this include the foreign pirate releases of existing commercial titles such as from Armati (and others which renames them) which are still listed as Commercial?

Sounds like it would require a lot of restructuring.

Posted By

MIK
on 2015-01-27
12:35:01

Re: Site matters

Something I've wanted to say for along time but don't really want to put the work load on you. I'll say it though so it's something to think about, and if you like the idea then there is no rush to do it. I'm not saying you must do it, it's something that might be worth looking in too...

It would be better if the Tape section was replaced with a Commercial Software section instead. Just like looking at the A-Z of Games, this new section would show all commercial software (only) from around the world, not just games but tools, demo as in Winter Demo, desktop publishing, art, music, turbo loaders that were commercially released ect...
Sometimes when you dig about online to see what people say you see the odd time that people think that Plus/4 World is hardwork because the commercial stuff they might be after also shows 10 different homebrew remakes of the same thing, or something is listed completely different because it's nothing more than a renamed crack which joe bloggs saved to a floopy for a laugh so it's stuck ever since. In short, to see the commercial stuff you have to dig through everything else inbetween when your looking at the Games section.

Before anyone gets upset or may not understand what I'm saying... it is perfectly fine listing anything and everything as this is what the site is mostly about, just a dedicated commercial software only A-Z listing would make things easier for anyone or everyone.

The tape section is not needed any more any way as each software page contains everything you need, and much more. Really the tapes section was here to cover commercial stuff but with some tapes still missing it will never contain a full list of everything there was. That's why I think it's better to have a section for commercial software.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2015-01-26
15:08:20

Re: Site matters

Sorry for not responding to these earlier!

1) This is the default Chrome behavior. It only shows the favicon in the address bar if you're using HTTPS.

2) Either you can do what JamesC suggested (copy and save them elsewhere, then clear them), or you can just hide the PMs. In both cases, they won't be part of the traffic between the server and your browser.

Otherwise, thanks for bringing these up, let me know if there's other stuff to improve!

Posted By

JamesC
on 2015-01-24
17:49:29

Re: Site matters

The site's favicon works for me - Chrome 40.0.2214.91 on Win7 32 bit - so I wonder if you're not receiving the icon at all.

Try this link. It goes straight to the favicon, and also works for me. http://plus4world.powweb.com/favicon.ico

There is a "Hide all PMs" setting at the bottom of the Options page. Is it selected?

Posted By

SVS
on 2015-01-24
14:06:15

Re: Site matters

Thank you James for your replies.

Regarding the favicon, in the favourites bar I obtain only a favicon like a "g" (google?) instead of "our" favicon.
About the other matter, maybe Csabo can explain why these data are reloaded from scratch on every page. The solution could be make them cacheable or at least put a button to skip onto real start page. I had thought to the solution you suggest, that is to copy the texts to a notepad.txt, but I keep it as a last move

Posted By

JamesC
on 2015-01-24
12:15:39

Re: Site matters

1) Chrome uses the favicon at the Favourites list, but not in the address bar. The icon in the address bar is for site permissions. If you go to an SSL site, you will see this icon change to a padlock.

2) If you copy your private messages to a text file of some sort (a Google Drive document, a file on your PC, etc) then you can delete the messages on +4World - speeding your page access.

Posted By

gerliczer
on 2015-01-24
09:25:46

Re: Site matters

/WISE ARSE ON
The second one is neither question nor suggestion.

/WISE ARSE OFF

Posted By

SVS
on 2015-01-24
04:33:20

Site matters

Just 2 questions/suggestions to our Csabo:

1) Is there a way to view the Plus4word' favicon with Chrome?
2) I use to maintain many received private messages for their info (links, etc). It seems to me that each time I change page, all they are downloaded again from the server. And this can not be cached by OS nor other utilities. This causes me to have long waitings each time I want to go to another page of "our site".

Thank you for the answers!