Screenshots

As the internet grows more and more freeware games are cropping up and the competition for my interest and time grows stronger. One of the factors that makes me choose what game to download and what game to ignore is how it presents its screenshots.

Screenshots are the window into the actual gameplay of the game and make my decision easier to make but only if they are done correctly, there are a couple of issues that i am seeing on an ever-increasing basis:

1. Screenshots are NOT Screenshots.



This is a classic example of a screenshot not being a screenshot. To me screenshots should be actual ingame pictures i should be able to see:

• who the player is
• the GUI
• other people,objects etc.

The above is not a case of this there is no aparent GUI in view i can only see one ship which may not be mine. I have no idea what the actual gameplay is this is a pure graphical screenshot that is, to be put frank, showing off.



This is a proper screenshot as it shows ingame footage and all of the things the other one lacked. This is also from the same game as the first and shows that it can be done.

2. Screenshots are impossible to find.

screenshots should be the easiest thing to find on a website a nice clear "screenshots" hyperlink takes me straight to the place i want to be. On many games, more commonly in MMORPGs, the screenshots link is placed in a flash file which is nested in another catorgory ranging(from experience) in name from:

• Community
• Game guide
• Media
• Features
• Gallery
• and many more...

The point is. If i cannot find them then i will not download it because all that happens is the website with its flashy nature shows off pre-rendered graphics and i download the game to find its actually a waste of my time.


SO ALL COMPANIES OUT THERE PUT A DIRECT LINK ON THE HOMEPAGE OF YOUR SITE!

How much is 1 gold?

In the gaming world today many RPGs or MMORPGs have a need to make monsters drop random amounts of gold. This looks incredibly simple but is actually quite complex and not perfect. Take this example:

here i feature a screenshot from a popula MMORPG called "Diablo 2":

(level 3 assain by the name of "moo" if you must know)

In the above example i have killed 2 monsters with my character and they have dropped identical piles of gold in graphical terms. They are however 3 gold in difference. This is where the problem(well nigle really) lies. although it is not neccesary for this to be fixed it can cause a few scenarios where the user does not know which pile to pick up first.

The above probably works by setting a numerical range to a certain resource eg:
in the example above 1-50 = gold1.

this causes the above problem.

I currently cannot think of a solution :(

Rating Systems - Seven (7)

Ocasions arise when we all need guidance about what to watch on tv or what to buy or what to read. We have a number of resources freely avalible to give us this advice but sometimes it can be less than helpful.

One example of this is a Rating system or Poll about what people who went to a website thought of somthing. Below is a picture of the gateworld.net website poll system for an episode of a tv show:


This at first looks quite easy to get advice from but is actually verry unhelpful. The score is an average of all the scores from ANYONE thats voted. This gives only 1 number which is usually the same and in this case it is. I am unable to determine between episodes that i want to watch and ones that i might want to skip.

There is however a soloution which gives you more info in a graph style:


This shows you the number of people who voted for each score and is much easier to get information from. It is also fast at telling you the information you want. More sites should display their results in this way. Some already do.

NOTE: I am aware that if you click the view results button under the gateworld poll you can find more detailed data