Restart Syndrome - High Score Boards

[Shepardus]

Just entered in a bunch of scores for non-Touhou games I've cleared (and Dodonpachi II - Bee Storm, which I haven't cleared), ran into a couple issues:

I was just trying to enter my score for Mushihimesama Original 1.5, but there's no option for PC as the platform, just Arcade and X360. I just chose X360.

If you enter two scores for Dariusburst Another Chronicle, both for the same route but for different ships, the higher score is treated as an improvement over the lower score and one of your ships' scores doesn't show up except in your own score history. You can see this in route K - I have scores for both Gaiden and Genesis, but only Genesis shows up. Also the site loads very slowly if I try to view the boards for routes where I've entered scores for different ships (H and K).

In route L scores, my score is appearing above a higher score in the ship-specific table:

[CStarFlare]

The Mushi 1.5 is an easy fix - I've got PC added to the list and updated your entry.

The Route L issue is very odd. I think I need to go back and redesign how I'm querying the ship types - I've already noticed that the Route field on DBAC (and other "extra" fields like Rapid Fire on Mushi) don't populate properly in the split scoreboards.

Thanks for pointing these out - I'll set aside some time this weekend to look into what's wrong with the split boards.

[CStarFlare]

Just entered in a bunch of scores for non-Touhou games I've cleared (and Dodonpachi II - Bee Storm, which I haven't cleared), ran into a couple issues:

I was just trying to enter my score for Mushihimesama Original 1.5, but there's no option for PC as the platform, just Arcade and X360. I just chose X360.

If you enter two scores for Dariusburst Another Chronicle, both for the same route but for different ships, the higher score is treated as an improvement over the lower score and one of your ships' scores doesn't show up except in your own score history. You can see this in route K - I have scores for both Gaiden and Genesis, but only Genesis shows up. Also the site loads very slowly if I try to view the boards for routes where I've entered scores for different ships (H and K).

In route L scores, my score is appearing above a higher score in the ship-specific table:

I think I've got the problems with the ship split boards all ironed out. Please let me know if you see anything else.

Thanks everyone!

EDIT: I've just noticed that the split boards for certain games all display scores of 3. Was this happening before or did I fuck something up? Regardless I'll fix it. :3 (EDIT: I think I know what's wrong, and it's something I fucked up when fixing the previous issue. Will fix).

[CStarFlare]

Quick bump for a question: It occurs to me that I haven't updated the "News" section since 2012. There's really never really any news to post, aside from new games - so I've been thinking I'd just replace it with the @shmups twitter feed which might be a better use of the space. But it occurs to me that maybe it's worth including tweets from other sources as well - would it be advisable to include tweets from people like Degica and Cave, for example, or would it be best to stick with the curated shmups feed and not clutter the section with others' tweets? Would be interested to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions of what twitterers might be worth including.

[Shepardus]

On the Wing Force board both the autofire options say "On."

Also, I can't upload my replay file for my first Cho Ren Sha 2-ALL (from October 2015), I put it in a .zip file and tried to upload it and the form appeared to go through, but there's still no link to the replay.

[CStarFlare]

Strange - a CRS replay should be well below the size limit and as a zip the extension shouldn't be a problem. Can you find some way to get the file to me so I can investigate?

(Wing Force is fixed, thanks!)

[Shepardus]

Neither uploading it as a zip nor renaming it to a .rpy extension worked. Here's the file.

[PurpleTheGuy]

Hey CStarFlare, what's up?

Yeah, I actually got another request I like to make of you for your website, restartsyndrome. You think you can add the game TWilight refrAIN, if that's possible? I would like to add what I got for TWilight refrAIN over there. Once again, I can tell you what to put in for there, if you need me to (Just like the last time), like the routes, stages, playable characters and their names, etc. You can also save replays on that game, too, as well.

[CStarFlare]

Yeah, if you could send a PM with the necessary info that'd be great. I know I looked at it when I added Twilight Insanity but can't remember why it never made it on the site - if there was some twist in how the game operates, or I couldn't find certain info or if I just got lazy.

[PurpleTheGuy]

Yeah, for sure, CStarFlare!

Yeah, I actually sent a PM to you just earlier, so yeah, whenever you have time, just check it out! I think I gave you all the necessary info you need to put TWilight refrAIN into your website, restartsyndrome, but if I somehow didn't include everything, and I left something out somehow or something around those lines, just let me know, and we'll go from there. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to you adding TWilight refrAIN into restartsyndrome, whenever you get to go do that!

Thanks, CStarFlare!

[Gas]

Has no one reached out over time to offer to help improve the GUI/look of the site?

[Faith]

Has no one reached out over time to offer to help improve the GUI/look of the site?

But why? Website works @_@"... load super fast because no unnecessary noise, easy to read, simple table means a lot of info in one page.

It should stay like this I feel. Really hate change for change sake when someone need to justify existence @_@"... and then website become harder to use, slower, waste more space, so on. This is such big problem in "new" internet. It is good for things to stay same... and work.

[Steven]

Dark mode would be nice, but otherwise, yeah, leave it exactly as it is.

Edit: lol forgot dark mode exists when you log in, so never mind, it's basically perfect as is.

[Gas]

Has no one reached out over time to offer to help improve the GUI/look of the site?

But why? Website works @_@"... load super fast because no unnecessary noise, easy to read, simple table means a lot of info in one page.

It should stay like this I feel. Really hate change for change sake when someone need to justify existence @_@"... and then website become harder to use, slower, waste more space, so on. This is such big problem in "new" internet. It is good for things to stay same... and work.

I love the look of the old internet myself, but anyone can see that not even having a css style sheet makes it look worse and quite amateurish compared to literally anything else. Really is the opposite of the spirit of the old internet if it has 0 color and life in it, and not even a site logo. That's nice there's a dark mode, but why is this not the default for passerbys and instead locked only for those who create an account?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Has no one reached out over time to offer to help improve the GUI/look of the site?

It doesn't need improving; it's a responsive scoreboard that's simple and effective without needing any complex frills and looks good on a browser and on mobile. At the end of the day, the important thing is the scoreboard and the data, not the frills.

Remember back in the day when websites thought that making your entire site using Flash was a sensible idea? Yeah. A lot of unnecessarily complicated site design things are like that: awful. Infinite scrolling for instance makes it impossible to browse older content on lengthy blogs because if you leave the page and come back you have to start from page 1. This site and Restart Syndrome are rather sensibly simple, minimalist sites whose design is primarily about function, not form, which is greatly appreciated.

If you want a site that's got more bells and whistles with respect to the design, look at the french site shmup.com. I had to struggle to figure out how to find the hiscore page, especially on mobile which shrinks the design to unlabelled icons. You have to find the one that has a game list, then you have to see there's a medal beside it that tells you there's a scoreboard for it, and then you can, a few clicks later, go to a separate site, hiscores.shmup.com (which isn't apparently linked to on the menu bar at shmup.com?), to access the actual game list. If you're on mobile, there's no way to see screenshots or video links for scores, at least I can't tell how to access it. You basically have to force desktop mode to see these things or even tell that photos or video links exist beside the scores.

RestartSyndrome mercifully will display the full board and all the info on it in an easily browseable format regardless of device.

[CStarFlare]

The real answer here is that RS was the first (only) site I ever created, and I was only focused on just making it do the thing. I've gone through and updated certain things over the years (I did go back and implement CSS so I could implement a dark mode, for example) but giving it a visual upgrade probably requires more ripping out and rebuilding than I'm interested in. I'm just not confident enough in my design sensibilities to feel like the whole effort would be successful.

EDIT:

If there's individual things that look bad, please feel free to let me know. In particular, I'm curious what people thing about the resdesigned front page - I wasn't happy with how some titles didn't fit in the old version (Touhou games in particular got really shortchanged by the old character limit) so tried to redesign so more would fit.

I'm also curious if anyone has ideas for what to replace the old Twitter gadget with. I used to embed Plasmo's timeline as a good STG score newsfeed, but the feature has been broken at least since Elon took over. So that section of the homepage needs to be rethought, or maybe the homepage needs to be reworked to just remove the social media element entirely.

[marus]

So, I'm in the boat that RS doesn't need a redesign - I think the layout and navigation are quite functional and user friendly, and I've gotten used to the Craigslist look by this point. I'm also aware that this is a personal project maintained by only 1 person (for whom I'm constantly thankful - thanks CStarFlare!) But also I think some of you are being facetious with how much power would be needed to give the site a facelift. You don't need infinite scrolling or HTML5 nonsense to change the font and add some color lol. Hell even this very forum is an example of that.

If there's individual things that look bad, please feel free to let me know. In particular, I'm curious what people thing about the resdesigned front page - I wasn't happy with how some titles didn't fit in the old version (Touhou games in particular got really shortchanged by the old character limit) so tried to redesign so more would fit.

I like the new character limit, but I'll admit the first time I saw the new front page I was confused by the new table. Each row now has 2 lines (the game, and the actual mode/score), but since there isn't any delimiter it isn't visually obvious where each entry begins:

Spoiler

There's a number of ways you could improve this. For example you could add some spacing between each row, or you can add a border, or do some zebra striping.

Spacing between rows:

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Row border:

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Zebra striping:

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I'm also curious if anyone has ideas for what to replace the old Twitter gadget with. I used to embed Plasmo's timeline as a good STG score newsfeed, but the feature has been broken at least since Elon took over. So that section of the homepage needs to be rethought, or maybe the homepage needs to be reworked to just remove the social media element entirely.

Maybe it'd be fun to show an embed to a random replay, or do some kind of replay of the day sort of thing.

[Gas]

Has no one reached out over time to offer to help improve the GUI/look of the site?

It doesn't need improving; it's a responsive scoreboard that's simple and effective without needing any complex frills and looks good on a browser and on mobile. At the end of the day, the important thing is the scoreboard and the data, not the frills.

Remember back in the day when websites thought that making your entire site using Flash was a sensible idea? Yeah. A lot of unnecessarily complicated site design things are like that: awful. Infinite scrolling for instance makes it impossible to browse older content on lengthy blogs because if you leave the page and come back you have to start from page 1. This site and Restart Syndrome are rather sensibly simple, minimalist sites whose design is primarily about function, not form, which is greatly appreciated.

If you want a site that's got more bells and whistles with respect to the design, look at the french site shmup.com. I had to struggle to figure out how to find the hiscore page, especially on mobile which shrinks the design to unlabelled icons. You have to find the one that has a game list, then you have to see there's a medal beside it that tells you there's a scoreboard for it, and then you can, a few clicks later, go to a separate site, hiscores.shmup.com (which isn't apparently linked to on the menu bar at shmup.com?), to access the actual game list. If you're on mobile, there's no way to see screenshots or video links for scores, at least I can't tell how to access it. You basically have to force desktop mode to see these things or even tell that photos or video links exist beside the scores.

RestartSyndrome mercifully will display the full board and all the info on it in an easily browseable format regardless of device.

Yes, in fact all websites should just be black text with a white background and no images, why not start with this forum. Javascript, HTML5, CSS, all of it a mistake

[Steven]

This very much seems like a solution to a problem that does not exist; what's wrong with Restart Syndrome? It... looks simple? That's it? What's wrong with that? That's a good thing; no need to worry about extraneous things. Restart Syndrome is, aside from a broken Twitter thing, perfectly functional as far as I can tell, and Twitter can and probably should go to hell anyway.

[ColonelFatso]

Maybe it'd be fun to show an embed to a random replay, or do some kind of replay of the day sort of thing.

This is a fun idea, but I feel like the options are too disparate both in terms of potential quality and in terms of real-time effort. A curated replay of the day requires at least a replay's worth of work per day, and a randomly-selected replay from the full set of submitted replays runs the risk of accidentally signal-boosting some schlauchi-tier misconduct.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

a randomly-selected replay from the full set of submitted replays runs the risk of accidentally signal-boosting some schlauchi-tier misconduct.

I think it's a fun idea, one that might not be too tough to implement (how do you check for and account for potentially broken links though?) and if it does that it has the benefit of identifying a cheater? More likely to do good than not.

Gas's response is reminiscent of when Mark complained about much the same thing on this forum, then quickly soured on it and left to make his own community with blackjack and hookers (where he's now apparently paid over $3000 a month to crank out videos for his fans, so that worked out for him I guess). The people who are happy with it are happy, and you're welcome to go make your own thing I guess.

Yes, in fact all websites should just be black text with a white background

Some of the most useful websites with game info have been basically this, plaintext stuff like GameFAQs or the EDF wikis on Atwiki that are graphically minimal and are basically text with a few tables. Way too many sites are overdesigned to the point where design overshadows utility.

[Gas]

This very much seems like a solution to a problem that does not exist; what's wrong with Restart Syndrome? It... looks simple? That's it? What's wrong with that? That's a good thing; no need to worry about extraneous things. Restart Syndrome is, aside from a broken Twitter thing, perfectly functional as far as I can tell, and Twitter can and probably should go to hell anyway.

This site half a billion people use could learn a thing or two from Restart Syndrome. And then people wonder why speedrunning is taken so much more seriously https://www.speedrun.com/

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Suggesting that speedrunning is more popular because a speedrrunning website looks prettier to you is an opinion wildly disconnected from reality.

[Steven]

This site half a billion people use could learn a thing or two from Restart Syndrome.

Yes, it could indeed, as the front page of speedrunning.com is a giant mess of disorganized shit. Like why is the very first thing I see a random replay that takes up like 40% of my screen? Get that out of here; it's annoying, obtrusive, unnecessary, and most likely has absolutely nothing to do with the reason that I would visit the site.

You still have not made any concrete cases about what is wrong with Restart Syndrome, probably because there isn't anything wrong with it at all aside from the broken Twitter thing. Also what Roo said ^ is true.

[marus]

This conversation, basically.

[Faith]

Zebra striping:

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I think for the examples you give, I like this (zebra) the most because it is faint but good enough to do job without making things appear too claustrophobic!~

Definitely can recommend this and think it is good!~

Spoiler

This conversation, basically.

Haha. I think a bit silly to relate these two things. Because, well, first... I am not a guy... but also... my apartment some parts are big visual mess with many things I love to collect, I have one full wall of many accessories, ribbons, toys... so on. I need that visual stimuli like how I need Crimzon Clover haha :p

BUT! You know when I do my shopping list, or my cooking recipe... you know what I use? Notepad. Then I take picture of that with my phone and go out, lol.

You know why? It is clear, easy to read, easy to format (no need to format)... it is easy for me to just super fast, open Notepad, type all my nonsense, paste ideas from internet, or from other sources... then just do quick print or screenshot, and paste on wall in my kitchen. Easy, efficient, fast, and to the point.

So, yes. I very much love my beauty, aesthetics, so on. Anyway, I do not oppose change... like I say above, your zebra stripe idea... great! I love your idea!!~

But, I understand why many want to be careful, cautious, and to limit changes.

Or there is risk of too messy & too much.

Also, I think, from what I read Steven type... I really do not think his apartment can look like that :p hahaha! Sorry Steven! Not in a bad way. But quite sure Steven likes to collect many things too, and many things that are not really small. But, no matter, as long as not dirty, happiness is the most important!~

[Faith]

This site half a billion people use could learn a thing or two from Restart Syndrome. And then people wonder why speedrunning is taken so much more seriously https://www.speedrun.com/

Not sure if this is supposed to be good example @_@?~ I know some game communities do not use this website and use other website instead to keep speedrun info... and for good reason ~_~"...

Example for Doom is DSD Archive. See how many player use that, compare to speedrun.com lol.

But, yes, if want to make website a bit more modern, but not so full of crap like speedrun.com then I think good example follow is DSD Archive.

[marus]

Haha. I think a bit silly to relate these two things. Because, well, first... I am not a guy... but also... my apartment some parts are big visual mess with many things I love to collect, I have one full wall of many accessories, ribbons, toys... so on. I need that visual stimuli like how I need Crimzon Clover haha :p

BUT! You know when I do my shopping list, or my cooking recipe... you know what I use? Notepad. Then I take picture of that with my phone and go out, lol.

You know why? It is clear, easy to read, easy to format (no need to format)... it is easy for me to just super fast, open Notepad, type all my nonsense, paste ideas from internet, or from other sources... then just do quick print or screenshot, and paste on wall in my kitchen. Easy, efficient, fast, and to the point.

Haha I'm just shitposting - please don't take my memeing too serious. For what it's worth, I do the same thing you do when grocery shopping lol (well, I keep plain text files that I can reference on my phone, but it's a similar idea). I agree it's a lot easier to scroll a simple text file on a phone, especially compared to those stupid recipe websites where they tell you their whole life story before getting to the actual recipe.

Anyways I do sympathize with Gas - I'd be happy to see RS get a (minor) facelift. I do agree that's it's easy to go too far, as a lot of websites do today, but there's still some styling you could do to give the website a little personality without disrupting the layout. DSD Archive is a good example. A logo might be a nice place to start.

This is a fun idea, but I feel like the options are too disparate both in terms of potential quality and in terms of real-time effort. A curated replay of the day requires at least a replay's worth of work per day, and a randomly-selected replay from the full set of submitted replays runs the risk of accidentally signal-boosting some schlauchi-tier misconduct.

Yeah hand-curating a replay would likely be too much work, but it shouldn't be too hard to randomly pick one. Identifying dead links programmatically also shouldn't be too difficult - any link which doesn't return a HTTP 200 status code could be assumed to be dead. I kinda doubt there's a ton of cheated replays on the site - I'm sure there's some, but not a large percentage. And if there is, then this would be a potential way to start catching them.

[Faith]

please don't take my memeing too serious.

Haha <3 Faith never too serious!~

But yes, some small changes can be nice, if good thought is put in!

Most important thing though, which I like most about the website... is everything really lightning fast!

Super speedy when clicking on links, searching, and so on. So, as long as that can be maintained, then doing a bit of tidying up is not bad idea... starting with removing that damn useless twitter crap lol!!~

[CStarFlare]

Yeah hand-curating a replay would likely be too much work, but it shouldn't be too hard to randomly pick one. Identifying dead links programmatically also shouldn't be too difficult - any link which doesn't return a HTTP 200 status code could be assumed to be dead. I kinda doubt there's a ton of cheated replays on the site - I'm sure there's some, but not a large percentage. And if there is, then this would be a potential way to start catching them.

I actually modified a bit of code you shared with me and it managed to identify dead links from youtube quite well. Somewhere in my backlog is doing the same to twitch links since those seem to die a lot.

I do expect cheated runs are quite uncommon at Restart Syndrome. It's a niche community site and moderation has been almost completely unnecessary. So a random video in that space should be pretty safe.

I've added some zebra striping to the front page to hopefully add some clarity. Let me know if if it helps. I'll work on adding a video embed over the weekend.

Spoiler

I feel seen.