I've got some questions I want to ask you guys about v3. If you want to talk about the music project, keep going in my previous blog.

I want to know what I should do regarding the following three items: recent activity, what I should work on next in development, and I want your suggestions for a members points (MP) shop.

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Recent Activity

There's been several people telling me that commenting has gone down since v3 came out, particularly due to the Recent Activity being ugly/in the bottom bar. Mush drove the point home to me in a suggestion today, so I'd like your input on what I should do about this.

There's sort of three ways to go about changing this:

First way:

I could make a preference to move the RA from the bottom bar to somewhere else. Where should I put this?

There's not much space to make a bar in the right side for the RA, because we're cramming so much stuff in the left menu.

I could put the RA into the left menu underneath everything, so at least it's always visible.

Second way:

Rework the way that the RA behaves in the bottom bar. I plan to add in a little pop-up notification in the bottom bar (like an old MSN notification) to show when a user comes online and when there is new activity.

However, that's only a temporary notification that there is new activity (it'll only pop up for a few seconds, then dissapear), so I also plan to change what is displayed in the bottom bar a little bit. Instead of that "(15)" after "Recent Activity", I was thinking of changing that to a simple way to notify that there's something new (like an exclamation mark, or the word "new" in brackets, or something). The problem with this, is that I don't know which point in time to reference for when it would notify there is something new.

When v3 was first released, I used those numbers to show how much new recent activity there had been since the bar was last opened. People seemed to hate that, because every time they opened it, it reset the number. And if they left the RA bar open, the number did not increase when there was new activity.

Third Way:

I could compress the left bar, and put in a right bar, for the RA/users online. The biggest problem with this, is simply that when viewing a game, the information wouldn't fit in the left side, so it would have to be redesigned. Also, the main content area would also get compressed a bit, but that should be okay - with the exception of some peoples' banners.

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Note that regardless of which RA method we go with, I'm not going to be removing the bottom bar, as it will be used for little notifications and chats in the future. It won't be removed, but it might be repurposed.

I'm leaning towards the third way, but that's also the longest thing to program.

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What should I work on developing

Aside from the RA, which I'd like to get working on soon, after some feedback, I have a small list of major things I want to hammer out. In no particular order:

a) Build a review system (pushed to the front of my mind by Glen's blog)

b) Game Submission

c) Game filtering (when viewing the list of games)

d) Make comments match the blog fonts/colours

e) Make a "shop" to spend your Member Points on.

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Gimme suggestions on what you want to be able to purchase, as well as ways to collect MP:

I made a push to get the QDB released with v3, in order to introduce the concept of Member Points. At the moment, the only thing you can do with them is ask a question in the QDB, but I'm hoping to build a little economy, to give people incentive to do things (such as answer a question for someone).

I'm going to be building a little "shop" page, that lists all the things you can purchase with your MP.

I would like your suggestions on things you can buy, as well as ways you can make MP.

For example:

To buy:

1) You can change the image beside your name in the Active Users list.

2) You can change the image beside your blog in the Recent Activity list.

3) You can purchase advertising space on 64D for your game, blog, website, etc.

To get points:

1) Answer QDB questions.

2) Every time you login within 24 hours, you get a small number of MP (to keep people coming back).

3) Write reviews on games.

4) Submit a game.

5) Get income for every xth download of your game, multiplied by the rating your game recieved. ie get 10 MP for every 100 downloads, multiplied by the rating. So a 9/10 rating would get you 90 MP.

So suggest away! Think outside the box with things to buy, and ways to get points.

I'd also like to build a members shop as well, where people can submit their sprites and scripts and stuff, for people to purchase. I'll be making classifieds as well, so people can hire others for their services and stuff.

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In summary:

What should I do about the RA

What order should I work on stuff for v3?

What do you want to do for/with your MP?