03.22 | Development Update

Welcome back to another dev update, I hope your weekend was well. This time I have some work-in-progress screenshots of 1.10 ready to share!

This will focus entirely on the revamped journal that's coming with the 1.10 update, as I'm hoping to improve it based accessibility, understandability, and simplicity. Now let's go through each screenshot where I can give a brief description of what's changed and why.

Also keep in mind these are still extremely work-in-progress so any of this can change and nothing here is guaranteed to make it into the final release.

1 - The Game Page

Here the biggest difference you'll see is the reordered log status buttons to the left under the game cover. Now each button as an equal amount of space and size so that they're all laid out together on one row, where before the "Playing" status was underneath it all. This is to make all your options more clear from the start and to give them each equal space. I'm also making sure the ordering of the log statuses are consistent throughout the site and so that they match the natural flow a game would take: Played <- Playing <- Backlog <- Wishlist

2 - A New Log

Now we're looking at what the journal looks like when you open up a new log. The biggest difference here is that the journal is no longer split into a single log with multiple playthroughs, but now just can be multiple logs. Each log has its own rating, review, platform, medium, etc... When you open your journal your most recent log will always be displayed (if you have one) with the option to create a new one from the game page when one already exists. In addition the advanced fields have now been moved to a collapsible section that should be more fluid to access than a new page like it is now. 

3 - Game Status to Played Status
Game statuses per log / play session are no more, instead they are now a sub-option for the played log status and can be selected via the dropdown shown in the previous log editor screenshot. Also you may notice that mastered is no longer a status+ since this felt status felt specific to the log it was on and shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Which is why it was moved to being a toggleable option as seen in the next screenshot.

4 - Filled Out Log

Now you can see the variety of new options a log may have. New fields include played on, edition, mastered, medium, and replay.

Played on will act as a free-form field where you can choose any platform to help you mark logs where you played a certain release version but on a different platform. This will cover cases such as emulation, collection ports, etc.. I'm still deciding if this is the best way to handle this problem but it is the most flexible.

Edition is where you can mark exactly which edition you played once edition combining is implemented. Unfortunately edition combining won't make it into this update so this field is likely to be emitted before release, but it's still good to plan for it ;)

Medium is the same as the ownership field from the old advanced section before just renamed and can now be log specific.

Mastered is just as mentioned above, a new toggle that will be replacing the game status that can be specified per log instead of set as an overall status.

Replay is similar where you'll have the ability to specify if this log was a replay or your first time playing.

5 - Journal Play Session Note
Game status has also been removed from play sessions as it felt it overcomplicated, confusing, and rarely used. But one great addition will be the ability to say if the play session was a start or finish date from the play session screen itself.

Something also to note is that all play sessions now sit together and there is no playthrough separation of calendars as playthroughs have been removed. This is again to make the calendar less confusing to use and even easier for those who do know.

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That's everything I wanted to go over today via these screenshots! There are still a few more details you might've noticed that I didn't mention but don't fret, I'm just saving them for next time ;) Anyway as mentioned this is all still very work-in-progress so anything shown can be subject to change, but also use that as a chance to provide any feedback you have by either commenting here or start a discussion the Discord #patrons channel!

Until next time, see you on the site!