Welcome to the new forums!

Black Mesa Archive Website Issues
#1

I would like to first apologize for the downtime during the forum migration. This was no easy task and I am excited to finally be here with you all.

Due to our previous software bottleneck, our quick solution to stop the influx of spam was to temporarily disabled user registration. Sadly, this solution turned permanent; stopping community growth as a result. This is why I am happy to introduce to you our new digs and welcome all newcomers as user registration is finally re-enabled.

With our new forum software being open source, it comes with a slew of amazing things such as powerful spam protection tools, community moderation, and more.

I have migrated everything from our previous forums database with the exception of avatars and user passwords.

In order to retrieve your account, please reset your password and be sure to check your spam folder. If you are having any troubles, please send an e-mail to: webmaster@blackmesagame.com. and I’ll get you back up and running in no time.

I also executed scripts to help format posts but it’s not always perfect. If you have a post that looks a tad malformed, be sure to beautify it. I’ll actively be doing so as well. Also don’t forget to re-upload your avatar.

Please use this topic to provide any feedback or suggestions. This may be the beginning, but I will be actively working on this iteration in terms of features and aesthetics. Help make it the best that it can be.

:heart: Hubi

7 Likes
#2
#5

Nice job, dude.

A few suggestions tho:

  • Bring back the ability to collapse/expand forum sections, so I can minimize the sections I don’t participate in and reduce the amount of text on the first page.

  • Ability to move around forum sections, so I can have my most visited sections right on top.

  • Quick read all threads button.

  • I also should be able to hide the right side activity feed column.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Again, good job, Hubi.

3 Likes
#6

BTW, will you be tweaking the design over time? As it stands now, this current one seems rather generic, like one of these websites with domains for sale, lol.

You could probably use some of the same fonts and design cues from the game, so the forum can look more on-brand.

Oh, and another suggestion, this one for mobile:

1080Ă—1920 496 KB

You see that purple box on the side with the arrows? That allows you to quickly go to the top and bottom of the page, which is particularly handy on mobile. If possible, could you implement that?

2 Likes
#7

Well, i’m not nearly as high of a level as i was before but other than that everythings fine.

#8

You are now a Vortigaunt, use it wisely :wink:

#9

Thank you for the feedback @Maxey. Now that the new forums have been deployed, I can now focus on designing it properly. I just wanted to solve the bottleneck first :heart:

1 Like
#10

Cool, good luck! :+1:

1 Like
#11

Dunno if this is worth mentioning but
image
The icon for the site shows up completely white now, so it’s invisible to me. When it had the black border you could see it on any color background.

#12

Why would you make him a Vortigaunt?
He’s a Non important user and, being a CPU, I’m vital!

1 Like
#13

I love the new forum design!

It looks simple and fast!
Sure the older one was fancy but sometimes slowish.

Thank youu!!!

#14

I amazed by how much of the original forums were preserved.
The new design is looking awesome so far!

#15

Congrats to @Hubicorn and the devs on the new forum :slight_smile:

Here’s some feedback on a few things I’ve noticed:

  • It appears that several of the pinned threads in the Cafeteria didn’t make it through the migration, eg. the “Got a Question?” and the “Ask the Developers” threads. These were originally posted by Raminator, I believe, whose account was a casualty in the war on spam, which could explain why the threads were lost (this probably also means that all of Raminator’s posts are now gone.)
  • All of stormseeker’s posts posted before his account (like Raminator’s) was accidentally deleted also seem to be missing. Their posts, some of which were posted in the ARG thread, and which may or may not still be relevant to the ARG, could still be seen on the previous forum as guest (ghost) posts. They weren’t searchable, but at least they were there.
  • The OP of the ARG thread has shifted. This is probably related to the fact that the ARG thread was originally two separate threads that got merged. I’m not sure if it matters much, though, since the OP hasn’t been updated for a long time.
  • I can’t edit posts older than two months or so.
  • Pinned threads get unpinned when read. It appears that I can pin it again myself, but it gets unpinned again the next time I read the thread. Is there a way to permanently pin a thread?
  • Formatting issues were to be expected, but in the ARG thread there are now many instances were text put inside code tags (typically source code and such) are now a wonderful mess. Also, [tt] tags didn’t get translated.
  • Also, something I’ve seen in the ARG thread, there are many instances where emojis are shown as :emojiname: instead of the emoji image.
  • In the ARG thread, the SPOILER tag was heavily used as a way to contract/expand sections of a post containing one or more images or walls of text in order to not needlessly clutter up the post/page. In this version, however, the SPOILER tag shows the full content, except blurred.
4 Likes
#16

@Flavrans You can disable “Automatically unpin threads when I get to the bottom” in preferences -> interface -> other.
should be second from the bottom.

1 Like
#17

I’d highly appreciate if there was a way to return to a traditional X-Amount-of-Posts-Per-Page formatting instead of infinite scrolling, but that’s just me.
Also, it feels like there’s a lot of unused space on the sides of the page. It’s not even being occupied by ads or other links. It’s just kinda blank.

1 Like
#18

The new forum looks good, although the design is a bit generic, just as @Maxey said.

Here are my initial suggestions:

  • Add strikethrough text formatting

  • Bring back the Black Mesa emojis

  • Bring back the “Mark thread(s) as read” feature / button

  • Bring back the total number of current viewers (registered and guests) per page

#19

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3… Well done! :smiley:

#20

Yeah, the current layout definitely isn’t ideal for widescreen monitors, especially for image-heavy threads.
Since the page is set to a max width in pixels rather than %, the blank areas are even larger at high resolutions.

Maybe some of the spare space could be used for avatars, the current 45x45 displayed size makes some a bit hard to read / recognise.

You can still do it with [s]strikethrough[/s]: strikethrough

2 Likes
#21

I can’t comment much on its functionality since I don’t usually make comments or post anything, but I’d like to say I really like the new theme. And it feels more fluid as well. :slight_smile:

#22

Really liked the interactive user tutorial, nice touch!

1 Like

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.