Sir Rogers
16-07-2010, 09:26 PM
Ok, sure the current design is ok and looks a bit like IRC, but I believe that it won't scale with increasing numbers. And I don't want to go down the GARENA style road, well maybe I could, to steal all your moneyz! :D
Anyway, here's the idea. I'd really appreciate some feedback if the either is possibly too functional, and possibly confusing too, or if it's nice, or whatnot. Just your opinion about the idea or possible suggestions on how to make it better.
Well imagine you have 800 users in one chatroom ... First of all the "xxx joined the chatroom" will kill your CPU, and then listing and ordering all players in alphanumerical order in the users list will burn your motherboard to the ground. Yes!
The point is that a UI which lists ALL players in a channel with no limited number of user, does not scale well. People with poorer PCs will start to see lag if they're ingame, and that wouldn't be good. So we need a new UI, or rather a new approach to the UI.
Let's think about this. Why do you need to see 800 users in a list? Let's assume you only know 5 people in that list, and 5 people in the list are admins/moderators. We can safely assume that you are chatting to 3 other people on some random topic. That means you only need to see 13/800 people on that list, really. So the basic approach is to not display any users in the list unless they are of possible importance to you. Let's break that down into bullet points of suggestions:
1) The UI doesn't display any users in the userlist to start with. It only shows you the total number of users that are present in the chatroom.
2) It will display your friends that join the chatroom.
3) It will display admins / moderators / etc ...
4) It will display people that are active in the chat. People that you might be chatting with. So if someone tpyes a message, he pops up in your userlist, and then if that person is quiet for X (maybe, 5) minutes, he disappears again from your userlist.
5) You only see the message "xxx left the chatroom" for people that were in your userlist. Maybe the same for the "xxx joined the chatoom" for people that are future entries in your list (friends, admins, etc...)
Those are the points for the initial suggestion. But what now if you want to find a user in the list? I suggest that there be a textfield on top of the userlist, where upon entering a name, it would display you all the users which match your search pattern. Example:
You type "al" and the userlist will display "mental", "alfred", "al_capone", "dental_floss".
I think that the users which were found this way should be displayed in a separate category, I'm not sure yet how that should look like graphically, it's just the idea for now.
And that's all. I'm really looking forward to your feedback guys.
Regards,
Sir Rogers
Anyway, here's the idea. I'd really appreciate some feedback if the either is possibly too functional, and possibly confusing too, or if it's nice, or whatnot. Just your opinion about the idea or possible suggestions on how to make it better.
Well imagine you have 800 users in one chatroom ... First of all the "xxx joined the chatroom" will kill your CPU, and then listing and ordering all players in alphanumerical order in the users list will burn your motherboard to the ground. Yes!
The point is that a UI which lists ALL players in a channel with no limited number of user, does not scale well. People with poorer PCs will start to see lag if they're ingame, and that wouldn't be good. So we need a new UI, or rather a new approach to the UI.
Let's think about this. Why do you need to see 800 users in a list? Let's assume you only know 5 people in that list, and 5 people in the list are admins/moderators. We can safely assume that you are chatting to 3 other people on some random topic. That means you only need to see 13/800 people on that list, really. So the basic approach is to not display any users in the list unless they are of possible importance to you. Let's break that down into bullet points of suggestions:
1) The UI doesn't display any users in the userlist to start with. It only shows you the total number of users that are present in the chatroom.
2) It will display your friends that join the chatroom.
3) It will display admins / moderators / etc ...
4) It will display people that are active in the chat. People that you might be chatting with. So if someone tpyes a message, he pops up in your userlist, and then if that person is quiet for X (maybe, 5) minutes, he disappears again from your userlist.
5) You only see the message "xxx left the chatroom" for people that were in your userlist. Maybe the same for the "xxx joined the chatoom" for people that are future entries in your list (friends, admins, etc...)
Those are the points for the initial suggestion. But what now if you want to find a user in the list? I suggest that there be a textfield on top of the userlist, where upon entering a name, it would display you all the users which match your search pattern. Example:
You type "al" and the userlist will display "mental", "alfred", "al_capone", "dental_floss".
I think that the users which were found this way should be displayed in a separate category, I'm not sure yet how that should look like graphically, it's just the idea for now.
And that's all. I'm really looking forward to your feedback guys.
Regards,
Sir Rogers