Stendhal Development Meeting 2014-04-02
On the 2nd we had a development meeting regarding recent changes to the Stendhal website and future plans. Please find a summary of the meeting below.
New unified search
- There is now a search box in the upper right hand corner. It will find: Creatures, Items, Quests, Regions, Dungeons, pages from the manual and players.
- Mostly positive feedback
- Sometimes it is unclear, why certain results are included and other are not shown: When you search for a black sword, the result shows the black giant but not one of the other ones who drop it. Black giant, however, is not shown because it drops "black sword", but because it has both words in its description: "You see a tall black giant. His armor and sword will hit you hard. Be prepared!"
- It might be a good idea to return the creature which drop a searched item. At least if it a rare item (e. g. not money).
- It may be a good idea, to convert the search boxes for players, items, npcs, etc. to use the unified search as well, with a filter. For example a row of checkboxes like [_] Creature [_] Item [X] Player.
- Multiple people did not notice the new search box. It's not close to the item/player sections so it does not work as a reminder. Upper right hand corner seems to be used on many website. But that it is very far away from the focus of attention. We might want to move it into the World guide navigation box.
- Actually, position of the search box may be a good path to another topic.
How should the start page look like, in order to be attractive to new people as well as seasoned players?
- At the moment, the start page has a lot of news, with quite a long history of old entries. New players are probably not interested in them.
- More information about the game, not just the events that happen here
- Games stats, like how many rooms, how many creatures, how many maps and