Site Feedback

I like both as long as they're readable, which that looks to be. I second the idea of letting people choose if you're up for maintaining two themes, because I know a lot of people have very strong feelings one way or the other.

The dark theme looks dope, I'm happy with either though!

I'm experimenting with a darker them for the site, what are your thoughts?

Do you generally prefer dark sites or lighter sites?

I always prefer the darker themes. Though, as the others suggested, it would be a good idea to make it optional.

I think having light and dark mode be optional would be a good idea. I'd probably end up using dark mode myself. If it's not possible to toggle it though, maybe you could do a trial run of the dark mode for a week or so and then make a decision based on the feedback?

I more like darker themes myself, but make it user choice is a good idea

I prefer darker themes. Just because I don't have a very well lit room and it's easier to the eyes. Dark room and white backgrounds strain the eyes a lot.

EDIT:

Oh and I also would vote for the "optional" setting. While I think darker is better, white background most of the time looks more professional as a default theme. It's also the better option if you have well lit room.

how does game submitting work and can you add itch.io as a platform also could you add gog.com and playstation network

how does game submitting work and can you add itch.io as a platform also could you add gog.com and playstation network

itch.io games are played on PC/Linux/Mac, so you select the one you played on.

how does game submitting work and can you add itch.io as a platform also could you add gog.com and playstation network

And for game submitting... You can add any game you want. If you add a game to your account that isn't in the database you can add the information yourself but choosing "edit details" on the game's main page or you can wait for it to be added by me when multiple people have requested it through playthrough submission.

RECENT CHANGES:
About a week ago I did a slight redesign to the search function.

Today I added a "Mentions" button to the forum homepage so you can easily see when someone quotes you and what they said.

Edit:
Visual changes to various navigation.
Keep sidebar (game image, adding to lists) on game pages (Overview, Reviews, Playing, Backlogs, Retired)
Mobile readability enhancements to user profiles.

Dunno if this has been suggested before (prolly has), but it'd be cool if there were a feature to rare and rank games based on their difficulty as well

Dunno if this has been suggested before (prolly has), but it'd be cool if there were a feature to rare and rank games based on their difficulty as well

This has been suggested a few times. Off the top of my head, the two big reasons against it are 1) Many games have a bunch of difficulty settings so you'd have to have a separate ranking for each one, which is way too many statistics to track, and 2) Difficulty is super subjective and dynamic. Someone might rank Dark Souls a 10/10 difficulty the first time they beat it, but if they beat it 20 more times it might not be challenging to them at all anymore.

I think difficulty is a useful thing to know about a game, but you'd probably need a whole new website to track it because of how complex it is. Most people here just comment on the difficulty in their completion notes.

Just want to add my opinion to the Theme discussion and say that I think the dark theme looks great, and it'd make the site a lot easier on my eyes, especially at night.

I'm seeing an issue with the Progress Timer not tracking time accurately. In Chrome I've just noticed that if I start the timer on one tab and then open a different tab within the same browser window the time won't track correctly on the original tab. I've timed it with my phone stop watch and when I start both and immediately go to a different browser tab, after letting my phone run for 1 minute I go back to the tab with the Progress Timer and it's only counted 40 seconds. Is this a known issue?

So, this is a weird little thing i've noticed with whatever the alphabetical sort used is.

Lately, i've been putting a star symbol at the start of any games in my list to differentiate them within the list for whatever reason (High Priority on my Backlist, games I may revisit on retired vs. never etc.) I did this after using it on steam to get one of my custom categories to appear at the top no matter what other ones were there.

However, for some reason, on this site the symbol appears between A and B in the alphabet, somehow...

hey guys, have you fixed the password reset? i forgot my password and my nickname years back, when this site launched, and i tried it a few years later and was able to remember it. at that time(2013?) the password reset didnt work.

otherwise, i love this page, just to know which game i should start next without throwing myself into one of those endless j-rpg games which take forever.

one this which is a bit weird is that the loading times are sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
is it safari or is it your end?

hey guys, have you fixed the password reset? i forgot my password and my nickname years back, when this site launched, and i tried it a few years later and was able to remember it. at that time(2013?) the password reset didnt work.

otherwise, i love this page, just to know which game i should start next without throwing myself into one of those endless j-rpg games which take forever.

one this which is a bit weird is that the loading times are sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
is it safari or is it your end?

I had to reinstall Windows unexpectedly a couple weeks ago and with that I lost all my passwords. I reset my password for this site at that time with no issues.

So, this is a weird little thing i've noticed with whatever the alphabetical sort used is.

Lately, i've been putting a star symbol at the start of any games in my list to differentiate them within the list for whatever reason (High Priority on my Backlist, games I may revisit on retired vs. never etc.) I did this after using it on steam to get one of my custom categories to appear at the top no matter what other ones were there.

However, for some reason, on this site the symbol appears between A and B in the alphabet, somehow...

So I was curious about this and I believe it's because that star is stored in the database as:
★

So it must be sorting it where ☠comes after A.

hey guys, have you fixed the password reset? i forgot my password and my nickname years back, when this site launched, and i tried it a few years later and was able to remember it. at that time(2013?) the password reset didnt work.

otherwise, i love this page, just to know which game i should start next without throwing myself into one of those endless j-rpg games which take forever.

one this which is a bit weird is that the loading times are sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
is it safari or is it your end?

The password reset works fine, the issue is that some email providers block howlongtobeat as spam or a potential threat (basically unknown so not trusted), sometimes denying the IP completely so it won't reach that inbox. I've had to email several email provides to have me white listed.

This one just came to me, i dont know if it makes sense to you but hear me out, since the 3ds line of systems has the virtual console would it be feasible to add that under the console selection window?

Could be the start of the steam sale sending extra traffic to the site. I know some addons like Enhanced Steam pull info from here on top of any extra direct traffic. Just a guess though, I noticed the slowdown earlier but it's eased up since.

Right now it is definitely running a lot slower than usual. Even just clicking "post" in the forums takes a good 5 seconds.

Edit: and then actually submitting said post took over 30 seconds.

I can confirm that it is the Steam sale. I've even optimized some scripts over the last couple days but there isn't much more I can do. Over the last couple years I've spent numerous sessions just optimizing and there aren't many more opportunities. I'll watch the database queries come through and I'll see a user send like 50 requests at one time. I'll keep monitoring and see if there more places to optimize.

There are other options, like even better hosting but that would require me to add more ads to the site or something. It's hard to justify for these random time frames when the site gets pounded.

As someone who's sporadically been submitting real VirtualBoy games/times (using the actual hardware, no less), please stop. And even if a few of us weren't doing that, intentionally miscategorizing things only makes stuff worse in the grand scheme of things.

Hi Nalgas,

I wasn't aware this affected anyone else, I thought it would just tag on my account. Sorry about that, I'll stop doing it now.

A big +1 for your FAQ suggestion. Maybe we could start a separate thread to brainstorm suggestions, help the admins out a little? Combing this thread and subforum for questions, cooperate on clear and concise explanations, etc.?