Hello there. Hope I'm not intruding too much. This has been an ongoing thing, and since pestering is what I do best, as Alex knows from another forum, I thought I might as well pester some more!

It's very simple, really. It's about the "Latest Games" page. I check that page every day for new games (so I'm not exactly a disinterested complainer), and when it gets updated with +18 games - as I think happened yesterday/today - some of those announcements are lost.

Looking at the date in which those games were actually added - some of them 5 and 7 days ago - it's clear to me that there's a backlog of games that gets updated every once in a while, which is hard to manage. I'm ok with that, it's great that someone actually takes the trouble to do that. I would not ask that that person be given even more stress bu forcing that person to update more often. I just think it'd be the easiest solution - the most sensible solution - to allow for some "previous/next" navigation arrows at the end of the page.

Consider also that the way it's currently done it will hurt some authors. Some games just won't be announced properly. Within this community it probably doesn't matter much, as you have other ways of announcing games amongst yourselves, but textadventures.co.uk clearly aims to be for people outside of this community as well. People like myself. And if I miss a game announcement on the Latest page because it got lost in the noise...

...and sometimes there's quite a volley of new items because someone decides to add a batch of non-Quest games, and I'm specificall thinking about the period when a bunch of Parchment-playable Inform games were added...

...then I will just never get to play that game. And neither will other people.

ALTERNATIVELY, the RSS feed was a great workaround to this, but it kept breaking and I'm right in saying that it's not active anymore, right? If that were still up, it'd give me (and everyone else) access to the older "Latest" games and all would be good.

I guess I could/should enable pagination for "Latest". One page used to be enough, but you're right, there are a lot more new submissions now. That means when I or another moderator gets round to categorising games, there are often 50 and sometimes up to 100 to go through, and so there can easily be more than 18 of those which are non-Sandpit.

Right now viewing by latest is only enabled within each category (so you can view multiple pages of latest Fantasy games etc), so one way of keeping up to date and seeing everything is to check each of them (which I acknowledge is a pain).

It would be super if you could, yeah. Again, the trouble you guys have sorting the sandpit from the non-sandpit games is tremendous, so I definitely don't want any extra work on your shoulders, having to worry about how many updates you can do. Pagination for "latest" just seems the easiest, most obvious solution.

I don't even think more than two pages would be necessary.

I think we just got another update that filled the whole page.

I've now added pages to "Latest" - right now it will show you up to 10 pages.

Awesome! I've only noticed it now, because it was only now that there was actually an update that necessitated it, and it was really much needed. Thank you!

Hey, sorry to be a nuisance, but I actually have a follow-up question/suggestion.

Am I right in thinking that the sorting of the new updates is based on when the game was originally released, rather than when it was moved out of sandpit?

Because, and this is very visible with the new batch that just went up, I'm seeing new games sandwiched between games I've already downloaded. I'm having a hard time keeping track, and am always wondering whether such-and-such is a new release or whether my memory is going now that I'm reaching the wisened old age of thirty.

Seriously, though, it can be quite hard to keep track of new releases if they can get jumbled with the *previous* new releases. I don't suppose you could consider having the "Latest" page be sorted by *when the games were moved from sandpit* rather than by *when the games were released*?

Sorry to be a pest, but hey, that only means I care, right?

Heya. The above post is still relevant, I'm afraid. New update is up, and I'm *sure* there are now more games between "Corujinha" and "A Day in Tanzania" than there were two days ago.

It really makes it difficult to keep track of...

"Latest" is sorted by when the game was released. We don't store the date a game was moved into a category. Perhaps we should but it's not really a priority. I have a behind-the-scenes project which is changing how data is stored on the site, so maybe at some point in the next year or five this could change. I've got lots of other things keeping me busy though!

Fair enough.

There did use to be a RSS feed, I used it a lot - and it got broken a lot, sad to say. Does it still exist? It has the advantage of listing every new release *and* of having its own way of showing me which links I already clicked on, so it would handily satisfy this later issue.

Is the feed still around, somewhere? Or has it been totally dropped?

In fact, it's pretty standard, isn't it?, in a web site, for a link that you have already clicked on to be of a darker colour, so that you know that you've clicked there already. If it were the same in this website, it would solve that issue immediately - I would know at once which games are new and which aren't.

I think it just happened again. It gets really hard to distinguish between proper "new releases", they get sandwiched together.

That RSS feed sure was great, I remember it fondly.

BTW, I've considered using the game downloader in QUest itself, of course, but that way I only know about the new Quest games; I don't get told about the new Inkle or Twine or Squiffy games, or any other sort. Just so you don't think I'm being difficult "just because".

Pretty sure it happened again. Wow, it really gets hard to see the new releases, I'm sure new games are not getting the attention they deserve...

I did like the RSS, what happened to it? It was such a nice solution.

EDIT - 11/12: Ok, NOW it really got confusing, I don't know which are the new games any more.

Seriously, it's getting really hard to see new releases, I'm having to guide myself on cover art. I know there's new stuff between "A Stranger, Unregarded" and "Alienable Society", but it's really hard to see what. That acn't be good for new games coming out, they're lost in all the noise.

No, seriously, I'm afraid you have to sort this out. I just now noticed I'd saved a game incorrectly, was browsing back, and I saw this game:

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... he-reunion

Released 26 days ago. I check your website every day and I still missed it. Seriously, there are games that are going completely under the radar. The "latest" page is really not much good at all if when it updates it buries games in the past.

The RSS feed used to work well, why did it stop?

EDIT - Actually, nevermind. If I can't keep the Quest games sorted and up to date, I'd just as well not worry about them at all anymore. You won't see this thread bumped again. Sorry to have pestered you - in fact, sorry to have wanted to play the games your users have been making.