addons.simutrans.com possible improvements.

[vilvoh]

For this new era, the new a.s.c management team has decided that would be a good idea to improve the repository, in order to improve the user's browsing experience. So we would like you to suggest new possible improvements for a.s.c. and then we'll choose which are worth to be implemented.

My two cents for this topic:

• A rating system for every addon, with stars or numbers.
• A tagging system, to clasify the addons by alternative criteria.
• A system of top lists for the front page and the different sections, based on blocks that would contain different lists: top ten downloads, most popular addons, editor's pick, most downloaded, etc..

[EvanBGood]

Those all seem like good ideas. Myself, I would just like to know more about the addons before I download them. Things like running cost/speed/era for vehicles, similar data for factories and buildings, and functional descriptions for signals and stations. Right now, you have to just pick the ones that "look neat" and hope they're balanced correctly or fit into the theme of your game.

[Amelek]

Well, probably add-ons site could just show content of add-on. It shouldn't be a problem to unpack .pak file and show relevant data (and render images). That's a feature that's pretty missing

[vilvoh]

Surely you could show more info for single objects or a summary for sets of objects, but you can't unpack the objects due to the pak file format. Moreover a.s.c only have permission to publish the object, not for accessing to the content of the pak files.

Let's wait for robofish's opinion about these improvements..

[robofish]

My two cents for this topic:

• A rating system for every addon, with stars or numbers.

I definitly agree on that point, hopefully I'll find time during the next 2 weeks of holidays ...

• A tagging system, to clasify the addons by alternative criteria.

What kind of criteria do you think about? Actually what is now called "Categories" *is* a tagging system, as you can assign as many categories as you like.

• A system of top lists for the front page and the different sections, based on blocks that would contain different lists: top ten downloads, most popular addons, editor's pick, most downloaded, etc..

most downloaded has already been prepared with the new downloads system, but still the data would have to be stored.
most popular requires the rating system and editor's pick should be the easiest.
I'll have a look into this, too!

As fas as I understand (or maybe interpret) the posts by EvanBGood and Amelek, the idea is that the system could automatically extract certain information from the pak files the way simutrans does. And I think this could be quite nice.
One aspect to think about first is the legal part - is addons.simutrans.com allowed to extract e.g. the speed of a vehicle the way simutrans does it, the second aspect is: can this be done on the web with PHP for example.
I might check the technical part if you like this feature/idea as well, but maybe you could than make sure, we are allowed to do this, first.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Well, to me, a "tagging system" means some way of having a list of keywords - that's usually what "tags" refer to nowadays.

I'm neither for or against the idea, just hoping to clarify (if I'm correct, apologies if wrong)

[Orange]

Maybe a "submit your addon" button?

[IgorEliezer]

The submissions is currently made through this forum. But a "Summit your add-on" link pointing to here wouldn't be a bad idea.