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Project:General Discussions/Archive: Difference between revisions

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(Archive a few other completed discussions, other "Recent Discussions" seem to have outstanding issues)
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:Oh, that was awesome. Since the fix was already done and just not committed to mediawiki master, Matt_P just applied it himself. It's fixed :D. Give it a try Kolano. And thanks anonymous guy, whoever you are. - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk:MaJoR|talk]]) 08:27, 7 January 2014 (CET)
:Oh, that was awesome. Since the fix was already done and just not committed to mediawiki master, Matt_P just applied it himself. It's fixed :D. Give it a try Kolano. And thanks anonymous guy, whoever you are. - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk:MaJoR|talk]]) 08:27, 7 January 2014 (CET)
=== Ratings Changes ===
As you know, our ratings are old. Very old. I'll paste them here for memory sake.
::[[File:Stars0.png]] Unknown: Has not been tested yet
::[[File:Stars1.png]] Broken: Crashes when booting
::[[File:Stars2.png]] Intro/Menu: Hangs/crashes somewhere between booting and starting
::[[File:Stars3.png]] Starts: Starts, maybe even plays well, but crashes or major graphical/audio glitches
::[[File:Stars4.png]] Playable: Runs well, only minor graphical or audio glitches. Games can be played all the way through
::[[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect: No issues at all!
Because of how vague that is and the need to handle more complex situations, we (or at least I) generally operated on a variant of those. Here they are.
::[[File:Stars0.png]] Unknown: Has not been tested yet
::[[File:Stars1.png]] Crashes when booting
::[[File:Stars2.png]] Cannot reach gameplay but can reach menus
::[[File:Stars3.png]] Major unsolvable issues
::[[File:Stars4.png]] Minor unsolvable issues or fixable major issues
::[[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect (with some tolerance for issues too minor to be user noticeable)
Now this has been the case for a long, looooong time. But there are a lot of problems with this. There are almost no 1 and 2 star pages anymore. Dolphin has evolved past the point where such a system is needed. Furthermore, the scope of each rating is vast: a game that has major graphics glitches but is completely playable: 3 stars. A game that has severe stuttering and is utterly unplayable: 3 stars. A game that crashes during the first level: 3 stars. Plus, 4 and 5 star ratings are vague and weird.
So, to solve this, we discussed it in the IRC and we hammered out a proposal that should address these issues. Most of them anyway. Here it is:
::[[File:Stars0.png]] Untested
::[[File:Stars1.png]] Does not pass the main menus
::[[File:Stars2.png]] Unplayable or cannot be completed
::[[File:Stars3.png]] Main mode can be completed, but has major glitches/crashes or missing modes
::[[File:Stars4.png]] Minor issues
::[[File:Stars5.png]] Perfect with the right settings
Now, obviously it's a little vague here and there. That can't be fixed; what determines minor bugs, major bugs, unplayable is a bit subjective. And there are some decisions that have to be made:
*is it Perfect if a super tiny non-user noticeable bug remains? Example - {{issue|6398}}.
*if it requires an extreme compatibility setting (interpreter, LLE, EFB to Ram uncached, MMU) with a significant performance hit to be perfect, should it still be marked as perfect? And if so what settings count for that?
*Is user configuration a component of this rating? If a major bug can be fixed is it still 3 stars or is it put up to 4 or 5?
And of course it could use a little polishing in phrasing and the like. Still, I think overall this is a lot better. Removing "crashes on boot" gives us more room in 3-4-5 to make the ratings more specific. Plus, most of the changes are in the 1-2 star range, so it won't require us change ratings for every single game on the entire wiki. That's definitely a benefit.
So guys, what do you think? We'll need to get as many specifics as we can hammered out before we go along with this. If things get too complicated we can use [[Project:Wiki Conventions]] for detailed information and have a trimmed down version in the ratings guide. It's work, definitely, but this is a long standing crappy system that really could use an overhaul. When it's done, this should be a nice improvement for us. - [[User:MaJoR|MaJoR]] ([[User talk:MaJoR|talk]]) 06:11, 23 August 2013 (CEST)
: Well, I'm in with it. About rating 4 and 5, I think that if a game need an extreme setting (interpreter, LLE, EFB to Ram uncached, MMU), we should mark it as 4. Otherwise, mark it as 5. And for graphical related issues, if the problem is backend specific and the issue can be fixed by using OpenGL (that works Windows/Mac/Linux), we should mark as 5, otherwise mark it as 4. Despite this two notes, I agree with the rest - [[User:Jhonn|Jhonn]] ([[User talk:Jhonn|talk]])
:: I agree with Jhonn on this. I'd even go further and say games that require interpreter, video software or full MMU+TLB emulation (=> no way to run even at 50% speed on any current computer) should be marked as 2 (unplayable) instead of 4. LLE, EFB to Ram uncached should be 4. Not sure about Single Core / SyncGPU. Please tell me when you reach a decision, I'll need to update the website to match that. [[User:Delroth|delroth]] ([[User talk:Delroth|talk]]) 14:14, 25 August 2013 (CEST)
: I'm generally OK with rehashing the definitions, but it will be a big job to re-align existing rankings. It looks like anything that was a 1 or 2 becomes a 1, which we could automate and 5 would stay 5 but all the 3/4 rankings would likely need investigation. We'll need some way to flag ratings that have been checked, perhaps we can script adding a comment/category into ratings pages to indicate ratings need review.
:I'm a bit concerned regarding the "Perfect with the right settings" description for 5 stars though. I'd prefer to keep that as "Perfect with default settings", since if special settings are needed we likely should be looking at updating game ini's to provide more appropriate defaults. Such aligns with current page handling as well since: Config entries should generally have related Problem entries explaining why a setting is needed, and games with problems aren't perfect.
:On the topic of ratings, it might be nice if the ratings link took you to a list of titles with that rating rather than just to the rating definitions. Adding a set of categories should handle that easily enough. [[User:Kolano|Kolano]] ([[User talk:Kolano|talk]]) 21:52, 27 August 2013 (CEST)<br/>
<br/>
In adding my two cents, I'd like to adress something I thought I read here, but apparently didn't (seeing as I can't find it now) where someone was against using the word "perfect"; I too am against using that word, partially on philosophical/semantic grounds, but also in a more practical sense; since most of Dolphin is HLE (as opposed to full LLE (admittedly rare, but there are projects, e.g. the "higan" emulator, who attempts to do this)), using the word "perfect" here seems out-of-place. I instead propose the use of the word "Excellent", as in "Works excellently". Another option is "Flawless", as in that it works without flaws.<br/>
On the actual ratings though, I find that "Level 3" (i.e. [[File:Stars3.png]]) for both the old (i.e. "Starts: Starts, maybe even plays well, but crashes or major graphical/audio glitches") and the IRC-born suggestion (i.e. "Main mode can be completed, but has major glitches/crashes or missing modes") are slightly misleading, and the example I use for this is [[Mario Power Tennis (GC)]] which with both definitions would probably be a 3. However, this isn't really the case for the end-user, as the "graphical glitches" in Mario Tennis makes it completely unplayable. If you're lucky, you can view enough of the screen to play a full match on the Easy difficulty, since the AI opponent won't make any difficult shots or shots that require much movement, enabling you to basically stand still in the middle and keep pressing the button for smashing the ball back. While this does technically mean that you can actually complete the entire game (at least in single-player on the easy difficulty setting), for the end-user, the game is unplayable since no-one would be capable of playing the game in that state for any reasonable amount of time or even enjoy playing the game in that state. Further, even if they would, luck would play a large role in it since depending on what court you're currently on, where you move etcetera heavily influences how little of the playing field you can see, rendering it in practice (even if not in theory) unplayable. This, to me (and I obviously admit I might be alone in thinking so) makes the game undeserving of a three-star rating (using the earlier discussed wording(s)), even if it is ''technically qualified for such a rating'' if going by wording alone. I'm not saying I have a perfect fix for this (though a quick-fix would obviously be to somehow point out/add in that a 3-star rating still doesn't mean that the game is actually enjoyable/playable), just that it is a serious problem that ought to be taken into account; perhaps the experience of the end-user should be taken into account in general somehow, e.g. in the sense that "playable" means that an end-user could reasonably be expected to play and enjoy the game and be capable of playing it to it's end, as opposed to meaning that it is technically/theoretically possible to play through the entire game without it crashing... Something along those lines? [[User:Incassum|incassum]] ([[User talk:Incassum|talk]]) 21:00, 14 January 2014 (CET)


==2015==
==2015==
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