VPUniverse 2.0 - First Look - Creator Portal - Creation Submission Process - Feedback welcome!

[Dazz]

It's been a couple weeks since my last update with the VPU 2.0 project. I've been mostly working on the backend with stuff that users will never see, but are very important to to the functionality. 

Creator Portal
Creator Portal is the primary place where creators will submit content to the application. I'll be expanding on the portal functionality in the future. 

Dashboard - Right now this is pretty basic. This is all just dummy data and work in progress. This dashboard gives an overview of content that the creator has submitted. 

 

 

Upload
My goal with content submission is to make it an easy process.
I'm still torn on if I even need to do a separate Add-On or Media upload screen. You'll see what I mean further down...  

 

1. Content Upload Selection - I may just change this to content upload and remove the Add-On & Media.  Database Submission is basically how the VirtualPinballSpreadsheet (VPS) is handled today. This is how content that is not hosted on VPU (ex: content on VPF, PN, etc) would be submitted. This is how the "Also Available On" sections are populated. 

 

2. Game Selection - Almost every incoming file will need to be associated with a specific game. There are exceptions, such as Tools, Utilities, FrontEnd Themes, etc.  Start typing in a game name, the system searches for existing games in the database. If a game does not exist in the database, but is a real machine you can search OPDB/IPDB & VPS (for now). If the game is an Original, then the game information can be manually input by the creator.
 

Once a game has been selected, you are taken to the table grid. If you use Pinup, then you should be familiar with this layout. Very similar to the Pinup Media Manager. On the right is the slideout metadata input. When initially loaded, this shows the basic metadata for the Game Level (in pink).

 

To upload, simply click on the zone (section/category) that you are uploading to. Each zone will only allow specific file types, so you can't load a vpx into the media pack zone.  zip/rar/7z files are allowed, but uncompressed is preferred as the system will compress as needed when uploading.

Uploading a Table Package, this can include table (vpx, vpt, fpt), screenshots, and Support Files (Support Files are those files that are required for running the game, such as PuP-pack, FlexDMD, etc). Once you click to add the .vpx or .vpt (working on fpt), the system actually scans the .vpx/.vpt file and extracts data directly from the file.  This scans and automatically fills in what metadata it is able to obtain from the file. Anything you see that says Auto-Detected was from the file scan. The submitter has the ability to overwrite any of auto-detected data incase it was not updated on the file. Even Features are auto-detected if they are listed within the file.

Multiple File submission -
If the same creator/submitter wanted they could also upload multiple files at the same time.  When this happens the system will automatically place each file into it's respective categories.  Wheel image into Media, B2S into B2S, and Table into Tables.  Technically the same person could add files to every "zone", and the system would know where those files go.



Upload progress

Once uploaded, all of the files show on the users Creator Portal Dashboard.

Admin approved and the files have been published.

 

 

[ejvfx]

"Almost every incoming file will need to be associated with a specific game" - There seem to be a lot of situations where add on media might be useful for several tables. Wheels or Protomech's stencil files, for example. I might be worth trying to figure out a way to tag multiple games.

 

I assume, uploading uncompressed components would allow the publisher to upgrade one component without making a whole new package? That seems like a win but might make version control for users trickier. Or when you download a table, would you only get the table and then you'd go get the .b2s, etc separately. Some table packages include all the necessary files (I acknowledge, many do not).

 

Anyway, this look amazing.

[Dazz]

16 minutes ago, ejvfx said:

"Almost every incoming file will need to be associated with a specific game" - There seem to be a lot of situations where add on media might be useful for several tables. Wheels or Protomech's stencil files, for example. I might be worth trying to figure out a way to tag multiple games. - Could you give me a couple good examples of files?

 

I assume, uploading uncompressed components would allow the publisher to upgrade one component without making a whole new package? That seems like a win but might make version control for users trickier. Or when you download a table, would you only get the table and then you'd go get the .b2s, etc separately. Some table packages include all the necessary files (I acknowledge, many do not). - Some uploads contain so much extra stuff that's not necessary. I've found uploads that have 5 different versions of the same table, just different version numbers. Anyone downloading that file would get all 5 versions, but would only use the most recent one.  The site already has version control built in, but doing stuff like this just eats bandwidth. Uncompressed helps in several ways behind the scenes and for future work. Large PuP-Packs can still be compressed as the system will still scan and create manifest from the zip. This work isn't being done for some basic website solution like we've had for the past 20+ years. Think of this system as the Steam/Steam Workshop made specifically for this hobby. The system will eventually scan what games you have installed. Creates a game library of your installed tables, checks for updates made, downloads the necessary updated files, and more.

 

Anyway, this look amazing.

 

[ejvfx]

1 hour ago, Dazz said:

 

Sure. For example, there are several Lost in Space tables - two distinct "retro" tables - and I would think any of the retro wheels could be used for either table.

 

 

There are many of these stencils that work on more than one table...

 

 

[skeeveo]

Neat, personally I don't really like the title fonts, they're a bit hard to read. 

Edited March 24 by skeeveo

[Dazz]

10 hours ago, ejvfx said:

Sure. For example, there are several Lost in Space tables - two distinct "retro" tables - and I would think any of the retro wheels could be used for either table.

 

 

There are many of these stencils that work on more than one table...

 

 

The wheels I can see being used for multiple games, I'd have to think about how to handle those.  However, these B2S's should be broken up into individual games.

[ejvfx]

27 minutes ago, Dazz said:

The wheels I can see being used for multiple games, I'd have to think about how to handle those.  However, these B2S's should be broken up into individual games.

For the B2S Stencils, I think you'd end up with people uploading duplicate media (or maybe you can just find them with tags or search like it is currently). 

 

Another tricky area would be posts like these:

 

What your building is going to be a huge improvement over the current system, regardless.

[RabidUrko]

Great work.

[Dazz]

12 minutes ago, ejvfx said:

For the B2S Stencils, I think you'd end up with people uploading duplicate media (or maybe you can just find them with tags or search like it is currently). 

 

Another tricky area would be posts like these:

 

What your building is going to be a huge improvement over the current system, regardless.

Yea, I'm running into several issues with collections like these... There are a couple others with hundreds of files in them for many different games.

 

[makmak]

Please consider using ergonomic principles (e.g. no white letters on black background 🫣

) 

[Solters]

Content that is added and is waiting in the queue for admin approval should be editable within the system. That way, if something was forgotten, you can make corrections without having to wait for the admin again. That would be my suggestion.