The Dink Network

Dink Network - Site Upgrade Planning

September 4th 2017, 09:46 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Over the next couple months, I'd like to fix up some things around here. Here's my wishlist; feel free to reply with 'yeah!', 'oh no', or 'hey what about this'. Note that none of this is set in stone, and is subject to change.

In no particular order:

1) It seems like D-Mod categories (Epic, Quest, Romp, Demo) don't have much value. May eliminate these (or maybe reevaluate)? Maybe user-submitted tags that staff have to approve?

2) Add ability to classify a D-Mod as 'mature', and make this status visible to users. (Done)

3) Replace (or supplement) review system with 'thumbs up' / 'thumbs down', potentially allowing anonymous voting. Use fancy algorithm so it takes into account low votes = lower average. Maybe move reviews to forum discussion posts.

4) Add compatibility information (v1.08, Freedink, Dink HD) to D-Mods.

5) Update the main entry page to look nicer.

6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder) (Edit: If DinkHD has better backwards compatibility; emphasis it over v1.08)

7) Add better support for animated screenshots, like this one (right now TDN will create a non-animated preview image unless someone tinkers with the files directly). (Done)

8) Fix weird Chrome XSS error when post something to the forum.

9) Move to HTTPS. This kind-of works now, but style sheets are messed up.

10) Add support for seeing download counts.
September 4th 2017, 10:08 PM
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kerrek
Peasant He/Him United States
oao 
1) It seems like D-Mod categories (Epic, Quest, Romp, Demo) don't have much value. May eliminate these (or maybe reevaluate)? Maybe user-submitted tags that staff have to approve?

I'd still keep categories for different lengths. Clean up some other ones but I like to know how long a D-Mod is before i play it.

2) Add ability to classify a D-Mod as 'mature', and make this status visible to users.

Smart idea!

3) Replace (or supplement) review system with 'thumbs up' / 'thumbs down', potentially allowing anonymous voting. Use fancy algorithm so it takes into account low votes = lower average. Maybe move reviews to forum discussion posts.

I don't know what that would add that the scores already don't, but it wouldn't hurt either.

4) Add compatibility information (v1.08, Freedink, Dink HD) to D-Mods.

Also would be good.

5) Update the main entry page to look nicer.


While there is nostalgia, I think changing the whole site's look would be for the better.

6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder)


Also helpful.

7) Add better support for animated screenshots, like this one (right now TDN will create a non-animated preview image unless someone tinkers with the files directly).

Nothing but good.

8) Fix weird Chrome XSS error when post something to the forum.


Unaware of this but an error fixed is good.

9) Move to HTTPS. This kind-of works now, but style sheets are messed up.

Whatever works!
September 5th 2017, 12:58 AM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
1) Well, yeah, they kind of lost much of their meaning. Many demos got to the route where Unfinished category would make more sense. I guess I would support the reevaluation route, because while they have problems, they are part of the site's heritage.
2) Why not?
3) Urk... this. I know the review system has it's flaws, but scrapping something more than 10 years old that I also got used to would be going too far.
4) I don't like that the general compatibility of D-Mods got to the point where we no longer have them fully compatible with a single version. But this change may be necessery at this point...
5) Good idea, though I and maybe others would like to see the possible new design for this.
6) Why not?
7) Interesting change - why not?
8) Good.
9) Yes, this would be preferrable for me.
September 5th 2017, 01:47 AM
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1) I'd say keep them, as mentioned by kerrek & RangerLord they a) give a general idea of length and b) are a part of the heritage, it would be sad to lose them entirely.
A reevaluation would be best I guess though not sure how to accomplish that for all D-Mods. If only done for some it wouldn't help much overall.
How could staff approved tags work without staff having to play the entire D-Mod before approving?

2) yeah!

3) I'd vote for supplement rather than replace. Perhaps that could replace the overall D-Mod score but reviews should stay as they are, with the scoring seperate? Or perhaps you could merge the two systems somehow with your fancy algorithm

4) yeah! ...in general, though this can be hard to tell for certain. I guess the status of most would be "unknown, probably ok".

5) yeah! I never really see it though as I always come straight to the forum (which is great and shouldn't be changed )

6) yeah!

7) yeah!

8) yeah!

9) yeah! Not 100% sure of the point but why not.

Can't think of any other suggestions offhand. Didn't we have a thread about this a while ago?
September 5th 2017, 04:05 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
defeat the spam bot invasion we've had as of late.
September 5th 2017, 04:20 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
September 5th 2017, 04:52 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
10) add ponies
September 5th 2017, 05:05 AM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Yeah, the spambots need to be dealt with.
September 5th 2017, 05:08 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
see, i have allies.
September 5th 2017, 10:01 AM
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1) It seems like D-Mod categories (Epic, Quest, Romp, Demo) don't have much value. May eliminate these (or maybe reevaluate)? Maybe user-submitted tags that staff have to approve?

I think the categories are useful, it's just that they have been applied a bit... liberally on some dmods. A tag system could work, I guess.

2) Add ability to classify a D-Mod as 'mature', and make this status visible to users.

Sounds like today's world. This would obviously fit with the tag system...

3) Replace (or supplement) review system with 'thumbs up' / 'thumbs down', potentially allowing anonymous voting. Use fancy algorithm so it takes into account low votes = lower average. Maybe move reviews to forum discussion posts.

I like reviews, they make this site's file system light years ahead of nexus sites, for example. I've browsed the comments section on those sites so many times, hoping someone's written an actual review. Usually no such luck, and you just have to download the file blind and try it. Looking at the most popular files doesn't help at all, probably because my tastes don't really align with what many people like (screw anime hairstyles in my Fallout/TES), or because an otherwise decent quest mod has some fatal flaw (dialogue written and acted by a 5-year-old).

What I don't like about the review system is when someone writes a decent review, but the score doesn't match or it's very high/low. Then you have to decide whether to approve the review and skew the score, or reject the review and probably have it remain rejected forever. I don't really like the staff controlling the scores by approving/rejecting reviews in the first place. It would be nicer to just reject them based on more tangible stuff, like if the review is obviously lying/text copied from another review/incoherent/etc.

I think thumbs up / thumbs down is pretty worthless when it comes to something as complicated as a dmod. You can't tell anything by that, other than 'maybe the dmod will at least be okay', 'maybe the author at least tried', or 'so many thumbs down, oh look at that the dmod was made by Skorn.'

Umm, a thumb system could actually be nice for ranking reviews rather than the whole featured/normal stuff. If you found this review helpful, give it a thumbs up.

4) Add compatibility information (v1.08, Freedink, Dink HD) to D-Mods.

Yes. (Tags?)

5) Update the main entry page to look nicer.

Yes. It would be nice to give the whole site a bit of a facelift, if only because it's been like this forever.

6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder)

YES.

13) I think deleted posts should be handled differently. Right now, you can either see them just as well as every other post, or not see them at all. They could be minimized so that you'd have to click a little icon to expand them, or moved into their own subforum that's not visible on the main board, or something like that.

EDIT: The ability to add screenshots/pictures into reviews would also be very nice.
September 5th 2017, 11:18 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
> Over the next couple months, I'd like to fix up some things around here. Here's my wishlist; feel free to reply with 'yeah!', 'oh no', or 'hey what about this'. Note that none of this is set in stone, and is subject to change.
>
> In no particular order:
>
> 1) It seems like D-Mod categories (Epic, Quest, Romp, Demo) don't have much value. May eliminate these (or maybe reevaluate)? Maybe user-submitted tags that staff have to approve?
>

Perhaps keep the categories, but use objective analysis to also describe the scope of a dmod. For example. Count the number of screens, and the number of scripts. Then compare those tallies to the number of screens and scripts in the Original Dink Smallwood adventure.

Or count the number of lines in all the scripts, instead of just the raw count of scripts. Using a (*ix-like) tool like wc could make that easy. To easily count the number of screens in a dmod would be a matter of writing "C" code you could use to count the number of undefined screens (purple blocks in dinkedit and it's descendants) in a map.dat file and subtracting that from 768. Anyway, the idea is that this would be a more objective way of sizing the dmod by basing that analysis on real world information.

Example: I found 22262 lines in develop/source that represent the original scripts for the "dink/story" directory. That count or higher could qualify as a quest. That count plus 615 screens (about 80%) in use could make it an epic.

> 2) Add ability to classify a D-Mod as 'mature', and make this status visible to users.

Excellent idea!

>
> 3) Replace (or supplement) review system with 'thumbs up' / 'thumbs down', potentially allowing anonymous voting. Use fancy algorithm so it takes into account low votes = lower average. Maybe move reviews to forum discussion posts.
>

I really like the long reviews and rating systems as they are. Thumbs up/down would not tell me enough. For example, if one reviewer complained that the story was too elaborate for a particular dmod and thus he lowered his score due to this perceived shortcoming, then that would actually ENCOURAGE me to download that dmod. Different people have different reasons for their evaluations. I also like that I can see all of the multiple reviews (when there is more than one) for each dmod.

> 4) Add compatibility information (v1.08, Freedink, Dink HD) to D-Mods.
>

Good idea. But how can you do this (with certainty) for the existing library of dmods?

> 5) Update the main entry page to look nicer.
>

It may encourage more visitors if it looked "flashier" and more modern, though I would recommend avoiding actual flash animations and code per se and using other techniques as flash seems to be on it's way out.

> 6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder)
>

I'd say this is a VERY good idea. Be sure to include any operating system specific instructions and a way to (for example) make sure you have all the sounds that came with the original game on your system.

> 7) Add better support for animated screenshots, like this one (right now TDN will create a non-animated preview image unless someone tinkers with the files directly).
>

This would be nice, but not very important as I see it.

> 8) Fix weird Chrome XSS error when post something to the forum.
>

Good idea!

> 9) Move to HTTPS. This kind-of works now, but style sheets are messed up.
>

I think this does not matter much, unless this web site starts taking payments via master-card, pay-pal, bit-coin or the like.
September 5th 2017, 09:08 PM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
I managed to deal with spambots on Dink Solutions entirely by making it so that people have to answer a rather basic Dink-related question in order to edit a page.

I found that forcing them to answer what Dink's uncle's name was meant that only legitimate people ended up being able to post. I imagine a similar approach would work on this site.
September 6th 2017, 07:50 AM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Hey redink1 is there anyways you can put up a spot in the right of the website so that it can show random game screenshots of dink smallwood ? kinda like how it is on steam website , click on a game and it shows different screenshots.

It would be nice to see random screenshots of the game along with the poll and quotes we have now.

Also would it be possible to sort dmods by number of dowloads or show the amount of times they have been downloaded ? so that people looking for go for the popular ones and the odd ones.

September 7th 2017, 06:11 PM
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brassweasel
Ghost They/Them
 
I just think that with so few people writing reviews these days, then any one person has way too much power when scoring a dmod. It can take months or years to make a good dmod, and yet only a matter of minutes to destroy it! There should be some kind of appeal system.

My mods have never been mistreated on here, but I think it could be a potential problem for someone in the future.

Thank you.
September 8th 2017, 03:30 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
a review doesn't "destroy" a dmod.
September 8th 2017, 08:16 AM
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Iplaydink
Peasant He/Him Sweden
Hmm.. 
Maybe a way of sorting dmods by number of reviews would be a good way to help people find dmods with only 1 or 2 reviews? Those are the ones we need reviews for, not more reviews of "ABCDEF...".

But yeah people also have to be interrested in writing reviews which we as a whole don't seem to be at the moment, and I don't think that is something website design can help with.
September 8th 2017, 09:19 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
unless you award points for reviews and other shit and have grapefruits up for sale which you can use points for.
September 8th 2017, 02:32 PM
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Toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
Can you add an option for members of the community to choose if they are worshiping DDC (Dead Dragon's carcass) or DDC (Dead Dragon's corpse)?

Things are getting stale here, we need a reason for flaming...
September 8th 2017, 04:42 PM
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brassweasel
Ghost They/Them
 
Well.... it may not destroy it outright, but one low score could cripple its odds of getting played. It's probably pretty rare though. Usually when I strongly disagree with a score, that is because I think the score is way too high than the opposite.

I think about what Scratcher said about 'Pilgrim's Quest' from time to time. He said that he'd give it about a 5.0! I picture myself working on a dmod for years only to get a 5.0 from Scratcher because one NPC showed too much cleavage or something. My dmod would be toast! There is no recovering from that at this point.

Also, there is you, Skurn, and 'Stone of Balance'. What did you try to give it?

So I do think that one really bad review could permanently cripple a dmod.

Shouldn't there be some recourse? Review court or something?
September 8th 2017, 05:23 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
5.0 from sctarcttrrt isn't going to bring down pilgrim's quest's score. my 1.0 or whatever for stone of balance probably brought it down like, 0.1. i dunno. skull got whiny about it and had it removed anyways.

but one or two or a hoof full of negative reviews really shouldn't matter. they're all free, after all so no risk in paying for a pile of shit.

i mean...look at abcd whatever.

(also put the stone of balance review back up. that dmod is definitely not a divine substance)
September 8th 2017, 05:54 PM
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brassweasel
Ghost They/Them
 
True it wouldn't impact pilgrim's quest much because it is well buffered. It would if it only got one or two other scores though.

I don't think this is too likely though. Scratcher is a cool guy, so I doubt he'd actually do that to someone. It's just something that I picture. I wouldn't even care so much if it happened after my dmod was out for a long time. Just so long as a reasonable number of people played it first.

I didn't know that this is what happened to your review of SOB. I just assumed that Scratcher rejected it. I guess I assumed too quickly. I never completed SOB. I started to play it, but I just couldn't get into it for some reason, so I quit playing fairly early on. I like dmods like '3 amulets' that keep moving at a fast pace so you never get bored.

I'd be interested to read your review of SOB. I 100% percent agreed with you on ex-peppermint!

September 8th 2017, 10:10 PM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Interesting discussion on reviews, i dont remember reading a single review on here before playing any dmods(no offense intended) , i always went with the score and any dmod that people were discussing on the forum , so probably the score is more important here. A low one might put the dmod out for good.
September 9th 2017, 12:23 AM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Progress:

1) Everyone can now upload animated gifs as screenshots.
2) Added random D-Mod screenshot to the right navigation bar.
September 9th 2017, 12:24 AM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Skurn, if you re-submit your review, I'll take a look. It's hard to look through old rejected items.
September 9th 2017, 01:13 AM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
2) Added random D-Mod screenshot to the right navigation bar.

Does it change automatically or only on refresh ?
September 9th 2017, 01:54 AM
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DinkDude95
Peasant He/Him Australia
The guy with the cute D-Mod. 
"2) Added random D-Mod screenshot to the right navigation bar."

This is already my favourite feature.
September 9th 2017, 08:23 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
is nowhere
September 14th 2017, 09:03 PM
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Hi.

I'm late, but I believe all improvements mentioned are good to have.
Is help needed in these matters?

September 16th 2017, 04:40 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Wouldn't it be cool if every user could have a "favourite" section on their profiles where they could favourite files on the DN?
September 16th 2017, 04:56 PM
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brassweasel
Ghost They/Them
 
Also, there should be a way to see only finished dmods. You can select unfinished, or demos, but you can't select only finished ones.

What about security? My browser says the site isn't secure if I go to sign in. So I just appear as a ghost (even though I don't use that password for anything else, so what am I worried about?).

September 16th 2017, 05:02 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
isn't that something to do with html/5 and kind of a reason the site should upgrade in general? it's not unsafe, just not modern. i guess. another site i went to was like that. then the code updated or something shit and the warning was gone. something about a certificate like how anti-virus software will bitch about evil software you downloaded every 4 seconds because the .exe doesn't contain a certain official certificate.
September 18th 2017, 01:27 PM
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pillbug
Peasant He/Him United States
Love! True love! 
Great ideas. Very excited for the changes.
September 18th 2017, 05:41 PM
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Toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
Replace (or supplement) review system with 'thumbs up' / 'thumbs down'

This really looks like limited option, especially if you intend to replace the whole review system. I don't know how would this be used as a supplement, but it can do a dmod injustice in both ways. Isn't a simple 1-10 scale without a necessary text review simpler and better? Just a thought.
September 18th 2017, 05:52 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
thumbs up and down is too black and white. just remove the scoring system entirely and leave it up to people to play them.
September 18th 2017, 09:35 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Progress:

1) Staff can now mark D-Mods as Mature. This status is displayed on the file page. These D-Mods are currently marked as Mature:

Pilgrim's Quest
Progeny
Stone of Balance

2) Added 'Let's Play (DSPT)' embedded youtube playlists in the file pages for:

Gold Knight Agency (The)
Quest for Cheese (The)
World of DinkC
Agatha Smallwood's Will
Quel
Dinky Dimensions 1: FIAT
I, Kara Gu
Hotel of the Middle Night
Power Of Blood
Chores
Prophecy of the Ancients
Grasp of Darkness
Historical Hero
Basilisk Smile (The)
Cycles of Evil
Dink Smallwood
Cloud Castle
Back from the Grave
Quest for the Gems
September 18th 2017, 10:51 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
sad
September 19th 2017, 09:11 AM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Some thought came to me. What if we simplify the reviews in a way that new reviews will no longer have decimal numbers. I mean like instead of 7.4 or 8.8 there would be 7 or 8. Or maybe 7, 7.5, 8 ect. Just an idea, maybe someone has a better one.
September 19th 2017, 09:42 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
10) Fix the CSS so as to bring back the rounded corners (takes eight seconds).
September 19th 2017, 10:13 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Im still supporting my "favourites" idea
September 19th 2017, 07:33 PM
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When creating a new File Discusson thread, the dropdown box includes rejected files.
September 19th 2017, 08:11 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
keep that
September 22nd 2017, 10:55 PM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
11) Repair the Steam profile banners. They seem to ahve stopped working.
September 23rd 2017, 02:05 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Yeah theyre a little bit broken. I had to fiddle around with the link in order to get mine working
September 23rd 2017, 05:02 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
A little bit? They don't work at all.
September 23rd 2017, 12:14 PM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Mine does
September 24th 2017, 10:56 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
I've tried multiple profiles and none of them show up. I'd be very surprised if it were on my end.
September 24th 2017, 11:21 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
try mine. almost all work for me
September 24th 2017, 11:46 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
Yours doesn't show up, nor does anyone elses. Going here https://steamsignature.com/card/0/bluedy002.png it says 404. I don't know what the hell you're looking at to say that they still work.
September 24th 2017, 12:17 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Toast, were you trying to open the image? Because Bluedy's direct Steam link works for me. Well, the image is broken, and the signature isn't working, but the direct link does. I think Bluedy was talking about that.
September 24th 2017, 02:47 PM
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LeProChaUn
Peasant He/Him Japan bloop
Responsible for making things not look like ass 
If I click on Bluedy's it connects me to his steam. If I click on mine it connects successfully too. If I click yours, Toast, it doesn't work. I'm not sure the issue you're having.
September 24th 2017, 03:16 PM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
The graphical display on the profile panel is broken. Related to a site called "steamsignature". Likely some things changed on that site and redink1 didn't implament integration with those, hence the broken signasture.
September 24th 2017, 11:07 PM
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Seth
Peasant He/Him Japan
 
While we're talking about DMOD properties - any chance we could mark dmods that have blatant copyright infringement? I think the iOS version won't be able to have those listed on the "Browse" area or the app would (eventually, if not right away) be rejected. How blatant is blatant? Well, if it's primary ripped Warcraft sprites that would get a "10/10 for copyright issues".

It's kind of a grey area because those things are not actually in the app, but if we ARE listing them for easy download we are recommending them or something in some sense. The user could still copy and paste the URL directly to get those specific dmods though.

Also, the app (at least not yet..) won't be able to use https, only http, so hopefully the API can run under both.
September 25th 2017, 01:31 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Hmm....What about if our dmod has the midi version of a copyrighted song? That should be safe, right?
September 25th 2017, 02:36 AM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Well, that would be difficult. It would require going through 350+ D-Mods. And that would be daunting task. Like testing compatibility with every single one of them. I tried that, but kind of gave up. I think about 25 to 50% of them might have copyrighted material. So the easiest route would be doing away with the browsing feature entirely.
September 26th 2017, 12:24 AM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
I dont think no one has reported a dmod for copyright issue, if such dmods do make a issue maybe seth can add a report button in ios so that when reported those dmods can be black listed for ios app.
September 27th 2017, 01:08 PM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
About site upgrade... Maybe adding "post preview" button next to 'submit' and 'reset', so you can check that the post looks ok, before actually posting.
September 27th 2017, 01:41 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
add a like/love/ feature so we don't actually have to reply and can shrug off every single post that is ever made on here. oh, and enforce a "real name only" policy and lock people out of their accounts if they don't use their names. to further show off your immunity-to-the-law-cock, demand identification from people who want to log back on.
September 27th 2017, 02:00 PM
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LeProChaUn
Peasant He/Him Japan bloop
Responsible for making things not look like ass 
oh, and enforce a "real name only" policy and lock people out of their accounts if they don't use their names

Oh so like what WoW tried to do once. (I think it was WoW. Either that or LoL.)
September 27th 2017, 06:07 PM
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twp
Peasant They/Them
 
How about an "ignore" button in user profiles? Yes, I can be antisocial...
September 27th 2017, 06:49 PM
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toof
Peasant He/Him
I disagree. 
How about moving everything to Facebook?
September 27th 2017, 09:02 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
wow, wow tries that shit too? great game. or lol. great game.

hey actually, here's an idea. pages and page settings for threads.
September 30th 2017, 08:43 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
1) Keep the categories. They are actually really helpful, not to mention they're a big part of Dink history. In fact, I'd say we need more categories (as in we need the "Weird"/"Arcade" category back). However, I think we should finally come up with some specific, more accurate rules about the categories. This debate's been had quite a few times over the last few years, and I think we need to have certain requirements at last. Such as the combination of map size and overall playtime, to determine what qualifies as Romp, Quest and Epic.

3) Bad idea, imo. Review system is fine as it is, I think. Anonymous voting/reviewing seems like it'd get abused super easily, too.

5) I think the entry page is okay as it is, but I wouldn't be against updating it either. In general, I think the site could use something more Dinkish in it. We don't really have ANYTHING other than that faint background picture that gives any sort of indication that this site is about Dink Smallwood.

6) As long as you can find a way to do that. I think the directions are about as simple as they can get, already.

I like the addition of GIFs and also the random screenshot on the right of the site. Not sure why the latter was ever removed for so many years in the first place, as that used to be a thing before.
October 1st 2017, 07:55 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
The potential problem isn't with there being MIDI files of pop songs etc, the issue would be the fact that most MIDI files on this site were not at all made by the uploader. MIDI files are in many cases made by karaoke companies, and to use those files without approval would constitute some sort of breach of something.

Now, this applies to pretty much every dmod in existence and is pretty blatant as long as you're not deaf. In fact the Ave Maria MIDI that comes with Dink states that it belongs to synthesiser company Roland, for example.
October 1st 2017, 09:56 AM
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Bluedy
Peasant He/Him Romania bloop rumble
I like Frutti Fresh 
Why can't there be a message in the game somewhere stating that "robinson technologies is not responsible for any copyrighted material the add-ons may contain" or smth like that?
October 2nd 2017, 04:25 PM
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DinkDude95
Peasant He/Him Australia
The guy with the cute D-Mod. 
Don't know much about copyright, but if the game is free, does it even matter?
October 2nd 2017, 04:43 PM
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Would definitely like to see the review system stay. Leave that as the only way to rate a D-Mod with a number. I wouldn't mind a "Thumbs up/ Like" system but a "Thumbs down" system might be discouraging to D-Mod makers. Thumbs up shouldn't effect the review score of the Mod though.

Having a "system" to automatically determine whether a D-Mod is a Romp, Quest, Epic etc. is risky and could also be abused. Someone could fill up there maps with nothing and add a bunch of copies of scripts (maybe change one line) just so they meet the criteria for a higher length adventure. Sounds like an awful lot of work for a system that won't really do much. I think it's fine how it is, even if you'll occasionally get people who label their romps as an epic. If anything, to show length you could do something like GameFAQs does and just make it so that when you review the D-Mod you can also input how much time it took you to finish. Then just show an average time of all the people who played the game along with the score.

I like the categories system, and definitely am down with it being expanded too. Rather than user-submitted tags I'd rather see more presets so that you can sort D-Mods by tag.

Besides that, everything sounds good!
October 7th 2017, 07:43 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Would definitely like to see the review system stay. Leave that as the only way to rate a D-Mod with a number. I wouldn't mind a "Thumbs up/ Like" system but a "Thumbs down" system might be discouraging to D-Mod makers. Thumbs up shouldn't effect the review score of the Mod though.

You could have something like Rotten Tomatoes has, where you have the "audience score" in addition to the reviews. You could keep the reviews, and have them be the only thing affecting a D-Mod's standing, but you could add a thumbs up/thumbs down voting system on each D-Mod too, that's easy to just click real quick and shows how the casual players enjoyed it. However, if something like this was implemented, I don't think it should be a "this many thumbs up vs. this many thumbs down" type of deal. Instead, there should be one score that isn't able to go below 0, and a vote down would always reduce one up vote. With how little motivation there is to make D-Mods these days, there's no need to have anyone's D-Mods getting like -20 thumbs down, and drive away the few people that still like to develop them. Obviously one vote per person should be allowed only, so I'm not sure how you could make this something that random site visitors could do as well.
October 7th 2017, 09:49 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
instant scoring is way too easily abused.
October 15th 2017, 08:07 AM
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RangerLord
Peasant He/Him Hungary bloop
The nation above all 
Man, those spambots are rampant again. The site really needs a better anti-spam method.
October 15th 2017, 10:32 PM
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Striker
Noble She/Her United States
Daniel, there are clowns. 
I agree... the old method isn't cutting it anymore.
October 15th 2017, 10:38 PM
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Robj
Jester He/Him Australia
You feed the madness, and it feeds on you. 
Maybe instead of making a poster type banana, make them answer a question about Dink Smallwood, that way the answer to what must be typed isn't directly above the text box. Something like " what is Dink's home town?". I dunno, just an idea I guess.
October 15th 2017, 11:40 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
have mandatory avatars for posting. dead duck with grass = no posting. those bots aint coming here to do anything but post, and they'll probably just bypass the questions. and what are the dumb minds behind them going to do? redesign their bots for this one specific place that doesn't use questions, but something totally unique?
October 18th 2017, 05:19 AM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Why do some dmods have two entries ?

i actually downloaded two different versions of quest for dorinthia one on mobile and other pc

http://www.dinknetwork.com/file/the_quest_for_dorinthia/

http://www.dinknetwork.com/file/quest_for_dorinthia_special_edition/
October 18th 2017, 05:10 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
As its title suggests, the other version of Quest for Dorinthia is a Special Edition. It's different enough from the original version, and was released so many years later, that warranted it to be its own file. I'm not sure there are any other D-Mods where that is the case, though.
October 21st 2017, 01:37 AM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
I think I fixed #8, where there shouldn't be any weird XSS errors when posting for the forum (or, more importantly, in the hidden administration console).

I also added and fixed #10 based on liquid141's request. The data only goes back to August 21st, but it's better than nothing.
October 21st 2017, 03:02 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
pages
October 23rd 2017, 03:14 AM
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liquid141
Peasant They/Them
Sons of liberty 
Awesome now it will be cool to see some stats on the download count in say 6 months.
October 23rd 2017, 03:24 AM
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Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
When did you add support for the download count? Some D-Mods have zero downloads, which seems a bit strange.
October 23rd 2017, 06:14 AM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
The source of the download count data only goes back to August 21st 2017; some files haven't been downloaded since then.
October 23rd 2017, 06:26 AM
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Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
I see.
Pretty cool to see that D-Mods still are being downloaded (and hopefully PLAYED) to that extent. Uplifting!
October 23rd 2017, 10:26 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
pages
October 23rd 2017, 10:28 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Please forgive my apparent ignorance. What do you mean by "pages" in this context?
October 23rd 2017, 11:09 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
we gotta have dem pages in threads.
October 23rd 2017, 11:26 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Thanks for all of your hard work maintaining and improving this website!

It occurs to me that new (and/or infrequent) visitors might be confused by the fact that the Downloads tallies can be zero, yet show that at least one (or more) person(s) downloaded it in order to leave a review. It may be helpful to place a comment somewhere that explains that this these tallies have only been maintained since August 21st 2017.

October 23rd 2017, 11:16 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Huh. Adventures with Jani has been downloaded 6 times within the last two months.

THE STICKMAN LIVES!
October 24th 2017, 01:30 PM
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SabreTrout
Noble He/Him United Kingdom
Tigertigertiger. 
Wow, nice feature. Would be amazing to know how many people have downloaded my d-mods in total over the years.

Pleasantly surprised by how many downloads there still are for these things.
November 14th 2017, 09:46 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
I'd certainly like to NOT see the presence of scammers/spammers in our forum (such as all those recent transparently lame notices from ryanjaxon418 and smithjone).

But, I suppose not much can be done about that. Sigh...
November 14th 2017, 11:42 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
could always set up some bots to spam them back.
November 14th 2017, 05:49 PM
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Marpro
Peasant He/Him bloop
 
Make sure deleted threads are set to "hidden". Spam is annoying, but the staff-members are doing a great job to keep it at a minimum.
November 15th 2017, 12:15 AM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Make sure deleted threads are set to "hidden". Spam is annoying, but the staff-members are doing a great job to keep it at a minimum.

Wow. I just put deleted messages on (I generally have them turned off) and there's so much spam. Didn't even realise. I've only seen one spam thread this whole year, so the staff really is doing a great job deleting them. Is there any way this situation could be helped at all? I'm not sure how the post deleting works on the site, but if there's any way to make it simpler for the staff, it should be added. Was thinking if there could be a way to just completely remove posts instead of just "hiding" them behind the deleted messages? And since many of the spam posts seem to be coming from the same accounts, would it be possible to make it so once an account has gotten enough posts removed, the account would automatically get completely terminated? I'm sure it would help the staff at least a tiny bit.

On a completely different subject, just popped into my mind that the new "Downloads" feature on the D-Mods' pages really should have "since August 21st" added to them. Also, this would be a really good chance to also change the D-Mods that say they were released in 1990, to just say their release date is unknown. That seems to come up every few years and cause a bit of confusion amongst some people.
November 15th 2017, 12:17 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
i'd be deleted outright which is probably your diabolical plan.

we could have a post filter though.
November 15th 2017, 11:58 PM
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Skull
Peasant He/Him Finland bloop
A Disembodied Sod 
Not if there was the option for the staff to completely remove posts, which I talked about. When enough posts would be removed, the account would get terminated. The hidden posts wouldn't have anything to do with it.
November 16th 2017, 01:21 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
that probably wouldn't stop them from making tons of accounts anyways. but a filter that prevents any threads period could be neato. just have to scrounge up all the scammy sites these things keep posting.
November 18th 2017, 07:05 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
I found it hilariously ironic that a spam account bumped a thread titled "Forum Freakiness Fixed".
November 18th 2017, 09:44 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
i greatly approve of erwin's tagline
November 25th 2017, 10:11 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
renew talporn
December 16th 2017, 10:33 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
I updated the stylesheets a little bit; the sidebar will always been the same height as the main content area.
December 16th 2017, 10:58 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
what the duck, like...screenshots won't be cut off by the foreground elements?

i saw that 2 nanoseconds ago and thought about it. then you fixed it. begone from my mind immediately.
December 18th 2017, 08:18 AM
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yeoldetoast
Peasant They/Them Australia
LOOK UPON MY DEFORMED FACE! 
Why didn't you bring back the rounded buttons at the same time?
February 27th 2019, 01:08 AM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
renew talporn
May 5th 2019, 01:47 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
renew talporn
May 10th 2019, 01:38 PM
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Exzcimus
Peasant He/Him Philippines
Change is constant, but Constants do not change. 
Upgrades, no but maybe a few features in the right side bar like;

1) Cumulative downloads counter, (indicates the the sum of all downloads from all files).

2) Website access counter. (Example. This website has been accessed 69696969 times)
May 10th 2019, 01:52 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
i think redink1 actually has those
May 11th 2019, 01:09 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@ Exzcimus & Skurn:

i think redink1 actually has those

Check out the counter at the bottom of this this web page:=-> https://www.dinknetwork.com/ for the number of visits.

As for the "the the sum of all downloads from all files", are you asking for total number of downloads for each file separately or the total number of megabytes downloaded for each file separately or something else?
May 12th 2019, 12:30 PM
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Exzcimus
Peasant He/Him Philippines
Change is constant, but Constants do not change. 
@ SlipDink

Regarding the site access counter, I first thought it was the total number of gold that each "quote writer", (there's a quote and it's writer placed near to it), had after repetitively playing the orig DS. Total nutcracker! lol.

To clarify what I have mentioned about the "sum of all downloads from all files", here's the point. You add all the number of downloads of all downloadable files in the DN, (regardless of category), then it will be displayed on the right side bar. So instead of checking the increase of downloads of all files in the "files page", just look at the right side bar, and you can easily monitor the progress.
May 12th 2019, 12:50 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
pssh, thats barely any gold.
July 13th 2022, 07:42 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
so how are these updates goin?
July 15th 2022, 01:42 PM
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drone1400
Peasant He/Him Romania
C# nerd 
Nice necro!

If anyone was to make any site updates at this point, what I'd like would be an API for reading dmod info more easily.

What I mean is, when making the dmod browser for "lil dinky (name pending)" I had to parse image embed file names to read the dmod/review score xD

But it's probably too much work to be worth doing.

Would be really nice if someone fixed the registration though :V
July 15th 2022, 04:35 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
Would be really nice if someone fixed the registration though :V

Yes, I'd say that is one of the most important things to fix for our little dwindling community.
July 15th 2022, 11:45 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
with only this topping it in importance - "6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder)"

most no one tries to register. but plenty of downloaders. all of them going for DUCKING dinkhd.
July 16th 2022, 10:55 AM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@all:
with only this topping it in importance - "6) Make it very obvious how to play the game for most people (install v1.08, then copy freedink into that folder)"

You make an excellent point Skurn. Perhaps when we see a bit more of redink1 around here, we can prevail upon him to add that text to this [https://www.dinknetwork.com/file/dink_smallwood_hd/] page, along with text explaining how to get the sounds and such from v1.08 into a freedink version that is available on Linux or Mac as well, using bold text, etc.

This is the page that the [Download Now] button takes the visitor to when he/she clicks on it on the home page,
[https://www.dinknetwork.com/].
July 22nd 2022, 01:42 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Time is a flat circle
July 22nd 2022, 01:43 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
Try https://www.dinknetwork.com/api
July 23rd 2022, 05:52 AM
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drone1400
Peasant He/Him Romania
C# nerd 
>Try https://www.dinknetwork.com/api
Wait, huh, what's this?!

Is this the API that's used by DinkHD? Interesting...

I see there's a Thumbnail field but there are no thumbnails though.

Edit: Also, the description field seems almost useless since the text gets cut off.
July 27th 2022, 11:38 AM
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drone1400
Peasant He/Him Romania
C# nerd 
@redink1
I just noticed a bug with the website's account profile info page. For the personal web page field, the parser does not allow https:// URLs, only http://
July 31st 2022, 04:54 AM
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msdink
Ghost They/Them
 
a button to click to find/reset your missing login details...coff...blush?
July 31st 2022, 12:59 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
July 31st 2022, 03:22 PM
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drone1400
Peasant He/Him Romania
C# nerd 
What the heck, when I click that link it tells me "Welcome ebilV. You are currently a Peasant." I can't believe the Dink Network is mocking me
July 31st 2022, 06:25 PM
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Skurn
Peasant He/Him Equatorial Guinea duck bloop
can't flim flam the glim glam 
you gotta be logged out to use it