It's time for update 2.3! This updates adds Crossplay information and many new features to the User Dashboard. It actually started as just a few tweaks I wanted to make, and ended up quite a large update, with over 40 additions, changes and fixes, plus a bunch more on the backstages.

But that's how it always goes, anyway. One change here, another there, before you know it, I'm trying to refactor the entire website.

Well, whatever. It's delivered!

Notable Changes

Cross ✞ Game sub-app

Tired of crawling a bunch of random websites to find if a multiplayer game has cross-play, or if a game sold in multiple stores has cross-save between them?

Well, I definitely was, so I made an app for that! It's called Cross ✞ Game, and you can access it from the Main Menu, under the Apps sub-menu.

It contains information about Cross-Play, Cross-Save and other, less-standardized features, like leaderboards, character sharing, etc, creatively grouped up under the name Cross-Other. It includes all platforms and vendors supported by the website!

Purchases Page on the User Dashboard

The Purchase Page lists all your purchases in a year. Great to see if you're spending too much or buying too many games that you'll never play.

The Purchase View can be found in your User Dashboard (which can be found in the main menu).

Playtime Page on the User Dashboard

TWO new pages for the User Dashboard in a single update? You're not dreaming, it's true!

The new Playtime Page shows your most played games during various time periods.

New 'Alternative View Mode' for the Playing Page on the User Dashboard

Wait, are you serious? THREE additions to the User Dashboard? This is definitely THE User Dashboard update!

Anyway, the new Alternative view-mode for the Playing Page isn't all that different from the (now called) Normal view-mode. It just features smaller images so you can see more at the same time, color-coded sections and a fancy animation when you hover/touch the games.

Still, I think it's pretty cool. :o

View-Mode Preferences

Added a new settings page in the that allows Users to set their preferred view-mode for pages that have multiple modes.

You can reach it by clicking the yellow link button in your Profile Page or by using Main Menu > YOUR USERNAME > My Account > View Modes.

Login dialog and button in the navbar

A new Login dialog has been added so users can login from any page without having to change their location. Also replaced the Sign Up button with a Sign In one when you're not authenticated, which annoyed me to no end. Finally, also replaced the previous profile link in the same place with a simple dropdown menu that has additional links, including a Logout button.

These are probaly minor changes, but I've been wanting to make them for quite a while!

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Patch Notes

Full list of changes:

New

• Added Cross ✞ Game app.
• Added View-Mode Settings Page.
• Added expand/collapse platforms groups in the Gamelist Page when using the Simple view-mode.
• Added a new sub-page to the Game Details Page to display Cross-Play (and other cross-features) information.
• Added platform icons besides the platform name to the Gamelist when using the Simple view-mode.
• Added the Playtime Page to the User Dashboard. It shows your playtime! Unexpected!
• Added the Purchases Page to the User Dashboard. It shows your gaming purchases! Exciting!
• Added the Alternative view-mode to the Playing Page in the User Dashboard. It's the same thing, but different! Like Call of Duty sequels!
• Added two new fields to Platforms: generation and portable. They contain exactly what you'd expect: generation is a numeric field with the console generation, and portable is a boolean that lets you know if a console is portable (own screen, battery powered). And yes, laptops and the VirtualBoy are portable, or at least "portable".

Improvements

• Added a Home link to the navigation sidebar of Game Pages .
• Improved date-time handling in forms. Not all forms have been updated with this change yet, but this will hopefully lead to less timezone-related problems.
• Improved the design and layout of the statistics in the Game Sessions Page.
• Improved the design of the User Dashboard > Recent page by
• Improved the design of the Action Bar. It now redistributes its contents in a smarter way, leaving less empty space. It still requires some tweaks in some places, specially when using mobile devices.
• Improved the layout and design for the Game Sessions Page using grid view-mode: session elements are now more consistent and properly aligned. The mobile version has also been completely redone and no longer is completely unusable.
• Improved the layout and design of the "Cool Stats" in the Game's Sessions Page: it now reflows more elegantly for different resolutions, specially mobile. It also looks cuter, with smaller text and a colored background. Also fixed the game's boxart image going outside its container box.
• Improved visibility of color-coded time durations with colors that have much better contrast against black/white backgrounds.
• Increased the Search's minimum similarity score from 0.06 to 0.10. With this, searches will hopefully stop returning hundreds of useless results.
• Moved the region field of the Gamelist Edit Form to the first position of the Collector section.
• Replaced the user profile link in the navbar displayed for authenticated users with a dropdown menu that has additional links, including a logout button. Also replaced the Sign Up button with a Sign In one for unauthenticated users.
• Updated markdown formatting guide with more accurate descriptions.
• Updated date fields in forms to have Today and Clear buttons.
• Updated style of obtained achievements in dark theme, changed background color from dark blue to golden. Now it's a lot easier to tell which achievements are completed or not!
• Updated the Gamelist Updated Page with many changes: added the game's name to the tab's title, added review/opinion buttons if the user meets the conditions to write one, improved the style of the other links, added boxart and background images.
• Updated the About field in Game Editions to allow markdown formatting.
• Updated the category field in the Gamelist Add/Edit Page to show your existing categories in a dropdown menu. This change also affects the category field in the filters of the Gamelist Page.
• Updated the price field of the Gamelist Edit Form with better decimal-places handling.
• Updated the sessions table in the Playthrough Details Page to display the session's comments if they exist.
• Updated the button of the Main Menu that opens the User Menu section. It's now way more flashy and easier to see!
• Updated the desktop version of the Quick Menu to be a bit narrower and moved it down a little so that it gets less in the way of the page's content when there's little whitespace near the edges.
• Updated the layout of the Playing Page of the User Dashboard. It now reflows its content according to the window size, improving readability and leaving less empty space (this only affects the desktop version). On mobile, each section is now fully color-coded to make navigation easier, and the layout was improved a bit. In both versions the expandable accordion was replaced with its newest, more responsive version. Also added a background color to each game box and the game's name to the top of the box.
• Updated the search page with additional information, such as alternative names, help text and search similarity score, as well as improved style.
• When clicking the Sign In button on the Main Menu, it will now shown the Login form in a small dialog instead of taking you to another page. You can still reach the previous Login Page by either directly typing its URL or opening the Sign In link in another tab.

Fixes

• Fixed errors in the Activity Edit Page: being totally broken, producing an error if the desired object did not exist and handling timezones wrong.
• Fixed game images not being displayed when editing its information.
• Fixed markdown blockquote not being properly displayed.
• Fixed markdown elements not being properly themed when using Dark Mode.
• Fixed missing style in the API Login Page.
• Fixed some dates displaying the wrong day when the embedded time information crossed midnight when accounting for the timezone. This was particularly noticeable in the sessions table in the Playthrough Details Page.
• Fixed the calendar icon of date inputs being invisible in light themes on some browsers. Still not 100% fixed, but it's better than it was before.
• Updated EA's game subscription name and url (was EA Access, now is EA Play. Amazing change, EA. Please give a raise and a bonus to your name-choosing team).

API

• Fixed the API Login Page on the browseable API having no style.
• Fixed the Gamelist API Endpoint not creating new objects. This was related to having a nested game field, which made everything a bit more complicated. Also fixed some validations not working as expected.
• Updated the Gamelist API Endpoint to use a flat object instead of a nested one. This means that the previous game field has now become 4 distinct fields: game, game_name, game_sortname and game_boxart.
• Updated the api/platforms/ endpoint with the two new Platform fields. Some platforms, like PC and mobile operating systems, will have a null value in these fields due to their flexible and constantly evolving nature.

Hotfix 001

• Fixed Javascript breaking on the Gamelist Page when the gamelist was empty.
• Updated the new Login dialog to have its username input focused when it opens.

Hotfix 002

• Maintenance and other uninteresting stuff.
• Updated the user profile navigation buttons to be aligned to the right with center-aligned text, so that they're closer to the show/hide profile navigation button.

Hotfix 003

• Fixed the User Dashboard > Purchases Page showing the wrong month names and being in reverse order.
• Fixed the changelog missing some changes.
• Fixed the new Cross-Play & More Page of a game being broken.
• Updated the Help > Misc > Vendors Pages to include a column with each vendor's icon.
• Updated the User Dashboard > Purchases Page with platform information, better-aligned columns and highlighted free games (green text on dark theme, underlined in light theme).

Future Releases

I have decided to completely rebuild the API, using a much more simple and consistent scheme than the current one, for both me as the developer and for clients consuming API responses.

This new api, which will be called API_V2, is still in the planning and prototyping stages, and thus is not included in today's update.

I actually had changed the current API URL in preparation for V2, meaning it would be a breaking change. However, I decided to wait for the next update in order to do this, which will now be 3.0 to make its breaking nature more explicit. For now, I've just improved API monitoring to get a better graps on how developers will be affect by this change.

That said, there's a chance that the current, V1 API, might end up being disabled and decomissioned instead, I also haven't decided yet.

Anyway, that's all for today's update! I hope you enjoy the additions, changes and fixes!