Drawing Tablet 22 and Game & Movie Updates

[TomFulp]

Movie & Game Hub Updates

The movie and game hubs have been updated! They now dive straight into the browsing interface, with larger thumbnails, ratings filters and expanded options such as filtering by specific date ranges.

You can set your default tab via the Content Settings page, so your preferred listing is always one click away. Casual visitors may want to stick with Featured content, while regulars may prefer Latest or Popular. We also added a "previously browsed" option that will default to the one you checked last.

If you block any users or specific tags on the Content Settings page, they will no longer show up while browsing games and movies, in addition to art and audio.

You can now browse games with medals, scoreboards or shared content by genre.

You can now play movies in-page if you click the play button in the bottom-left corner of a movie thumbnail. They will also play back-to-back.

There are a handful of bugs getting sorted out and we haven’t decided on the best place to link to under judgment movies and games, both of which are very buggy at the moment. It would be best to use the Classic Portal for now, which most people were using already.

If you have movies or games with small thumbnails, this would be a great time to update them! If you're a fan who wants to make a larger thumbnail for an old favorite, you can help out in the Thumbnail Crew thread.

Holiday Cheer

@larrynachos has announced a holiday event in Newgrounds Arcade:

Also play Tankmas ADVENTure and get today’s gift, art by @Figburn:

Today’s Drawing Tablet Recipient

Today’s tablet recipient is @amiralo!

Amiralo once had a tablet but has been in need of a new one, to finish a visual novel project about dating cannibalistic monsters and eldritch abominations!

Today’s Featured Flash (without Flash)

@Ansel and @BoMToons entered and won a 2008 Max Games contest with this skirmish on the high seas! Can you demolish the enemy cannons while fending off opposing pirates?

Ansel later teamed up with @Snubby to make Defend Your Trump in 2012…!

About Ruffle and Flash Preservation

Most of the content shared on NG nowadays isn’t Flash; you can share your HTML5 games and any sort of original animation you’ve made in video format, as well as art, music, voice reels and podcasts. As the original Flash Portal we continue to host both old and new Flash content.

Newgrounds sponsors the development of Ruffle.rs, to run Flash content in the browser without Flash. Flash will be removed from browsers at the end of the year but thanks to Ruffle, we can enjoy Flash forever! Ruffle doesn’t support everything yet, which is why we have Newgrounds Player as a desktop fallback until it does.

Ruffle was created by @Mike as an open-source alternative to the Flash plug-in, free of all the legacy problems associated with Flash. Lots of smart people have gotten involved with the project and you can sponsor it with money or help as a Rust developer.

For the remainder of the year, I’ll be making regular posts highlighting both drawing tablet winners and classic Flash content that is now supported by Ruffle.

About the Drawing Tablet Giveaway

Newgrounds is hosting a 2020 Drawing Tablet Giveaway, inviting artists to apply for the chance to receive a drawing tablet. Applications are still open, however you must be US-based (tablets are sent directly from Amazon) and your chances will greatly improve if you have examples of your art or animation here on Newgrounds.

We’ve received generous donations from @Egoraptor, @AnonymousAlchemist, @SinclairStrange, @RonDMC, @SaucySaucepan, @Afro-Ninja, @Jonas, @NCH, @Sabtastic, @Squidly, @MSGhero, @Rarykos, @Straqt, @kleinerjunge, @DevAesthetic, @NickSenny, @Ronald-McDonald-LoL, @MrChambers, @53xy83457, @AKA-38CAUTION and @Wegra. As a result, this will be our biggest tablet giveaway ever!

Community News

@Everratic is hosting a Video Game Music Challenge!

@VoicesByCorey is looking for people who would like to join the 2021 Voice Acting Collab!

Read Monday’s edition of The Tank Tribune!

The top-ranked game based on original material in December will win $250, with $100 each for 2nd, 3rd and 4th! The top-ranked animation based on original material will also win $250.

Flash Forward Jam

NG is hosting a Flash Forward Jam. We’re gonna surprise people with a bunch of new interactive Flash creations, running in browsers this January thanks to Ruffle, after Flash has been officially removed. Over $2,600 in prizes!

Double XP

From today through Sunday, we’re offering Double XP! This means you can vote on at least ten things per day and log 20 XP, instead of the usual five vote / 10 XP limit. Help clear out all the purple Under Judgment games and movies in the Portal!

Pixel Day

Pixel Day will be January 23rd and there will be prizes for the best animation, games, art and music. If you are down to sponsor Pixel Day, use the donation option on the Supporter page and PM me a heads up you donated towards game prizes.

Current Pixel Day sponsors are @JohnnyGuy $200, @SrPelo $100, @53xy83457 $50 and @1DarkVoid $50, with NG tossing in $400 to bring the current prize pool to $800; double what it was last year, with room to grow!

Read more in yesterday’s post!

[CarterSterling]

The new hub is pretty cool, I'll have to get used to it for games tbh but for movies I like it a lot!

[Dungeonation]

The new hubs look great so far! Those little boxes have been so small to look at I wasn’t sure how they’d all look scaled up.

[BobbyBurt]

New layout looks great. What's the best resolution to upload for these bigger icons? They seem to display at 300x170, but I don't know if it's different on other devices or whatever.

[ChrisSkyRo]

This sure sounds amazing. NG has a more modern look now. I'm looking forward to having some of the old features back in an intuitive way and in an easy place to find (Collab, Under Judgement, etc).

Peace

--Sky

[DamnedByFate]

At 12/16/20 11:35 AM, TomFulp wrote: There are a handful of bugs getting sorted out and we haven’t decided on the best place to link to under judgment movies and games, both of which are very buggy at the moment. It would be best to use the Classic Portal for now, which most people were using already.

This might exacerbate the problem of tube cloggage, since if there's more stuff under judgement than the portal can show, that stuff will never be seen.

[TomFulp]

At 12/16/20 01:26 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: This might exacerbate the problem of tube cloggage, since if there's more stuff under judgement than the portal can show, that stuff will never be seen.

I've been nervous about this too...

[sirkaotik]

At 12/16/20 11:35 AM, TomFulp wrote: The movie and game hubs have been updated!

[BoMToons]

Thanks for the Buccaneer Battle shoutout!

@Ansel, IMO, has one of the coolest art/animation styles for games that I've seen!

I wonder where he is these days...

A few behind-the-scenes tidbits:

• Ansel originally had another programmer (@Coaly lol - who helped make Castle Crashing the Beard) on the project who bailed last-minute after Ansel had done ALL the art/animation
• Ansel put out a desperate BBS post asking for help 1 week before the deadline
• We crunched HARD to finish the game and tweaked/edited various things to make the deadline (I'm impressed we crammed in so much variety like the ship battle, the treasure grab, the speedboat battle, the shop, and a multi-stage final boss) - There are even sound fx and music!
• We WON (I think it was $10k!! - this was during the peak of Flash game sponsorships/contests)
• Ansel also contributed to Super Chibi Knight by doing a bunch of storyboards and prelim art/animation for the final/ending cutscenes (his caricature appears in the NG tank/blimp easter egg along with @Luis, Brian Holmes, and @TomFulp
• Here's a news posts from the time period to see what was happening in my life/Newgrounds around the time of Buccaneer Battle's release at the end of 2008: https://bomtoons.newgrounds.com/news/post/218187 - Portal Defenders would come out next, Abobo's Big Adventure was in early stages, Cave of Wonders was coming up too, I was helping organize/design the NG Calendar with @Renaenae, the first "NG Sketchbook Tour" was happening, I was actually exercising!

So many great memories from that time period. Thanks for providing the soil where this kind of stuff could grow Newgrounds!

[Czyszy]

Yay! The thumbnails are working now! BTW I love the fact that now you can filter by rating in the under judgment section! <3

[StickmanMarkinson]

Well that update fits the games and the movies categories quite well. I hope it can be further improved when it comes to sorting and setting up the dates for the said submissions.

[TomFulp]

At 12/16/20 03:33 PM, StickmanMarkinson wrote: Well that update fits the games and the movies categories quite well. I hope it can be further improved when it comes to sorting and setting up the dates for the said submissions.

Are there specific things you're hoping to see where it comes to sorting by date, like a different interface for entering before and after dates? We've been debating moving the sort options behind a "Filter" button, the downside being the options would be hidden by default, the upside being more room to do something other than dropdowns since the filter settings could be in a bigger dedicated box.

[Dungeonation]

At 12/16/20 03:39 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 12/16/20 03:33 PM, StickmanMarkinson wrote: Well that update fits the games and the movies categories quite well. I hope it can be further improved when it comes to sorting and setting up the dates for the said submissions.

Are there specific things you're hoping to see where it comes to sorting by date, like a different interface for entering before and after dates? We've been debating moving the sort options behind a "Filter" button, the downside being the options would be hidden by default, the upside being more room to do something other than dropdowns since the filter settings could be in a bigger dedicated box.

Not for sorting by date, but I do see myself using a creation tool filter for the games section? Not out of pickiness for game engines of course.

[TomFulp]

At 12/16/20 04:10 PM, Dungeonation wrote: Not for sorting by date, but I do see myself using a creation tool filter for the games section? Not out of pickiness for game engines of course.

Sorting by engine directly in the hub would be pretty nice - we still need to put a front end on the entire tools database so people can browse through the different software and see what was made with it. Right now you can only do that by clicking the tool in the left column of a content page, which loads an incomplete list of other entries in a lightbox.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/16/20 11:35 AM, TomFulp wrote: You can now browse games with medals, scoreboards or shared content by genre.

Big thing this bit! Maybe there was a way to find all games with shared content with advanced search earlier too but if so I never did try that... really simple to toggle like this, finna be useful! The idea for additional filter options sounds great too, could maybe have the current filters and just a little + or 'more' or something to the right that opens up a larger selection of available toggles? The more the merrier! Game engines and such would definitely be fun too.

Overall the new hubs look great. Handy being able to play all movies right away too, though wonder what this trend will do for reviews in the long run. A lot of people finna be skipping out on submission pages entirely now. Probably miss a little potential additional context with the descriptions too hmm...

Do still feel pagination going away's a shame, but such are the ways these days! Best just embrace the waves of change in range...

And Congrats @amiralo!

Dating cannibalistic monsters and eldritch abominations hmm! Sounds intriguing!

At 12/16/20 02:47 PM, BoMToons wrote: A few behind-the-scenes tidbits

What a blast to read this too. :) Tales of a crazy time in life; crazy accomplishments with making that particular game too.

Inspiring mementos.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/16/20 01:44 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 12/16/20 01:26 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: This might exacerbate the problem of tube cloggage, since if there's more stuff under judgement than the portal can show, that stuff will never be seen.

I've been nervous about this too...

Maybe possible to slightly expand on the 'latest' selection on the Portal if this becomes an issue? Seems like there'd be room for around 65-75 items there without the column growing (too far) past the others.

If there's no problem with concurrent page load requests and such now.

[DamnedByFate]

At 12/16/20 05:52 PM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 12/16/20 01:44 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 12/16/20 01:26 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: This might exacerbate the problem of tube cloggage, since if there's more stuff under judgement than the portal can show, that stuff will never be seen.

I've been nervous about this too...

Maybe possible to slightly expand on the 'latest' selection on the Portal if this becomes an issue? Seems like there'd be room for around 75 items there without the column growing past the others.

If there's no problem with concurrent page load requests and such now.

Yesterday, before the interface change which prevents me from counting, UJ was well over 100.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/16/20 05:54 PM, DamnedByFate wrote: Yesterday, before the interface change which prevents me from counting, UJ was well over 100.

Oh that's a bit past the point of visibility either way then... though a little more might still help. Get through all visible ones faster at least; maybe help voters catch up on current selection. Especially if the Portal is the page most go to.

Other alternative that comes to mind would be pagination, like back in the old days there... though I guess with the UJ hub pages still available maybe it'll still sort itself out. Possible to just link to those somewhere prominent to get more people there if need be...

[DamnedByFate]

At 12/16/20 06:01 PM, Cyberdevil wrote: Other alternative that comes to mind would be pagination, like back in the old days there...

[TheGamechanger]

Any plans on bringing back the random button? It's now gone with the current layout.

[ImperialPixe]

New layout is kind of putting me off, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

The one thing that feels like it's missing to me when I look at things is seeing the genre of the game before I click. I think this was on the bottom left of the thumbnail before? It would be cool if that would also show up on hover with the rating.

Also can you let us change the time default in Content Settings? One week seems short when sorting by Latest especially if we have infinite scroll. (I fully admit that is largely because this is a porn account and I have it filtered as such)

[GrimJimmy]

It's ok I guess, but I'm not happy with the way you just took the page numbers away.

It's probably just me, but browsing videos I might've missed might take even longer now.

[Ozone]

So with how the portals are structured your work is only going to be seen if you've got Front paged or if you placed in a daily? So essentially you're always gonna have to shoot for dailies to get seen on Newgrounds first?

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/16/20 10:28 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Any plans on bringing back the random button? It's now gone with the current layout.

Didn't think of this but definitely would be cool to have back too!

[BrandyBuizel]

Gotta be honest, I'm against the new layout changes in the Game and Movies tabs. The design is clean and mobile friendly, but less utilitarian. UX Design should facilitate the needs of the individual content, and where a plethora of thumbnails benefits the Art Portal browsing I always found pleasure in the smaller sections that curated the lastest, the recently popular, and the greatest all on one page without scrolling. Besides frontpage, these small sections brought attention to games and movies with good reviews or recent popularity that I'm worried will now be entirely relegated to frontpage features. Which means the content with the most eyes is even more reliant on Moderator preference.

[yairhamagniv]

It looks really bad, i get doing it to save time on modderating it but i just can't get used to it.

[TheGamechanger]

At 12/17/20 07:58 AM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 12/16/20 10:28 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Any plans on bringing back the random button? It's now gone with the current layout.

Didn't think of this but definitely would be cool to have back too!

Yeah, I must admit that for pretty much ever since it made a return years ago, I've been using the random button to vote instead of going to Under Judgement. With the random button, instead of looking for submissions to vote on, the submissions come to you instead and thus is more convenient for me.

And I just had a idea pop into my head right now as I was typing this to. Instead of just having the random button return, in addition to that we can have an Under Judgement button that picks anything that's Under Judgement at random? This way it'll make things slipping through the cracks and missing our attention less likely. Of course in the rare event there's nothing currently under judgement there'd be an indicator showing that.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/18/20 01:18 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Yeah, I must admit that for pretty much ever since it made a return years ago, I've been using the random button to vote instead of going to Under Judgement. With the random button, instead of looking for submissions to vote on, the submissions come to you instead and thus is more convenient for me.

You know you're probably missing out on B/P points this way though, considering all those submissions you randomly get linked to probably won't be Under Judgement? It's definitely a fun feature either way, but if you want all points you can get here...

And I just had a idea pop into my head right now as I was typing this to. Instead of just having the random button return, in addition to that we can have an Under Judgement button that picks anything that's Under Judgement at random? This way it'll make things slipping through the cracks and missing our attention less likely. Of course in the rare event there's nothing currently under judgement there'd be an indicator showing that.

...that'd be the best of worlds here! :D Would encourage people to really delve into all type of work too and maybe leave some feedback where it's really needed. :)

That'd be perfect. Perfect for getting more people to vote on UJ work at the same time at times like this when there's a bit too much of it at the same time! Great idea.

Not that it's all too difficult to just go to the UJ stuff directly and click at random but for all who don't...

[TheGamechanger]

At 12/18/20 02:25 PM, Cyberdevil wrote:

At 12/18/20 01:18 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Yeah, I must admit that for pretty much ever since it made a return years ago, I've been using the random button to vote instead of going to Under Judgement. With the random button, instead of looking for submissions to vote on, the submissions come to you instead and thus is more convenient for me.

You know you're probably missing out on B/P points this way though, considering all those submissions you randomly get linked to probably won't be Under Judgement? It's definitely a fun feature either way, but if you want all points you can get here...

And I just had a idea pop into my head right now as I was typing this to. Instead of just having the random button return, in addition to that we can have an Under Judgement button that picks anything that's Under Judgement at random? This way it'll make things slipping through the cracks and missing our attention less likely. Of course in the rare event there's nothing currently under judgement there'd be an indicator showing that.

...that'd be the best of worlds here! :D Would encourage people to really delve into all type of work too and maybe leave some feedback where it's really needed. :)

That'd be perfect. Perfect for getting more people to vote on UJ work at the same time at times like this when there's a bit too much of it at the same time! Great idea.

Not that it's all too difficult to just go to the UJ stuff directly and click at random but for all who don't...

Yeah, none of the random submissions I got through the random button were Under Judgement. Tbh I don't really have much of a motive towards B/P points, as the main reason I joined this site is to just have fun. And I'm pretty sure some of the folks who patrol the Under Judgement section would agree that quite a few of the things that end up there aren't all that fun to watch. Make me actually feel sorry for them, having to endure things like that while doing a job that's practically thankless by the silent majority of NG users.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/18/20 06:33 PM, TheGamechanger wrote: Yeah, none of the random submissions I got through the random button were Under Judgement. Tbh I don't really have much of a motive towards B/P points, as the main reason I joined this site is to just have fun. And I'm pretty sure some of the folks who patrol the Under Judgement section would agree that quite a few of the things that end up there aren't all that fun to watch. Make me actually feel sorry for them, having to endure things like that while doing a job that's practically thankless by the silent majority of NG users.

That's true, though fun could mean a lot of things. Watch content for fun? Gather points for fun? Personally I love doing the latter. Every day's like a game here in that regard, competing for rankings; grinding on to finally make it among the legends that lead the lists... that's my main kind of fun. Fun content's fun too but: I love the gamification aspect of it all. And the feeling of doing something worthwhile at the same time.

No need to feel sorry for us I think! It's rewarding. Don't think as many people would do it if it wasn't.

But indeed maybe not for all.