PCFormat Forum Archive

I've just caught a glimps of the 3dguru forums and noticed that under their avatars they have the specs listed of their systems. I've got my system specs as text in the signature which for some apparent reason won't let me edit my signature without dropping more characters.

I was thinking since this is a gaming/pc and most things technology forums why don't we do something similar? Why not have the forums have a semi automated pc spec generator that we can stick as our signatures or maybe something listing the parts we are most proud of under our avatar?

I like this idea...

Putting it in the poster information on viewtopic sounds good on paper; I do have concerns about cluttering that area too much though -- that said, it should be fine with a maximum character limit per field though (~30 characters per field should be sufficient). I'll add it in when I get some time and see how it goes (and while I'm at it, I may as well remove that totally useless "Alliance" field).

I'm thinking that fields for "GFX Card", "Processor", "Motherboard", "Memory" and "PSU" should be sufficient. I'm not going to include a "soundcard" field, even if 3dguru does it, by virtue of the fact that most games don't use a discrete soundcard, and hard drives don't really play well because people have different number of hard drives in their systems (as an example on the upper end of the scale, I've observed people with >10 hard drives in their rigs at Organised Chaos, and there's no way in hell that I'm creating "HDD #1", "HDD #2", ... "HDD #6,000,042" fields).

StarBound wrote:...which for some apparent reason won't let me edit my signature without dropping more characters.

The reason is that the maximum signature length has been dropped from 500 to 300 characters.

How about doing it like SystemShock does it?
They have the information on your user profile page

While that's also possible, having it less visible than a user signature would likely result in the user signature still being preferred and the new fields going unused. There may also be an additional, unwanted side-effect of the epeen wavers assembling outside my house with pitchforks.

Of course, I can set custom fields to display in both places.

@Ron for those among us who like to overclock and push for scores how about a custom text field (can that be done?) where we can specify the scores we get with what program? That way you dont have to populate with all benchmark programs and allows us to specify what we are using?

/did I make sense?

NAK. The subset of forum users that would find an overclocking field applicable is, at present, too small to make such a field worthwhile.

Cool, just thought I would put it out there .

Ron2K wrote:Of course, I can set custom fields to display in both places.

Could you set only certain fields to show below the avatar?
That way, you could have the juicy stuff there (CPU, GPU, MoBo, RAM) and then a full list in the users profile, which could have options for the OC, or bench scores etc.


And would it be possible to have unpopulated fields hidden from the view so as not to add clutter?

I can indeed. In terms of visibility options, I have the following at my disposal (and this is set per field, not globally):



The screenshot above also answers your question regarding unpopulated fields.

Sounds good. I have set a location although I don't really use it as I am still situated in ...The Greater Unknown (should maybe say lost).
CPU/GPU/Mobo usually is the main sets. Indeed if we can decide to select say 5 fields under our avatars that we would like to share like the location and our specs then it would also be interesting what people choose to give (getting a black ops 2 vibe with having X spots available from a list).

As for the 500 to 300 characters ...aaaawwwww now I need to be more selective in what I put in there. Maybe I should put their product codes XD

quick question: if you go ahead with this, and if one doesn't put anything in those fields, will they still show in the signature/side bar? I know that if you don't put anything in the location field that it doesn't show so just wanted to know about the rest...

Thanks

Your question has already been answered; please read the entire thread next time.

Ron2K wrote:Your question has already been answered; please read the entire thread next time.

Boom!

You know what else would be cool? If everyone who listed their PC specs could get a ranking so they could work out how their PC compares to everyone else' on the forums. Maybe somewhere a Top 10 could be shown? Sure its a simple way of giving each component a score, and then totaling it up. Perhaps CPUs or GPUs scores should hold a little more weight, but I'm sure you can figure out that part

Dj

OK, the new custom profile fields have been set up.

The following fields will display on the user profile page and the mini profile on viewtopic:

• Processor
• Motherboard
• Memory
• Graphics card

The following fields will display on the user profile page only:

• Sound card
• Power supply
• Hard drives
• Benchmark scores

Let me know how it goes.

DJT wrote:You know what else would be cool? If everyone who listed their PC specs could get a ranking so they could work out how their PC compares to everyone else' on the forums. Maybe somewhere a Top 10 could be shown? Sure its a simple way of giving each component a score, and then totaling it up. Perhaps CPUs or GPUs scores should hold a little more weight, but I'm sure you can figure out that part

NAK. The benchmark scores field, added above, is a suitable substitute.

I like it.

Thanks ron.

Could you please consider adding case and cpu cooler?

Test. I'll have to modify my sig then.

As discussed on GTalk, would a Steam field be possible? Seeing as most people will have it these days. Don't know what everyone else thinks about that.

DJT wrote:As discussed on GTalk, would a Steam field be possible? Seeing as most people will have it these days. Don't know what everyone else thinks about that.

I like that. We could get rid of the ICQ field since I dont think anyone uses ICQ anymore...

Thanks for the added fields Ron I promise not to gank you if I ever play wow again. It's a Horde promise though so will probably only last a few seconds ...or milli seconds.

Brilliant idea - and well executed.

Two months on, I have some feedback for the following posts, mainly because I just happened to stumble across the phpBB developer discussion regarding them:

DJT wrote:As discussed on GTalk, would a Steam field be possible? Seeing as most people will have it these days. Don't know what everyone else thinks about that.

Anakha56 wrote:I like that. We could get rid of the ICQ field since I dont think anyone uses ICQ anymore...

I'll start with the ICQ field and related instant messenger fields. The problem is that they were hardcoded into version 2 of phpBB back when it was first released (2001, if my memory serves me correctly), and at the time, those protocols were relevant. Fast-forward to 2013, and not so much. Those protocols are little-used today and have been replaced with others (Twitter, Skype, Steam, et. al).

The problem is that they can't simply be removed. Take MSN/WLM for example: as of March 2013, it has been deprecated in favour of Skype, except in mainland China -- and although this has no bearing on this forum specifically, it has a bearing on the phpBB software that this forum runs on. China represents ~20% of the total world population; removing a field that one-fifth of the global community could potentially use is an unacceptable solution.

Besides, some users on this forum have likely filled this data out, and a core principle that I enforce on this forum is: except in rule violations where our moderators need to step in, we do not remove user data. (For the long-time members, this was one of two reasons why I removed lancelot, the second reason being gross insubordination when confronted about the issue.)

That said, the hardcoding of these fields is likely to change in phpBB 3.1, with those fields being turned into optional, custom profile fields. I'd then be able to add more, and hide the superfluous ones (except from the user's profile page, where I will still keep them visible if filled in). Basically, once this version is released (there is no release timeframe at this stage; it will be released when it's ready, and not a moment before or after), I would be able to treat these fields in the same manner as the rig specification fields that were added earlier, which would mean that the requests in the two quoted posts will then become viable. Right now though, those requests are on hold.

TLDR: the instant messaging changes requested earlier in this thread will likely happen when phpBB 3.1 is released and this forum upgraded to that version, not before.