[X] My Assistant

[SilverPT]

At this moment, if I counted right, we've 931 species on the site (719 (Volcanion and Hoopa are missing) + 47 (Megas; Hoopa and Diancie are missing) + 165 novelties). The problem is, we only have 1200 (a little over if you count party, Daycare, Pokewalker, Mobile Walker, VS Seeker, Underground and Battle Tower) places to storage our 'mons. We've had 6 generations so far (721 'mons), with the last one introducing Megas. If you add every 'mon, in average, each generation introduced 120 'mons (that number could have decreased (SM will give us this answer) so that Megas could take the spot (that way we didn't end up with 150+ 'mons each gen)). So far we've 48+1 (Hoopa Unbound) Megas, all of them introduced in last gen. So, next gen, we should get at least 100 new species. Well, I'm sure meanwhile we'll also get new novelties on the site (let's say 2 per month). By the end of the year, with everything introduced, we would have something close to 1053. This makes having a living dex unbearable because we also need boxes to store shiny fails and shinies in general. And needless to say, it's impossible if someone wants a living dex + shiny living dex (even excluding legendaries and all Unown).

My suggestion would be introducing the new PC Boxes (not additional/purchasable) that we got in 6th Gen (XY/ORAS). They're bigger (we can store 30 instead of 24 'mons, which would increase the number from 1200 to 1500, removing the need for us to buy more PC boxes or increasing the limit) and aesthetically better looking. We could also have the new pokémon sprites and those sprites could have more space all around since GPX uses 32x32 pixels in almost every 'mon, which could be increased to 40x40 pixels (if I'm not mistaken), completely preventing 'mons overlaping each other and still fitting 30 'mons in a box.

There are also cons, which are losing variety in terms of wallpapers (from 41 to 32) and with them being bigger (we probably could only have 4 PC boxes in a row instead of 5), we would need more space on the PC page. To counter that I would also suggest an expand/collapse icon, either being on the top right (with the lock/unlock icon switching over to the left) or the top left (with the lock/unlock icon remaining untouched) of the PC box. It would totally minimize the box length (almost 200 pixels) leaving only the bar with the name on it (thus decreasing the size of the scrollbar).

Now I don't know how much work this would give in terms of coding, but, as you could see, this is not an emergency (and I'm certain that the site has other needs at the moment trinket system & inventory revamped. I'm not finding any other cons besides the ones that I've said and I don't think that neither of them is something that would make this suggestion be declined (especially with that expand/collapse icon, which would even help with the current boxes). I truly think that the site would benefit from it (better looking + more organized) and I would like to hear an opinion from everyone.

[Aragarthiel]

I think such a large overhaul of the PC system might be risky, but not knowing the inner workings of the site I can't say for sure. It just wouldn't be good if everyone's Box 5 or such was lost and completely unrecoverable. Since so much is stored in the PC, changing it would require a lot of time to test and make sure it was absolutely flawless. While it's a good idea overall, I don't see such a large overhaul being done before it would be impossible to have a full Living Dex. More likely, we might get some more boxes while an overhaul is being considered/worked on.

[pumpkinking0192]

IIRC, I've heard here and there in the past few months some people suggest that if you have all or almost all of the possible PC boxes and they're all full or nearly full, the PC page can experience slowdown or total crashing because of the large amount of data it's trying to access. I'm not sure how prevalent this problem is (FWIW, I've been intentionally avoiding buying the last 5 or so boxes to try to avoid triggering it) or whether/how it would be affected by all boxes having room for more Pokemon, but I thought it was worth a mention.

[Cycloneblaze]

There's no doubt that the PC, if it doesn't already, will need more boxes some time soon. The fact that the PC page needs overhauled a bit (both to fix problems like pumpkin mentioned and a few other less major bugs too) is also true. The necessity of adding new-style boxes, so that we can have new wallpapers (even though we never did get the Gen V ones) and new menu sprites, is debatable - but it would be nice. I'd definitely support it and this suggestion in general.

Either way, I feel like the staff are aware of the need for this, and that it's on the list, and - being that we only have the one, busy, programmer - it's not coming off the list any time soon.

This post has been edited by Cycloneblaze: Mar 11 2016, 04:21 AM

[SilverPT]

There's no doubt that the PC, if it doesn't already, will need more boxes some time soon. The fact that the PC page needs overhauled a bit (both to fix problems like pumpkin mentioned and a few other less major bugs too) is also true. The necessity of adding new-style boxes, so that we can have new wallpapers (even though we never did get the Gen V ones) and new menu sprites, is debatable - but it would be nice. I'd definitely support it and this suggestion in general.

Either way, I feel like the staff are aware of the need for this, and that it's on the list, and - being that we only have the one, busy, programmer - it's not coming off the list any time soon.

I just mentioned the wallpapers since there will always be people complaining because their favourite wallpaper doesn't exist anymore (at the moment I'm using maybe 4 different ones, so I don't really care).


Regarding the supposed crash, I think I've heard about it. If the PC box supports more 'mons, theoretically we don't need to buy so many boxes, which would prevent/delay the crash (it obviously doesn't mean that that crash shouldn't be fixed).

[Cycloneblaze]

Regarding the supposed crash, I think I've heard about it. If the PC box supports more 'mons, theoretically we don't need to buy so many boxes, which would prevent/delay the crash (it obviously doesn't mean that that crash shouldn't be fixed).

I think it's more to do with the sheer numbers of Pokémon on the page, which comes from the amount of boxes. Decreasing the number of boxes by increasing the size of boxes will increase the number of Pokémon and, without some change to the way that data is handled, increase the page's instability as well.

[Aragarthiel]

Making the PC boxes collapsible as SilverPT suggested might cut down on that though. It could make it so that only the "open" boxes load when you visit the PC page, and as long as nobody has most/all of the boxes "open" when they leave the page, it shouldn't crash. I've seen similar mechanics implemented before (have you ever opened a spoiler only for the page to suddenly slow down because there's a really large image or a lot of images in it?) so I know it can be done.

[Cycloneblaze]

Mm. Depends if the (contents of the) boxes were preloaded or not. You could have them load their Pokémon when expanded, alright.
Of course that still doesn't solve the problem when you want to look at your entire PC at once.

[Aragarthiel]

If the problem is the site trying to load so many Pokemon at once, then if the boxes load the Pokemon as you expand them the site should be able to handle loading them one box (or a few) at a time. It just wouldn't be smart to open all of the boxes, navigate away from the page, then go back (if the page is set up so that whatever boxes you leave open are still open when you come back). Once they're already loaded the site wouldn't have to do anything until you prompt it to, and there shouldn't be anything you could do at that point that would be enough to make it crash once the boxes are already open.

[Csxhseft12345]

I support this, more space would be handy for alot of people.

[Gema J Gall]

I do think we could use some tweaking here. Maybe we could just have different pages on the PC to help with loading. For example, maybe only 15 boxes would be visible at once, then we'd have to click on Page 2 for another 15 boxes. This might make it a bit hard on finding the pokemon you're looking for though.

I really think swapping sprites and box sizes would be a lot of work--a lot more work than just adding new ways for people to get new boxes. (I'm half expecting there to be a Box exploration when Sun/Moon come.)

One thing I REALLY want though is more wallpapers. There's a ton of wallpapers from newer generations that could be reworked to fit the GPXPlus PC boxes. At least, it would be easier to rework a dozen wallpapers than hundreds of sprites. Please, please new wallpapers please?

[Synx Itax]

We're listening, guys. PC issues are rather inevitable, so there has been talk of revamping them somewhat. I'm all for a collapsible PC system. Hey, more wallpapers would be nice, too. It's not at the forefront of our to-do list, but it's on there.

[Breech Loader]

As somebody with a Living Dex, I'm all for new boxes.

New wallpapers would be nice; maybe put that little creation task to the members?