Divinelegy Search Experience

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  • DossarLX ODI
    Batch Manager
    Game Manager
    FFR Simfile Author
    • Mar 2008
    • 14999
    #1

    Divinelegy Search Experience

    Greetings, I'm here with a side project that is focused on providing a user-friendly search with a few other features, and I wanted to get some feedback on this before potentially bringing this up to Jayce who owns Divinelegy.

    As a side note, I am not concerned about the aesthetics of this site right now. The design for the site can be improved later.

    Link to Pad Search. Tentative unoriginal title for the time being.

    Divinelegy

    Not mobile friendly

    - Took 1 minute and 40 seconds to load the page on a slower company WiFi connection. See LOADING TIMES section for some comparisons.
    - No progress bar, just a "Loading packs..." spinning wheel. Users on a slower connection don't know how far it is into loading or if it's even loading at all
    - The page freezes for several seconds after the packs are done loading


    Results are displayed under packs, then single files

    Doesn't immediately show the resulting songs that match the user's search criteria
    - For instance: Difficulty Dropdown > Expert. Block Rating > 15. Mode > Single.
    - You should see a lot of pack results. e.g. 0X Velocity II, 9V Recharged, all that stuff.
    - Open up 0X Velocity II. You get presented with a list of Charts for the pack, but still don't know where this Singles Expert 15 is.
    - After clicking 11 songs, I finally find a SX 15, Pwnage U N00bs. It wasn't obvious where this SX 15 was.
    - There also isn't any BPM to search by. Maybe someone wants to practice a difficulty range, perhaps 14-15, for 200 BPM (range could be 190-209 for example). Helblinde is a well known pack for this and it would appear in the results on Pad Search.


    Table could be improved

    - Too many search fields at once; basically an exaggerated datatable.
    - Can't change how many results to display at once in the table. Results in too many pages that only display packs, and requires a lot of clicking to get to individual songs.


    Pad Search

    Search by BPM

    Pad Search immediately shows song results in addition to the pack it's in, and also allows search by BPM.
    - For instance: Go to the Difficulties/BPM tab in the navigation bar.
    - Specify 14 for minimum Rating, 15 for Maximum Rating.
    - Leave Difficulty Type all, make Game Type single.
    - Make Min BPM 190, make Max BPM 209.
    - While the current pack list for this site is small, this should show a clear difference. There's a lot of Helblinde results (which is to be expected) and several other pack results, and the songs are displayed right in front of the user.
    - The search could be narrowed down to Expert difficulty charts, getting the results down to a much smaller sample.


    LOADING TIMES
    Some comparisons, Uncached (first time loading):

    Regular 2G (250 Kbps 300ms RTT)
    - Pad Search: 15 seconds
    - Divinelegy: 49 seconds

    Regular 4G (4 Mbps 20ms RTT)
    - Pad Search: 2.25 seconds
    - Divinelegy: 12.5 seconds

    WiFi (30 Mbps 2ms RTT)
    - Pad Search: 1.45 seconds
    - Divinelegy: 9 seconds

    Cached comparison:
    WiFi (30 Mbps 2ms RTT)
    - Pad Search: 1 second
    - Divinelegy: 2.5 seconds

    From this data it looks like Divinelegy tries to reload the simfile data every time the user visits the site, resulting in slow loading times -- especially when loading everything at once. Pad Search uses node.js, which has the behavior of storing the data in memory which doesn't require the user to reload it upon visiting the page so the web page can load faster. The searches are also a lot more lightweight, although could definitely be improved (an advanced search can be implemented, but for now this is just the original concept).
    Last edited by DossarLX ODI; 08-13-2015, 07:33 PM.
    Originally posted by hi19hi19
    oh boy, it's STIFF, I'll stretch before I sit down at the computer so not I'm not as STIFF next time I step a file
    Tags: None
    • Leo137
      FFR Player
      • Apr 2012
      • 422
      #2
      Re: Divinelegy Search Experience

      tbh aside mobile-friendlyness, divinelegy solution was faster for me because i don't need to load every page to browse, even if it takes 10-20 seconds to start. You would need to at least provide that ease of use to make this solution a better option
      My latest works:

      BCMP-ish (6key)

      Solo 137 Pack (6key)

      Jumpstream of Fighters vol.1

      Jumpstream of Fighters vol.2

      6k key discord

        Comment

        • DossarLX ODI
          Batch Manager
          Game Manager
          FFR Simfile Author
          • Mar 2008
          • 14999
          #3
          Re: Divinelegy Search Experience

          That probably goes into the idea of an Advanced Search, which I mentioned in the OP. I can definitely say there are too many individual searches right now.

          What about the other points I mentioned about how Divinelegy displays results? Divinelegy is a great place for finding download links for packs, I was thinking that this Pad Search could be used to find a specific song, and then Divinelegy could be used to find the download link for the pack that showed up for that song (so basically, a hand-in-hand kind of usage).

          A few other things to note:
          - Song Title and Song Artist search on the site currently return all matching objects and I realize this is an issue and it can be fixed (e.g. type Pendulum in Song Artist search and you get many duplicate results in the autocomplete).
          - When the phone is rotated to allow for a wider screen, the page doesn't readjust properly. I am aware of this and it can also be fixed.
          Last edited by DossarLX ODI; 08-13-2015, 08:13 PM.
          Originally posted by hi19hi19
          oh boy, it's STIFF, I'll stretch before I sit down at the computer so not I'm not as STIFF next time I step a file

            Comment

            • Leo137
              FFR Player
              • Apr 2012
              • 422
              #4
              Re: Divinelegy Search Experience

              That could work too, sorry if my argument wasn't as solid, i'm somewhat tired haha

              I thought two solutions to counter the "Results are displayed under packs, then single files" problem:

              -When searching for a specific song: at the moment you open a pack folder, it sends you automatically to the song accordion and opens it too
              -When searching for songs, disable the pack grouping style and display songs directly as the parent accordions

              Right now i could see the potential at Divinelegy at browsing the contents of packs rather than searching for a song. Indeed Engine could provide a better solution to search songs and then go to Divinelegy for everything else. But as now, it works pretty similar than the old system you had. It somewhat annoys me that the searchs aren't combinable as before (i can't search for song title and artist at the same time) so it lost that functionallity

              About the many individual searchs it's true that there are many text fields, but is good imo because the whole navigation can be made in just one page avoiding posterior loads. Maybe Jayce could hide those extra fields and display only when required (the user clicks on "advanced search") without leaving the page

              To avoid the long loading wait, could be a good idea to store those results in cache to avoid querying every time the same thing again and again. http://redis.io is a good alternative for those cases and it could improve loading times drastically
              Last edited by Leo137; 08-13-2015, 08:30 PM.
              My latest works:

              BCMP-ish (6key)

              Solo 137 Pack (6key)

              Jumpstream of Fighters vol.1

              Jumpstream of Fighters vol.2

              6k key discord

                Comment

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