Seeking help developing pcmr.co (PC Master Ratings website) (x-post from/v/pcmasterrace)

4    10 Jul 2015 15:30 by u/the--dud

An idea was formed recently by me and some other over on "the other site" and I've been working quietly myself lately to implement a website.

The whole idea of a website was spurred by this imgur post.

My original idea sounded something like this:

Make a PCMR rating website. Everyone can submit their own scores on any game using the metric proposed by OP. But the genius part is that you can also set your own preferred weights on the ratings so that games will come custom-reviewed for you only! When you score a game you simply give each category a score of 0-100, consider each metric as objectively as possible. When you look for games however it shows the accumulated ratings weighted for your own personal preferences. For instance you might want to weight controls an 8 because it's very important to you. Someone else however wants DLC to be a 9 because they're very frugal.

In short the whole idea of this website is simple:

  1. All users can objectively rate games on the metrics proposed by /u/BallisticGE0RGE and improved by /u/macnetic.
  2. Users can search/browse games using their own customized weights for categories. Eg, if you're frugal you might be concerned with DLCs. Others might rate controls very important. Others yet again cannot possibly play a game without modding.

The implementation I'm working on is based on the python framework Django and it uses a PostGreSQL database backend. I have a Debian VPS server configured (professionally hosted) and the whole project is hosted on Github.

Ideally I'd like 1-2 contributors who's comfortable coding in Python with the Django framework. Myself I'm quite decent at coding but it's not what I primarily work with (I'm an IT consultant for a large health care provider).

I'm also using the Bootflat HTML/CSS framework and I believe I've found someone with experience who will aid with the design.

Check it out and let me know if you feel like helping out :) http://pcmr.co/ratings/ & https://github.com/the--dud/pcmr_co

7 comments

1 u/FrozenInferno 10 Jul 2015 15:46

What's the difference between this and http://www.pcmrating.com?

3 u/the--dud [OP] 10 Jul 2015 16:23

That site was hacked together one day after I proposed the idea, which is quite impressive but I think it's missing the most important part of my idea.

You can't use your own custom weight on each category. The whole idea was objective ratings which you can then shape to your personal preferences.

Do you love amazing graphics? Then weight graphics a 10. Is controls not so important for you? In the mood for a platformer with great controls and fun mods - make a custom search then!

Additional, me personally, I'm not a huge fan of the execution or design of that page.

AFAIK 3 websites spawned from my idea. pcmasterating.com, pcmasteratings.com and my page pcmr.co. I wish them all the best and eventually I hope the best one will "win" in the end. For the benefit of the community.

1 u/Vivsnakehips 10 Jul 2015 16:10

It's a cool idea, I hope it takes off.

1 u/WWWyzzerdd 10 Jul 2015 16:51

My python skill is nil, but I like the concept of a personalized way to weight game reviews. I'm a bit confused on a couple points though.

  • Framerate - Is this a thing on pc games? I somehow have never run into a framerate limited game... In the last, idk, 10 years? Or is that the point? I just turn on VSync for most games anyways so maybe I'm just clueless. Only a couple genres I play require VSync to be off, like project cars for instance.(with vsync on it's unplayable)
  • Resolution - Again, maybe I'm clueless here but since when do pc games not support at least 1080p? DSR at 4k works for every game I've tried in my old games collection.(steam/gog)
  • Optimized - This is a tough nut. Ok so some games are ports from console builds, and generally, don't run well. Which actually should soon be a non-issue seeing as the current-gen consoles are x86 AMD machines anyways and nothing about them is faster than a gaming rig. Speaking of amd.... Let's assume the game was made for PC only. Does is use nvidia gameworks sdk? Well, there went any hope of running well on AMD graphics cards. So yeah some games have a heavy bias towards team green, and generally run like shit on team red. TLDR I think this section needs expanding on
  • Glitches - Which patch? It seems like a common trend now-a-days for a game to run like crap and crash until a couple patches are out.

So yeah, I think that a couple extra data points need hitting on. I'm also just a tad confused about framerate/resolution, and if it's actually something people run into issues with. I guess that's the point of doing a personalized weighting, just weight those 0 sure. I'm just genuinely curious if those are problems for real.

Also, just out of curiosity, why python? Something like this done with meteor/mongo/node.js would be my first choice.

0 u/the--dud [OP] 10 Jul 2015 23:52

I agree with most of your points, I think the categories and wordings will need to be refined/changed somewhat as it originally evolved as a way to identify, even warn about, "bad console ports" like AC:Unity, the new batman game and similar games.

Framerate refers to horrible stuff like the new Batman game which dips down to 5-10FPS even on powerful computers. Same thing happened before they patched AC:Unity.

Resolution I agree, it's incredibly rare for games not to support a wide range of resolutions now, perhaps little point to it.

Yeah optimized can basically mean anything and nothing! Again I like to point to the newest Batman game, it seems like WB was so frikkin focused on the console versions they kinda forgot/ignored how the game ran on PC. Even on very powerful PCs it can run like shit... Obviously the "final site" will have good explanations of all the categories and certainly all the wordings will be revised and improved too!

Why python? I think it's a relaxed and flexible language, I like it especially for quick prototypes. I also quite like Django - the philosophy and how it's designed makes a lot of sense to me. To be honest I don't know much about meteor or mongoDB - I kinda fell off the web development ride about 10 years ago hehe. Nowadays I really only program in c# and python - call me a casual if you like but I do what I enjoy and what works for me ;)

I also really like PostGreSQL because it's open-source, it's proven to be secure and incredibly powerful, plus it's a full SQL implementation.

0 u/the--dud [OP] 13 Jul 2015 15:11

If anyone else wants to help, or in any way become involved, feel free to join us over at https://pcmr.slack.com/! Send me a private message with your email and I'll give you access :)