To keep the current CodinGamers excited and passionate, we’re trying to regularly deliver new features to the platform. Sometimes though, you need to focus on the existing features, and check if they still fit in the global picture. This is way more complicated but necessary. We’ve lately worked on the ranking system, the home page and the chat and we really can’t wait to show it to you.
This post is the opportunity to give you a heads up as to what changes are coming.
Level Up!
There are several ways of enjoying CodinGame. In particular, there are some developers who prefer to resolve solo puzzles on their side and others who like to participate in multiplayer games (and of course some others enjoy doing both). However, both behaviors enable you to gain CodinPoints to climb the global leaderboard. This is indeed a problem for several reasons:
- If you like competition and multiplayer games, there is no point in comparing yourself to a CodinGamer who never participated in one.
- On the other hand, if you like the solo part of CodinGame, you’re more interested in your personal progression than your ranking among CodinGamers.
- As a new CodinGamer, this is quite demotivating to start from the bottom of a huge leaderboard.
This is why we have decided to add level and experience to your profile.
New profile page*
Levels represent your personal progression on CodinGame. Each time you solve a puzzle, get a contribution accepted or upvoted, etc, you get XP (experience point). Basically every CodinPoint (CP) you could get through achievements will now be XP.
Your progression is then different from your ranking which represents your performance in multiplayer games compared to the other CodinGamers. Every time you participate in a game that involves competition and leaderboard, you gain CP.
*The most observant readers will have noticed that your company and school are now visible on the profile page! On this topic, we’re still thinking of adding leaderboards per company or school. Stay tuned for updates 😉
There is No Place Like Home
Adding more information (experience) to the profile page made us realize that we needed to simplify the way we display all the information. On this matter, we decided to put our efforts on the home page. A home page should be a central place from which we take directions to our next actions on the site. We’ve then reworked it with two main objectives:
- Simplify the display of information.
- Make the navigation on the site easier.
New Home Page*
On the left side, you’ve got all the information about your current progression and ranking while you’ve got options on the right side for your next activities. Note that the options on the right may differ depending on your progression on the site. We feel it is clearer this way and we hope you will like it!
As this has been mentioned on the forum, the puzzle list is also getting reworked. There are several problems with this page. For example, today you have to scroll through the list of puzzles you have already resolved to see the hard ones. We’re thus reworking it with the same objectives as above. We have no screenshot to show you yet as it is still in development.
*The most observant readers will have noticed that Codebusters contest is coming really soon. The contest is now over, but you can play the game here.
The Chat
As you have probably seen, we’re working on the chat. This has been explained in this thread of the forum. Long story short, we want to have a chat integrated within the platform. This way we will be able to integrate cool features to it.
The current chat is a prototype and is actually just a copy of the old IRC one. A new version is coming out soon. What will change is the following:
- The design will be way better, integrated with the platform. Links will be clickable. CodinGamers cards will be displayed when hovering them…
- Long messages will be automatically put into a pastebin with a link to it.
- Spam will be greatly reduced thanks to a server-side anti-spam system. Guests (unlogged users) will also just have read-only rights.
- Messages will be asynchronous, you will receive the messages sent while you were offline when you log in.
New chat*
And more will come as we have many ideas to make the chat more useful, collaborative, informative and fun.
*Yes there is a blue star near [CG]VonRickroll in the chat. It means he has admin rights on it. I’m sure the most observant readers did not miss that.
We hope you’ll like the reworks! In any case, we really value your feedback so don’t hesitate to tell us what you think!