Yesterday I finished up removing links to features that won’t go in Release #1 and I also re-factored the Contact screen because it was too ambitious. Now the contact page is just a simple form, fill out your name, e-mail address and a message, that’s it.
To the left is the Contact screen. See? Super simple, all it needs to be.
After working on this contact page, I started mocking up the Club Profile screen.
The club profile is going to change almost immediately after the 1st release because I need to make sure that when a club goes from game to game to game that their club doesn’t get segmented and it should be easy to just say let me see everything that this club has ever done, no matter what game. So in the near future the Club Profile will need to include things like a list of racing games that this club is involved in with links to their stats pages. There will be charts/graphs that layer the game data on it so you can compare. For instance, this version of the Club Profile that will be released in Release #1, is going to have a graph for “Attendance Trends.” It is a line graph that plots how many racers showed up for the last 5-10 races, so you can easily see how your attendance is. With the new Club Profile, we will want to see how the club’s attendance is across all active racing games. That means changing the graph to have 2 or more different colored lines plotted so it will be easy to compare.
To the right is the mock-up for the Release #1 version of the Club Profile. Featured prominently at the top left is the club’s name.(possibly logo in the future) Directly under that is a check box where you can say that this is your default club, which lets you skip right to this page when you go to the Racing Club Manager. Hooray for less clicks! Under the check box is an Ask to Join link, where interested racers can ask you to join the club.
On the right side of the screen is the date and time of the next race and a link to it’s details. The races screen shows more of the upcoming races so you can plan accordingly, this is just for quick checking.
Below all of that is a line where we want to show some quick information that non-members might want to see before asking to join. The Club Personality says a lot about how you operate your club. The personalities that you can choose from right now are Hardcore, Casual, Fun, Serious, Private, Open, New, Creative, Drifting, Weird. Scroll to the bottom for explanations of these personalities…
Next to personality is the date you last held a race. This is important to potential joiners because maybe this club hasn’t raced for 6 months but is still listed as Open or New. I am going to try and deactivate clubs like that, but just in-case it hasn’t been deactivated, you will want to know.
To the right is the number of members, or should I say active members. At a glance it would be nice to know if there are 5 or 100 members. If there are 100 active members maybe you’ll get lost in the shuffle or maybe that’s exactly what you’re looking for. Some people might think I don’t want to be in a club with only 5 members because I want to race in full lobbies so the club I am looking for needs to have around 20-30 members. Active members doesn’t mean active every race. It’s best used for a situation like RacerX only shows up in the winter because he/she is away every summer. You would want to deactivate RacerX until they are ready to race again.
Beneath that row are 2 collapse-able rows. The top row is the Club Description or welcome message. You want to tell potential joiners what you club is all about and what your restrictions or schedule is typically like. You can include images as well.
The second collapse-able row is the Attendance Trends for this club, which I explain above. It’s a line graph that shows how many racers were recorded as showing up to the past few racers. I haven’t actually tried making this graph yet, but I am intrigued by Chart.js and I want to attempt to implement it here and maybe a few other places in the future. It seems pretty straight forward so I’m going for it.
Is 1100+ words a long read? Thanks for reading!
Personality Descriptions
Hardcore would be for clubs that keep meticulous stats and have very specific restrictions and use bonus points.
Casual just means that you organize and schedule races on the fly and maybe you don’t have a very strict schedule, or the races aren’t tense.
Fun is just that, fun. Maybe you schedule races with SUVs or vans and the point is to not tip over or something. Maybe you play a lot of games like soccer or tag.
Serious is for not messing around, maybe it’s redundant and Hardcore is what you’re looking for but it’s an option.
Private means that you are not looking for new members and your Club Profile will not include an Ask to Join link.
Open means that you are actively looking for new members. You can be Hardcore, but then maybe your attendance is dropping and you need new members, you would want to switch to Open.
New is for first time club racers or for a club that is just starting out and hasn’t found their footing. When racers want to find a club they would typically either search for Open or New.
Creative could mean that your club is for trying to take cool pictures, or you are all trying to collaborate on a design. Also, it could mean that the races you run are creative.
Drifting is for designating a drifting club. You don’t have to ONLY drift, but if you do a lot of those this is the club for you. We don’t currently have a way of tracking drift points specifically, but you could just use bonus points with a custom points template. Say you have 3 drifters in the lobby and maybe 1st,2nd,3rd get 0 points for finish position, but you enter their final drift scores into the bonus area when filling out results.
Weird is for clubs that have races like “set all suspension to maximum softness” or “turn down the grip setting” I’m not sure how often this will get used but it’s an option for day 1.
Racing Club Manager 