Developer Update: Oct 2022

Backloggd
4 min readOct 24, 2022

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This development update I’ll be recapping some smaller releases that happened, touching on the progress of the log editor beta, and give a reminder about a certain upcoming event.

Long time no see! These semi-monthly updates used to be a Patreon exclusive but I’ve decided to start posting them for all to read going forward. It felt strange to keep progress behind a paywall when it only gives transparency on what I’ve been up to in-between the main releases.

ICYMI — Recapping the last couple months

When added upgrade

Since our last update in August, there was a small feature release where sorting by ‘When Added’ now dynamically sorts your games by when you specifically last marked those games as played, playing, backlog, and wishlist depending on the status you currently have selected.

This makes the sorting appear much less random and more specific to the log type you’re currently looking at.

Release date auto-lock

It’s not news that certain games would be locked if they haven’t been released yet, meaning you couldn’t leave a rating or review until the game’s release date hit. But now ALL games with a defined release date will be automatically locked from now on. This helps prevent misses and deliver a more consistent behavior of what to expect on upcoming titles.

When you do open a locked game, you’ll be presented with a greyed out review box and a disabled rating selector. Once a game hits its release date, you’ll be able to review / rate like normal. Games with TBD releases will remain unlocked by default, this is to prevent more obscure games from getting locked when they’re just missing the data.

Avg rating upgrade

‘When Added’ wasn’t the only sort to receive an upgrade. The ‘Avg Rating’ sort on the main games library page now considers more factors when determining the cut-off number of plays limit when sorting. The biggest factor being when filters are applied.

This fixes the issue where if you sort by ‘Avg Rating’ then apply a few filters, you’d only get like 5 games in the results. Now you should get a more proportional amount of games to the amount that would normally be returned with the filters on. User libraries continue to be unaffected and have no limit.

Log Editor Beta

After the log editor survey concluded back in August, I got to work on starting a new approach to the editor to address many of the pain points that are being experienced. The first part in that solution is to try a hybrid editor approach of having a ‘Quick’ and a ‘Full’ logging UI.

Editor in full mode

Here you can see the latest rendition of the editor in the new ‘Full’ mode. The idea is to have all options available on one screen, so you can easily update your log without switching tabs. Some fields such as the play session and library entries will still be there own popups, as you can’t fit everything on one screen no matter how much room you have.

This is an experiment though and not guaranteed to be the final solution. A beta with this new editor will launch for Backers only at first, if all goes well I’ll open it up to more users as time goes on. I’m getting close to the first release but still need to finish things like editing the library entries and mobile views.

GOTY 2022

Hope you’ve played lots of games that came out in the last year because the annual Game of the Year event will be starting Nov 15! If this is your first time, this event is where you select your favorite games that were released in the last year (Nov 15, 2021 — Nov 14, 2022) for five main categories while then crowning your GOTY. The top picks will then be showcased as Backloggd’s GOTY after the event closes Dec 31st.

Check out 2021’s results here as you prepare: https://www.backloggd.com/goty

That’s all I have this time around, 1.10.4 will be the launch of the beta but if time allows I’ll likely drop other smaller features in-between now and then to get them out earlier. Once that’s done, 1.11 will be the focus where the home page takes the stage to a new design.

See you then!

MrProg

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BackloggdApp

Discord: discord.gg/Ac6XNNN

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/backloggd

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