The CustomsForge Desktop App - How would you like it to look?

[sfix]

Hello guys,

 

If you didn't know already, the CustomsForge team has a desktop application for managing your Rocksmith CDLC being developed quietly in the background.  We have a small team of developers about to get to work on creating it but first we'd like to pitch it to the users of CustomsForge to see how they'd like it to look / function.

 

The initial mockup off the application would include CDLC listing / categorization (with a verbose view of the contents of the CDLC, arrangements, tuning and the like.) with the ability to do some simple in-place modifications on various meta info.

 

The application itself will be tightly integrated with the website and would include notifications of when updates for DLC you own are availabe (don't panic, this doesn't mean you can't use the tool offline!) and also updates for the application itself.

 

We already have a pretty good idea of what features we'd like to deliver to you guys, so I won't reveal too much just yet. However, what we don't have is a UI prototype to base the application on. We have some rough ideas, but we don't know what you guys really want.

 

So, calling all designers and UI/UX enthusiasts, we'd like your advice on how the app should look. You can submit anything you want to this thread related to the GUI, be it a mockup, a link to an example of some fancy UI controls you seen, or a textual description of how you *think* it should look.

 

If more info is needed to come up with an idea, then let me know and I'll add it to the thread. I'll be happy to help.

 

Thanks,

sfix.

 

Note: This is not a feature request thread.

Note 2: Nor is it the official development thread.

[Azrael]

First of all, nice to hear about the project again!

 

For the looks: You could for example just copy the website theme(s). This way we get a consistent design.

I prefer the white theme: I find it easier to look at, and it uses the whole of my screen (whereas the black theme uses less than the half of my screen widths, which is super annoying^^)

[TomH1703]

Sounds great, Just please include a way to load/organize/search for the latest added songs.

[noahfence]

<blink>Text!</blink>

 

:D

[cloudsong]

I'm so excited...seriously!

[firekorn]

For the UI, i think something like a library taht you can organize yourself like many music player do seems correct to me since the purpose is kinda the same.

And i'll admit that i would like if it keep the same look as the cdlc search interface.

[sfix]

Ok, I'm going to begin prototyping something up over the weekend for the UI. Screenshots will follow soon.

[Motive]

Would be good if it will to look and useful like media center. With filter working in realtime, tags, and choices what need update what not.

Example there, where tag it field for edit, field with genre replace tags from search engine like, dd, rr, tuning etc. All columns must be allow sorting in multiple mode, like artist, then album, then date upload etc.

http://i.imgur.com/WeWIyCr.jpg

[L33tr]

As low in the community as I am, I'd still like to throw out an idea: I'd love to see a section dedicated to showing certain statistics on the amount of downloads of CDLCs that a user has uploaded, stuff like a chart of downloads per day. Just a thought :)

[Motive]

I have one idea for app. If there will appear different tags (user comments, quality (rate -10) for every path. There posible add tags  difficult for every path, rate 1-10, every who want fill it at PC, then it may be sync with database on server, and calculate average rate if is a few rate. Similar as we doing in at week challenge, an example there: link

Same can calculate average a quality for each paths and total quality CDLC.

[Azrael]

Note: This is not a feature request thread.

Note 2: Nor is it the official development thread.

@sfix:

You should open up a feature request thread, if you don't want this to become one ;-)

[Motive]

Im sorry. :) I think about this as about improve tags from my first post.

[sfix]

Hi guys,

 

I've been a bit caught up with work at the moment but the prototype involves something a little like the UI posted by Motive. It will be modeled a bit after the popular torrent client, Vuze. If anyone has any feedback on this please let me know.

 

Thanks,

sfix.

[sfix]

Managed to get a bit of work done over the past few days, screenshots to follow tomorrow.

[monkeyriot]

Is it possible to read the in game stats on each song?  I often like to sort by my mastery.

[Alex360]

Yes, toolkit can access to profile content so you can also provide information based on profiles.

[f3rn4nd0d]

Great idea. Will it be PC and Mac compatible?

 

F.

[sfix]

Is it possible to read the in game stats on each song?  I often like to sort by my mastery.

 

Great idea! However, this is not a feature request thread :). I will set up one shortly when the application is in at least an alpha state.

 

Great idea. Will it be PC and Mac compatible?

 

F.

 

Yes, originally the plan was to write the application in C# and only support Windows, but since I've picked it up as the lead developer I'll be writing it in Java and it will run on any platform with a Java 8 runtime (don't worry though, we'll provide a conveinient installer for those who don't feel like installing the latest version of Java).

[sfix]

Been a bit busy getting our new servers online, pictures of the prototype UI still to come :).

[f3rn4nd0d]

 

Is it possible to read the in game stats on each song?  I often like to sort by my mastery.

 

Great idea! However, this is not a feature request thread :). I will set up one shortly when the application is in at least an alpha state.

 

Great idea. Will it be PC and Mac compatible?

 

F.

 

Yes, originally the plan was to write the application in C# and only support Windows, but since I've picked it up as the lead developer I'll be writing it in Java and it will run on any platform with a Java 8 runtime (don't worry though, we'll provide a conveinient installer for those who don't feel like installing the latest version of Java).

 

Excellent news indeed! Thanks so much for all your efforts!

[lewiiis]

I'm a bit late but I'd like the see the ability to automatically update my downloads if a new version of the song is released.  I suppose the way I see it is you'd link the download folder directly to your DLC folder.  Since version numbering is all over the place in the current database you could compare hashes on local files and the ones on the server and then update if different.

[Rockinbiscuit]

The choice of folder where you store your DLC would be nice to include, so you can direct the software to that folder.

 

Many of us simply dump all the cldc in the 'DLC folder', but some prefer to keep it separate. IE, I have a folder contained within my 'DLC folder' simply called 'CDLC', which is where all the CDLC I download is stored.

 

tris

[monkeyriot]

Any progress updates you can share?

[Alex360]

As I know it's not that far from beginning, but UI prototyped and it can read parcs that's all I know :)

[Byproduct]

Huge thanks for making this!

I would like to see stuff stored in a dedicated server rather than these random inconvenient file hosting services. It would make downloading much easier (directly through the application) and would prevent the danger of randomly losing files on these file hosting services. The files are pretty small, so server costs would be manageable I think. I would happily donate a few euros towards that too.

[tripsick]

Awesome i cannot wait... a tool that searches all your songs and checks for duplicated with different CDLC file names would be sweet. 

 

Stop some of the crashing when the same files are in the same location with different names. but i imagine if this tool updates all your files with the latest version  it would solve this issue..