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[NicMagnier]

Hello TIGers

I'd like to talk a bit about what I've been working on lately but before doing so I would like to talk about Hotline Miami.
When Hotline Miami was released I really wanted to play it but I only had a Mac, no WinPC. I knew that a Mac version was announced and being developed but I didn't know when it would be released. So I ended up having to check Steam every few weeks because I was really unsure there will be no news about the release of the mac version. This drove me made because this is something I always had to keep in mind *check Hotline Miami on steam*
The solution nowadays is simply to ask users to follow twitter or facebook or register on a mailing list but if I don't want to do that I will just miss great games. It's like I'm stuck between Fear of Missing Out and Information Overload.

Recently I thought I should really seat and work on a website to try to solve this problem.
And here is it: http://whenitsd.one

The idea is pretty simple:
- You subscribe to a project
- You receive an e-mail when it's done

I've made a quick tour video to actually show how the website works.




This is a pretty simply and straightforward idea but I really to make it as polish and useful as possible.
So for example, one focus was to be up and running for a subscriber or a project creator as fast as possible. So it literally take just few seconds to register a project.

This is the first time I talk about it outside a circle of friends which mean no one is really using it at the moment and this is still in alpha so stuff will change but I really really want to have your feedback. So if you think it might be useful to you, use it and tell me what you think.

[Grhyll]

This is a great idea! I often find myself in this situation, where I'd like to know when the game will be released but don't want to subscribe to newsletter. I wish you all the best!

[NicMagnier]

I thought it would be a good idea to document some of the progress I make on the website visible here.

So one of the feature I spend too much time working on was Twitter. You can now signing using twitter which is very convenient and if you don't want to give your e-mail at all you can all receive the notification with a personalised rss feed (writing that I realised I could also create a rss feed per project so you wouldn't even need to register // add to todo list).
But I wanted to integrate Twitter to also transfer a project to somebody on twitter. The idea is that a user could register a game on the website they would like to subscribe to and send it to the project creator. I spend some time working on all that to realise at the end that maybe project creator don't have to be received such project transfer out of the blue. Maybe I will disable/remove the feature at the end to not over complicate the experience. I'm not sure yet.
Overall the lesson is that I spend too much time on developing the twitter integration and transfer of projects. I have to pick my battles more wisely.

I also redesign a bit the website to be a bit nicer. The biggest update has been the frontage that explain way better what is the idea behind the website. I also receive some feedback from developer that many of their question were still unanswered so I've added a page that goes in more details on how the website works: http://whenitsd.one/learnMore

Lately I also integrated itch.io widget. When you announce the release of your game, you can simply put the url of your itch.io page and the purchase widget will be directly integrated.

There is tons of stuff I still need to work on but the most valuable stuff was small tweak and feature that was suggested by developers. So I want to spend time to keep tweaking the core of the service and try to get as much feedback as I can. So if you are using it, I encourage you to contact me.