Cheerful Ghost Blog

Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2013

In what may be heralded by many to be the defining moment of the convention, Cheerful Ghost had a booth at this years Portland Retro Gaming Expo. The above image only captures a partial moment in what was a very fun filled weekend handing out stickers and talking about nerd things. We split the table with our awesome friends making Monster Ate My Birthday Cake and that really seemed to work out well. Many people stopped by to find out more about the site and play Monsters and we met a ton of cool Vendors too.

I want to give a special shout out to @scrypt for stopping by and helping out at the table. My most favorite moment of the Expo was when @scrypt and I were... Read All

scrypt Supporter wrote on 10/08/2013 at 03:28am

Good times, indeed! It was a lot of fun getting to meet the local community, and be able to promote the site. I don't know... I think I liked it more than PAX, especially in size. There weren't more than a handful of game developers there with booths, but even then, the games they were showing were really interesting. One in particular was a turn-based combat game that used the power of math as a summoning pool! Now that I'm settled back into Vancouver, i should be posting more frequently, starting with attention going to the local scene. Stay tuned!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/08/2013 at 04:27am

I agree, PRGE was more fun than PAX for me too. Less people and stuff means you can focus more on what is actually present and most of it was really great.

Travis Admin wrote on 10/10/2013 at 06:09pm

So where can I get a bottle of Cheerful Ghost hand sanitizer?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:04am

Hahaha, just buy one and apply sticker.

INSTANT BRANDING!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/11/2013 at 01:46am

Interesting PRGE video from Gamester81 http://blip.tv/gamester81/portland-retro-gaming-expo-recap-6658829

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Portland Retro Game Expo 2013

Just wanted to let you know about some awesome stuff. October 5th - 6th is the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and I am happy to report that Cheerful Ghost will be showing this year. We will have a booth to showcase the site, sell Cheerful Ghost swag packs and are stuffing free stickers in each attendee bag. I am also excited to say that as a special bonus, we are sharing the table with Sleep Ninja Games, the awesome folks making the crazy great game "Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake."

I seriously encourage anyone living in Portland or its surrounding territories that loves retro games to stop by the booth and say hi. Not only will you be able to get an above average dose of... Read All

A Taste of Something to Come...

Wanted to share with you guys something I had printed to advertise The Cheerful Ghost Roundtable. I'll be handing them out soon and tell you about it in the next couple of days!

http://cheerfulghost.com/roundtable

Site Tech: Upgraded To Bootstrap 3.0

I just pushed a new update to the site upgrading it to use Boostrap 3. As with any upgrade, some site breakage may occur so if you see anything amiss let me know.

That said, the site should look much better on phones, tablets and desktops now.

http://getbootstrap.com/

Travis Admin wrote on 09/16/2013 at 02:13pm

Things look a little smoother in places, yeah. It's nice!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/16/2013 at 02:16pm

Yeah, it should be. Plus the site should be a ton better on Tablets in both orentation modes.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 09/16/2013 at 05:42pm

Green notifications!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/16/2013 at 05:44pm

Ha, yeah. They discontinued the purple for some reason. Oh well.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 09/16/2013 at 05:50pm

I like the green. Works well with the leaf.

Blue_Element wrote on 09/16/2013 at 06:50pm

Wow, the new font is pretty nice. And the site does look better overall.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/16/2013 at 07:41pm

Awesome, glad you like it!

hardeyez wrote on 09/16/2013 at 08:24pm

Yes, it's definitely nicer... The posts fill the screen better on linux and android (i.e. chrome and chromium on linux, and chrome on android 4.2). In fact, android is much better all around. Nice!!

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PAX Day 2: Hearts, Talks, Fortresses and Roads

My final day at PAX was Saturday and it was great. I decided to hit up a few talks and went back to the Indie Mega Booth to checkout other games I had missed on Friday.

talks

I went to a few talks this year. One called "Now that we Know Everything is Sexist, Now What" and a Q&A with the founders of Super Giant Games. Both panels were interesting for different reasons. I appreciate the Sexism talk but it depressed me a little. The Supergiant Q&A was good but I wanted a bit more time with them and the questions didn't seem to resonate with me. Super Giant Games is a great company and they have a very dedicated fan base so it was fun to hear the fans ask questions.... Read All

PAX Day 1: Bright, Loud and Amazing

First day at PAX is always the most mind and foot numbing. I usually don't hang out in large auditoriums filled with massive art pieces, loud music and large seizure educing lights so the first day of PAX takes a while to acclimate to. @scrypt is at PAX this year so we have been co-ordinating a bit to see most of the show together and so far its worked out pretty well.

Today we decided to hit up the expo halls and check out the games developers are showing. I didn't have a huge list of games I came in wanting to play because most of the games I know about, i've played. All told, I found some awesome new stuff I hadn't heard of before and played some games that haven't... Read All

Private Messages & Responsive Design

I wanted to talk about some of the new things we are doing on the site as well as a bit about some of the technology we use to make Cheerful Ghost. I put the finishing touches on a new private message system this weekend and am pretty happy with the result. A week or so ago CapnCurry asked me how he could distribute Card Hunter beta keys to people on the site and I didn't have a good recommendation for him. He suggested a simple message system and the gears in my head turned a bit. I spent a week thinking about how to build things and spend a few days hacking on it.

how private messages work

If you want to send a private message to anyone on the site you can do that in... Read All

Auth Changes + New Account Security Section

I wanted to update you about a recent batch of features to hit the site. One such thing I have been experimenting with are the comment visuals. The old comment style was fine in Desktop browsers but on mobile they were squished. The new style gives the comment body much more room and I think they are much easier to read. That said, they don't seem as good as they could be. I can't put my thumb on it entirely, but something needs to be done in terms of the colors we use or placement. Beyond that, I really love how much more room the comments have on my iPhone.

A few days ago I changed the "Update Profile" link in the drop down to "Account Settings." This will be an... Read All I wanted to update you about a recent batch of features to hit the site. One such thing I have been experimenting with are the comment visuals. The old comment style was fine in Desktop browsers but on mobile they were squished. The new style gives the comment body much more room and I think they are much easier to read. That said, they don't seem as good as they could be. I can't put my thumb on it entirely, but something needs to be done in terms of the colors we use or placement. Beyond that, I really love how much more room the comments have on my iPhone.

A few days ago I changed the "Update Profile" link in the drop down to "Account Settings." This will be an "umbrella" area for all things related to your account. I added a series of tab buttons to the top of the page allowing you to update your profile as before and I also added a new "Account Security" section. Currently what this allows you to do is sign out all other open Cheerful Ghost browser sessions. If you think your account may have been compromised or you are just a bit paranoid, this should help you be more secure.

I want to stress the point that we have not been hacked and no account has been hacked that I am aware of. Security really matters to me and I want to allow people the right tools to ensure that is a priority. We also started a new policy that requires everyone re authenticate every 2 months. I know this is somewhat of a hassle but is a fairly normal convention on modern web apps.

One of the next features I will be working on in the upcoming weeks is updating how posts are seen on the Cheerful Ghost main page. Some of you have asked for some kind of front page moderation and Travis and I are currently working out how that will work. Our goal is to painlessly allow awesome content to make it to the front page. I want to stress that the majority of what people post will still make it to the front page, that said as the site grows we need to ensure that the stuff people see is our best.

If you have any questions or comments about anything covered hit me in the comments or using site feedback:

http://cheerfulghost.com/feedback

The Cheerful Ghost Pack

After launching Cheerful Ghost over a year ago I have been very happy with how the site has taken shape, most notably with how awesome it is to play and talk about video games with everyone. The site focuses on the games we love so we can talk about and schedule events with our friends.

One thing I wanted to do soon after I launched site Memberships is design and print some cool Cheerful Ghost swag to hand out to Members as a thank you for supporting the site. It may have happened much later than I anticipated but I am happy to finally announce..

The Cheerful Ghost Pack

The Cheerful Ghost Pack is a collection of all new Cheerful Ghost swag that will be shipped for free... Read All

Server Support & Moderated Events

A few days ago I launched a few new features for Cheerful Ghost events that I want to talk a bit about.

moderated events

All the events created with Cheerful Ghost events to this point can joined by anyone. This is a pretty awesome default and will remain so, but occasionally we all might want to create an event that we want to be bit more selective with. Intro moderated events. Moderated events allow the event creator to approve people to join the event that request access.

server support

In the past Cheerful Ghost has run game servers that last a month or so and as such events now support that use case. You can now put in your Server URL and Server Password into the... Read All