Hi. (I'm not sure if this belongs to the 'feedback' thread or not). I noticed that browsing the games on this site can be tedious, due to the current user interface, and this is my suggestion for another system.

First, I'll explain the problem with the current UI. When I want to filter a specific parameter, which isn't proposed in the short display, I click 'show all' and then hundreds of possibilities appear and stretch the column a lot. So I scroll back and forth, it takes a lot of time, espescially when the query is complicated. Many of the values proposed are obscure ones, tied to only one or two games, just as obscure.

I understand that speedrun.com is a host for a bunch of game, disregarding their popularity, which is a good thing ; except that it plagues the UI. Exhaustively showing all values possible for a parameter with a checkbox doesn't seem to be a good idea. I think that users should be able to type what they want. Because usually they know what they want to filter, so they don't have to be shown hundreds of possibilities they're not concerned with.

So for these criteria: 'name', 'year', 'platform', 'publisher', 'developper', 'game engine', everything can be typed. There's another issue with the 'genre'. There's a whole lot of different writings for the same genres, 'point-and-click','point-n-click','point&click','p-n-c','adventure p-n-c'... Those need a standard to stick to. When filling a game entry, instead of letting users write whatever they want in this field, use checkboxes, or a tag system, there should barely be 30 of them... So when browsing a game the 'genre' criteria has just as much possibilies

Also, sometimes users don't know exactly what they're looking for, so they need to be proposed something - or they need to check the expected writing for their entry. That actually works with the current system, since you can read all possibilities displayed. This won't work on mine, except if we let the user the choice to see all those possibilities. With a mere '?' or 'show all' button, displaying all those values in a new tab. Just an almost empty html page consisting in a list of everything that's possible, in a new tab ; so it doesn't bother the user, as opposed to scrolling the same page up and down.

Now that I explained the system, let's try to sketch how it could look.

First imagine an empty board then the users can add a line they choose an operator (==,!=,>=,>,<=,<) and what type of criteria they want to filter (year, platform, genre...) and what value it should have (they type it) and they can add another value on the line and after that they can add another line, etc...

filter queries will look like a list, parameters on a same line conjugate as OR, parameters on different lines conjugate as AND.

examples:

== [PC, PS3]

= [2012] <= [2016] != [Capcom, Rockstar]

"all games, which have PC or PS3 for platform, released between 2012 and 2016, and neither by Capcom nor Rockstar"

== [adventure] == [action] != [platformer] < [2002]

"all games, which belong to both action and adventure genres, but not platformers, and released striclty before 2002"

It may look a bit convoluted, but once one gets used to it, it works easily and quickly. The UI shouldn't take too much room on the page, and it will be more efficient than checking boxes here and there in an overloaded column.

Thanks for reading, I suppose such issue isn't a priority for the devs, maybe a very few people use this filter feature anyway, certainly it's a lot of work to fix... idk. I'm just proposing.