#ktomg

“Why walk when you can ride?” -- Silt Strider driver, Morrowind

Yes, that’s right, a new update! And for fun, I’m going to start naming them after cities or other lore from Elder Scrolls. Morrowind is probably my all-time favorite game so I have to keep the nostalgia going. It’s also just more fun to give names to updates, don’t you think?

So without further ado...

✨ Enhancements

Sexier email templates

Totally boring but important back-end updates

🐛 Fixes

Fix being unable to add a platform to a game (ownership)

Fix toasts not displaying errors or success messages in top-right corner

Fix some games not getting properly updated from IGDB

Fix support popup not working

Fix some steam collections not being synced

Fix list stats page not displaying correct page title

Fix box art not displaying in emails

Fix release notifications not going out on Twitter or Facebook

Get Hyped for New Email Templates

Besides a TON of back-end updates to prepare for better app architecture moving forward and various small but important bug fixes, the number one thing you all will notice is new email templates I re-designed from the ground-up.

This was actually out of necessity since I had to redo the entire email infrastructure of the site. I decided I’d spend the time to make them look better and more streamlined and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out:

If you’re reading this from your email inbox, you should have noticed it right away!

I enjoyed picking out the icons for the footer. If you look closely, you’ll notice me paying homage to the character that got me into games in the first place, good ole’ Mario:

The other thing you’ll start to notice is for games that you haven’t assigned any owned platforms to, the emails will contain Amazon links to buy the game. These links help support the site but they won’t show up if you’ve assigned a platform to the game (which will treat it as “owned” by the system).

Time for a new year!

Did you know I’ve been running KTOMG since July 2011? It’s nearly been a decade and I have special plans for our decennial birthday. Some of you have been with me this whole journey (thanks 🙏). 

In the meantime, 2020 will be an important stepping stone for KTOMG as I have a lot planned. Some of it is more important but boring work and others are pretty awesome which I hope to bring to you soon. There will be a mix of boring and new in each major update just like this one. Fixes will be included in every update as I can tackle them (search! 😣). Smaller recovery updates to fix bugs will continue to be released without being “named” updates.

I am excited about the future of KTOMG and I am constantly thinking about your feedback and new ideas, so thank you for being a member and I’ll see you in the next update.

A word about being a patron

I don’t have a Patreon profile for myself but I have the coder-equivalent under GitHub Sponsors. 

If you want to support not only KTOMG but all my other endeavors outside KTOMG, you can support me directly through that venue. Some of what I build through KTOMG is open sourced, like my development kits for IGDB and GiantBomb for use by other projects.

Hey everyone! Kamran here, your friendly neighborhood dev. I know things have been quiet lately but don’t despair! I’ve been hard at work at the next iteration of a UI rewrite the past couple months. It’s been busy around here, Mini Kamran is growing fast (already 4 months!). I split the time I have between some open source projects and KTOMG so work is progressing in a steady but slow pace.

This is another big update two major new features! Watch the site update video below for more information!

Video Link

Introducing the KTOMG Bot

Ever with friends and someone asks, “I wonder when so-and-so game comes out?” or “When did that game come out?” Wonder no more. Instead of having to go to KTOMG and searching for a game, now you have someone you can ask who’ll answer you within seconds:

The KTOMG Bot is available to interact with in multiple ways:

As a Skype Bot you can add

Via Facebook Messenger

Via SMS by texting the KTOMG number: (520) 314-4986

Web chat (soon to be added to the site)

Right now the KTOMG Bot has a very limited conversation set, you can ask it two types of questions:

When did/does [game] come/came out?

KTOMG can reply back with the release date of an upcoming or already released game

When does the next [franchise] game come out?

KTOMG can check (to the best of its ability) when the next game in a franchise is coming out

If the bot can’t understand you, it’ll say so--and we’ll also see reports of any messages it couldn’t understand so we can train it better. Over time, it can adapt to different question styles and will understand as we train it. Just keep trying more specific phrases to see if it’ll work.

This is a pretty cool feature we’re excited about--we hope to add way more functionality such as managing your lists, adding games, etc. so this is just the beginning.

New Status Lists

One of the most requested enhancements to KTOMG is finally here! You can now set some new statuses for your games. Here are the changes:

Playing now has 2 sub-statuses:

Active -- games you’re playing right now

Paused -- games you’ve started but put on hold to play later

Played now has 4 sub-statuses:

Abandoned -- games you played and never finished

Beaten -- games you beat

Completed -- games you beat 100%

Mastered -- games you not only beat 100% but also “mastered” in whatever way you interpret that (make sure to set a description to say why you think you mastered the game)

Both Completed and Mastered have special tags and styling to make them stand out in your game list:

Over time, we hope to add some unique animations and more “juice” to these two statuses, as you deserve to show them off on your lists.

Additionally, to make it easy to show off your collection, you can now sort lists by Status:

You can also set this as the default sort when viewed by someone else:

Go ahead, show off those games!

Other minor updates

Sort by Oldest Release Date

We’ve added an option to sort by oldest release date.

Exclusion Filtering

You can now exclude games using the NOT filter when organizing and viewing your list:

This makes it easy to view your games while excluding things you don’t care about when organizing.

Better Site Announcement Dialog

The site announcement dialog is better now--it will let you page through announcements you missed, the images work now, and it looks better.

What’s in store for December?

I am trying to keep on a monthly cycle still--even though this update is 2 months later, I still finished features last month and worked on new ones. I also began preliminary work for December, investigating ways to make the UI of KTOMG even faster and more responsive. It will be a major update behind-the-scenes but the only thing you’ll notice is how much faster it feels--I am hoping to finish that this or next month.

Due to huge effort put into June’s update, this month was much more low key and doesn’t really need a video update. We fixed a few bugs and focused on improving performance. The site should feel much snappier now and pages should load faster. We also did some planning and research for introducing more statuses and what it’d take to achieve better customization.

Changes

Improved response time across most of the site (50-200% faster in some places)

Fix bug with GiantBomb images

This month we released more behind-the-scenes updates that will help us approve Steam games faster and security updates that strengthen the storage of your data. We were already doing a pretty good job, now it’s even better. We take your privacy seriously so whenever there are new best practices and security updates, we take the time to implement them properly.

Fixes

Fix auto-tagging with the steam tag when syncing steam games

Fix rare issue where users would be notified twice about the same thing

Fix links to filtered lists from game detail page

Fix issue with drag/drop where it wouldn’t work sometimes

Enhancements

Always-SSL support -- Now all traffic to KTOMG is encrypted

Better in-site notifications -- Previously it was impossible to see errors/popups on mobile, now they will appear in the top right corner

Security: Even stronger password storage

Security: Implement CSP support to prevent malicious script attacks

Security: Support HSTS to ensure all requests are over SSL

Admin-only: Steam review enhancements to speed up approvals

If all the security talk seems foreign, don’t worry--these are all industry best practices that we’re following. For example, HSTS is still only enforced by 1% of sites today--and now we’re one of them. All this means for you is a safer, private, more secure browsing experience.

Looking forward to March, we hope to finalize the list organization and display pages and get prepped for “generic” game list support so we can start expanding the Explore area of the site. We want to focus on organization and lists before adding more new features.

Keep the ideas coming and vote up features you think are important, we’re always working towards finishing the most-requested features.

June updates consisted mainly of maintenance and slight cosmetic changes.

Enhancements

Add share buttons to games and profiles

Add site news to Explore page for now

Add Currently Playing to Explore page

Better browser compatibility with Welcome page

Allow dismissing tutorial

Fixes

Fix issue with some games not displaying box art properly

Fix issue with welcome email sometimes not being sent

Fix issue with sorting by release date when searching

Today we pushed out the May update. You can read more about the features introduced.

Features

Redesigned lists

Reordering for any list (besides My Games)

New intro tour

Filtering

Ownership

Redesigned game details

Search sorting and typeahead

Public profiles

Stats for users and lists

New statuses (Want to Play, Currently Playing, Played)

New homepage

Miscellaneous fixes

Remember we mentioned previously there would be some surprises? The new homepage is one but more importantly...

Public Profiles & Stats

We are making small steps toward site-wide community features. In the May update we now allow you to view (and link to) your KTOMG profile.

Take myself (yours truly) for example:

You can view some high-level stats (which are also available for individual lists). If you’ve donated, people will also see it (I should donate to myself, just for the flair!).

Games and lists are not shown yet. Options for game privacy and making lists public will be coming soon. Nobody can see your lists yet.

I’ve been so busy working on KTOMG I haven’t even come close to filling out all the games I’ve played (since it never really mattered... until today!).

You can see I enjoy many different platforms, with PC coming out ahead, but I still haven’t updated all my ownership information yet.

Hope you all enjoy the new updates, it’ll be interesting to see some more stats in the coming weeks. Feel free to fill out your collection and share your stats with your friends!

Bugs and Feedback

On Saturday, May 30, we will be pushing the latest update with all the new awesome features (plus some surprise ones).

As a major feature update, you should expect some downtime as we make sure all of you receive the new lists and that things are working as expected. We will try to be as fast as possible.

After the update is live, we will be monitoring the site for any issues and will push out hotfixes as needed.