New GamerCards and Comparisons

I've had a load of new GamerCard designs sent in over the last 2 months and I've only just got round to loading them onto the site (they take a little bit of testing). Anyway, there's 5 new ones now live, go check them out at the Customize->My GamerCard page. Many thanks to those that sent them in!

Also, I've modded the comparison pages now so that you have quick dropdown access to compare any games with any of your friends. There's also a dropdown on the main Compare With Gamer page (to get there just click the little graph symbol in the button panel under on a gamer's home page).

And for those that have an interest in such things, most of the site is now 100% valid HTML markup. Bit boring really, but search engines like that sort of thing so I thought I'd sort it out!

Enjoy!

Speedier home pages

I've spent some time changing the indexes on some of the major tables today. Initially this looks to have speeded up the home pages and My Achievement pages quite dramatically (which is obviously pretty damn cool).

I've also made a couple of tiny changes elsewhere, you can now choose your Reviews badge in the forum if you want to, and you can also update your forum signature from the My Settings page

All the...small things

I've just made a couple of small changes in a few of places on the site.

Firstly, your Completion Percentage ratio is now calculated on the number of achievements you've won divided by the total number of achievements in the games you own. It was previously calculated on your gamerscore ratio, and after a discussion on the forum, this has now been changed.

Secondly, I've made some changes to the way solutions are displayed:

1) If more than one solution is tied at the top of the voting, you will see all of the tied solutions

2) If a solution has been added in the last 2 weeks you will also see it (marked with a New icon)

3) You have a new option in your settings page under the Achievements section to See all the solutions by default.

This should make it easier to choose which solution you want to go for and increase the visibility of new (and possibly better) solutions.

The ToDo list capacity has been increased to 30 items.

I have also made some changes to some of the game links, you won't really care about this but it will help with the site SEO (wiki it if you're not sure what it means).

I've also tidied up a lot of stuff that either looked bad or didn't work in IE6 for those of you that still have to use it.

There's lots more to come over the next few days, so keep on checking back!

Happy New Year!

10 million Achievements!

It feels fitting that we have just busted through the magical 10 million achievements tracked barrier on New Years Eve!

I would like to thank all of you for your support and ideas for the site over the last 6 months or so (since we really came to people's attention), I couldn't have made it the site it is today without your help.

2009 is going to be a very big year for TrueAchievements, I have so many ideas to make things even better than they currently are, new features galore, I'll be buying a brand new server for everything to run on, and organizing some hosting in a big data centre for a bit more stability.

I would like to thank those that have already donated to the site, you are wonderful people and I now have enough to get some hosting sorted this month. I know it's a tough time economically for a lot of people so it makes your donations even more valuable to me.

I want to wish you all a wonderful New Year and hope that 2009 brings you and your families every happiness!

Thank you,

Rich
(TrueAchievement)

P.S. I am not at work for a few days so I will be adding some mods in the next week or so...

Server problems

Firstly, I would like to say a merry christmas to all the TAers out there!

Secondly, I want to apologise that the site has been a little up and down in my absense (I'm on holiday in Switzerland at the moment, but now down from the mountains and with internet access).

It's made me more determined than ever to sort out the new server and I will be ordering it at the start of January.

I hope you're all enjoying your presents!

Wishlists and bug fixes

I've added a way for you to add games you want to get in the future to a wishlist. This will appear on your homepage so you have a quick link to these games' pages. They will disappear from the list as soon as you earn a cheevo in the (ie you have bought them).

I've also added a way to clear out achievements from any game in case you have been a victim of the mystery "scanner has picked up games I've never played" bug. If you removed items using NXE and want to remove from TA you can also use this button. It's a clear button under the game image on both the game or achievement pages.

Cheers!

Various modifications

Hey TAers, I noticed that some of the new badges didn't take too kindly to the resizing process and looked a little messy.

So I've recreated them all from scratch, they should look a lot sharper now.

I've also updated the badge info page (under Useful Links) with a fully up to date description of the badges.

I've also added a badge for those who have donated to the upkeep of TrueAchievements.com - thank you all!

Talking of donations, I have 2 people who have donated that I couldn't match up email addresses, so if you have donated to the site and don't have a badge then please PM me so you can have your funky new badge! And if anyone else does donate, please put your GamerTag as the message so it's easy for me to credit you!

A particularly neat little feature that was recently requested has also been added - you can now see which of your friends are on trueachievements.com as they will have a little green light next to their name on your friends list.

I'm off on holiday for a couple weeks shortly, so please don't be upset if I don't respond to your PMs - I'll be up a mountain with no internet access!

Have a wonderful Christmas everybody!

TA

Forum Search + Smaller Badges

Due to the gamer pages having a load more stuff since we started, I've reduced the size of the badges somewhat.

This means we can fit a lot more on the page now, especially for those that had a lot of badges!

I've also finally implemented the forum search, and you can see anyone's posts by clicking on their posts badge.

Enjoy!

Forum stats + new leaderboard

I've added another site leaderboard, this time for completed games.

There's also now a stats panel on the forums showing the most active posters in the last 24 hours and of all time (just for you forum whores out there).

I've also made a few changes to the My Games list - you can now re-rate your games, order by completion percentage and add/remove to your boosting list from here.

Enjoy!

New forum code and leaderboard

I've had several people ask for a couple of mods on the forums to allow a signature and for posts to be previewed.

I've added both of these features now, and the signature will remain on the post as it was at the time the post was made, even if you change your sig later. You can also preview your posts before confirming them.

I've also added a new site leaderboard - Gamer by TrueAchievement Difference. This is probably the "purest" measure of your achievement skills - you will get virtually nothing for your 1000 in Avatar here, as it's calculated by subtracting your GamerScore from your TrueAchievement.

Enjoy!

Xbox live back

Good morning

I'm pleased to report that xbox live is back up and running and we are scanning again.

I also want to let you know that I am trying to find a new home for the site. I'm buying a new server for it today, which should arrive in the next 2 weeks.

I'll obviously need to take the site down while I move the data to the new server, and then move the server to a new data centre. DNS will also need to update. I expect this process will take a couple of days to complete (I know it's not ideal!) so you will be without the site for that period of time.

I'm sorry about this, but it's a necessary bit of short term pain for some long term gain.

Cheers

Xbox live changes

Strange things are afoot at the circle K - or Xbox Live to you and me.

I've switched the scanners off temporarily while I try to see exactly what's going on.

I can't even log in at the moment, I'm getting Page Not Found errors.

Anyway, it's bed time for me now, hopefully they'll be back up and running in the morning.

Thanks

5,000 registered gamers

Well, today we passed the 5,000 gamers mark.

A true achievement I'm sure you'll agree (pun intended).

I've added a couple of things - you can now change your password, and you'll get notified of any new news items next to the Useful Links menu so you stay informed!

Thank you for all your support and help in making the site what it is today.

Small reworking of gamer page

I was looking at a couple of gamer pages today and I realised that things were starting to get a little messy.

With all the features that have been added over the months, there were buttons and flags all over the shop, and it was looking a bit wierd with the avatar on there as well.

So I've moved the buttons into their own little section under the reputation on the left, and put the flag next to the TA score.

And I also thought that you might not really be interested in seeing other people's friends feeds, so you can now switch them off in your settings (under Friends).

Enjoy!

P.S. How much fun is Hoard????

Monumental outage!

Well, this has been a fun 18 or so hours!

So a router blew up this morning. It's never happened to me before, 3 or so years that line has been running without a single dropout. But this morning the router just died, all the lights went out and no one was home.

So a replacement had to be sent over - from another part of the country! You'd think BT would keep a spare in London wouldn't you? But no, seems they only keep them up north.

Ah well.

We are now back with a brand new shiny router in place. Let's hope this one lasts another 3 years (minimum!)

So I'd like to apologise to you lovely people, it's probably not been much fun for you without your daily dose of TA, but I can assure you that's it's been a whole lot less fun for me ;o)

To sooth your brow, there's a couple of new features.

You can now show your funky new NXE avatar on your homepage, I think we were briefly the first site to offer this (apart from Xbox.com of course!) until Mr Cisco kissed goodbye. There's an option for this on your Customize My Settings page.

You'll also find something else there - an option to prevent TAers adding you as a friend without your permission.

And finally there's a status history button next to people's status so you can see what they've been changing it to. If that's what floats your boat.

Right, I'm off to play with my avatar (oh matron!)

Xbox live a little flaky

Morning TAers! Unfortunately the xbox live servers are down again, I expect this may happen quite a bit over the next few days as NXE rolls out.

Please be patient, obviously we are 100% reliant on MS for our information and if they are down, then we can't scan.

Why not spend some time using NXE and let us know what you think of it in the forums?

Xbox Live back up

Yay, my gamerscore has returned to it's vaguely embarrassing level!

If those of you that have registered over the last 4 hours or so could please be patient, your profiles should update shortly.

Thanks!

P.S. The xbox live pages are still the same - Brucey Bonus!

Xbox live is down

As you all probably know, xbox live (the website part anyway) is currently down.

As this is where we get all of our information from, new registrations are not being scanned and any new achievements you may have won are not being added.

This is undoubtedly for the NXE which goes live tomorrow.

Hopefully they won't change too much of xbox.com otherwise the scanners are going to require a lot of rewriting!

Cheers all

Forum enhancements

The forums are starting to get more and more popular, but to get you all to post a little more frequently, I've made a few changes and tweaks.

Firstly, they look a bit different. I wanted to show more threads on a page so I've squeezed the list together a bit, changed the icons and added the gamerpic for the last poster.

I've also added a new filter for the My Threads page. The first time you click the link the defaul options selected will be "all unread posts in my boards". I think this is pretty much what everyone wants to look at first, so that's what it now shows. You also get the same page by clicking the Forums menu item.

Finally, I've added a quick reply section to the bottom of every thread. This means you can quickly knock out a response to any thread without leaving the page.

I've also added a Donate button and links to buy games on Amazon (both US and UK), so if you want to help the site please use these links to buy your games as we can a small amount of commission on them.

Thanks for your continued support!

Add some personal touches

Tonight I've added some features I've wanted to do for some time.

You can now set up a biography which appears on your homepage, and a status which appears on all leaderboards and lists in which your GamerTag appears.

The status history is also stored, so you can use it to make a record of stuff you are doing, games you are playing, achievements you are going for, and you can then look back on that whenever you like!

There's been a ton of new code for this so, as ever, let me know if you find any bugs in the forums.

Thanks people!

Countries and Extra Game Info

We've just added some extra features to the site, including some things that people have been asking for for some time.

If you set your country in your My Settings page, you will now get a little flag next to your gamercard on your homepage. These link though to new regional leaderboards.

Thanks to our helpers, there's also some additional information on most of the 360 games, including Genre, Developer and Publisher. These link through to lists of games that are in the same genre, or by the same developer or publisher.

You will also start seeing links to buy games from Amazon. This is your chance to help support the site, so if you are thinking of pre-ordering a game and like what we are doing at TrueAchievements, please use the links on the game page.

We've also re-coded the friend feeds so they should be much faster - phew!

Enjoy!

A few enhancements

Hello TA'ers! I've made a few enhancements to the site over the weekend.

You can now review your games! There's a link on the home page of the game itself, please add some reviews, they'll be badges for reviews etc, and the most popular review will appear on the game's homepage!

You can now easilly compare your scores on the game pages with any of your friends that also have the game by simply choosing their name from the dropdown.

You can now specify your Time Zone for the forums, which should make things a little less confusing. This is done in your Customize->My settings menu.

While you're in there, please also set up your Country so that we can produce new leaderboards based on where you live.

Speaking of leaderboards, you can now choose whether your leaderboards are based on TrueAchievement Score, TA Ratio, Achievements Won or Achievement Completion Percentage - neat!

Enjoy, and as usual if you find anything playing up then please report it in the forums.

Thanks!

Secret Achievements

It's the one you've all been waiting for, and we think we are pretty close to having a proper solution to the missing Secret Achievement information.

You should start to see the secret achievements you've won gradually appear with proper descriptions as our helpers upload them.

There is also an option in the My Settings page for automatically viewing ALL secret achievement descriptions even if you haven't won them, but this defaults to "No" to avoid spoiling games.

Please note, there's a lot of new code to make all this happen, so you might find the odd bug here or there, if so please let us know in the Bug Reports forum.

There's also a new report, in your Site Pages menu which shows the top 50 most won achievements over the last 7 days.

And a new graph on every game page showing the distribution of the number of achievements each gamer has for that game.

Interesting stuff!

Problems resolved - hopefully!

We've reinstalled some of our servers to try to get things working properly again.

And 2 hours in, we seem to be ok!

No counting of chickens here though, so if you find anything error-ing or buggy, please let me know.

Thanks for you patience!

Some problems

We are having some problems with our SQL Server installation. I've been trying to fix it all day but haven't really got anywhere. So apologies if you are experiencing anything weird or broken, we do know about it and are working on it now.

It seems to have started this morning and for no reason. Unhelpfully there are over 500,000 pages referencing the error on google, but the first few pages of them haven't yielded a solution yet!

So if we dip offline at any stage in the next 24 hours you'll know why...

Thanks

Site milestones

Tonight we smashed through 2 pretty big milestones for the site - 3000 registered users and 4 million (count 'em) achievements tracked.

That's some mighty fine gaming people - excellent work!

As usual there have been quite a few new features and bug fixes added since last week, you can read about them in the Site Wishlist forum.

Thank you all!

New feature - ToDo list

Let's say you're planning a weekend of solid cheevo-popping - how do you sort out which games you want to load up in the 360?

The answer, my friends, is you use your TrueAchievements ToDo list.

Simply go to the My Achievements page and select the 'Achievements I don't have in games I own' option. Then go through them and click on the Add to my ToDo list for any you fancy trying to win (remember the list is sortable by any of the column heading if you just want to go for those high-scoring ones).

When you're done, wander over to your ToDo list page (from the Main Pages menu), where you can re-order them and print them out, along with their solutions (if there are any)!

You can even add a random achievement from your games collection that you haven't got yet for a real challenge!

Nice!

As ever direct any feedback to the Site Wishlist forum.

(P.S. Xbox live.com is back up and running)

Xbox .com down again

Well, it looks like we spoke too soon - xbox live.com is not working properly today, which means the scanners aren't picking up cheevos.

Will try to find out some more info.

Thanks

Good news - we're back!

Xbox live came back online today, and as far as I can see nothing much has changed in the gamer pages so I've switched the scanners back on.

If you do notice anything strange, please drop me a PM and I'll look into it.

Thanks people!

The Xbox Live website is down

As expected, xbox live.com is down today.

This means you might see a few odd things on the site - my gamerscore has plummeted to zero for example ;o).

Hopefully when it comes back it will all be working in the same way as before and I can turn the scanners back on.

So if you register with us today, please be aware that your profile will not be generated until tomorrow at the earliest - sorry about that, but it's microsoft's fault :oD

Rate your games!

We've just added some neat functionality for you to rate your games.

Simply go to the game page of a game you have and you'll see some stars. Simply click on the rating you'd like to give the game (1-5 stars), and it'll get automatically added to the rating for that particular game.

So get cracking and rate your games!

Xbox Live outage

Hey all

You probably know by now that xbox live is going to be down for 24 hours on Mnonday.

This means the scanners are going to be twiddling their thumbs during that time, just waiting for it all to come back up so they can grab your hard-earned cheevo's on Tuesday.

A word of caution - this update is to prepare Live for the big November update - I have no idea if they are going to change live.xbox.com at all, but if they do then the scanners are going to need to be rewritten in order to handle the new HTML.

So if they aren't working normally again on Tuesday you'll know why - please don't PM me about it, I'll be watching closely for any problems.

You are wonderful people!

TA

Additional forum funtionality

We've added a new page to your menu for My Threads. This allows you to keep track of multiple threads you are interested in in a single place.

You can move threads in and out of this list very easilly, and also set any of them to mail you when there are new posts.

There's also some new options on the My settings page to automate some of this functionality for you.

There's also some rather splendid new GamerCards for your enjoyment - please check them out!

Solutions pages and new badge

You can now see all the solutions we have getting xbox 360 achievements on their own page. You can also see any recent guides added on someone's profile page and click the More button to see them all.

And there's now a new badge for completion percentage. This shows the number of gamerpoints you have earned compared to the total gamerpoints in all the games you have. A high percentage tied with a high TA means you're a proper hardcore gamer!

So....

Just how good are you?

My Trophy Case

Some of our member wanted a way to show off the achievements they have won that they are most proud of (and why not?).

So now they can - against any achievement you have won on the achievement page, or on the My Achievements list, you'll now find a button to add the achievement to your Trophy Case.

These achievements then appear on your homepage in their own little section.

By going to the Customize->My Trophy Case page you can put them into whatever order you like.

And there's now a setting in the My settings menu to have the top 8 (or 5 depending on the card shape) achievements in your Trophy Case, appearing on your TA GamerCard instead of the recent games list.

So why don't you choose the achievements you're most proud of and show them to everyone else?

We get (literally) bigger!

As you may have noticed, I decided to give the site a little more girth tonight - it's now a full 1000 pixels across.

Almost all browsers are using a minimum of 1024px these days, so why not make use of it? it gives us a bit more room to play with.

I've also added a feature for you to create a Trophy Case - you can choose up to 8 of the achievements you've won and they appear in a little section on the right your gamer page. This was suggested only this morning in the forums, and I thought it was such a good idea I went ahead and did it right away...

So if there are any achievements you're particularly proud of, set up your trophy case by going to Customize->My Trophy Case and show the world!

My achievements and more

I've added a rather natty new page to the site which should make it easy for you to see which achievements you can earn that will boost your TrueAchievements or GamerScore.

Once you've logged in, go to the Main pages menu item and select "My achievements". This will bring up a list of all the achievements you have, the game you got them in and the TA score and ratio you got for them. You can even sort the achievements by clicking on the column headings. All good so far, but that's not the really cool part...

By clicking on the "Achievements I don't have in games I own" option, you will bring up a list of, well, Achievements you haven't won yet in games you've got (predictably). If you then sort this by TA Ratio, you'll find a list of the easiest achievements to get with the lowest ratio (for some GamerScore boosting), or click the TA Ratio again to see the hardest ones to get. Or click on the Score header to see the ones that will give you the biggest boost to your TA Score - nice!

And if there's a solution available for the achievement, they'll be a little icon for you to click on to view the guide - sweet!

I've also added some functionality to allow you to set up your leaderboards as "by request" - this means you will receive an email when someone wants to join it and it's up to you whether you let them!

Have a good one

Feature frenzy!

I've had a chance to add quite a lot of functionality over the last 2 days.

Firstly, you can now quote and add smileys in your forum posts.

Secondly, you can now see which scanner you are being scanned by, and by clicking on it's link you can see it's recent activity.

You can also request a scanner update by clicking on the refresh button - please note that your score updates automatically in a maximum of 40 mins so unless there's a reason you absolutely HAVE to see your new score please don't click it. And give it a little while after clicking it (2 mins or so) to make the scan. There's a possibility that if there's a load of new gamers to be scanned that it could take longer than this so please don't bombard me with messages to say that it's broken ;o)

Thirdly, there's a new filter on the performance graphs so you can see how people have done in various different date ranges (note you'll get more date options the longer we have been scanning the gamer).

Forthly, and probably best, is a new Compare To Me button against every Gamer on their homepage. This will show you a comparison of scores for all the games either of you have. Clicking on the game on the left will give you a comparison for just that game.

Wowzers!

TA

Registration fully open

Well, I think I'm pretty happy that the scanners are going to work fine this weekend, so registration is officially open!

I'm limiting it at 5000 gamers for now, although there's no chance we'll reach that for a good while yet.

There are also new badges on the site, and you can see an explanation of them here.

Have a great bank holiday weekend!

TrueAchievement

New scanner and more..

Firstly, sorry it's taken so long to post anything on here. I've been seriously busy at work, and then I went on holiday for a bit and then I had a stag weekend so there's not been a lot of time for all things TA...

Anyway, while I was away both scanners ground to a halt which is bad in a way, but it forced me into rewriting them from scratch to make them more reliable (remember when this little project started it was only scanning about 40 GamerTags so things didn't really go wrong very often).

The new scanners went live last night, and I'm delighted to say that they are running very nicely. In fact, the rewrite has allowed me to make some changes to speed them up a touch and I'm glad to say that it now takes somewhere in the region of a second and a half to see if you're gamerscore has changed. The search for the extra achievements you've won takes a little longer as it needs to go through all the games again, but this is a fantastic breakthrough and I think I'll be able to open up the site to all very shortly!

Because the initial pass takes a fair amount of time, I think I might limit the site to 50 or so new registrations per day so we don't notice a huge lag on our scores updating, but in theory we should be okay to increase the user base to around 5000 and see what happens...

A couple of non-scanner related mods:

I've added a new thing where if you look at a game page there's a new list on the right of how many points each of your friends has on that game - a game-friend leaderboard if you will. And if you also have the game, clicking on their name in this list will show you a comparison of the achievements each of you have for that game. Easier to see in action than to explain so check it out and let me know what you think.

I've also added 2 new leaderboards to the site - they are for Retail and Arcade titles. A few people asked for them so here they are (check out the Leaderboards page)

I have a load of mods in the pipeline including a revised badge system with 10 colours (!) of badges and awards for some extra things. Hopefully you'll start to see more mods coming a bit more rapidly as my workload dies down a bit.

Anyway, thanks for the support as always!

Peace,

TrueAchievement

P.S. Geometry Wars Evolved rules!

Registration open again

...but there is a catch.

We need to be already tracking you. If we are then you can sign up using the link on the registration page.

Enjoy!

Site leaderboards live!

We now have some additional leaderboards for the site as a whole.

These cover Gamers, Games and Achievements, so check them out at the bottom of the leaderboards homepage.

Sweet!

GamerTag Change

So I thought I'd better get in there before anyone else did. My new GamerTag is TrueAchievement. Unfortunately they only allow 15 chars so I'm a bit singular.

But you get the point.

And of course, if you want to be more personal, I'm still richs99 really ;o)

One Million Achievements!

No major announcements, I just noticed that we just tracked our 1 millionth achievement!

That means that between the 1422 gamers that we are tracking as I type this we have over a million achievements (and that's not points, that the actual number of achievements we've all won!)

Which I think is pretty damn cool.

So give yourselves a pat on the back for being rather excellent gamers.

:oD

richs99

P.S. Site enhancements are continuing at a pace, to read about them check out the Site Wishlist board in the forums

RSS Feeds

We have just added RSS feeds for your friends list and all leaderboards!

Just click on the sexy RSS icon next to the leaderboard or friend feed in question - this can be added to any RSS Feed reader so you can keep up to date with who's getting which achievements!

Thanks

richs99

New badges

Hey people

We've just added 2 new badges to your profiles.

The first one is for your Site Rank which shows the position you hold across the entire site when everyone is ordered by their TrueAchievement points.

The second shows your TrueAchievement Ratio - this is your TrueAchievement score divided by your GamerScore. Anyone with a score of over 1.6 is pretty hardcore!

Thanks

richs99

Forums now live!

After a great deal of hasty development, we now have our forums live.

All games and leaderboards automatically have their own forum. You can see a list of forums that are relevant to you (ie the games you have and the leaderboards you are a member of) by clicking on the Useful pages ->Forums link on your menu, or by clicking here.

They are relatively basic at the moment, but more functionality will be added shortly.

Why not try them out by signing our petition for our all important Microsoft Developer License - Please sign here!.

Thanks!

Leaderboards

We've just launched some funky leaderboard functionality to the site.

You can create your own once you've logged in by visiting the leaderboards homepage, set up a name and a description and choose whether they are Public (anyone can join) or Private (only you can add gamers).

We've just created our own one - TrueAchievement Admins.

Sweet!

Customize your pages

A rather tasty little feature has just been added to the site.

You are now able to choose how many achievements you see in your Friend Feed on your Gamer page.

You can also choose whether or not to make your Friends List private, and to choose how many recent achievements and games you see on any gamer page you visit.

Live Achievement Feed

If you like watching things appear before your very eyes, why not check out new Achievement Feed?

It constantly updates with new achievements being earned by our tracked gamers, in fact bacuse we know how lazy you lot are you don't even have to refresh the page!

FAQ page added

We've recently been bombarded with a load of question about the site, how it works, and why the achievement scores are at the values they are.

So we thought we'd produce an FAQ.

Hopefully you'll find answers to any questions you might have on this page.

If not, you know how to contact us.

TrueAchievement GamerCard

Yes, it's true, we can hardly believe it ourselves, but we've managed to do it.

You can now parade your TrueAchievement GamerCard around on any forum or website you like!

Simply log in and go to your GamerCard page to choose how you want your card to be displayed and find the code to add it to any site or signature you want!

Now everyone can see how much of an achievement whore you really are!