quiz badges r not showing avatar

goodone · #1 07-17-2012, 11:04 AM

well, i do not know why this service seems all messed up and somehow uncared for, especially since it has sooo much potential, great history and can b rather popular as a true gamer site, but i decided, as a new user who made a calculated and hard decision to use it actively, to report every and single issue and bug i encounter while using it. hopefully that will make someone think it over and get the site to its greatness again.

probably everyone is aware of this issue, however, i rly find it annoying. quizzes on gamerDNA r the most important thing, imo, to this service's success, and quiz badges r important part of that functionality. while they work, for most part, lack of avatar on them is a serious issue, when it comes to design, and they r almost unusable on other places, with an empty avatar space like that.

so, this should b, ofc, a priority fix.

twilsonxpert · #2 07-17-2012, 04:48 PM

I'll check it out this week. Thanks for reporting it.

goodone · #3 07-17-2012, 04:52 PM

looking forward to a fix.

twilsonxpert · #4 07-18-2012, 01:26 AM

Try it now.

goodone · #5 07-18-2012, 08:45 AM

nope, it's still broken.

my and ur bartle test quiz badges r fixed, but the same badge for many other ppl is still broken, while they otherwise have an avatar and a working badge. bartle badge alone, other badges r still broken, both for me and other ppl.

now, i do not know what u did, but, there r two possible problems. the ground cause is, obviously, a badge creation code, but after u fixed that and badges r still broken, it may b that:

badges r statically created, in which case, even if the code is fixed, they r broken, since an owner would have to recreate them by going through a quiz once more, to run the creation code again, now fixed.
badges r dynamically created, in which case, the code is still broken, at least for some ppl and other badges.

i guess the case here is the former, and that u've manually rerun the code for my and ur account individually, just to have our badges fixed, right? should i expect other badges r gonna fix themselves after i rerun the quizzes again?

however, even if true, this is still a broken behavior. imagine a situation in which a person replaces their avatar. judging from the present code behavior, this would break their badges again - if they r statically created, they would remain displayed with the avatar that was current at the time of their creation, ignoring the new avatar, unless quizzes r manually rerun again [which is painful].

on the other hand, there's no need for panic in this case either. i suggest adding a small code to the avatar upload page [or whatever function does that], which would simply rerun all the badges creation code for that account, on avatar update, and in turn, this would fix the badges both for avatar changes, and all accounts on this services eventually, since ppl rarely rerun the quizzes, but they do change their avatar from time to time [and even if someone doesn't, it's still an easy thing for them to fix their quiz badges, if wanted].

ofc, u can have the service rebuild all badges on a timely basis to account for this issue, but i guess such an overload of a server is out of a question. this goes the same way for dynamical creation approach too, i would guess.

so, making a small code addition to avatar upload function is not a serious problem, and has many benefits - it would also account for ppl who 1st do the quizzes and then create their acc [like myself and probably more than a half of gDNA membership], a state in which their badges would b broken [cause of no avatar to speak off], even after they create an account and upload an avatar. that way, the most common cause of the issue would have been dealt with.

and from what i see, there's already something like that [?force=true]. however, plz, check the code for it, as it may seem broken for ppl who r actually with no account at all. in any case, by using it, i have been able to refresh my badges. still, having the same thing rerun on avatar update would do wonders for less skilled ppl.

anyway, sorry for the long read. i hope i have been helpful, and that u r not too bored to make this fix final and complete.

twilsonxpert · #6 07-18-2012, 04:36 PM

You're right, they are created once and saved. Users can go to https://www.gamerdna.com/dna/quizzes/ and re-fetch their signatures to refresh them (right again, with the force=true). I'll have to look into what it would take to refresh them on account creation. It actually might not be too bad. When you take a quiz as an anonymous user, you have a temporary id. Then, if you subsequently create an account, anything you did as that temporary user gets merged to your account, so that would be the perfect time to do it.

goodone · #7 07-18-2012, 05:30 PM

quiz badges have only two dependencies: quiz results and avatar. so, they should b rebuild on changes in those two.

when u retake a quiz, badges r rebuilt automatically, so... there's no need 2 change anything there.

when u change ur avatar, badges r not rebuilt automatically. so, u need 2 make some changes in the avatar update code, to force badge refresh on avatar update.

actually, there is no pressing need 2 change how unregistered quiz data merges with once registered account. badges will stay the same, cause there is no avatar to speak of yet, and quiz data stays the same. so, finally, u need only to force badge refresh on avatar change.

separately from this, what u need 2 check is the anonymous user quiz badge functionality, since badges r broken for a temporary user, after a quiz is finished. try it urself, u will c what i mean. i'm quite sure many probable users find this displeasing and consider the service broken or abandoned, choosing not to join.

twilsonxpert · #8 07-21-2012, 01:16 AM

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I took several quizzes anonymously then logged in and they merged to my account fine. Example

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/FPS/...png?force=true

became

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/FPS/...e&t=1342829740

goodone · #9 07-21-2012, 08:01 AM

account merging was not the issue. the issue was the display of a badge on a quiz result page for anonymous users.

however, i checked it now again, after doing a quiz as an anonymous user, and it works properly now [badge shows, instead of a broken placeholder, which was the case before]. i do not know what u've actually done in the recent fix, but maybe this thing was a consequential fix too. the badge was broken when used with ?force=true [as the result pages use it]... if i tried accessing the png file without any parameters, it, actually, worked. so, maybe something there was the issue. but, it works now, so, this is merely a feedback for u.

i'm sorry to have wasted ur time on doing the quiz pointlessly... i could have rechecked after u did the 1st fix, on my own, before i posted about it, sparing u the trouble. i hope u dnt mind.

anyways, any thoughts on avatar upload problem?