New GAF Feature: Key Giveaways in Posts

Josemayuste said:
Palliasso Palliasso it seems that the buttons don't work while on Chrome (Android).
Click to expand...

for me the buttons didn't work in Opera on my Samsung tablet... but they worked in Opera on my Samsung phone.

seems to be a weird bug. I also tried both the dektop and the mobile site on the tablet, neither worked.
on my phone on the mobile layout, it worked.

are you on a tablet? maybe it is an issue with the screen resolution/size on mobile 🤔
 
kevboard said:
for me the buttons didn't work in Opera on my Samsung tablet... but they worked in Opera on my Samsung phone.

seems to be a weird bug. I also tried both the dektop and the mobile site on the tablet, neither worked.
on my phone on the mobile layout, it worked.

are you on a tablet? maybe it is an issue with the screen resolution/size on mobile 🤔
Click to expand...

Nope, I'm on an Android mobile, and the buttons do nothing on that browser.
 
I still don't understand why you guys took away the giveaway section. It made it fair for everyone to have a shot at giveaways, that can't necessarily lurk the forums as much as other can.
 
cash_longfellow said:
I still don't understand why you guys took away the giveaway section. It made it fair for everyone to have a shot at giveaways, that can't necessarily lurk the forums as much as other can.
Click to expand...
Maybe it was flawed, rigged, or susceptible to manipulation? Even though I won a few times, it felt like the "good" games always went to the same handful of people.
 
Kupfer said:
Maybe it was flawed, rigged, or susceptible to manipulation? Even though I won a few times, it felt like the "good" games always went to the same handful of people.
Click to expand...
That's possible. I won a few games, mostly crap, but got a couple of decent games throughout the years. I suppose it could be some sort of manipulation reason though. I just wish they would set up something like that again. First come first served sucks for people who can't be on here that much.
 
The bug should be fixed now so entering [KEY=Steam Game]S:BOGHAV97VTM26QYI[/KEY] (without quotes) should now work as intended. Sorry for the oversight on that one, I guess the bots had a few last hurrahs at my expense.

Some updates I'm working on:
  • When it writes "claimed by USER" back to the thread, I'm going to add in the key type and name (so everyone knows what they missed out on!)
  • Adding a dialog "Are you sure you want to claim?" when clicking the button, hopefully this prevents accidental claims
  • Better error handling, as now the system kicks back errors (invalid giveaway ID, key already claimed, etc.) but still is refreshing the page as if you were successful. Looking into that.
  • I'm looking into the reported mobile(?) issue with claim buttons not working

cash_longfellow said:
I still don't understand why you guys took away the giveaway section. It made it fair for everyone to have a shot at giveaways, that can't necessarily lurk the forums as much as other can.
Click to expand...
The old system actually used a disproportionate amount of processing power compared with GAF's regular daily operations. Gathering names for a drawing, kicking off a process every few minutes to see if a drawing needed to happen (which sometimes got stuck), performing the random calculations required for the drawing, etc. It was also set up in such a way that the more giveaways that were created over the years, the more CPU intensive this process became. The code was old and obviously unoptimized, and it needed replaced.

This new system was designed to be lean on resources from jump. We have to dance a fine line: for example just rendering the buttons normally would be a database driven process, but that would be a massive resource hit given GAF's daily traffic. The system now has a very tiny performance impact, and only has non-trivial impact segments server-side when a giveaway is being created or redeemed. It's designed to scale up linearly.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk
 
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Palliasso said:
The bug should be fixed now so entering [KEY=Steam Game]S:BOGHAV97VTM26QYI[/KEY] (without quotes) should now work as intended. Sorry for the oversight on that one, I guess the bots had a few last hurrahs at my expense.

Some updates I'm working on:
  • When it writes "claimed by USER" back to the thread, I'm going to add in the key type and name (so everyone knows what they missed out on!)
  • Adding a dialog "Are you sure you want to claim?" when clicking the button, hopefully this prevents accidental claims
  • Better error handling, as now the system kicks back errors (invalid giveaway ID, key already claimed, etc.) but still is refreshing the page as if you were successful. Looking into that.
  • I'm looking into the reported mobile(?) issue with claim buttons not working


The old system actually used a disproportionate amount of processing power compared with GAF's regular daily operations. Gathering names for a drawing, kicking off a process every few minutes to see if a drawing needed to happen (which sometimes got stuck), performing the random calculations required for the drawing, etc. It was also set up in such a way that the more giveaways that were created over the years, the more CPU intensive this process became. The code was old and obviously unoptimized, and it needed replaced.

This new system was designed to be lean on resources from jump. We have to dance a fine line: for example just rendering the buttons normally would be a database driven process, but that would be a massive resource hit given GAF's daily traffic. The system now has a very tiny performance impact, and only has non-trivial impact segments server-side when a giveaway is being created or redeemed. It's designed to scale up linearly.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Click to expand...
Nice improvements

Also knowing what we missed out on is nice too!
 
MSduderino said:
Cool feature, but I can't claim any of the codes either (clicking on the buttons does nothing) using Chrome on Macbook Air.
Click to expand...
For those of you that are having this issue, can you check your dev console (F12 in most browsers) to see if there are any errors listed there? That would help point me in the right direction. Thanks!
 
Palliasso said:
The bug should be fixed now so entering [KEY=Steam Game]S:BOGHAV97VTM26QYI[/KEY] (without quotes) should now work as intended. Sorry for the oversight on that one, I guess the bots had a few last hurrahs at my expense.

Some updates I'm working on:
  • When it writes "claimed by USER" back to the thread, I'm going to add in the key type and name (so everyone knows what they missed out on!)
  • Adding a dialog "Are you sure you want to claim?" when clicking the button, hopefully this prevents accidental claims
  • Better error handling, as now the system kicks back errors (invalid giveaway ID, key already claimed, etc.) but still is refreshing the page as if you were successful. Looking into that.
  • I'm looking into the reported mobile(?) issue with claim buttons not working


The old system actually used a disproportionate amount of processing power compared with GAF's regular daily operations. Gathering names for a drawing, kicking off a process every few minutes to see if a drawing needed to happen (which sometimes got stuck), performing the random calculations required for the drawing, etc. It was also set up in such a way that the more giveaways that were created over the years, the more CPU intensive this process became. The code was old and obviously unoptimized, and it needed replaced.

This new system was designed to be lean on resources from jump. We have to dance a fine line: for example just rendering the buttons normally would be a database driven process, but that would be a massive resource hit given GAF's daily traffic. The system now has a very tiny performance impact, and only has non-trivial impact segments server-side when a giveaway is being created or redeemed. It's designed to scale up linearly.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Click to expand...
Ouch that does sound archaiac and wasteful of processing. I remember entering a few of those old ones but never got anything.

Thanks again for the new one!
 
Reizo Ryuu said:
Going through some of my old bundles because I've seeing a bunch have already expired, so have at these while they still work (steam):
✅ Claimed by Davevil Davevil
✅ Claimed by e0n
✅ Claimed by MLSabre
✅ Claimed by elbourreau

✅ Claimed by TVexperto
✅ Claimed by TVexperto
✅ Claimed by MidGenRefresh
✅ Claimed by Josemayuste Josemayuste

✅ Claimed by TVexperto
✅ Claimed by firegamer273

✅ Claimed by firegamer273

✅ Claimed by TVexperto
✅ Claimed by LordBlodgett
✅ Claimed by firegamer273
✅ Claimed by e0n

More coming but let me post these first.
Click to expand...
@TVexperto…hope you give back to the community after taking 4 keys on the same give away.
 
Palliasso said:
I might have to look into adding cooldown timers to this feature if people start abusing it. At least this way everyone will know who the culprits are.
Click to expand...
Would it be possible to set up a 24-hour time window per Key? Within this time window, anyone interested can register and at the end there will be a lottery.

Or will we end up with the performance problem again?

As. cash_longfellow cash_longfellow already wrote, first come, first served is disadvantageous for users who cannot be online here as much.
 
Kupfer said:
Would it be possible to set up a 24-hour time window per Key? Within this time window, anyone interested can register and at the end there will be a lottery.

Or will we end up with the performance problem again?

As. cash_longfellow cash_longfellow already wrote, first come, first served is disadvantageous for users who cannot be online here as much.
Click to expand...
I think they mentioned already that it was too intense processing for doing the lotterry system. Which is why they did away with the old one
 
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Kupfer said:
Would it be possible to set up a 24-hour time window per Key? Within this time window, anyone interested can register and at the end there will be a lottery.

Or will we end up with the performance problem again?

As. cash_longfellow cash_longfellow already wrote, first come, first served is disadvantageous for users who cannot be online here as much.
Click to expand...
Sometimes though the juice is not worth the squeeze and lot's of times its people getting rid of shovel ware, not always obviously. A 24 hour lottery just for that sounds lame as hell.
 
CrimsonTide said:
Sometimes though the juice is not worth the squeeze and lot's of times its people getting rid of shovel ware, not always obviously. A 24 hour lottery just for that sounds lame as hell.
Click to expand...
It was just a thought. It wouldn't make any difference when it comes to getting rid of junk. You would get rid of it after the timer expires anyway.
But this is (I believe) an international forum with users from all over the world. It would only be fair to give everyone whose time zone does not correspond to that of the majority of users here the same chance to win as the large time zone bubbles.

Also thanks R Reizo Ryuu for Hyperviolent!
 
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Kupfer said:
It was just a thought. It wouldn't make any difference when it comes to getting rid of junk. It will disappear after the timer expires anyway.
But this is (I believe) an international forum with users from all over the world. It would only be fair to give everyone whose time zone does not correspond to that of the majority of users here the same chance to win as the large time zone bubbles.

Also thanks R Reizo Ryuu for Hyperviolent!
Click to expand...
I can see that too, or maybe a 24 hour cool down for winners too.
 
Kupfer said:
Would it be possible to set up a 24-hour time window per Key? Within this time window, anyone interested can register and at the end there will be a lottery.

Or will we end up with the performance problem again?

As. cash_longfellow cash_longfellow already wrote, first come, first served is disadvantageous for users who cannot be online here as much.
Click to expand...
It probably won't be possible to do time-based giveaways, but it may be possible to extend the system to let users specify an optional number of entries required before a giveaway is drawn. For example, you could specify that 100 people need to enter before the giveaway key is distributed by the system.
 
Palliasso said:
The bug should be fixed now so entering [KEY=Steam Game]S:BOGHAV97VTM26QYI[/KEY] (without quotes) should now work as intended. Sorry for the oversight on that one, I guess the bots had a few last hurrahs at my expense.

Some updates I'm working on:
  • When it writes "claimed by USER" back to the thread, I'm going to add in the key type and name (so everyone knows what they missed out on!)
  • Adding a dialog "Are you sure you want to claim?" when clicking the button, hopefully this prevents accidental claims
  • Better error handling, as now the system kicks back errors (invalid giveaway ID, key already claimed, etc.) but still is refreshing the page as if you were successful. Looking into that.
  • I'm looking into the reported mobile(?) issue with claim buttons not working


The old system actually used a disproportionate amount of processing power compared with GAF's regular daily operations. Gathering names for a drawing, kicking off a process every few minutes to see if a drawing needed to happen (which sometimes got stuck), performing the random calculations required for the drawing, etc. It was also set up in such a way that the more giveaways that were created over the years, the more CPU intensive this process became. The code was old and obviously unoptimized, and it needed replaced.

This new system was designed to be lean on resources from jump. We have to dance a fine line: for example just rendering the buttons normally would be a database driven process, but that would be a massive resource hit given GAF's daily traffic. The system now has a very tiny performance impact, and only has non-trivial impact segments server-side when a giveaway is being created or redeemed. It's designed to scale up linearly.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Click to expand...
I'm going to need you to use smaller words 😂. Kidding, and that actually makes sense. It was probably mentioned before somewhere on the board after it was taken off the site, but I didn't notice anywhere, so it's good to get some clarity on that front. Thanks!
 
Kupfer said:
Would it be possible to set up a 24-hour time window per Key? Within this time window, anyone interested can register and at the end there will be a lottery.

Or will we end up with the performance problem again?

As. cash_longfellow cash_longfellow already wrote, first come, first served is disadvantageous for users who cannot be online here as much.
Click to expand...
That would be perfect if possible. But even then that would be tough, because people would just sit there and wait at the last minute. Only thing I can think that would work is maybe a thread based way to randomly choose a user. Almost like a poll thread where the thread opens for 24 hours, and anyone who participates gets chosen randomly from the thread, then the thread locks and falls off the board forever at a certain point. But realistically, I don't know how difficult that would be to incorporate though, and it's probably not worth the effort in the long run.
 
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  • When a giveaway is redeemed, the "✅ Claimed by" that shows in the thread will now show the detected platform icon and game name, if detected / provided
  • Redemption links have been added to the DM you receive for some storefronts that support it
✅
YCrEtCC.png
Key for The LEGO® Movie - Videogame Claimed by mrpants mrpants
 
Palliasso said:
  • When a giveaway is redeemed, the "✅ Claimed by" that shows in the thread will now show the detected platform icon and game name, if detected / provided
  • Redemption links have been added to the DM you receive for some storefronts that support it
✅
YCrEtCC.png
Key for The LEGO® Movie - Videogame Claimed by mrpants mrpants
Click to expand...
Thank you, this giveaway format is much better! No more disappoinment when trying to redeem a key
 
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