GameTap 3.5.
December 5th, 2007 by xamountWhat would it be like if we took the launch speed and nimbleness of the Lite Player and married it to the full-featured game-browsable, controls-mappable Deluxe Player?
Sounds like chocolate and peanut butter, doesn’t it? And it turned out just as sweet. After a good 6 months of dual GameTap Players — during which we essentially rebuilt the Deluxe Player in the Lite — we’re back to a unified Player experience. And we’re pretty excited about it. Here’s what we focused on:
Speeeeeed
We’ve on-demanded this thing up. Lengthy catalog updates during launch are no more; we now pull in catalog-related stuff on the fly. This means quicker launches from the desktop (or web), and quicker access to your games.
What else makes it faster? Once you’ve downloaded a game, you’re one click away from playing it. You’ll still have access to those helpful game promo videos during the download process, but once you’ve got the game, you’re in for good. The “Play” button really means play now… now.
Access
Interface-wise, everything is heads-up. Now, you don’t have to “go” to a My GameTap platter to access things like your profile, your playlists, your leaderboard games, your challenge games, or the buddy hub. We’ve relocated all of that functionality to the top and bottom toolbars. So you’re just a click away.
Also added to the toolbar — a bonus search field — that’s right, search from anywhere. Presto, the Search ring drops and contains your results.
We streamlined the visuals of the InfoCard, and in the process found a way to provide unobscured access to Related Games. Having them not hidden behind a drawer certainly encourages exploration, and I’ve already started envisioning a Six Degrees of Bacon-like game to see how few steps it takes to get from Psychonauts to A Game of Concentration.
Finally, we’ve added a GameTap.com navigation strip so that you’ll always have immediate access to your favorite GameTap TV shows in Watch, our world-class Read editorial section, or the latest forum activity in Talk.
Community
We took 3.1’s separate Buddy Hub and IM thingamabob, smashed ‘em together, and provided universal toolbar access (alongside an at-a-glance view of how many buddies are online right this minute). Oh, and remember how whenever you’d go into your Buddy Hub, we defaulted to alpha sort? Dunno about you, but we always immediately switched the sort to online status. So, we made that the default.
We split out your active IM conversations (each one gets its own window and they can all be open at once), made all the buddy related pop-ups draggable, and created a nice little side-rail featuring the TapIcons (is that gonna stick? we keep trying…) of your active IM sessions.
As for Challenge! games, in moving the full access list to the toolbar, we also slightly switched up the ease of jumping into challenge lobbies. You used to be required to visit a game’s InfoCard to get to the lobby. Now you can dip into to any downloaded game right from the list. This also means that you can maintain your lobby status in a particular game while you browse the vault. Handy!
Control
Queue up the world with the new download manager. No longer are you limited to selecting four games to download. Add as many as you like, change the order, and let it rip. Once you’ve amassed your ultimate collection of games, use the improved storage manager (paired with the download manager in the global toolbar) to, well, manage your storage. When it comes time to make room for bigger games, you’re no longer limited to deleting them one at a time — “delete all” is still available, as is the new ability to multi-select.
GameTap’s window now behaves like a standard Windows window: resize on the fly, maximize/minimize, and everything else you may have previously tried to do (including right-click menus from the taskbar). And you can still go full-on full-screen for that pristine arcade presentation.
There are lots more little improvements and bug fixes scattered throughout (we took your overwhelming “kinda, sorta” votes and comments seriously when it came time to dealing with the game dock’s location). Make sure you get in there and explore. Seriously: the speed of getting into this thing is just amazing. Going back and forth between 3.1 and 3.5 in development has been a real eye-opener as to the weight of the old Deluxe Player. We took a load off. Now you do the same and let us know what you think.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Awesome job! I’m lovin’ the new look.
I just had to uninstall the whole thing and install it again to test the new speed. (Sure I could have just cleared the library using the Management Tool, but I didn’t think of that then. 
)
Quick question, what’s this “Prevent ‘Guest’ access to this Gametap Player” thing?
December 5th, 2007 at 9:58 am
The new player is very, very nice. But you forgot the best feature: it’s also available for the Mac!
Thank you so much!
December 5th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Oh… I figured it out. Neat.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:42 am
It looks a bit weird at first, but it’s also pretty cool.
Although the end of Gametap TV in the player is kinda sad.
December 5th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Oh, and I can’t find A Game of Concentration, but I did get from Psychonauts to Bonanza Brothers.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Wow, it’s great! And I can use it on my Mac at work as well. So happy.
December 5th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Excellent job guys! The new player is a huge improvement.
December 5th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Love it!
There are a few things I know I’ll never use (like the gametap.com bar at the bottom - it’s quicker to just type the address into a browser), but the overall interface is a massive improvement. Nice!
December 5th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
It feels a bit more “flat” than it did before - probably because it no longer has to “turn” left or right to switch from “my GameTap” to “Vault” to “GameTap TV.” I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it may be time for a total overhaul of the design. The current one has had a good run, but it seems to be out of place with the current feature set.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Two related complaints:
One, why is GameTap TV no longer a part of the Deluxe Player? Now you are forced to go to the website, where you are stuck using Flash to view the videos. Flash is a HUGE SECURITY RISK. There are Flash ads showing up on legitimate mainstream (read: not pr0n) websites that will redirect you to malicious websites where your computer becomes infected with malware. There is no way to prevent this from happening other than by using a Flash blocker or by uninstalling Flash altogether. There is no setting inside the Flash player to “turn off” Flash-based redirects, which means that as soon as a malicious Flash-based ad appears in your browser, you’re pwned. This isn’t so much a beef with you folks at GameTap - it’s Adobe’s fault, really, for not providing basic security in their product - but requiring Flash subjects your users to more security risks than was necessary, when you could just put all the videos in the Deluxe Player.
Two, if you don’t have Flash installed (like me), the GameTap website redirects you to a stub page that has nothing on it other than a demand that you install Flash:
http://www.gametap.com/home/views/watch/flashInstall.html
This is completely unnecessary. Instead, the website should insert a message into the otherwise normal content that says that the video requires Flash to play, but you shouldn’t be blocked from otherwise being able to navigate that page. Ditch the redirect, and don’t prevent your more experienced users from using the website.
As for the other changes within the Deluxe Player itself, I likes it
The download/storage manager in particular is a really good thing.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I never really used the Gametap TV so I hadn’t noticed it was gone. The one on the site started working better so I won’t mind using that.
Barry, I recommend Firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript. The two add-ons work great together. NoScript blocks all scripts globally until you allow them, and Adblock Plus does what it says, blocks ads. Both are free. With those you should be able to safely watch Gametap TV on Gametap’s site.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I *do* use Firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript. I wrote my own replacement Flash plugin so that I can navigate at least some websites that stupidly use Flash widgets for navigation (it parses the Flash and recovers any URLs hidden within, although the Flash spec apparently changed enough since I wrote it that it doesn’t work on newer widgets). I also use Unplug and FLV Player so that I can watch Flash-type movies from YouTube without having to use a browser-embedded player (also safer).
Unfortunately, GameTap’s current setup bars me completely from using the Watch section of the website (or the former GameTap TV portion of the player) without reintroducing Flash’s vulnerabilities into my browser. Either of the changes I suggested - reintegrating GameTap TV into the Deluxe Player or removing the “Evil Overlord Demands That You Install Flash” redirect - would give me a chance at accessing that content, though both would be optimal.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I resubscribed yesterday, and man was I surprised to see this today. Awesome update, way to go guys.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
I like the new look of the player and the different tweaks but I do have two major issues that I can’t get over;
One, and most annoying; why is GameTap TV no longer available in the player software?? The best thing in the world was clicking on the little platter at the bottom of the interface and have instant access to all kinds of video goodness. I have never and will never take the time to go to the web site and trudge along looking for videos, partly because of issue number two.
Secondly, while I do have to use Windows to play my favorite games, I prefer not to use Internet Explorer. GameTap keeps trying to open up IE to go to the GameTap site which is SLOOOOOW, video section in the old player software was much faster.
I don’t intend to sound mean, I do appreciate the update to the software, Just installed a fresh copy of XP and the new downloader will help in getting all my games back together. I am simply very disappointed that it is now more difficult to access video. I have my PC hooked up to my TV with an component video cable and it is nice to use my 360 controller to navigate around.
Thanks guys and gals, keep up the great work and please bring back the video browser in the player software!
-thatITguy
December 6th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I can just see this now..
Today:
“Wow! This is fast, but why did you take XYZ out? Put it back in!”
After XYZ is put back in:
“Geez! This is a lot slower than it was before, what did you do?”
December 6th, 2007 at 12:18 am
That’s much better than version 3.1!
December 6th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Speed kills mmmkay…lets slow things down a bit mmmkay?
Atleast it didn’t delete my boot.ini file like the EVE patcher did to some people who play EVE.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:36 am
“Atleast it didn’t delete my boot.ini file like the EVE patcher did to some people who play EVE.”
I believe that’s being saved for GameTap v. 6.66
December 6th, 2007 at 2:45 am
Much nicer! I had some problems with my DLed game collection, so I uninstalled and then installed fresh, and so far everything seems great. I’m going to miss some of the games that are being deleted soon, though — no more Gateway to Apshai sucks!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
I too miss the Gametap TV. I didn’t even like having to go to the web for the Laura Croft episodes and was very glad when they showed up in the player.
More speed is good I guess, but I never really had a speed “problem” before. Everything seemed to work just fine.
I subscribe for the games, not the tv, but it was nice to be able to use it.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
As someone who had speed issues, and never used GTTV, I love the new update. When it comes to interface, the less the better, IMO. uTorrent, FireFox, MPC are all great examples of powerful, but simple and easy to use interfaces.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Lots of great improvements! Good job, guys!
But I miss my GameTap TV! Why was it taken out?
I probably wouldn’t mind so much if the web site TV experience was improved. Running Firefox or Safari on Mac, things are sluggish, controls disappear, video sometimes appears as blank screen, and I can’t full-screen my GameTap News.
If you can streamline and improve the TV experience as much as you did the Player, I’m eagerly awaiting to see what’s in store.
December 8th, 2007 at 4:27 am
It’s all good, except that I miss Gametap TV, as others have said. I really would prefer to watch videos right from the player than go there the web interface, where I’m being asked to install some sorta weird proprietary plugin. Pass, thank you.
December 12th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
What’s in the new update today?
December 13th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Yesterday’s update was a minor bug-fix patch (primarily focused on video card crashes and the like). I’m still trying to get a complete list of what was fixed myself. One minor thing that we fixed based on initial user feedback: we changed the upper right toolbar display settings text from “Switch” to “Display”.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
It also fixed the allocation of space to GameTap not limiting correctly. Found that out first hand.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Nice new client.
But, where do I see the total number of games available? I know I can see it on the website, but this should be listed in the client somewhere. Likewise when you do a search, you should see the total number of results.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Total number of games (including those that are coming soon) is still present in the Search ring, directly above the middle game. The number is modified depending on your search results — but for an empty set, you can see the total games available to you.