Welcome to Negative World. If you have any question, please read the following list and click to read an answer. If your question isn't in the list or if you have a suggestion, feel free to post a reply.

To be able to add more questions/answers to the list later, your participations to this thread will eventually be deleted to make room, after they've been answered.

Donations

Currently, the site doesn't bring in much money, and it costs about $85 a year to keep up. Not a whole lot, but the owner of this site isn't particularly rich, so every bit helps. Also, the web designer spent a lot of time and work to implement skins, navigation layout, make the site work quick and neat, and implement the options you asked him, all this instead of doing a paid professional site. The more you support the site, the better it'll run and the more potential its future will have.

Now, the FAQ...

General questions

What is "Negative World"?
What are the round icons at the corners of the site?
What are XP and user levels? Why do some features seem inaccessible to me?
Can I choose the looks and features of the site?
How does the private message system work?
Does the site have social network connections?
What is the Neverending Experience Quest?

Forum

Are there specific threads I should know about?
What do the lights on the left of the forum index mean?
What are the negative numbers on the right of the forum index? On the private message page? Level 99?
What are the little grey icons on the right of the main forum page? What are "news", "roundtables", etc.?
How can I search for specific posts?
Can you flag threads to spot them more easily?
Can I embed videos, resize an image? What's "Reference"? My links don't work, etc.?
What are the Terms Of Service?
Apart from the T.O.S. is there particular netiquette to observe with post formatting?

Game Database

How do you rate games? The games I want to rate aren't in the base? How do I write reviews?
Do you have a backlog feature? Can I see who is playing what?
How can I browse Negative World's game reviews?

User profiles

What are user profile features? Can I see who's online?
How can I browse user profiles/post history? I'm looking for a specific profile?
How can I check the system codes of other Negative World users (Wii, XBL, PSN, Steam...)?
My Steam system code on my Negative World profile doesn't link to my Steam profile!

URL to share (right click and copy)

Yeah.

Well the most honest answer is that I'm not totally sure exactly how much is coming in but it's probably either not fully paying for the site or super close at this point and this probably isn't changing for the better anytime soon. So I wouldn't mind a little help.

But I'll also be honest, what with making my own game, except for some articles here and there and fixing any nasty bugs that may arise I have no time or energy to do much with this site anymore, so I'd feel weird if a bunch donations came in if there was any expectation that this would lead to me doing any serious work like adding features or something around here, lol. For the foreseeable future the site is what it is, so anyone who might want to donate, keep in mind that you're helping sustain its current state, not really build upon it.

I figure if not enough comes in and I'm "in the red" I'll just pay out of pocket, not a huge deal for me, though obviously not my ideal. Don't worry though if I ever get to the point where money becomes a huge issue and I need to bring some more in to justify keeping doing this I'll do a donation drive or something, I won't just let things die.

TLDR: Could probably use some financial help, but don't need a lot, if I ever do need a lot I'll let everyone know, and I'm not adding much to the site anytime soon so if you donate, know that it's just to keep things as they are, more or less.

HMM, I don't know if I'm going to do a Kickstarter for my game or not but a part of me is like if you want to support the site, just wait (though who knows how long?!) and help support the game instead. The game isn't the site but it all feels the same to me in some ways. Like if someone is going to give me $20 anyway, might as well get a game for it.

@Zero
Sustaining the site is perfectly fine with me. Personally I don't feel a need for this place to be more than it is as such. It's got great features and works just fine, with the odd post-eating, but I think we're all used to that by now. It would be nice to see more posters, some new faces perhaps (I've been trying to convince certain people to come over here for a while now, but it's hard to leave an old hang-out no matter the state of it, I suppose), but that's a different matter. That's probably up to us all collectively, to create and maintain quality threads and topics that may or may not attract others. Can't exactly say that I'm pulling my weight in that respect.

But seriously though, I don't expect you to just accept losing money on this place like that, so do make sure you tell us if you need more donations. I know you wouldn't let things die, but I wouldn't put it past you to lose more money than needed just because you don't want to bother us with it. I made my first donation sometime late last year, but I'm trying to plan out my spending a little bit more and want to figure out when and how much to donate to this place in the future, which is the main reason why I brought this whole thing up.

You bring that game to the Switch or Switch U or Dreamcast 2 and we have a deal!

@Zero

You should re-brand the company name of your game to NegativeWorld. Then when it becomes a smash hit the site's traffic will increase drastically.

@Abdooooo I actually thought about that for awhile but I wanted it to be its own thing. Plus even though like EVERYONE tells me that it is "Minus World" not "Negative World", the name came as a Mario reference, and I don't want my own game company name to be a reference to someone else's game.

Besides I already have a sweet ass logo...

That's a really good looking logo Andrew.

Fair enough. I agree that the logo looks nice. You could always make the forums section of your Paper Salamander website jump over here.

I've been questioning whether I really need a site just for my company when I only really have a single game... at the moment I just have a site for my game.

And it does link to Negative World!

Hey, umm... I tried to upload a new avatar, and it shows up in my list of private avatars, but when I select it, my avatar just appears blank next to my posts/in my profile? I'm not sure why this is happening. When I go back to my Rain avatar I was using, or my older Ranma avatar, they show up, but the avatar I want to use now doesn't show up. I don't know what could be causing this D:

EDIT: It seems uploading it with a smaller file name got it to work. Thank goodness. Now I can have Bowsette goodness everywhere I go here :3

How should games be added to the database which are half physical and half digital when it comes to marking them as retail or digital? I'm talking about stuff like Mega Man Legacy Collection 1+2, Final Fantasy X / X-2 Remaster, etc. Should they just be split as separate entries, so for example just add in Mega Man Legacy Collection as retail and MMLC2 as digital?

@Mop it up The whole line is really being skewed and I probably need to rethink our whole system but I always saw "retail" as games with a primary focus on retail which is basically most AAA games. I guess a collection from Capcom would also count there. For the most part I tend to mark anything that has a retail release as "retail" unless it is an indie game or a game that like... released digitally first and then got a limited retail release later on.

@Zero So per my example, "Mega Man Legacy Collection 1+2" should be added as a single entry and marked as retail? Just want to be clear here.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I guess so. I don't even know what retail is anymore but a lot of games have you doing massive downloads the moment you put in the disk, so maybe this isn't that different?

...OR IS IT?!

All games are digital unless you play them on vinyl!

Anyone else seeing the trophies just all on a single line breaking the user profile on a profile with a lot of trophies? (You can click mine to check.)

I definitely didn't change anything but this seems to be happening now...

@Zero

I can confirm that in my browser, Safari, this does not happen on my account page nor yours. Four rows of about 10 icons.

It looks fine on Chrome on my work computer, just not Chrome on my home computer.

Web dev is so much fun!

@Zero

It looks like that for me!

How is it looking now? Better?

@Zero

Yes! Looks good.

How hard would it be to get Negative World working with https? My web browsers have been becoming increasingly concerned about unencrypted traffic. I'm probably not the only one who has a big Not Secure warning next to the URL?