Greetings Researchers & Readers:

_About These Questions_
It has been far too long since we've posted on this wonderful service!
We've got a new series of questions related to the newest version
(4.0) of our web site, and really hope you guys can help us out. 
Hopefully these questions/tasks will be fun!  Oh, and no fair
answering identical questions ? feel free to answer different, but not
the same!

_About The MyAdventureGame.com Project _
MyAdventureGame.com is a website dedicated to playing, creating, and
sharing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style games. The people behind
MyAdventureGame.com (us) created the site as a hobby and to have a fun
learning experience. Because of this, we have no real budget or
anything like that, which is directly reflected in the questions'
$-to-time ratios. But, we hope to make up it for fun.  The current
live website has some more information if you're interested.

_About The New Version _
Being never satisfied, we've decided to complete redo the entire
website - from giving it a slightly cleaner interface to using an
industrial strength 3-tier ASP.NET web application (in our humble
opinion).  Currently, we're in the Alpha stages, which we define as
having enough functionality to determine if the design/interface will
work.  Expect broken links and errors, but don't worry about reporting
them unless we specifically request in the Question.
 
_And Finally, The Questions_
We'd like some feedback on the new version of the game-creating
application (EZ Edit). It's similar to the one on the current site,
with some slight improvements.

To answer this question, you'll need to create an account on the
current and alpha sites. This is done by going to the Login page, and
clicking on Create New Account.  Then, you'll need to Click the Create
New Game button, and walk through that wizard. Make sure to not make
it an advanced game.

You should now be able to edit this new game in the EZ Editor
application. The game you make doesn't have to be any more than a few
pages -- just enough so you get an idea of how you would use the
application to write a fun interactive story.  Please note that the
ability to upload images and the Game Options do not work on the Alpha
site. You'll also need to do this on the Current and Alpha sites.

After you've done that, create another sample game and publish one of
the games.  Please do this only on the alpha site.

Overall
Okay ... so what did you think?  What were the differences you noticed
between the current and alpha versions of the EZ Editor? Did you find
the EZ-Editor Easy enough to use?  Did it make sense? Any improvements
you can think of?

New Limitations
Did you notice the fact that you couldn't use the Refresh/Back button
while editing games? Did it bother you?  Did you notice that you
couldn't publish a game while one was open for editing?  Did the
concept of that make sense.  (If you didn't come across this, then
don't worry about it) -- only pertains to alpha.

Error Messages
What did you think of the tone of the error messages, if you received
any? If you didn't, go back and hit the refresh button in the middle
of using the EZ Editor (alpha site only).

Any other comments?

? so we just asked a whole bunch of questions, but we're just trying
to explain what we're thinking.  You don't have to explicitly answer
each question, but try to have your response answer what we're
generally asking (Overall, New Limitations, Error Messages).

_Links_
Current Site: http://www.MyAdventureGame.com
Alpha Site: http://Mag.Papadimoulis.com


_Closing_
Please accept our apologies for the novella of a question.  But,
understand that we want to be as concise as possible, and explain
exactly what we're looking for, and try to make sense of why we're
asking such atypical questions.  Also, we really appreciate your help.
Everyone on this site has been very helpful in the past, so thanks in
advance!

Sincerely,
The MyAdventureGame.com Team