ASoberIrishman
07-23-2008, 05:08 PM
If you're anything like me then at some point you've had some difficulty navigating the gameroom. From what I have been told MLG is aware of many of the gameroom's problems and glitches, but they have bigger fish to fry it's unlikely the gameroom navigation will be fixed any time soon. That being said, I've figured out a couple tricks for browsing the gameroom and finding videos that not everyone may know.
Filtering game videos by category
As you know, for some reason there is no way to sort a list of videos in the gameroom by more than one variable. This means if, for instance, you want to look at funny Rainbow 6 videos, you have to either select Rainbow 6 and manually search for humor videos, or select humor videos and look through it until you find something from Rainbow 6. However, there is a way to filter by both category and game. For instance, say while you're looking at Halo 2 videos you see an awesome jump and want to look for more trick videos. It would take forever to look through the list of trick videos and sort out all the ones that aren't Halo 2, and even longer to look through the Halo 2 video list. Luckily, there is a way filter both.
If you look at the URL bar while browsing Halo 2 videos it should read http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177
The important part being the game_id=177, which tells the gameroom to show only Halo 2 games. If you were to go to the Trick section the url would be: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&category=2
Obviously, the final part of the URL tells the gameroom how to organize the videos you're looking at. What some people might not know is it is you can combine the filters. It's very simple, all you do is take the last part of the url, starting with &, and add it to the first one. So if you have:
Halo 2: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177
Trick: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&category=2
You can combine them to be:
Halo 2 and Trick: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177&category=2
This can be stacked as many times as you want. So if you want to look at the highest rated Halo 2 trick videos of all time you would first browse to the all time highest rated category, whose url is:
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/?search=1&popular=1&sub=1&rating=1&date=
and add it to your old URL, making it:
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177&category=2&popular=1&sub=1&rating=1&date=
Better search
The gameroom search will sometimes return what you want, but for me more often than not the results are unsatisfactory. This solution makes searches a lot more consistent, and also helps if you need to search something with less than 5 characters (like 'Ogre'), or if you can remember a comment someone left but not the name of the video itself.
For example, I want to find a video where I get spawn sniped by Killzone for a triple. Even if I know the title and type it in exactly (Killzone's Sniper Spree) the gameroom still won't find it. Fortunately, there is a very quick workaround for this using google's site searcher feature. Simply type in the name of the video, then add a space and site:gameroom.mlgpro.com. My search would look like this:
Killzone Sniping Spree site:gameroom.mlgpro.com
Copy and paste that into google and you'll see that the first video returned is exactly the one I was looking for, followed by other similar videos. It should be pretty obvious, but you are not limited to just searching titles. To use a real example, I knew there was a video where I got spawn sniped for a triple. I couldn't remember the name or who put it up, only that I posted a comment explaining that my controller and some moron said I was mad I got pooped on. With this knowledge, I searched
asoberirishman pooped on site:gameroom.mlgpro.com
...netting me the exact video I was looking for. If you remember anything from the video you can most likely use it to search it through google this way. I actually made it more complicated than it had to be - if you want to find a video you commented on in the gameroom, all you need to do is search your username, although if you comment a lot or are mentioned in a lot of videos you might have to dig a little for the video you want. The google search is very useful, and if you play around with it you can narrow your results even further. For example, say after watching myself get owned I become a huge Killzone fan, and want to look at some more of his Halo 3 videos, but not his dated Halo 2 ones. Searching "Killzone" the way I have previously will bring up all his videos, not to mention videos about Killzone the game. However, there's an easy way to filter these other videos out using google by changing what google searches. Instead of searching all of gameroom.mlgpro.com, I can copy the Halo 3 videos url from the gameroom and have google search that instead, which would look like:
Killzone site:http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=1298
Hopefully these two tricks help out a couple people. If you think anything is unclear let me know, I just banged this out and will edit later. Of course, if you have something to add just post and I'll be sure to put it in.
Filtering game videos by category
As you know, for some reason there is no way to sort a list of videos in the gameroom by more than one variable. This means if, for instance, you want to look at funny Rainbow 6 videos, you have to either select Rainbow 6 and manually search for humor videos, or select humor videos and look through it until you find something from Rainbow 6. However, there is a way to filter by both category and game. For instance, say while you're looking at Halo 2 videos you see an awesome jump and want to look for more trick videos. It would take forever to look through the list of trick videos and sort out all the ones that aren't Halo 2, and even longer to look through the Halo 2 video list. Luckily, there is a way filter both.
If you look at the URL bar while browsing Halo 2 videos it should read http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177
The important part being the game_id=177, which tells the gameroom to show only Halo 2 games. If you were to go to the Trick section the url would be: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&category=2
Obviously, the final part of the URL tells the gameroom how to organize the videos you're looking at. What some people might not know is it is you can combine the filters. It's very simple, all you do is take the last part of the url, starting with &, and add it to the first one. So if you have:
Halo 2: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177
Trick: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&category=2
You can combine them to be:
Halo 2 and Trick: http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177&category=2
This can be stacked as many times as you want. So if you want to look at the highest rated Halo 2 trick videos of all time you would first browse to the all time highest rated category, whose url is:
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/?search=1&popular=1&sub=1&rating=1&date=
and add it to your old URL, making it:
http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=177&category=2&popular=1&sub=1&rating=1&date=
Better search
The gameroom search will sometimes return what you want, but for me more often than not the results are unsatisfactory. This solution makes searches a lot more consistent, and also helps if you need to search something with less than 5 characters (like 'Ogre'), or if you can remember a comment someone left but not the name of the video itself.
For example, I want to find a video where I get spawn sniped by Killzone for a triple. Even if I know the title and type it in exactly (Killzone's Sniper Spree) the gameroom still won't find it. Fortunately, there is a very quick workaround for this using google's site searcher feature. Simply type in the name of the video, then add a space and site:gameroom.mlgpro.com. My search would look like this:
Killzone Sniping Spree site:gameroom.mlgpro.com
Copy and paste that into google and you'll see that the first video returned is exactly the one I was looking for, followed by other similar videos. It should be pretty obvious, but you are not limited to just searching titles. To use a real example, I knew there was a video where I got spawn sniped for a triple. I couldn't remember the name or who put it up, only that I posted a comment explaining that my controller and some moron said I was mad I got pooped on. With this knowledge, I searched
asoberirishman pooped on site:gameroom.mlgpro.com
...netting me the exact video I was looking for. If you remember anything from the video you can most likely use it to search it through google this way. I actually made it more complicated than it had to be - if you want to find a video you commented on in the gameroom, all you need to do is search your username, although if you comment a lot or are mentioned in a lot of videos you might have to dig a little for the video you want. The google search is very useful, and if you play around with it you can narrow your results even further. For example, say after watching myself get owned I become a huge Killzone fan, and want to look at some more of his Halo 3 videos, but not his dated Halo 2 ones. Searching "Killzone" the way I have previously will bring up all his videos, not to mention videos about Killzone the game. However, there's an easy way to filter these other videos out using google by changing what google searches. Instead of searching all of gameroom.mlgpro.com, I can copy the Halo 3 videos url from the gameroom and have google search that instead, which would look like:
Killzone site:http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/index.php?search=1&game_id=1298
Hopefully these two tricks help out a couple people. If you think anything is unclear let me know, I just banged this out and will edit later. Of course, if you have something to add just post and I'll be sure to put it in.