All the webpages - Arkana-FTS forum

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-06, 11:31 #1

User title: The big bo$$
Member since Jul 2009 · 222 posts · Location: Hergenrath, Belgium
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Subject: All the webpages

As stated in another thread, we have too many, loosely coupled nearly independent websites and it's absolutely not clear to a first visitor what is what and where to find what.

Here are his main concerns:

http://en.arkana-fts.org/ seems mostly borken (didn't look at all pages) and the wiki/forum etc list seems to be the only useful thing (it looks pretty though).

http://arkana-fts.sourceforge.net/ has "news" and it has "blog"

There are also galleries in many places, which is slightly confusing

I recommend to have a simple simple html page that has one screenshot and the links: Blog Forum Wiki SF.net Project and then maybe some more.

You should use the blog for news. The feed which is very important. If the blog is used, it can be added to planet.freegamedev.net or individual people's feed readers, who don't have time checking out web pages for news for changes.

The blog has the problem that it seems to be german and that the main page does not show the last few news items, but a "welcome" page. That is not the intension of a blog (saying hi), a blog needs to contain news posts.

Is this helpful? Do you see the problem? If you agree, I can try to look into the pages more and figure out what needs to be moved where.

I completely agree. We don't notice that because we are used to all these pages and know what is where, but others don't!

So, tell me your ideas on how to make it better.

I personally would love to put everything we have under one hood:

remove our current arkana-fts.sourceforge.net page completely

Make a main blog in english with all the game news.

maybe other blogs one for every developer and artist

integrate the dokuwiki and this forum with the blogs, all at one place. We could use drupal for this.

screenshots, how to help, how to download/install could all go to the gamepage.

The first page on the gamepage should clearly (and in big fonts) state that it needs a web developer and is incomplete.

Then, we could try to make only one login work for everything: forum(s), dokuwiki, gamepage, game.

What do you think of this plan? Any ideas/objections? Who would help me?

I don't want to put the model format development at rest for one month just to clean up our web-presence, but it seems that this is really needed!

[Image: http://www.arkana-fts.org/~thibault/pompei2/schrift_pompei2.png]

moOshiE (Moderator) 2010-02-06, 11:40 #2

User title: Arkana Lead Designer
Member since Jul 2009 · 180 posts · Location: Belgium
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Quote by pompei2:
I personally would love to put everything we have under one hood:

    * remove our current arkana-fts.sourceforge.net page completely

    * Make a main blog in english with all the game news.

    * maybe other blogs one for every developer and artist

    * integrate the dokuwiki and this forum with the blogs, all at one place. We could use drupal for this.

    * screenshots, how to help, how to download/install could all go to the gamepage.

    * The first page on the gamepage should clearly (and in big fonts) state that it needs a web developer and is incomplete.

    * Then, we could try to make only one login work for everything: forum(s), dokuwiki, gamepage, game.

perfect. i can help you.. have to go now ! lets talk sunday about it

Arkana - FTS! Going to rule the World!

(Thibault)* 2010-02-06, 12:38 #3

User title: The Coffee Talk King
Member since Jan 2010 · 110 posts
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I would appreciate if you could somehow hide this message. 'Cause its rated
*** Top Secret *** Destroy after reading ***

Some nights ago, I had a dream for my own page.
But I won't really use it 'cause I won't be able to do that.
Maybe it could help you:

- You should see everything in 1 Page.
- Its a very interactive Page.
- Something never seen before!

Okay, now, it is hard to describe. That's always the case because unfortunately you can't look into my head..
You should have at the top a Header with buttons beneath. If you go over one button with the mouse, everything: (the whole Page including the header) swoooshes from right to left (the header and the buttons standing still, only the inner background swooshing) into the page which correspond to the button clicked.
Everything swooshes into the theme of the choosen part. Let us say, the index is black and white (with the selections on the top, news and ways to follow the project) and the Board is like now in white & blue. So if we click on 'Board' everything swooshes (like told before) from black and white into blue and white (the background of the buttons, which was like black flowers swooshes to blue water & the header which was in our case the title Arkana FTS like you see now on the Gamepage but in black and white swooshes to a "Arkana FTS - Board" whitch remind us of an old map or something in watercolor blue and white. The news etc. (the content, still black and white) swooshs to the board (still blue and white) adding some teardrops at the bottom or something could be fun too. You could design for every different page a nice design in a specific color theme.
If you read Swoosh you have to think like Movies made on MiniDV (or the 3D movie when the camera turns very fast around).

Well, I guess you have to read these sentence several times to understand what I mean.
But if that would be done, you would have a little artistic masterpiece of game-page and everyone would support you and link to that page as being they favorite page

I'll mace a little Picture to show you what I mean if I have time again.

The only possibility I saw was to use Flash. But that's only because I'm not a programmer. (Flash is quite sad solution because you can't use the right click. But I still found this being the best choice for some circumstances like my page) I think the "new" web 2.0 offers us possibilities to make it all in PHP or something. Maybe Manu is able to make it, I've no Idea.

Greetz

This message will be destroyed in
10...
9...
8...
7...
6...
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Come on, I'm just joking.... Dude...

[Image: http://www.arkana-fts.org/~thibault/pompei2/schrift_thibaultb.png]

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-06, 13:48 #4

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Yeah, with AJAX (web2.0) that might be possible somehow. But you have to consider one thing:
internet is slow even with those big DSL connections nowadays, a normal page still needs about 1s to load, sometimes even more. Now imagine our page like you described it. There needs to be a lot of pictures loaded in order to make this smooth. A lot of loading time.

If you look at our gamepage, the buttons on the left have a "mouseover" effect that changes their image. The image is quite small compared to what we'd need to load in your scenario. Try it, going over the button with the mouse needs 1s or so to load the second image, this is long enough for ppl to notice the loadtime and think "wow, that sux". For the next times, the image stays in the cache and there is no more loading time, but hey, how long will it stay in the cache? No idea.

So to make what you think possible, we'd need a loadscreen. Well, that kind of suxes.

Aside this issue, I like your idea, but it's a lot more work then we have manpower right now. Might be a good idea for the future if we get a good web-developer with a lot of time some day ;-)

(Thibault)* 2010-02-06, 15:57 #5

User title: The Coffee Talk King
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I don't think it would take to long.
Really I don't think so. But you might be right.
A solution would be using a technique like streaming. Show something and load the rest in background.
Or make the swooshing, like I call it, a video, which is shown over the whole page (where you don't see details just lines moving and you think that your buttons move).
Maybe it's not possible nowadays, but I don't think so. Just nobody tried.
Loading the buttons take 0.1-0.2sec/button say there are 10 buttons = 1 sec for all buttons to load. Loading text is even faster. Yea, the shit is if you have a slow/medium connection -.-' f'ng Internet, you can't do everything you want.

Streaming is the best solution I see for 2010. Else you could give the Pictures within the Game and take the Informations from there.

But you're right, it would blast your project size in the moon, if you understand what I mean

--
Maybe I've to wait 2 or 3 years. But soon we are all dead :O so what to do?

moOshiE (Moderator) 2010-02-06, 16:33 #6

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I like the idea very much. But I think it doesn't fit to our project especially to the medieval style we use.

The second point is, that the game page will frequently be used and if the user has to see the effects whenever he loads a site it would be nerving by and by.

Arkana - FTS! Going to rule the World!

(Thibault)* 2010-02-06, 21:38 #7

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Yea, that's true, maybe this idea still helps you, for a little inspiration

See 'ya

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-07, 22:28 #8

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So, here is the plan as discussed with mooshie today:

We will merge the gamepage and the official page (including a blog, images, ...), leaving us with one and the same page for news, info, introduction and tournaments. There, we will put a little link to the developer's page that is a very simple page having links to the dokuwiki, the credits and maybe some more dev's info.

Also, we decided to have only one forum with two big sections: developer's edge and gamer's edge. That forum is this one, I will just put the gamer's edge on top and add some more categories to it as time comes.

See the details for the merge and what we have to do next in the dokuwiki.

(Thibault)* 2010-02-08, 11:12 #9

User title: The Coffee Talk King
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Lock the developer's edge, for developer's only?

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-08, 12:12 #10

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No, because this would also lock possible developers, often ppl want to first just talk a bit and then join the development if they like the atmosphere.

Also, it would lock out ppl that submit patches.

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-08, 18:17 #11

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Just to tell you the state of things:

As my new notebook is gone into guarantee today (and they say it'll be back in 12 days => 3 weeks) and the camera-class is updated and works again, I will focus on the webpages now.

My intent is to reorganize everything mooshie did. I will use a lot of your code, just organise it in a way to make it more easy to add content, integrate things like the blog, the gallery, ... and also to translate it. Details will follow later, as I will write a documentation of the sourcecode while working on it.

I looked at opensource gallerys, the two candidates are linked in the dokuwiki page linked above. The blog engines really seem to not care about integration at all. None told one how to integrate it into one's site... all was about templates, skins and plugins, but that's nuts for us. So I will write my own engine (much like you J.J., we can exchange our experiences).

Concerning the wiki engine, I will probably use dokuwiki, but I didn't look enough into its integration yet so nothing is for sure.

This post was edited on 2010-02-08, 18:38 by Pompei2.

moOshiE (Moderator) 2010-02-08, 22:49 #12

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I started working with the forum. I'm trying to make the design like our gamepage. Buuuut the code is not really clear so I have to work it in a bit.

Arkana - FTS! Going to rule the World!

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-09, 13:27 #13

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Do you need a separate copy of the forum to fiddle around with it or have you already a testplace?

Notice that I created the subdomain "test.arkana-fts.org" where I play around. you can make a subdirectory "manu" there and I won't touch it, so you can play around there.

moOshiE (Moderator) 2010-02-09, 13:41 #14

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okey perfect. thanks

Arkana - FTS! Going to rule the World!

Pompei2

(Administrator) 2010-02-14, 17:41 #15

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Just to show you that there is real progress going on here, you can check-out my first tests of the blog engine, that includes a gallery engine!

What the visitor sees is nearly finished. Now I still have to do all the interactive part: the forms, for example to write a comment, write a new entry, ... and make it possible to translate blog articles. The little blog words like "author", "xx comments", ... is already being translated.

One more thing we wanted to add is different "post categories" that are easily recognizable by a little icon in front of the title. Categories would be "game news" for the news about the game program itself, "Arkana world news" for stuff that happens in the world of arkana (new units, new maps, ...) and maybe "Tournament news" that is quite self-explanatory.

Check it out and tell me what you think!