New Banner

Started by jetxl, Wed 04/01/2006 23:24:11

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jetxl

The AGS forum banner is getting a bit old. So I though we all could make some new ones.



This one is based on the old design, but more radical banners are welcome too.

m0ds

Perhaps a slightly longer one? Even in 800x600 theres a huge area of just blue & I think it'd look much nicer with more game-shots in it.

Also, to avoid "We don't need a new banner!" arguments, just don't post :) If you're going to make a banner - make one, and who knows - perhaps it will be implemented. This isn't an official change that CJ or any other has asked for, Jet has taken his own initiative to do this. Saying that means this may not end up with what you want, Jet - but you'll still get an array of great banners :D

Andail

I agree that the screenshot area should be longer. Maybe there could be a script that makes sure at least a small portion in the middle of the banner would remain blue, even in very small resolution?

Also, I think it would be good with a greater variety of graphics styles. Your new banner seems to include only low-res/cartoonistic shots. Maybe a few shots from games with more realistic graphics, just for the variation?

jetxl

Actually, I wanted to include all the award winners of last year, but I couldn't remember them all, so -Tadaa!-

Pumaman

Thanks for bringing this up, Jet.

What I'm thinking of is the long-talked-about randomly rotating banner system, so we could have multiple images and it would pick a random one each time you visited the forums.

So if people want to create alternate banners that can be added into a random cycle, that'd be cool.

As for the size of it, I think the current one is about right for 800x600 -- if it was much larger it would start to overlap the blue cup logo, which would probably look rubbish.

ManicMatt

That would be a good idea Chris, and then less people would argue or get upset if their game isn't there..

If that even happened in the first place!

I haven't even played a single game off the current banner.

Ashen

#6
Quoteif it was much larger it would start to overlap the blue cup logo, which would probably look rubbish.

There might be a sound reason against doing it this way, but what if the montage image was a cell background, and the AGS logo image also had the blue fade on it. Crapply described, sorry, I mean something like this. (Change the width of the browser window to see what I mean.)

Would you still be able to use the rotating banner thing if it was done this way?

EDIT: I thought the idea sounded familiar ...
I know what you're thinking ... Don't think that.

strazer

Internet Explorer doesn't do alpha-channelled PNGs by default so it will look ugly unless you use a workaround.
Actually, I proposed the same thing to CJ more than a year ago:

Quote from: strazer
The gap between the games montage and the ags logo in the website banners really bugs me.
I figured you must have missed my suggestion in the "Choose the AGS website of the future" thread, so I've decided to pitch my idea again:

I'm sure the banner looks good in 800x600 resolution, but in 1024x768 (which I'm sure a significant number of users surf with) and higher, there is an ugly blue gap between the montage and the logo image.

So I had the idea of making the games collage "loopable", so it can be tiled as the cell background.
Check out this demo I've made to see what I mean:
http://www.strazer.net/ags/website01.htm

Note that I used an old crappy-quality games image that just looks better tiled than the current one. Didn't want you to dismiss the idea just because it looked  wrong... :)
If you decide to go with this solution, I would suggest to contact the creator of the current banner to make a tileable version.

This approach has the following advantages IMO:

- The banner looks great & colourful in all resolutions
- The montages can be reused, even if the website design changes again (I know, not for a few years, but you get my point)

The only drawback I can see is that the size of logo image is now 23kb instead of 6kb. But keep in mind this image won't change and is cached by the user's browser so will only be transferred once.

I'm sure you can figure it out by yourself from the page source code, but let me tell you what I did:

- Changed logo to PNG format and added transparency to the left side (and moved it a bit to the left so there's a bit more space on the right)
- Tiled the games image in the table cell
- Put the names of the displayed games in the title-attribute of the cell
- Added title-attribute to the logo image ("www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk") so you instantly know where that link takes you
- Changed cell background color from black to #6699CC (light blue)
- Changed table cellspacing from 1 to 0. Looks a lot better IMHO

I don't think the games should be clickable at all, unless the link takes you to the game pages.

To get the Internet Explorer to display the PNG correctly requires a workaround:
I've added the required CSS command at the top of the demo, but you can add it to the site.css later.
Then just save this script to where the CSS command points (I'd suggest /pngbehavior.htc for example).
(I've modified it so you don't need an extra blank.gif, so take this one).
Read all about the script here.

I've tested the demo with both Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 0.8. Both display it perfectly.

Sam.

coul it not be a randomley gengerated image either on page load/refresh or just on rotate, showing a montage from a popular game, or ags resource like the wiki, and then be a link to that, that way it could look pretty and serve a purpose.

Bye bye thankyou I love you.

Mats Berglinn

I would like to have a new banner and a longer one too. The random banner selection doesn't sound too bad but I've got a suggestion based on the World of Monkey Island site, having a number of banners and the members can choice the one they like best and the banner won't be on every computer but on your PC when you're logged on.

MrColossal

oh man, imagine 10 random banners and someone posts:

Hey, what games are in the banner?!

every 2 weeks!
"This must be a good time to live in, since Eric bothers to stay here at all"-CJ also: ACHTUNG FRANZ!

HillBilly

Maybe if the banners linked to the different games? I don't know, maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing. But it would solve the whole "what are the games?" problem.

Barbarian

Or (if going with the rotating banner idea) perhaps make a permanent thread in the "Popular" fourm in which authors of new banners could post there banner within the thread and mention what games the banner(s) refer to.
Conan: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"
Mongol General: "That is good."

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Squinky

Man, I knew I couldn't have a spot on the banner forever....(Mine is the one nobody ever remembers).

Sektor 13

Here is contribution !?


ManicMatt

I like that! Stargate screenshot? Cheeky!

and the second right picture, while well drawn, isn't exactly enthralling is it?

Sektor 13

Quote from: ManicMatt on Thu 05/01/2006 21:19:25
I like that! Stargate screenshot? Cheeky!

and the second right picture, while well drawn, isn't exactly enthralling is it?
These are all backgrounds from various games, i think second right picture is good too.

AlbinoPanther

We could also make right part of banner "Adventure Game Studio" changing from time to time.Just like GOOGLE do (christmas,haloween, CJ birthday etc).

Joseph DiPerla

Sektor I like your banner design.

Anyways, What if we had an animated GIF banner. It wouldn't cycle through a script, but rather just keep animating. Each new side would show something new like every 30 seconds. We could possible even make it have some cool transitions too.

Just my idea.
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
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Barbarian

Joeseph: Though your idea is interesting, I think it may not be the best choice for a couple of reasons.Ã, 

If you had a large gif file that had several banners to load in, it would add much more to the loading time of the page (especially for dial-up users).Ã, 

As the banner is at the top of the page, and if you had a gif image on a 30 second delay between displaying the next banner image, it might seem unfair to the various banner contributors that their banner was not the first one to be displayed in the gif image, as I would think within 30 seconds, people might already tend to be into reading a posts or such and already have scrolled-down the page, therefore the banner is already out-of-view and not hardly ever getting to see the rest of the banner images past the first 30-seconds.

Each time a new banner was to be submitted, this would make the gif file get larger and larger, and taking longer and longer to load in. Plus, a new gif image would have to be remade each time.

Ã,  Ã, I dunno, these are just some of my thoughts of why throwing all submitted banners into 1 gif image might not be the best way to go.Ã,  I think sperate banner images on a cycle or loaded from a data-base of sorts might be a better way to go?Ã,  It would probably allow the image and page to load in much faster, plus giving all the banner contributoions more fair/ equal showing.
Conan: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"
Mongol General: "That is good."

Blade of Rage: www.BladeOfRage.com

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