New GrimQuest website

[Construed]

http://www.grimquest.tk - Multiplayer QFG remake

Please let me know how I can improve upon this and its subsites

[Andail]

Hm... I would go with one of those blog tools you'll find everywhere. My head started hurting just from a quick glance at that site.

[Construed]

Ok, I replaced it with a more bloggish css style, what do you think?

[straydogstrut]

Hi,

Just a few thoughts..

The GrimQuest page

1) I find the GrimQuest page itself very harsh on the eyes. I'm not sure if you've changed it as this is the first time i've looked at it but the colours really clash. I appreciate that you're trying to keep a similar palette to the game (I think) but I would suggest making it more subtle. There are tools and sites to help you come up with matching colours schemes, Adobe Kuler is one of them.

2) The background graphic doesn't look great when it's tiled like that. It makes the text very difficult to read. Perhaps try making it more subtle or dropping it in favour of a solid colour with a little bit of texture.

3) The navigation menu does it's job but could be made a lot prettier. If you sort out the colour scheme this will help and I would suggest giving the links different colours than the blue default for links that it has right now. Remember to give it colours for normal, hover and visited.

3) It's minor, but I would change the page title so that the tab shows something like 'GrimQuest remake' rather than GQ.zip

4) I would suggest centering your images or getting them to sit side by side. At the moment they're all over the place (but see my other suggestion below)

5) I don't think you're using the space very well at the moment. The images are good but I have to scroll to see all of them and one of the download links is right down at the bottom of the page. If you want to make this page and the other sites more unified, I would suggest going the more common approach of having a horizontal navigation that had links for:

• Home (or similar) - the main page of the site that tells you what it's all about. What you have right now, but a bit cleaner with less scrolling. There's no link to this at the moment so when I visit any of the other pages i'm sent to another site with no way to get back except by hitting the back button. Having a unified navigation across all pages (which the exception of the forums naturally) would make me feel like i'm on the same domain and I can easily get back to the main page.
  
  
• Features - here you could single out those features that make this remake fantastic. You're already doing that with the subtitles under the images but they don't really stand out at the moment. This would be the page for that.
  
  
• Blog - the current blog but with a similar scheme to the main page so it feels like you're on the same site, or at least the same domain. This could even be the main page of the site, and probably should so people get the latest updates. Home could be called About instead.
  
  
• Forums - again, in the main navigation and prominently displayed. The style of GamersPlanet is completely different, but people will expect this as most forum software has its own stlying (our own AGS site doesn't look exactly the same as the forums here for example)
  
  
• Live Chat
  
  
• Download - this can either be in the menu or a big lovely button somewhere on the page. Just make it obvious and make me feel 'I need to click that!'
  

The blog

1) Your stylesheet seems to be missing so I can't see what you've gone for. It seems to be looking for /themes/black-glass/style.css on your local machine rather than the server.

2) Excuse my ignorance but I know nothing about GamersPlanet. I'm assuming it's one of your sites? I only mention it because the branding on the blog is GamersPlanet, whereas the GrimsQuest page is all about that. I would suggest deciding what the blog is for - is it about the game itself as I was expecting or about GamersPlanet? - and keep consistent branding. By all means, incorporate the GamersPlanet branding into the GrimsQuest site if you want to make it clear that the remake falls under that brand.

3) You can set up wordpress so that the homepage is gamersplanet.tk (or grimsquest.tk) even if the wordpress files are stored at http://gamersplanet.tk/gamepress/wordpress/ which will make your urls look a lot nicer. If this is all falling under the same branding I would expect to see pages like gamersplanet.tk/grimsquest and gamersplanet.tk/forums. You could keep the grimsquest domain name but have it redirect to your grimsquest site at gamersplanet.tk/grimsquest or vice-versa.

These are just my thoughts, but i'm no web-kung-fu-expert. It's up to you to decide what to do with your site. It's good that you're using Wordpress though as you have a lot of room for customisation.

[Khris]

All very good advice, I'd focus on two things first, though:

-Change the background. It's really hard on the eyes and very distracting.

-Proper screenshots.
Either create the screenshots using AGS's built-in functon (try F12, they should end up in the savegame dir), then scale them to twice the size using a nearest neighbor setting. By default, AGS overwrites the same screenshot file so you need to open them in your graphics program (not Paint!) before making the next one.
Or run the game windowed with the standard x2 filter, press the PrintScreen button then paste and crop the resulting image.
Whatever you do, DON'T save them as jpgs! Use png instead.

Here's a comparison:

Yours:


Mine:

[Tabata]

Sorry, but the background colors are much too hard/strong and nervous for my taste (not like a background to present something on) and also distracting, when reading text.  :

[Construed]

@ khris stray and tab.
Some great advice indeed, which i have taken!
Let me know what you think now, It's updated.

[Eric]

I'll echo a few of the notes made by others -- I'd reconsider the background, work on your arrangement of elements, etc. But it already looks much better than how it did when I first checked in on it this morning.

When designing a website, it's much more important IMO to avoid thinking about the specifics of images, color, typefaces, etc., and focus on basics: what is the function of the site, the hierarchy of elements, the architecture of information across several pages.

Start with a grid (Google 'grid-based design' for a wealth of resources), and create the most minimal wireframe you can. No specific images, no colors. Represent your non-text design elements with boxes containing X's. Represent text with straight lines. Note what each element represents without getting into the specifics of creating copy. Do it by hand on graph paper, even. Like this:



Do the five W's and an H in this order to guide your design process:

Why am I making this site?
Who will be using this site?
What information do they need, and what information do I want to supply?
Where should that information be located on each page? Where across the site?
Now that all of that is arranged, how can I make it aesthetically pleasing?
When's lunch?

[Construed]

Nice diagram, I'm going to snag a copy of that lol

[Ghost]

The looks have certainly improved! One thing I'd add is a little Hero's Quest info. Right now you assume that a visitor knows about the original and can compare your version against it, but that might not be the case: By adding a little summary (maybe comparing them directly to your game, with screenshots) you'll get a bit more attention.

[straydogstrut]

Let me know what you think now, It's updated.

A big improvement i'd say, well done!

I'm personally not a fan of those slideshow thingamyjigs but don't let me discourage you - go with it, it looks pretty neat. The only thing I do notice is the last tab, community, doesn't obscure the previous image like the others do. Only the tab slides over and then the background pops into view, if that makes sense? I don't know if you can do anything about that though.

I'd definitely agree with what Eric and Ghost have suggested. Definitely have a brainstorm and a scribble about the direction you want to take the site in, and give some info about the original game.

Looking good, keep it up!

[selmiak]

like khris already suggested my first thought also was: use pngs for screenshots and not low quality jpgs. This just looks ugly.

[Tabata]

Much better than the previous one!
You are on the right track â€" With this grey background I would give the title a different color and change it (not to be mistaken for the original game).
What Eric posted sounds a very good way to think about and to go for the layout and I see a little mistake after the red color changes back to grey. At the right side is to be seen a part of the pic from the left side.

[ThreeOhFour]

In your blurb at the top you have used the incorrect form of "wether" and "your" in place where I would expect to see "whether" and "you're".

[Construed]

Thanks a mill guys!
If not for you all my site would be a 1980 john travolta rendition!
Unfortunately the images problems are caused by scaling and the engine cant produce the correct size images without scaling, Bi-Cubic scaling is hell on sierra games or any games which use dithering especially Although i will stay away from the jpegs from now on.
I'm going to make a page about the original which will be linked from that page soon.
I thank you all greatly for your crits and I'm pretty happy with it now although always open to suggestions.

Thanks ten billions,
-Jared

[Khris]

Screenshots of 320 games are usually shown at twice the size. You are not supposed to arbitrarily scale them.
If the screenshots don't fit the current layout of the site, change the layout.
Proper screenshots make or break your presentation here.

You might also want to change this sentence: "GrimQuest now features full featured multiplayer capabilities!"

[Ghost]

You might also want to change this sentence: "GrimQuest now features full featured multiplayer capabilities!"

Would "...features full-fledged multiplayer capabilities..." work? The triple-f alliteration sounds snappy; I like that in a webpage.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I'd get rid of the screen grab in the top right corner and move the other stuff from there to a bottom row below your image slideshow, allowing you to center your logo.  I'd also slow down the image slideshow so it automatically cycles images maybe once every 10-20 seconds.

[Darth Mandarb]

When viewing it from my laptop the actual content of the site (the too fast moving slideshow area) is almost off the bottom of the screen so I have to scroll down to read the content.  I try to avoid this type of layout when I design (as I find it annoying).

Also, on the topic of the slideshow thing; I'm not a big fan.  I prefer to present the content in a way that doesn't force them to either wait or click.  I know the moving stuff is all the rage these days but the most important thing is still providing the content in the most easy and convenient (user friendly) way.

I started to work on a mockup but simply ran out of time so I'm going to post what I started;



- retooled the logo's color a bit (the logo was getting lost in the grey background pattern) and made it a bit smaller
- shrunk down the header area's height to pull the content up more
- reworked how the content is displayed (three of the slideshow's options felt like they could be one section "features")
- I intended to put more graphics in (in the media area particularly) or maybe the heads could have little icons, something like that (I just ran out of time!)
- the bottom area (darker) was intended to be more information (a footer of course) but again, time ran off on me

Just some suggestions... you've already made MAJOR improvements from the first time I clicked the link!  I don't think enough has been said about that original background (I think my eyes are still hemorrhaging!!) so take this as you wish!

[Construed]

Well, I'm not one to shoot down good advice!
I started working in that direction

Let me know what you think 8)