Messages

What we're getting at is that

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?action=profile

and

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?action=summary

are identical. They both go to the "account settings" page.

For me, the first link sends me to my profile summary and the second link takes me to the main board index... just as (from the links' appearances) they should?  I'm very confused 

Also, stop using IE, especially if you're building websites. The newest IE versions (9, 10) are already pretty close to adhering to the current standards, so you're way better off if you build the page for Webkit/Gecko, i.e. Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Check out w3schools.com.

Seconded, Thirded, Fourth'd - Infinitied.

NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER^infinity do design/layout work in IE.  It is shit.  Even the newest "standards" versions of IE are still shit.  The world would be a FAR better place if IE died and nobody used it ever again.  Do yourself a huge favor and switch to Chrome.  It's the best browser available right now.

[/rant]

[UPDATE!!]

Why does the forum look totally different when you're logged out?

I am working on a new theme and when I created the theme it changed the "default" back to the original SMF theme (not sure why it did that). 

I have switched it back to the AGS theme now so that issue should be sorted.

UPDATE!!

Okay... I have created the "compact" version of this layout:

• Click on Profile (top nav)
• Hover on "Modify Profile" and click "Look and Layout"
• Top option is "Current Theme" and select "Change" (over to the right)
• Find "AGS (compact)" in the list of available themes
• Click on "use this theme"

This is a much more compacted version (hence the name).  I don't like it nearly as much but I think it will appease those that felt the default AGS theme had too much "dead" space.  For the most part it's identical to the default AGS theme, I just tucked in most of the padding.

Some of the changes/updates made include:

• Headers are 24px (instead of 31px)
• Removed the moderator labels from the board index
• Post/topic counts width are 12%
• Post/topic counts are font-size 11px
• Last Post boxes width are 28%
• Last post font size shifted to 10px

I have updated many of my smileys to use Mad's suggestions.

We are addressing the padding issue... hang in there.

TomatoesInTheHead - I'm working on adjusting the side-bar (with the avatars, member info) as well.

[Ryan]

Ryan - valid points (and thanks for the screenshots).  Yes, I'm a "padding" guy !!  We are discussing it in the "moderators" forum but I'd also love to hear other people's opinions on the padding.

I, too, suggested just removing the moderators line from the board index page.  That was one of the things that was on there when we upgraded to the new version and I just didn't pull it off.  (Also discussing in the mod forum!).

Oh no, Tweet and Facebook Share buttons, is there no escape?

Did we use to show post counts before? I thought we only showed post counts up to 10 posts or so, then hide them.

Edit: My avatar is now a spiffy 120x120, and I'm glad my Larry Vales smiley survived the move. It is my greatest accomplishment

Personally I'd like to remove the tweet/facebook links... I don't much care for them! 

We didn't show post-count before.

Of course Larry stuck around!  I didn't want to get lynched by removing him

Speaking of the smileys:

• I have updated the set and added some of the animated ones as well
• I created a second row for Larry (and other non-blue-cup smileys) which will be added as we go.

And of course... there's the hidden ones too!!!!!1!!

As will be obvious from the rest of my post:

• Updated the quote CSS
• Updated the news section/area to better separate it

Why is that? :/ It's a probably a relatively good thing that you can use avatars bigger than 120x120 and they get scaled down to fit (though most often they don't look good that way), but I never liked that avatars smaller than the allowed size got upscaled. Wouldn't it be better to not resize the avatars unless they're too big, or to never resize them and just not allow any avatars bigger than 120x120?

This is, sadly, something the forum software does automatically (seems an oversight to me).  I have been toying around with...

This can be achieved by using CSS using the max-height and max-width options.

... for awhile but there are so many places where the avatars are displayed and, to be honest, the CSS that comes with the software is a mess!  One big problem with the max- attributes is that there are some older versions of browsers that don't support these attributes and anybody viewing the forums [with those older browsers) might end up seeing some HUGE avatars!

However I'm not too sure about the gradient behind the board titles, and at the bottom. I find it looks better if it's just a uniform colour. Or maybe make them a bit lighter? The colour seems quite harsh compared to the rest of the forum colours which are softer. The text in the posts/topics column seems a bit crowded.

We really went 'round and 'round with this (well I did) ... in the end we decided this "fit" better.  I really like the contrast personally (and think it looks great) but if the forum consensus is that it should change it can be updated.

• Collapsing forum sections causes the title text to align at the top of the cell
• The "Warning - while you were typing" box, and the 'mark all messages as read' button, has no padding at the top

The collapsing issue I noticed during testing and no matter what I've tried it just doesn't seem to want to align itself properly... I'm thinking it might be some kind of internal bug in the software.  I just couldn't track that sucker down!  It only does it on initial collapse; once you navigate/refresh it aligns properly (and stays aligned properly) so I considered it low priority

The padding issue on the "mark all as read" button is fixed/updated.  The other one will take a little more doing... but I'm on it

Updates so far:

• Updated the over-all forum width to 95% (was 90%)
• Updated the number displays to x,xxx.xx
• Updated avatars to 120x120
• Updated breadcrumb to be links now

Important note; your current avatars will be automatically resized to 120x120 (though the header avatar display will remain at 60x60 for space considerations).  You'll need to update accordingly if you no longer like how it looks!  You can also just take the existing image and add the spacing around it to make the file 120x120 (but keeping the image 60x60 as you're used to it).  Or take advantage of the FREEDOM that double-size grants you

Question, will we get our chance to design characters and tracks? I've only skimmed the thread so far (not much time at the moment) but my first thought on characters is, obviously, the characters would all be from AGS games, yes?

I was thinking more along the lines of forum members being the drivers/karts ... but now that you mention it, it would probably make more sense to use characters from games because not all members have avatars that would be suitable! 

I'm giving serious thought to actually making this a reality! I'm talking GiP thread and everything (once I have two screenshots of course)

Quick list of missing/wrong things I've come across:

• all text appears to be centered (board headings, titles, posts, etc)
• the 'new' image (for new threads) isn't updated (I think this is because the language isn't selected the same as on your server)
• avatars sizes are 60x60
• forum width appears to be 95% (was set at 98% on the test server)
• forum links (right above posts) are acting very strange (I think an anchor tag was left unclosed or something)
• categories/boards order is way off
• footer CSS is off (the blocks are being covered by a white box)
• normal_post_locked.gif isn't updated like the rest (yabb/themes/ags/images/topic/normal_post_locked.gif) - should be in the .zip I sent!
• news area CSS is different from what we had on the test server (might be intentional?)

I'll keep looking!  But for the most part the upgrade appears to have gone extremely well!  Great job and thanks for the hard work!!

Nice work AGA.  I like the colours.  Apart from the centered text and dead space I haven't got a problem.  Can't wait for the new smilies to be introduced though.  The old ones look so out of place.  I may have dreamed this, but did I read that we'll be able to have larger avatars?  That would be cool. Although saying that, it would force even more dead space into the posts.

1) Can somebody take a screenshot and show me what you mean by "dead space"?  I tried to keep it to a minimum!  Are you referring to all the white-space up near the 'news' announcements?  When there aren't news announcements that area is MUCH more condensed!

2) You weren't dreaming!  The avatar sizes will be increased to 120x120 (double the current size).  It really doesn't add more spacing to the side though so don't worry about that!

Looks great. Although I can't help but think that the

quote-box

should look as if it went into the panel instead of coming out of it (or have no graphical effect on it at all). Now it looks like a button and I'm constantly trying to click it

Yeah, it actually is the same CSS as the buttons!  I did it quickly, liked how it looked, so didn't change it!  But it's an easy fix/change.

I'd favour another theme where the width of the board is yet smaller.

There are BIG ideas in the works for themes... stay tuned

There are several things that will be changing in the days to come as we fine-tune the new layout.

I haven't scripted in AGS in AGeS (it's literally been years).  So a) I'm not sure I'm even using the right terminology and b) I'm not sure if what I was thinking was even possible but...

Basically you'd create a top-down view of the track (in Photoshop, Gimp, etc).  It would contain all the stuff on the "ground".  You import that into AGS as an object (each "track" would be it's own room?).  You make the main background of the room a static image (the very back of the parallax scrolling that doesn't move... most likely just a color or gradient for the sky backdrop and other 'objects' would be the layers of parallax).  You could then place other objects on the 'track' object that would be the sprites interpreted by the game (like pipes, sandtraps, power-ups, etc).  Then, when run, all the objects would (through the aforementioned scripting wizardry) be handled pseudo-3D and you could cruise around the track!

I think creating the tracks/levels would be the easy part... we just need somebody willing to devote some time to figuring out the mechanics of the P3D! 

If I have some time later today I'll whip up some example graphics for what I'm talking about.  It's always easier to "show" rather than to explain

Is this the actual title of your game? 

Working titles are okay, but this doesn't even seem a working title...

As I mentioned previously I think a swarm would be a good idea for something like this.

I think the pseudo-3D route would be more appealing (to me at least) with sprite based objects and pre-rendered karts.

Could be cool to do it similar to the swarm development thing from a few months ago. 


Get a bunch of contributors ... each person could make their own kart and their own level/track as well (after the mechanics of the scripting are worked out and some guidelines and methods are established of course!)

[edit]

Awesome!!  I had this same idea back in ... 2009 I think?  I actually made up some of the tracks.

I was envisioning it as Mode 7 (like Mario Kart on the SNES!) where the track (a large 2D graphic) would be an object and you would place other objects on it (for pipes, sandtraps, etc) and using some kind of scripting wizardry create the pseudo 3D (mode 7) effect and the kart would stay centered.  I was also envisioning multiple layers for the background so you could get some parallax scrolling as you went around the tracks.

I wasn't able to find a willing code-slinger who would/could do the scripting (as 3D is slightly out of my purview) so the idea died slowly!  I'd still be VERY interested in the concept though!!

edit - I was also playing around with the concept that the outer edges of the "track" graphic would use an alpha channel to fade out the track and blend into the bg layers behind it to create a very pleasing (I should think) horizon effect .

Could we have a "yes" smily to go with this "no" smily?

     

Update 1:



Update 2:

Will there be animated versions possible in this size, too?

I have quite a few animations in mind for these guys!

But I'm kind of holdin' off for a bit until I get a sense of whether we (as a community) want to use the larger or shorter versions!  It's a lot of work to animate!!