Topic: PsPong.com layout Proposals ][ (Page 1 of 1)

The other thread was getting too long, I've decided to close it. See http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum13/HTML/000036.html for more on that.

I've started posting all of the layout proposals at www.PSpong.com - I'll do the same with the logos later today. Carry on, this is coming together for me!

Your pal, -doc-

oh...yeah...look at that...pixelflo.

~cough~

Now then, I agree on the search factor Emps...but only for "us". Remember that a great deal of people will be surfing into the site without any background, so a site search is always helpful (imagine that some young PS'er is looking for pieces that specify photo montage work, or layer effects etc. etc. Might be nice to have a bit of a way for them to check around and see what's what)

The news section is critical I think, for keeping people updated on how the servers are running, any changes in image location, backend changes, updates to the message boards or the rules, as well as announcing feature matches that are upcoming, and any important links that are going on, or articles etc. about pspong.com.

Feature matches are a bit touchy of a subject here I'd bet....but I want to dig feet in on this one. The fact of the matter is that wide exposure will be dependent on a great many factors, but one of the best is to have "big names" or "respected players" get involved in highlighted matches. Look at Coudal.com and the original PS Tennis idea to see what I'm talking about. If we can goad in relatively well known designers and artists, the site stats will soar, and the exposure will be amazing. I love the idea of keeping things in a nice tight community, but let's see if we can expand that community for interested parties as well as possible. I know it's marketing hype, and a bit dodgy...but it really does work, and can help out with linkage and highlighting people's work and skills.

As for anything else, the layout is just placekeeping for now, I think any and all windows can be sorted around.

And the "game site" issue. I know..big graphic..but I had a couple Flash ideas there too (wouldn't it be fun to have a small interactive game of pong playing in that space?) Aside from that though, this IS a game site..since this should be fun...but I understand the critique in that sense...it does have a bit of that "feel" to it.

As always..let's tear apart, and build up

Peter

As for the PSD...it's a hell of an ugly amalgam right now..let's see if we can thin things out a bit, and make solid decisions on what stays and what goes before I rename all the layers and start grouping so that people have a friggin clue what's being done. (I think I have in the vicinity of 50 some odd layers right now, and multiple masks, channels, and paths)

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Reread the post InI. I'm all about bringing in anyone and everyone to the pspong fold, the idea of featured matches is just to gain more exposure so that those new folks KNOW about the site.

Marketing is a fickle game, and starting a site like this will require a good head for it right off the bat. Luckily Doc is one of the best I know, but the high profile of gaining "big" matches can't be denied. This isn't about exclusion, it's about complete inclusion, involving a way to assure that people know about the site, outside of just *this* closed little ring.

Dig?

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

About that 'Feature Match'. What about inviting famous designers to challenge the best Pong player. We could have that like once a month or something. Many great designers love to do things like this, I'm sure of that, and it would be great for the site too.

Softhead

DG: The search feature for things like e.g. 'collage' would be fine if such things were used - so far the player comments have been along the lines of 'and he floats majestically into the air and hits a scorching cross-court smash' which tend to not have the 'hooks' we would need. I think we should have search features I was really just questioning the need for them on the spectator main page. We should also try and press people to give a little sketch of what they did.

OK I see what you are getting at on the news front and I think if it wer to contain things like that then that would be cool.

One aside though the windows would require a search or 2 to populate and I'm wondering if InI had had any thoughts about the maximum of searches that would be OK on a page as this might be a critical consideration we need to keep in mind if we are going to have all sorts of stats in different windows (which was why I was thinking about letting people customise he ones they are interested in. I would imagine it would be easy to get the number of searches into double figures - would that be a problem (as far as I'm aware it shouldn't be as long as we only have one connection. I've done worse!!).

I love the idea of exhibition matches (like a Borg vs McEnroe) - it would be a great opportunity to get new, highly talented people in and a chance for we mere mortals to ooh and aah!! I mentioned before that we could have 3 different types of matches like Pool, Challenge and Tournament I wonder if Exhibition could be added to that (thoughts on doubles and some kind of PSvolley ball!!).

Anyway good stuff rolling out - keep it coming!!

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

Here's another concept that has been running through my mind. As this site grows in popularity, we'll end up with bunches of people that we don't know, who all know each other, and they'll start to get good ratings too. When things get to this point, I think it might make sense to then have "teams" of players, just for the ego-stroking and competition aspect. (Picture if you have to drop out of a match, computer crashes or what have you. Each team could have a limited number of options to insert a "pinch hitter" from their ranks, could be fun! <g> I'd like to get a good solid "Asylum" team built and then challenge the Adobe guys, publically, to come out and show us their stuff! We'll kick their asses, it'll be fun! (Or be kicked in return, educational, at least! :-)

This is one for the "future file" - first we need a game engine that allows us to play, heh.

Your pal, -doc-

Doc: I love that idea and although I have full confidence in whomever gets picked would it wrong of me to slip performance enhancing drugs into the water supply?

I would imagine once the basic types of game have been thouroughly tested adding in Exhibition and Exhibition Team matches shouldn't be any problem - then we can start working out unlikely variants: Tag Team 8 person matches (where the person serving gets to nominate their team member to get the oppositions return), Wildcard Team matches (where the person to receive the serve is randomly drawn only when the opposition hit their return), urmm... Barb Wire Racquet matches (where ... I dunno), Polar Bear Invitationals (where the polar bear decides who plays), ..... perhaps I'd better go to bed!!

It should be fun throwing out stupid/odd challenges - it all adds spice to things and should get people talking/interested.

So back to the layout proposals...

Emps

So I back from a Macromedia Seminar that was yesterday and a bit of today,

You guys have come up with some nice ideas, I won't comment on all of them because it would take to long. So I am still reading some of the reply?s I have missed (A lot too ) and after that I will make some more layouts and mess around with other peoples logos to fits the design, this will be mostly over the weekend if I can .

So well do and hope to see more layouts .



Chris C

I'm a big fan of Softhead's first Blue layout (the one that doesn't say player's lounge) because its very simple graphically. The viewer should be looking at the match thumbnails instead of the interface, also considering the ammount of images the site is going to have because of the matches means that the least ammount of images needed for the interface would be beneficial. A lot of the interface could be done with colored divs or tables.

Schitzo

SB: I'm in favour of a low graphic approach with most of the interface being done with CSS and HTML but I would say that!! What does everyone else think?

Emps

I'm in favor of rediclously large, poor graphics. Laid out with a WYSIWYG editor... preferably on a geocities site.

comments?

I can do that.

some one gag taxon.... im to tired...

/me gags taxon for a couple of minutes, until taxon manges to bite the gag...

anyhow, my vote goes for softheads 'players lounge' proposal. it's clean. it looks nice. and it's at least not a full two screens long... and I can see it load quickly.

yours,

Tyberius Prime

Here`s my take on the layout FWIW.

We need to keep in mind we`ll probably have lots of viewers surf in from nowhere, so we should keep it as simple as possible. It`s all about the images, yes ? Give the nonregistered users a place to see the stuff with a tool bar for them Like this and the registered users another tool bar for stuff they need like this .

Have the buttons open a drop down menu ( where needed) and the links open in a floating window. That way the page only gets as cluttered as the viewer wants it. Add buttons in the blanks for players or for whatever I forgot. Not everyone coming in will be a player, or even an artist. K.I.S.S. Leave all the room possible for viewing the matches, yes ?

just my .02

regarding the players telling what they did... We might consider implementing a few checkboxes in addition to their comments. (like: collage, color manipulation... whatever). We could store those tags in the db. shouldn't be too much of a problem, and then anyone who searches especially collages and how they were done could easily find some.

db: Good points and I esp, like the idea of a what is PSPong element showing for people who haven't visited (or at least haven't signed in and got a cookie) and a the Lunatic Consortium Project is a nice touch. I must admit I was looking at having quite a lot of the relevant controls in the panels themselves but that is another twist on the scheme.

TP: That is a good idea as some of the current matches going on now demonstrate some of the fine arts of photomontage, hand painting, etc. and they would be great help to someone getting to grips with each technique.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

#cough# bump

I hope nothing important fell off.

Still seeking opinions here. Thoughts/input (as only about 1% of the Inmates have had their say)?

Emps

Doc I was surfing around today and found This site That had sort of you idea with photoshop blocks background.

Have alook if you want its just a wallpaper sites, but had the same idea I think with the background.



Chris C

I am is still here, although I begin doubting anyone else is... hello?!

hello.

Yah, I'm still here too! This thing is going in fits and starts, sometimes fast and sometimes not, heh. (Like most projects in the real world, actually!) I'll start some more work on this later today, busy busy...

Your pal, -doc-

Emps has been talking much about giving the users more control. Take a look at this site: http://www.kinwashi.org/

Softhead

Wow, that's pretty cool. Some of the content doesn't wrap right if you use the little resize button in the lower right. But other than that, it's way cool

SH: That is a good use of those panels which I think could work nicely. I was thinking that we could go one further and let people edit what they want to see in those panels (to a certain extent) and this could then be stored in their profile (or they could select how many panels they want and which ones, etc.). It should all be fairly easy to do if people thought that was a good idea (I'll see if I can find an example - it was something I've been thinking of doing but never got around to).

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

And store that in a cookie? That could be cool. I need to learn how to set cookies to remember some DIV positioning (collapsed, expanded, etc), and then read it back on the next visit. Same type of thing would work here......

Pugzly: That will be important too. What I was thinking of was that there are numerous ways the stats can be processed and when someone is setting up their profile they could select to view the top five matches of all time or the most popular games - or only last months most popular games, etc. I think to get things running smoothly we'll need a combination of client and server side data storage. Something to think about anyway - it could be a feature that might take a while to work out and never get used so its something worth throwing into the discussion to see if people even want it.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave