Topic: PSpong.com?

I couldn't help but notice the domain was available, hmm...

Your pal, -doc-

hmmmm
should i, should i not?

what could you do with it? a portal system where users can sign up and play pong....

Yes, but they'd be playing *Photoshop* pong! Prize matches, member rankings, working your way up the standings, "the thrill of victory, the agony of the feet"? It was just a thought, always amazes me when I see an open domain name for something I'm thinking of.

Your pal, -doc-

hehe...
i know that feeling!
i just went over to gandi.net filled all out and then in the last moment, just before the payment i cancelled it... hehe

Doc : Do iT! Do it I say hehe and if you want a hand, count me in. Awesome =)

Weadz (Still waiting for Fallen)

I've been mauling it over ever since DB and DL started their match. Can't help but think about it. Sure sounds attractive.

A page where you sign up as a member. A page where you sign up for a game. As soon as there is a match, both parties are e-mailed, there is a general post, and both are wiped from the match sign-up. Then they go to town. I'm sure one you you script-heads could manage this fairly easily. I'm sure maX could do it while napping on his lunch break.

If you think you can spare the bandwidth, use some sort of mechanizism to get the PSD back and forth via the site, but that might be a bit much. If you do it right, members can be totally anonymous besides member name, but, again, that might be a bit much.

And just think of the money you could make with click-throughs!




[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-19-2001).]

The Forum Is a bit confuzing when it comes to who is playin or wants to play who... A webpage would be cool... Very Cool... unless the excitement of this wears down...

and pspong.com has a really nice ring to it...

[This message has been edited by eyezaer (edited 11-19-2001).]

I personally went to see if photoshop-tennis.com was still free, when I felt that this was taking off... to bad it was already taken.
(I know, I know, I can be a leetle capitalistic at times. But not always. But when I see a dime lying on the ground...)

Tyberius Prime

I'd be willing to help coding!

Tyberius Prime

i've been running the design of this site thru my head for the last few days...
this sort of thing really needs some sound conceptual modelling, and i'm willing to donate a few hours to this one.
i'll be overseas for most of december, so it'll have to be conceptual, not actual coding.
(ie a few emails of design ideas, etc)
...but love to hear of any progress ideas that ensue.


___________________
b u n c h a p i x e l s

I'd love to help. I need experience and it seems really cool. But I'm not nearly as good as most people here and I know little about Photoshop, but if you got some work you think I could handle just tell me about it and I would be more than happy to help.


http://www.maninacan.com

Doc, What's this? Have I been far away for a long time?

How do you decide the amount of points and who wins the match ?

Everybody wins.

(Wakkos: to me, the words "domain name" in doc's post are just regular text. Perhaps this does it to: domain name ? Could be spyware or something, I dunno.)

Doc: don't buy the domain until you've got the site built. You'll save money that way if you change your mind. =)

maybe we should organize a mailinglist, so that anyone who wants to help can be informed...
or even a project portal, like on projectplace.com ?
any one in for that?

so long,

Tyberius Prime

I go away awhile and come back to amazing things.

If it beasme popular enough to attract them we could sponsers later like Adobe and Wacom etc.. to provide prizes.

I believe Ini has said that he could work on something to cover the server side scripting and buncha and maninacan have offered their services so it would be rude of not to offer to do something (I'm lacking any graphical skills but I'm sure I'll learn a lot from the quality work that is going on here, when I get the time to look things over, so it might be good to give a little something back). It should be possible to do something with CafePress:
www.cafepress.com

(as the Doc has) to offer mousemats, Tshirts, etc. with various designs on them (from those who agree, of course) - a small markup would pos. go some way to covering hosting costs no?

[edit: As I suggested a tutorial on getting CafePress working from one's site, rather than linking in to theirs, might be a good idea over at the GN, if people thought that was a good idea and this gets off the ground, then I could sort that out and then write it up as a tutorial - we win two different ways!!]

Thoughts?

Emps



You're my wife now Dave

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 11-24-2001).]

Go for it!!!!!!!!

Think about it, it would be a great franchise for ps6 and other adobe graphic programs. It would be a whole different asylum for photoshop pong!!!! Think of the possibilities, the graphics that would be created!!! I think you should go for it........

If the bulk of things were done server-side perhaps Weadah could pull some impressive PHP/Flash interaction thingy out of his magic hat to make us all jealous!!

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

if it's just PHP, i'll be of some use at last... (ie. give me your unstructered, wiered and vague feature requests. me and wedah will turn them into working code... but don't put me in charge of the html design yet!)

yours,

Tyberius Prime

I'd love to help in anyway too

quote:

---

unstructered, wiered [sic] and vague feature requests

---

Well they are a speciality of mine so we could be onto something!!

So we've got ideas, offers of help, etc. what next?

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

This is unrelated to PSPong, just answering Wakkos' question...

Wakkos, that yellow links are coming from TOPText, adware/spyware that has been installed on your computer together with some adware supported application (Kazaa, for example). You can find more information about it in this article.

/me is suffering from not knowing how to spell weired. no, not wired. More like in weired things going on. so how do I spell it?

let's see:
common goal: Check.
Graphic Artists: Check.
Enough people to promote: check.
coders: check.
someone who is willing to buy the domain: check
A webserver with PHP/Mysql: Failed.
Huge amounts of bandwith: Failed.

anyone willing to provide the last two?
(and the first thing we'll set up is a developers forum...)


Tyberius Prime

erm...yah... like I said.... look down at the next post...

[This message has been edited by taxon (edited 11-25-2001).]

TP: Correct spelling of weird: Check
www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=weird

The amount of space and bandwidth would depend on what was planned. The games would be best played out here and any site would handle the signing on and assigning games (say 3 categories: Pool, Tournament and Challenge) and any other stuff (polls to vote for best player in tournament matches or best overall picture, a store, etc.). If anything more than the final PSDs were to be stored then things might start getting problematic. I think if it really took off then sponsorship or something would have to be sought to cover costs. It all depends on what the plans are - if any.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

I think step by step jpegs (or gifs depending) should be saved so you can see the progression of the image and the final PSD so you can mess with it.

We could also expand the concept to potoshop games and include make-it, but make-it unlike pong does work well on the forums and there would otherwise be no reason to add it, just a thought though

Schitzoboy: And with added commentary too!!

I think elements of PSPong work well here but it could do with something to organise things (and, of course, playing it here means we'll attract more interesting people here).

I'm sure there are plenty of other games that people could play - I know I pointed this out a while ago but the site has really got going now and there is some interesting work going on - the links go through to a couple of pieces that our own moaiz contributed to:
http://anexquisitecorpse.net/archive/00000025.shtml
http://anexquisitecorpse.net/archive/00000023.shtml

There is no lack of enthusiasm for this kind of thing I suspect the main constraint will be on people's time so it might be best to keep things focused.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

And thanks to Darkshadow for pointing out this little graphical challenge - DigitalQuilt:
http://ds9r.com/digitalquilt

his piece (with softhead) is at:
http://ds9r.com/digitalquilt/quilt/complete/quilt_31.htm

Although unfinished the patch of the week's quilt is scary - you wouldn't think 2 people were working on it.

It is also a sneaky way to bump this topic back up the top of the stack (although I assume as PSPong.com is still available no-one fancied taking on the task of spinning off another site).

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

Here's a biggie collaborative: http://www.cubadust.com/versus/ -- close but not quite. Everything spins. Leave me alone. I hate being sick, especially now of all times. But it's still cool. Enjoy.




[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-29-2001).]

<<common goal: Check.
Graphic Artists: Check.
Enough people to promote: check.
coders: check.
someone who is willing to buy the domain: check
A webserver with PHP/Mysql: Failed.
Huge amounts of bandwith: Failed.
anyone willing to provide the last two?
(and the first thing we'll set up is a developers forum...)>>

I can provide space, at my (low) cost, with PHP/MySQL: Linux based. Not sure what you call "huge" amounts of bandwidth. No reputable host promises "unlimited" but I can provide up to 15000MB per month. Email me if interested.

Either way, I hope this gets going. I'd be willing to help with graphics and navigation (UI) design, if needed.


Never underestimate the creative powers of pure laziness.

AC: That is very generous - now as far as I'm aware:

common goal: check.
Graphic Artists: Check.
Enough people to promote: check.
coders: check.
someone who is willing to buy the domain: check
A webserver with PHP/Mysql: check.
Huge/large/good amounts of bandwith: check.

It looks to me that all the requirements are in place - is this still seen as being a good idea? At least as an experiment to see how it goes (or until such time as we get bored and find something else to fill our time!!).

buncha has had some ideas about the design, Ini has mentioned some ideas about the backend and there have also been offers of help for the code and GUI anyone fancy coordinating things? We do have people here experienced in managing teams.

I should also add that we should also consider some legalese about signing over rights to the images to pspong.com and about it being not for profit any money generated from adverts/sponsorship/mousemat sales go to covering costs, etc.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

well, AC, thank you!
Now set us up a little space, doc, rent the domain and point it there, hand me the password, and I'll set us up a developers forum :-)

But I am not happy at all with signing the copyright of the pictures to our host... although that might be the simplest and safest approach for us. any US copyright lawyers in here? (this would belong to our dev forum then...)

so long,

Tyberius Prime

TP: There are probably other alternatives to signing over the copyright - like the creators keeping the copyright but giving pspong.com rights to reproduce the image. Someone with more experience may know of the best approach but if this is seen as a good idea then there should be something written down so that everything is clear and there are no misunderstandings.

Anyone any quick back of the envelope calculations on possible bandwidth - AC has kindly offered space but I'd hate to think we'd accidentally take a server down or anything!!

Damn - that is all unpleasantly pratical but these and a few other things probably need to be addressed to reduce any future problems.

Thoughts anyone?

Emps

If ya need a host........ :-)

We can do the PHP/MySQL thing. Doc - you've got the DNS settings I sent you for GN? Grab the domain and tie those to it. Let me know - I can have the space up and running in 5 minutes. Bandwidth isn't really an issue (it helps when you own the hosting company...)

I like PhotoshopPong.com better.

<thinking>
There has GOT to be a way to tie this to GurusNetwork.....
</thinking>




[This message has been edited by Pugzly (edited 11-29-2001).]

Now that would be cool.

Hey, If you are not really sure about buying PsPong... or waht ever you could do PhotoshopPong.Gurusnetwork.com

Or Not.... that is a pretty long name there... hehehehe

Pugzly: Now that does make things nice and easy - there are probably a few things that might get tried which could turn into a few tutorials (I know I've said this before but if its run of PHP and MySQL we could talk nicely to Weadah about hooking it up to a sweet Flash interface and that would be a tutorial I'd like see!! ~whips drool of keyboard~).

I liked PSPong.com as it seemed nice and punchy/short.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

So, who's going to code the backend for this thing?

About copyright of the images people make... the Internet Raytracing Competition does a similar thing, look at their copyright info page here - entrants to the competition are required to submit to that copyright.

Well, if someone wanted to start whiteboarding a MySQL db, that would be fine. My servers have all the flexibility that we'd need. And I've got phpmyadmin, so that should make things a little easier.

I'm standing by....

well, I will code the backend of course!
No, honestly, I will be more than happy to design and write the backend code. But first we all have to get clear on what we're going to built here... (and not anything really before the mid of next month... I'm busy with school right now.)

Bandwith: (just really approximate calculations)
100 Matches.
let's say 8 jpegs at 200k a piece... but thumbed so it's more like 30 a piece.
makes about 240k + 200k (assuming people want to see the very last one in full size) per view. + html and stuff, call it 5m. Wohoh.
That means your 15gigs would allow each match to be viewed 30 times a month... hmm. and we're not going to store the PSDs.

how realistic are my numbers?
well the size for a single view is about right, but the number of matches could be off by quite a degree.
Doc, can you somehow tell us how often a single game is viewed in here?

So long,

Tyberius Prime

Hmm, it's hard to say exactly, (see the thread in OZONE for links to the stats), but the busiest matches seem to be viewed about 70-100 times/day, for maybe 500-800 views total. Now, do we want to store all of the images on the website, or allow people to post them to their own sites and then just pass on the link? It would certainly be simpler for users if we hosted the images ourselves, then we could automate the thumbnail creation ourselves and get a good cohesive look for things. I was thinking a stealth mail gateway for passing the PSD's back and forth, that's where most people have problems, it seems to me. (Stealth, in case people want to keep their emails/identities secret. People will, I'll bet.)

I'm willing to write out a pretty detailed specification for what the site should do, functionalities, flowcharts, etc... Then I could post it here for discussion, we'll pretty quickly come up with a good plan of action, methinks. We need a few roles filled, writing the back-end code is one thing, but the actual "Project Management" of this thing is potentially a big hassle. Pugzly did this for the GurusNetwork last time we made a major spin-off, but he may not want that time-intensive task again!

I'll make some preliminary notes and post them back here later this weekend.

Your pal, -doc-

Well, I don't think I could handle the Project Management duties this time around. But I'd love to be in on the backend stuff, especially if it's PHP/MySQL.

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.

I think we all agree that the Doc has a good grasp of the Big Picture so it might be a good idea if he drew up the overall design. I'll throw in my thoughts and perhaps anyone with a good idea can throw in theirs too.

I envisioned the actual games being played out here (where we can all ooh and aah) and the admin and storage of old posts their for starters. We could have a number of game types - Pool: where people go and make themselves available for a random pairing (hmmm I hear there are parties like that but I digress) - if you fail to turn up for your match someone else gets assigned to someone else and you have to put yourself back into the pool when you want to play; Challenge: You can challenge someone to a game (I sense the possibility for grudge matches here: Barbed Wire Net matches anyone??); Tournament: people play off against each other and we have some kind of voting script so we can all decide who played the best and they progress (should be interesting with some good gamesmanship!!). We need rules and FAQs. I can help out with backend stuff if required but plenty of people have already offered their services (Ini had initial ideas on this - any input Ini? [edit: OK Ini snuck a post in while I was typing this on this very subject - please ignore]) and so I've offered to do the link up with CafePress if people think that is a good idea (there are already some excellent pieces which would go nicely on a mousemat!!). The question is should all the images be stored on the site - most people can store their images and PSDs but it is inserting of thumbnails into the match which is the tricky bit so automating that might be interesting (but increase the bandwidth by quite a bit). My idea would be that finished matches would be stored with thumbs linking to the main image as well as the final PSD (and intermediates?). If we do have the matches here and the admin elsewhere we can have a section on every page with a link back here to the most recent posts in this forum.

I think the tricky thing (until Doc moves us over to PHP) will be getting inmates details for signing in, etc.

Would it be a good idea, as has been suggested above, to set up a development forum on the site to coordinate things but not bore people with details? We may need someone to coordinate things but we could try doing things more organically (spaghetti management?) and see how that goes - we have identified quite a bit of work that needs doing and got volunteers for most of it.

Anyway that is just a few thoughts I had on the topic. Anyone else got any thoughts on this?

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 11-30-2001).]

well, I was envisioning ...
A) matchs played on pspong.com
B) us storing at least the jpegs and thumbs.
C) but not showing the whole match at a time, like in the asylum. we could save tons of bandwith, if people had the option to either open the first or the last picture of a match and then navigate with next/last buttons...
D) generall voting on the matches so the best ones make it to the front page
E) your game types seem appropriate, emperor
f) allowing our users to comment on the pictures, just like here.

so what we need is a voting system, user registration obviously, a db to store the jpegs (NO! we will not store the jpegs in files, if I can get MySql to do that. And I can.)

And I might be able to coordinate at least the coding, so that we won't get 5 different user registration systems.
yours,

Tyberius Prime

oh and the stealth gateway isn't too bad an idea. but many free emailproviders (very! common in germany) limit incoming emails to a few megs a piece. and I just remind you of our match, Doc. That thing got huge.
But we might be able to store one PSD per match on our server during the match, and delete it once it's finished.

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 11-30-2001).]

oh and the stealth gateway isn't too bad an idea. but many free emailproviders (very! common in germany) limit incoming emails to a few megs a piece. and I just remind you of our match, Doc. That thing got huge.
But we might be able to store one PSD per match on our server during the match, and delete it once it's finished.

Tyberius Prime

TP: All good ideas there - I suppose to even things out (some matches seem well furnished with thumbs and links and some seem a little sparse) all the image part of the match could take place on the web page and the banter, commentary, questions, etc. could take place here. It would be quite handy if when one uploads your next image that it spits out the correct UBB code to put in the forum to display a quick thumbnail of the full image. It really just depends on the bandwidth - all images going through the site would be whole different kettle of fish to people making their own arrangements to store the image but it would even out the matches and cut down on some of the hassle and let people concentrate on the match. If people are going to have to find storage space for the PSD hen they might as well.

I suppose it depends on how much traffic the site should take.

Emps

Well....

If we store the .jpg files, then we *should* be able to do thumbnailing on the fly via PHP.

We'd need to set restrictions on image properties (640x480, or the like).

If we store the .psd files, we need to have an expiration period where they roll off, or it could get out of hand.

Just my .02

DOC - Decide on a domain name. PSPong.com?

And some of you graphics guys can do a quick "coming soon" page with graphics. As soon as Doc decides the route we'll take, we can toss it online as a "placeholder" (assuming, of course, that Doc decides to host it with me).

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.

Yeah, I agree. From what I've read, storing them in the db isn't really a good idea. But we could do a file upload via a web page that stores them in a specific folder based on, say, the "game" number.

Just a though. And that might make dynamically thumbnailing them easier. Not sure, as I've not dived into that feature yet.

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.

All good ideas - I don't think anyone was suggesting storing the jpgs in the DB but you could store the initial file name and this would give more flexibility. I'm in favour of timing out the PSDs but leaving the final one - timing out the storage of jpgs is an interesting one I'd quite like to see all the matches stored or we could keep some Hall of Famers. Pos. aim to keep all the images available and see how storage and bandwidth go and switch to plan B?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is a logo - its one for the more graphically able but I had an idea: have PSPong with the vertical bars of the first P and the g as the bats and the o as the ball. Its a little cheesy and we shouldn't let that dictate the colours (black background and flourescent gree text would be a bit of a strain after a while). Any good ideas anyone? Oh I suppose we should wait until we find out if its going to be PSPong or PhotoShopPong (the former gets my vote).

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

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.

sure. I must admit I've never created a production site with the images in a db... so we'll just either put the filename into the db, or name the files in such a way, that we can construct the filename on the fly.
(don't hit me for ever suggesting it. A file system is just another db. albeight a very fast one... and there is some kind of query chache, but I'm not sure it would be up to it.)

Yeah, we should construct the filenames on the fly using a format. Should make for a more streamlined, orderly, file structure.

OK; while I'll take the feedback concerning PhotoShopPong.com vs. PSPong.com under advisement, I already registered the latter, so...

(I always prefer short domain names, if possible, and the 'ppong' at the end of the first one looked odd to me, and easy to misspell, heh.)

http://www.PSPong.com/

I'm going to start a new thread for this topic, and the DNS is already pointing to the Pugzly's server farm, he'll have the server up and running by the time the DNS records percolate around, I hope. We *do* need a logo and a color scheme, so the next stage should be submissions for this concept! I'll grab the one that seems best to me and clean it up into nice pretty vector graphics and make it as a mask for playing around with, and this weekend I'll do a first draft for the technical/functions specification, cool? We can discuss that further once I get the first bits written down. I'll close this thread once I open the next, and add the link!

New thread here: http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum19/HTML/000049.html

Your pal, -doc-



[This message has been edited by DocOzone (edited 11-30-2001).]