Preserved Topic: World's Tallest Digital Building

I don't know if this has been posted here before but I just ran across it so I thought I'd drop a link.

World's Tallest Digital Building

I just wish I would have found it before the construction stopped.

:::11oh1:::

Heh, that's pretty cool. It is too bad they have stopped building. Why not make one of those here at the asylum. Not a tower, but a few floors of cells. Everyone could design their own cells.

Ramasax:

quote:

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Why not make one of those here at the asylum. Not a tower, but a few floors of cells. Everyone could design their own cells.

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Good idea - I'm sure there would be a few people interested in kicking it off.

If people want tips then see:

:FAQ: How do I go about making sprites?

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

That is a good idea.
An actual virtual Asylum,
and you could click on a person's cell
and it would lead you to their profile, or something.


.quotes.

Nifty =)

That would be cool here. I'd be all for the tower concept though. We could do 4 (for the east, west, north and south 'wings' of the asylum.....) if space is an issue....

And it clearly fits in with this:
http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum3/HTML/003793.html

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Someone decide on a grid and I'll be happy to make a little something.

Apart from the tower idea, I seem to remember some kind of village done in the same idea.

Since the tower idea is done, how about a square asylum?
birdsview like:

XXXXXXXXX
X..............X
X..............X
X..............X
X..............X
XXXXXXXXX

That would accomodate for the south,east,north and west wings, and we could easily add new floors when needed (starting out with the corners).

I guess the biggest challenge is figuring out the perspective and the implications that has if we're building both high and wide....

The idea is interresting. As for the perspective we could go for the Zelda: A link to the past style.

The template cells should have some basic walls and doors placed according to the wing in the Asylum, but everything could be remade by the inmates. Or why not simply starting with a 4 doors cell and let the inmates choose to which cell they want to be connect their own one and put a least one door to let others connect to it. ?

We should also decide the resolution of the cells.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

ooo... i think it'd be pretty spiffy. i'd be interested in getting in on this

I guess we could assemble the image in code... That way I could write a grail module that was easily extended with new rooms ;-).

I've never tried this type of "pixel art" before but I'm checking out sprite domain for some ideas now.
I think it would make an interesting project. If needs require I'm sure we could also modify the "Model" to extend underground. to include all the "activities" there too.

I'm down for that...

I'd suggest doing it in 30/30 or 45/45 isometric instead of top down or anything like that...and we really need to decide on one thing, do we go wide, or high...if high we can only stack one on top of the other, and if wide then we can't go up, unless we make it a DHTML or flash page where we can choose to show the various layers or not at the user's discretion.

I would also suggest doing what the above people have done with the 'world's tallest digital building' and provide a template for people to work from, just to everyone's work is the same size and shape and will tesselate properly.

awesome link, thx for sharing
btw i think its a good idead doing some asylum work

Very cool idea!

. . : slicePuzzle

I think it might be quite cool doing it in DHTML/Flash so if we stacked them up into towers you could mouseover one and it would show you the inside as well as the outside.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

How cool! I can't wait to decorate!


Cell 617

I think just wide would be bad. It would turn out as the worlds longest trailerpark...

One way to allow both high and wide is to choose which side one wants to view (e,w,n,s). That would also allow us to play with a bit of surroundings on groundlevel, like gates, fences main entrance etc. The biggest thing we need to figure out from a "political" view is what to do with those corner offices

The default could be the side with the main entrance.

Or mebbe if you coding geniuses could come up with a way to create some routine that creates smaller images of each side when they're updated and give us a 4-split screen showing all wings at once.

I'd love to be a part of this, if you guys don't mind of course, being a n00beh and all.

I was thinking more of doing it wide, but not 'straight-line' wide. Updates only happen when you have a square number and the flash/script/thingamy would arrange them so they form a square (or a diamond since you're looking at it isometrically).

The corner offices would, of course, be reserved for the mad scientists...

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 12-18-2003).]

and (sorry for the double post), if we lay it out in the quare arrangement I suggested, some of the better pixel pushers around here could come up with hallway tiles, so that between each of the cells we can lay out the hallways, having it use a base template of a hallway in the appropriate direction, thne pick a random number and type of people to put in there, as ewll at acessories; carts, shock therapy machines, mops, bowls of pears, etc...things that are very distincly Ozone Asylum, all those little things that have come up over the years that we can define as 'ours'.

How about a sprawling complex with no pre-defined order? Why would an asylum built by the occupants have any structural logic? Lay out a basic templete of the core structure along with the functional asylum items mentioned above and it can be built to suit from there.

Pos. some decisions need to be made or this could end up spinning off at too many angles and ends up coming to nothing (not that that could happen oh no).

Personally I'm in favour of two towers (east and west wing - we don't talk about the north wing) - I doubt it will get too long anyway but two towers could get the abalnce about right.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Whats in the north?

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Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

I've been looking into lots of different isometric goodies as of late, and I had the asylum in mind for some of them, although they were more "chat" based with the ability to build a world/cell using the isometric engine itself. Kinda lke Haboo Hotel meets The Sims. But somehting like this would be much simpler and possibly more fitting for such a talented community.

Anyways, there are actually quite a few projects like this, Roadmaps is one and there?s also a virtual city project that expands in 2 directions.

In creating the "asylum" in isometrics, a lot depends on what we'd want each "block" to be. If we wanted to create the outside walls of the building then the tower concept works fine, but with a little flash trickery it'd be quite easy to create a system where we show the insides of a very large complex. This way the members could create their "cell" and most importantly its contents instead of just two angled outer walls of a tower. Hallways and the outer walls of the asylum could easily be automatically generated and in-between each cell given the tile like nature of isometrics.

Not to mention all the bizarre things we could do when ordering which cells get put where. I'm sure we could also come up with some interesting concepts for expanding in three dimensions (left, right and up!). I mean, if we're going to create a modular graphical representation of the asylum, we does it need to be ordered in a logical manner?

Escher discovered that isometrics was a great tool for creating impossible structures. ? This is the asylum after all.


Just some thoughts.

Although, I echo emps' feelings of this generating a million ideas that manifest into nothing (everyone remember that stor troopers project?). Although, I'd be very keen to help/manage/build the system that peices everything togther as isometrics is something I've been doing a bit of research into as of late.

Can we have a map key like A Link to the Past, also? Like when you were in a bosses castle and you hit select, it would bring you to a floor overview.

I'm not really for an isometric thing. Sorry to preach for my parish but I think some 2D cells would be far more convenient and still allow a lot of creativity ( including impossible perspective effects and what not ). The only imperative would be the resolution of the cell and the position and size of the doors.

If we go in "3D", we could do a map similar to the ones in the castles of Zelda :



But showing in which wing/block/floor of the Asylum we are.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

[This message has been edited by poi (edited 12-19-2003).]

Indeed, although making it isometric would provide for a more graphically rich contributions whilst still maintaining all the same functionality you've mentioned, if not more because we'll have a third dimension to play with rather than just different "levels".

The heart of this project is in the contributions of the artistically inclined members. Yet given it's intrinsic modular nature there do need to be some limitations imposed. Of which I strongly believe that isometrics allow the greatest amount of artistic freedom whilst still providing the capabilities for each contribution to be pieced together through code allowing the display system to be infinitely scalable and possibly even interactive to a certain degree.

I like the pixellated 3d idea you could even use the 'sprites' from that big group picture thingy I saw not too long ago, y'know the one where you hover the mouse over each person to see who they are. IMO the cells should be "bricked over" until you roll the mouse over each cell revealing the person inside making it feel more like an asylum, maybe you could open the doors too and watch people go about their crazy business, ok I just stop with the dreamworld now.

Well drawing in an isometric view is a little more difficult, and I think many isometric-pixel thingy looks the same, I'm not sure it would provide more graphically rich contributions. For sure an isometric view gives a more evident perspertive. The way the cells are stacked in the World's Tallest Digital Building gives little area to the graphists. The Asylum and its inmates deserve more space to express all their inner demons.

Of course we could make map like a tiny tower/corridor with some generic cells labelled with their number and/or inmate's mane that, when clicked, reveal the fullsize cell next to the map.

Whatever we choose I'll push some pixels together and make my cell

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

I think the 2 towers idea is cool. then we could have (x) inmates per floor, and one mad scientist with their own quarters and corner office.

I threw this together from one of the Zelda pics to illustrate what I mean:


-Bigger-


Something along those lines, maybe a little more space for everyone though.

Then when you enter a wing, a simple thumnail gallery of the floors could be shown.



[This message has been edited by Ramasax (edited 12-19-2003).]

I don't see any reason why we can't ultimately have two or more representations of the Asylum but we do have to pick one to work on first. I'm still in favour of the isometric view over the 'Zelda' one for now and as Cameron is enthusiastic then he could go point on this one. I would be interested to hear what mahjqa has to say on this though.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

I like the tower format. Would we be able to make modifications to our cell? Allowing for someone to improve their cell would be a great feature...


[edit] Why dont we talk about the North? Whats there? [/edit]
_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

[This message has been edited by UnknownComic (edited 12-19-2003).]

Yes, much of the work done by various isometric pixel artists does look very similar, but isometric imagery on a whole is a lot more varied, consider; Diablo, The Sims, Age OF Empires II, Fallout etc...

All of these games used an isometric perspective, some tile based (The Sims = Square Tile, Fallout = Hex Tile) and other being more freeform, but on a whole all were set in an isometric perspective. Indeed all of the imagery for those games was also created and rendered in a 3D program but what's to say someone can't construct an isometric line drawing then paint it up as you would any other digital painting.

Additionally, the abundance of isometric pixel art tutorials give the less graphically inclined something to work from.

The structure in which this is all pieced together is probably the biggest debate though. I see several possible options:

1) Two Towers (Outer Walls):
Pretty much exactly the same as the World's Tallest Digital Building project but x 2. -- Only possible variations in contribution sizes would be the height of each section.

2) Two Towers (Inner Walls):
Similar to the above but depicting the inside of each "floor" individually -- the walls are generated by the display program (Flash/DHTML) or by an additional graphic which the member can provide, a default graphic being used if they choose not to. The walls can be hidden/shown in a number of different ways which can be configures by the viewer using the display system. We could even make each floor slightly modular (four iso square blocks make a floor for example) offering more variations in the possible size of a contributions and they way they piece together (Anyone for a game of Jenga?).

3) Sprawling Complex:
Similar to the 2D top-down ideas, rather than having a vertical scrolling tower, It would also be possible to create a display that scrolled both vertically and horizontally (Like almost any 2D Isometric Strategy Game, or Diablo). This way we could create a display similar to a massive floor plan of a single complex (which could include both the west and east wing). The placement of each "cell" could be static (decided when the contribution is made) or dynamic. Outer Walls, corridors and staircases could be dynamically generated to connect each cell in a number of different ways depending on their location within the asylum complex. Additionally, the size of the contributions wouldn't have many limitations (only those imposed by the size of the hallway tiles and the like).

If I've missed any possibly ways of displaying this then please jump in and offer your suggestion.

Of the three, I like number 2 and 3, the latter being my personal choice because it offers the largest flexibility (and could possibly even be made to display as number 2 if we made the contributions fixed sizes) but number 2 would probably be much more feasible and simpler/quicker to develop. Perhaps we could start simple and build features into the system once we have a basic one up and running. It would be interesting to see cell placement (in both the tower and floor plan format) ordered by post count, name or some other silly demographic.

Edit: Yes, being able to alter you cell after you've added it to the asylum would definatly be an option. I can forsee people re-decorating their cell for various holiday seasons or to match with their current sig or latest web project.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-19-2003).]

Shouldn't cell placement be in some sort of cell number order, as opposed to name or post count... (since post count is being tossed in The Grail anyway...)?

This is a heck of a brainstorming session going on...

Only problem there is that leaves a heck of a lot of empty cells. Out of 4256 members, how many will actually create their own distinct cell?

I was saying that the asylum could be magically re-ordered depending on how you wanted to view it.

Given access to the members database, and making the system so that the cells can be placed in any order we want dynamically, then you could select how you wanted it to be built.

Cell order would be easy enough, you'd just have to skip big sections here and there. Although most people got their cell numbers from the way the FAQ Wikki was coded so we'd have to work out a system for allocating them correctly, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

You know, this would be a great opportunity not just to start up another collaborative project here in the Asylum, but to have the masters of this pixel art, mahjqa and so on, to show the less educated people (ie: me) how exactly they go about doing it, in a context and environment conducive to actually getting results out of it

Well...that's all my big words for the day.

If no one has any objections, I'll start building a basic display system for a "two towers" version just after x-mass (am tied up with other projects and family commitments right now).

I'll start up a new thread for this when I begin to draw up the design sketches and the like.

Edit: Oh, yes. Something that will need to be decided on even before I begin thinking about the design is what technology we decide to use for it.

I'd prefer Flash. It's not the best tool for displaying bitmap graphics but I believe it would be better than DHTML. Shockwave would be ideal due to it's robust bitmap capabilties, but it's a sizable plugin with a shrinking user base. Both Shockwave and Flash provide a much more transparent interface to server side scripts than DHTML does and given that flash has an extensive userbase, I think it provides the most benifits with the least ammount of drawbacks.

If anyone has an reasons why we shouldn't use Flash for this project (asside from general, "I don't like flash period" comments), please let me know.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-20-2003).]

Well...I personally don't like flash, but I think it would be perfect for this. Given it's ability to interact with PHP means it can be plugged straight into the grail and we can truly intergrate this into the asylum.

So...2 votes for flash...

any more?

Make that 3.

4

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

flash's all right.
Just holler when you get to the server side side.
Oh, SVG would be nice as well, but oh well, no one has the plugin anyway.

Well, hopefully we can make the server side part of this generic enough (xml) that we could make several different display clients for it if anyone saw the need for such a thing. I would have suggested SVG and Java as possible solutions but I know very little about those technologies.

Ah,,,, the happy gurglings of Mad Scientists at work, don't you just love it?
I have no idea of most of what's said, but that's my loss.
tao

This sounds like a good use for Flash, so another vote here.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

I really dislike Flash... but I really like this concept and want to see it happen regardless of the technology used

. . : slicePuzzle

Why not something like this :



And, I'm really not for Flash. (D)HTML + PHP can do exactly the same job.
EDIT: sorry for the ugliness (?) of the sketch

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

[This message has been edited by poi (edited 12-21-2003).]

i hope no one minds but, i started a faq specifically for pixel art since there wasn't one. :FAQ: Pixel Art

[This message has been edited by Lacuna (edited 12-21-2003).]

oh, that's coming along nicely...good job on the scetch

Indeed, this could be done using a number of different technologies. But having worked with both (although, I'm not on par with you when it comes to DHTML), for what I've currently got in mind I believe flash would be a better choice.

But that's not to say we can't have multiple clients to display this data with. If the backend is created with this in mind then it would be interesting to see different people making different clients to display the data with. After all, having more than one person programming the client side of things is going to be overkill and cause confusion anyhow.

If we can come up with some ideas of how to standardize the backend interface and how all of this data will be stored and related to the members database of TP's Grail asylum, then I don't see how this would cause any problems. Indeed it would be interesting to see a project like this where different technologies use the same data to create different displays. Although, my only fear with this is that by standardising everything to be as flexable as possible the end products made end up being rather "canned" and limited as a result.

To develop a little my argument against Flash I'd say it has ( except MX or MX 2004 ) that little bug when displaying bitmap images that double some lines and disalign (?) the images and make them "pop" when they are moving. Unless you do it by hand, you don't see the URL of the elements your hover in the status bar, neither you can copy the location or open them in another Tab or Window in case you'd like to see several cells at a time.

For the data input interface, the easiest way could be to add a "pixel-cell" field in the "inmate" table.
When an inmate edit his/her profile ( or cell if you prefer ), he/she can download the pixel-cell template ( in a .ZIP in various formats ( .PSD, .GIF, .PNG, ... ) ) and upload/update his/her final pixel-cell image, and voilà.

EDIT: Since it's already the case with the monthly sig contest on the Grail, the pixel-cells could be stored on the Asylum itselft to lower the number of attacks by the Red Cross Monster.

For the front end, we could do something the famous navigation bar where you simply have to move your mouse close to the border of the content area to make it scroll. The scroll would obviously follow the slope of the isometric tiles. The only problem we could encounter is to load the infos of the cells if the user scroll like crazy, but nothing we can't handle. The template cell can be displayed until the pixel-cell / cell number / nickmane are loaded. And when the user do not scroll, nothing forbids us to preload the infos of the sibling cells.

Cheers,

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

[This message has been edited by poi (edited 12-22-2003).]

Ok, I really don't want to turn this into a Flash vs DHTML thread, so I'll be breif. There are ways around all of those issues, but I'd question why you'd want to support some of those things anyhow. I've always been of the belif that you should design for the user, not for the medium.

The bitmap shifting issue only happens when you do motions tweens, if you code the animation and restirct the movement to integers then you simply won't have that problem. As for being able to see the URL -- I was thinking one HTML page would be sufficent regardless of the technology, which means there's no need for such a thing. As for being able to open things in a new window -- I don't see how this has anything to do with the application's primary goals as I see no reason why a user would want this to be displayed in multiple windows period. Even if they did, all they need to do is open an new window and cut-n-paste the URL from the previous browser window, but like I said, I don't see any need for someone to do this.

As for the actualy display, I was approaching this in slightly more of a "tower" format as that's what the majority in here seemed to want, perhaps with several cells per level. Or a more freeform format similar to your sketch but with the cells tiling in 2 directions instead of just one with actual hallways being generated to join them togther where needed. I like your idea, and indeed this would be expressly simple in DHTML, but I think it's a little too linear. Isometrics offer the ability to tile each cell in multiple dimensions and I think it would be a waste to ignore this:



But I really didn't want to be tossing around images at this point. I think there's a lot more to be considered then the technology and the interface for this. I'm also quite tied up with other projects for another week or so and thus can't devote much headspace to thinking this over right now.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-23-2003).]

We do have a lot to do if this is ever going to happen and if it is doable in Flash then I think we should pursue that path for the moment but, if it is possible, it would be worth going the extra mile so that a DHTML interface could be added on at a later date.

I think at the moment we need to focus on the look, etc. - I'd love to hear what mahjqa thinks of this for starters.

Cam: Love the Escher look - is it possible to extend that in various directions though?

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Given that a lot of us come to the Asylum to learn about technologies like DHTML, CSS, javascript, etc. my vote would be to use those same technologies so that this might be an example of what can be done and a learning experience for all involved.

Of course, maybe there are a lot of Flash developers on this forum, so Flash may be appealing. (I'm showing my bias here as I am not a Flash programmer...)

MF: But it isn't an either/or situation - we should be able to do both but to get things moving in one direction I think we need to select one and develop things on that front and then work on adding another interface.

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Looking at the backend...

Since it will be tied in with the grail, this will undoubtably be PHP, and the great thing about using PHP is that we can actually put a number of front ends onto the one backend and let people choose what they want.

I say we draw up a list of specs for the front end, then we give the development of the various mediums (DHTML, Flash, etc) over to different people. Those peole can then recruit the group that will assist them in the development of their front end. Meanwhile, there will be another group of us working on the backend, getting it to output to a common format that all of the various front ends can read (most likely XML).

As my I.T Teacher at high school used to say "Get it working, then make it look good"

Skaarjj, sounds like a plan, but...

First we need to decide on exactly what we want this to accomplish and what we'll need to do that. I'm not talking about just saying, do the back-end with PHP and the frot end with x, y or z. Starting a project by making a decision about the technology before you know exactly what your doing isn't a good way to start. Know the technology helps, but there's still a bit of pen'n'paper work to do if this is going to work well.

If everyone involved has a different concept as to how this will pan out, it'll cause lots of wasted time and people (the developers) will start to loose interest and cut corners. I've seen this happen a lot and would like to avoid it if at all possible.

I'll write up some stuff to get things started over the next few hours and start up a thread in the MS forum under the heading Cellular Asylum.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 12-23-2003).]

quote:

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I've always been of the belif that you should design for the user, not for the medium.

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That's why I'd rather go for DHTML to let the user use all the built in features of the browser ( all the things like showing an URL in the status bar, all the functions in the contextual menu, the Ctrl+click to open a link in a new tab, copy/paste ... ) vanished by Flash.

When I talked about opening several windows, I meant that a visitor could browse the Asylum building a.k.a the front end ( in a page in the vein of the World's Tallest Digital Building ) and wish to see the profile/cell of some inmates ( in a new tab/window ) but keep browsing the Asylum building in case he/she sees another pixel-cell that please his/her eyes and wish to see the profile/cell of that other inmate, and so on...

Add to that that if the user do what you said, that is to open a new window and copy/paste the URL of the Asylum building, he/she'll have to scroll a lot to get back to the place where he/she was in the original window.

As for the visual approach to browse the Asylum building, I did my sketch like a corridor 'coz real asylums are more like corridors ( that's why we talk about east/west wing, no ? ) rather than towers, but I don't really care

Regarding the needs, as I said in my previous post, all we need in the back-end is a text field in the inmates table to store the name of the pixel-cell image uploaded by them ( which will be replaced by cell_number.file_type ( file_type being GIF, PNG, JPG ... ) to avoid name conflicts ). Nothing more, nothing less. The upload process could check the resolution of the new image and decline it if it's to big or saved in an invalid format.

Skaarj: If we follow the advice of your teacher, it's just a matter of few hours to make a working back-end and front-end. Really. The core of this thing is extremely basic ( let the inmates upload a pic. display a list of these pics with a link to their cell/profile ), but that's how we'll make the front end interface that matters. Whatever, I'm all to make the things quick, and don't bear to waste my time. I've wasted enough time at work.

Below are several tests to see how we could stack the pixel-cells :



My preference goes to B1, C1 or D2 because in the others some cells are partially/completely hidden. D2 seems to be the most practical and we could eventually insert some small corridors between the cells, and use the left ones as the west wing, right ones as the east wing, and the middle ones as the Mad Scientists wing.

Cameron: What do you have in mind for the front-end that would require the use of Flash ?

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

*Sigh*? Why would I want to use flash? Why would you want to use DHTML?

These questions could be asked till the cows come home and none of us would end up with a satisfactory answer. You can nit pick at specific features all you want but at the end of that day, as long as the application is functional and achieves it's goals, it really doesn't matter what technology you use. My main arguments for using flash are its stronger animation capabilities and the ability to perform server side calls and database queries without having to load another page, thus we could just load the users profile directly from the application without needing to send them to another page to show that information. Along with a list of other things that would just be a pain to try and support in DHTML.

In all honesty, I shouldn't have asked the question about what technology would be used for the client interface as this just saw people making rash assumption about the final outcome of the project, which is what I wanted to avoid.

quote:

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let the inmates upload a pic. display a list of these pics with a link to their cell/profile

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That's exactly the reason I didn't want to jump in head first. I think this can be a lot more than just that but obviously no one agrees with me and I really don't have the time nor the energy to argue this right now so go ahead. I have plenty of other things to do anyhow.

quote:

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*Sigh*? Why would I want to use flash? Why would you want to use DHTML?

These questions could be asked till the cows come home and none of us would end up with a satisfactory answer.

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I didn't meant to tease, but wanted to hear how you see the front-end to think that Flash is more appropriate than DHTML. What do you wish to animate, and how ?

Remote scripting or writing a new <script> tag is common place. It's not a surprise but I tend to think that unless what you wanna do with Flash is impossible or source of a lot of headache to do in DHTML, you must do it in DHTML to keep all the built-in functionnalities of the browsers the users are used to use ( remind me to use the word "use" less in 2004 ).

I hope you, and some other inmates , could take some time to explain what you see for the whole thing.
Till then, have a Merry Christmas.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

ok...besides the beytter animation features and such, another argument the (in my opinion) puts flash over DHTML in this discussion? Flash is equally supported (almost) across the board. When you do something in flahs, it works the same whether it's in IE, netscape, mozilla, etc. OYu know if it works in one it's going to work in the other. DHTML on the other hand doesn't work like this. Unfortunatly

I'm still unsure what the discussion is over really - Cameron has offered to give it a shot and if it works out we can add a DHTML interface. As I said:

quote:

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But it isn't an either/or situation

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What we really need now are examples of floorplans, etc. to get an idea of the range of possibilities (we already have some but lets see some more).

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

I am with Emps on this one. Flash or DHTML doesn't matter. Make a robust backend that will be extendable into a multitude of front ends, and then design your front end with your favorite tool. Just make sure to stay away from hard coding the data into the front end application. I am under the impression the Flash has the excellent ability of interworking with PHP, as do most web formats. Neither flash nor dhtml (is it even called that anymore? EMCAScript or something?) is completely supported. So work on making a good PHP backend (flash can link to php can't it?) and publish the API, we will have no problems modifying it to fit the individual needs.

-Dan-

WM: Agreed.

quote:

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flash can link to php can't it?

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Yep in a multitude of ways (XML, remoting or just loading text strings).

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Emps

The Emperor dot org

Another thought that could tie into this would be to attach a chart to each room with the resident of the cells 'diagnosis' along with comments left by other doctors or wandering inmates. Each cell could have its own chart with some autobiographical and external info, dosages, pictures, etc.

#cough#

#cough# indeed. So tell me people...are we agreed on PHP as the backend for this? If we are we can start to nominate people to lead the various working groups for the different elements: backend IDE, flash frontend, DHTML frontend, overall design concepts and so on and those people can then get on with recruiting their groups to help them.

So...are we agreed?