Anyone interested in site design?

[Andrew]

I'm not wild about the orange (never been one of my more favorite colors in Web 2.0), but amazing amazing site design, Mark.

I was thinking that the orange would be signifying Tails more than trying to be 2.0.

[Kain]

It being in the first version made/makes me think otherwise, but that's not really that important. More important is how it looks/fits. Thinking of it like that (of it being tails to the rest of the site's Sonic) makes it seem less of an eyesore, but it still kinda clashes in my eyes. Others may disagree and it's more of a distraction than bad color choice or anything.

[Mark the Echidna]

I'm experimenting with different color schemes:

As you guys may have noticed from the image above, I enjoyed Midi's color scheme.

Anyway, I agree with that we should wait and see all the designs. We don't necessarily need to pick only one of them, either... We can pick the best element of each, and create the ultimate life form layout.

Also, I won't mind if mine ends up not being used. I can always recycle it into something new.

[Epon]

Colors should be able to be changed dynamically yo. make it a skin option

[Kain]

I'm actually liking the toned down orange/tan (i.e. Tank), though maybe even a bit more orange than that. Heh, I can be real fickle and nitpicky about colors and not really knowledgeable in the area, so probably best not to trust too much my opinion.

Anyway, I'm interested to see what others come up with, as well.

[Mark the Echidna]

Colors should be able to be changed dynamically yo. make it a skin option

Well, it would be nice, but hadn't we opted for no skin system?

[DimensionWarped]

I like the pure orange most, but I don't know if my opinion counts since orange is probably my second or third favorite color.

[KoE]

I quite liked the orange too.

However everyone perceives colour differently, so its hard to say what would be best overall.

[Midiman]

I'm experimenting with different color schemes:

[qimg]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/MarkEchidna/flavors.jpg[/qimg]

As you guys may have noticed from the image above, I enjoyed Midi's color scheme.

Hahah, at least I got in some way or another

[Mark the Echidna]

Made some massive changes to the bottom part, since I wasn't happy with it. Now it's more like the current SFGHQ, thought I'm not sure if people will like it.

If you're wondering where's the giant orange tab, I've hidden it, since it will appear only when you click on the sections. This way I also save more space for content.

[MikeL]

just have a few different stylesheets to do the skins

to keep track of what stylesheet the user currently is using just use $_REQUEST maybe

it really wouldn't be hard to implement themes if they are done in a way that does not require differing html.

[HeroSublime]

Designing large is in. "Smaller" fonts are a thing of the past for webdesign. Now if only this was made Silverlight, then you'd REALLY be living on the curve of technology.

My only beef with this latest design is that the sprites look stretched out pretty badly. It could just be the res on the screenshot is not scaled correctly, but from what I see it looks very ugly and contrasts the high res text in a bad way.

[1LT Worm]

Mark, please have my babies.

[Spike]

Mark, that is some cool stuff right there. Rep up.

[Epon]

Keep in mind that those sprites on the top-left might look awful on wide screen monitors such as mine (1050 across)

And the entire concept of CSS w/o using images for design is all the content is built on the client's side, thus not wasting any bandwidth. If that is how a skin system is implemented (not awful tables with shitty gradient PNGs everywhere), then I see no problem for using skins. Catch my drift?

[Mark the Echidna]

Keep in mind that those sprites on the top-left might look awful on wide screen monitors such as mine (1050 across)

Due to aspect ratio? I don't really understand, don't the widescreen resolutions have special aspect ratios to keep the pixels square? My monitor is still an old CRT, so I don't really know.

Maybe we can use scale2x.

And the entire concept of CSS w/o using images for design is all the content is built on the client's side, thus not wasting any bandwidth. If that is how a skin system is implemented (not awful tables with shitty gradient PNGs everywhere), then I see no problem for using skins. Catch my drift?

Yeah. But we need some additional spans and divs to achieve all the effects, because we don't have the fancy CSS3 borders yet.

[HeroSublime]

Keep in mind that those sprites on the top-left might look awful on wide screen monitors such as mine (1050 across)

And the entire concept of CSS w/o using images for design is all the content is built on the client's side, thus not wasting any bandwidth. If that is how a skin system is implemented (not awful tables with shitty gradient PNGs everywhere), then I see no problem for using skins. Catch my drift?

RFT(Repped for truth)

[Mark the Echidna]

Also, are we going to use the PNG alpha channel for effects? If so, are we going to do all that nasty workarounds for IE6 users, or are we just going to add conditional comments? Even if we do that, we need to take into consideration IE7's fucked-up color correction.

Here are some stuff (not design-wise) we could also consider:

• Posting news on the website that are not updates, for example: Game progress, demos released, maybe even the best screenshots of the week, from the post your screenshot thread. It would contribute to give the site a more "alive" status. We could choose 2 or 3 members for that.
  
• A SFGHQ store. We could sell t-shirts and mugs with the SFGHQ logo, and maybe with phrases like "SEGA, you're doing it wrong". Not sure about legality.
  
• Show sprite and background listings in tabular form (like Google Image Search results)
  
• Do not zip PNG files. That's just annoying as hell, and useless.
  
• Provide hosting for SFG project websites
  
• Written articles on game design, pixel art, simulating physics, 3d modelling. I would like to give it a shot, even if my English is not as good as I would like it to be. I'm pretty sure many people here would like to give it a try too.
  
• Provide advantages to high repped members. Maybe a "member of the month" panel, maybe posting something about their websites/projects/whatever on the news, maybe showing banners of their choice.
  

[Spike]

These ideas would definatley make the website more interesting.

[Smidge204]

Also, are we going to use the PNG alpha channel for effects? If so, are we going to do all that nasty workarounds for IE6 users, or are we just going to add conditional comments? Even if we do that, we need to take into consideration IE7's fucked-up color correction.

No PNG alphas for just that reason.

[*]Posting news on the website that are not updates, for example

This is what the forums are for.

[*]A SFGHQ store. We could sell t-shirts and mugs with the SFGHQ logo, and maybe with phrases like "SEGA, you're doing it wrong". Not sure about legality.

It's illegal.

[*]Show sprite and background listings in tabular form (like Google Image Search results)

This is a design issue. It makes things a little more difficult for me, but if that's what you really want it's very much possible.

[*]Do not zip PNG files. That's just annoying as hell, and useless.

It's not useless because it helps prevent hotlinking of the images without having to fidget with .htaccess files and other protection methods.

[*]Provide hosting for SFG project websites

This may be doable (technically it's very doable), but it'll come at a (non-monetary) cost for those who take that offer. I'll give some more thought about it. Certainly won't be offered to anyone.

[*]Written articles on game design, pixel art, simulating physics, 3d modelling. I would like to give it a shot, even if my English is not as good as I would like it to be. I'm pretty sure many people here would like to give it a try too.

This is what the R&D forum was supposed to be for. I'm all for this idea if we can scrape together some real content.

[*]Provide advantages to high repped members. Maybe a "member of the month" panel, maybe posting something about their websites/projects/whatever on the news, maybe showing banners of their choice.

Meh. To be brutally honest, the rep system is like one giant circle-jerk. Just about everyone here knows each other already. If the forums were more busy with a larger group of people it may be something to discuss further.

Edit: Worth mentioning, I guess... the "heart" of the new site is pretty much done. That is, the server-side scripts just doa basic SQL query and dump out the data in XML. Client side Javascript then handles all the display, sorting and pagination of the lists. This does a great job of minimizing server load and bandwidth.

AJAX - It's not just for laundry.

=Smidge=

[Guest Shadix]

Smidge: You sure about merchandising SFGHQ specifically being illegal? OCremix has made merchandise for years and they only promote the remixing of commercial game music without expressed consent of the copyright holders.

Anyways, I propose the implementation of a project profile & management system. While hosting the actual game files may be a bit much, we can each have the ability to create a project profile and user profile that is tied to our forum accounts. In these profiles users could upload screenshots and stuff for their game, as well as update it as more info becomes available, sortof of like a game development blog. You could have a field that designates where the download location is and the user can link from offsite for the link to appear on their game profile.

For the user profiles it could expand upon the age old idea of making groups or associations for everyone in the community, and eventually you could be able to database search the users to find the type of person you are looking for.

For example, Sage's would be classified under "Musician" and he could use his user profile as a sort of resume of what he's done.

Or Dami would be "Programmer" and he could keep you posted on his latest programming endeavors.

Through these profiles you could also view all the material X user has submitted to the site, with direct links to any tutorials and whatnot the user has submitted. This also opens up the possibility of submission directly through the site, where Mods on duty can decide what actually makes it on and what's trashed.

[Epon]

Maybe more of a "MySpace"-esque profile page would be better than full out webhosting.

It can be something like "http://epon.sonicfangameshq.com" and in that site, there'd be tabbed pages. "Profile", "Projects", "Contact", "Anal", etc...

Get what I'm saying? It'd all be done via PHP and content would be stored in a SQL table. The user can input markup if they want, but only controlled things like background colors, font color and size, etc... hotlink out to images. That kinda stuff?

[DimensionWarped]

Might be able to get away with things like shirts with the accronym "SFGHQ" on them, but the moment you start using licensed characters to promote the product, you are pretty steeply fucked. Honestly, its probably better not to test the water.

As for the user groups, you'd need it to be rather malleable. Very few people here do just one thing. Hell, Dami and I might both be programmers primarily, but we also do a fair amount of sprite work and even some 3D modeling.

[Slingerland]

It can be something like "http://epon.sonicfangameshq.com" and in that site, there'd be tabbed pages. "Profile", "Projects", "Contact", "Anal", etc...

OK...there needs to be limits on thinking here in some aspects. Remember the SFGHQ Wiki and how much of a "success" that was? SCD had a "MySonic Space," which was totally retarded by the way, and that totally bombed as well.

Can we focus on the core aspects of the site and the designs before moving on to these larger tasks, so that we can actually get something done?

We must fulfill the basic needs of the site first, before we do anything else. Update the image before we update the content.

[Guest Shadix]

I think if the project management system (or "Myspace-esque" profile as Epon puts it) was implemented into the site in a productive way and it was significantly connected to the boards it wouldn't bomb, but yes, perhaps it's too early to be thinking that big considering the huge amount of work already on the table. It probably should however be noted so that the infrastructure is set up for it. (Room in the layout for the features, etc)

Edit:

Rough draft of my layout:

Yeah, there is still some loose trash I haven't done anything with, I plan to do something with monitor icons still, hence why the ring is in the image. Also I'm thinking hexagon Sonic needs to go, the banner is starting to get too heavy.