Possibly maybe sort of back for a bit in Off Topic

ID:24112
 
Dec 12 2006, 11:37 am
Some while back I decided to try abstaining from BYOND on the theory that I'd have more time to focus on work and school, but it's become apparent that this strategy really wasn't doing anything helpful for my mental health. So... time to dust things off a bit.

Not sure how much time I'll actually have for development stuff, but we'll see. Not really sure what I feel like working on either, but I think I will be cracking open Champions again. It's only a year or so late, which compared to my usual standards makes it ahead of schedule.

I find myself debating my original plan to move more interface stuff over to the browser side, though. I had been kind of looking forward to getting all the character creation/viewing/editing interfaces into a similar popup window format, but I'm not sure my web development skills are up to the task. I could get them all into a single on-screen HUD format, but I don't want to give up the popup character view windows; I don't want players to have to replace the game screen with their character sheets every time they want to check something. Going half-and-half with HUD-based creation and popup-based character viewing seems the easiest way to go, but breaks up the presentation a bit.

Then again, I don't really recall anyone ever complaining about the statpanel creation menus; a lot of people seemed to like them, though I really have no idea why. I would like to include retraining features, though, which would probably call for a better creation/editing interface.
#1 Dec 12 2006, 11:44 am
Two button contest.
#2 Dec 12 2006, 11:47 am
Yeah, yeah, I know. I was planning on (re)launching it all proper-like around New Year's. And, y'know. Actually running it this time.
#3 Dec 12 2006, 11:50 am
Game-over! Your score: 2 months!
#4 Dec 12 2006, 11:53 am
Woohoo! Champions!
#5 Dec 12 2006, 12:45 pm
Nice to see you around!
#6 Dec 12 2006, 1:21 pm
Yay! He's back!
#7 Dec 12 2006, 1:38 pm
:D
CoV lives! Hurrah!

Welcome Back, Leftley!
#8 Dec 12 2006, 2:49 pm
Oh no! My arch-nemesis returns to continously outwit me at every turn! (split infinitive, woohoo!)

Great to see you back. =)
#9 Dec 12 2006, 2:58 pm
Good to see you back.

I think convenience and clarity should be the goal, not a focus on pure browser/statpanel driven interface. So far, you have done a good job. Stick with it!
#10 Dec 12 2006, 3:07 pm
Welcome back. :)
#11 Dec 12 2006, 5:13 pm
Possibly maybe sort of welcome back. =)
#12 Dec 12 2006, 8:09 pm
Jmurph wrote:
I think convenience and clarity should be the goal, not a focus on pure browser/statpanel driven interface.

The thing is, the idea behind the focus on the "pure" interface is convenience and clarity; it's clear and convenient to have similar interfaces for similar functions.

The step-by-step statpanel creation does have a nice sense of clarity to it owing to the limited amount of information it conveys at once, but for the same reason it's somewhat lacking in the convenience department. Going through the statpanel menus doesn't give you much feedback on what exactly you're doing.

I think I am going to give the javascript-based popup idea another go (or rather, try taking it all the way through the previous go). I'll have to work on emphasizing the process step-by-step in the popup window, though, trying to duplicate some of the straightforwardness of the statpanel approach; on further reflection it does occur to me that the current window layout, while informative, doesn't really do much to point out what the player is supposed to be doing.
#13 Dec 15 2006, 11:34 am
been getting reports that CoV is broken on the digitalBYOND server- some sort of corrupted resource. might want to make a clean copy available for the kiddies!


welcome back!