Charas-Project

Off-Topic => All of all! => Topic started by: DragonBlaze on March 21, 2013, 04:51:39 AM

Title: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 21, 2013, 04:51:39 AM
Hey Charas. As many of you have noticed, Charas has died down and lost it's mojo over the past many years. Rm2k/3 is 10 years old now, and replaced by new makers or simply by user friendly game engines such as XNA. If we want our site to thrive again, we need to update not only the look and feel, but the overall site as well. Instead of just supporting a 10 year old maker, let's offer tools, graphics, and advice for current game developers.

It looks like the powers that be (admins) will allow me to redesign and code up a new charas. This thread is meant to be a brainstorm of what we want the new charas to look like and what features we would like to add. I have a career designing enterprise websites, plus lots of experience with HTML5, CSS3, and webGL, so chances are, if you guys have an awesome idea, we can bring it to life (IE7 and below are exempt, those browsers are evil).

I'll pose my proposed ideas in this post, and I will also try to add all of your ideas (New things to add, Things to change, and things we need to remain the same) to this post as well, so we can easily see everyone's ideas.

-Last updated March 22nd, 1:00pm PST

New Things to Add:

- Support for new makers, as well as for games coded in real languages such as xbox games coded in XNA, flash games, Java games, etc. To support these other makers/engines, we need to add sections to our resources and generators to support more makers as well as custom formats/sizes/etc. Changes to the makers will take a bit of time, but image processing to allow for these extra operations is doable. We can simply start with added sections for graphics and content for other makers/engines.

- Community driven tutorials/support/guides. Wouldn't it be cool if we had an organized and searchable section for tutorials and guides for game development? Let's build a community that will support game makers to help produce the next great indie games.

- Individual Game/Project section on the main site: Wouldn't it be great if we each could create our own page for the games we're developing (in any maker)? This could be in a new section on the hope page called "Community Games". Any registered user could create, update, or delete a page for their game. One the page, their would be separate tabs  for Overview, Characters, Screen Shots, Downloads, and possibly a few more. You could also link this page to a forum thread for discussion as well as have an area to request/offer help for the project. These games could be searched through based on popularity (up/down votes), name, maker, user, date, etc.

- Have some sort of layout skin selector that includes "Classic Charas" as an option, for those of us who are still in love with the ol' blue-on-blue.

-Some advanced user information stuff, like an online/offline indicator next to the user's posts, a friends zone thing to have private group discussions or whatever, and perhaps some kind of system for showing experienced users/friendly folks/sarcastic smartasses/etc. for the less active users to know who to go to for what? If possible, that last part would be something you could vote towards non-staff user badges on their profile page. Enough people think you're the bomb? "The Bomb" badge is now active.

- Main boards for a main branch of game development. A main board for PROGRAMMING (with the above suggested subboards), for ART (Pixel, 3D Modelling, music, sound etc) and perhaps even a board for DESIGN (level, character and world design, how stuff relates to each other as well as story and setting).

- Example projects, this can be part of the tutorial section mentioned before. Deliver the source code so that people can look into it because that really makes people learn new stuff.

- Contests, I always liked the idea of contests and they're a good way to get a community to work.

- Team Projects. I mean, get a team together here and make a game.

- I'd say go as far as make it not a RPG Maker forum with game development on the side, but a Game Developer forum with boards for the major game development environments including and not limited to XNA, Unity, AS3, MonoGame, GameMaker and of coure RPGMaker.


Things to Change:

- The layout/theme: I've been hanging out with my company's experience design folks for too long. Lets be honest, this is the classic chars look, but it is really outdated. We need a refresh of the theme while at the same time keeping true to the good old charas charm. If anyone has ideas for what the theme should look like, feel free to come up with some sort of moch up (image or something else), and I'll be able to code it up. I'll be able to come up with new themes on my own, but I bet the community can come up with something even better :)

- Profile Options (specifically avatars): Charas probably has the strictest avatars when it comes to size and file type. Let's make this, and a few other things, more user friendly.

- Anything related to game making on the forums (or the site as a whole, why not?) should be divided up based on the program the game is developed with (seems obvious enough, right?).

-A really small thing, but please do something about the broken rank images.



Things to Remove:

- Can we please do something (anything!) about the flood of birthdays? I'm at the point where I'd vote a removal of the birthday tracker entirely based on how crazy it is. / Also, we should probably remove the birthday board, it was big in the past to write birthday threads but we're not using it.

- Those goddamn verifications, do we really need 7? Just do one re-captcha, not the annoying one now but the readable ones. Or hell, add a slider you have to slide from left to right, that keeps the bots out.



General Feedback:

- People are very fond of the classic charas look :)



BTW: Once we complete the overhaul, or at least make significant changes, I plan to advertise charas on Google and Facebook. Advertising is surprisingly cheap and effective if done right. So we should hopefully see a new flow of members when it's all done.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on March 21, 2013, 06:14:48 AM
First thing: Have some sort of layout skin selector that includes "Classic Charas" as an option, for those of us who are still in love with the ol' blue-on-blue.

Second thing: Anything related to game making on the forums (or the site as a whole, why not?) should be divided up based on the program the game is developed with (seems obvious enough, right?).

Third thing: Can we please do something (anything!) about the flood of birthdays? I'm at the point where I'd vote a removal of the birthday tracker entirely based on how crazy it is.

Fourth thing: Some advanced user information stuff, like an online/offline indicator next to the user's posts, a friends zone thing to have private group discussions or whatever, and perhaps some kind of system for showing experienced users/friendly folks/sarcastic smartasses/etc. for the less active users to know who to go to for what? If possible, that last part would be something you could vote towards non-staff user badges on their profile page. Enough people think you're the bomb? "The Bomb" badge is now active.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 21, 2013, 07:41:11 AM
New Things to Add:
- Support for new makers, as well as for games coded in real languages such as xbox games coded in XNA, flash games, Java games, etc. To support these other makers/engines, we need to add sections to our resources and generators to support more makers as well as custom formats/sizes/etc. Changes to the makers will take a bit of time, but image processing to allow for these extra operations is doable. We can simply start with added sections for graphics and content for other makers/engines.
If anyone knows how to accomplish this, I'm on.

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- Community driven tutorials/support/guides. Wouldn't it be cool if we had an organized and searchable section for tutorials and guides for game development? Let's build a community that will support game makers to help produce the next great indie games.
Should be divide them into tutorial, support and guides or just mash it all together? I'm thinking that tutorials are pretty straightforward, explaining in detail how to achieve this feature by following it. Support to be more general advice like Sai's "things not to do in boss battles" and that thing about character creation. While guides are more... I donno, the same thing as a tutorial I guess. The one thing I would be looking for when it comes to tutorials would be "How to make RPGM VX/Ace look like RPGM2k3 in graphic and battle style"

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- Individual Game/Project section on the main site: Wouldn't it be great if we each could create our own page for the games we're developing (in any maker)? This could be in a new section on the hope page called "Community Games". Any registered user could create, update, or delete a page for their game. One the page, their would be separate tabs  for Overview, Characters, Screen Shots, Downloads, and possibly a few more. You could also link this page to a forum thread for discussion as well as have an area to request/offer help for the project. These games could be searched through based on popularity (up/down votes), name, maker, user, date, etc.
Sounds like a good idea, would it be possible for the forum to link to a random "page" from that section or swap around every day/week? That would be kinda cool

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Things to Change:
- The layout/theme: I've been hanging out with my company's experience design folks for too long. Lets be honest, this is the classic chars look, but it is really outdated. We need a refresh of the theme while at the same time keeping true to the good old charas charm. If anyone has ideas for what the theme should look like, feel free to come up with some sort of moch up (image or something else), and I'll be able to code it up. I'll be able to come up with new themes on my own, but I bet the community can come up with something even better :)
I will always love the classic look, reminds me of a game. Like a NES game or a codec conversation.
Suggestions for another layout.... I'm thinking blue, black and white, perhaps black text, mostly blue background white details. Add some neat looking borders.
Or maybe make it all retro with dramatized pixels at some borders and just go for a really neat old school look.
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- Profile Options (specifically avatars): Charas probably has the strictest avatars when it comes to size and file type. Let's make this, and a few other things, more user friendly.
We still have those restriction? I thought they were lost some time back, have a slight memory of telling some newbie to remove or change the avatar.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on March 21, 2013, 07:51:09 AM
A really small thing, but please do something about the broken rank images.

Second thing: Anything related to game making on the forums (or the site as a whole, why not?) should be divided up based on the program the game is developed with (seems obvious enough, right?).

Or just have one project board and we won't have to have a shitload of sub-boards bloating everything. For me at least I'm more interested in the game than what it's being made in.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 21, 2013, 11:05:52 AM
A really small thing, but please do something about the broken rank images.

What broken rank images?

Also, we should probably remove the birthday board, it was big in the past to write birthday threads but we're not using it.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on March 21, 2013, 11:29:02 AM
What broken rank images?

These (http://i.imgur.com/lMgbB6x.png), or at least I'm assuming it's an image of your rank. Whatever it's suppose to be it's broken though.

Edit: They apparently don't show up in firefox. I'm using chrome.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 21, 2013, 12:00:13 PM
Edit: They apparently don't show up in firefox. I'm using chrome.

That's why I never noticed it then. Using FF
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ellie-is on March 21, 2013, 04:49:08 PM
...I never noticed that the image ranks were broken, but, huh, they were supposed to be showing up.

As for the Birthdays, I agree. I could probably get rid of that section right now, but I'll wait a bit more. Mostly because I just woke up.
The actual birthday board should go, too, once changes start happening. It's not that important, and simplicity is good. The less boards, the better.


As for the new theme, I always thought we'd look nice in a lighter, less saturated blue.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 21, 2013, 05:03:45 PM
The list of changes has been updated in first post.


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If anyone knows how to accomplish this, I'm on.

I can make the changes to the generators, though that will be one of the more time consuming projects, so it will most likely be in the later stages of the overhaul.

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Should be divide them into tutorial, support and guides or just mash it all together? I'm thinking that tutorials are pretty straightforward, explaining in detail how to achieve this feature by following it. Support to be more general advice like Sai's "things not to do in boss battles" and that thing about character creation. While guides are more... I donno, the same thing as a tutorial I guess. The one thing I would be looking for when it comes to tutorials would be "How to make RPGM VX/Ace look like RPGM2k3 in graphic and battle style"
We can play around with the idea, most likely we wouldn't have 3 separate sections for these, support will most likely just be a section in the forums. When I think of tutorials, I think of how-to instructions such as "how to create a custom battle system", when I think of guides, I think of advice instructions such as "Things not to do in boss battles". We could name the sections whatever we want though, and we could separate tutorials and guides if people feel it would be best. 

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Sounds like a good idea, would it be possible for the forum to link to a random "page" from that section or swap around every day/week? That would be kinda cool
Great idea! (and yes, it is possible)

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We still have those restriction? I thought they were lost some time back, have a slight memory of telling some newbie to remove or change the avatar.
I was having trouble selecting any avatar besides this old one lol, so that's why I brought it up.


When it comes to different sections for different makers and such, I feel that we should separate them, but not a new section for every maker. For example, we could put all rpg maker games in one section, all other makers in another section, and all coded games in a third section, or something along those lines.

It appears that everyone really likes the current charas layout, so I'll have an option to select the classic theme. For a second, new theme, I feel that we need to have a clear separation of posts from other posts, posts from background, and in general just make sure sections are easily distinguishable. It is usually best practice to have either a light theme for the background, or have a dark background with a light themed content boxes. I'll tinker around with charas css style on my local browser to try to make some of these changes, and post screenshots of the results.


Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 21, 2013, 08:36:35 PM
The old layout was a bit more efficient since every other post came in a different shade of blue. The one used for all posts is the darker version, there used to be a lighter that came inbetween, so there was a clear distinction when a post ended.

I suppose I'm just nostalgic about the colours. If it would be possible to create the same kind of feel with less eyehurt it would probably do wonders.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: drenrin2120 on March 21, 2013, 09:21:10 PM
ill read the whole first post later, on the subject of formatting, i still feel that at most the old layout should be an option. if not possible we need to embrace a newer better format.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Fisherson on March 21, 2013, 11:07:08 PM
Quote
- The layout/theme: I've been hanging out with my company's experience design folks for too long. Lets be honest, this is the classic chars look, but it is really outdated. We need a refresh of the theme while at the same time keeping true to the good old charas charm.

I must admit I have been confused several times. I keep thinking a posters post was their signiture or vice verse when they get really piled up. ^^; Though keeping that in mind....If any of you even so much as a look the wrong way at that banner I'll destroy you completely. >-< It's the first, as far as I know, banner to have me on it. I'd love to find out who did it and thank them personally. I mean it surprised the heck out of me when I got back. o.o
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 21, 2013, 11:11:10 PM
I'd love to find out who did it and thank them personally.

Ed
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 21, 2013, 11:53:34 PM
I must admit I have been confused several times. I keep thinking a posters post was their signiture or vice verse when they get really piled up. ^^; Though keeping that in mind....If any of you even so much as a look the wrong way at that banner I'll destroy you completely. >-< It's the first, as far as I know, banner to have me on it. I'd love to find out who did it and thank them personally. I mean it surprised the heck out of me when I got back. o.o

What if we create a new banner with you in it as well? Ideally we'd have a not-so-tiny banner lol
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: A Forgotten Legend on March 22, 2013, 03:32:53 AM
Cool.  I would say more but I'm more interested to see what everyone else is thinking.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 22, 2013, 04:39:44 AM
Cool.  I would say more but I'm more interested to see what everyone else is thinking.

That's not the idea of a brainstorm!
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on March 22, 2013, 07:35:07 AM
How about a section on the main page to share scripts for the later RPG makers and Unity3D and maybe just code snippets in general.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Dr. Ace on March 22, 2013, 09:32:51 AM
let's offer tools, graphics, and advice for current game developers

I'd say go as far as make it not a RPG Maker forum with game development on the side, but a Game Developer forum with boards for the major game development environments including and not limited to XNA, Unity, AS3, MonoGame, GameMaker and of coure RPGMaker.

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Support for new makers, as well as for games coded in real languages such as xbox games coded in XNA, flash games, Java games

I suggest revamp the whole complete resources to be less RPG Maker 2k and 2k3 specific. Keep the stuff on it for sure, because this site has the biggest classic RPG art collection I've seen so far, but reorganise it to allow for more styles of art, perhaps even already coded scripts for Unity or coded classes for other languages.

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Community driven tutorials/support/guides.

Definitely a big plus, tutorials and guides will certainly help with luring outsides into the community. Again, think big and don't limit it RPG Maker. I'm pretty sure a lot of users (Momeka and myself included) that will gladly help with tutorials.

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Individual Game/Project section on the main site

One of the easiest way to do this would be, in my best bet, a wiki section on the site. This way our users can add their projects as a new wiki page and easily edit it.

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layout skin selector that includes "Classic Charas"

Do this, please do this. I want CLASSIC classic Charas, 2005 - 2009 era Charas. The current skin is really difficult on my eyes (and I see like a hawk).

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Some advanced user information stuff

Not mandatory but would make it more interesting and I've seen it on a lot of different sites.

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should be divided up based on the program the game is developed with

Program, runtime environment or language (or all). Wouldn't hurt to have a separate sections of C# next to Unity and XNA, or C++ next to UDK, because it can vary a lot depending on that. (Unity even supports Javascript and Boo for example).

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birthdays

Kill it with fire, it's useless and clogs up too much space.

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bigger and different banner

Yes.

-----

Besides this, some ideas of my own.

Idea #1: Main boards for a main branch of game development. A main board for PROGRAMMING (with the above suggested subboards), for ART (Pixel, 3D Modelling, music, sound etc) and perhaps even a board for DESIGN (level, character and world design, how stuff relates to each other as well as story and setting).

Idea #2: Example projects, this can be part of the tutorial section mentioned before. Deliver the source code so that people can look into it because that really makes people learn new stuff.

Idea #3: Contests, I always liked the idea of contests and they're a good way to get a community to work.

Idea #4: Team Projects. I mean, get a team together here and make a game.

Idea #5: Those goddamn verifications, do we really need 7? Just do one re-captcha, not the annoying one now but the readable ones. Or hell, add a slider you have to slide from left to right, that keeps the bots out.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ellie-is on March 22, 2013, 05:21:20 PM
We have a wiki, but it sucks and is not what a wiki should be at all. I like DB's idea of being able to create a project page, though. It's not a simple task, but if he says he can do it, great.

As for the verification. We were having some REAL bad issues with bots. Nothing seemed to fix that. So I changed the number of verifications to something outrageous, and, well, it worked. Not really the best method, but if anybody knows a not so invasive way of keeping bots out...
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Fisherson on March 22, 2013, 05:41:30 PM
Ed

TuT Ofcourse it was. Gosh I miss his crazyness.

What if we create a new banner with you in it as well? Ideally we'd have a not-so-tiny banner lol

=D Then I would be less zappy and more helpful. Well as helpful as I can be not even knowign the first thing about web coding other than it uses HTML and I mostly played chess in those classes. ^^;
Didn't help I was still in my "I don't need complex code to make games" era. To be fair I did learn to make two awesome systems by not wanting to use complex code but now I regret it as I lost those systems when I first
upgraded my computer OS and I can't help other than suggest things and sit on the sidelines. -_-;
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 22, 2013, 07:53:25 PM
Great ideas Ace! I'll add them to the list :)

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I'd say go as far as make it not a RPG Maker forum with game development on the side, but a Game Developer forum with boards for the major game development environments including and not limited to XNA, Unity, AS3, MonoGame, GameMaker and of coure RPGMaker.

Yes! :)

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We have a wiki, but it sucks and is not what a wiki should be at all. I like DB's idea of being able to create a project page, though. It's not a simple task, but if he says he can do it, great.

Should be easy enough :p In a nutshell, when you type or link to a page in the format charas-project.net/projects/?projectId=someId, the server will look in the database project table to see if someId exists, if it does, pull the projects info (text, creator(s), images, etc) and plug the values into a standard html/css project template, and there you go lol

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As for the verification. We were having some REAL bad issues with bots. Nothing seemed to fix that. So I changed the number of verifications to something outrageous, and, well, it worked. Not really the best method, but if anybody knows a not so invasive way of keeping bots out...

I should be able to make it a bit better, but I'm not too familiar with working with captchas. My company mainly uses the method "we'll call/text you with a confirmation code to enter", but that method won't work for charas. I can do some research and see if I can come up with something better.


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=D Then I would be less zappy and more helpful. Well as helpful as I can be not even knowign the first thing about web coding other than it uses HTML and I mostly played chess in those classes. ^^;
Didn't help I was still in my "I don't need complex code to make games" era. To be fair I did learn to make two awesome systems by not wanting to use complex code but now I regret it as I lost those systems when I first
upgraded my computer OS and I can't help other than suggest things and sit on the sidelines. -_-;

No worries, just ideas and feedback help tremendously! Otherwise I could spend all these hours coding up something, only for people not to like it or want it done completely differently, which would be a huge waste of time for me. If we can be fairly confident that we're on the right track, it will save lot's of time and work.

BTW, I probably won't use html anyway (maybe a few lines), it'll be mainly in javascript (jQuery and ExtJs) and PHP with a dash of CSS for styling.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: fruckert on March 24, 2013, 05:50:09 AM
This is a pretty small detail that I doubt many people are aware is even a feature of Charas, but our RSS feed SUCKS.
It's limited to five posts, which considering how often we talk is...stupid.
Could you make it, like, not suck?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 24, 2013, 08:52:05 AM
This is a pretty small detail that I doubt many people are aware is even a feature of Charas, but our RSS feed SUCKS.
It's limited to five posts, which considering how often we talk is...stupid.
Could you make it, like, not suck?

Usually when I think of RSS feed, I think of a news feed or something, but I am unsure of how charas handles this right now. Adding additional RSS feeds should be easy, but I'm curious on how/where it is being used right now and how we can improve it. If we can identify how we can can improve our capabilities in this area, I will do my best to my best to make it happen. Can you give any examples of how you would like it to work?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on March 24, 2013, 03:58:05 PM
Different background colours for alternating posts.
I think we had it at one stage, but now we don't, and it all blurs into one mess.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on March 24, 2013, 06:51:37 PM
Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: fruckert on March 24, 2013, 10:03:11 PM
Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!
Cue everybody making their post backgrounds fuchsia.

Different background colours for alternating posts.
I think we had it at one stage, but now we don't, and it all blurs into one mess.
Yup, we did!
It was going to be in the redeux theme that I was working on, but that didn't really pan out because I know about as much PHP as an insufficient metaphor.
Also, my CSS isn't that fantastic.

ed: BTW, everybody who's asking for the old theme: it still exists!
It's just that if you change to it, a bunch of things are broke and you can't switch back.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 25, 2013, 12:17:50 AM
Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!

Nooooooooooooo!

Chrome has this nifty feature where you can modify your local cache of a site's css file and you can see the changes in real time, so I'm tinkering with the style right now, it's fun :)
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Fisherson on March 25, 2013, 05:17:46 PM
It occurs to me something that that defiantly needs to be done: The Music section in the Resources. It needs to have sperate categories. Ya now. MP3's, Midi's and Wav files. This occured to me while I was a sleep oddly.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Meiscool on March 25, 2013, 07:53:48 PM
The resources section in general needs a quality makeover. However, that should be lower on the priority list.
Contests... I came back and did some, and I saw a few other members tried some too, but after the first two contests no interest was shown. A lot of the contests that fail are set up to fail (make your own game competition, etc), but some take little to no effect and still go nowhere (make an avatar, etc.).
I wouldn't mind doing some tutorials on how I do my graphics in games, but I don't think anyone would get much use out of them.
TBH, one key reason I've not worked on my game much in the past month is because I know most people here won't try it. I'm just as guilty of this though when it comes to the games of others.
I guess what I'm trying to say... is that there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life. IF I get people to say otherwise I'll try my part as contest mod to kick some life back into this place. I know these changes are geared towards attracting more people, but just because you change your country doesn't mean you've got a bigger spot on the map. I feel discouraged overall.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 25, 2013, 08:32:50 PM
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I guess what I'm trying to say... is that there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life. IF I get people to say otherwise I'll try my part as contest mod to kick some life back into this place. I know these changes are geared towards attracting more people, but just because you change your country doesn't mean you've got a bigger spot on the map. I feel discouraged overall.

There is no guarantee that we will bring the site back to life, but a site overhaul to make the site more appealing as well as an advertising campaign to get more people in the door has a good chance to make this place a little more lively again.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on March 26, 2013, 01:35:58 AM
there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life.
13 people in this thread isn't a bad start.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on March 26, 2013, 06:47:55 AM
I'd say it is alive. But if we manage to get guests to be more inclined to join us because of a pretty layout and other neato features.  That could change. I'm not extecting the 1500 member activity like back in the days, but some need blood could be nice, this incest is killing our chocobos.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Grandy on March 31, 2013, 05:06:32 PM
My (very late) 2 cents

First thing; we must support more than just RPG Maker. JRPGs simply lost popularity in the last few years, and especially 2D ones. I think Charas could get more people if we became a game-making forum in general.


Secondly, we are far too self-centered. It was okay in the past because we already had a huge userbase, but that is not teh case anymore. Look up to our banner, what you see? The banner countins charasets and facesets of our own characters, and worse, of people that do not even fequent anymore. It is sintomatic of a problem we have; we focus too much into being Charas, instead of focusing on what charas should be. As a userbase, we balieve *we* should be Charas, and that is why *we* are on the banner. It is offputting for newcomers, because we seem like a closed group. You'll also notice that a good chunk of signatures, etc, are just in-jokes that newcomers wouldn't get.

The layout, as people said, is really outdated I think we could keep the blue, just not *this* blue. I personally believe that a sky-blue theme would fit. Or maybe it would be too bland, just as this current blue is too bland. I see other backgrounds, for example the minecraft forums;  and you may notice that it is not bland not just because there are different details like the sky on the top and lava on the bottom, but also because instead of being just one tone of grey, it has small variations. Same for http://thatguywiththeglasses.com; (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com;) even though most of the background *seems* monotonic, there is some shading going around. Same for the steam user forums http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=80, (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=80,) where you can see it starts lighter and goes darker. Charas however is monotonic to the core; there is literaly just one shade of blue all over it, without variations at all.


I also think that visually, we would benefit more for a faux-retro theme, since that is what is associated with indie gaming (and thus with game-making in general). We don't need to go full 8-bit for everything, though, but, you know, have it there somewhere. Perhaps change the bland paper files

Also, notiuce how most of the smileys on the top are not only generic, but also have white adges around them? That just screams anti-professionalism. Same for that black line cutting the charaset on the opening of the page.

The forum layout of our forums is also VERY user-unfriendly; there are many instances of black text on dark background, and I myself always get confused wether the "next" buttom means "next topic" or "next page of this topic", or wether the "quote" buttom is for quoting the person below it or above it, or where the posts end and the signatures begin.

We also could use some actual buttoms that lead to the generators, instead of just text. They were, after all, the reason the forum was created.

Speaking of the generators, know what needs some MASSIVE overhaul? Them.

Look at this;

http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php (http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php)

LOOK AT IT


Do you see the question marks animated gifs? Do you SEE that gif? That sort of gif just tells you "I am a website created in the 90s and am stuck in the 90s"

Even if we do not update the generators themselves (which we really should, btw), we should at the very least change their layout.



Now, how can we make all of this better, I really don't know. I have a few friends that are design students, and I can ask them their opinion on it.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on March 31, 2013, 11:11:42 PM
You make a lot of good points Grandy.

Quote
The layout, as people said, is really outdated I think we could keep the blue, just not *this* blue. I personally believe that a sky-blue theme would fit. Or maybe it would be too bland, just as this current blue is too bland. I see other backgrounds, for example the minecraft forums;  and you may notice that it is not bland not just because there are different details like the sky on the top and lava on the bottom, but also because instead of being just one tone of grey, it has small variations. Same for http://thatguywiththeglasses.com; (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com;) even though most of the background *seems* monotonic, there is some shading going around. Same for the steam user forums http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=80, (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=80,) where you can see it starts lighter and goes darker. Charas however is monotonic to the core; there is literaly just one shade of blue all over it, without variations at all.

The layout I'm currently working on still uses the charas dark blue as a background, but instead of using a solid color, I'm designing a graphic-y background image to display. The background image is static and won't scroll with the rest of the page. The actual bulk of content on the page is displayed on semi-transparent white panels. The panel headers, page header, and other items use a similar blue to what we have now, but with a more metallic modern feel. I saw a site that did something a layout like this an it look really slick, I cannot remember which site it was though... Point is that I'm trying to keep the charas feel, but with a user-friendly, sleek, and modern feel.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Meiscool on April 01, 2013, 04:50:53 AM
^sounds good to me^
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 01, 2013, 06:03:53 AM
Grandy's right, the banners should just be pictures of me
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Grandy on April 01, 2013, 11:15:02 AM
Razor's right
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on April 01, 2013, 04:12:17 PM
The layout I'm currently working on still uses the charas dark blue as a background, but instead of using a solid color, I'm designing a graphic-y background image to display. The background image is static and won't scroll with the rest of the page. The actual bulk of content on the page is displayed on semi-transparent white panels. The panel headers, page header, and other items use a similar blue to what we have now, but with a more metallic modern feel. I saw a site that did something a layout like this an it look really slick, I cannot remember which site it was though... Point is that I'm trying to keep the charas feel, but with a user-friendly, sleek, and modern feel.

That sounds awesome.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: fruckert on April 06, 2013, 07:36:32 PM
dees guy (http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28691.0) made me realize that it's impossible to navigate to the Charas home page from the forums.
That's kinda stupid.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on April 06, 2013, 08:28:54 PM
We didn't get members back in the day by being nice to them. Quite the contrary: When I joined, everyone was a dick to me and I thought "if I can rise up through the ranks so they like me, that'd be awesome!"  Trouble is we don't have the right sort of  authoratative dicks. At the time it was people like Darkfox, Ghostclown and Carmen.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on April 06, 2013, 09:27:24 PM
I can be authoritative!

I mean, I'm too busy being more the lenient father figure who lets the kids eat ice cream for dinner and stay up way past their bed times, but I can totally put my foot down!
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on April 06, 2013, 09:35:34 PM
I'll do it.

Next new member won't get eaten. They'll get "YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR CHARAASSSSS! *shakes head so cheeks wobble uncontrollably and spit flies everywhere*
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on April 07, 2013, 02:21:26 AM
I'll do it.

Next new member won't get eaten. They'll get "YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR CHARAASSSSS! *shakes head so cheeks wobble uncontrollably and spit flies everywhere*

Posts like this make me wish Charas had a "like" feature...
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Cerebus on April 07, 2013, 05:19:32 PM
We didn't get members back in the day by being nice to them. Quite the contrary: When I joined, everyone was a dick to me and I thought "if I can rise up through the ranks so they like me, that'd be awesome!"  Trouble is we don't have the right sort of  authoratative dicks. At the time it was people like Darkfox, Ghostclown and Carmen.

But we could take it. Can today's youth do?

I could be your authoritative dick. I remember back in the day when drama occurred with staff strictness and such, I seemed to be one of the few who thought staff weren't really strict, and one of the very few who didn't dislike carmen and Ghostclown's strictness.
Many people also disapproved my point of view on post deleting and stuff, since they thought it wasn't a necessary measure and blah blah.
But then again... Back then, we did have a good amount of members and stuff, so more modship was needed. Now, was I to be the fascist mod and stuff, I wouldn't have much of an impact wand would just be ignored, especially considering everyone but me is already a mod...

I miss coloured names, too...
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: SaiKar on April 08, 2013, 09:11:50 PM
We didn't get members back in the day by being nice to them. Quite the contrary: When I joined, everyone was a dick to me and I thought "if I can rise up through the ranks so they like me, that'd be awesome!"  Trouble is we don't have the right sort of  authoratative dicks. At the time it was people like Darkfox, Ghostclown and Carmen.
Considering the near constant stream of people near-begging me to remove Carmen and Ghostclown, I'm not sure your trial by fire stance was very widespread among the user base at the time.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Alex on April 10, 2013, 11:34:21 PM
Sorry for jumping in so late, I had been faaaaaar away from home for a couple weeks.
Really I have not much to add now. But surely I have to pay full support to this thread, some posts really reminds the goold old days!

For the time being, the only thing I can do is to keep the hosting up and running. We already have a decent hosting plan which should guarantee some server-power.
Considering our current traffic and ranking, the banners we have around the site are now fully paying for it. But if some extra traffic will start coming in, in future we could reduce banner's presence with no problems, or increase to a more powerful machine if needed.

About updates, a thing I miss here is some kinf of color alternation on forum posts: the username on the left is really the only thing to determine a new post begins, but it's visually so hard to distinguish top post's signature from next post's beginning.
I general I'd say I agree 98% with Grandy's post (http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28672.msg382299#msg382299) above.

I agree Generators (and not only) require a full recode, but still I would keep the current ones live somewhere.
Not about being selfish (talking as a Charasian, not as the developer), but remember what the internet world looked like when Charas was released to the big audience (2002/2003).
No Google Maps, no YouTube, almost no dynamic websites at all... by that time this thing was OVER THE TOP for its technology and, evenif far less crowded than in past, I'd say this is the only website that survived mostly "as is" for more than 10 years. Talking Internet, that's an eternity.
So I think that while new things and changes are planned, we should really consider building a sort of "Virtual Museum" to remind it all.
Our History was more than unique, and it's a perfect example to (hopefully?) show new youthies what being passionate and creative means.

All from me for now. My time now is extremely low, but let me know if there's anything I can do to help whenever something will start to move seriously.

All the best!
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: HackersTotalMassLaser on April 11, 2013, 09:31:40 AM

Not about being selfish (talking as a Charasian, not as the developer), but remember what the internet world looked like when Charas was released to the big audience (2002/2003).
No Google Maps, no YouTube, almost no dynamic websites at all... by that time this thing was OVER THE TOP for its technology and, evenif far less crowded than in past, I'd say this is the only website that survived mostly "as is" for more than 10 years. Talking Internet, that's an eternity.


The truest truth ever posted. And i just realized it. Man Im old. Its true though. This place has come a long way.

"Just" fix how everything looks.  Everything else falls into place.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: drenrin2120 on April 11, 2013, 07:06:16 PM
huh, i never thought of it that way... charas is like a living fossil of the internet! kind of makes me love it more.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: SaiKar on April 13, 2013, 12:09:09 AM
Also,
Look up to our banner, what you see? The banner countins charasets and facesets of our own characters, and worse, of people that do not even fequent anymore. It is sintomatic of a problem we have; we focus too much into being Charas, instead of focusing on what charas should be. As a userbase, we balieve *we* should be Charas, and that is why *we* are on the banner. It is offputting for newcomers, because we seem like a closed group. You'll also notice that a good chunk of signatures, etc, are just in-jokes that newcomers wouldn't get.
Should add this banner up there too!
(http://i.imgur.com/F6muJy7.png)
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 13, 2013, 02:23:24 AM
No. That should be our background, tiled.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: fruckert on April 13, 2013, 02:58:58 AM
I think it'd need a bit more GIF to work with that.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: SaiKar on April 13, 2013, 04:39:33 AM
I mostly like the irony being that neither of them are still around.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on April 13, 2013, 06:53:51 PM
XD It is a wonderful banner.

I don't necessarily think members on banners is a bad thing. New members see it and think 'hey, folks have fun here and make friends.'

Maybe they do, anyway.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 13, 2013, 07:31:40 PM
That is some pretty delicious irony.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on April 15, 2013, 05:56:04 PM
Quote
I agree Generators (and not only) require a full recode, but still I would keep the current ones live somewhere.
Not about being selfish (talking as a Charasian, not as the developer), but remember what the internet world looked like when Charas was released to the big audience (2002/2003).
No Google Maps, no YouTube, almost no dynamic websites at all... by that time this thing was OVER THE TOP for its technology and, evenif far less crowded than in past, I'd say this is the only website that survived mostly "as is" for more than 10 years. Talking Internet, that's an eternity.
So I think that while new things and changes are planned, we should really consider building a sort of "Virtual Museum" to remind it all.
Our History was more than unique, and it's a perfect example to (hopefully?) show new youthies what being passionate and creative means.

That's a great idea! The forums should be pretty easy to keep a legacy version of by just allowing users to use this theme (with some minor fixes). The rest of the content we can just keep around provide links. I may have to make some tweaks so that the main site pulls news articles/forum posts if the forums are significantly updated in order to keep it functional, but the look and feel would be the same.

Quote
I don't necessarily think members on banners is a bad thing. New members see it and think 'hey, folks have fun here and make friends.'

I'm wondering if there is a way to not have members on the banner itself, but still award members with having the their characters displayed on the page somewhere, maybe as a separate secondary banner. Being able to swap featured members in and out would be key though.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: fruckert on April 15, 2013, 08:52:46 PM
Some dyanmic banner thing that displays random members of the community would be awesome.
We'd all have to have sprites/pics made of us, though.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 17, 2013, 10:24:53 PM
We also need to increase the amount of characters in the signature field, at the moment I can't add anymore quotes, and who knows how many people will say I'm right (hint, all of you, always, forever)
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: oooog on April 17, 2013, 10:44:28 PM
Razor's right [shameful attempt to get in his signature.]

I only have 4 space kittens in my signature.  I need a minimum of a baker's dozen.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 18, 2013, 07:47:13 AM
I cannae do it laddie, I dunnae have the room!
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on April 18, 2013, 12:15:32 PM
I think Grandy got a good signaure coming.

I general I'd say I agree 98% with Grandy's post
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 18, 2013, 11:06:32 PM
Yes, I actually edited my post yesterday to comment on how Alex made reference to our old meme, but then I thought what if I'm reading into it too much, and then I broke out into sweat and hives and spaghetti and reverted my edit.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on April 19, 2013, 01:14:12 PM
How about your steam nickname in the profile (where the msn, icq and all the other stuff is) and remove outdated clients.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Razor on April 20, 2013, 02:47:24 AM
Apparently people still use ICQ, which is the most amazing thing to me, because ICQ was what I was using to talk to El_Presidente, as we would set up games of Diablo 1 over modem, where we had to insert each other's phone number to join up.

ICQ PREDATES BATTLE.NET. AND EVERYTHING.

But yeah as I'm sure a lot of you noticed, MSN died recently.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on April 20, 2013, 05:15:03 AM
Oh, did it?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Prpl_Mage on April 20, 2013, 06:35:29 AM
Oh, did it?

It did, but it's still around a bit longer.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Grandy on April 23, 2013, 12:12:52 PM
About updates, a thing I miss here is some kinf of color alternation on forum posts: the username on the left is really the only thing to determine a new post begins, but it's visually so hard to distinguish top post's signature from next post's beginning.
I general I'd say I agree 98% with Grandy's post (http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28672.msg382299#msg382299) above.

Hey, the big man mentioned my name. W-what is this hot feeling inside my chest? Is this... is this love?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on April 23, 2013, 03:03:09 PM
No, it's a tumor. Call a doctor.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: hero_bash on May 20, 2013, 09:37:34 PM
Glad to see there is interest in the site's revival :)
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Kilyle on June 13, 2013, 11:39:44 AM
You have no idea how heartening it is to come back to this site now and again and find it still functional.

When the internet isn't loading my normal sites and I want to find out if it's the sites or my internet connection, this is the site I type in to check.  I have had the URL memorized since college (over a decade).  I still think fondly of this site and my time here even though I've largely moved on to the Minecraft forums.  I would be devastated to come back here and find it gone like so many other sites the world has lost over the years.

There is so much potential in a site like this, and it's not just tied down to one particular game engine.  Heck, you can use these graphics to evoke one of my favorite graphical styles (SNES-era retro) in just about any game engine if you cared to.  Or game "screenshots" even if not from actual games... or webcomics... actual games aren't the only thing they're good for.

Should I ever get back to making hobby games, I'm sure I'll come back here to find the resources I need, or even some tutorials.  And since I'm trying to teach my nephew (9) how to program, and since we'll soon be getting a Raspberry Pi and I hope to be teaching him how to hack ROMs, I'm pretty sure we'll drop by to find neat things to stick into old games, if only to get a laugh.

So if you guys have plans to make this site more functional for people from all walks of gaming, then I'm all for that, and I look forward to the results.  Thank you for keeping this site going long after its heyday.  :happy:
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ZeroKirbyX on June 16, 2013, 06:00:26 PM
Just fix this layout. Oh god, what is this.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Dr. Ace on June 16, 2013, 06:32:12 PM
Please tell me there's been ANY progress on the layout.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on June 16, 2013, 07:33:16 PM
Just fix this layout. Oh god, what is this.
Dick, come back.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ZeroKirbyX on June 16, 2013, 09:53:54 PM
Dick, come back.

You can't make me.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on June 16, 2013, 11:18:02 PM
Wanna bet?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on June 17, 2013, 03:31:31 AM
Please tell me there's been ANY progress on the layout.

Haha there is. I thought just redoing the CSS would be enough for the forums, but it appears the HTML doesn't have the right sections and divs for what I want to accomplish. I'm trying to redo the actual forum template (which is done with a system I'm not familiar with) in order to get around it, so progress is happening, just not very fast.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Dragonium on June 17, 2013, 07:50:44 PM
this incest is killing our chocobos.

You can't take away our incest.

DON'T TREAD ON ME THESE COLORS DON'T RUN
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Apex on June 22, 2013, 12:34:27 PM
I miss Satan's Triple Used Condom...
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ambrose1987 on August 26, 2013, 03:48:09 AM
Late contributions to the thread, I know, but hear me out.

I don't know if you want any assistance, but on my own I decided I wanted to teach myself jquery by creating my own variant of the generator. I have not come very far at it yet but a better Javascript developer than I could probably finish it quite quickly. I started a github repository for it here https://github.com/dkoksal/openchars and you are all more than welcome to use it however you want as I develop it and in perpetuity. It is not my main project, though, my main project is a game in C++.

On that note, my game in C++ incorporates an abstract factory which assembles sprites in one of a few randomized ways, then hands them to the gameobjects which are then rendered. A subset of this abstract factory could be used to create a new Charas.EX. However, a Javascript-Only version of the online generator could serve much the same purpose and be wrapped in a native program. Is the site interested in overhauling Charas.EX?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on August 26, 2013, 04:58:58 AM
Hmm sounds interesting, I'll probably look through your github soon to see what you have thus far.

I like your method for using a factory to randomize sprite creation. I don't think that we would remake Charas.EX though. I would imagine most people have high speed internet by now, plus the most valuable thing about the generators are the resources people put up for them. Actively maintaining Charas.EX to make sure it has the latest resouces seems like a lot of work to solve a problem that only affects a few people. I think a better solution would be to just use a javascript generator that lives on the site, we can have smart caching to make sure resources aren't downloaded/loaded more than once.

And by the way, who are you?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on August 26, 2013, 09:08:11 AM
Clearly a top-notch lurker with faith in the site.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: ambrose1987 on August 26, 2013, 10:27:04 AM
Lol yeah I suppose that was quite a bold first post. Spot on though, I've been a lurker for like a decade and have always loved your site, and as a matter of fact it was basically the model for my sprite factory. My name's Dan IRL, and I don't use RM anymore but I use sprites just like the ones used for the Charaset generator for Procedural Content Generation in my C++/SDL game, which has gameplay similar to old-school Gauntlet but with extensive PCG and some other stuff I'm keeping secret for now. I'm not usually big on web programming but I've done it fairly competently before and am starting to grok jquery as I work on this clone.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Momeka on August 26, 2013, 11:57:18 AM
You should make a game thread. I want to see more of your game.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on August 26, 2013, 06:04:37 PM
Yeah, that would be great. How about an introduction thread so that we can all greet you properly?
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Dr. Ace on December 04, 2013, 05:43:02 PM
What ever happened to the overhaul idea? Seems like it just died. Seriously, this website needs to be kicked beyond recognition and be revived.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Archem on December 04, 2013, 06:41:56 PM
That's on DB, the volunteer.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: Moosetroop11 on December 04, 2013, 07:28:47 PM
: p It does seem to be the right time to do it, since we have quite a few almost active members, if you know what I mean.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: DragonBlaze on December 05, 2013, 09:37:37 PM
Yeah... So after poking around a bit, I noticed a few things.

1.) The forums can be remade simply enough since it uses Simple Machines. The upside is that this allows for easily creating new themes, but the downside is that I'm not sure how much (if any) actual code they allow, so it may only be a theme swap rather than a revamp. I made a new CSS style for the forums a while back that was pretty awesome, but alas it was not compatible with Simple Machines.

2.) The generators will have to be remade, from scratch. When they were made, it was the standard to have the backend server to do the bulk of the work, and then just pass the client computer what needs to be displayed. Now a days though this approach isn't that good anymore because A) javascript has become more powerful B) Client browsers can handle complex code that servers had to run in the past C) It is pretty difficult to add on to PHP code that is telling the client what to display.
Making the generators from scratch isn't that big of a deal, just very time consuming.

3.) I don't have access to the source code... I imagine that the rest of the site is built with the similar style of having the PHP code sending the client web browser what to display. If this is the case, most of the site will have to be re-written, again, most likely from scratch.

In conclusion, the project is slightly more than I originally thought it would be. The overhaul pretty much entails creating a new site from scratch, and just hooking it up to the charas database so all of our info persists.

I've also have been putting this project off for the moment to focus on creating my 3D web engine which allows 3D content to be rendered directly into a web browser without any plugins. I have the whole 3D displaying, rendering, lighting, cameras, and transforming part down, and now I just need to add the controls and some physics. On the bright side, this engine could allow for some REALLY cool things to be done with the generators (possibly 3D character generators too), plus it'll be very fast as it uses openGL to do all of the image processing.
Title: Re: Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul
Post by: jdarling on December 24, 2013, 03:40:02 PM
Its been a long (really long) time since I have been on Charas, but recently started playing around with an RPG idea with my kids.  Came back across Charas and got the good old warm feeling.

The one thing I've always wanted to see on Charas is an option to download the raw resources.  I never use the composite images as compositing in the engine isn't any more difficult to me, but creating all possible combinations is more pain than its worth to me.

Oh, and if you want to do some type of backend in Node.js or supply a REST over JSON API I'm more than happy to write a wrapper :)

Oh and for the love of christ, get rid of that captcha or at least give us poor folks with eyesight issues an option that isn't blue on blue.