Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

To quote from James Starkweather, our expedition commander: "We will travel back to the campsight and last resting place of our colleagues from Miskatonic University, led by professor Charles Lake, some two years ago. We intend to confirm their amazing discoveries and to map and climb the Miskatonic Mountain range, reported to be the highest peaks in the world. Once we've reached those peaks, we will continue further. We will continue beyond the mountains. Beyond those mountains where we intend to perform an aerial survey of the lands on the far side of that range, into uncharted territory that has never before seen by the human eye. To uncover the secrets…"

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Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Job »

I decided to make a thread about our new front door since...

...I like making new front doors?

Here's a link to our new portal.

No, I'm making this thread because as I'm buildng that portal for us, I'll occasionally ask you, my players, for suggestions in deciding what looks good and what features are helping vs. not. Actually, I'm always open to suggestions, whether it's about this site or the other, so don't hold back!

I just finished tweaking the front page of our portal. It looks GREAT! Our homepage is surrounded by "bleak and blackened summits"! I've added a quote from H.P. on the homepage! I added our Google map and one of our videos to the homepage where they're easy to find.

And I think that I broke it. The site is down. Ah well, it was a good idea...

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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Anatomist »

Its up again
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Job »

Hooray! I didn't break it!

OK, here's what I'm thinking of doing next with the portal: There is an "Adventure Log" area of the portal that I'm considering for use to summarize what happened in each of our prior chapters. Some of you have previously requested that I summarize the early chapters, especially those were written long ago on EnWorld, so the portal would seem to be a nice area that can serve this purpose. I'm considering adding approximately a one-paragraph description of each chapter on the main page that links to a longer, one-page summary. This would also provide any new visitors with a nice, concise summary of what has already taken place in our game.

So instead of adding lots of NPC's to the portal right away, or adding maps and wiki pages to the portal, I think that the chapter summaries would be a great thing to use it for. The NPC's and the maps and other details all exist already on this forum.

What do you folks think?

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P.S. I recently saved copies of all of the EnWorld threads to my hard drive, just in case.
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Mr. Handy »

I do like the idea of posting the summaries first. Adding links to the previous chapters to go with them would be great too, for people who want to read the whole thing.

It's good that you backed it up. The first game I ran online would have been lost forever if I hadn't crossposted the story threads to a more stable site.
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Job »

Mr. Handy wrote:I do like the idea of posting the summaries first. Adding links to the previous chapters to go with them would be great too, for people who want to read the whole thing.
Yep, we're on the same page, Mr. Handy. I'd provide a summary that is hyperlinked back to the actual story threads as much as makes sense, so that any readers--or even players--who might want to delve deeper can easily navigate their way to the interesting bits.

This would be a somewhat sizeable project for a game that's been running for over two-and-a-half years (with an additional hiatus of 2 years in the middle) so I don't expect that I'd pull all of that together very quickly, but over time I'd keep adding to the summaries to get them in shape to draw in new readers. And the authors have been known to occasionally visit the long-running BtMoM games. :)

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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by royya »

Wow, logging the adventure is going to be a challenging project - good luck with that. Being your player from the time when the adventure was played on ENworld I will try to help as I can in my very little free time.
Last edited by royya on Sun Apr 15, 2012 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Anatomist »

Job wrote: P.S. I recently saved copies of all of the EnWorld threads to my hard drive, just in case.
Would like a copy of those :)
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Post by Job »

Anatomist wrote:Would like a copy of those :)
39 text files X roughly 50kb per file = roughly 2000kb = 2mbytes. Not too much memory. These files are only text files, though, and do not include jpegs or hyperlink info. Just straight text. I might be able to post them here somewhere... I'll take a look later. If not, I can email them to ya, Anatomist.

Hey, I added a "parchment" layout to our portal home page here. Take a look at it and tell me what you think. I think that it's just a bit too dark, not bright enough. I like the parchment look though. It's one of the few standard templates, so if I want something brighter, I'd need to create or edit it using photoshop.

Thanks,
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Post by Mr. Handy »

I like the look. It isn't too dark to read, except for the hyperlink. Changing the link's color should do the trick if you don't want to lighten the background.
Doctor Who/CoC Campaign:
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(viewforum.php?f=191)]The Ninth Planet
The Shadow Over Dunwich
The Brotherhood of Death
The Horror in the Blackout
The Masque of Nyarlathotep
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Job »

This weekend, I lightened the parchment background on our home page. I like it now. I also cleaned up the text on the page so that it's neatly formatted now, and darkened the hyperlink text that you mentioned, Mr. Handy.

Next, I have to create a custom navigation menu (for a couple of technical reasons that a few other GM's on that site told be about) and then I'll be ready to begin adding our chapter summaries. Hopefully I can get the first one done in a week or so, then get on a roll.

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Post by Job »

I've been testing box styles and brightness on our BtMoM Obsidian Portal site (I'll be adding brief descriptive text to these boxes for our chapter headings) and need your opinions.

Take a look at the 5 boxes on this page and tell me which box you prefer in terms of style and/or brightness. I've added a thumbnail image to some of the boxes so that I could see what the box looks like if I put a small icon inside it.

I'm also open to other suggestions.

Thanks!
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Post by Mr. Handy »

I like 3 and 4 the best, as they have the right level of brightness and the text is easy to read. I prefer 4 to 3, since I think it looks better without a border.
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(viewforum.php?f=191)]The Ninth Planet
The Shadow Over Dunwich
The Brotherhood of Death
The Horror in the Blackout
The Masque of Nyarlathotep
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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

Post by Anatomist »

Job wrote:I've been testing box styles and brightness on our BtMoM Obsidian Portal site (I'll be adding brief descriptive text to these boxes for our chapter headings) and need your opinions.

Take a look at the 5 boxes on this page and tell me which box you prefer in terms of style and/or brightness. I've added a thumbnail image to some of the boxes so that I could see what the box looks like if I put a small icon inside it.

I'm also open to other suggestions.

Thanks!
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Just to answer the question. I like 1.
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Post by Job »

Thanks for your responses, Mr. Handy and Anatomist!

I've been playing some more with those boxes, and started a summary of the "Chapter 5 At Sea > NYC to Panama" trying to gauge how easy or difficult it will be to put together our expedition logs. I suspect that it will take a fair amount of time to do a nice job with the layout, and with key text excerpts, and hyperlinks, and deciding on the best photos. I'll start with the NYC to Panama chapter and work my way backwards (or forwards, when we complete another chapter).

I don't feel that there's any hurry in putting these things together, though. I plan to only work on this when I've recently responded to most threads on our Play@YSDC main forums, so that our main game keeps its momentum. If you folks (and the rest of the crew) are rather prolific, then it'll take a little longer to put together the summaries since I'll be focusing on our game. But our game is more important! You can't die on the ice until we reach the ice! :roll:

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Post by Anatomist »

Does the site has some tools to help you on the layouts? or are you coding this stuff yourself?
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Post by Job »

The site includes functions that provide only the most basic creation of pages and text and inclusion of photos. If I want anything with a unique layout or image or background, then the site requires me to program it. For most of this, I'm learning as I go.

However, the site provides me with a singular advantage: a large roleplaying audience!

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Post by Anatomist »

Job wrote:The site includes functions that provide only the most basic creation of pages and text and inclusion of photos. If I want anything with a unique layout or image or background, then the site requires me to program it. For most of this, I'm learning as I go.

However, the site provides me with a singular advantage: a large roleplaying audience!

Job.
Well im a programming dude ;) havent done much front end stuff (as HTMl layout and such) but im rather a fast learner of all thing code :)
If you need some help you ask.
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Post by Mr. Handy »

You're welcome!

I'm a programmer too. I have done front ends for web applications, but those were made using Visual Studio's design tools. Still, I know HTML and might be able to help.
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Post by Job »

Thanks for being willing to help with our portal! You guys don't really need to spend a lot of time on it, but if you feel like "playing", then below is a bit of information.

One GM (Wolfhound) wrote a few very good tutorials that I've been referencing to build things. Here's a link; scroll down to the miscellaneous section to find them. Take a look at those tutorials to give you an idea of the type of coding needed; this programming may be familiar to you, but it's all new to me. :)

I'm still getting ideas as to what we'll need to present and in what form, so it's all still being borne in my mind. The expedition logs are a must. Summaries of our characters (PC's and NPC's) would be helpful, but I'm not sure how far to go with this since we already have a lot of that info in our Play@YSDC forum. A few of these gamemasters have made some cool icons that link to the logs and character pages and maps. I also would like to add maps that have sections that can be clicked to get more information. But all of these ideas are just that; ideas right now.

If you get a chance, take a look at the tutorials and let me know how easy it might be for you to build things. If you guys think that you can lend a hand with some custom menus and linking, then I'll spend some time developing a (very simple) design document that outlines what I have in mind. With a design document, and the free accounts that you can set up, I think that you'd be able to pick an area or two to build buttons, or images, or menus to test in your area and that I could later add to our portal. It might be possible for me to grant authority for you to directly customize the BtMoM portal, but I'm not sure that's possible. However, I think that a design document would also allow us to bounce ideas off each other too, so we'd be able to cooperatively build the site without stepping on each other's work, each of us taking pieces to work on as time permits. Remember, this is not an urgent matter. Our game will take many more months, so we have lots of time to build this thing.

Here are two examples of game portals that seem very well done to me. I like Wolfhound's icon system in his Dresden Files Dallas game, but I'm not crazy about the themes and colors of his site. I like our background and colors much better. I love the look of Dlaporte's Violent Skies game, but I still like our look better for our Cthulhu game.


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Re: Our BtMoM Obsidian Portal Front End

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Here is a link to a site called the Westerlands that has an elegant layout with minimalist buttons and imagery, but it is beautiful in my opinion. I may follow his lead when I add our expedition logs. Simple, well summarized, easy to comprehend.

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