to be or not to be..

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat May 12, 2001 8:56 am

Ok I've put up Wuuf.. I did a whole bunch of research just to find out what Bika meant.. Go figure, Wayne put a fair bit of research on his own.. it took forever..

Anyway, I'll do Hissa Next and then maybe Leyla .. Not sure..

What I would really like to know though is if anyone even cares that I'm doing this. I'm only half doing this for myself.. so if nobody else could care less about these Bio's then I'll quit after Hissa or leyla..

If anyone does care though, some support would be nice.. in the form of ideas for Bio's there are 24 characters and I've only done 4 so far. I have only used about 18 of them past the 4th level. So I'm not really used to their quirks. However some of you are. If there is a character like or one that you don't like please send me some ideas or comments about them.

You don't need to do a full bio like Beowulf did but that would be cool too. I'll take anything..

Thanks

Cowsmanaut@collegeclub.com

Post by **Zyx** » Sat May 12, 2001 6:57 pm

Your work is great and I'm reading the Bios as soon as I can, but I can't help you now: I'm leaving home today, I'm travelling over the atlantic in a few days and I have exams till end of June.
Cheers!

Fredrik Olsson · Post by **Fredrik Olsson** » Sat May 12, 2001 8:42 pm

I just looked at your bios page. And they are really great.

I can hardly wait for Sonja and Chani.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat May 12, 2001 8:54 pm

I like them - the new Wuuf one is really good as I always play with him and never ever thought of any backstory for him at all! He was just wonder spellcaster boy

I've got another three suggestions - for Zed, Boris and Alex Ander, though I don't know alex too well to play with. I'll try to send them soon. NAbi, Halk, Syra and Alex are actually mentioned in the manual story, though not too much.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat May 12, 2001 10:18 pm

Thanx for letting me know people are actually reading this stuff...

1. I have an Idea for sonja since she is obviously based on the character fromt he movie.. Chani is however a bit of a mystery. I see her as one of noble blood in her silken finery but beyond that I have no idea as to how her character works.. is there things she's good at? or is she a jack of all trades? Some characters are more disposed to one skill or annother except zed who simply is just 'ok' at everything.

2. thank you for the help once again.. these are characters I've either enver used in a full game (like boris) or didn't use more than once like zed. Halk well, him I have some ideas.. I may need to add them to what you've sent me.. (I haven't read it yet)

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat May 12, 2001 10:58 pm

I added a direct link to the heroes page from the start page. The mirror at the bottom will now direct you to the choose your champion page.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun May 13, 2001 9:56 pm

Mr.Lizard is up..

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue May 15, 2001 7:45 am

I went ahead and added more graphics.. not a game character yet but has to do with that..

I felt that the simple little choose a character wasn't very interesting and went off on a tangent.. Sigh.. There now is a whole page to give you that home Tavern feel.. The Barkeeper is there waiting for you to join him for an ale and a story..

Just let me know if I'm driving anyone nuts yet.. I know some of you are suffering through 56k connections..

Equus / ZPC · Post by **Equus / ZPC** » Tue May 15, 2001 5:53 pm

Hi Drake,
nice work..."Grab up a tankard and listen a while. I'll tell ya everything I know.." ...

))) lovely...

But...the site is really slow...I do a bit of webdesign and I would suggest next:

- get faster site (lots of pages are stucking just on that banner ad)
- get site without banners ... you work is so nice that it should be without any distracting s*it.

btw ... I can offer you space on one of my sites, even 3rd level domain - ANYTHING.zpc.cz - no ads, no banners, no money needed, lots of space... sounds fine? what I would like to get from you is just cooperation on creating the czech version of your "artwork" pages ... not much work from you, just some graphix alligment...we will translate it by ourselves... how does that sound?
(of course with all the credit for you.)

back to suggestions:
- think about cutting all those big pictures on much smaller pieces...if you get 40 piece for 5kB, it's much better than three pieces for 60kB... using tables you will not have any problem...
- the names could be also pictures, don't you think? when adding new heroes, you can just change the pieces with the names and other pieces of that big picture will remain unchanged...
(if you are not feeling doing the design by yourself, let me know, I would be pleased to help you.)

Let me know, what you think about my offers (off course you will get special FTP account to upload your files or we can arrange WEB-page managing of the pages, in PHP it's easy as breathe..

)), I really mean it. Maybe you will get a question on your mind why I am doing this? These are answers:
a] I like good work and I think it's bad to unsupport it
b] I am building one of the Czech biggest sites about DM and it's sequels and clones...and this is just a bit more than walkthroughs and maps, spells etc...
c] I study pedagogy and I am oriented toward talents (rather accademical, but I don't give up on art and sport talents as well), and all the things I do (and which has banners they should support my activities on internet in Czech rep.
d] As you can say by reading my words (sorry for my weak english) I am just a good guy. You won't be the first man to say it.

))

Thanx and looking forward.

Equus / Martin ZPC Zikmund
email: dm@zpc.cz

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed May 16, 2001 5:26 am

should I go for it?

No adds, other languages..

I sent you an email Equus, With a few concerns of my own.. if everything is ok on that end it shoudl be fine.. I need to inform other people here to change the link however when/if it get's transferred.

So unless anyone has any objections or an act of god prevents.. (shrug) I guess we'll change over..

Fredrik Olsson · Post by **Fredrik Olsson** » Wed May 16, 2001 5:10 pm

As Chani has the moonstone amulette and fair in apearance. She is most probably some kind of priestes of a temple. Or maybe she is an orphane and was found with the amulette?

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu May 17, 2001 12:50 am

This was shaping up to be a nice page until you went and stuck the barman and his fireplace in... all those graphics weigh up to 346Kb! That's bigger than some entire websites I have built that have contained 10 times the graphics on that page.

You seriously need to optimise this page if you don't want to lose a lot of modem users. The animated fire should go straight away - it's 150Kb and doesn't really add anything to the page. The book page is 100Kb and could probably be reduced to around 20Kb with no noticeable loss of quality. There are numerous other optimistations that could be made too.

Email me privately if you'd like some suggestions for optimising your site.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu May 17, 2001 9:32 am

well, I've shaved off a bit of the numbers on the web page.. I optimised all of the graphics.

The fire animation I just couldn't do away with entirely.. I changed it from a 256 col 12 frame animation to a 128col 3frame animation so it's dropped a whole bunch.

some images I've compressed by at least half and a few by 75%!!! I tried to keep as much of the detail in as possible though..

On cable and DSL it didn't matter but for you modem users it was probably hell. Anyhow, if someone wants to test it out .. it should load twice as fast.. or close to.. I'm going to figure out a way to do something about the barkeep page to make it just a slice faster..we'll see what comes of that..

Cheers!

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu May 17, 2001 4:07 pm

This is much faster now - but it's still about 130Kb which is still slow for modem users. As a rule of thumb, one webpage and all it's associated graphics shouldn't be more than about 50Kb to avoid users getting bored and going elsewhere.

It would be better if you could integrate the book into the background graphic so that it's not on a separate layer. That way, the whole thing could be optimised as a JPEG rather than a transparent GIF. It would also hide the guy's 'feet' which at the moment are still being displayed even though you clearly intended them not to be seen. I imagine this is why they look like stumps!

It also doesn't need to be that large - the page doesn't display properly on anything below 1024x768, and target resolution for most website design is 800x600. You could really cut down on the file size by reducing the overall size.

You should remember that the entire world does not live in America and many people will be surfing with 56Kb modems for many years to come, so anything you can do to make your web pages quicker to download, will be much appreciated by your visitors in the long run, even if you don't get any feedback explicitly telling you that...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu May 17, 2001 5:06 pm

I'm only using a 56k and it loads fine - if all pages are animated and loaded as long as the champions one it might be annoying, but the rest are ok and so I don't mind.

If you do decided to switch your webspace somewhere else, a speed thing that gambit hasn't mentioned is advertising pop ups - I bang my head on the keyboard anytime they appear on the ezboards, as they are killing my surfing, and that's with the main pages being simple...just something else to concider : )

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri May 18, 2001 12:17 am

I was planning to integrate the book page with the barkeep and I was also thinking of scaling it down more as well... both suggestions are right. I made the pages for 1024x768 due to the fact that is the res I surf at as well as most of my friends and family. I know that there are some who surf at a lower res though and since it won't hurt any thing but make everything faster, I suppose it's worth while..

the only thing I won't ba scaling is the character portraits. any more shrinking on them and some will lose the inteded detail..

As for the adverts.. well I've had myself hang on a few of the banners and I'm on Cable!! so once they are gone the better it will be.

I will be transporting my web space to a new location with the help of Equus. I think the new loaction will be Chaos.zpc.cz but it'll still be at angelfire for a little while and I will announce the change over when it's done..

cheers

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun May 20, 2001 10:55 am

ok..
Leyla is up but only at the new location. She has not been optimized yet and there are a few small touch ups (spelling errors) to be made but otherwise she's good to go..

The new site is as follows

<a href="http://chaos.zpc.cz">chaos.zpc.cz</a>

The counter needs to be fixed and the pages need to be pushed up to fill the empty space at the top.. as well as a new layout to allow 800x600 ease of surfing..

Cheers

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun May 20, 2001 8:50 pm

Big problems on the new site - you need to ask Equus to check that the server allows content to be cached by the client browser. No pages are being cached at all which means all the graphics are being re-loaded from the server every time you move from page to page. This effectively means the site is slower than it was before!

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon May 21, 2001 4:09 am

I sent a notice off to him and we'll see what can be done.. I hope this is not a permanent problem. It was starting to look up!

Equus / ZPC · Post by **Equus / ZPC** » Mon May 21, 2001 10:01 am

OK guyz, the only thing I need is to know who has such problems and in which browsers it takes place. (need to know which headers can cause that, we are on track of that problem.)
I only have that problem in MSIE 5.5. How about you?
Netscape, Mozilla and Opera look fine to me.

Thanx for coop.

Equus / ZPC

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon May 21, 2001 10:45 am

I use IE 5.01 at home - I also use this at work, but I can't check the page from there due to internet restrictions....

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue May 22, 2001 2:22 pm

I'll try to keep up some work on the characters and bios.. However no real work on the site itself will get done untill he's back and can help fix that problem..

Most I plan to do is make some minor adjustments and fix little things like the book on the barkeep and the counter..

Cheers all...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed May 23, 2001 4:18 am

Equus has informed me that the Cache problem should be gone..

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat May 26, 2001 6:47 pm

Hi everyone.. not sure if anyone reads this far back but hey...

I updated the look of the site and added in some new options.. I'm still trying to fix some of the old little problems and looking for solutions to new ones..

I've added also a Credits and legal thingy at the bottom.. those of you who assist me make it in there.. Beowulf has made it in for the help with Bios..

cheers all..
(ps the Hall of champions link has been moved to the page with the book 'introduction')

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun May 27, 2001 7:15 pm

I've added three new characters.. now don't get too excited.. I haven't put in their bios and the drawings are not yet done.. however if you wanted to know how I start every drawing you can see it for yourself.

Daroou is in the first colour stage before the detail gets done and the other two are in the concept stage.

I've also made a repair to the 'Inn' so that you don't see Jamus' feet (or lack of..) the images need to be compressed further but I'll do that a little later..

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon May 28, 2001 11:34 pm

As noted on the DMJava board, the champions' page doesn't fit on a 1024x768 display without scrolling. If you insist on designing for this resolution, it should fit the browser window with no need for scrolling horizontally. However, in my opinion you should really design for 800x600 as this is the res that most web surfers use.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon May 28, 2001 11:46 pm

The concept drawings are a great idea (especially alex, can't wait to see the full versions). You might want to keep some in the dowloads section if you have space? The page does need optimised, especially with adding all the hand written style book names (also cool).

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue May 29, 2001 1:59 am

EEEEK!
hmm.. I dropped the detail to 30% on most of the new stuff on the first page of the INN.. so they are really compressed already.. however it seems to be the way i set it up that it loads the image slowly.. or rather displays them slowly..

I have no idea what I did wrong.. it says that nearly all the image bits are supposed to load in 1-2 seconds on a 28.8k bps modem.. there are about 40 of them.. which means between 40-60 seconds should load the full thing on a 28.8.. and even faster on 56k and cable etc.. so the code is boggin it down somehow.. or that's how it seems anyhow.. I have Cable it it loads off the names first... slowly.. and then bits of the rest of it.. (sigh)

I really suck at html and I know next to nothing about Java.. I suppose I should learn but I have little time for that.

ok Gambit.. you want to help with the page structure? as I said I can't do code all that well, I'm using a demo of dreamweaver.. and a notepad to edit little bits.. I don't know how to make it center itself so making it 800x600 means it hangs out on the left side at 1024x768 with my method.. anyhow..

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 29, 2001 11:44 am

The correct way to align something centred is to use a div tag. So if you want to align the table that holds all the graphics, before the table insert this code:

Then after the closing tag, insert

As a general rule of thumb, to fit a display of 800x600, your graphics should be no wider than 760 pixels in total and probably no higher than 450 pixels. If I were to design your page, I'd create the whole thing in Photoshop at my final target size before doing anything. Then it can be cut up into small elements and placed in a table (as you have done) or positioned using layers, depending on whether you're targetting old browsers or not.

You won't need to know anything about Java for your particular pages.

Hope that helps.

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue May 29, 2001 9:43 pm

Well, that worked well...

The tags you need should be something like this:

<pre> ...content here </pre>

Hope that works this time...

Dungeon Master Forum

to be or not to be..

to be or not to be..

Virtual support

Great work

Re: to be or not to be..

ahhhh thank you ...

refresh the front page..

hissssa

oops I did it again... ;)

Great but lil slow and sometimes time-outed

what do the rest of you think..?

Chani

Graphics and bandwidth

shave and a haircut...

Re: shave and a haircut...

Re: to be or not to be..

hmmm

WOOHOO!

Re: WOOHOO!

well that sucks..

Re: well that sucks..

Re: well that sucks..

ok well, Equus is gone for a few days...

hey hey! He fixed it!

new look more options..

more new stuff..

Re: more new stuff..

Re: to be or not to be..

moo man mooo..

Re: moo man mooo..

Bloody ezboard...