Dungeon Master Forum

A little something to keep you going--this is my current DM collection (475Kb):

http://www.dmcodex.com/dmall.jpg

Whew! Do you maybe have a spare CSB manual and more important a spare Gor-coin?!?!?!

wait.. what's that video up to the top right??!!

I need to sort through these as some of them aren't great quality. I'll be selling the worse ones on eBay, and there may well be a copy of CSB going on there... I won't separate manuals though as I'd rather sell them complete. Nope, I don't have any spare GOR coins. I did have two, but I lost one...

Cowsmanaut, don't excited, that's not a video... it's the Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) version of DM. Many games of that era were packaged in VHS sized boxes... it has great cover art though... wait for the site to see a hi-res version of each game box... Yes, I know I keep promising, but the site will DEFINITELY being going live sometime this spring/summer.

don't worry, if I were to harp on you for not getting it done I'd be a hipocrit as I keep saying I'll complete the art set "soon".. well I suppose I've gotten better as I seem to be admitting I don't know when I will be able to get it done.

so much to do. so little time.

Here's a sample screenshot of one page of the site. I've been beavering away at this so long, I thought it might be nice to prove that I haven't just been messing about!

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matt_hill/sample.jpg

nice, I like the mouse up there now and the torches blend quite nice. the book looks good and why oh why did you change the menus? I love the parchement ones!!! These ones look good to though.

So how much left?

Tons left! And the first release is only about Dungeon Master! I've got four more games to go after that.... the project has grown way out of proportion, but it'll be worth it in the long run... still a early summer release for the first version...

I know what you mean about the parchment menus. I still like them too, but after a few late nights messing about, I felt that the new arrangement worked better, plus I was never happy that I couldn't center the parchment menus in the middle of the screen (Since I've changed them I've actually figured out a way to do it that's cross-browser and backwards compatible, but heigh ho--you live and learn!). The new menus are collapsible in browsers that support it, or permanently expanded in those that don't. The whole site has ended up being a bunch of compromises, because despite what browser developers claim, there's still too many inconsistencies between browsers.... oh well.

Longer term, once I've learnt PHP, I'll be moving the whole site to a dynamic database driven site which will make maintaining a lot simpler, but that's waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the line.

Thanks for the encouraging words. The screen grab is heavily compressed--it looks much better on the actual version. One thing to be aware of though--as the site is now quite graphics heavy it probably won't be too enjoyable on a 56k modem....

*falls to the ground and shakes a fist at the sky*
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! why, god, whyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

eh, the site seems good enoguh that i will persevere : )

Very nice work, Gambit!
It really seems to be worth the wait.

Take heart Beowuuf! Now you have a good reason to get broadband!

Seriously, the site should still be usable on a 56K modem, but the initial load times will be long as there's a ton of interface graphics that have to be loaded. Origianlly, I was keep to keep everything very small, but, well, it looked sh*t. That's one reason why I keep redesigning it. Do you remember the early sample I sent you and how pants it looked by comparison?

Thanks Christophe for the encouragement; I guarantee it'll be worth the wait!

Quite impressive. Without having seen the parchments beowuuf mentioned I tend to agree with him - it seems to be in style. But apart from that the screenshot makes me want to see more... keep going!

Regards

PitD

there is nothing to say, it is brialiant work!

Well, I've bitten the bullet and downloaded Apache, mySQL and PHP and am now busy getting to grips with it all.

Having completed a couple of test pages and seen the ease and power of the mySQL/PHP combination, I have decided to modify the DMCodex so that it will be a database driven site. I still have so much content to develop that it makes sense to do this now rather than complete a static version of the site, then re-code it again later.

What does this mean? Well, from my point of view, this will make things so much simpler to maintain, and already I've benefited from things such as server-side includes which makes it really easy to update the navigation; previously I was using Dreamweaver library items, which meant that every time I modified the meus, the whole site needed to be updated. Now I just change one file... much better!

It doesn't make much difference to the end user, but it does mean that my anticipated release date for the first version probably won't be until some time in July/August.

Hang in there guys, I promise it will be worth it!

BTW, sorry about the broken image links at the top of this message; I've moved to a new host and haven't re-uploaded the images so they won't work... same for my avatar!

Sure php + MySQL are powerful things to make a web site.
However, I only use them on the encyclopaedia for the guestbook, mailinglist and forums.
For all the other pages, I wanted people to be able to easily download an offline version of the web site (a single archive), in case the site disappears one day (every site does one day or the other).

Yes, I did think about that for some time, but decided that the gains far outweighed the losses.

Additionally, it's easy for you to offer things like that because you're using a free host. I'm paying for mine, so I want to keep things as small as possible and if I made a big zip file of the site it would soon eat up a lot of data transfer if lots of people download it.

I sure hope yours does not any time soon. It amazes me every time again how many people are still dedicated to this game and giving their valuable time to make enhancements.

Regards, PitD

Just to pick up on Christophe's earlier point about offering a ZIP file of the Encyclopaedia for offline viewing:

http://www.httrack.com/index.php

I've tried this out on my locally served -- data driven -- development copy of DM Codex and it works perfectly. This isa very cool freeware program indeed.

It means that I will also be able to offer an offline version of the site, if I so choose.

Yay for the internet and software developers in general. I love you all!

Might be very useful. I keep the Encyclopedia locally for maps and spell lookups since I never memorized all the syllabes for spells And I'm using it quite regularly in fact...

Regards, PitD

Hi,

The link on top of page don't work : 'forbidden access"

How can i make to see what is promised ?

Bye

dungeon.master

Which link are you referring to? There are lots of them!!!

He probably referred to the first post in this thread (from yourself), containing the link http://www.dmcodex.com/dmall.jpg.

I also receive a "Forbidden access"-message when clicking it.

Regards, PitD

Oh, that's right, I deleted the file! never mind, I'll post it again as part of the site -- which is coming along very nicely I might add....

Shall I repeat one of the most favoured questions around the DM community? When do you think it will be ready for the public ?

Regards, PitD

Hi, im new on the forum, but i read it very much. ^_^
The little tidbits i've see of DMCodex seems great, waiting to see more soon.

Best Regards!

That's because we know all the answers to alot of other questions will be in his site! : )

Edit: Welcome Spider!

All the answers to alot of questions ?

Regards, PitD

I think fuzzy face means lots of questions that are still unanswered! Or something like that.

The answer to the question, is: When it's ready!

It's difficult to maintain enthusiasm for it at the moment, with the things going on in my life. But it will get there, I promise! I am beginning to regret mentioning it at all now, I knew it would be better if I kept quiet; that way, it would have been a big surprise. Oh well!

Umm...yes?

Gambit: Good luck with your current hassles, i hope gainful employmentfinds you soon that recognises your talents with oppertunities and money!

Did not mean to prod you Gambit... just asking. Patiently awaiting any developments, since it's your work I can hardly demand anything, can I?

Regards, PitD