Work on Wesite?

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

• Webspace: Yes, Cpl. Shrike also said we could be hosted on BU
• Database: I was thinking of some kind of database... A friend of mine once made a little custom map page where we stored 3 screenies with subtitles plus some info (waypoints yes/no; if yes, by whom etc.). The entire info could be entered into an excel table (VERY amateurish, I know!), and he programmed a little Perl script that would slap all the data onto an HTML page automatically. There must be a more professional way to get this concept to work. But I don't know jack sh*t about SQL databases...
• Supported wp formats: I was thinking about all BU bots...8o
• Colour scheme: Yes, that's a good point: BU "corporate identity" or something individual? Maybe we could integrate all RGB colours that BU uses, albeit in different proportions. For example, the dark blue you see in the bar for "quick reply" would be a nice BG colour IMHO... the light blue inside the box where you reply to a message could be the font colour that goes with it, and the medium blue you can see in the title bar of the "posting rules" box could be the rollover font colour, the darker blue from the bottom bar ("Contact us - Bots United...") could be the font colour for visited links, and so on... you get the idea (I hope)

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Hey, nothing wrong with excel dude, as I say "as long as it works, that's alright."

And yeah, that color scheme sounds nice TWrecks, I think it'll work out nice.

As for the site, are we gonna incorporate BU's login's for commenting on waypoints/waypoint-packs? Cause I doupt everyone will like the idea of registering twice just to go on BU, and then again for Waypoints @ BU... I almost hesitated on signing up at RCbot's forums cause I was feeling lazy.

But yeah, for RCbot, nearly done, I played with those waypoints with some buds, n' the bots seemed to run pretty good on his comp (but he was using v1.3, so the bot's weren't as efficient as the latest beta build of v1.38 ). A few small fixes were needed, but I got most of them implemented. I'm almost done, just need to run through aboot 10-15 more maps and then the bot's SvenCoop HL1 Campaign waypointpack should be ready for release. So I was thinking, if we don't get the site up after a few days of me completing the pack, I'll put it in the filebase for now, n' then later we can just transfer it to our site.. how does that sound?

[biohazerd87]

soooo should i have someone make a template and if sooo what do you want the layout to look like or do you just want em to make on up

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

IMHO, the best approach would be:

1. Agree on the structure, the features and the functionality of the site.
2. See if somebody can get all that coded and if it's possible at all. If not, go back to 1) and keep the limitations in mind. If it IS possible...
3. Get a skeleton of the site working - no gfx, no effects, just plain, ugly default font text links.
4. Tinker around with that demo site a bit. See if it does what we want it to do. Make a small WP database and see if we can have search results filtered as we plan to do. Change a file's revision number and see if the changed number appears when we reload the page, etc.
5. "Skin" the whole thing and give it a nice layout.

If we can agree on the general scheme I posted, we ought to think about the necessary filters now... "sort by" and "display only" - but according to which criteria? How many parameters do we want to implement anyway?
File size, upload date, file time stamp, revision #, WP author, # of downloads, rating, new, updated, xx map type only ? All of them or just some?
And should the resulting list be customisable in a sense that the user can specify which columns to display? Let's say only time stamp, author and rating?

[biohazerd87]

lets start simple.... i will get somepeople to throw together a layout first

[biohazerd87]

check this template out, it isn't for the site but i just want you to see some of this work!!! http://www.crimsonsunsetrock.com/test1.jpg


and as for the layout copy that is so no one rips it off

[MarD]

Heyyo,

Ooo, nice, it looks 3Dish, but very simple, nice.

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

That looks nice indeed... I just hope we don't lose too much space due to that vertical division.

I'm gonna post more tomorrow, gotta go to sleep now.

-EDIT-

Ok, as announced, here's some terribly ugly little sketch based on bio's template. It shows the basic concept, and I wrote some text into the pic to explain things a little. Please ignore the "stone age kiddie style" layout skillz, ok? :o
For a visual impression of what the main part (thge waypoint list) is meant to look like, better refer to Counter-Server Maps... (server.counter-strike.net/maps/). I had thought about a list like that, only that we don't need preview thumbnails. Thus, each line wouldn't have to be as high as on CSM. Likewise, the huge number for ratings could be replaced by little stars (or bullets, or whatever).

Does that look like the most ridiculous concept you've ever seen or is it barely tolerable?

Oh, another note: Of course we could add reverse ptions for the "sort by..." arguments, i.e. if there's an option "sort by name (a-z)", we could also add an option "sort by name (z-a)"...

[Attached file is NOT a zip! It's a png - please remove the second extension after d/l'ing... just added that to get around the size limitation for image files.]

[biohazerd87]

srry didn;t know you had posted .... uumm yeah i didn't actaully intend this to be for the website we are doing but if you wanna use it for that thats fine with me... i can also get the guy to extend the graphics so we don't have to make it 800 x 600 it can be like 1200 x 600 centerd or w/e... i will talk to squall about how he did the website voting stuff....


[EDIT]
Actaully i think he manually adds the reviews that way he can look them over first
[/EDIT]

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

Yeah, sorry... I saw too late that the template was just intended as a kind of quality sample and not as a draft for the WP page... I should read more thoroughly before I post something.

Anyway, it's not that different from what I had in mind: A broad horizontal bar at the top, a side bar at the left, and the main frame in the lower right area of the screen. Only the bottom bar is superfluous IMHO. No problem, though - what I wrote into that screenie applies for any design, so no damage has happened.

What exactly do you mean by "he adds the reviews manually"? You are referring to the "official" reviews, right? The ones by the CSM reviewers, I suppose. I think the readers' comments are added automatically... and boy, are those stupid in 80% of all cases! o_O
A separation between "official" waypoint comments & ratings and player ratings looks indeed like a good thing to do...

In our waypoint list, it could look like this:
-------------------------------------------------------
WPU rating: ***
User rating: ****
-------------------------------------------------------