Games

[icycalm]

All the visual elements of the frontpage are in place now, and the content also soon will be. There's only a minor detail to be taken care of:

grandknightshistory.png (85.81 KiB) Viewed 50272 times

There are a few stray gold pixels on the top right of the image (to the right of the character's head) -- I am sure you can see them. Can you take care of that?

[icycalm]

Oh, and also some purple pixels right on the top left corner...

[ronan]

The image is too small, and I cannot find any bigger version. Could you upload it again?

[icycalm]

But that's the size it needs to be -- it's on the sidebar. What software are you using? With Photoshop at least you can zoom in until a pixel is the size of your screen, or something ridiculous like that.

[ronan]

My bad, I thought it was another header. Here it is:

grandknightshistory.png (62.75 KiB) Viewed 50267 times

And I mostly use either GIMP or Seashore.

[icycalm]

Perfect. I am really happy with the sidebar, and the frontpage in general now, thanks.

[ronan]

Here is another attempt for the backgrounds. I tried to keep as close to the original as possible. You do not want a detailed explanation, but just let me say that I have to work from the source files, and that last time I worked on the colors with a strategy that was not optimal. The changes you mentioned were not just for the sake of it.

backgrounds.zip

(1.94 MiB) Downloaded 748 times

As for the other files, I would rather not modify them now. They should already have a correct hue, but it is hard for me to know how to adjust the saturation and the brightness without looking at the webpage...

[ronan]

And another background set, with less saturated colors. It is even closer to the original. You may prefer it.

backgrounds - less saturated.zip

(1.81 MiB) Downloaded 806 times

[icycalm]

Now we are getting somewhere. Here's where improvements could be made:

1. You keep moving the image for some reason. Open up two tabs on your browser and stick the gold frontpage in one and the green forum in the other and switch quickly back and forth between them: you will see that the gold background is displaced by something like 20 to 50 pixels to the right. We need them to be exactly the same size and in the same location, so that switching between the tabs produces no movement.

2. The purple in your backgrounds is still far more pronounced than in the originals. Take a look, for example, at the right side of the images: in the green ones you could not tell that there's purple at all if you don't know where to look for it, where's in the gold ones it jumps right out of the page at you. This might be due to the higher contrast between gold and purple, but you are definitely somehow brightening it up for some reason. And on the left side too. It just doesn't look good when it's that pronounced.

3. Your backgrounds are quite grainy and "pixelized". This is not so much apparent on my netbook, but on a proper monitor it is unmissable. Do that tab-switching again, both with the top image and the bottom one, and you will see how much softer the original backgrounds are. Yours are kind of soft too in the middle, perhaps, but the right and left sides (which are also the most prominent) are grainy as fuck.

4. Finally the buttons and text. The buttons need to be a little deeper in color, and the regular and hover versions a little further apart, and the text (which is the same color as in the old Insomnia: #F6F2BB) -- well, I actually I am not sure about that, but I suspect that it needs to be the same with the buttons -- either the regular or hover version, though I think it's probably the regular, so you'd have to give me the color code after you've redone those.

That's what I think needs improving. The problem is that even if you did pull off all those things successfully, it's not guaranteed that the result will be better than the green we already have... so it'd be a good idea if anyone else reading this gives us his opinion, because I've been looking at this for so long now that it's hard to see with fresh eyes. Still, it might perhaps be better if they waited until we have a sort of "final" version, so as not to become affected by our current half-attempts and whatnot.

[icycalm]

And another little thing, Ronan. Can you please hit the enter key once before you attach a file and once after it? Because I am going back and editing every one of your posts for this... I know I am obsessive-compulsive about stuff like this, but you don't get to be a perfectionist without also acquiring the odd disorder here or there :)

[icycalm]

This is a very good one, so I really hope you manage to take that logo off...

There's also a tiny green thingy near the top left corner...

[icycalm]

I am on a roll today. This is the fourth I've made and I am still going.

[ronan]

[ronan]

This one was quite difficult. I hope you will like it.

[icycalm]

It doesn't quite work I am afraid :( I am very strict with the headers now -- it has to be absolutely stunning or I am not including it. So for every five I make now I end up throwing out four... It's quite frustrating, throwing all that work away, but the result is worth it.

Perhaps we can salvage this one though if you are willing to try something. I think the problem is the little round thing to the left of the cannon. If you can crop the image there and then add blue sky to the right of the windmill to compensate for the lost area, perhaps it will work...

[ronan]

I am trying to finish the Dead Rising header. Could you tell me which one you prefer, so that I can clean it? It will indeed take me some time, especially if I have to remove the undead's hand.

If no header is good enough, I can try other rotations and scalings.

[icycalm]

I uploaded the second one to the frontpage. And yeah, it'd be nice if you get rid of the hand, and the little white spot on the bottom left corner, but that's all I think. I've been looking forward to this one! Best header for a videogame site ever. Can't wait to review the game, too.

[icycalm]

It'd be a good idea, before you begin the heavy work, to try out a couple more rotations just in case. The second one you posted will work fine, but just in case, perhaps you could try experimenting a little more.

[ronan]

Two more. I will have to finish this tomorrow, sorry.

[icycalm]

The second out of four still seems to me the best, if you can remove the hand and the monster thingy on the right... But I may change my mind on this so the best thing would be to not do anything, and let me switch them a few times over the next few days to see which works best.

[icycalm]

Actually, let's just go with the second one. The changes are minimal anyway, and in all cases the hand and the monster thingy will have to be removed. In the old site things were much easier with this header...

[icycalm]

Can you clean the logo from this?



Not sure if I'll use it on the frontpage, but it's definitely going in the forum.

[icycalm]

Same with this one (and there's a also a few black pixels on the bottom right and a few grey ones on the top left...):

Note that you have to click on it and then download it. The thumbnail is 652 pixels wide, the full image is 960. I am saying this because I've made this mistake before I realized how attachments work.

[icycalm]

By the way, I took down the Dead Rising one until you get a chance to clean it up. It's definitely going up once it's done.

[icycalm]

This one's currently on the frontpage, so it takes priority over everything else:

Damn wallpaper site had to stick its stupid logo on his head. And the image cannot be found anywhere else.