BA Website

[SirArtturi]

You mentioned you were doing responsive stuff but nothing has changed =s

Width and position of the main content change depending on screen size, e.g. posts, forum, news. Take a closer look please.

There isn't anything wrong using existing themes and modifying them for your taste, but isn't wordpress themes copyrighted to give credit to original author. Now you have basically tagged your trademark there to make it look your own?

[knorke]

Speaking of which, what happened to all the BA tutorials I wrote for Spring Info ages ago?

I recently tried to find them on springinfo but did not manage. Afaik AF did not delete anything so maybe the search is just stupid.
Or maybe they got moved to http://guides.springinfo.info which is now dead:
http://www.springinfo.info/2009/05/04/spring-guides/

On the site, tbh I think many things are wrong with it.
"Welcome to BA website! I hope you will enjoy." <- lol a splashscreen like its 1999!
The videos look like thrown together and are different sizes.
Maybe there is a system with how they are sized but it looks messy. Videos only play in mini-size unless you go fullscreen or watch on youtube directly.
The background keeps on changing waah. Why would I want to look at untextured grey lowpoly models as background anyway? (without textures, spring models look lame)
Overall, I would say remove all the dummy content and do-nothing buttons. Concentrate on what players care about: see some screenshots, download the game, manual.

[Petah]

Will this web site be open source?

[abq911]

Will this web site be open source?

I highly doubt it, considering its a paid theme, so depending on the license of the theme...

[marciolino]

... but isn't wordpress themes copyrighted to give credit to original author. Now you have basically tagged your trademark there to make it look your own?

No, themes can have different licences. I didn't remove credit to original author (there wasn't).
About the license, yes I can pretty much modify and adapt the theme to fit the project, the only restriction is that I can't resell or use multiple instances of it (btw i don't pretend to).

Will this web site be open source?

The PHP code is licensed under the GPL license as is WordPress itself.
The CSS can be modified but not resell.

[marciolino]

This is all I have. Wordpress XML backup of all the posts made before 5th April 2009 including source images for the guides and thumbnails for each article. Haven't looked at it all properly so there might be some stuff missing. It's all I have though unfortunately.

http://www.mediafire.com/?si92sqafhvtmjjt

Thanks Jazcash, awesome tutorials!

I just imported your xml into the website. I had to replace some images and some of them I couldn't find, but it should be enough I think.

Take a look please on http://balancedannihilation.org/category/strategy-guide
Tell me also if there are out-of-date tutorials or if you want to edit them by yourself.

[Jazcash]

This is all I have. Wordpress XML backup of all the posts made before 5th April 2009 including source images for the guides and thumbnails for each article. Haven't looked at it all properly so there might be some stuff missing. It's all I have though unfortunately.

http://www.mediafire.com/?si92sqafhvtmjjt

Thanks Jazcash, awesome tutorials!

I just imported your xml into the website. I had to replace some images and some of them I couldn't find, but it should be enough I think.

Take a look please on http://balancedannihilation.org/category/strategy-guide
Tell me also if there are out-of-date tutorials or if you want to edit them by yourself.

Awesome! Thanks :) Seems like there's a few missing and a few images too but I'm glad everything hasn't been completely lost. Note that a few of them might become useless once BAR is released though. If I get into BAR though I might even make a few new ones.

[Forboding Angel]

You mentioned you were doing responsive stuff but nothing has changed =s

Width and position of the main content change depending on screen size, e.g. posts, forum, news. Take a closer look please.

There isn't anything wrong using existing themes and modifying them for your taste, but isn't wordpress themes copyrighted to give credit to original author. Now you have basically tagged your trademark there to make it look your own?

Yeah, that's what most of us do. Re-inventing the wheel is stupid unless you have a specific reason for doing so.

Looks really great, the Architect OS theme is quite excellent. I have one gripe and that is the fact that the default background is white. It should be black or very dark gray so that the page loads blend nicely, or actually a better idea for this site in particular, would be a page fade script. It would fit in nicely.

[marciolino]

Nice point ForbodingAngel, but in fact the default background is alread dark gray (e.g. http://balancedannihilation.org/portfol ... ing-rts-ba)

And the image transition is already a fade effect. But you are right, the problem is that the fade effect give the idea that background is white
I will try to find a solution.

[marciolino]

I just created a thread to post BA replays, since we have no more a dedicated website for that

http://balancedannihilation.org/forums/forum/replays-2/

File size is limited to 1024kb, i think it is enough.

[marciolino]

For the landpage I was thinking in something about this:

http://balancedannihilation.org/homevideo/

A fullscreen video (youtube) with a good demo (todo), where we can switch to another 1 or 2 demos, switch sound on (sound of would be by default), play, pause.
The demos should not have text and do not display game ui.

Some information about the project could be displayed in a overlay like in the example (ofc it need a better look), as well as 2 blocks of latest news (not much bla bla).

But for this, we need a good demo with the new models

[albator]

I just created a thread to post BA replays, since we have no more a dedicated website for that

http://balancedannihilation.org/forums/forum/replays-2/

File size is limited to 1024kb, i think it is enough.

I never upload a replay less than 1Mo, ffa replay are around 6Mo

[AF]

For the landpage I was thinking in something about this:

http://balancedannihilation.org/homevideo/

A fullscreen video (youtube) with a good demo (todo), where we can switch to another 1 or 2 demos, switch sound on (sound of would be by default), play, pause.
The demos should not have text and do not display game ui.

Some information about the project could be displayed in a overlay like in the example (ofc it need a better look), as well as 2 blocks of latest news (not much bla bla).

But for this, we need a good demo with the new models

This is bad because:

• It runs like molasses on my work machine, and there are far slower machines out there
• It autoplays, we dont want users who open new tabs to hear music and have to search for which tab is playing the sound, first impressions count, and we don't want users being pissed off to be ours.
• The play pause controls aren't obvious enough, nor how to get to the video on youtube, nor can one rewind back.
• Bandwidth bandwidth bandwidth, I pull this up on my phone expecting a landing page and end up with it pulling a youtube video over the 3G network? It's a good job I have unlimited quota ADSL oh wait...
• There's a period at the beginning where no background is shown that looks like the site is broken
• The text is not clear enough. Super thin white text over a background like that is not going to work well enough.
• Giant youtube logo in the corner
• Performance/Memory, that youtube video isn't going to help with the page, you already have jquery animations on load, and other things

[marciolino]

First of all i told that it was just a test.

[*]It runs like molasses on my work machine, and there are far slower machines out there
[*]Performance/Memory, that youtube video isn't going to help with the page, you already have jquery animations on load, and other things

I didn't optimize yet the page loading. But even without much optimization it runs fine on my laptop. Which machine do you have in your work?

I also did some tests on WebPagetest to compare with springrts.com (see images attached)

[*]It autoplays, we dont want users who open new tabs to hear music and have to search for which tab is playing the sound, first impressions count, and we don't want users being pissed off to be ours.

This is why I said "switch sound on (sound off would be by default)". And the demo video would be only on the landpage not on all pages ofc.

[*]The play pause controls aren't obvious enough, nor how to get to the video on youtube, nor can one rewind back.

If i would like to have a youtube video formatted like on youtube i would do it

[*]Bandwidth bandwidth bandwidth, I pull this up on my phone expecting a landing page and end up with it pulling a youtube video over the 3G network? It's a good job I have unlimited quota ADSL oh wait...

Telephones will not load the video, but only the infos, news and a background image. It can be easily detected depending on screen size.

[*]There's a period at the beginning where no background is shown that looks like the site is broken

I will put a background which loads fast, and a message "loading demo" or something like that.

[*]The text is not clear enough. Super thin white text over a background like that is not going to work well enough.

I said "a overlay like in the example (ofc it need a better look)"

[*]Giant youtube logo in the corner

And

[marciolino]

I never upload a replay less than 1Mo, ffa replay are around 6Mo

Increased to 6Mo, but i couldn't test yet.

[AF]

Those stats do not include the flash content, which loads after the Dom ready event. I'm sure we can agree 1.4MB for the whole page video included is paltry and unrealistic.

Also, not all iOS devices can be used as phones, and to iPhones and android devices as 'telephones' is incredibly ignorant.

Possibly because when viewed in landscape the site is squashed into a thin band, with a menu that's unreadable, and dissapears outside the viewport when zooming in (iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1):



Or that the page in question with the video looks like this on the same device:



Performance

Having loaded the page in Google Chrome, leaving the window open for 2.5minutes consumned 16MB of video, and counting ( only the flash requests were counted, other content was ignored ). It does not appear to be caching the video.

Assuming that my laptop is tethered to my iPhone, or that my iPhone is loading the video, I have 500mb of 3G allowance per month, which is common here, that gives 6.4MB per minute, or 1 hour and 18 minutes of leaving the page open.

Of note in js.js:

Code: Select all

Uncaught TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'prettyPhoto'
initJsSweetnessjs.js:130
$j.browser.versionjs.js:193
f.Callbacks.njquery.js:2
f.Callbacks.o.fireWithjquery.js:2
e.extend.readyjquery.js:2
c.addEventListener.B

Screen Resolutions

Here's the site in 1024x768:




My Work Machine

It's not the fastest of machines but its more capable than a lot of machines out there, and its equivilant to my late 2008 macbook with the same CPU and GPU, only with 4GB not 2GB of RAM (the same macbook on which I did my final year degree project which involved running Spring at 100x speed for 500 rounds).

Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, Geforce 8400m with 128mb dedicated vram, attached to a 23" 1920x1680 monitor.

Maximising the window from 1024x768 to fullscreen on the 1920x168 monitor makes the youtube video lag despite it staying at 480p.


Comparisons to this site

This site is widely acknowledged to be a virtuous fountain of technical bad practices.

[marciolino]

Those stats do not include the flash content, which loads after the Dom ready event. I'm sure we can agree 1.4MB for the whole page video included is paltry and unrealistic.

LOL, I think you don't know what is a website loading time, ofc it doesn't take in account the video loading time. In addition, the video doesn't need to be completely loaded to start playing. Or you could say that any youtube page is very slow because the video doesn't load completely in 1 sec

Code: Select all

Also, not all iOS devices can be used as phones, and to iPhones and android devices as 'telephones' is incredibly ignorant.

Ignorant point. I dont care about the iOS, it is just a question about screen size. The CSS don't detect the iOS but the screen size.

For the video idea, I didn't say it should work on smartphones right now so please use a real screen to visualize it. I will work on it after, but it is really not the priority now.

Performance

Bla bla bla...

It is just a HD youtube video playing on fullscreen, nothing more so if your machine cant hold it, I am really sorry

[Jazcash]

It is just a HD youtube video playing on fullscreen, nothing more so if your machine cant hold it, I am really sorry

It's the network performance that's the issue here, not processing power. Unfortunately, the UK has terrible internet speeds which means a lot of places in the UK can't stream HD video fluently.

At uni it's fine, I get around 7Mb/s here, but at home I have an average of 0.3Mb/s download which means I have to watch every video in 240p for it to be smooth.

Personally, I think it's a nice idea and it's quite creative of you, but I just don't think it works. And that's not a dig at your attempt either, I dislike auto-playing on sites in general. There are exceptions, but unfortunately, I don't think this kind of site is of them.

[Senna]

@Marciolino

Cant u ask JJ to give u some spare space on his springfiles web for replays?

And about the website, nice web, good job

[AF]

Its not how much data is transferred between request sent and dom document ready event that the network operator counts, its all data.

An iPhone/android(most) might not play the flash, but a laptop tethered to it will.