Spring RTS Engine

I'll also need someone to help go through our current FAQ and sort it into the new FAQ system in categories, aswell as ellaborate and correct old mistakes.

If I may just make a few suggestions...

think about who will be visiting this site, and who expects what from it. And this guy here needs to be accomodated better:

Mildly interested non-Spring-players who just wants to have a brief look
- Give them immediate eye-candy. Big header image. Embedded video. Something like that.
- Answer their immediate questions:

• what is it?
  • -> A free, open source 3D RTS Engine for windows and linux, with numerous awesome mods and a very powerful user interface. It has several simple to use but powerful lobby clients with integrated map and mod downloading.
  Where can I see more pictures/videos?
  Where can I get it?
  Where is the FAQ? (Will it run on my system etc.)

And give these things room, lots of space around them. Make them completely bloody unmissable. This is the guy that has to be awed instantly, you really need him to open the page and present him with the stuff relevant to him, in this order:

1. looks awesome
2. is free
3. is (relatively) simple to get going
4. has lots of (friendly) players
5. is open source.

Progress update:

A lot of little things have been done, a lot of kinks ironed out, but most of the sites there, there only needs to be a gallery added. I could use some help though as theres an entire wiki to rewrite and restructure.

Neuralize has also helped some too, re-arranging content and making adjustments here and there, such as removing the menu at the very top.

Here are some images from left to right:

lightbox (latest version), FAQ sections, links, an FAQ section

I like the layout and the colors, but there seems to not be a front page.

Maybe though there could be something where there's just a page with screens and advertext and the Spring logo, and then you click ENTER to go to the first functional site.

Noo. I hate sites that have a splash screen, let's cut straight to the news.

New front page work in progress. I plan to put a list of news items under the text intro along with a prettier download graphic. All those images are lightboxes.

Neuralize wrote:Noo. I hate sites that have a splash screen, let's cut straight to the news.

You could just point your browser to http://spring.clan-sy.com/main, but have the site redirect to http://spring.clan-sy.com/splash from spring.clan-sy.com.

eek we currently have a horrible 404 page, must correct!

AF wrote:

I liek... Except for the banner... not sure why but I don't like it.

I like the banner, but I think that it'd be even cooler if you made a template and let people do some random variants, so that the site's initial look is slightly different each time you hit it. That, and people would get to see all of the mods (that participated, and did not submit 'orrible pictures).

Agreed. Sinbad, I think you dont like it because its too dark and needs a little brightening up, something I've been meaning to get around to.

AF wrote:New front page work in progress. I plan to put a list of news items under the text intro along with a prettier download graphic. All those images are lightboxes.

hmm...i'd say redo the title bar, or shit i might do it for you if i get a chance. you don't even have anti aliasing on the letters.

good work though! hopefully we are on the road to making spring more user-friendly for new players.

i agree that the main page should be some regularly updated news, not some generic splash screen. that generic explanation belongs in the F.A.Q. tab. btw that should probably should mention that there are other mods written for it besides TA, that's probably pretty important to the devs to mention seeing as how they wrote an RTS engine, not just a TA port.

That frontpages being refitted as an 'about' page. The current top post on TA Universe is more suited than that.

The frontpage also needs a new top banner thats 200 pixels taller, I'm going to put a download link in the banner at the top on just the frontpage.

Then I need to make the current image brighter or make a new one.

here is the current banner image being used:


edit{ I made some adjustments and icnreased brightness and contrast and it looks much better, you cant see much difference at those sizes in the thumbnails...}



The logo is a transparent GIF overlaid ontop:



You'll find a photoshop file for the banner here:
http://www.darkstars.co.uk/randomfiles/banner.rar

Here's the download page with the better banner

And some wiki improvements. The install of docuwiki now has the orphanswanted extension and will display 4 new tables with numerous parameters.

On the page in the image below it shows, all links in the wiki, all valid links, all links to nonexistant pages, and all pages that are orphaned and arent linked to.

There's also the sitemap generated by Dokuwiki as shown in the second screenshot.



edit:: triple post prevention



Anything else I've missed?

After soem editign and tweaking ehres the tempalte for the main page:



The news items will need editing to feature more flashy screenshots, less lorem ipsum

af, I like it but it is too tall, crop the center around the logo for height as it takes about 1/3 of my screen

It used to be a lot taller. Remember thats only 1 page, the rest have a different banner thats much much smaller.

Needs way more pizazz. Everything is just to plain, without the banner, I would think of it more as a portal then a site for a game. We don't want that.
I think the banner is OK, but the logo needs to be more flashy. Our current one on our ancient banner (As the mission basicly states) is better then that.

I do like the format though.

Doesnt look like game site at all.. makes me think of cooking or art sites...
I hate such pages where logo takes 66% of the space vertically... logo max size vertically should be something like 120px, yours is about 420px...

AF wrote:It used to be a lot taller.

It used to be a lot taller??? omfg... think users like 800x600 resolution...

AF wrote:Remember thats only 1 page, the rest have a different banner thats much much smaller

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Changing banners makes even more confused about the page, like you are in different site every time you click some link...

Also make those texts smaller, it makes me sick to read big text...

Make the banner more like the current one. The awesome flamy EE shot is a good start yes. A good shot should look clean, with one or maybe two units in it. Unless maybe if you can make an army that looks really neat in an awesome formation, NOT the average typical messy mass clump of units. Or as in the current banner, that dosn't show the units up close (ugly if your gonna show TA mods usually). Also the shot must make good use of the terrain, that previous dark shot was way ugly since it was taken from up-to-down perspective, instead of a nice horizon view on a map such as that map with an awesome planet in the background.

http://moddb.com/images/cache/mods/58/5 ... _61062.jpg

Why did you change the spiky sun thing to the side? It's confusing, like C:Spring or something. The one with the sun rising up above the letters is much much better. Also note the clever alpha and texture on the current logo/banner, it looks much better then boring solid color, that's not even properly antialiased either.

Also it's way too tall, the current one is again, right on.