Spring RTS Engine

Hi all, a first version of the BA(R) website is ready, take a tour on:
http://balancedannihilation.org

It would be great if we can make this website alive, i mean people coming visit it regularly, posting stuff, guides, tutorials, videos, etc... and ofc using the forum for discussion.

The main idea is to start giving visibility to BA now, and make a "teasing" for BAR, follow the modeling progress, etc.
Then it would become a BAR only website when it will be released I think (will depend on devs aims).

Details: the CMS is Wordpress, forum is bbPress, everybody can register to post on forums, everybody can comment on posts around the website. To post something outside the forum (like news, tutorials, guides, screenshots, etc) you will need a "contributor" account so contact me to ask for it.

It would be great to have a nice logo for BA now, and for BAR in the future (or wathever it will be named)

It is not really finished/tested so feel free to make *constructive* comments/observations about the website, bugs, errors.

very nice but the landing is a bit bland

I like it! I haven't had a full dig through everything yet but here's a few improvements that could be made that just jump to mind:

• A lot of Javascript is going on there. At uni, the site loads alright and is usable fairly quickly. However at home the site takes about 5 seconds when switching pages before the content actually pops up.
  
  I can't remember how to do it but if there was some way to keep the frame of the site static and when changing pages only the content changes.
  
  Also remember some people disable Javascript completely.
• Loving all that CSS3 magic. Glad people are finally starting to make use of it. Good job there.
• Doesn't need its own forum. I can make a forum for it on here and you could link externally to it.
• The social media things in the bottom left are very out of the way and aren't visible against the default white background image you chose.
• The name still hasn't been decided but Bob said he didn't want it being called "Balanced Annihilation Reloaded" and I can't see it being called Balanced Annihilation still. Probably shouldn't have bought that domain, unless you got it free

Overall though, it works. I'll try and come up with a nice logo once the name has been decided upon.

I love it!

Yes, the landing page is a bit minimalistic at the moment. Should contain info about what this project is (true spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, free, open source, collaborators wanted, screenshot, etc.)
What do you all know about WebGL? Is it commonly supported among recent browsers? It would be needed for an armory (I believe Petah was working on something like this, but I havent heard from him about it)

Excellent!

I would recommend putting a video on the front page, if you have anything kind of like a trailer. Licho found that the percentage of people who downloaded the installer after getting to zero-k.info jumped like 1000% or something crazy after there was a decent trailer on the front page.

Thanks guys!

• I will try to reduce js file' size to speed up loading.
• I will make that only content reloads and keep header, menu.. without reloading
• ok for the name, i just took the balancedannihilation domain because i need one temporarily, but no problem in changing it when the new name comes.
• WebGL is well supported on Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
• Yeah luckywaldo, nice idea for landing page, i will put a demo video (if someone want to do it or know one, just tell me)

Is this an officially supported website this time?

Jazcash wrote:Probably shouldn't have bought that domain, unless you got it free

Domains are cheap

Petah wrote:Is this an officially supported website this time?

Yes it is.

Petah wrote:

Jazcash wrote:Probably shouldn't have bought that domain, unless you got it free

Domains are cheap

They still cost money and effort

Also hope you're not paying for hosting just this site, Marcio. Licho would probably quite happily devote some server space to you for it

Awesome website!
Just some feedback:

• On the news page, text color after fade to white background is hard to read, change text color as well in the same transition (And actually on most pages)
• Downloads page is good and comprehensive, though a single installer type thing would be welcome (Anybody still have some usable NSIS scripts? All the ones on the forums are depreciated/broken links )
• I second waldo in that there should be a trailer type thing on the home page as well as behe in that there should be some basic information about the game
• I second jazcash in that the social icons are currently near impossible to see
• Forum is very nice, I like it, and should be kept on the BA website
• Media page is AWESOME, can't tell you how much I like it

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the whole black on white theme, too much contrast, and not enough colors. For game websites, I think of www.commandandconquer.com or http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ , zero-k has a website that matches that, while BA just looks like a dev website right now imo.

It's nice, but lacks of color. Deep orange for example goes very well with black&white themes.

And yes, I didn't even know that social media buttons existed until somebody said so.

@jazcash: domain and host isnt a problem to me. I didn't asked for licho since I have other websites to manage and having them grouped is easier to me.

@abq911: Thanks!
I agree that it need more colors, I was waiting for the logo to change it, the colors should be well integrated imo.
The download package for BA is already something I would like to put in the download page, I will try to do it soon (or if someone can do it just tell me)
social icons > need to be changed
video+infos at the homepage > ok

Other than the content, and the sidebar menu now being fixed width, I don't see what you've changed from the original architectsostheme. You mentioned you were doing responsive stuff but nothing has changed =s

Could you point them out?

Oh it's a modified existing Wordpress theme, sorry but now I'm slightly less unimpressed

good videos!

But "tutorials" section has too much of columns. It is hard to understand something when you first visit this page))

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

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

Do you have backup of them?

AF wrote: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.

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

If you find them tell me and I will put them in the website.
I only found this > http://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Annihilation:misc
and this > http://springrts.com/wiki/Balanced_Anni ... ng_With_TA

Tutorial videos would be great also, with some basics about the gameplay. (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