First thread

[Administrator]

Testing... testing. Riverspell, you there?

[Administrator]

Indeed I am!

[Administrator]

Hello! Things done tonight:

- drawn some pixel griff bases: male and female adults, and egg. Got all coloured body-parts and some markings ready to upload and try ImageMagicking them. I think they're kinda ugly (esp the female) but hey, testing!



Also there's that smaller base I made earlier. Maybe we could use it for the juvenile stage for now (if you want the PSD just ask). I'll scribble a chick or two tomorrow.

- added public profiles for griffs, part 1. Later must add a box for owners to write info in...

- (mostly) added backgrounds. There are 7 uploaded in the backgrounds folder in the cpanel file manager, and set up as items in the Mys admin cp. You can go to explore - market and buy them from the shop, then use them.

There's some unknown error stopping the bg images showing on the profiles, though. I had to remove the bit of code for the griff image too, just to make the page show up. Someone else had the same problem, apparently. Need to ask for help.

Riverspell, feel free to make more random items or backgrounds or griff breeds for testing, if you like. BG images can be uploaded in the x10hosting file manager:  folder public_html -> backgrounds. Size 358 x 222 but it's only for testing atm. Then in the Mys admin control panel, create item and give it the category "Scenery" and function BG from the dropdown list.
Not sure where to put griff images yet, so can use sta.sh and link to the URLs for now. So professional...

Next things to do:
- dynamic coats and breeding
- finish profiles
- encyclopedia mod, will be useful for storing breed info/ideas and concept sketches even in these early stages
- learn how to mix PHP, CSS, HTML so we can start planning better page layouts, prettify everything
- possibly a news system? Check out that mod and see if you like the look of it.

[Administrator]

More things done.

- added a few pages. Credits and News. You can edit them from the Mys admin cp.

- did some writing last night, planning for a little lore encyclopedia and help section. Instead of using that limited, pre-made mod, I think we ought to make these all custom pages so we can lay them out how we want. 

- figured out how to change layouts. Just the menu at the top needs fixing so it's prettier. "Green" is the main one I like. "Night" is a crappy unfinished darker attempt. You could duplicate them (or make all-new themes) and edit those if you like.

(note about editing CSS: sometimes it's really slow, changes take a while to show up for some reason)

- would be good to have the user's logged-in info, and money, still listed somewhere (as text, above the menu, or maybe on the index/home page?), as the annoying sidebar div had to be removed. If $sidebar is inserted anywhere in the HTML, it's an ugly vertical list. So I/you have to find out how to call the PHP codes for those things, and add them individually where we want to.

- uploaded all the body parts for BasicGriff images and added DB fields to contain the RGBA/hex colour values, for later.

[Administrator]

Just keeping notes of image layers...

BASE - a flat white area of the griff, underneath the rest. So if some body part fails to load, there won't be weird transparent bits.
and then...
legs
wingnear
wingfar
midwingfar
midwingnear
hind
fore
crest
horns
beak
strings
eyes
and finally SHADE - the layer of shading. Always the last to be rendered so it appears on top.

In the DB, only colour values are stored.  Name and then col.  So... legscol, wingnearcol, wingfarcol...

They should always be in this format:  rgba(255, 255, 255,1)  where the 255s are the RGB colour values. 1 is alpha channel, for opacity. For body parts we always want this to be 1.  Perhaps some markings could be fainter, like 0.6... but think about those later.


In the image generation script, first get the image parts from the folder, then the associated colour value from DB.
Something like:

Code:

$images = array(
    'picuploads/griffimages/' . $pet['type'] . $pet['gender'] . $pet['level'] . '/BASE.png',
'picuploads/griffimages/' . $pet['type'] . $pet['gender'] . $pet['level'] . '/legs.png',
'picuploads/griffimages/' . $pet['type'] . $pet['gender'] . $pet['level'] . '/wingnear.png',
...

to construct all the layers
("type" is the proper name for breed, and "level" means age; egg/chick/juv/adult,  numbers from 0 to 3)

And after that, another chunk of code that goes through each part and applies the colour (---col) value. Before final merge etc.

Code:

$composed_image->colorizeImage(new \ImagickPixel($pet['color']), new \ImagickPixel("rgba(128,128,128,1"));
$composed_image->tintImage(new \ImagickPixel($pet['color']), new \ImagickPixel("rgba(128,128,128,1"));
...

[Administrator]

Oooh! I found some inspiring goodies while looking for colour mixing stuff. Perhaps we are saved?

https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend

https://jadendreamer.wordpress.com/2013/...n-a-range/

[Administrator]

Few new things.

- don't use the custom page maker/editor in the admincp. It's hard to use and often inserts random symbols in spaces. Instead more pages can be added this way, and edited in the x10host cPanel file manager. The News page is one example, and pages for Rules, Lore, Griff breeds and such can all be nicely laid out with HTML/CSS divs and tables.

- custom CSS can be applied to certain pages. In admincp it's under Themes -> Additional CSS. I thought it would be a nice touch to have different backgrounds for some areas, like the stables/perches (where exactly do you keep griffs?), nursery, market and so on. I haven't drawn anything yet so there are currently ugly background tiles. Please excuse them x)

- there used to be an auto-ban for visiting certain pages, like pounding a griff that's "not yours" (aka page refresh after already pounding one) among other things. I discovered that the hard way, LOL, while editing the pound pages... it's really annoying. Bans you from the admincp, doing any actions... every permission has to be manually changed back to Yes in the database.
So I've disabled that function in the scripts, and replaced it with a redirect to a warning page.

- added first few test items. They work. Woo

- still haven't updated the breeding system. I simply am not sure how/where to add that colour function...

- I've got some vague ideas about the scenery of the ruin/fortress/whatever this big place is. Big collection of reference pics
So I'll try throwing together some fantasy 3D structures in Blender, with forest and skybox and lighting around them. That would be really nice to have, for background art reference and maybe writing inspiration too.

- the table layouts (flock page, inventory, shops etc) are ugly, going row-by-row with inconsistently sized images. The PHP table method is hard to edit at all, so I'll try to remove and replace them with something better looking, with HTML etc.


Something silly I realised. If we use dynamic images, generated on-the-fly and on-site, whenever someone views that griff... that means we couldn't use them as sprites to paste outside the site. We would need to save (host) each image. Which might be doable, I guess, but not quite sure how.

Related to that... having big, wide, pretty pages and backgrounds is making me dubious about only using small pixel sprites. Some dynamic colours and markings could be lost on them. I wonder about having larger, painted griffs... at least on their own profiles. In the rest of the site (and offsite) we could still represent them by sprites, sorta like thumbnail versions.

I'm pretty sure it would be possible, by having two image generation scripts. Mostly identical, just with different paths for fetching the body/marking parts from folders.
One for the big image, which is only applied on the profile page, and does not save anything. Then the other for the tiny sprite versions, those images are saved into a big folder (and perhaps only updated when someone changes the griff's look).

[Administrator]

I thought it was messy having multiple pages for each griff's details and visits, so here's a single new profile layout: http://griffusion.elementfx.com/griff

Not quite ready to "hook up" to the system yet, though. Need to fill it with the right links/variables and whatnot, and get the different backgrounds and adopt images working. First the coloured sprites and then I'll scribble bigger versions.

Gonna try a mod to rearrange the inventory and shop layouts. Also I'm sure there was once a mod for a page that generates random eggs..? Must hunt for that.

Also started adding bits of banner/background things on most pages. Right now it's a curly feathery pattern, but later it could be scenery from locations, fading in. A bit like what FR does with lots of boxes.

[Administrator]

Sorry about my absence! I'm back to poking around. Just having that lovely pain guest but I'm trying to get on. I'm reading through this thread right now and I'll update this with some thoughts.


Wow, you've done a lot! The new adult images are amazing. Can I ask which breed they represent? As to a copy of the sprite PSD, I purchased it not long after you posted it. So no worries there. I've played with it some but nothing serious yet. Also, that new profile page is awesome. It's clear and to the point. Easy to figure out without having to search around.

I can work on some themes if you want. That was one of my favorite bits of web design. Making things pretty while having them flow and work together. If you don't mind, I can make a shot at one or two. You can inspect them and I'll remove 'em if you don't like them.

HTML and CSS would do much better tables than PHP. Not everything needs to be done in PHP so I'm not sure why they'd do tables that way. PHP is needed to program the webpage and it's functions, perhaps some of the structure, but I'd think you could largely rely on CSS and some HTML to build the framework. I also could be wrong, so feel free to toss tomatoes at me if that turns out to be incorrect. I'm just one of those coders who likes to keep things streamlined and simple. It's easier to edit, easier for others to edit, and runs better. My dad called it "KISS" lol.

As to the image issue. Hmm. I like the thought of having the big pretty picture. Your idea of having only that on a griffs profile would probably work best as a solution to that. With simpler, merged, pixel griffs to represent. The merged images could then be shared and linked to too. Meaning they could then be shared offsite.

Log in info, money, number of griffs, etc could be represented in a player tab. Part of the issue is that the generic site layout for Mysidia isn't super functional for anything more than something super basic. If you're alright with it, I can experiment with changing the layout of the site. As in editing the position of menus, boxes, etc. I wouldn't alter the griff site directly, I'd do a practice site first that you could check out. Altering the layout won't alter the PHP at all. You're just changing where stuff shows up. Well I should correct that, some PHP would be altered. Since they apparently used it to create tables and such. If those turn out to be necessary, we'll know because my test won't work.

My medicine is probably making me miss things. So if there was something else you wanted input on that I missed, let me know!

[Administrator]

Haha, no problem! Good to hear from you again. Sorry, I've kinda been rushing ahead... really impatient to turn this generic site-skeleton into something prettier, with writing details, and some gameplay that's actually half-fun. The layout needs work still. Maybe the first menu section, "Home", should be removed and have the site logo there instead. I had to remove the default titles for some reasons...

If you want to start tinkering with easy things, to get familiar with PHP: in the x10hosting cpanel file manager, see the Lang folder and how it contains most of the site messages (success, error, intros to pages). That's definitely an area needing loads of better writing!

Also the custom pages, like News and About. Those contents are edited via the View folder: newsview.php, aboutview.php.

You can use HTML and bits of CSS inside the PHP comments. In some of them, I added <div style='width:700px;'> and so on, to keep the page texts a bit neater. But you could also insert images, tables, anything.

Be careful never to use double quotes " though, as they'll break a PHP comment. Only use single quotes ' inside them.


As for the breeding and image generation scripts (can't stand these boring grey sprites!)... I'm honestly thinking of hiring Dinocanid from the Mys forums, to implement that stuff for us. Not sure if they can do the hex code colour stuff, but I can make a bunch of pre-coloured bases and markings and whatnot, just so we can test the inheritance. 350x350 is nice and small.

Also just added a few more forum areas; have got some sketches of 3 basic breeds (not decided at all, but something to test with) and will post them over there...

/// ah just saw your update now, haha

Yes, please do poke around! The current layout is... meh, basic. I can't do much more CSS than just boxes and stuff x)
But could you please try adding/editing other themes, rather than change the Green? I'd like to have a stable sort of layout while we edit game stuff. It's boring but very easy to see, for adding stuff on pages.
(sorry, it's just... the number of times I messed up there, and pages all fell apart... noooo, I don't want to see any of that ever again lol)

Forgot to mention: CSS can be really slow to update, due to the host automatically caching things. You'll have to turn that off in order to see changes instantly. In the hosting cpanel (before you go to the file manager, phpmyadmin or anything) go to the Cachewall bit, and select Enable Development Mode.