Material for Quakeone.com Banners !

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I've switched from Chrome to Firefox (hello old friend) because I was getting that issue all the time with it. Seems like with every update it became worse, more crashes also. Sucks tho, I like Chrome. But FF is just as nice and seems more stable atm. Chrome also doesn't seem to like Flash at all for some reason...

Mindf!3ldzX: have you tried running in a 5:4 res? That's what Q was originally designed for.

Bingo, yeah I swapped to a 5:4 ratio and it was all going swimmingly. Then had a catastrophe, lost a couple hours of a DM3 banner. I'm irritated with it now and don't even wanna mess with it. I'm gonna work on a custom animated avatar now. But yes, that was the culprit. I might attempt it again later.

[Solecord]

Re: server browser - the server browser queries and gathers data behind the scenes. It queries and gathers data and sticks it in a text file. The web site itself simply opens the text file and outputs the data. So the querying of servers does not impact the web site at all.

The server browser itself uses a javascript library called overlib to display the player data when you hover over the server. If you hover over the player numbers before the page finishes loading the javascript library, then it will not work. I will look into better alternatives for that.

Re: facebook - for those saying the facebook script takes awhile to load, do you have a facebook account and are generally logged in to your facebook account when browsing the site here? I have not experienced any slowness from the facebook code myself, but I am always logged in to my own facebook account. I'll have to investigate this as well.

[Spiney]

I wonder if it is the server browser or something to do with it. It does not show the players on each server until about 5 seconds after the page loads. (When you mouse over the server). Maybe it only queries that when you mouse over it and isn't involved with fully loading the main page.

I've switched from Chrome to Firefox (hello old friend) because I was getting that issue all the time with it. Seems like with every update it became worse, more crashes also. Sucks tho, I like Chrome. But FF is just as nice and seems more stable atm. Chrome also doesn't seem to like Flash at all for some reason...

Mindf!3ldzX: have you tried running in a 5:4 res? That's what Q was originally designed for.

The page loads slow for you?

Hi Solecord biatch

What you said (full message) is right... I mean I agree... BUT the only thing slowing a full page loaded to me seems to be the "facebook" codes and possibly the "twitter" dm section.

Ya sometimes the front page was a little long to download but then with the cache it's pretty good.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I wonder if it is the server browser or something to do with it. It does not show the players on each server until about 5 seconds after the page loads. (When you mouse over the server). Maybe it only queries that when you mouse over it and isn't involved with fully loading the main page.

Mindz - texturing, bevel texturing, or 3D all brings the words to life. I found tutorials for gimp on all of them on you tube. I don't use gimp but I am assuming it is pretty easy. You can design the new banners tonight. I expect them in the morning.

@load times
It might have to deal with how many servers are being queried / how long it takes them to return results.I know the results show up as a whole,so that means its waiting on servers responses. Servers that aren't even up / dont exist now could be causing the entire hold up there?

@banner
haha. There is a problem with my attempts to use panorama scripts, and the problem is that, no matter what FOV you use, there is distortion that occurs at every edge of your view,ESPECIALLY on angled walls/architecture, and every time you turn / change positions , that outer edge continues to warp and distort the images horribly and always at a different angle than your previous image. good example of this is The Necropolis. The angled pillars that hold up the walkway @ goldkey / water / zombies area are the sections that showed me this unkillable distorting effect.

Next im going to try and approach it by cutting out 25-50 percent of the outer edges of the images, as thats where the most pronounced distorting is occuring. I tried using fov 90 / same shit / tried using lower than fov 90, its no longer viable too close to walls and objects.

Trial and error, im still messing with it. I just now figured out my next approach to it and don't know how its gonna pan out yet. I'll try and have something to look tomorrow. I also think by getting rid of this god-awful FOV distorting effect the banner quality can be increased with that alone.

[MadGypsy]

what "hangs" my browser is facebook and something else I forget the name of.

The page loads fine...then all kinds of other stuff spins the browser loading thing for another minute or so. I just press x. I don't even let it load anymore. Anything that takes that long to get/send information, doesn't deserve to finish.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

are these actual maps? If so, which maps are thes??

was looking for an excuse to play through tronyn's magnum opus again

hee hee!

The page loads slow for you? I admit, the page is fairly large as it loads some big images like the banner, as well as a bunch of javascript libraries... but once you've viewed the page once, those larger files should be cached, unless you have your browser set to not cache (which I don't know why you'd do). There are times when the web server gets bogged down which may get slower, but I get notices of these instances and I actually haven't had this happen in a couple of weeks now.

In terms of the page fully loading, the signatures which contain player stats from gamestatus.net do take a long time to load and cause the browser to show it's still loading the page. However the page should fully display and allow you to start scrolling. These images don't cause a delay in the entire page loading. At least it doesn't in Chrome for me. There's nothing I can do about that besides enforce a "no gamestatus.net image" signature policy... but that seems counter-productive.

I can concur and observe the same , using latest Chrome here as well. I just refreshed this post, and your right. The last thing to be loaded was mine/your GS images, but the rest of the site was done loading before the GS siggy's finished!

[Spiney]

@hgdagon: those are all from Tronyn's Something Wicked This Way Comes.
One of the most epic releases of last year along with CGZ's Honey and Necros' Altar Of Storms. Make sure to check those out if you haven't

I like madgypsy's idea of seperating the logo from the background. I also like mindfield's idea of using a panorama to make it tiling. Combining those would solve the tiling issue nicely. Only difficulty might be getting a good panorama spot where there's something interesting to look at everywhere.

[Solecord]

@mindz - it already takes a year for the site to load and you want images that are heavier than the entire page * 50

The page loads slow for you? I admit, the page is fairly large as it loads some big images like the banner, as well as a bunch of javascript libraries... but once you've viewed the page once, those larger files should be cached, unless you have your browser set to not cache (which I don't know why you'd do). There are times when the web server gets bogged down which may get slower, but I get notices of these instances and I actually haven't had this happen in a couple of weeks now.

In terms of the page fully loading, the signatures which contain player stats from gamestatus.net do take a long time to load and cause the browser to show it's still loading the page. However the page should fully display and allow you to start scrolling. These images don't cause a delay in the entire page loading. At least it doesn't in Chrome for me. There's nothing I can do about that besides enforce a "no gamestatus.net image" signature policy... but that seems counter-productive.

[hgdagon]

Fart...
I tried those screenshots, but I think it's better to use more recent maps with prettier brushwork and textures as a base.

http://www.spiney.me/files/etc/quakeonebanner1.jpg
http://www.spiney.me/files/etc/quakeonebanner2.jpg
http://www.spiney.me/files/etc/quakeonebanner2b.jpg -- *upd: tweaked text colors to match forum colors

Yeah doesn't tile and all, but whatever. Was looking for an excuse to play through Tronyn's magnum opus again

Are these actual maps? If so, which maps are thes??

[Mindf!3ldzX]

haha, all I did was insert text with some capitol Q lowercase other letters. I need to check into Gimp tools before attempting a 'Quakeone.com' logo, right now im foolin with Gimp learning as I go, pretty powerful graphics app to be free.

Comparitively as good as Photoshop so far,I like it. Free is also the shiniest part of Gimp!

[MadGypsy]

actually, if you just added a gradient bevel to the lettering your banner wouldn't be half bad. Oh, BTW - I am about touch my keyboard with the intent to program. I will be working on my banner idea, well, right now. It will take me longer than an hour. I have been thinking about this for 3 days. I have some more ideas that will accommodate all of the ideas I have heard so far. I also want to make it absolutely portable - meaning there will not be any need to try and mush my idea into QuakeOne it will be stand-alone, just include it in the header and done. One part I need to overcome though is the method of retrieving the banner content. Since this isn't going to change day to day, there is no point in accessing the database every time a page loads. This can be done with JSON or XML

form to database to (append to) XML or JSON. PHP loads up that info, picks a random banner from the selection and passes the JSON or XML to Javascript. If a user doesn't have Javascript turned on they still get a random banner, otherwise Javascript will take over to perpetuate the rotation. I want to include a way to distinguish a
"static" banner from a content one (in the code) so customizations can be made to adjust rotation content without losing ....errr this is way too hard to explain. Just know I got some friggin ideas and I need to get poppin.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

^-------------------------- fu white bars----------------------------^

I didn't go out of my way to overly compress this image as it was already under 1mb when I was done, but conforms to the 1864x250 specification as requested. Working on panorama next, which will break conformity with the requested resolution width but remain @ 250px height. Be back later again

ps : yes, I suck at making banners I'm just eager as hell to see Quakeone.com get a facelift and want to be apart of that process if possible.

pss : PHOTOFUCKET RESIZED MY SHIT. I'm really tired of websites resizing my images, if I desired for my image to be resized I would do it on my own. Oi..... maybe I should just stick to gaming pew pew pew... before I give up im gonna take a stab at using GIMP + this fokn Panorama Stitch python script file I downloaded. Even if for my own shits and giggles,and I definately won't be using PhotoFUCKET or Imageshack. bleh!

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I'll just undertake making a shitty proof of concpet banner at minimum, I would double the width of the current banner, this would be the elimination of tile/mirror effect and still come out looking decent.

Also I'll take a stab at a panorama left makes it right /etc.,be back later with some stuff.

Gonna be using Gimp tho, haha.

[MadGypsy]

well yes and no - compression will eliminate colors within a certain range but that will also make the image less detailed. Making the image dimensions smaller can only go so far. It still needs to fit in the banner spot.

PNGs do not scale well and JPEG is a lossy format. What else are you going to use? BMP? lol that would be a mega huge file. SVG? How would you post that as an image?

I think you're wishing. The size of the banner alone even if it was solid white is gonna make for a huge filesize.