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BlackShipsFillt
24-02-2010, 11:56 PM
Hi, I'm just indulging in some shameless self-promotion.

Finally got a website with my work on it : http://www.freelives.net

Miktar
25-02-2010, 12:21 AM
I like the pulsing 'games' and 'more info' links, though I think the glow/blur around the dude and logo in the top banner looks off, compared to the crispness of the stuff below it. I would drop the white glow around 'free lives' and the green glow around the black pixel dude, but that's me.

http://clip2net.com/clip/m6496/1267049997-clip-8kb.jpg

Also, the pixel style works, but the tail on the bubble around the 'free lives' logo clashes, by being angled vector - I would make it pixellated too, so the dialogue bubble matches the overall theme.

Azimuth
25-02-2010, 12:37 AM
Everything's too big, dude. When users have to scroll down to see a page's main text, it's time to resize your banners.

BlackShipsFillt
25-02-2010, 01:34 AM
@Azimuth : Yikes... I had a look at it in 1024X768 and it's terrifingly large... I'll have to skootch it down a notch. (I'll probably resize it to 80%, I did intend for it to be oversized, but I think I took it too far)

@Miktar Yeah, the design is all over the place, I'm not going to justify it, it looks unprofessional and a little crazed, but it makes me happy. Though thanks for the opinion!

Fengol
25-02-2010, 07:03 AM
Nice to see your stuff being pimped :D Love the website theme (makes me think of mint ice-cream) and the layout is simple and bold. Now you need to lob mails at the various indie game review sites you've got mentioned and give them Kicky Fighter to play with. It worked by Nandrew is still busy with Desktop Dungeon.

Oh, and do you actually have a pig a pet?

BlackShipsFillt
25-02-2010, 10:04 AM
Desktop Dungeons is rather good (which is why Nandrew is making such a splash with it)...

Hopefully KickyFighter will get there, but it'll need a lot more content before it can sustain someone's attention long enough... but I'm working on it. And once it is feeling more complete I'm definitely going to be pushing my minty fresh website on everyone.

Sadly Floyd (the pig) is not mine. I can't afford a beautiful pig like that (he has an eating disorder, in that he can't stop eating, but I hear he's on a diet now)

xyber
25-02-2010, 10:34 AM
I like :D

Aaw, I thought the pig was yours, you two seems to fit so well together,

dislekcia
25-02-2010, 01:50 PM
I like the site, concise info and you get straight to listing games as content. Win :)

Unfortunately, this is just going to make Aeq and Nandrew kick my ass harder to get the QCF site up.

P.S. Have you incorporated now?

Nandrew
25-02-2010, 01:57 PM
"IF YOU ARE WONDERING ABOUT THE OCTOPUS' EXPRESSION, THE OCTOPUS IS SMILING (ALTHOUGH IT WAS ACTUALLY AN ATTEMPT TO DRAW CTHULHU, NOT A FOUR LEGGED OCTOPUS). IT'S MEANT TO BE WELCOMING."

^ Haw haw. :)

BlackShipsFillt
25-02-2010, 03:28 PM
I put in some links linking back to the posts I've made for games here... until I convert the thing into wordpress or something I won't have any comments system. And even then managing users and spam is a nightmare and expecting people to sign up just for my games is a bit of an unnecessary hurdle.

(the threads at NAG are permanent right?)

@Nandrew : If I had a picture of me and an octopus I'd definitely be resting my head on it instead.

Fengol
25-02-2010, 04:43 PM
I don't think your site needs a comments system. You've put up contact details if anyone has something meaningful they want to tell you; otherwise you can avoid the whole spam clutter!

Karuji
25-02-2010, 08:18 PM
I like ^_^

dammit
25-02-2010, 08:29 PM
I don't think your site needs a comments system. You've put up contact details if anyone has something meaningful they want to tell you; otherwise you can avoid the whole spam clutter!

I think you'll get more feedback when you have a comment system in place. Sure, it'll be loads of spam, but there's also a better chance someone will give you real feedback. Sometimes people can be too lazy to even send an email :P

BlackShipsFillt
25-02-2010, 09:03 PM
Yeah, I might convert it to a blog at some point... just blogs are more work every step of the way... and right now I don't need meaningful comments, my site isn't going to be the point where people encounter my games... they'll come across them in communities like this one.

If I could find a comment system that works through google accounts that might be useful... I'm not going to make people create special accounts just for my website... And I'm definitely not going to allow anonymous comments (spam)... I'll do some research.

xyber
25-02-2010, 09:09 PM
But do the blog thing (can just disable comments) and then enable a webfeed so I can subscribe to it i n google reader and not miss anything :P

BlackShipsFillt
25-02-2010, 09:26 PM
Follow me on twitter then... It's sort of like RSS only more fun.

And making a site that looks like the one I've got in a blog is going to be a WHOLE lot of mucking about in PHP. Maybe I could hire someone to do it.

dislekcia
25-02-2010, 10:42 PM
Follow me on twitter then... It's sort of like RSS only more fun.

And making a site that looks like the one I've got in a blog is going to be a WHOLE lot of mucking about in PHP. Maybe I could hire someone to do it.

Um... I can't find your twitter handle anywhere :(

Also, procedural generation is a ludicrous amount of fun when it starts giving you things that work. Last year at rAge a kid came to find me after SpaceHack generated something that looked like the Millennium Falcon!

Fengol
26-02-2010, 11:16 AM
I can't find your twitter handle anywhere :(

@Free_Lives (http://twitter.com/Free_Lives)

dislekcia
26-02-2010, 01:13 PM
@Free_Lives (http://twitter.com/Free_Lives)

See, I was looking all over the site for that!

BlackShipsFillt
26-02-2010, 01:57 PM
Yeah, see you found me now... Thanks Fengol!

Silly me, I'm going to have to put that link up on my site, when I have a spare moment.

Fengol
26-02-2010, 05:11 PM
I am the fishhead in your stargazy pie!
I am the provider of twitter pages!
I am... Darkwing Duck!

BlackShipsFillt
02-06-2010, 01:13 AM
Hi guys...

I've been rebuilding my website... http://www.freelives.net ... I haven't included all the old content yet... but I'm interested to know if it breaks on any of your browsers (It's now got lots of php and javascript courtesy of WordPress)

Anyway... I'd really appreciate any feedback, I'm pretty sick of it now, so not much is going to change, unless someone spots something broken (and as php is not my strong suite there most probably is), in which case you'd be saving me a lot of embarrassment down the line.

Also I'm interested in it's usability, it's basically the same site I had before, but I had to hack allot of the WordPress code to get it so.

Also it may once again be huge on smaller screens, I apologize in advance to the 1024 users.

However it does now support comments!!! (though I have only enabled comments on two pages so far)

dislekcia
02-06-2010, 01:38 AM
Welcome to wordpress :)

The site works and doesn't seem to have any technical problems... The main thing is that you've ticked the indie game boxes with lots of juicy screenshots, which is pretty much the biggest thing people seem to care about. We don't have nearly enough screenshots on the QCF site.

Couple of things, nothing huge though: The way the elements "scoot" up from the bottom of the page is a little unexpected, not a big deal though. Also, the bottom content elements are grey text on a grey background, could do with a little more contrast. Apart from that, sweet :)

BlackShipsFillt
02-06-2010, 11:40 AM
Thanks Dislekcia! Good eye on the bottom section. I like what you guys have at the bottom of your website, the categories list with smart rollovers, I might emulate it a little bit when I'm doing the finishing touches.

The screenshots are as a result of the way I use websites, in that I don't read anything unless I'm interested in the surrounding images, with the exceptions of research and life threatening situations.

Btw. As an aside. Are QCF ever planning a fighting game? Your company name demands it (Quarter Circle Forward).

FuzzYspo0N
02-06-2010, 07:34 PM
+1 on that

Cyberninja
03-06-2010, 04:53 AM
That banner really cheapens the website, BlackShip. It could really use some work, imo. I like the rest of the site, though. Also, that pig is adorable. :P

dislekcia
03-06-2010, 04:56 AM
Thanks Dislekcia! Good eye on the bottom section. I like what you guys have at the bottom of your website, the categories list with smart rollovers, I might emulate it a little bit when I'm doing the finishing touches.

The screenshots are as a result of the way I use websites, in that I don't read anything unless I'm interested in the surrounding images, with the exceptions of research and life threatening situations.

Btw. As an aside. Are QCF ever planning a fighting game? Your company name demands it (Quarter Circle Forward).

Those rollovers were a lot of annoying CSS :(

Heh, maybe one day we'll do a fighting game. I'm not sure how I'd do something different to what Soul Calibur does (which to me is pretty much a perfect fighting system) but it would definitely be fun to try. We'd probably do Red Shift before that, which is an RTS that could conceivably incorporate quarter circles for special actions... But that's still just a design in the big file of stuff to do one day.

BlackShipsFillt
03-06-2010, 10:09 AM
That banner really cheapens the website, BlackShip. It could really use some work, imo. I like the rest of the site, though. Also, that pig is adorable. :P

The rainbow thing at the top? Or the old menu bits?

I think at some resolutions it looks pretty awful, I'll have a look at it.

xyber
03-06-2010, 12:28 PM
whah.. i spot a feed :P .. time to add you to my google reader.

site works fine on Firefox.. but then again.. it would ;)

Cyberninja
03-06-2010, 01:06 PM
The rainbow thing at the top? Or the old menu bits?

I think at some resolutions it looks pretty awful, I'll have a look at it.

The rainbow thing at the top. I'm sorry to say man, but that image just looks childish and out of place. You have some awesome pixel artwork on your site. Why not create a new pixel-style banner using some of those images instead? Or perhaps, just an idea, create a black banner with white text (which would be the name of the site) and a green pixel pig image (at the far right hand corner).

I know it's just an unimportant aesthetic change, but I think it would really make your website look so much better. Just my 2 cents. :)

BlackShipsFillt
03-06-2010, 05:04 PM
Oh yeah, the guys at the office aren't 100% about it either, but I quite like it (the rainbow)... games today are way too brown.

That said it would make more sense in 8-bit, I may take a look into it. (and I do quite like pigs, so that may happen too)

Squid
03-06-2010, 05:47 PM
I really like the rainbow, but the soft glowy text looks out of place imo.

xyber
05-06-2010, 10:52 AM
+1 forliking the rainbow.

M2K
05-06-2010, 12:48 PM
niiiice!

Grim Reaper
08-07-2010, 07:49 PM
@ blackshipsfillt

let Gabriele do the artwork he better at it than you

BlackShipsFillt
08-07-2010, 10:35 PM
Gabriele is quite the artist, though he is also a hardcore gamer who plays Call of Duty and so doesn't understand rainbows, whereas I'm not into desolate (brown) nuclear wastelands caked with blood and war-ruined machinery, faceless hulking warriors carrying flak cannons who listen to viking metal and other hyper-masculine-things and manliness (which he is into, because he plays an awful lot of Call of Duty).

But that is also why we make a good team.

xyber
09-07-2010, 09:20 AM
Vikings listens to techno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGRs8PyqKKs

;)

Grim Reaper
09-07-2010, 05:48 PM
You going to start that argument about the colors of game again. Please don't ,it was the most pointless ten minute of my life.