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Wednesday, August 4, 2004
Beyond v7
A couple of days ago I was thinking about OtakuBoards a bit more, in terms of its future. This came about because I was mentioning to Justin that I need to finalize the new postbit stuff for the site soon.
If you haven't read about that before, it's basically a two stage update for OtakuBoards. One stage is the OB Arcade, the other is the new postbit.
If you've been to Tony's boards, you'll have a fair idea of what the Virtual Bulletin arcade setup is like. It's pretty cool. The ability to generate a ladder and things like that make it an interesting added feature.
As I've mentioned in previous updates, we've actually had the OB Arcade sitting there, all finalized, for several months now. In fact, I remember seeing the finished version not too long after v7 itself launched.
Normally, it would be okay for us to just add an arcade link and be done with it. But OB Arcade is going to include a feature, whereby members can actively challenge one another in games. It's almost a turn-based system, where the person with the highest score wins. I haven't had an in-depth look at the system, but I assume that your profile will have some sort of info that lists your wins/losses.
However, to implement this properly, it's necessary to actually modify the site's postbit (the postbit is the area that shows your name, avatar and myOtaku links).
Of course, I have to design this postbit for each skin seperately, which is somewhat annoying. But that's to be expected.
Anyway, I'm really hoping to have all of that done pretty soon. In conjunction with the changes in The Arena, it should inject some further interest and excitement into the site.
But beyond that, there are a few other things I have in mind. Some involve forum changes that I'm working through at the moment -- ideas that I'm kinda formulating in my head.
In addition, I would like to find new ways to connect OtakuBoards with the rest of the network. I have a few ideas in this regard, but whether or not they are implemented really comes down to the feasibility of the programming side of it.
And the third thing...skins. I've had a couple of people approach me about making skins, but they have kind of been very slow to act on design in general and so, I don't want to rely on them at this point.
For my own part, I have kind of changed course a bit. Originally I had planned to develop a new optional skin for OB. But now, I want to make a new default skin. Of course, the current two skins will still be selectable -- but Liquid would no longer be the default.
The question is, what type of skin should be the new default? I'm having trouble answering that question. I had a few ideas in mind (one involving liberal use of yellow, the other involving a fruity lime/green scheme). But it's hard to say, at this point.
In any case, I suspect that I'm going to have to actively recruit skin artists soon. I would actually like to have a couple of people who dedicate their time to the development of new skins, so that this way, a new skin can be added every couple of weeks or so.
Of course, it's ultimately easier said than done. Everyone has their own stuff to work on and making vB skins (especially OB-specific skins) is a tough job. It's also a very long process -- it literally takes hours and hours to make a forum skin from the ground up. There are a billion tiny things that you have to edit. By just looking at the forum, it's hard to get an idea of the number of things that have to be changed. But yeah...it's nasty.
Anyway, hopefully I can find a couple of people who are willing to go through that, to get their skins displayed on OB. I would love to churn out a handful of skins for the site at the moment, but I'm just too busy with other things.
Hopefully things will settle down a little once theOtaku.com's new work is all complete (and there's still a way for me to go on a few things there).
Also...I am planning something big that doesn't relate to online stuff at all. It potentially relates to my career, interestingly enough. If things go well, I'll fill you in.
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