Thursday, May 08, 2008

SMC & internal affairs

SMC 1.5: New particle effects and enemies

You can now download version 1.5 of Secret Maryo Chronicles (smc). Lots of improvements found their way in:


New World, many new sprites, replaced enemies, particle emitter, ambient sound, many fixes and more!

The project is moving the game's visual style further away from it's Mario inspiration - I applaud to that. There still is a bunch of tasks for audio and 2D graphics artists though.


A bit of a while ago, the platform game scored first place on yet another genuine top open source games list™.


Okay. The update on smc was actually just a cover up. You and I, dear reader, we have to talk. Text browser folks and RSS users can leave now.


This is what Free Gamer will look like... maybe

This blog will get a new look soon. If you care about the style of the text you read here, please take a look at the current work in progress and comment on it. Let me help you help me help you (help me?)

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my opinion there is not enough contrast between the whites and the greens on the new layout. That makes my eyes bleed.

Leslie P. Polzer said...

Sidebar too wide, not enough contrast as a whole. Main content should stand out somehow, either by contrast or borders.

Nice logo :)

Andrew said...

There should be more importance placed on the text rather then the sidebar. It's too wide and distracting when you're trying to read the article.

Anonymous said...

At 1600x1200 screen resolution there is way to much white on the screen. The old layout may be even smaller, but the black border helped to hide this somewhat.

Generally I prefer layouts like on http://www.happypenguin.org/ where the content adapt to the screenwidth.

Anonymous said...

I think the new page is great. I like the text in the smaller column as it's easier to read.

Nice job!

Anonymous said...

but i like the crazy dude with squashed nose look

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Charlie... please.. DONT change anything.. it is fine.

Alan Macdonald said...

I do think this is an opportunity to make a wider page or as a poster above has stated one that adapts to the user's resolution. I also run 1600x1200 and so many sites have ridiculous amounts of white space with a tiny amount of content in the middle. HTML provides percentages for this and it gets on my nerves (tho there are counter arguments my blog discussing this, wah hay)
when sites don't utilise this.

qubodup said...

just a quick note: newspapers don't use full page width, because it's easier to read and requires less eye movement, when you use 40-char-wide columns. This is why I'm against %-based text-area-width.

qubodup said...

Anony#1: Ok. I guess we can optimize the link color still.

Leslie P. Polzer & Andrew: Don't you feel claustrophobic, when sidebars are too slim? I do.
I will look into making a "hide/show" link via js/cookie.

Anony#2 & Alan Macdonald: IMHO it's not about using all the valuable space of the display, but to make it readable. If web page design allowed auto-columns (which would make the web site grow to the right) I totally would prefer them.

Anony#3: Thanx!

Anony#4: I do too =) but... I don't know how to make a design with him that I would like.

theotherhiveking: What do you dislike in the new design?

Alan Macdonald said...

Actually the newspaper columns idea seems to be possible:
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/getting_started/article.php/3479341

and that page's example.
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/legacy/tutorials/getting_started/cols_example.html

I tested in IE 7 and FF3 nightly build and both display ok. I appreciate this might not be easy to incorporate into the blog structure though. It also Won't "grow to the right" but I personally don't think horizontal scrolling is a good thing.

Free Gamer said...

Multicols does not work in modern browsers. The fact the example looks like it does is because it's a very bad example. (It appears as 4 columns because you have 4 sets of "Text text text text" repeating.)

Anonymous said...

Sidebar is waaaaaaaaaay to wide, and the text is not centered, In every other page i have seem it is. Just it seems to be easier to read it when it is centered, text 50% of the screen and 50% sidebar doesnt seem very confortable..

Order of the elementents on the top bar. I will be using Blog and Forum the 95% of the times, and these link are lost in a mass of thing that i don't even know what do. (wiki watch?) Those should stand somehow.. Like blog being the first link and forum the last, or anything while i have not to fight with a mess of links in green.

Green? CONTRAST!

Anonymous said...

Reading something where the text is not in the centre of the screen is odd. A left margin would be nice.

qubodup said...

theotherhiveking: True about the sidebar.

The top bar items will stay that way I think, they're supposed to let the people know of what our community includes.

Anonymous: you're right, thanks for that hint It should be better now.


Please post about the skin on http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=msg&goto=7192

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