Legends Station V4 - Site Discussion

[fAB]

My hiatus has ended, time to get things moving around this site! Both for the sake of progress as well as washing away painful memories, it's time to get to work on Legends Station, Version 4!

I created the first prototype for MMLSV4 last summer actually, and I've been tweaking it some this past week. The main thing that's changed though is how I plan to go about implementing it. Instead of my usual, keep-it-under-wraps routine that surprises everyone with a big bang, this time I want all of you involved along the way.

Step 1 - Determine layout style
I'm pretty happy with the design I've come up with, and of course I get the final say, but I'd like your input as well. Suggestions for changes or improvements will be considered. Please visit here: v4.legends-station.com and let me know how you like it, or don't like it. The banner scene is very temporary by the way.

Step 2 - Confirm layout functionality
Once everything's looking good visually, it will be important to make sure all is well on the technical side of things. There's still a lot for me to do as far as this goes, but for now please check and confirm that the following are working for you:
- The main navigation buttons (Site & Forums, MM Legends, MM Legends 2, etc.) should change when the mouse rolls over them. No one should have a problem with these, but I take nothing for granted anymore when it comes to web design.
- In the upper left you should see a little arrow. When clicked, it should open the Quick Map, which will allow you fast access to almost every page in the site. Clicking the arrow again should hide the Quick Map.
- In the middle of the page is an ugly circle. Clicking it should open up a new, small window, which will be used for screenshot viewing and such.

Step 3 - Convert pages to new style
Once all the preparations are made, I'll begin to put all of the site's content into the new style pages. When we reach this point, I'll be taking care of them one or two at a time, and want everyone to monitor the progress as it goes. If taken page by page, it should be easy to pick out any bugs, typos, and make any suggested changes or additions before moving on.

Step 4 - Replace old site with new
All of this work will be coming together at the V4 address, and when I feel the new site is far enough along, I'll go ahead and move it all over to the regular address, thus replacing V3 where it is.

This will be a huge project and take some work, but by the time everything's done we should have an all new Legends Station that's better than ever, and one everyone's happy with! Oh, and not to worry, I'm still holding a few surprises back for later revelation.

Your comments please!
Oh, and of course, be sure to give your input in the separate thread setup for the forums.
mmls.proboards7.com/index.cgi?board=comments&action=display&n=1&thread=378

[Edwardo Rocket]

Ooh, I love the setup for V4. The banners look good, the buttons work nice, and the colorscheme suits the Legends franchise more than that light one. I do still like the little watermarked images in the background of the site, though, so maybe every page could have that on it? It's probably not that difficult to do in CSS or something, so I'm sure you could pull it off.

[Chiz]

Oooo...nifty! V4 is going to be PHP (and PNG)-powered!
The site map in the corner is a nice touch.

I have 2 suggestions!

1) Make a rollover animation for the affil buttons!
Something like this:
Rolling over:
Would show this:

Might take a bit of work, but hey, it looks neat...and it's less than 7kb.

2) ...I forget #2...lemme think about it...

EDIT:
Something I just noticed! (sorry about poking around! JMC taught me to explore every little thing when beta testing so uh...blame him!)
The URL to the image of the main logo is
"http://v4.legends-station.com/v4classic/logo1.png"
Is this hinting that there're going to be themed pages for holidays like Christmas and Halloween and stuff? I mean, we've got themed main page pics made my the community, but in v4, will the whole thing be themed?

[Santa Melty]

Well... as far as functionality and the like goes, it seems to be good thus far. The quick links in the corner is an excellent addition. I hated needing to muddle through the links to get to a particular place. Otherwise, it seems about the same. The button that churns up screenshots is a novel idea, and it’s not as large as the images we put on the front page in this version, meaning that us down here at the lower resolutions won’t need to scroll down to see if there is any new news. I see that you’ve also added the Main Gate link to the main bar, which should help immensely. Far more convenient and noticeable then the submenu link. Visually, it looks rough, but that is to be expected, seeing as how it’s still... rough. The new reaverbot eye is nicely colored. The color scheme is slightly darker, but equally blue, and not as dark as the version before the current one, which is good.


All in all, I like it. One thing bothers me though... In the current version and the one before, I know that there was a fairly large image on the front page which was used for art contests, such as the one that was held just last Christmas. In this new version, are you planning to do such a thing? Perhaps with the bar across the top? It just concerns me that if there is such a thing planned, the allotted space, as things stand, would have to be awful small. o.o

[JMC47]

I myself, am more concerned about the Main Gate more than anything else (I haven't updated the MMLEx site, so thats my fault). The Main Gate is dying due to lack of content. All my MMLEx downloads are down from the Virus, AT hasn't been updated in a long time as with Halycon days, and Launch the Draches also hasn't been updated.

Legends-station itself I thought was amazing. I still do. If you can make it even better, then you will surprise me once again.

[Mandinga]

would you like to implement flash things such as cool legends animations? such as this www.deviantart.com/view/23725198/

I can make em in any fashion you like, let me know I also like the new layout BTW but some more circuitry lines on the big blue parts would go nicely. If you don't mind my saying so.

[Dashe]

Hmmm...I like that v4's a bit more 3d-looking than previous versions. Though I would've used a transparent background for your reaverbot eye, and stuck it on the watermark without the white stuff behind it. Perhaps for the different sections you could stick the game titles up on that banner, and put images from each respective game behind it...I wish I could word it a little better...

That banner just looks like it could pretty much adapt itself to the different pages of the site.

[dragondash]

Wow. Good Job. It actually feels like Legends/DASH. Maybe if you add scrolling backgrounds like the pause menu screen in MML, it will seem more interactive.

[fAB]

Okie-doke. Sorry things have been quiet on everything V4 lately. Being back and working on MMLS again doesn't necessarily equal the same thing as having lots of time for it, or it being priority #1. I've been doing a few minor things in advanced preparation though, behind the scenes. *sneaky*

Anyway, let's go over the suggestions here...

FinalHazard/The Regal Wind
I must admit, I do like the subltle background pictures myself, and I put a lot of thought into it before deciding a plain background would work best for this style. That doesn't mean I still won't change my mind though...

Eric Chiz
6 or 7 KB times 7 buttons is an extra 42-49 KB, which adds up on dial-up, so I think I'll pass on such an inconsequential detail.

As for the question of v4classic, just trying to keep everything straight. As you may have noticed by now the different styles here on the forums use that setup with their directory names.

mltmlt22
Still needs a bit of tweaking yes, but I wonder if you could define "rough" for me.

Standard setup so far has been for the home page to display a large image, and V4 will be no different. What we're looking at here will be the template for every other page, but yeah, rest assured there'll be something eye catching (and holiday interchangeable) on the home page as always.

JMC47
Hopefully I will surprise you once again then. Legends Station does need a lot of attention though. The longer a site sits there, there more things you see need fixing, or alterations, etc. especially with a site this big. V3 is full of them. Don't give up on The Main Gate though, it's day will come... Could sure use some devoted staff though...

Mandinga
Animations like that for Legends characters would be cool, but the only place I could possibly see them as useful would be the Characters sections, in which case we'd need one for most if not every featured character, for consistency's sake. ; Stuff like that would certainly be awesome in the fan art section nonetheless.

Dashe
Judging from what you're saying, I'm guessing you're an Internet Explorer user? The Reaverbot eye logo has a transparent background around it, but IE doesn't read it. However, as much as I love Firefox and recommend anyone using IE switch over, I do intend to take care of this problem for those who won't change.

I understand what you mean about the different banners for different games. I've kind of tried to do that before, with the different BG images and top-left images of the past, but that's just too much hassle as it requires different templates which all need editing whenever I want to change one thing, so I finally decided not to continue that trend. However, as I said above, "The banner scene is very temporary by the way." Meaning, the final banner image won't be so reeking of only the first game.

Dragon DASH
Again, that's getting into having a background image, which I'm kind of trying to avoid for a few reasons... For one thing, there's no way to blend an image into the background when it's an image. See what I mean here? www.legends-station.com/mml2/index.php Now if all the world were PNG transparency compatible, that wouldn't be a problem, but I still have all the IE users to consider...


Still thinking over some things here, but mostly I'm just preoccupied lately.

[Santa Melty]

mltmlt22
Still needs a bit of tweaking yes, but I wonder if you could define "rough" for me.

Define "rough"?

Rough as in... rough, I suppose. Unfinished. I didn't mean anything by that except that the page looked empty. But then, the content still needs to be added, so that's to be expected.

I forgot to mention before, but in that banner that you're using at the top of the page... you didn't stretch that image, did you? Or is that another browser issue? o.o

[nettosaito]

its pretey nice, a more darker and bluer site works well i say, NICE JOB!

[Shift]

mltmlt22, you're right, both Roll and Data appear to be stretched, but the Sharukurusu seems fine. And judging by the official picture, www.legends-station.com/mml1/art.php?image=pic03 , I think it's pretty safe to say that it's somewhat stretched.

Other than that, fab, it looks great.

[fAB]

You know, looking back it's remarkable how few people actually posted anything in this thread... Here's hoping all the work I'm putting into this site will be appreciated by more than just the few here...


Well now, things certainly didn't go according to the plan, did they? Nevertheless, Version 4 has prevailed throughout the months of hardship and doubt. It's about time I give you all a true taste of it!

Welcome to Version 4 In Progress

There is still so, so much yet to be done, and some of it is done but yet to be shown. Let's focus on what we do have here though, for now.

The Style:
The Version 4 look has gone through many variations, but (aside from the still temporary home page image and the banner) it has finally become what you see. I sincerely hope that everyone will like it, but of course I understand that tastes differ and when you're used to something looking one way it can be difficult to see it change. With that in mind, V4 offers the ultimate solution, a Style Changer, which allows you to revisit any style in Legends Station's history! All the styles have been rebuilt to V4 specifications while doing my best to preserve the feel of the originals.

The Completed Pages:
All site related pages (with the exception of policies pending) are up and in place, as are those relating to the forums. Fan Sections and Other Games parts of the sites have also been brought over to V4 better than ever.

New Content:
While a lot of what's made the jump from V3 to V4 so far will look familiar, there are a number of new pages and/or new features added to pre-existing pages. To name a few...
+ The Caption Contest page is up-to-date with all 100 images, their winners and captions, HM, and number of participants. Full caption stats have been calculated and posted as well.
+ Soon to be implemented here in the forums, the avatars have been completely reworked to fit a new 150 pixel size. Nearly all the avatars have been reproduced in the new style, plus there are a number of new ones that have been added. In particular, thanks to Eric Chiz we now have animated version of the MOTB characters! (note, linking to these avatars before they are officially added to the forums will result in their "shrinking," so please wait)
+ The Fan Art and Fan Fiction include all of the latest submissions in addition to the reorganization of all previous galleries and stories.
+ New games have been added to the Other Games/Cameo section.


I know it's not a whole lot to look at (at least on the surface), but before going any further with the site, I want to confirm that everything looks good so far. All of you, please, look all around at the completed sections and tell me if you find any problems or have suggestions on how to improve a page. Basically, if you use the Quick Map in the upper-left corner you'll see which links are working and be able to navigate those sections.

Check it thoroughly, test it in different styles, let me know what you think of it thus far!

[Aim]

On one note, I had never been able to find the Alternate Trigger stuff before, and I'm glad I finally got to see it. Sweet Loatheage! XD

On another, I think the new site update looks like it will be great. Two things:

a) I couldn't find the caption contest section you said had been updated with new images. o.o;

b) I still have a fanfiction and a few short stories I could contribute if you need more fan stuff. =D

[Dashe]

WOAH!!!! THE AT TEISEL MODEL'S GOT AN AVATAR!!! BON TOO!!!

*Is suddenly distracted again* WOAH!!! NEWS UPDATES!!!

*See above* WOAH!!!! I NEVER KNEW BLYKA WAS YOUR BROTHER!!! though I had been suspecting it for a while and never got around to asking...

Yeah, this is definitely the version for people with ADD. It was hard finding a lot of stuff without using the drop-down menu in the top right corner though...maybe you should take that into consideration. And I don't see the forum page anywhere (the place where you archived the caption contest winners and avatars), just links to the actual forum. I kind of liked the pages a little better (they were a bit more organized, IMO), but I can see that having actual forum links could get more people browsing the site to check out the forums. It really could go either way, and most of it is probably a matter of opinion anyway.

At least now I can rest assured that this IS happening, and not just a cover story on our avatars to cover up the dire truth that a giant toyota with fangs and claws has destroyed your computer and the v4 related files, preventing any progress on the site whatsoever until the year 2037, when Dash Myoku finally gets his job making music for Crapcom and strangles whoever's in charge at the time, taking over the company himself and forcing the rest of the company to begin work on Rockman DASH 3.