Posts by Thrik

  • What do you think about the new look?

    There are a few issues with signatures, including the fact that they bulk out the mobile layout even more and also many signatures' formatting was broken by the update. It's not so much that they're super low-priority — although they are lower than some things — but it's just quite a bit of work to get them working.

    What I might have to do is blank all signatures and start again, with a limit on size and I'm not sure if images should be permitted. Although whatever I do, signatures can be turned off by users so I guess that it doesn't matter a huge deal.

    I'd be interested to know what people generally think of browsing the forum without signatures, because I've never actually asked?

  • What do you think about the new look?

    There are bugs with the editor, but again I'm really hoping these will be resolved soon. That's a deep rabbit hole to start messing with myself. :D

    That'd be very kind of you. As it happens, I've been looking into setting up a way of allowing people to easily do this and will get some details up soon. :D

  • What do you think about the new look?

    Don't worry I'm not offended, bear in mind I didn't build all of this myself. :D

    Some of the things you describe are clearly issues, however because the software is still relatively new there are lots of bugs going through the vendor's bug tracker and being fixed with maintenance releases. For example, I believe one has just come out that I need to schedule time in to install.

    When it comes to things that seem downright buggy such as the back functionality, I would expect those to be fixed relatively quickly now the software has out been out in the wild for a while, and also I am reporting things that seem like they should be fixed at the software level. There's no harm in letting me know about problems, whatever the case.

    Regarding the mobile view, I think that we're entering subjective territory here. In my opinion the mobile layout works well in that it retains most functionality without adding very much to the scale of things. There is more scrolling, but in exchange it means that everyday functionality such as 'like' and quoting aren't buried beneath taps like they were before.

    I also find the text more comfortable to read thanks to the additional leading between lines; it might not be as efficient, but it's better typography. Also, the forum listing is more loaded with content but actually includes things like articles and various other data now, and of course the articles themselves barely worked with the previous layout.

    Speed is something I've noticed, although it is an inevitable side-effect of now streaming all of the JavaScript, avatars, attachments, etc that were often just missed out entirely with the previous layout. I have been taking steps to address it a bit at a time, for example we have Varnish caches and potentially with time CDN-served assets. I'm also experimenting with various server-side ways of caching data and layout.

    I'm not completely dismissing your concerns, there are areas that need improvement; as I say, feel free to share which things specifically are hindering you and I'll do what I can. But overall I would say the mobile experience is a big step forward, as someone who spends at least 50% of my MapCore time using it.

  • Fallout 4

    The graphics discussion is potentially endless, but in my opinion once you become accustomed to a certain level of graphics it's difficult to be easily immersed in something that falls short. It's like when you watch a film and the CGI is a bit passé, or you play a game that you missed from the last generation (or two).

    I mean, if gameplay were the only factor why bother making assets better than PlayStation 2 levels, right? Obviously such a step back would be widely considered unacceptable — but the same exists on a more micro scale too.

    Of course, I did say that I like the visuals. :D

  • What do you think about the new look?

    I've updated the configuration of buttons for all screen sizes now. It's no longer possible to fit any more on without some proper messing around, so BBCode will be needed for additional functionality. To fit the font formatting onto tablet-size, I've had to take away the (very rarely used) alignment options.

  • What do you think about the new look?

    Oh, you're seeing the tablet version of the editor @jackophant. When the page loads, the editor buttons available is determined by the screen size (i.e. mobile, tablet, desktop). This is so that the buttons actually fit, although it does look like there is a bit more room available on tablet sizes.

    If you were to make your browser window wider and refresh it'd most likely show them all, but I can probably fit the buttons in so I'll do that. There is no longer a code view though, BBCode is just entered directly into the regular editor.

    @Vaya the button to the right of bold/italic/underline/strike clears formatting.

  • Fallout 4

    I'll admit that the visuals of Fallout 4 haven't blown me away, but they look nice. They're a lot nicer looking than Fallout 3, which I thought looked pretty sparse and just generally weak to be honest, even when it came out. I'm also happy to see more colour injected into proceedings — a guess taking a cue from Rage — because its predecessor was so dreary and washed out.

  • The Witcher 3

    The hype about this game is remarkable, I don't know if I can do it to myself to purchase what I assume will be a borderline endless game. The last game like it I played was Skyrim, and admittedly after 30 hours or so I started to get really bored because the stuff I was doing just wasn't that compelling — things eventually started to feel quite formulaic and I was really powerful so I felt little need to progress. Wondering how TW3 compares for someone who kind of loves the idea of RPGs but rarely gets that into them. :D