Concerning the Future of the Terrain Board

[Celaquil]

So, I'm currently discussing improvements to the Terrain Board for the oncoming storm of Hive v2, obviously I can't discuss neither when it's coming or anything concrete regarding what's going to happen about it, as I have no such exemption. Neither do I know jack shit about it, so we're basically on the same page anyway. However! Concerning the future of the Terrain Board, I thought I'd include you lot if you've got any great ideas for how it should be working and ideas of improvements.

The current ones I've presented are as follows:

In regards to improvements to the Terrain Board, well, I'm uncertain of how far the powers of this new forum goes, but certain aspects that would be perfect could be:

- Getting a spot on the main page to preview the latest posted terrains in the section, maybe even have it slowly shuffling through all the terrains of the first page.
- Having it so that when someone post a thread with screenshots attached to it, they show as a small image beside the posted thread, something like the attached image. And for such threads as "Top Ten Terrains" when more than one screenshot is uploaded to the main post of the thread, it could also slowly shuffle through the screenshots.
- Some clever attachment upload, actually, skip that, something exactly like the one we've got, because that's perfect. (where the image is tiny first and when you click it, it pops up as a preview.)

Now, feed me those ideas!

 

[Gilles]

I really like the idea of the preview, but it seems to take up too much room with the current layout. Something like reddit would work I suppose. Have it so that there are images all down the side, and there is more info listed where the title of the thread is. You could fit 2-3 extra lines of info/options (subscribe, like, etc.) under the title.

I hope that makes sense. I'll think about this tomorrow.

 

[Celaquil]

Yeah, the image is a simple edit I made to show what I meant, it sure as shit won't look like that in the end, though. The layout of hive v2 will look different regardless, as I stated in the development thread "What I want is for the Terrain Board to be more picturesque, seeing as terraining really is mostly about visuals."

Those ideas about additional quick-functions like subscribing to threads and whatnot are good ideas, but those are more in line of being general forum improvements more so than specific Terrain Board improvements, I'll see if I can't sneak em in as suggestions, though.

 

[Gilles]

Well something along those lines, but more terrain oriented, would be the ability to "like" images. That way you could have the ability to list threads (or maybe even just the images) by rating of the terrain images. If you could list them by image, you would be able to post multiple images in one thread, but they could receive different ratings and would therefore show up in different spots when images are sorted by rating.

If that makes sense. I didn't read it over.

Edit: Basically the ability to hit "Sort by rating" and there would be a list of terrain images that are sorted according to how many "likes" they have. Images would be "liked" separately from threads. This would require people to actually upload their images instead of using hidden tags, which is better imo.

 

[Celaquil]

Hm, yeah. I could appreciate this terrainbook function
- We should use another word than "like" though.

 

[fladdermasken]

{Space}

we should use another word than "like" though.

LEGENDARIZE

 

[Naze]

- We should use another word than "like" though.

Hmm, maybe something towards the word "appreciate"? Or instead of a verb, we can use an image, like (but with it being a star, for example). In the search, the image would appear again, like "Sort by ".

These are just bad examples, if you guys could think of anything better it would be awesome.

 

[fladdermasken]

I could definitely stand it being a little less text-based. The primary medium here is images. Something like the art gallery over at WC3C only with other integrated features. Integrating slideshows can be done with simple jQuery or even html scripts so it shouldn't be hard to implement for Ralle.

I was thinking in the description, like where it says,

Terrain Board Need some help making a terrain? Got a terrain screenshot that you would like to showcase? This is the place for you.

to show an image slideshow of the ten most recently uploaded terrains.

Also if we integrate the rating system we could have a dynamic top ten list. We could even have two separate rating systems; one for jury memebers and one for sheeple.

 

[Celaquil]

...we can use an image, like (but with it being a star, for example). In the search, the image would appear again, like "Sort by ".

I like this. Only being the nostalgic prick that I am, I'd like to go with the "thumb up" image from over at skins, models and maps section.

Oh and flad, yeah, those are some great suggestions. Especially the top ten part, anything that'd make less work for us would be an improvement to our board ^^

It's just saddening that Ralle won't be attending these matters from the gecko, however.
I'll keep the pressure on, anyways.