I will look into it again. I've thought of doing it a few times but the problem was that there were no clients that I would trust with putting on the site. Putting it on the site immediately means opening it up to way more people and in turn more potential for abuse, so we need a good team in IRC to keep the channel clean and a reliable way to ban people. Many clients connected in a way that made it difficult to ban by IP and others required a plugin to work. I'd like to see what's available now in a Javascript format or something, I'll look into it and post back here.

In other news it's time for my monthly update on the new site. Previously on NerdTalk I outlined my final choice of database and my work in speed performance and API construction. I also talked a bit about the game I am making as part of the new SP layout. This month I shelved the game for the time being to refocus on the actual design of the new site. It was a welcome distraction and I will finish it, but it's obviously not a priority. Sometimes I need to take a mental break if I work on one task for too long, so this game is intended to be a nice productive way for me to do that then revisit my work with a fresh perspective. It will be worth it in the end as the project will tie into the new website experience in a bigger way than just being a cool header.

Anyway since I had hit a point where continuing on the design would influence the API choices I make, I've been on a sort of spiritual journey to create a design language I'm happy with for SP. I've mentioned before that I don't think a clean flat look would be right for SP, at least not the way all my designer friends enjoy doing. Don't get me wrong I do think it's an aesthetically pleasing professional look, but SP has never really been known for it's professionalism. I have this vision just out of reach for something flat but fun, and it's both frustrating and motivating. Much of this month has been spent forking the web server a bunch of times in order to explore different looks. I feel like I've come a long way in figuring out what I want, but I'm still not satisfied. I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from motion design, and my favorite explorations so far are the ones with moving elements that are made with intent and perceived responsiveness in mind.

I chose to hold to a policy of only adding animation to elements if I could justify it beyond "it would look nice". I find that a UI that tries to be fancy by overusing animation actually just becomes frustrating. Having an immediate response to an action not only saves time, it feels good. When you load animations on to everything it might look nice but the viewer's brain is getting impatient because it's waiting for the task you initiated to be fulfilled. Website interfaces for sites that offer a service are first and foremost supposed to deliver the service effectively and intuitively, not attempt to become the center of attention. I mean how annoying would it be if you wanted to breeze through setting your controls in a game so you could get back to the game, and every menu transition was a 1 second star wipe? For me it can be tricky modelling my web design after motion design, since I find it very easy to go over board which creates the same frustration I am trying to avoid. Forcing myself to justify every use of animation - to think, "This is needed because I need to attract the viewer's attention so they know this button is here," or, "I'll start this animation immediately while the action is sent to the server so there is perceived response," - it produces a satisfying experience that gets me closer to hitting that level of intuitiveness where the UI never crosses your mind. My issue now is just applying that to a flat style that fits SP. If anyone has any suggestions or examples of interfaces they like, please feel free to post as I'm always looking for inspiration and ideas. Sometimes working out the reasoning for other people's design decisions helps me solve my own problems.

Other than my design quest I've been finalizing some of the finer details for the features that will be a part of the new SP so the end product is starting to take shape. I've talked about some specific features before but I've been meaning to give a loose outline for the features that are for sure going to happen. I get a lot of comments from people who want to know for sure if there is a portal or if RHG is being affected, so hopefully this clears things up. I'd appreciate it if anyone would link people here if they see those comments around, just to help the information spread. Keep in mind that just because I don't mention something here doesn't mean it wont be included.

There will be:

A Portal - The portal will be the backbone of the site. Every bit of media will be served out of this system. It is designed with an easy sponsorship system (which I've talked about before) as part of it in order to encourage and give incentive to animators to better themselves. It's intended to be one level above getting your animation on the front page - now you can get paid for your work through the site. The system is flexible enough that we can categorize portal submissions and treat them differently. A sponsored animation for example would hypothetically be taken out of the portal ranking system as it would be unfair to allow sponsored content (which gets more exposure) to be rated the same as regular content, while still keeping a score, the same comments, and the same authors. Speaking of which, there will be a proper credits system in the portal as well. You will be able to add users to your submission in order to share credit. Rewards and other perks achieved by that submission will apply to all credited accounts. The system will let you define the roles of each credit as well, so you can have "Stone - Animator", "Jeff - Programmer" and "WafflesMgee - Writer". I wanted this credits system in it because I think as we grow as a community sharing ideas and experience will become essential, so collaborative projects should become more accessible and easier to manage. Having everyone get a fair share creates incentive. I've intentionally allowed any role to be assigned, as I don't want to restrict to a few generic terms or terms specific to a medium, as this system isn't limited to just video content. This leads me to the next thing I want to mention.

Something for Writers - Since I can serve different content out of the same base system, I have planned out a very useful writing tool for the sweet little writing community that has grown within SP. It wont be something that's included along side animations in the portal, in fact I'm not sure if there will be a site-wide ranking for it at all. The actual idea started out as being for another part of the site, but I liked the idea so much that I felt it would be awesome to make it available on a site-wide scale. There are two basic aspects to it: the first is a publication tool that will allow you to format and style your document, and do other useful things like create a table of contents or save drafts. Using this you can publish literary works to various parts of the site like your own profile or to a community. The second part is a "reading list" that is always accessible from your user bar when signed in. In this list will be literary submissions that you have chosen to save there, or submissions that you have open. By design literary submissions are viewed without actually leaving the page you're on. This is done so that you can easily and quickly pull up these submissions for information at a glance, then close them and get right back to what you were doing. Your position in the document will be saved, so going back to it will put you right down to where you left off. This will be very useful for it's original purpose in the tutorials system, which leads me to:

A Tutorials System - This literary submission system was meant to be for tutorials, with the idea being that you can be animating, then quickly switch to SP and press two buttons to pull up a tutorial you need regardless of what page you're on, find the information, then returning to animating. There's no hunting down tutorials or navigating through 20 menus to get what you want. The tutorials system will be a portal of sorts in it's own right. We will be writing and publishing extensive tutorials in-house which will be featured first and foremost as they will tie in to your user account in some way, but we also want to open it up for anyone to create tutorials which can be ranked by readers based on how helpful they are. The best tutorials could be featured or promoted. CJ is really excited about this one. A big part of our vision for the new site comes from the renewed desire to help others learn a skill. Having a well thought out and accessible tutorial system is going to help a lot of people get started.

RHG: The Next Generation - The RHG system is getting a complete overhaul. This has been something we've been working on for a while and there will be a lot of information to cover on it which we will do later, but I promise it will be worth the wait. I don't want to give too much away since I do want to have a few surprises when we release (they will be big ones ;) ), but I've been asked a lot about RHG so here's what I want to share now to give you an idea where we're headed. First, the system is upgrading to an automated one. RHGs will be treated almost like another account that doesn't have voting privileges. You will be able to create your RHG character through an interactive system meant to replace the tedious process of posting a filled out template, and the character will be attached to your profile. We are being careful to keep the spirit of RHG untouched: you will have complete creative control over every aspect of your RHG character. We have designed our automated system to work hand in hand with your creativity.

RHG battles will be initiated using a battle system that will handle the agreement between two gladiators. You will define your terms and agree on a due date and length of voting time. You can submit your battle any time through this system up to the due date. If you haven't uploaded it on time you will lose by forfeit, unless you both agreed to extend the deadline before hand or your opponent grants you extra time. When you submit your battle it will be handled by the portal system as a battle; users can still rate it like normal in the portal but the submission will be linked to a battle page where both battles are showcased, the winner can be voted for and discussion about the battle can take place. Battles will be showcased in an RHG section on the site and will probably have some way of sorting them based on interest in the outcome. The RHG page will be an important hub into the RHG universe, it will not only have battles but show what's going on with other RHGs, as well as events currently going on related to RHG and other interactive secrets ;).

We've been working hard to make RHG better creative tool in general. It gives you a platform to launch your imagination off of, not just for animators but of course for wRHG as well. The new RHG is developed with a universe and story in mind, officially. We chose to take this route a while ago, trust me when I say the feedback towards RHG has always been heard and we're finally introducing these features we've wanted for years. Having a well thought out and cohesive universe that doesn't place restrictions on what your character can do or what story elements you have to include is going to be a big part of the new RHG. Much of the system is designed around this story, and the system will evolve as the story progresses and events occur. As we're building a universe together, we will consider every character created as a valid part of that universe, however since our narrative is intentionally ambiguous everyone has the opportunity to simply opt out of participating if they just want to use the system in their own way. You do not have to battle to own an RHG. It wont affect what we do.

This new RHG will give everyone a fresh start with a canon reason for the new beginnings. The story will account for the old existing RHG system and all previous generations, there will be an established reason why RHG is a thing in this universe. We are very excited for this new RHG, the anticipation is agonizing. I don't want to give away much more for now, we'll have more details and a full explanation of everything when we're closer to launching it all. There's a lot of surprises in store for the new SP in general that I don't think people are expecting at all. I definitely think it will be worth sticking with us through the rough times. With some TLC from all of us the new RHG system creates a much better environment for creating and learning. I can't wait to see what people come up with.

Anyway that's all I have in me for now. It's late and I should get to bed. Apologies if there are any typos or weirdly worded sentences, I'm too tired to go back through and proof read right now. Hopefully my mind dump makes sense.

Quote from Jeff

I will look into it again. I've thought of doing it a few times but the problem was that there were no clients that I would trust with putting on the site. Putting it on the site immediately means opening it up to way more people and in turn more potential for abuse, so we need a good team in IRC to keep the channel clean and a reliable way to ban people. Many clients connected in a way that made it difficult to ban by IP and others required a plugin to work. I'd like to see what's available now in a Javascript format or something, I'll look into it and post back here.

Maybe you can put the client for Registered users only?
And you can ban IRC user by banning the forum account (linked rule)
speaking of IRC Client, Free Open-source client isn't trusted enough?

Anyway about this Automated RHG System,
Does that mean we will have our own RHG page? that would be awesome

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[/hr]
Good work Jeff, I'm looking forward for the updates!

[Random Question]
Are you get paid for your efforts? or you do this on your desire?

Quote from Jeff

there will be a proper credits system in the portal as well. You will be able to add users to your submission in order to share credit. Rewards and other perks achieved by that submission will apply to all credited accounts. The system will let you define the roles of each credit as well, so you can have "Stone - Animator", "Jeff - Programmer" and "WafflesMgee - Writer".

God I hope this completely eliminates those long ass credits that people like to bloat their animations with. Like seriously, they'd add another song that would just make the file size unnecessarily bigger.
--

Suggestion: Would you be able to like, make some kind of preloader for all animations? This way, there would be no need to add preloaders into the animations themselves, and animators can just upload their animation and the preloader would automatically be there. It's just that some animators would forget to put one, and their animations play automatically. It gets worse when they put that code thing that removes the right click so you won't be able to press the rewind button. I hate this because I usually put loading animations on the side and do something else, so when I'm done I can go back and the animation would have already fully loaded.

A player would probably give the same benefit and even allow a lot more functionality, but idk the player on hyunsdojo kind of sucks on slow internet and a lot of times doesn't even load the animation. Like, it would just buffer forever, and reloading won't help. At least, that's in my experience. So I'd rather have the animations load just like how they always have (with a preloader), but if you're planning on a player already then I guess it can't be helped.
--

I don't actively participate or even pay attention to RHG as much as I did when I first joined this community, but I have to admit you're getting me hyped even for that. An automatized system, and even an official RHG universe with its own timeline, will surely make RHG a more interesting concept as it already is to the target audience. And I don't animate anymore but if the tutorial system works great then hell I might just pick it back up again. I'm sure it's going to attract a lot more interest from the newer generation and it might cause an influx of great members and animators in the future, so I'm very interested in this one.


@guramecon - this is his job, so naturally he gets paid for it.

Sounds good Jeff. Maybe I'm not understanding completely, but will sponsorship and submissions still be different?

Quote from guramecon

Maybe you can put the client for Registered users only?
And you can ban IRC user by banning the forum account (linked rule)
speaking of IRC Client, Free Open-source client isn't trusted enough?

It's a little more complicated than that, IRC uses it's own user system and actually relies on a third party to run. I cannot simply mash the two together, though it would be nice. I have been considering just dropping my support for IRC more an more lately as people seem to be losing interest and the new SP I think will offer a better way to communicate than IRC, but I would lying if I said I didn't have a soft spot for IRC since I've been using it so long. The free open-source clients had some issues when I looked into them previously as I mentioned, but I think with all the advances lately there's bound to be one we can use now. I'm going to spend some time today looking into it because I wouldn't mind drawing more activity within the community.

Quote from guramecon

Anyway about this Automated RHG System,
Does that mean we will have our own RHG page? that would be awesome

Yeah! The RHGs get their own profile of sorts and everything related to that RHG is automatically collected within that profile, so people can keep track of your RHG and make comments.

Quote from guramecon

Are you get paid for your efforts? or you do this on your desire?

Both. I do get paid for it but I also want to do it. I am employed by SP and currently the only web developer so I am literally spending all day on this project Monday to Friday. I think I've been working on SP officially for about 4 months now doing this. It's why I am able to implement all these features, I have a generous amount of time to dedicate to the project and control over every level of development. Pretty much my ideal situation at the moment :P

Quote from Smile

God I hope this completely eliminates those long ass credits that people like to bloat their animations with. Like seriously, they'd add another song that would just make the file size unnecessarily bigger.

Maybe I should add a way to "thank" other members as well :P

Quote from Smile

Suggestion: Would you be able to like, make some kind of preloader for all animations? This way, there would be no need to add preloaders into the animations themselves, and animators can just upload their animation and the preloader would automatically be there. It's just that some animators would forget to put one, and their animations play automatically. It gets worse when they put that code thing that removes the right click so you won't be able to press the rewind button. I hate this because I usually put loading animations on the side and do something else, so when I'm done I can go back and the animation would have already fully loaded.

A player would probably give the same benefit and even allow a lot more functionality, but idk the player on hyunsdojo kind of sucks on slow internet and a lot of times doesn't even load the animation. Like, it would just buffer forever, and reloading won't help. At least, that's in my experience. So I'd rather have the animations load just like how they always have (with a preloader), but if you're planning on a player already then I guess it can't be helped.

I haven't locked in the upload workflow yet on SP, but I have considered what you've mentioned. One of the issues I am facing right now is the inevitability of Flash Player's death in the browser. How should I plan for that? Right now the least I can do is make sure the site doesn't rely on Flash's existence to survive. The portal like Dojo's is going to support Flash and video uploads, and the video player will be made using HTML5 technology but I am hesitant to build tools that alter Flash files if Flash support will just be dropped in a year or so anyway.

Also in my experience altering Flash files can often have unexpected results. On Dojo I had created a feature that allowed you to control the volume of any flash file, but we had to disable it because the alterations it made inconsistently broke SWFs made for specific versions of Flash Player. I'm also a little hesitant to introduce a forced preloader in case someone already has a preloader they made, I'd rather not neuter any amount of work put into a project. I do not have a reliable way to detect existing preloaders.

We'll definitely have some preloaders anyone can use, and there are features we are planning that may actually eliminate the need to worry about Flash, but those are still up in the air. I think a player of sorts for Flash content would be a good idea, perhaps we may end up forcing our own preloading system any way just for consistency. We'll see, but these are good things to consider. I am focusing a lot on the delivery of the new site's experience, and speed is one of those things I am putting a lot of work into. I know how frustrating it is to wait for videos on Dojo to download, they don't have the same infrastructure we do so when you access their files they come from a small server in the US. On SP we have a global Content Delivery Network that will send you a copy of the file from the nearest server to your country, and I have put a lot of work into compression settings for video files so that they are able to be sent faster over the network. With this kind of streaming media latency will always be an issue, and I'm certainly not a team of computer scientists working for YouTube, but I think I will be able to develop something that is reasonably fast.

Quote from ???

Sounds good Jeff. Maybe I'm not understanding completely, but will sponsorship and submissions still be different?

They will use the same basic system but they will be treated differently. I'm not sure what an example would be to describe this, the view page for both types will look pretty much the same, sponsored content will just be put into it's own section like how it is now on SP's main site.

Quote from Jeff

We'll definitely have some preloaders anyone can use, and there are features we are planning that may actually eliminate the need to worry about Flash, but those are still up in the air.

I think you should add Resources Page, so users can download the preloaders, sfxs, etc. more easier (like Newgrounds)

I put up a new page for IRC accessible using the top navigation. Hopefully that will help generate more activity! I made some changes to the Adelais server so that we can just use Kiwi IRC. Seems to work well.

Hey Jeff, would you by any chance allow the ability to upload Unity-stuff? Seeing as it's free these days, it might be a future Flash-alternative that isn't Pivot and its picking up steam lately anyway.

Also, lovin' the IRC tab. I can finally get in there from work. If necessary.

The RHG universe idea sounds rad, but my fear is that it will have to be persistent and constant in order to work. I know it's an optional endeavor; I'm not talking about that. A "universe with its own growing story" implies that it ought to be maintained and updated regularly otherwise it'll stagnate when left alone. Currently, there is little to no maintenance and it seems to serve more good than harm because of its simplicity. But what you're pitching reminds me of RHG Territories, and that sort of failed spectacularly. Why? Because it hinged on one guy (and a couple of helpers) to maintain a certain resource and when stone went busy for a long while, the plan sort of just died. Is it going to be like that again but on a massive scale?

I don't think so. The Unity web player isn't currently in a state where I would feel comfortable implementing it. The alternative for them is their push for HTML5 output, which I may implement but it's also not quite there.

Obviously I cannot predict the future, so I won't promise that an active RHG universe will remain a persistent thing on the site. It may well fail spectacularly in unpredictable ways, but the fact is that the old RHG is getting incredibly stale and falling apart. People are clamouring for something fresh so we're trying some bold new ideas out that we've put a lot of thought and work into, and we think everyone is going to like them. I don't believe the issues that plagued RHG Territories will apply to what we're doing. RHGT required much more involvement than our system, which is the benefit of making everything automated. I think that's something to keep in mind, because this system doesn't need the same level of oversight and intervention so priorities are shifted towards this extra creative work. Even if that creative work fails, the system will chug on. That's partly why we're crafting the universe in an ambiguous way, so the entire system doesn't fall apart without it. There will always be something to do with RHG.

Let me make it clear that obviously I am referring to a worst case scenario. We don't expect to mess this up or ditch it, this overhaul of RHG is part of a real attempt to pump some life into the creative side of this community. We have been planning it out carefully because we've learned from all the mistakes that were made in the past. I've built tools to assist the directors of RHG in managing the universe, so it's not very much work for us to keep track of what's going on and make notes for the future or set up events and stuff like that. It can be brought together in the same manner as competitions, and those were run fine for a while before I was brought in. So I really don't think there's cause for concern as I've done a lot to prevent the same mistakes, but I can see why anyone would read this and worry based on history. It's going to be another one of those times where the only thing I can say at this point is that you'll have to trust that we got this, especially since this is actually our full time job now and not just a side hobby like it has been previously.

I feel like if it seems like we're not paying enough attention to the site you should remember that I'm building an entire new one, so there's not much value in spending a lot of time on something that will be replaced in the foreseeable future. We aren't all over the forum RHG at the moment because something far better is going to replace it soon.

Quote from guramecon

I think you should add Resources Page, so users can download the preloaders, sfxs, etc. more easier (like Newgrounds)

There are already threads for that, but I can see the upside to it having it's own page where the links don't have to be updated all the time.

Quote from Apex-Predator

There are already threads for that, but I can see the upside to it having it's own page where the links don't have to be updated all the time.

I mean the official one, you know.. I don't see the Official Stickpage Preloader (by Phil) thread get sticked in the Resources Section
and also the links are dead

What's the SP IRC channel?

Quote from TheLegendofKaito

What's the SP IRC channel?

address : irc.adelais.net
channel : #stickpage

Quote from Jeff

It's going to be another one of those times where the only thing I can say at this point is that you'll have to trust that we got this, especially since this is actually our full time job now and not just a side hobby like it has been previously.

I trust you man, we all do. You've done and been doing so much for this place, it's hard not to say that you will do everything to make RHG better, and work on it when Plan A fails. I guess I was just trying to poke your brain because I can't imagine what the scheme would look like and can only draw on RHGT as a historical milestone in RHG development.

hey jeff