The Fall gets a new website design.

[Pope Viper]

The Fall: Last Days of Gaia gets an all new look.

Extended Info: Updated by Kotario
Along with the interesting new visual direction of the website and new screenshots, information has been released on the battle system and Living World Architecture (LWA).

<blockquote>After having worked on the LWA for more than one and a half year it is now possible to establish almost any kind of dependency between arbitrary objects in the game, no matter if it's characters, map objects, buildings, items or tools. The LWA also manages the general behaviour of the NPCs and the enemies of the player. Every single character has a set of activities he will follow depending on certain circumstances. Time plays an important role as an NPC has several tasks he can address during the day. And depending on their preferences characters will go to sleep in their bed or whatever resting place they have at night.

All these activities and behaviour patterns can be assigned individually, of course. One could create any imaginable setup, however, it is crucial that the tasks fit to the NPCs since they're extensively commenting on whatever challenge they're currently facing and their living conditions in general. And through aforementioned dependencies we can establish relationships between characters (love, hate, envy etc.) or model the preference for certain objects or hobbies - tech expert, gun fanatic or survival specialist to name a few.

To sum it up, the Living World Architecture is a powerful, efficient and flexible tool, enabling us to construct credible and dynamic worlds for all types of Role-Playing Games.</blockquote>Hope LWA lives up to Silver Style's description of it.

Check it out: The Fall

Thanks to Glowbewohner for the heads up.

 

[Ashmo]

Oh, come on! Cutting images into pieces and putting them into a table?
The sane approach would be putting the actual decorative picture up as a background and then putting the clickable parts as seperate pictures on top of that by positioning them via CSS.

CHRIST.

Ain't going to take a second look at it to determine what else they did wrong. That turned me off enough already.

 

[Odin]

Oh, come on! Cutting images into pieces and putting them into a table?
The sane approach would be putting the actual decorative picture up as a background and then putting the clickable parts as seperate pictures on top of that by positioning them via CSS.

LOL, I knew this one was coming!

 

[Ashmo]

I'm the local Web Standards Guru / Web Design Critic. Can't do anything about it

 

[Roshambo]

Oh, come on! Cutting images into pieces and putting them into a table?
The sane approach would be putting the actual decorative picture up as a background and then putting the clickable parts as seperate pictures on top of that by positioning them via CSS.

CHRIST.

Ain't going to take a second look at it to determine what else they did wrong. That turned me off enough already.

Hey, it worked for BioWare's Inbred Engine, it can work for them, too! I hope for their sake that their art direction for the game isn't as hopelessly backwater as the art direction for their site.

If their design is anything like their Webmeistery, expect the LWA to be just a corny rip-off of Ultima 7 or Gothic's social system, only it sucks ass and is contrived to the point where it can be exploited mercilessly by anyone familiar with the game mechanics. I can imagine the letdown as the game turns out to be a polished turd after all this media whoring, hype, contests, etc.

-Rosh, still giggling like a maniac at "Battle Bar".

(Great, another game that will tend to play itself for you. I wonder when game developers and publishers figured that gamers liked to have their intelligence insulted due to a few GameSpy morons, and turn everything into a copy of Dung. Shit.)

 

[Briosafreak]

Oh, come on! Cutting images into pieces and putting them into a table?
The sane approach would be putting the actual decorative picture up as a background and then putting the clickable parts as seperate pictures on top of that by positioning them via CSS.

LOL, I knew this one was coming!

Yeah, me too Ashmodai needs a special webdesign critic from the Den or something like that rank by now

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Actually it's kinda funny. I can look at that site now and see a better way to do it too. None of that table bullshit.

Oh God... the entire site... it's a mess of tables...

 

[Ashmo]

Actually it's kinda funny. I can look at that site now and see a better way to do it too. None of that table bullshit.

Oh God... the entire site... it's a mess of tables...

Yeah, the sad part is I remember that it was considered a hip and new technique back in the year 2000. The really sad part is that most "web designers" (::spit: have never evolved beyond that and totally ignore the trend towards web standards.

 

[GameMaster]

Actually looks kind a good, and that's all that matters to me.
Of course this may not be a very objective appraisal, since I don't know anything about webpage design.

 

[Tannhauser]

Ashmo... you have ruined me. Now I can't visit a game website without thinking of you.

For example, I just spied the BloodRayne 2 for the first time yesterday, and I thought "Gee... Ashmo would love this."
Edit: I just noticed that according to the News section, Rayne is topless in the newest edition of Playboy. That's rather... interesting.

 

[Roshambo]

BloodRayne could use anything to make it more appealing. I have heard of The Legacy of Kain, when a vampire nut I know openly slags on BloodRayne as being as interesting as Dungeon Siege, and when I have watched someone play it...ugh. I'm a renaissance gamer; I like all genres, surprisingly enough since I'm a hard critic on most of them. It is because I've seen many excellent examples of games that I tend to like the concept of "quality" rather than the genre itself. Of course, it could also be the possibility that I've fought my way through a multitude of crappy games.

Terminal Reality's developers aren't that particularly bright, either, if one of their artists is anything to judge by. The former lead artist of the Shattered Oasis mod himself, Vitaliy Naymushin. You can meet the moron in this thread here. He's been playing FPS games most of his life, has about 4 years of gaming graphics experience (modwork) and tried to say that he has more graphical knowledge than anyone here (including his two years of 3d art).

Yes, the fuckwit thinks that first-person view is the "next logical step for RPGs". Yeah, since the twit grew up playing classic id games for the first six years of his gaming experience, and then he got an iMac at 14 from his father! Let's not forget the wonderful eye-grabber for development studios, using the beloved "u" shortcut in a bio page, which is something else people look at for employment considerations if it's present. Yes, all of that REALLY makes me want to believe that 19 year-old kid when it comes to his "understanding" of CRPGs, much less his attention to detail. He must be decent at the artwork, because I see no other reason to have him at a development studio, and there's a reason why Boyarsky is liked for what he did (ie, understanding game design outside of "D'urr...I draw things!").

And, don't forget the epitome of shit, there's now going to be a BloodRayne movie. See the Happy Tree Friends clip of "The Way You Make Me Wheel", especially Handy's reaction. A slice to the jugular with a safety razor was undoubtedly the thought for some who have already had the misfortune to have heard of this. Yet, I am afraid it would be more like puking up your guts into the aisle.

GameMaster: It is because from a programming and cache point of view, it's INCREDIBLY messy and can often lead to some funky graphical errors by people who haven't cleaned out their cache when the site has an update. Besides, there's a cleaner and FAR easier way to code than that, and it uses far less coding.

Hell, we have used the link AREA SHAPE method for YEARS here at NMA. Check the Fallout 1 maps section sometime, and the clean links upon them. That's all one graphic, clean, and has a neat little area that you can click on that goes to another page or entry, also without any JavaScript or Flash concerns. Using such also assumes that people aren't wholly dependent upon a lame WYSIWYG editor. For fuck's sake, it would have taken about a tenth of the time to manually edit the source to use AREA SPACE link methods on flags you pasted onto the large graphic than it would take to cut the jpg image down into small squares and to insert in the flag graphics. All you need to do is open up the pic in any program that shows you the pixels coords and take some notes. Then, put in the HTML, upload the pic, and there you go.

 

[Ashmo]

Uhm... how should I put this...

Image maps have their place, but in most cases they are used due to lack of understanding or just misused.
I suppose the map thing might make sense, but menus or navigation in general could do a lot better without them.

As for markup of image maps: a is superior to area. Marking an image map up as a list inside of an object is a good way to provide an image map for browsers that support them and alternative markup for browsers that don't (or the case that the image can not be loaded for some reason) at the same time.

Anyway.

The page is a good example for bad design. A crappy 3D animation and particle effects supplied with Flash, tables placed inside other tables due to a misperception of the idea behind tables, etc etc.
The sad part is that not only the technique but also the design is totally ass. The designer not only didn't know anything about the tools, but also lacked comprehension of design theory and principles.

 

[Elissar]

If you can do better, then offer your services.

 

[tired007]

i think

I think I'll stay out of this one. I know about as much about HTML and web design as a Texan known about sweet corn.


I thought the site looked fine but then again.... I'm a moron

 

[Odin]

Re: i think

I thought the site looked fine but then again.... I'm a moron

There's a difference of looking fine and going by standards/less code hence the reason why we are talking about these things..

 

[Ashmo]

If you can do better, then offer your services.

I can do better and I earn money by doing better. Offering my service would most likely be pointless as the management would see only two facts: 1) they already have a website, 2) the website looks fine to them (and apparently a clumsy and utterly complex design bloated with dozens of decorative gimmicks is expected of large companies and game websites, or so I've been told by someone representing the teenage MTV target group -- luckily this will change once the accessibility laws are in place, at least for governmental and market dominating organisations).

 

[Roshambo]

Uhm... how should I put this...

Image maps have their place, but in most cases they are used due to lack of understanding or just misused.
I suppose the map thing might make sense, but menus or navigation in general could do a lot better without them.

They're good for pretty much that. Making a graphic have "clickable" locations. Most browsers should support this - if they don't have a supporting browser, it's unlikely they'll have a computer that will support the game. Image maps also work with browsers that have JavaScript disabled, while most menus will not. I was pretty much pointing out a cleaner method to code what they had there, but if there's a concern for those using text browsers, then a text menu of some sort should be used.

I also think the word you're looking for is WYSIWYG. Either their WYSIWYG editor put in that w3.org line, or Silver Style's' webmaster is lying clean out of their ass. They forgot something very important about tables that w3.org consideres to be bad juju. False credentials on the website, too. *sigh* It never ends.

 

[Ashmo]

They're good for pretty much that. Making a graphic have "clickable" locations. Most browsers should support this - if they don't have a supporting browser, it's unlikely they'll have a computer that will support the game. Image maps also work with browsers that have JavaScript disabled, while most menus will not. I was pretty much pointing out a cleaner method to code what they had there, but if there's a concern for those using text browsers, then a text menu of some sort should be used.

I also think the word you're looking for is WYSIWYG. Either their WYSIWYG editor put in that w3.org line, or Silver Style's' webmaster is lying clean out of their ass. They forgot something very important about tables that w3.org consideres to be bad juju. False credentials on the website, too. *sigh* It never ends.

The problem is that people usually think of "making a graphic have clickable locations" rather than of what they are semantically trying to do and thus end up with image maps where they don't make sense.

As you may know from A List Apart, there are many ways to make a sidebar navigation out of a normal list with CSS. You can even have button-ish effects for the links and have the navigation have an actual image as background (rather than a navigation bar image with text on it and the text being part of the image -- very bad design technique there, common with most Flash sites).
With a little bit of spacing (padding and margin) and positioning (absolute, relative or fixed) you can create the same effect as with an image map with a lot less work and have the "map" be easier to edit too. Most important (unless you used positioning): no more pixel counting!

Another benefit is that the graphics are determined by your stylesheet, thus you can create a new stylesheet with new graphics without touching the markup.

Markup should be semantic.
Most navigations are lists of links, sometimes they are nested lists, sometimes they are even definition lists describing a key -> value relation (like a link and a description of that link, or even a category and a list of links). However I have yet to see a navigation which is semantically a table. Layout plays no role with markup, the only things you should consider is semantics and semantic order -- a navigation should come first after an optional website heading and before the actual content and page heading.
Once you've gotten used to it you are able of putting almost any content into semantic categories.