Kit's Blog

Massive undertakings underway

     I'm getting ready to make some pretty programming-heavy changes to a lot of different things on the site. The first undertaking would be reparing the deplorable state of scuzzstuff. I think that it's just going to shift over to php for organization issues. I also need to re-code the chat sections. It may make more sence to make it a php project, but I also may make it so that the page actually refreshes and codes on the fly. It all depends on what makes more sence when I write it.
     I';m also discussing the possibility of "living" avatars on the forum. This is by far one of the most intriguing undertakings that I've looked at in a long time. It does need the forum's consent, and then there'd be a long pause as I learned how to code phpBB plugins, then worked on making the actual code go. It would require a LOT of weird work defining sizes, shapes, and positions, but the end result would be awesome. Some of the ideas for features I have:
1) You could buy the eyes (shape and color), nose and mouth (shape/design)
2) You could buy actions for your Avatar to perform.
3) You could buy outifts
4) You can buy different hair styles
5) They could need upkeep (if you don't buy food and water there are ill effects) And this could include a wide range of effects. The most prevolent would be the obidience to you commands. You could ask your avatar to dance, but if you haven't fed him, he'll just sit there and scowl
6) You would be able to decide silly little things like if you took a really long time to read a page, your avatar would fall asleep.
7) You could also have your avatar express certain sentiments based on what you were writing about (you would have to pick that when you made the post)
8) You could make an image be the pattern on the clothing.

Issues with these ideas:
1) The most obvious is that each different position requires a drawing. With template drawings you could see how this would be a hassel.
2) All the positions would need coding for changing the position of all the different parts. If your man falls asleep, his eyes, nose, mouth, hair, and body all need to fall asleep with him.
3) All the avatars would need to be the same size. Could lead to some issues with repetitive avatars (though with enough different styles this shouldn't be an issue).
4) Lots of hard coding of course! (Not really a problem, it'd be fun)
5) All the data about your avatars would need to be kept in the MySQL database. (with some clever coding the size wouldn't be that bad)
6) Since a lot of images would need to kept on hand it might be bad for slower connections. Especially when everyone's avatars were different there'd be a lot of data to download per page.

     Anyway, this is all of course in the "wouldn't this be cool?" phase, so don't expect some amazing piece of software in a matter of days, but maybe by sometime next winter if the forum decides to go through with it.

And, of course, some hhgttg: