Echoing m15o, the Katamari inspired low-poly approach is fantastic! The variety of colors for each asset adds a lot to world immersion.
The last image gave me a laugh by the way LOL, I appreciate that "behind-the-scenes" screenshots are literally what things are looking like in-scene, and out of context, I feel for the deli counter NPC, just watching as a customer is just. Shuffling beverages into neat rows on the floor XD
Whether you have been making personal sites for many years, or have recently come into webmaster-ing, I think there is something very deliberate about the act of hand coding a personal site on the world wide web. Platforms like Neocities help a lot with lowering the barrier of entry while also providing a light framework of community, but even then the process can feel like setting your tiny raft adrift into a vast sea of possibilities. It is a very different kind of jump compared to signing up for a platform that has established templates and expectations.
The call to creating a personal site may be brought on by many things: nostalgia, a desire to have a little home of your own on the net, a place to catalogue your deepest interests, perhaps as a challenge -- etc, etc, the list goes on and on.
So I ask to anyone who wants to share, a few questions. Answer whichever ones you please, and feel free to pose any questions of your own if you've got any related thoughts!
What inspired you/made you want to create a personal website? What are some challenges you've faced in the process of creating and maintaining a site? Imagine your site five years from now (even if you may or may not be running the same site five years down the line, or may have closed it out as a completed project)... What do you think it will look like, or what would you want it to look like?
It is something often taken for granted, but being able to actually follow up on an idea/roadmap is (in my humble opinion) commendable -- the site is looking very much like how you were planning it to, in this iteration. Looking forward to hearing your explorations, challenges, and ideas as you go, and best of luck wrangling those navigation boxes
My personal rule of thumb is that if it works for 80% of users, that's good enough. My main site gets 12% mobile traffic, so that means it works for 88% of users on desktops with no mobile support at all (that said I do try and have SOME mobile support just so its not totally broken).
search.melonking.net gets about 30% mobile traffic, so its more important in my mind to support mobile for that site. I think that's because its a service or utility and people use those more on phones, although that said this forum only get 11% mobile traffic.
Basing design off of service/utility makes a lot of sense. I do also like the thought that...it doesn't have to be all or nothing, necessarily, when it comes to said metrics. On the note of forum traffic, I would probably die trying to use a forum on mobile haha...that said, I do use it to keep up with people's responses, but the risk of fat-fingering the post/preview button on a reply...is a risk I personally cannot take!
I don't think any of my sites contents would be of interest "on the go" so I don't bother with mobile support; and I think my site looks fine enough on landscape that a mobile user could navigate it anyways.
I resonate a lot with this thought, Cy83r -- when it comes to "surfing the web" in the context of personal sites, browsing in front of a monitor vs a phone just currently feels more natural. Of course, this could entirely be the opposite for those who prefer to predominantly browse on mobile, and I'd be curious to hear from folks who prefer that camp. But I usually find the desktop experience more immersive.
I used this tutorial and it's been fine since then. Getting the tables to shrink can be a pain.
The results from that tutorial look great -- it's nice that it does not look like it takes much work to get things running better, too.
--- After sleeping on it a bit, I do think I have the bias of wanting a larger "canvas" to play with, which kind of goes back to hoping visitors can "view as it was meant to be viewed". That said, the tinkerer in me does values some degree of mobile navigation...though if it can be done with minimal effort, the better -- I think there is some amount of personal pride, in seeing and knowing your code, with minimal effort, can work on multiple devices & screen sizes. (It is definitely not laziness...no way...)
Didn't want to start a new thread necessarily, but did want to give a quick shout out for the new Dreamy theme, it's a cool new addition! It's endearing that the two themes have kind of naturally flowed into a "dark mode"/"light mode", whether that was intentional or not.
EDIT: I didn't realize that in this theme, clicking the Message Icon on a published post...would let you actually change the message icon too? I'm...assuming it's a feature from the base theme by Simple Machines? Or was it something y'all took the time to code in? Whichever the case, it's neat.
Love this idea tons! Again, with a lot of these community-building kinds of games, I think it's always great to see how everyone's individual creativity shines through.
Initially I was wondering if The Ender Draco had a repository of known NeoCave users, but then, maybe half the fun is stumbling upon a user's cave and hoard while traversing their site. I certainly think it could add to the excitement of being able to find someone's stash to collect from.
It goes without saying that mobile device usage is a commonality in this day and age. As someone who still predominantly uses computers over a mobile device, it is a little startling for me to imagine that a lot more people are using their phones to connect to and browse the web. It makes sense, but I also imagine most of this surfing is often used to browse bigger platforms or social media sites with actual web development teams, who do often optimize for a mobile experience.
Designing one's personal website to be friendly or optimized for mobile (from my experience browsing sites on Neocities) seems to be a fairly whimsical and unpredictable topic for a lot of users. Homepage descriptors along the lines of "SITE IS NOT MOBILE FRIENDLY", "SITE DESIGNED ON A ____x____ MONITOR", "BEST VIEWED ON [BROWSER OF CHOICE]", or "I'VE TRIED TO MAKE THIS MOBILE FRIENDLY" are common sights -- sights I'm not at all adverse to seeing, but these sorts of disclaimers did pique my own curiosity about others' experiences with designing their sites.
Speaking personally, I don't worry too much about cleaning my site up for a mobile experience. For a personal site, it is quite nice to have that power of having things be viewed as the webmaster intended, even if that does mean the mobile version might be a bit of a mess. It might be a bit of a selfish act, but I also think it is a nice reminder that one's personal site is one's own, and that one will have the most authentic experience possible. That said, while I have not really considered going all-out with mobile-friendliness, there are definitely a few visual bugs that annoy me sometimes when I do look at my pages on a mobile device. There is also the realization that some people may only own a mobile device to browse the web, and do not have access to a desktop/laptop -- though I think that is an entire discussion in of itself.
What are your thoughts on optimizing for mobile? Is this something that you consider while working on your site? To what degree? Or do you prefer to design specifically for desktop, or for your personal browsing experience? Maybe it is not something you expect on the retro web? Or something else?
There's a name I haven't heard in a while! Sadly my experience with IRC was very limited, mostly due to personal wariness/preference away from instant messaging. But the ethos of it always seemed super cool, particularly the decentralized aspect, and the very bare-bones plain text aspect, which I assumed allows for a super lean experience.
Speaking from this incredibly limited experience, I still think it is a shame IRC isn't used more over things like Discord/Slack, though I could see the user interface/lack of "fun" being a turn off for some.
The biggest question I was always curious about (and admittedly haven't yet taken the time to research) is the level of security/anonymity possible in IRC.
I've been struggling with deciding if I do want to buy a domain, mostly because I'm not exactly hurting for one right now, and I'm not sure if I want to rush into it quite yet...getting back into webbuilding for a hobby is still a day-by-day process.
I do like domains with a medium length, but I'm used to autofill, bookmarking, or just typing things out. I may be in the camp of forcing brevity to be a little overrated, but I also admit I'm a windbag LOL, who likes overly descriptive titles. That said, I am not a lot of fun and do not really care for emoji domains (:x) But in defense, I use my desktop more than my phone to browse the web, so the idea seems...a little troublesome haha
On the topic of domain lengths and their pros/cons, when did you all decide to get a domain? Was it early on in the process, or did you take a bit longer to eventually purchase one? Or for those who haven't purchased one, have you held off for any particular reasons?
I had a chance to download and play the completed game; the additional story framing was very charming. It actually was pretty bittersweet to collect all the discs to leave the final level, I dawdled quite a bit there. That said, I know I certainly will be diving back into the game again, for sure. "Meditative" is a great descriptor for the whole experience. I don't know how you made the disc collecting effect, but that visual is probably one of my favorite details of the game, it's really dynamic and cool.
Now that the game is officially released, the press is curious to know: what did you find to be the most challenging part of development? And what was the most rewarding, or something interesting that you learned in the process of building the game?
Nice stuff Icelogist! The home page concept is already shaping up to be a fine roadmap.
I'm excited to see what sort of content will go under some of the planned pages (such as Games, 3D Models, and Images), whether it's original or linking to resources you personally enjoy.
I don't play too many mobile games, but I recently got back into Old School Runescape on mobile -- I didn't remember leveling being as fast as it is, it definitely felt more of a slog back in the day. Admittedly I treat it a bit like an idling game when it comes to raising stats, but I might be convinced to finally try out membership if it keeps my interest.
It's pretty old now, but Card Thief was a favorite of mine for a while -- it's a little "solitaire"-esque card game with clever gameplay and a sharp art style. I always did like the unlockable bounty missions, where you can play as other thieves with weird gimmicks and abilities. It was impressive how a simple mechanic change could affect the rules of play so wildly, and I always thought it was a really clever way of improving the base game.
@Melon: A recipe page, now that's a fun idea for site content! There is somehow too much pasta in my house right now, and I have never experienced Marmite either, so it is the perfect opportunity to hit two birds with one stone with that recipe.
Thank you for the soup video! I find it helpful hearing people's recipe variations, it can be hard to improvise sometimes so it's good to know what works for other people.
@Cinni LMAO...the bravery of this suggestion. An ice cream maker has been on my radar this year, maybe it'll be time to bite the bullet once the weather takes a turn back to the warmer. I appreciate the notes on getting the consistency just so, I think that is one of the harder parts of homemade ice cream for sure.
The recipes from the PPK look amazing. Do you have any favorites from the list? The Earl Gray Chai Pancakes look and sound really good...truly, breakfast foods are the meals of champions.
The weather has been pretty nippy where I am at, and it got me bemoaning my utter dearth of good soup recipes.
It got me wondering if any of you have some favorite recipes, for any sort of foodstuff -- food, drink, dessert, etc. I'll have to dig up my Most Generic 7(?)-Ingredient Pasta("?" because it might be less than that...) that I always throw together if I am feeling especially unmotivated but do not want to do takeout... but if anyone has recipes they would like to share in the meantime (does not have to be soup!), this thread (and I) would love to hear from you.
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