HELP: does Rarebit allow for Homestuck/Awful Hospital-style comics?

[OneMillionFurries]

As the title says, does anyone with experience in using Rarebit know if it allows for Homestuck/Awful Hospital style comics? The type where instead of a comic with panels and speech bubbles, it's instead an image/animation with text underneath describing what's happening.

I'd imagine it's possible through changing the "artist's comment" section to be above the page navigation? But I have yet to mess with it because I've just been too busy lately :(

If anyone knows the answer (and can give any other advice when it comes to using Rarebit) that would be greatly appreciated!!

[tarraxahum]

I pretty much use Rarebit as is, so I don't have much experience with changing it. Repurposing author's comment section for textual description shouldn't be too hard though, I think your idea of swapping it with navigation should work nicely.

One thing I will say about Rarebit though, is that the way it works you choose only one format for all the pages, and all of them will have to be like that. So if you're planning to alternate between animated and non-animated pieces they'd all still have to be .gif (or such). So I imagine that could limit the possibilities of what you could potentially do in terms of file types.

I'm sorry if this is a mess of a reply, been a weird day today.

[flowers]

yes! since it's just a file you can change and host locally, you can alter it to your heart's content for your needs.

you've got the right idea of how to do it! the easiest way to go about it is using the author comment field. you edit each author comment manually in comic_settings.js with html formatting. so you could make it look however you'd like, if you're interested in doing anything more than purely plain text. so stuff like the pesterlogs on homestuck! as well as anything else you can think of. and you can delete/leave blank the additional variables you don't need, or you can move them around on the page elsewhere.

in the index html, i'd recommend putting the authorNotes div above all the navigation stuff to match the typical layout of sites like that (paste it right below the line 21 - the showComic div)

feel free to ask me any questions if you get stuck or need help! :>

[OneMillionFurries]

so you could make it look however you'd like, if you're interested in doing anything more than purely plain text. so stuff like the pesterlogs on homestuck! as well as anything else you can think of.

Awesome omg! would I be able to put images inside the "author comments" section too? I'm thinking of having some sections of like, fake forum threads where users icons would be present within the messages. Idk I read that the comic pages are created by just uploading images, so I really don't want that to mess things up, yknow? just suddenly 50 pages of various forum icons LMAO

Also, is it possible to schedule pages to go up? Like if I have 10 pages I did in advance, would I have to upload them each manually or can I just set it up once and let it go?

One thing I will say about Rarebit though, is that the way it works you choose only one format for all the pages, and all of them will have to be like that. So if you're planning to alternate between animated and non-animated pieces they'd all still have to be .gif (or such). So I imagine that could limit the possibilities of what you could potentially do in terms of file types.

Oh that's VERY good to know! Thank you! I was thinking of doing some small animated bits so that's some very useful information to have :)

[flowers]

would I be able to put images inside the "author comments" section too?

yep, just use an image tag like you would with html. and if you want to add stylization, you can just specify it with a style tag (i.e <img style="width:200px;">picture.png</img>) to make life easier. i don't personally know how you would specify a style sheet in a javascript file but i think it's a lot more convoluted
 

Idk I read that the comic pages are created by just uploading images, so I really don't want that to mess things up, yknow? just suddenly 50 pages of various forum icons LMAO

very valid concern but that would be hilarious ngl. congrats on catching up with my comic, now LOOK AT MY ASSETS

but you don't have to worry about this! only images that are put on the folder /img/comics will become a page. for each image in the folder, a url is made for a new page. all other folders, even others in the img folder, do not turn into pages of your comic.

Also, is it possible to schedule pages to go up? Like if I have 10 pages I did in advance, would I have to upload them each manually or can I just set it up once and let it go?

unfortunately no, since it's just a static file there is no support for that. that would require some kind of server that automatically pushes updates to your site for you, and i don't really know how you would go about that and i doubt it would be easy.

for that, i recommend using an online hosting service like comicfury! it functions similarly to rarebit in that you can have full control over your site's look and functionality and even an access to a personal file directory for assets, but it offers features like update scheduling and other online stuffs like page statistics. there are very few differences between the two besides ease of use (you only have to use html if you WANT to get advanced with comicfury and you can do a lot but it is someone else's site) so it's kind of a preference thing otherwise