iSoaker.net :: Soaking the world!

I'm planning out a fairly major (relative to before) update to the site. While I don't have an easy method of creating and updating pages, I'll be arranging things together for the next few days. Of course, the HBWW 2010 logo will be going up as well, but the 2009 and 2008 ones will still be around on the event listing page. The new design vision is to serve as a better general stop for those new to water warfare and still unfamiliar, or as an alternative to browsing through the larger amounts of content here and at SSC. I'll try to cut things down to just what's needed to avoid excessive reading, but it may not happen so well that way.

The logo was just finished today and is up here.

This is the full 1280x720 version, which you'll have to click a few times to get it up. A slightly smaller one (853x480) will be used on the site to take up less space and load a bit faster.

I was actually planning to add a bit more to the 3D scene (more underwater plants in particular) but it would've taken some more time. The water blaster there took some time already, though it was modeled fairly crudely. The reservoir cap doesn't show at that angle and the lack of the trigger is pretty noticeable, but I had to get it done anyway. I also took the time to setup some other simple 3D scenes for pictures that will be used throughout the site.

Remember: Colorful water warfare 3D artwork serves as propaganda! Or heck, I just use it for style anyways.

I won't be updating much here until I get the new site up and running. In the meantime, have your last visits to http://hbww.fateback.com while it lasts. I doubt I will even back up the old files since I'm not making a completely new site anyway, just switching graphics and flipping pages around.

Nice! Always looking forward to seeing site updates!

:Looks like you're having fun with rendering 3D-scenes as well! Do keep us notified of your update progress!

As for your existing site, you should archive it as much as possible if you can, just for posterity-sake.

Actually, I forgot I still have the site on my old computer and external HDD. What I'll probably do is just integrate the old files with the new so that the folder where I usually work with the site files holds the old files as well. (whilst I upload only the files I need) Other changes would be background and whatnot; a lot of material is only being updated instead of re-written.

Haven't gotten through much progress today so far since I've been doing schoolwork and trigger repairs on the 2700. Sooner or later it'll be up but I'm still not sure when.

Edit: Update, this is really going to take a while. I'm just about finished with the history section as well as the general layout of the pages. I've also revised and updated most other pages, but I still have some left to update as well as a ton of new pages to create and link together. I just dug up some old pictures on my external HDD that I forgot existed before, which will help out in adding material to the site to keep things a bit less boring. I also updated the map slightly for 2010 though it's kind of pointless so far.

This will all take quite a while but when it's all done, it'll be up. As said, I'm going to have to upload it all at once since the re-arranging of material won't allow for small, minor updates one at a time.

Well it has been quite a few months. I've finished with a third of the armory section (high end blasters) and have a ton more to go. Each blaster listed is currently accompanied by a short description; my personal take on the blaster, but ultimately I'll end up linking to iSc's reviews anyway. Nevermind modifications, homemades, repairs, and accessories for now. The armory will take some time and I've got a month of college left before summer.

That said, I've still slowed down considerably when working on these updates. I was hoping to get the site ready before our water wars actually began but that probably won't happen. My choices now are to launch the new framework and finish up the material later, or wait until I have a good set of items ready before putting up the updates. I'm leaning towards the second option right now.

Well, some may or may not have noticed that I took down HBWW shortly. I fixed some outdated info, changed the look and feel, and underwent massive file re-organization which will break older deep links until I can figure out how to make generic redirects. (i.e. any malformed address will go to the same page, not just the old pages) HBWW 2011 is incomplete; no 2011 logo yet and things are still rather messy. Nonetheless, it's been too long since I neglected to upload anything so here it is, as always.

http://hbww.fateback.com

Cool! I noticed HBWW was offline for a bit so it's great to see it back up! New look and feel are cool!

Should definitely try to push up a 2011 logo since, well, your 2010 one is sooooo last year.

The new look and feel started when I previewed the site to a fellow warrior and he basically said "there's so much blue". From there I decided to go for a grittier, dark feel and apperance, avoiding saturated colors.

The 2010 logo hasn't had much exposure since I never uploaded it to the site during 2010, though I posted it here.

You may have noticed however, my pathetic attempts at wanting to present the logo in the full 1280x720 it was created at, versus not creating a big scroll bar on the bottom for users who aren't browsing with a maximized window. I ended up using a CSS rule to resize the picture to 640x360 by default, and expand when clicked. Specifically, it displays at full resolution in the "active" state. I've contemplated using the hover state, but found that it can potentially get very annoying.

The problem with the active state however, is that it's different for each browser. Firefox and IE will leave the active state on when someone clicks and drags the object, but Chrome will release from the active state as soon as it's released. What I really need is for clickability; a click alternates between expanded and resized states. Maybe swapping the actual image would be a good idea for more extreme cases. And I'd like to be able to do this without Javascript.

I know how to swap the image (I'd have to use a different tag instead of the img tag), but I'm not sure if I can get a click and unclick sort of behavior working.

I guess the question for now is, is it possible without Javascript? I'd prefer to keep things to HTML/CSS for now, if possible.

I haven't done any serious in-browser image scaling. Javascript seems like the only real way to do so semi-decently. Can try to play around with setting percentages using CSS, but keeping the aspect ratio can be problematic.

The code I need is for specific image sizes, so aspect ratio and resolution aren't a problem. Even if they were, percentages should keep aspect ratio constant.

I can Google up some Javascripts to use, if I really want to make this work nicely. For now, I'll leave it to expand when in the active state, and that browser inconsistency issue will just have to be dealt with. I should probably wrap the images into a table or something so that expanding images don't shove the rest of the page's elements down, though right now my only real concern is the water warfare FPS and the HBWW 2011 logo.

The new map has been posted, courtesy of Google maps. Their new satellite photos are considerably higher resolution and I guess it was coincidence again that I noticed the updates and thus, updated the map accordingly with the new satellite imagery. I also brushed up on my Fireworks editing skills a bit, as you can see.

http://hbww.fateback.com/briefing/map.html

The map will have to be updated again once I finally get the 2011 logo up, and I may consider marking more points on the map.

A great idea just occurred to me as well on how to explain map borders. HQ has some windows and I can put a computer and screen up to a window and display the map information there, rather than having to print them out or explain the map borders. We never took map borders seriously so I guess this isn't even a concern, but if I ever need to explain our playing area to anyone, it will be easy with the map and with a computer monitor placed by the window.

Well, there's been a change recently. I'm taking a class on interactive web systems and for the term we have to do a website. After excessive procrastination on a personal website project that I couldn't think of many good ideas for, I've finally decided to completely revamp HBWW instead. The new site will have to switch hosts as Fateback doesn't support PHP and SQL, as interactivity is required for the class. I will consider creating mini-forums, quizzes/scenario response systems, and comment systems on most articles/pages posted; I say consider as I can't guarantee anything other than that I have to fulfill the interactivity requirements.

Originally, I did not plan on touching HBWW again (except for map/logo updates) until 2011. Now, I have three weeks to get this site in a basic state with all interactivity working, but due to the time crunch, content such as homemades and other things I originally planned for in big, ambitions HBWW update ideas in the past, may not be possible to cover all that well. You can however, expect a new and clean, somewhat professional looking site layout now that utilizes a proper header, body, sidebar/content, and footer.

When the new site is at least at the level of the current HBWW, I will take down the Fateback site and replace the index with a redirect page to the new site. The next three weeks will be intense for me, as I have this site, another site for another class, a book to read, and several finals to study for. Not sure how or even if that will affect my activity on here, but it already has in a way. (I've been unable to refine my entry for the concept contest.) In the meantime, I will post updates as they go up.

Sounds exciting! Definitely looking forward to a revamp/upgrade of the HBWW site design! 3 weeks is a fairly short amount of time for redesigning things so I wouldn't expect you to do too much with content, but once the redesign is complete and live, it just may help inspire you with creating more content to match the new awesomeness of it all!

Definitely keep us posted with developments and heck, maybe you can teach me some new things with PHP. I still only consider myself a novice when it comes to PHP scripting.

At the moment I only know the slightest things of PHP. I'll be borrowing a lot of examples from the web in order to help build the system and perhaps could end up with a decent framework by the time the three weeks are over.

Here's a little preview for everyone. http://hbww.comlu.com/base/

Obviously, there's hardly any content on there. I'm still getting a good foundation built on the basics so that things will be easier to manage later. Plus I still haven't figured out how to center that navigation bar, though I spent at least a whole day trying to get the CSS rollovers to work. They now appear to operate quite flawlessly.

Any tips on how to center the navigation bar would be appreciated. =)

Edit: Finally got it to center. Had to use a table to do it but it works.

Looking good!

As for centering, using a table when you've got CSS is a step backwards. Try adding the following code to the class tg that is surrounding your nav bar to get it to center.

Code: Select all

margin: 0 auto;

Of course, you can also set your nav bar's width and height as needed using the right CSS codes.

Edit: I should also note that after seeing that page, I gotta give you a better iSoaker.com logo. That transparent gif looks *fugly* on the dark background.

The SSC logo doesn't look so great either, though that's mostly because I edited it badly and left a white outline around it. I'll fix it up eventually. I can also patch up the iSc logo if you don't get the time to put up a better one.

I tried a lot of things, but the div wasn't fitting around the nav bar and I tried many margin settings. Usually only left and right are set to auto; I've tried that as well as trying to set everything to auto, but I haven't gotten anything to work, not even the 0 vertical and auto horizontal setting you suggested which I tried placing in a div wrap. If I end up sticking with the table, I should probably remove the div and move everything into it. Also, not sure what you mean by the tg class. At the very least, the header and footer are contained in a PHP HTML output file so I only have to change it in one spot.

As is, the navbar must restricted to quite a wide min-width, of at least 800 pixels or so. This is not good, as I can't get most of the rest of the site to adapt properly when the width is below 800px. To see what I mean, resize the width of the window to something fairly low. Ideally, I'd want the site to support the widest variety of widths possible, but as is, it doesnt work well with smaller widths and looks very bad. Either I have to at least keep the appearance consistent when a lateral scroll bar is present, or have the site scale down properly, but I can't seem to do both due to issues with the navbar and the fact that the rest of the site after the navbar uses absolute positioning. I had to use absolute because I couldn't find any other method to get the dropdown menu to not push the rest of the site downwards.

In particular, I'd like a min width of perhaps about 600-700px to be safe. The nav bar is making things difficult and I had to fix the width of every element on it to the same width (of 100px) as there were a lot of problems I was having trouble sort out when the width was done automatically/based on text length.

I'll continue looking into this; things are getting pretty busy and I need to start nailing the basics of interactive PHP asap. (Thus I need to push old HBWW content onto the new HBWW faster and sooner, nevermind make the 2011 logo, fill out the armory and workshop sections, etc.) I may be too late to finish even all the basics and SQL database. If I don't finish by the time the term ends (which will hurt my grade), I may end up not finishing the interactive aspect at all of HBWW (I get lazy sometimes, sometimes too often, and right now im in a real time crunch between two classes both of which involve web/visualization design), but hopefully it won't come to that.

Well, I'm finally getting to writing the basics of HBWW's game system. The section (called "Briefing") will comprehensively explain HBWW's theory/methodology on hosting games and creating gametypes. HBWW's games are also being listed.

After that I got to do the events section, then get the login/session/comment system working. All by 1pm tomorrow. Perhaps I'll have to skip on the content, but I don't want to miss this opportunity to solidify HBWW's objective types, game theory, etc. I now have a more proper definition of Soakn' Destroy as well as Conquest, though those definitions have changed so much over the past few years (without me even playing full games of them) that it's getting too ridiculous. This will hopefully set things in stone, or at least bake them dry for a while.

I really like the idea of being able to comment on things. That's the way the web is going. I have to figure out how to write the code for that.

Supposedly, all you need is a form whose action directs to a PHP file that'll write to an SQL database. Sounds so simple in theory, but I got to figure out how to do this in, oh, about 12 hours.

Procrastination kills. Don't do it guys.

CA99 wrote:Supposedly, all you need is a form whose action directs to a PHP file that'll write to an SQL database. Sounds so simple in theory, but I got to figure out how to do this in, oh, about 12 hours.

Procrastination kills. Don't do it guys.

No, actually it doesn't sound that simple. Oh, and God bless err I mean good luck with that homework May the Flying Spaghetti Monster be with you.