Free Allegiance Forums

Very good. Better to not hide the movie. I didnt even notice it was there lol

Wow, this actually makes the game look exiting!

As for "Click the button/tab" you could always rewrite to "select topic", regardless of buttons or tabs.

I think your and others suggestions of polishing all look great, much more appealing than the current portal.
As for the selection of techs, weapons, ship descriptions etc. I think your description is good enough for release, yes it can be polished and probably should but I rather see an upgrade of the portal now with polishing later instead of polishing for weeks first, delaying a release.

About the learn to play, should it perhaps be split in to two parts?
1) Crash course (as seen suggested in another tread lately) to get players up to speed in a couple of hours
2) Enroll as a cadet for deep learning (where I would rather see a connection to the storyline btw.) to enhance skills during several weeks.

Great Job Bacon!

Very pretty :applaud:

Tabs could be more graphically obvious. Obvious enough to do away with the text that says 'click the buttons!' Also having one tab open by default would get rid of that huge gap in the middle of the page.

Those links strike me funny. I thought they were headers, then thought the little arrowheads were instructing me to do something, then... I'm sure there's a more conventional way to show links.

I read, "Allegiance: Fly alone!" and went wait, what? A couple of the catch-phrases need work, but this one specifically. Maybe, "He who flies alone dies alone"?

Skutch wrote:QUOTE (Skutch @ Dec 14 2009, 12:25 PM) Wow, this actually makes the game look exiting!

As for "Click the button/tab" you could always rewrite to "select topic", regardless of buttons or tabs.

I think your and others suggestions of polishing all look great, much more appealing than the current portal.
As for the selection of techs, weapons, ship descriptions etc. I think your description is good enough for release, yes it can be polished and probably should but I rather see an upgrade of the portal now with polishing later instead of polishing for weeks first, delaying a release.

About the learn to play, should it perhaps be split in to two parts?
1) Crash course (as seen suggested in another tread lately) to get players up to speed in a couple of hours
2) Enroll as a cadet for deep learning (where I would rather see a connection to the storyline btw.) to enhance skills during several weeks.

Great Job Bacon!

We've been waiting a while thus far, another week will not hurt us.

Keep it up Bacon

Hopefully I have some time later in the day for more detailed comments. However I think the intro movie should be moved off the front page (and not linked to Youtube, but hosted internally). It should either be reintegrated into the game or added to some sort of history section on the web site.

Why not make the video one of the buttons (the one that's open by default?

Maybe with thumbnails of other alleg videos underneath. Here's a very quick mockup made in excel - the Vs are where the video pane goes.

CODEForum Create Account Download Learn to Play

V V V V Videos
V V V V
V V V V Screenshots
V V V V
V V V V Factions
V V V V
V V V V Ships
V V V V
V V V V Weapons

Thumb Thumb Thumb Thumb Tech

lol raveen, like I wrote then?

notjarvis wrote:QUOTE (notjarvis @ Dec 14 2009, 10:19 AM) Where you can select only one at a time? And there's a Box around the text when a certain button is selected.

Dorjan wrote:QUOTE (Dorjan @ Dec 14 2009, 11:14 AM) (Only allow one option to be selected at one time, if you select another one then auto hide the others first etc)

notjarvis wrote:QUOTE (notjarvis @ Dec 14 2009, 11:57 AM) I'd default it to have one of the categories selected (select Factions by default?) when you first load the page, and remove the "Click to hide" text/functionality personally. This would avoid having a big gap in the middle of the page......

Dorjan wrote:QUOTE (Dorjan @ Dec 14 2009, 12:00 PM) Why not have the deafult to be the youtube vid instead of "please click on the right" thingy since that is pretty pointless. And add a tab for screenshots?

TurkeyXIII wrote:QUOTE (TurkeyXIII @ Dec 14 2009, 12:28 PM) Tabs could be more graphically obvious. Obvious enough to do away with the text that says 'click the buttons!' Also having one tab open by default would get rid of that huge gap in the middle of the page.

QUOTE Why not make the video one of the buttons (the one that's open by default?[/quote]

Lol Dorj - everyone's repeating everyone else in this thread (myself included)

I like spacejunk's format best. For the factions/ships/weapons links, we can make tabs, above the screenshots.

I also prefer "The best game you've never played" as a slogan, but i LOVE the new banner Bacon.

Also, we need a link to news.freeallegiance.org.

We're doing a lot of work here, and it's great stuff, but has anyone got an admin's (TE's) approval to do a new front page? I'm sure he'd be up for changes, but there may be parameters within which we would need to work and it's always best to know those parameters prior to doing the work, if possible. Can someone contact TE about this thread and get his input?

Also, keep in mind all of the marketing efforts at news.freeallegiance.org. Since www.freeallegiance.org (www.alleg.net) are not google-able (right?), people are likely to hit the news website FIRST and then end up here (or so that was the original design). The front page definitely needs a new face, but let's keep it focused and try to have ONE place for content if at all possible. We'll need TE to weigh in on that and I'll take that discussion to the Marketing forum.

The Factions/Ships/Weapons/Tech/Command thing is nice, good addition. The move away from blocks of text is also really nice.

Three things:

First, the banner kinda works with the page. The reason I like our current one is that it is seamless with the background, almost as a header of sorts. If it looks less forum sig like, it could be great.

Second, the catch phrases. Though I am partial to "The best game you've never played".... I gotta say, "Fly alone, die alone"... really? Stick with the original unless there's a better alternative.

Third, the screenshots at the top of SpaceJunk's are a nice touch. If you expand them when clicked on, that lets people look at the game immediately, not just a cheesy intro move

Good job though, I'm sure we can give the front page a facelift

TB

EDIT: and the ">Community Home >Create an Account >Free Download >Screenshots >Learn to Play" thing is incredibly easy to skip over, but I think someone already said that.