Well I only arrived at this site yesterday and already I'm making a whiney suggestions topic. =) Actually I was going to email you (tabitha), but thought I may as well start a topic so others can chip in with little suggestions that aren't worth making full topics about. So:
- Filenames for the videos: a good convention for high score / speedrun videos is to incorporate the score into the filename, so when you post a new, improved video of the same thing at a later date, people who downloaded the earlier vid can tell them apart on their harddrive (and keep them in the same folder, and what-have-you). To be extra helpful you might want to include the name of the player (you!) in the filename too, and in some cases it'll be necessary to describe what kind of run it is (e.g. in NiGHTS, to separate link videos out from the score videos). So you might have something like:
tabitha_gillwing_111.avitabitha_gulpo_108.avitabitha_sm1_329_links.avitabitha_sg1_342_links.avi
...of course the specifics don't matter as long as you settle on some kind of convention and stick to it, but it's definitely a good habit to get into.
- Second, I'd recommend putting a small but clear copyright notice at the bottom of the site's page layout, something like:
NiGHTS into Dreams and all related official content is © SEGA 1996-2006. All other content on this website was created by [your real name or alias] unless otherwise noted, and should not be reproduced without permission.
Obviously, adjust snottiness to taste. =) Of course the amount of copyrightable stuff on sites like this one will always be lower than normal, but it's *always* a good idea to include something along these lines.
- Also noticed a could of typos on the FAQ page; the bit about boss times currently says:
Press StartLoad your save gameOn the Dreams screen, press "Z"Select "Options"Select "Night Maren"Select "Night Maren"
...whereas it should really be something like:
Press StartLoad your save gameOn the Dreams screen, press "Z"Select "Options"Select "Night Maren"Select "Random Off" and choose a boss from the list
Also, the bit about how to submit scores sounds like it should have a hyperlink to the forum thread in it, though there's not one there at the moment.
- This is more of a personal suggestion than anything, but I think an "About" page for the site might be cool, just to set out its aims (even if it's only a short paragraph).
Hint, hint!
Another smallish site suggestion: it'd be nice if the screenshots on the video pages were a bit sharper, as the current shots look noticeably lower-quality than the videos themselves. If you're not doing it already, I'd recommend taking screenshots from the original uncompressed videos (even just from playing the DVDs on your PC normally), as the screenshots need to be compressed into a jpg or gif anyhow, so it's best to start off as sharp as you possibly can. Incidentally, you shouldn't worry about people feeling "cheated" if you're representing a video with a screenshot that's of a higher quality than the video itself, because people cut moving images a lot more slack than they do still ones; it's best to just make the screenshots as good as possible.
If you're reducing the dimensions down to the same sort of size (320 x 240), a 25 to 30 kilobyte jpg should be about optimal, at least, that's the size I'd use myself. (What program are you using to optimise images, BTW? It can make quite a bit of difference; I tend to use Photoshop myself, but if you don't have access to it I gather IrfanView is one of the best free programs for handling this sort of thing...)
tabitha wrote:To the best of my knowlege there is no way to score the ideya bust times, feel free to correct me though.
The bonus you get for destroying the Ideya prison counts down based on how long it takes you to do it, remember? :P Hence me posting my best bonuses in the "collecting blue chips as the kids" thread (e.g. 10,000 or 9,500 or whatever) - it's a measurement of how fast you've been. The bonuses for first courses will be a bit different depending on whether you collected chips as the kids or went straight to being NiGHTS, though. I can understand you (tabitha) being reluctant to add these scores to the main site at the moment too, as it's more of a "random challenge" than a main game score, and you already have a lot on your plate. However, if you (skaternights) want to create a thread where people can post and compare their best Ideya-prison-destruction bonuses, I'm sure you can feel free to do that.
tabitha wrote:sorry, I didnt mean it doesnt show you during the game I meant that it doesnt appear to log the bust time anywhere to be reviewed after playing. If I get a decent bust time I would usually like to have a run at the level rather than taking pictures of them time or noting them down.
Ah, I see what you mean, but the reason that didn't occur to me is that I'm boring enough to have them noted down myself. :) In fact when I came to look over my old notes, I was mildly surprised that I'd been doing this, but I think I was noting them so I could easily compare new methods of getting the chips to break the prison in each course.
EDIT: And er, yeah, I've just noticed that destroying an Ideya prison actually does tell you how much time you took as well as telling you how big your bonus is. I have no idea how I've failed to notice that the last hundred or so times it must have popped up on my TV screen... either way, my last post probably made less sense than it should have.