People willing to make my OP site look pretty

JaymesBolton

So I haven't touched html since high school and I am in law school now so to say its been a while is an understatement. I have looked around at some of the featured campaigns and have had great pains of jealousy and inadequacy at how amazing their pages look. I was wondering if there were people out there willing (either out of kindness, boredom or some sort of compensation) willing to spruce up my campaign site and for other people like me that want to look awesome but don't have the skill to do so. If not if there is a tutorial out there with easy step by step that I can follow at 3am (which is usually the time when I can actually stop studying and work on this) to do it myself. Thank you in advance for your help and suggestions. (I included a link to my campaign page for people's reference if necessary)

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/l5r-changing-history

arsheesh

Hi Jaymes,

For basic Textile/HTML coding, I'd have take a look at Chainsaw's "FAQ and Tips":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1114&page=2#Item_5 sticky. Also, in response to some inquiries I've posted some of the "HTML templates":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/age-of-legends/wikis/html-templates-for-age-of-legends I'm using over at my Age of Legends campaign. To make proper use of them however, you will need to be able to create your own graphics images. If you don't have access to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you can download the next best thing, GIMP, for free "here":http://www.gimp.org/. Also, a while back I created a handful of "Free Navigation Buttons":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/age-of-legends/wikis/navigation-buttons for the use of the Obsidian Portal community. Feel free to make use of them if you wish. Best of luck to you.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

GamingMegaverse

Hi Jaymes-

Arsheesh is a great resource, as is Chain's FAQ- you will find really helpful people all over the Portal.
Doing it for you however... I think not.
Good luck!!
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt

HurstGM

will you pay me? LOL On a more serious note if you look at any of my pages and want the coding to modify for your own uses let me know. "Here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/l5r-changing-history is a link to your game if people want to check it out

"USS Sanctuary":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/uss-sanctuary/wikis/home-page
"Diary of Joh Sing":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/the-diary-of-john-sing
"OCP Security Services":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/unkown-project

vstraydogstrutv

Jeez arsheesh, throw a campaign a bone here! You can find links to most of what arsheesh linked on my new "Shared Creations":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shared-creations campaign. Feel free to favorite it and help expand it with your creations. The textile help is always posted somewhere and can really come in handy. Most of the code the fine people have posted is simple and easy to fit to your needs - just replace a link here, change a picture there - also, I've found the OP picture uploader to be rather helpful for quickly dropping graphics in without a lot of bothersome "external" code. You can then surround that picture with a good old fashioned a href tag to make the picture code a linked graphic.

"Heurdenvaar":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/heurdenvaar

arsheesh

Hey Vstray, just updated "Faq & Tips":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1114&page=1 to include your site and a couple of other helpful resource sites as well; hopefully that will help direct more traffic to your site.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

vstraydogstrutv

Thanks arsheesh! I appreciate it. I hope I didn't offend earlier. I was reading through my posts earlier and realized I can come off a bit snarky sometimes when I'm trying to be funny -.-

arsheesh

Not at all man, it was actually a good reminder: I've been meaning to include links to your site and the Fantastinomicon to Chainsaw's FAQ page for some time now.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

vstraydogstrutv

Oh Jaymes, I have a prestige class in there I made up called "The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi" based loosely off of the Iajutsu Master in the Oriental Adventures Handbook from WotC. I'd like to get some feedback from someone who plays L5R.

JaymesBolton

Grumble....now I remember why I hated doing this coding back in highschool. I appreciate all the help and advice....hopefully I can make good use of it.

Sure vstray. I have played a Samuria/Iaijutsu master from lvl 4 till lvl 19 (D&D 3.5 campaign) so I can critique it pretty well. What edition of D&D did you make it for?

vstraydogstrutv

It can be troublesome sometimes, especially when you discover you're using code that's restricted. But that's few and far between, really.

It's made for 3.5. At first it may seem a bit over powered, but I think taking the lifestyle role playing facts into account balances it out. It's a very strict class.
"The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/shared-creations/wikis/the-blind-swordsman-zatoichi

JaymesBolton

Yeah the main issue is deciding also what exactly i want it all to look like. I am not the most artistic minded person in the world so that will take some thought before I really start. Also trying to convert my players from 1st edition to 3rd edition right now so that is taking up my time.

Vstray: Your page is set to GM only so i can't see it.

vstraydogstrutv

I know how you feel, sir. That's why I try not to get too complicated, just a sidebar, splashes of graphics here and there. Y'know, the KISS method. I find if I get too wrapped up in making my site pretty I lose time to create pertinent content. Of course, that may be the ADD.

Fixed the page, it's now public view.

JaymesBolton

Ok I want to have the sidebar link to a "Rules" and "Fluff" pages. In those pages i want the different wiki pages i have made that correspond to both. example in the rules page i want a link to "skills" and "schools and paths" while in the story page i want "spirit realms" and "seven fortunes". Do i need to make a sepate wiki page with the individual links in it in order for it to work or is there a better way?

vstay: your prestige class is fairly balanced mechanically in my own opinion due to the couple dead levels in there, d8 HD and the MAD (multiple ability dependency) that the prestige class needs. The only thing that seemed a bit out of place was the sunder ability....not sure what to replace it with....,maybe a small (10-30ft) blindsense to go with the whole blind swordsman concept. hope my opinion helps.

vstraydogstrutv

The way I reference multiple pages with one link (assuming I'm reading your post correctly) is by setting the link to search wiki pages by tag. For example, in "Heurdenvaar":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/heurdenvaar, if you click on the "Domestic" link and look at the address bar you will see "http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/heurdenvaar/wikis?tag=place" which returns a list of every wiki page with the tag "place" in it. You could take this a step further by setting multiple tags and setting links to reference different tags for different situations.

Conversely, you can create a wiki page "Glossary" and link your pages within it, then add a hyperlinked alphabet or word cloud at the top that can quickly direct users where they want to go by clicking the links. The method for doing this can be found "in this forum post":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2114&page=1#Item_11.

wolfhound

I just had to say "thanks" to everyone that's contributed to this thread. Even though I am not the original poster, I learned a tremendous amount reading and following along.

I've retooled my Dresden Files RPG site a smidge to incorporate some of the things I learned on here. I avoided the floating side-nav menu because I discovered that my wife's iPad 2 (and the Safari browser) just ignores it anyway. Other than that... I'm quite well on my way

"http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/dfd":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/dfd

Again, thanks. Your collective expertise is a great boon to the curious.
~Matt

arsheesh

WOW! What can I say, other than I think that I see a COTM in your game's near future. I love that even though you used techniques described above, you adapted them within your wiki to come up with a style that fit the look and feel of the Dresden Files. Also, thanks for linking back to the that GIMP script; I was not aware of it before but after seeing how well it was used in your campaign I'll definitely be downloading it soon. Also, hope to see more of your face around the forums in the days to come.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

wolfhound

Thank you! Your "Age of Legends" was certainly one of the ones I looked at closely for inspirations early on.

Yes, we're very enamored of those GIMP scripts for our current art theme. Hope it proves useful. Since I have fielded a couple of questions about how I did it perhaps I should add to the volume of lore.

"Dresden Files Dallas":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/dfd "Toon" Graphics
----------------------------------------------

Setup Steps (Installing Scripts)
------------------------------------
1) Install GIMP if you don't already use it.
2) Download these Script-Fu macros:
"http://joe1gk.blogspot.com/2011/04/cartoon-effect-photo-effect-using-gimp.html":http://joe1gk.blogspot.com/2011/04/cartoon-effect-photo-effect-using-gimp.html
3) Install
a) Just cut and paste the above macros into a text file
b) Name the text file with a .scm filename (what you name the file doesn't matter)
c) Drop it into your C:\Program Files (x86)\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts folder (non 64 bit Windows won't have the (x86))

"Tooning" an Image
------------------------
1) I crop the image to 256px by 256px. (A slightly smaller image can be scaled up, the "tooning" helps obliterate the rasterization)
2) Depending on the picture I either use the Cartoon or the Comic Script from the above site. This will create a 2 layer image. Your source image layer and the new "tooned" layer.
3) Then I apply a Sobel Edge Detect (Filter -> Edge Detect -> Sobel) to the original layer.
4) Then I "Difference" Layer Mode (from the Layer dialog, select "Difference" from the mode dropdown) the "toon" layer to the now "Sobel" layer.
Optional 5) Add a new blank layer, then select all for that layer and apply a 8px white stroke and then a 4px black stroke so the images have a natural border to save me some CSS work later.
Final) Save

vstraydogstrutv

Your OP's definitely looking lovely Wolf, well done.

You people and your GIMP. Screw you, GIMP, I'ma use my Photoshop until...the time...comes...that...I need to learn to...use...GIMP...for something. *cough*

Duskreign

Dresden Files Dallas is a damn impressive wiki, to be sure.

wolfhound

You are all very, very kind. I am completely enjoying the learning process. Tweaking the wiki's CSS is like some kind of digital addiction. :)

Pils

Hi Wolfhound,

Congratulation for your OP page !
For tooning a photo, you can also go to the site "be funky":http://www.befunky.com/features/ . You can apply many effect to an image and after save it.


"Dark Sun A Trova":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/dark-sun-a-trova

JaymesBolton

Wolfhound: I absolutely love your adventure log layouts. I am still having issues getting a background image to work with mine.

wolfhound

I just put this as the first thing on all my pages.

The image itself is horribly inefficient at 1920px x 1442px



This is hardly the most elegant solution (I think I should have done a scaling option.... but the deed's done), it worked for me.

wolfhound

Oh, and also I don't know if you noticed. In my Administrivia area (bottom of the wiki main page) I have a couple of page templates. Those are exactly my layouts, I created them so that my players can copy/paste and create pages that mesh the site without having to have me do it all the time.

Feel free to copy/use/modify as you see fit to give you ideas.

wolfhound

Ok... I had a few minutes at lunchtime to play around. Jaymes, I threw together something inspired by a Japanese Kakemono wall scroll. I figure most folks that play D&D (myself included) like to do parchment inspired themes. Since yours is L5R and thus very "Japanese" you would need something a little more eastern. :)

I massaged a couple of royalty free chrysanthemum seamless tiles I found (since the Kiku is the Imperial flower) and went with a red color scheme since your L5R logo looks to be on the red side of things. It's just the Ichimoji & Heri, and a parchment background so that your game/wiki text can be the Honshi.

"Japanese Kakemono Experimental CSS Page Theme":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/dfd/wikis/css-experiments

I added a transparent 256px image as well so you can see it with artwork. I figure the Obsidian Portal page itself can be your hyoumoku/housou and jiku. If you like it shoot me your email address via PM and I'll email you the art and the CSS so you can upload them to your site.

wolfhound

I just read about how you're only doing this stuff at 3am.... I'm not going to be awake then... :)

... so I uploaded all the stuff I did as a zip file plus a step-by-step Readme.txt and put a link on that experimental CSS page up top. Enjoy. Anyone else that has an L5R site feel free to bogart the file and use it.

JaymesBolton

Ummmm....wow? Ok I will have to look thru all this and process it and then i will try implementing it. I tried using the background image code you gave me but
a. I guess my picture is too small so i need to make it bigger without distorting it all to hell and b. it put it at the left hand corner of my screen ( up above the left hand corner of the main campaign banner). The rest of the stuff i will look at later. Right now i have to write the adventure log from last Wednesday that i have been procrastinating about all week (even if only 2 of my players read it....ahhh the pleasures of being a GM)

wolfhound

Just noticed that the forum screws with the Double Quotes. It forces them into actual left and right. If you cut and paste from the above message, delete the " and type in your own.

I threw up a background around my sample CSS page using the above code and a new URL.

wolfhound

...and yes, your image needs to be large and the starting position is 0 (top left) using the above code.

GamingMegaverse

Wow, wolfhound, the background is awesome!!!

killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt