Comic Book Theme (Uncanny)

wolfhound
wolfhound
edited October 2011 in Campaign Portal Building
This is my new project (still in planning/creative exercise)

"Uncanny":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/uncanny (an X-Men themed supers game using the ICONS/Fate system)

I was wanting thoughts, tips, tweaks, things to try, etc.

As you can probably guess, I'm going for a "comic book" theme with the CSS. I think I've finally cobbled together one that works, but I'm open to other ideas.

For example, I have no clue how I'm going to do a custom menu navigation, not even an inkling of a theme/gimmick yet. The only condition I have is that I want to avoid floating sidebars as my wife's iPad 2 tends to ignore them.

Encouraging comments of course always welcome! :)
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Comments

  • Baalshamon
    Baalshamon
    Posts: 585
    Wolfhound, As I said to you earlier, the site is looking great and I cant wait to see the final project. I wish I knew coding better or I would offer a hand. I am still a novice with this whole textile thing.

    -Steve
    "Star Trek Late Night":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-trek-late-night
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    Hey there, Wolfhound! I took a quick look around, and I have to say, this is a really cool looking wiki! I dig the silver-age comic book aesthetic. One idea I had was to write the adventure logs as if a 'fan' wrote a letter asking about how things turned out, and one of the characters is answering the letter, just like the fan-mail pages from old comics. If you want help with doing a custom wiki menu, let me know. I'd be glad to give you whatever help I can offer.

    "Duskreign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/Duskreign

    "Wyrmshadow:The Duskreign Prophecy":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/duskreignprophecy

    "Wyrmshadow Campaign Setting":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow

    "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic

    "The System":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/system
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    I love it. I'm going to try and track down some of those old Bullpen Bulletins that Stan Lee did and see if I can make it work!

    And thank you for your kind offer! I love how your sites use that Transparent rectangle. I believe I saw in another thread how you use absolute positioning to pull it off, I just need to come up with a vehicle for accomplishing that.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    That is Rase Cidraen's transparent rectangle. That lad spoils me.

    - Mike
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    That transparent rectangle sparked some ideas - but it'll be murder to implement except on a couple pages - I'm thinking for top level pages of doing a straight up comic book page style layout. Then within the text boxes/bubbles of a particular panel, will be text that tells you what it links to.

    So imagine looking at any comic book page. This will be the "menu" if you will - if you click the top left panel (normally panel 1 in a comic book) it'll go to Page A, next panel to Page B, and so on. Using those absolute position transparent boxes I think I can make this work. :)

    .... now to just find a way of creating those pages in the first place. Time to fire up my old 3D Poser/Daz3d art programs me-thinks.
  • magavendon
    magavendon
    Posts: 112
    Good luck and I hope you'll share when you're done, it sounds like it'll be really cool!
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    The nice part is, once you have a single one of those pages set-up, it acts as a template, and all you have to do is change the urls, alt-text, and coordinates. The code itself is pretty much the same throughout the whole process, so its really a lot of copy, paste, edit, rinse, repeat.

    - Mike
  • arsheesh
    arsheesh
    Posts: 850
    You're doing some good work here Wolfhound. Glad you finally decided to become active in the forums: the whole community benefits from having new sources of inspiration.

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh
  • Dungeon_Master_Loki
    Dungeon_Master_Loki
    Posts: 358
    What Arsheesh said.

    Game Designer, Pro GM, multiple ENnie Award winner

    GM of Planejammer: The Spelljoined (Pathfinder 1e) Campaign of the Year 2011 and still going strong!

    GM of The Planewalker's Guild (Pathfinder 1e) 

    Need a GM? Book me today!

  • DarkMagus
    DarkMagus
    Posts: 425
    Very cool. I love the look!
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 3,001
    This is a phenomenal, original look! I like it a lot!

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

    Just trying to help out.

  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Thank you all for your very kind words.

    I'd like some feedback on my above posted idea - "implemented here":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/uncanny/wikis/testing-page

    That would be the new main page of the wiki, and sub-pages would drill down from there.
  • Baalshamon
    Baalshamon
    Posts: 585
    Wolfhound that is fraking awesome. Very well done and really pushed some memories out of the broom closet. Good work and a great idea.

    -Steve
    "Star Trek Late Night":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/star-trek-late-night
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    Beautiful!

    - Mike
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Thanks.

    I'm having an issue with absolute positioning cross browser that's giving me fits. IE renders correctly, but Firefox and Chrome shift everything about 20 pixels over to the right. I can't figure out why.
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 3,001 edited October 2011
    Opera is different as well. I put everything in to view on Firefox, which is the least forgiving on positioning. That way I never have to worry about the other 3. If you program to IE, Firefox viewers will never, ever be able to see what is on the left or right sides.
    As far as feedback on your test, that is difficult to view on Firefox- looks great on Opera though!!

    killervp
    "A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt
    Post edited by GamingMegaverse on

    Just trying to help out.

  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    See, it was working fine for me in Firefox earlier, and now it's messed up. I'm guessing you're in the middle of tweaking it, now, though.
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Try it now please. I went back in and scaled the background image to 700px (chopping 30px off the sides).

    Using Firefox as the base browser, did the margins so that the whole thing now fits inside the white area. It's near the leftmost edge in IE and near the rightmost edge in Chrome and Firefox.
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 3,001
    Now covering the right side items.

    Just trying to help out.

  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Curious. Clearly I'm leaving out something to account for different screen resolutions. May have to tackle this after sleep. :)
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354 edited October 2011
    Nevermind. I'm just blind. I forgot to put it all inside another DIV that WOULD move around. Fixing now.

    EDIT: I'm leaving the color positioning boxes on the TEST page for now. The live page won't have them, they're just to help with positioning. Please let me know if the boxes all move and format correctly now.

    Seems to on my laptop but then again, that's hardly a valid test. :)
    Post edited by wolfhound on
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    Glorious! Success on every browser I have at my disposal.

    Huzzah!
  • arsheesh
    arsheesh
    Posts: 850
    Ooh, I'm liking the look of this Wolfhound! It really does hearken back memories of my youthful years collecting X-men. Good stuff man.

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Thanks y'all. Glad to see the gimmick is working. I know I'm certainly having way too much fun with it. My wife laughed at me last night as I was giggling writing the new text for the wiki main page.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    The way the characters are full-on telling people where to click is really funny.
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    Awesome. Breaking down the 4th wall is really fun for me. I took it a little further on the now refined "basic info" page

    "http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/uncanny/wikis/basic-info":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/uncanny/wikis/basic-info

    From the same X-Men #1 from 1963 - I edited a couple more panels. It really doesn't add a lot more effort to give the art custom text, but I think it really sets apart the layout and gives the page the right mood/feel I'm going for.
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 3,001
    Looks great!

    Just trying to help out.

  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    I think I found a layout for the "Character Creation":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/uncanny/wikis/character-creation page I like. Now to just turn the images into links to actual useful information.

    I always knew that anything I did about "making a mutant" would have to draw art from Barry Windsor Smith's Weapon-X masterpiece.
  • Duskreign
    Duskreign
    Posts: 1,085
    I love it. What a cool site you've got there, Wolfhound. It makes me wish Duffpool's Exiles game got off the ground, because "I was gonna be Deadpool up in that mutha.":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/theexiles/characters/25040 I had so much fun writing him up, but never got a chance to play him.
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 3,001
    Ok, Dusk, this is further proof that you are a great writer- "I started my welt and bruise collection at the same time as dad started his empty scotch bottle collection. Good times." Nice..

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

    Just trying to help out.

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