FuManchuDrew
Hi everyone!
We’re excited to bring you the new Obsidian Portal today! Needless to say, it’s quite an update. As a lot of you are aware, the Reforging was part of a KickStarter we ran and through the forums where we generated a lot of great feedback on design and the direction of the new site. Now that we’re out in the open, we’d love to continue the process and open the floor.
Part of our Reforging process was updating the whole site from the core to the front end styles making it easier for us to maintain and follow modern web conventions. If you haven’t done so yet, I’d urge you to take a peek at the site on a tablet/phone, as we’d love to hear your thoughts on mobile as well!
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First off, some of the things we’re hearing is that people are unsatisfied with the color scheme. We definitely want to address these concerns, we’ve already pushed a small change to darken the text input and fix some links. Another thing to note is that all Ascendant members have the ability to further customize colors and css. Another thing to note is that we’ve started a basic style guide here:
"Style Guide":https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SEGiRhBC5I-JjZJROQnWuJ0W-6SXfZ9uAgMPstu0hcA/
and you can leave basic feedback/suggested additions to the style guide in the forum here:
"Style Guide Discussion":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3324
We’ll also be updating the stock backgrounds in a few days to better help with the text contrast in other parts of the front facing design.
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Another concern we’re hearing is that the sub forums are gone. We understand all the work put into place and are working on a few solutions. The ‘new’ forum is in place to facilitate quick discussions and remove email chains from players.
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For the right sidebar, we’re very happy with some of the information listed there (take a peek at the campaign home-page) and some of the stretch goals will utilize the space even further. We are open to hearing more suggestions and thoughts on this change.
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We’re really excited about what we’ve built so far, and know with some great and constructive feedback we can make it even better. Thanks for all of the comments--positive and negative. We're reading them all and taking everyone's suggestions into consideration as we move forward with the Reforging.
Comments
1) I use a lot of quotes in our adventure logs. So a times I'll use a '...', as in etc..., or a character thinking out loud but not finishing the thought. Well, everywhere in our logs that has that '...' it turns the line or partial line coming before it into gibberish letters and symbols.
2) Maybe this comes under the color scheme thoughts above, but the background in editing becomes too light gray once you start typing. It makes it harder to see the white letters you're typing. And I think all of my headings show up with the code, for example, "h4. Tomb of Rehotep" rather than made into a heading.
I guess my biggest question is what are the chances of a refund for either the year's membership and/or my kickstarter contribution?
Black on white.
It does not, just takes you to the main forum page. If that gets fixed, this could be nice.
Unconquered Kingdoms, July 2016 CotM
I like the look and feel overall though.
@dragoner - I have seen your comments in support tickets and various other threads here, I'm asking you to please consider coming back in a day or two after Micah and other team members have given some updates and we've managed to address some of these concerns.
1) Can this be changed?
I have a hundred + GM only wikis that I have started. In the old site format I could select "Show All" and scroll down to my list of GM only material.
2) How do I do this now??
Thanks!!
TTalamini: You can alter that with CSS at the moment. See "Edgerunners":https://edgerunners.obsidianportal.com/dashboard for an example and "here":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3393&page=1#Item_8 for how I made it work. This doesn't change the two side columns, but they're the same size now as they were on the original site. This edit provides about 220px more space than we had available on the original site for the main content.
http://imgur.com/63aSzZR
You literally have enough extra width to do triple-column format if you wanted to, the white-space is that revoltingly overused. If your UI people have no talent, hire new ones. Please.
Also, I've got a big ol' space between my banner and the top bar.
1) Please double the default width of the content column, or give us a setting to control it.
2) Is there a "show all" option for listing wiki pages, or is hitting ENTER in the search field the only way to accomplish this task?
3) Is there a way to indicate or filter pages that are not viewable by players?
More to come...
The character selection screen not having a distinction between NPCs and PCs is not one I enjoy, the Character Sheets and basically every other page have a crushingly tiny amount of screen space, which is terrible given that most people have widescreen monitors, and no additional information is given in the areas around it.
As far as first glance impressions go, I'm not fond of this. I've supported the site and recommended it to people for years despite some issues, but as it stands now, I'm not sure I would continue to do so.
Additionally, the right-hand column does not have a ghosted background, so depending on the color scheme and background image combo, it's varying degrees of difficulty to read.
Those are my first impressions. It seems to me that the purpose of Obsidian Portal should be less about giant pretty pictures and more about actual UI functionality.
My main campaign takes place in the future. Adventure logs are thus logged during the year they take place in (currently, 2048). I used to be able to input the year, but now I've got to really scroll to get to my required year.
1. As stated by others a 'Show All' button for wiki pages would be great. Preferably to a list that does not contain a page preview of each entry.
2. I made my campaign without custom CSS, in the old fashioned method of DIV tags on each page. I had a graphic menu that overlaid the default OP menu along the top of the content bar. Unfortunately those graphics now cover up the only 'Edit page' button so I can't even change my pages back to plain text. An 'Edit Page' link at the bottom or in the top ribbon would be great.
3. The imbed image button won't run for me (Firefox) so I can't even access my uploaded media to delete the images.
As it stands, Reforged has rendered my campaign unusable. I have no issue with having to restyle all of my pages - but right now I can't even do that.
https://legends-of-the-three-pillars.obsidianportal.com/
If a user account is either assigned to two different PCs (as is the case where one of my players manages both his and his significant other's Obsidian Portal character profiles), or if a user is both GM and PC (as I am in one of my campaigns), it only shows one entry.
Example A): In https://relics-of-a-lost-age.obsidianportal.com/ , there is another character named Natalia who is owned by the same Obsidian Portal account as the character Solven. Solven shows up on the front page, Natalia does not (I have confirmed she is flagged as a PC).
Example B): in https://shadowrun-nyc.obsidianportal.com/dashboard (a skeletal campaign I've thrown together while waiting on the actual GM to register on Obsidian Portal so that I can turn it over to him), I am currently both GM and owner of the PC Yurei - but Yurei doesn't appear on the front page (I have confirmed he is flagged as a PC and not an NPC).
Or, and this is probably easier, just go to the address bar and type /edit after the page address and hit 'enter'.
I see that @DreadGazebo has said that this may be soon rectified, can we get some clarification, please? Are you bringing back the Adventure Log comments function?
There are a number of aesthetic options that I don't care for, but the only thing that will totally kill my game is the lack of Adventure Log Comments.
Also the lack of a genera Comments section is a pretty big detractor. We use that a lot for OOC chatter.
1) A "show all" for the wiki that separates the GM-only pages. If you could make it sortable that would be phenomenal, but for now, I really would like to see just the page titles all together like you used to.
2) PCs and GM-only characters separated from the others. We've got a LOT of characters in one of our games and it was nice to have the PCs right there at the top.
3) The color seems to be a bit better than it was earlier today, but still, white text on grey? A little bit of glare or even just a crappy monitor and we won't be able to see what we're editing. Please give options. (If that's in the CSS I might not have seen it. Because like most people who don't know anything about coding save for textile basics and some simple html, I don't want to have to learn how to do that. I got other stuff to do.)
4) Tags visible on the wiki front page was very useful. I like the new tag search, but if there's any way to make the list of tags more readily available (like it used to be), I'd appreciate it.
5) There are issues with the character icons on the front page of one of our campaigns. One player's character shows up twice, and two don't at all. One of the missing characters was created as a second character by a player, the other was created by the GM, but both should be categorized as PCs.
Time is what I put a considerable amount of into learning CSS code and editing, editing, editing page after page for weeks on end. I am not the most computer literate person in the world.
This is after I paid good money to OP for ascendant membership.
I'm sure some of the minor snafus in terms of layout and appearance will be ironed out shortly, but that's not my concern. I simply don't have the TIME to go through and re-edit my entire campaign from scratch. I won't do it.
Right now I'm not even sure I want to continue playing. Our group was pretty dependent on our OP page. This horrible update has murdered my enthusiasm for running our real-life RPG with my friends. And surely that's not what the OP staff set out to do.