I've always liked glossaries and dramatis personae in the fantasy books I read. I find it very handy as detailed explanation of unusual terms or names do not take up more space in the flow of the novel. I just merely stole that idea to use in the Campaign site.
I find it useful as it serves two functions: for the players, it can led them straight the wikipage they are trying to get to without going through a maze of clicks if they know what's the exact thing they are looking for. For me, the GM, every time I do an update, I will update the Glossary with the new terms and names. The red links then remind me of the pages that I have yet to write up and update.
"My new home page for Wyrmshadow":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow
That is closer to what I have been wanting my home page to look like. My old home page is now the "New to Wyrmshadow page.":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow/wikis/new-to-wyrmshadow
lmao, FrankSirmarco, I actually get a little itchy when I see a campaign page that doesn't use all one kind of image, all at one size, for their characters tab. I'm quite obsessed with it. Headshot 200px for Wyrmshadow. Headshot 164px for Star Wars (because of the JimTriche backgrounds I use on my character profiles, I don't want the profile pic to intrude on the background).
I pay far too little attention to the right things and far too much to the wrong ones. I will spend three hours tweaking font sizes or whether something should be aligned to the left, right, or center, or whether there should be one, two, or no horizontal bars before or after something. I will spend twenty minutes actually writing my damned adventure logs, which is the one thing I am so ridiculously behind on.
I'm a 200px headshot person, too. I love the uniformity of it all. I'm very organized in my geek life.
I've just spent the afternoon editing character pages that I created before OP allowed you to link to character sheets or wiki pages, so I know something about paying too much attention to the wrong things...
I let them pick whatever size they want for their characters provided it fits there, I just edit the page with line breaks until the background passes the picture.
Hey, just thought I'd let you guys know that I finished the new video! I think it's a little bit more epic then the last one, and more tailored to the current game, although I think I might re-upload it to youtube in higher quality. For now here it is: "Intro Video":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/melekar
I agree with Duskreign, the transition timing was the hardest. That and the music itself, I actually wanted to use parts of three different songs for the sections of the video, but I just couldn't for the life of me get the transitions between the tracks to sound good, so I settled for one song that i thought worked pretty well.
Gaaran, in one panel, the text reads: Man turn on man, brother against brother
Should it read Man turned on man, in the past tense, or Man turns on man, in the present tense? It actually might flow a bit better if you used the word against in both sentences as well. Man turned against man, brother against brother.
Oh, and DAMN YOU! Now my video looks like a paramecium against your mighty multi-celled organism of a video.
I choose terrible analogies.
P.S. - The transition timing is tough, but you freaking nailed it here. Also, I love the music. I couldn't imagine these images without that tune backing them up.
P.P.S. - What program did you use to put that video together? Windows Movie Maker doesn't have a lot of those text animation options, at least that I can find. I am looking for a way to make a scrolling text, bottom to top, fading in at the bottom edge and out at the top, for use in an intro video for all six of my Wyrmshadow Campaigns. The closest I can get in WMM is, frankly, not all that appealing to the eye.
P.P.P.S - Post-Post Posting Syndrome - An affliction that... afflicts... Duskreign, which compels him to write a post, then afterward, continue to add more, unrelated data until the original message is lost. For example: This sentence and the one immediately preceding it.
Ooh, thanks for the catch on that one, yeah, I'll fix that text, don't know how I didn't see it.
Oh, and thanks about the timing, I tried to stretch out images or shrink them just a bit to make it fit, there were a couple parts that i wished there was some change in the music during the transition, but over all I thought it worked out well.
To make it, I used Adobe Premier Pro, if I took the time to REALLY learn how to use it, it's a pretty powerful tool, I could make some pretty kick-ass stuff, but that's time consuming :P.
Premier Pro? Damn, that brings back memories... I made the most awesome instructional pizza tutorial ever, but unfortunately, it's lost to the ravages of time...
So, it's not quite a video, but I'm quite proud of it nonetheless - I haven't quite made the Hierarchy link as flash as it deserves, but I'm liking the rest of the page, in terms of information consumption.
HAH! It cannot be stolen! For it is gifted! Muahahaha! (I wish content generation came to me as easy as formatting did, some days...)
Anyone else having trouble deciding what order to tackle projects in? What comes first, content, presentation, or organization? I'm definitely having a shortcoming with content, and organization is somewhat weak, but the issue I have is I don't know how to present content I don't have!
Well, my campaign cannot even begin to compare to the awesome stuff shown here...but I spent a weekend learning how to use the video editor and the sound mixer for my little intro video, so here you go: "Summer Stories":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/summer
Still a lot of work to do...and not much time, I'm hoping the campaign will start in 2 weeks!
Ydeon
[Any comments are welcome...specially cuz I hate design but can't help myself it seems]
Hey Ydeon that was pretty awesome, very cool video! I had been toying with the idea of playing a game with that system, it looked like a lot of fun!
And Rase... I TOO made an instructional video on how to make pizza a while back, and it too has been lost to time... did your video have any special guest stars? (Ours was cooking with Mario)
Noooo! (By the way Ydeon, excellent job!) Gaaran, you stole my video! That, or you're my best friend from high school. The plot of my movie was thus. My friend and I sucked playing Mario, and were hungry. We decided we needed to "grease up the controllers" to be better at it, and decided to make a pizza. Cue some snazzy camera shots (Inside the oven and the fridge), and some pizza making madness. And when it came time to stretch the dough, my friend couldn't hack it, so he had to get some "Flour power!" (Cue shot from the game, and also cheesy sound effects). Honestly, with all the time it took us to make the video, the pizza wasn't quite as delicious as it should be.
Rase, that is eerie man! Ours was an instructional video, my friend dressed up as Mario and he was the host of a cooking show. The pizza we made was terrible, but the video was awesome. What are the odds man?
1 to the power of 26 against. That's pretty awesome - I don't have the Mario physique, or I would have done the same. On the plus side, I had a 100% authentic chef's outfit, but that's about it. Not as cool as a cooking plumber, though.
AHH! My math skills! I am hungry! Wait..maybe I meant it like that... (Curses! Who stole my zeros!)
Speaking of Showing off - I'd love to show off my Index page, but the problem is, it looks like garbage, as it stands. JimTriche helped me sort the Main Page properly, but I would like to request some input on this page:
It's a bit...sparse, at the mo', to say the least. That's probably the thing I want to snazz up the most, before even considering fleshing out the Planar realms (Which is a shame, because thats where the players will be going at some point)
My original thought was to modify an experimental frontpage I was working on for my Friend's campaign, which was quite custom-graphic intensive, for what I had been doing at that point. At some point, I plan on going back and feathering the flag edges here: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/tsts/wikis/test-page-4
Unfortunately, while I love doing banners/flags (If anyone needs help, give a shout), I can't even see how modifying THAT would make my index page look more attractive. (I hate it when I get stumped on layout...)
I checked out "The Mourning After" and I have to say that it looks like a fun game indeed. I kind of like the tongue-in-cheek way you deal with the wiki. It's very WYSIWYG, which I admire. I admit to being a bit jealous. Your game is set in an established campaign world, so you can link directly to some of the WotC content when you need to. I can do the same for my Star Wars campaign, but unfortunately, Wyrmshadow is all my own, and if I want there to be a calendar, I have to make it up.
And I haven't. Because I am lazy.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know your cry for attention didn't go unnoticed! I noticed, and I'm glad I did. I'll be checking back on your campaign as it develops.
I appreciate your comments! It's nice to know shameless self-promotion does yield occasional rewards. I have found Eberron to be a rich world with a rich flavor and full body to delve into (like a good beer or cigar).
I too have a homebrewed campaign setting that I've used over the years, and never fully fleshed out in one place. I want to keep all of my attention focused on my current campaign for, as any DM knows, going in too many directions can be the early death of many a good campaign. That said, I will be picking at your brain like some sort of dire idea-vulture when I finally try and exorcise my homebrewed world from my possessed, green bile spewing face onto OP.
That is a mad kind of crazy nightmarish image! If you need help figuring out coding, I'll try and do the best I can - probably everything I've done so far could be streamlined, but it's worked thus far!
Comments
Frank, it's only a short video, but I think it came out pretty good. Lemme know what you think.
I've always liked glossaries and dramatis personae in the fantasy books I read. I find it very handy as detailed explanation of unusual terms or names do not take up more space in the flow of the novel. I just merely stole that idea to use in the Campaign site.
I find it useful as it serves two functions: for the players, it can led them straight the wikipage they are trying to get to without going through a maze of clicks if they know what's the exact thing they are looking for. For me, the GM, every time I do an update, I will update the Glossary with the new terms and names. The red links then remind me of the pages that I have yet to write up and update.
That is closer to what I have been wanting my home page to look like. My old home page is now the "New to Wyrmshadow page.":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow/wikis/new-to-wyrmshadow
I am curious to know what you guys think.
Dusky McReigns. OB/GYN (not licensed).
I'm glad to see that someone else is as anal-retentive as I am, and has their PC/NPC images all set to the same size...
lmao, FrankSirmarco, I actually get a little itchy when I see a campaign page that doesn't use all one kind of image, all at one size, for their characters tab. I'm quite obsessed with it. Headshot 200px for Wyrmshadow. Headshot 164px for Star Wars (because of the JimTriche backgrounds I use on my character profiles, I don't want the profile pic to intrude on the background).
I pay far too little attention to the right things and far too much to the wrong ones. I will spend three hours tweaking font sizes or whether something should be aligned to the left, right, or center, or whether there should be one, two, or no horizontal bars before or after something. I will spend twenty minutes actually writing my damned adventure logs, which is the one thing I am so ridiculously behind on.
I've just spent the afternoon editing character pages that I created before OP allowed you to link to character sheets or wiki pages, so I know something about paying too much attention to the wrong things...
I agree with Duskreign, the transition timing was the hardest. That and the music itself, I actually wanted to use parts of three different songs for the sections of the video, but I just couldn't for the life of me get the transitions between the tracks to sound good, so I settled for one song that i thought worked pretty well.
Should it read Man turned on man, in the past tense, or Man turns on man, in the present tense? It actually might flow a bit better if you used the word against in both sentences as well. Man turned against man, brother against brother.
Oh, and DAMN YOU! Now my video looks like a paramecium against your mighty multi-celled organism of a video.
I choose terrible analogies.
P.S. - The transition timing is tough, but you freaking nailed it here. Also, I love the music. I couldn't imagine these images without that tune backing them up.
P.P.S. - What program did you use to put that video together? Windows Movie Maker doesn't have a lot of those text animation options, at least that I can find. I am looking for a way to make a scrolling text, bottom to top, fading in at the bottom edge and out at the top, for use in an intro video for all six of my Wyrmshadow Campaigns. The closest I can get in WMM is, frankly, not all that appealing to the eye.
P.P.P.S - Post-Post Posting Syndrome - An affliction that... afflicts... Duskreign, which compels him to write a post, then afterward, continue to add more, unrelated data until the original message is lost. For example: This sentence and the one immediately preceding it.
Oh, and thanks about the timing, I tried to stretch out images or shrink them just a bit to make it fit, there were a couple parts that i wished there was some change in the music during the transition, but over all I thought it worked out well.
To make it, I used Adobe Premier Pro, if I took the time to REALLY learn how to use it, it's a pretty powerful tool, I could make some pretty kick-ass stuff, but that's time consuming :P.
"Duskreign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/Duskreign
"Wyrmshadow Campaign Setting":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow
I am downloading Premier Pro right now, so nyah!
So, it's not quite a video, but I'm quite proud of it nonetheless - I haven't quite made the Hierarchy link as flash as it deserves, but I'm liking the rest of the page, in terms of information consumption.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/planescape-campaign/wikis/factions
Not that I would dream of stealing it for my own illicit purposes.
(cough).
Oh, alright, twist my arm, won't you? I'm totally using that code.
Great work, ESPECIALLY in terms of information consumption.
Anyone else having trouble deciding what order to tackle projects in? What comes first, content, presentation, or organization? I'm definitely having a shortcoming with content, and organization is somewhat weak, but the issue I have is I don't know how to present content I don't have!
Still a lot of work to do...and not much time, I'm hoping the campaign will start in 2 weeks!
Ydeon
[Any comments are welcome...specially cuz I hate design but can't help myself it seems]
And Rase... I TOO made an instructional video on how to make pizza a while back, and it too has been lost to time... did your video have any special guest stars? (Ours was cooking with Mario)
..darnit, now I want pizza. Grr!
And pizza DOES sound pretty good right now.
Speaking of Showing off - I'd love to show off my Index page, but the problem is, it looks like garbage, as it stands. JimTriche helped me sort the Main Page properly, but I would like to request some input on this page:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/planescape-campaign/wikis/main-page
It's a bit...sparse, at the mo', to say the least. That's probably the thing I want to snazz up the most, before even considering fleshing out the Planar realms (Which is a shame, because thats where the players will be going at some point)
My original thought was to modify an experimental frontpage I was working on for my Friend's campaign, which was quite custom-graphic intensive, for what I had been doing at that point. At some point, I plan on going back and feathering the flag edges here: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/tsts/wikis/test-page-4
Unfortunately, while I love doing banners/flags (If anyone needs help, give a shout), I can't even see how modifying THAT would make my index page look more attractive. (I hate it when I get stumped on layout...)
Let me know how terrible or incredible it is.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/mourningafter
I checked out "The Mourning After" and I have to say that it looks like a fun game indeed. I kind of like the tongue-in-cheek way you deal with the wiki. It's very WYSIWYG, which I admire. I admit to being a bit jealous. Your game is set in an established campaign world, so you can link directly to some of the WotC content when you need to. I can do the same for my Star Wars campaign, but unfortunately, Wyrmshadow is all my own, and if I want there to be a calendar, I have to make it up.
And I haven't. Because I am lazy.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know your cry for attention didn't go unnoticed! I noticed, and I'm glad I did. I'll be checking back on your campaign as it develops.
"Duskreign":http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/Duskreign
"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
I appreciate your comments! It's nice to know shameless self-promotion does yield occasional rewards. I have found Eberron to be a rich world with a rich flavor and full body to delve into (like a good beer or cigar).
I too have a homebrewed campaign setting that I've used over the years, and never fully fleshed out in one place. I want to keep all of my attention focused on my current campaign for, as any DM knows, going in too many directions can be the early death of many a good campaign. That said, I will be picking at your brain like some sort of dire idea-vulture when I finally try and exorcise my homebrewed world from my possessed, green bile spewing face onto OP.
Danke!
VociferousUrsus