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Post your unlock ideas!
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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Fri Oct 2nd at 9:37am 2009

Post your 'unlock' ideas!

What are unlocks/unlockables?
Unlocks or Unlockables are the things you earn with Snarkmarks.
The more Snarkmarks you have, the better the unlock.
For example: After 100 Snarkmarks you may choose your country flag that is displayed next to your profile when you post something.

Why did I make this thread?
The unlocks are still under construction, and I think we should complete it sometime. To my opinion, there aren't enough yet.

What kind of ideas are allowed?
Actually any idea is fine as long as it isn't too crazy (you know what I mean).

How should we post our ideas?
Probably the same way as the normal ones are (check my second post or go to control panel > snarkmarks for an example)



Ideas so far:

Niborius

Gain 500 Snarkmarks to colorize your username!. (Displayed in your profile and every post)

Gain 250 Snarkmarks to unlock a "To-Do list" at the start page of The Snarkpit!

Gain 150 Snarkmarks to change the default font for your posts!


aaron da killa

A forum rank which is a little title such as "honorable heroic member" displayed next to your name on every post. The first word reflects a given user's ban/behavior history and the second word reflects a given user's activity/post count/log ins etc so you can have a noble member or a noble heroic member, or an honorable mythic member or just a heroic member etc.






Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Le Chief on Fri Oct 2nd at 10:08am 2009

The thing I don't like about the current unlockables is that well....

The flag for example isn't really a reward or anything, it feels like something that everybody should already have, just like your forum avatar and name but not as important as that. It feels the people without it are being excluded rather than people being rewarded.

Here's my idea, they do this on the bungie.net forums. You have a forum rank which is a little title such as "honorable heroic member" displayed next to your name on every post. The first word reflects a given user's ban/behavior history and the second word reflects a given user's activity/post count/log ins etc so you can have a noble member or a noble heroic member, or an honorable mythic member or just a heroic member etc.

Also on the bungie.net forums, above each post is a bar displaying the members name, forum rank etc etc and the colour of the bar also reflects the users status where the bar stands out more with higher member status.

It should also be noted that forum moderators/admins are not included in this system, they're bar is a unique colour and they're rank is "forum admin".


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by **Dedi** on Fri Oct 2nd at 11:43am 2009

I like the bar idea very much Aaron, I think we should definitely introduce that to the Pit.

EDIT

Fifa.com has that also. It's an 'activity' bar and has a percentage activity and status of your activity. For example, at 60% activity, your status would be "On the bench" or something similar.



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Fri Oct 2nd at 3:27pm 2009

Here comes mine:



Gain 500 Snarkmarks to colorize your username!. (Displayed in your profile and every post)


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Sat Oct 3rd at 9:15am 2009

Quoting aaron_da_killa
It should also be noted that forum moderators/admins are not included in this system, they're bar is a unique colour and they're rank is "forum admin".

I'm pretty sure it's "their" and not "they're" since they're means they are.

Sorry I just want to be sure before I learn it the wrong way smiley


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Le Chief on Sat Oct 3rd at 9:51am 2009

Oh, no your right oops lol. smiley


Aaron's Stuff



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Sat Oct 3rd at 10:48am 2009

"Your" should be "You're" smiley Sorry I just had to fix it... smiley

Anyways if I have enough unlocks, I think I'll just make a list into the first post with some of the best ideas, so the admins can decide which one to add. IF they are going to ofcourse smiley


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by FatStrings on Sat Oct 3rd at 3:46pm 2009

I thought we used to have a ranking system involved with snarkmarks and activities on the old pit

new members were "noobies" etc...



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Sun Oct 4th at 4:29pm 2009

The old system you mention was specifically dropped as it was felt to be set up in a way that was derisory toward all but a few particular members.

I take the point about being able to set a country flag etc, and agree it should probably be standard.

Coloured names and especially aaron's ideas are both excellent suggestions.

"there" - as in "The kitten is over there"
"their" - as in "The kitten is theirs"
"they're" = "they are", as in "they're feeding the kitten"

Other common annoyances include using the contraction "it's" when the possessive "its" is intended, incorrect or failure to use possessives (eg "The boy's school" for singular possession, "The boys' school" to indicate collective possession, "The boys" plural) and using "your" instead of "you're" (the contraction of "you are") eg "Oh, no your right oops lol" instead of "Oh, no you're right oops lol"

etc

smiley



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Sun Oct 4th at 7:02pm 2009

2 More here:

Gain 250 Snarkmarks to unlock a "To-Do list" at the start page of The Snarkpit!

Gain 150 Snarkmarks to change the default font for your posts!

The last one might not be a very good idea since some people might use very unclear ones, or maybe we should be able to choose from a list of some good fonts or something?

Anyways I noticed the pictures are not looking transparent but that is because my post is darker than the others. On the brighter color it does look transparent. Just take a look at my first post and you know what I mean smiley

Oh and Larchy thanks for helping us with our English smiley I learn alot from it.




Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Mon Oct 5th at 8:30am 2009

lol seems like you're enjoying making stuff up.


Here is a PNG with the required overlay for both the black and blue site themes (you'll need Fireworks) - just paste whatever graphic you want in underneath the grouped objects on each layer.

Export as a PNG24, one for each theme.



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Mon Oct 5th at 9:25am 2009

Thanks that saves lots of time ^^

Edit:

Do you think this one is better for the colored username unlock?


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Mon Oct 5th at 9:47am 2009

Nope, don't like it tbh. I think the lego-brick one is awesome!



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Mon Oct 5th at 9:58am 2009

I think I agree with you then. Actually this was more of a test because I'm not used to Adobe Fireworks ^^

The Lego brick picture is probably not 24 bit yet I think, so we still need to do that if it's really necessary.

Anyways do you think you're going to use any of my ideas?
Aaron's idea sounds great too.


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Mon Oct 5th at 10:34am 2009

So long as it's a .png then it doesn't really matter, but png8 doesn't have enough colour depth for more complex images and png32 isn't required as we don't need an alpha channel for these. (The only reason I want them as .pngs is to keep them all the same as I may need to use them with some dynamic output at some point and it makes life easier)

Can certainly do coloured usernames if you like.

Not sure about a to-do list as it sounds like a bit of a redundant feature.

Changing fonts is fraught with potential issues. It would be possible to allow people to use different fonts for their forum posts (via bbcode tags for instance) where it wouldn't affect layout as the text wraps anyway (changing to verdana site-wide would mess up a lot of layout because it has wider kerning for example), but if you're thinking of letting people use crazy weird fonts for a laugh then that doesn't work because you have to stick to what fonts people have installed on their system. There are also rendering and display issues with certain fonts, especially cross-application and cross-platform.

This is why all websites use either Arial or Verdana with a fallback to sans-serif (there are about a dozen web-safe fonts we're restricted to).

Being able to choose between Arial and Calibri isn't exactly the most interesting feature ever smiley

There are javascript based scripts available that will render non-standard fonts without the end user needing it to be installed, but they all have issues with special characters, hyperlinks and other issues. You can also use php to generate the text as an image, but that doesn't work for smileys/links etc and is basically hell to parse correctly for the image output.

You can embed the fonts via css, which would download any custom font when you view the page. The problem with this, again, is support. IE supports it but only in MS's proprietary EOT format. The valid CSS3 technique only supports TTF (truetype font) . This @font-face property is now supported by Firefox 3.5+, Opera and Safari, but isn't enabled in Chrome by default - it's a command line option (--enable-remote-font). Opera is also very picky about the syntax used and the code can break easily.

There is also the additional overhead of the font download to consider.

All in all it's a rather troublesome problem!

I could add some bbcode tags for some custom fonts and just use the @font-face CSS3 method since it degrades gracefully, and hard cheese to IE users! It would spice up forum posts I suppose!

Ok I've argued myself into taking a look at it smiley

Yes I think aaron's ideas are great, although they'd be more of a feature than an unlockable.



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Mon Oct 5th at 10:47am 2009

I understand. We don't want the Snarkpit being messed up of course smiley.

I was also thinking of an unlock that lets you organize the start page (like youtube where you can organize your channel) but I think that's almost impossible to make.

Anyways the colored usernames will be fun IMO smiley




Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Mon Oct 5th at 11:00am 2009

Proof of concept:

ie sucks ass!



smiley

Should work in: Firefox 3.5+, Safari, Opera 10+


Let me know if it doesn't.



Time to find some fonts ppl! .ttf please, must be free to use (no copyright violations) and not all of them work unfortunately... just have to try them and see.



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Mon Oct 5th at 2:27pm 2009

Quoting larchy
Proof of concept:

ie sucks ass!

It doesn't suck but Firefox is better (though I use Cometbird now)

Quoting larchy
Time to find some fonts ppl! .ttf please, must be free to use (no copyright violations) and not all of them work unfortunately... just have to try them and see.

Maiandra GD is a nice one, though I'm not sure if it's nice for snarkpit aswell.




Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by larchy on Mon Oct 5th at 2:35pm 2009

If you want to pay for the commercial licence then that's very kind of you!


IE does indeed suck.


Cometbird is just firefox with some preinstalled addons.



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 Re: Post your unlock ideas!
Posted by Niborius on Mon Oct 5th at 3:58pm 2009

Quoting larchy
If you want to pay for the commercial licence then that's very kind of you!


IE does indeed suck.


Cometbird is just firefox with some preinstalled addons.

AND Cometbird has a cool name smiley

edit: What made you suddenly say that IE sucks ass?


Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Nibgames




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