You Have Chosen.Us

Going live is all good and well, but that’s when the real work starts. Especially so with a project like GASP Comic, which was released during the development stage to ensure the release was still in 2008. That’s not to say it was released on buggy software, just with vastly limited features. When it went live, GASP Comic had nothing more than an index page (to be manually edited), a comic page (with First, Previous, Next and Last links functioning/disabled properly), and a just-functioning admin section.

Naturally, at first most of the development time goes towards creating more comics, and as we speak there’s been 12 published with 8 more waiting, for a total of 20 comics added (and, for your information, only 20 created so I’m not holding any back locally). There have been further tweaks to the index and comic pages, as well as some news and information added to the index page. What’s more, I’ve created a fully functional (albeit unoptimized) archive page listing comics (published and waiting, with dates and times of release) per 20. Having only 20 now you might think a few errors will crop up, but I assure you testing has been profuse. Bugs always creep up, but the risk was kept to a minimum.

There you have it, another status report. I’m desperately worried about viewer opinions, so I think tonight I’ll start work on a (custom) guestbook type comment system. No registration, just fill in a name, your comment, and hit submit. It’s very vulnerable to cheating (someone could use your name since you can’t register it), but it should do for now. I’ve also planned for the system to automatically add a comment when it publishes a comic, although that could be hard, but we’ll see. Here’s hoping the system will at least be free of spambots.

Bit of a belated news post, but what the hell. GASP Comic.com has gone live at 02:23:51 (server time being GMT -08:00), on december 31st 2008. No matter which (earthly) time zone you’re in, that’s still 2008 (which was my target, hence it being slightly more under construction than I’d wanted it to be).
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Yes, the third. I’m keeping count (although, with only 3, who couldn’t?). A few things have been finished for a while, but I wanted enough stuff to be worthwhile of a status report. Doesn’t hurt that this practice saves time through writing fewer status reports (although it does make it harder to remember all what I’ve done…).

• Finished the 5th comic.
  • Finished: 5
  • Sketched: 12
  • Scripted: 15
  • Translated: 0 (in 0 languages)
• Made a To-Do list
• Got depressed over how much work goes into so few To-Do item(s)
• Finished the comic’s navigation (code, layout integration, making everything work properly…)
• [Admin] Add Transcripts (roughly 40% done):
  • Add ‘Characters’ table
  • Add ‘Add Character’ function
  • Add ‘Translate Character’ function
• [Admin] Add language/translation stuff (roughly 50% done):
  • Add ‘Languages’ table
  • Add ‘Add Language’

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Feel a bit like a worker orc after today. Anyhow, here’s a little list of what’s been acomplished:

• First, previous, next, last links have been coded (… but not tested so there’s an 80% chance there’s something wrong with ‘em).
• The layout has been poured into the code, formed around it. Basically I merged my static HTML layout into my php code, so from now on all my testing will be done in a pretty layout.
• Semi-decided on the 3 cylinder menu.
• Made the flash logo’s background transparent.
• Added a little Published/Added box for the current comic.
• Gave all navigation (menu, comic top/bottom) the same font face (and coincidentally, font size).
• Minor layout tweaking.
• Finished comic #4 last night.

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I’ve been working on this project for a few weeks now, but here’s a status report.

The website layout is mostly done, pending peer review. I still need to choose the fonts for the navigation (both comic and main navigation, thinking of using the same font). See the layout and some fonts I’m considering. Everything above the top comic nav bar/tower ad is still unfinished. Basically it’s displaying 3 options for my main menu (3 cylinders, boxes, 1 cylinder), and in orange a reminder (for me) of my (current) main menu links. I’m leaning towards 3 cylinder option… It has room to expand, still leaves room for a second logo to the right of it (with the name GameSphere Comic), and doesn’t leave me with ~600pixels to fill for a 2nd logo. The main logo is still incomplete. It will be flash with an animation (slightly fading halo) with an easter egg - a funny when you click it. Right now it might as well be an image though…
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