The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Go check the current ingame universe stats, at least half of the players have switched from the default round 23 skin to something else. :(

Could we please have a default skin which is more appealing? Get a new designer and scrap what's currently being used.

I know the skin system gives people choice and you could argue that people are free to switch skin, but I'm concerned that half the players have switched away from the default - which I'd say is a pretty bad percentage. Planetarion needs a default skin which is visually appealing to existing players and visually stunning to entice new players into thinking this is a good game.

Could you please not skimp on this? A combination of a good design along with someone with experience of creating decent user interfaces would go a long way in improving the image of Planetarion, instead of it looking like an 8 year old web game.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I admit I was a bit shocked (and partially blinded) by the new default skin.
Something along the lines of r21 skin with just a sexier touch would be great.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Im using r21 one as always

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

me too. something to do with being appalled by what was raping my eyes when i logged in.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Text only all the way baby.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

i'm actually surprised that they managed to break the r21 skin somewhat. the grey background boxes don't appear properly on all sections now :(

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I use the r6-9 xan skin even when i'm not playing xan. That's how hardcore I am.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Out of interest is the rd6-9 Cath skin available?

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

appears so

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

it is indeed

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

tbh, whoever came up with the colorscheme used in the portal / login form / skin should be shot...

Combining red with orange with blue with shades of green is simply enough to make me cut out my eyeballs so they can never be violated in such horrible ways ever again.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

For reference on how I thought the portal should have looked like:
http://users.telenet.be/Veedeejem/PA...rtal-final.jpg

Still makes me sad that they never used it and put up that crap instead...

edit: that was an unfinished design btw

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

suppose its a matter of taste, yours looks pretty sweet though, easier on the eyes too, i'd have voted that one.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Yes I have, but there's a big difference between a shitty signature on a forum and a design for a portal / game.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Reason i added/changed the pages to the r23 skin was to get a "consistent" look on everything and as i had to change much of the login/signup etc page anyway.

Now if someone is willing to supply us with skins, both for the game and portal, they are welcome to do so.
If the skins meet our approval, atm i can only really remember we've not added 2 skins supplied to us, we'll add them.
If we find something that's fitting to use on everything, i'll gladly put in the time to make the required changes.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Bring back Clean Black tbh.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I'm not after more skins, I don't think that most of the playerbase is either.

I'd like to see a decent default design for the portal and the game.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I rather like the round 23 skin, but then again I have no taste.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

but if what exist isn't usable as it, don't we need new ones?

and as Juice, there are ppl that like the r23 skin.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I like the skin a lot. I always use the r23 skin. After several of rounds with clean black and the r21 skin, people got used to the all black skins. Once something new, something different appeared, people rejected it like it was a hamburger of cancer. People have already decided that all skins that are not all black and is not called clean black or r21 sucks. Some skins have strong colors and are tough for the eye, but the r23 looks very good to me. I believe that the r23 skin is more appealing for new players than any other of the skins.

It took me a few weeks to get used to the r23 skin, but after that I started enjoying the skin. And I've also used clean black for several rounds, but r23 is better. The skin is not perfect, but with some improvements I believe it could easily be the best skin we've had.

[r23skin]Jinstarro

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

You need a replacement for the awful default skin, not more crap alternatives which end up with a handful of users.

And even he admits he has no taste. :(

Yes there are bits of it which are okay, but there are so many flaws with the design which make it annoying to read.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

in all honesty, i like the r23 skin - just not enough to use it over the r21 one. theres something with the transparency and spacing that bothers me.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I did the same, only with the R6-9 Cathaar skin :(.
I tried mixing it up a bit though, with some less popular skins like some wierd psychedelic purple one. That was fun.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Atleast it isn't as bad as TheGate skin.

Also, R6-9 Xan skin is the way to go. I also miss clean black, which was my favourite in R11.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Why not hold a competition like you did a few rounds ago? scrap all old skins and just take the best 10 skins submitted and use those.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

just because the skins are old, doesnt make them bad.

i wouldnt have thought that having too much choice would be a bad thing either.

just add new skins :).

btw, i actually think changing the default to something controversial is a good thing, as it encourages people to look at all the other skins, rather than just immediately select the clean black :(.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I could also argue that a fresh vote on skins each round would make people see all potential new entries. But i agree, it wasn't until the excel skin was pointed out 3 rounds ago that i realised i could play in work WITHOUT minimizing!

But in the same way we scrap round name suggestions each round to get a fresh idea, the same could be said for skins. And with the potential to extending it to a portal skin (is that what its called?) after every round too?

just ideas of course

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I understand what you mean but I don't agree. Players don't always want to go through the effort of changing skin. If they log in for the first time that round and are confronted with a skin they don't like it will immediately act as an incentive not to play.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Yeah, I'm sure if you were kicked in the balls everyday for weeks you'd get used to it too...

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I like it, tho the curent portal has placed better all info and links on it... better concept.

this is something I shared in another game forums:

What I would like to see in a portal

5 catecories

1. Game info, login/signup info. Basicly tell its a online game site
2. Game help, news/announcements, manual, bcalcs, stats, techtree, tools
3. Community, alliances, players, past history, curent leader board
4. Discussions, active forum topics, new columns, kiwi, irc-link + info, way to contact tc admin, tell a friend option, open polls
5. GFX/logo some visualation to make the page look better and add some interest

the game info must be in place where it is seen the first thing u enter the page and from where u find it again when u come back. first priority to it.

game help is obvious to have a place to find all tools you need to do well in the game.

community should be rised up a lot more, its more than half of the game afterall.

discussion, show some activity inside community, wake up peoples interests!! IRC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the logo and visualiton are there to make people think the game is more alive than just the text what it really is also it makes it nicer to view ofc.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

yes
for there to be a replacement one has to be coded/written
for one to be coded/written one has to be designed
for one to be designed someone has to design it
what cin is saying is if someone designs a really good replacement then he would happily make the portal etc fit in with this new design.

i honestly thought YOU wouldn't need this spelling out, i over estimated you and i apologize.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I made that design before the current portal was even up and running and when nobody really knew what was going to be on the portal / where to put it / etc etc...

Though I'll take your other remarks into consideration since I'm tempted on designing a new portal lay-out & try to make a skin tbh.

If anybody wants to help (I really really suck bad at slicing in photoshop) plz pm me on IRC (nickname VdM can be found in alot of channels like #tof , #rock, ...) or send me a forum mail :)

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

It's got to be Text only!

The Skins situation has been brought up a few times and as before i fear that if you want better skins or more of a choice then you better get out your graphic suites and start making them :P

It would probably cost a fair bit of money to get a designer to do this job and PA, in my experience, aint flush with cash. So.... once again it would fall to the community to come up with the goods. Not ideal but there you have it. If you think about it though it's actually quite a great part of this "community" I have no doubt that if somebody came up with the goods it would get used.

In the PA Teams defence they ask for help all the time and, well, get a lot of complaints and not a lot of help!

I would love better skins (one for a mobile phone please! ) but would have to concede that with limited human resources and cash to invest there are other things that the PA team are going have to prioritize over this.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

The Round 23 skin is good.

Its other colors on it than black.
Its easy to understand.
It looks the same way as the login page.

So it all sums up to that Round 23 skin + login page the same = Good

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

you sir, have hit the nail on the head precisely

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

well I dont mind if you come loan your "skills" to another project...? :P

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

but if u think the login page sux?

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

we could, but if we scrapped old ones (which we won't), we'd end up with 1 or no skins....
we really don't get much sent in for competitions like that.
Same as above really, before anything like that can be considered we'd need to have a rather steady stream of skins being sent in, and they'd need to have a good/high quality as well.

Reason we have the skins we do is that simple noone really bothers making them, i guess it's easier to just complain about those that are and about the ppl that's actually put work into providing them.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Is there a good reason why we don't have some of the older ones?

Eg Newspaper, clean black.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

The skin system changed so all the old skins have to be remade to fit.
The old skins use a lot of images with text, and that text has to be updated both for the menu and page titles.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

Oh great, this has ended up as another thread where PA Team insists that the community has to help by submitting skins. :(

If you want help in improving the design then you need to put some effort into getting people suitable for it. Amazingly enough there is a thread for support team recruitment, as well as multihunter recruitment, yet absolutely no effort is made in any other area at all and it shows badly. You cannot rely on skins submitted by various people in the community for any quality, they might be half decent efforts but I seriously doubt they provide any form of decent image for the game.


Cin - whilst I'm sure people appreciate your efforts, you seriously need extra people onboard who have more experience in certain areas, especially with design.

From what I can tell you're doing most of the coding, which is fine. You're currently the only one doing occasional portal updates (we've been here before), let someone else do it who is actually willing to update it more than a couple of times a month. A decent graphics artist is also needed, someone you can work with instead of just receiving new designs. Most importantly a semi decent designer who can work with both the graphics artist and everyone else to bring a decent user interface to Planetarion, instead of it looking like it was created by a bunch of coders.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I still have the Clean Black photoshop files, but I don't think it's good to go back on old skins (they had their lives), something new is needed.
I stopped doing skins coz I don't understand anything to the current template with CSS...

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

What is wrong with the community contributing?
The whole admin staff has come from the community, and only 3 of the current skins are created by the community. By allowing the community to contribute directly in a thing like this, they can create just about anything they want, naturally there are some limits. So why is this so wrong?

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

And that is why there hasn't been put much/any effort into converting the old skins, sticking with the old ones all the time doesn't really "move things forward".
There are ppl that can help you sort that part, me included, if you make the skin as an image, i'm sure ppl can help you sort the rest.
Would probably be an idea to include them a bit underway to be on the safe side.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

i agree, shame none play this game it seems

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

btw, the skin it's being complained about, the r23, was done by a designer

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

If the future's what you are looking towards, scrap all the skins and replace them with a blank screen.

Re: The players have voted - round 23 skin sucks
 

I suppose you can't please everyone :P

Ok heres another alternative, why not (when you have the time, or maybe someone else could do it?) write up a tutorial explaining how to make the most basic of skins etc. That way people are being helped along with the first step in creating a skin.

Its overwhelming looking at all this and trying to understand how it is done. I've still got all the files from the last skin competition you held. But if you write up something that explains how a skin is created or designed then you then have yourself a guide to getting something out the community.

I'm sure if you did this (well i hope) that you would see an increase in skin submissions.

And at the end of the day, lets face it, a lot of the round name suggestions are shit, but we still have to pick one.