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These last years, the CWA Board assimilated what was archived from many old Carmageddon forums, including the whole of the Official Carmageddon.com Forums.
If you wish to merge any previous account you might have had with your new or existing CWA account, don't hesitate to reach out to us !

New TheSprayShop.net

For everything that doesn't belong elsewhere.
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Toshiba-3
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

TSS has opened again:
http://thesprayshop.net

After years (a decade?) with a very distinctive design, it is now based on Drupal, what a change.
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Post by Razor »

Yeah, I'm not sure I like this new design, it seems a little generic to me.
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

What I see more like an issue is the waste of onscreen space.
IMO things should be smaller and tidier (makes any sense?); I find it hard to read the content listed atm.
Also it was nice to have car galleries per author.

Let's wait and see what LJ comes up with! :)
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Post by Lumberjack »

See this update. I think the best way to implement per user pages (other than viewing all that users content at once, which is currently possible) would be to add a dropdown filter on the file pages. Should be possible. But first, design change! You sods.. :p
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Post by Lumberjack »

Better now? I know that the dropdown filter is not ideal as it shows all authors, not just the authors who made that type of content. But its better than nothing! I think it is simpler than having a page per author actually. Makes things more flexible too.

Tosh would you like any RSS feeds from here to be syndicated on TSS? I gather I should be able to incorporate feeds from many sites into, for example, a block in the navbar.

By the way I thought about it, and I don't think it was a whole decade with v6! Although it was a long time, certainly at least half a decade, but I think it was more than that. Checking on the Wayback Machine it seems that I uploaded v6 on 2nd Feb 03 so thats 7 years! Long time..
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Post by Harmalarm »

Yes, In my opinion, the design is better this way. Less white, and more good-ol green. The dropdown box is very handy! Makes it real easy to navigate.

I see you are getting into c2 modding again :) Cool.
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Post by Lumberjack »

Thats the plan! Good to see people registering on the site. You should all be getting your activation emails hopefully.
Regarding the dropdown box, it is still annoying me, as I can't filter it to only those authors in that file type. I mean I haven't found a solution yet. I have found a solution for doing that only for the current page (ie page 1 of 10) but its not what we need.. when I get that working, will update it, but for now its working ok.
Tip: you can click an author's name and see all content on the site by them. Try it for random_monkey for example, you'll find cars, skins, posts, tutorials.. I like that a lot.
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Post by Harmalarm »

yeah, me too. Organised and well sorted, that's how I like it.

hope you can fix the drop down box. It doesn't work when I change to a different user now... I guess that is what you meant above?

edit; heh message after loggin in;

[quote]
Member for
1 hour 46 min[/quote]

wow... I'm fresh
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

Hey, I find the select per author menu to be really handy indeed.
It seems like you worked with an old backup, did you? Because I see that my stuff on the current TSS is what I had done back in 2007. The next year, TTR had uploaded everything from me. And finaly in mid 2009 I asked every site to remove my content (which shouldn't be back on TSS thus~).

Yes, I guess you can syndicate devWAM RSS feeds on TSS if you want but I'm not sure what the benefit would be. I mean: the Carma community isn't as intense as before at all (AT ALL), and thus people are used to check the very few active sites left.
And with the same approach to the carma community integrity (stuff that The_Bollocks didn't understand and locked (calling it useless shit :gnnn:)), I see you're wondering about a TSS forum ; once again, look how the current boards are deserted/almost inactive, things should be gathered and kept together, each actors in this community should question itself about its role and find the fitting one. This is how CFe decided to really pose itself as a dev oriented board in comparison to the CWA. This is why my site (RR2000) which was at fist a TDR team page, became a french carmageddon portal and then a static download/ressources site, seeking integrity and trying to avoid redundancy/waste of time and effort.
Because it's an important factor too, say you open a new forum, start to put a lot of time and efforts into your new projects trying to get things moving, and then figure all of sudden that you're still alone in your castle, I'm sure your motivation will drop instantly and you'll disappear again like all the other vets who attempted to come back.

Things have changed a lot, there's so few people left, yet so much (new) knowledge and possibilities. Community-based projects should be based on this situation. Let alone creating too much forums, there's not enough people. Forget about tiny tuts and fun badly done creations, it became all serious apparently (which isn't that good). We made it serious (I know I did...), we are vets, we became older with the game and our creativity tended to get more mature as we did.
People like CoffeyCup (who's the vetest vet though) or Maxine however would often bring a lot of fun into Carmageddon editing (that being a good breath of fresh air) but I guess they kinda got tired being the only ones.

As I see it, there should be only one board but well maintened (maybe by two separate teams of mods) and then a lot of personal blogs/static download sites. And ofcourse one or two big depositories (should be Wasted! but it's still kinda half broken apparently).
This is how I think the community would be solid, very integer and effective. I've been often proven wrong about my thoughts etc. but it seems very logic to me in this case.

To come back to the new TSS layout, I find that all fonts are 25% too big and the information structure lacks of hierarchy. Ticket headers put a good contrast with the rest of the text (too big IMO as I said) but there's nothing else as to discriminate an element from another one. I'd suggest being more subtle with the different font sizes and using different color intensities ranging from white to a 25% white/green (the green from your background).
You can easily change the font sizes through CSS by applying a relative global 75% (in example) font size to the main contener (it will apply to every child).
I was also thinking that you should add a max width. At some point, the site's aspect loses visual consistency. I'd try a max-width of 1200px or 980px (might be too much).
Is it normal that the menu list on the left takes so much horizontal space? Makes it a bit hard to follow. I'd make every child's left padding go back to the left from 1em or 1.25.

Voilà, hope it helps you see clear through a few things. I think that by now you figured there isn't much life at all left into this side of retrogaming (esp. in comparison to that "Who's still active" topic at CWA).

etc.
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Post by Lumberjack »

Tosh you're right you do take things too seriously ;)

Thanks for the feedback on the forums, I agree it is best to have just one place to discuss things. Which is why I am confused at the current situation?? But I am adapting!

Personal blogs, TSS can do, if required. Drupal is very flexible.
Depository, that is already possible, if you want that it is easy, just create an account and ask :)

TSS layout.. well I agreed that the standard Drupal one was crap, so I put a lot of effort into sorting out this very v6-style layout. I am quite new to CSS but believe me after all this I understand it pretty well. My understanding is that you should be able to adjust your font size and the rest will follow suit? Personally I wouldn't want the main text to be any smaller than it is. Section headings etc, well they could be smaller but I don't think they are horrible now!
The side menus, they take up less space now for me than v6 ones did.
I think it would help me if you can post a screenie of how TSS looks for you. For me it looks like this. It seems I have my browser at 1366 wide and it still looks fine to me. Maybe you like things a bit neater ;)

If you want me to remove your content from TSS that's fine, I wasn't around at the time when you have asked people to remove it, and I think it was always on TSS still? Noone had access to the ftp to get rid of them anyway :) but yes I did work with an old database backup, as I couldn't get access to the current state of v6. Sorry about the confusion there. Let me know for sure and I'll sort it out, I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes at all.

Just want to fit back in where I left off ;)
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

I don't take things too seriously. It's important to look at what's eating your free time/efforts in an objective way.
This is also a very good exercise and could [should!] be very profitable to the whole Carmageddon network.

This is how I see TSS right now in Chrome, but also in Firefox, Opera and IE8.
You only tested it in Safari? Did you doublecheck your font families?

BTW... Ruin Nation isn't available anymore?

Oh and yes, it'd be very appreciated if you could get rid of my old items. If they had to be reuploaded again, I'd prefer to do it myself with up to date packages, infos, etc.

Do you think TSS could become a repository ala Wasted?
I have 300+ (I think) TDR cars that I'd like (someday) to upload back on the net. But the process should be as easy as possible but complete too (images, infos, real authors, skins, release dates, etc. if possible).
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Post by Lumberjack »

Hi Tosh,

How you see TSS looks very similar to how I see it? Just the font is different, yes probably I am using a mac font as primary. I'll mess with in in my new xp install then just to check. Otherwise seems alright? I will consider having a max width, but then, why not use the whole page.. its not too hard to move the mouse from one side to the other. Well you manage on your screen don't you :)

Ruin Nation is there, I just haven't decided what we should do with it. I quite like its little site design so maybe I'll move it to a folder under root.

You are not clear about your files- do you want to update them, or do you want to remove them?

TSS can become a repository. If you want to call it that. Only thing is that these files you mention should of course have distribution permissions. As for linking in related skins, well currently the skins go as separate items, but we can something like you see in "Files mentioned" on the current newest main page story. That should work fine. Release date can overwrite post date? Then its easy already. And the rest, yes its already set up.

I think it would be useful for the community. I have tried to make it so that anyone could submit their files. It should work well, if that's what people want.

LJ
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Post by TTR »

Wait...what? i had access to the FTP still, and removed all Tosh's stuff though (also the links on the pages and the pages).

On a 1280x1024 screen it looks good and like the original V6. However on the newer screens of todays (which are widescreen) i don't think it looks good. Since i got all these stats at my sitemeter, it's visible most people still use either 1024x768 or 1280x1024 screens..so i guess a fixed size would be nice? Well i dunno, just looks awkward on other screens! :)
Besides, at wider screens the middle text just spreads out wiiiiiiide, which looks to me as a mess imo.

Noone really cares about permission anymore really, as long as it's not modded and released without credit due where credit is needed, see.
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Post by Lumberjack »

Hi TTR, its odd then, if the files were removed then they shouldn't be showing up now. Are you sure you removed them? I didn't reupload any files. Perhaps you just removed the pages...

Ah its all you guys with your windows maximised to massive. If you don't like websites that big then why have your browser so big? :p I'll work something out at some point then.
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Post by TTR »

Hmm, now you're saying..i think i didn't remove the files from the FTP indeed. Maybe i decided that if Tosh wanted those back, it saved a bit..i don't recall.

Why maximise? I definitely hate a floating browser, never use it. I also never really see someone use a browser other then maximised, i mean..it's not just about us right? :)
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

Yes, delete my files for now please.
And as for other people's permission to host their files... seriously it doesn't matter at all anymore. Most of these guys' websites are down, files are nowhere to be found, the dudes themselves aren't even contactable anymore! Priority is to keep as much content as possible, there are true gems amongst them.

Ruin Nation address was: thesprayshop.net/jp/Ruin

Yeah well the font does a big difference. Try that difference in a newspaper and the sales drop directly. There's a good reason... Also I actually really prefer the font weight shown on Windows platform.

[quote]why not use the whole page[/quote]
Because it is a bad idea. As I said, on larger screens (and god knows they are spreading like gremlins nowadays), the layout totaly loses consistency, paragraphs become boring to read and the center column looks like a ladder for midgets. Even with the width you're using it's not paragraph friendly.
Why should anyone use a 100% width when it alters the text that much? Once again, imagine the same with a newspaper, what if they got larger when their reader had big arms? They would have to move their head and eyes a lot to read a single line, would read just one paragraph then throw the newspaper because it isn't comfortable at all.
Seriously it's just a single entry to add in your body or main contener style and it assures that what you post will always be comfortable to read.

BTW, making books, websites, visual communication is my everyday job. Those details is what I struggle with continuously.
But anyway, as for my help with C1/C2: take my advices or not, I don't care much, but I don't have enough time to talk for nothing so at some point I just stop. No offence ofcourse, just making things clear.

*reading your mind*
And yes I'm an egocentric maniac, half asshole half robot. But I'm always there to help actually. ;)
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Post by Lumberjack »

Well I don't have a maximised browser. I like to see other parts of my computer. But I am on a mac so maybe its different. I'll keep your comments in mind.

/oldsite/jp/Ruin should still be there for now, probably will move it somewhere easier.
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Post by Lumberjack »

Toshiba do you still want to upload those files you mentioned?
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Post by Toshiba-3 »

Which files? If you're talking about mine then you can safely delete everything for good. I might reupload them all /someday/ but for now I prefer to be able to control their online existance.
If you're talking about the TDR cars, yes I'd still like to upload them all someday. Lots of work/time though.
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Post by Lumberjack »

The TDR cars yes. Yours are gone.
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