Tzigla Rocks!!!

[evilchelu]

May I ask what this is about and why there are big black holes in each of the pictures? Nvm I got it, but does all of it have to be pixel-by-pixel or can we use the brush tool?

If a board does not specifically say it's pixel art, it's not. Also, I assume that most pixel art boards will have a fixed palette.

[evilchelu]

I want to see our tiles

I should do another one or two then, I suppose

Nice to see all this progress made in my absence.

I'm confused as to why "crazy" shaped tiles are labelled difficult here.
Obviously you have to fetch the data a different way but if you overlay the images with alpha you only need to know the 2D offset at which the tiles tessellate and if that alternates. For iso tiles, you use placement_x = ((coord_y - coord_x) * block_pixel_width / 2) and placement_y = ((coord_x + coord_y) * block_pixel_width / 4) where the block_pixel_width is the "diameter" of the tile from the furthest apart opposing corners. Similar rules can be made for hex tiles and the like (though hex tiles have an alternating x offset each row), and I'm sure the same could be said for "crazier" shapes. The person setting up the board could be able to define the shape to be used with a mask (1 bit image) and the offsets, and have an example presented to them as to what the server would tessellate those objects as with the rules provided so they could tweak that beforehand.

Sure, it's not as nice as just multiplying the numbers but programmatically it's not much worse, and could make for some awesome collabs. The hexquisite tilesets could be emulated with the "void" tiles you described earlier

Thanks for the suggestion.

Briefly: crazy shaped tiles are just "nice to have" and yet give ample opportunity for doing other things than collaborations, aka yak shaving

At the moment, people are not even drawing square tiles. And that worries me more than crazy tiles at this point.

Anyway, besides just placing tiles on top of each other there are several other things that happen:

* actually have "tesselatable" tiles
  * someone needs to make/test them, we'd most likely have to make some editor
* know each tiles neighbors
  * this affects tile availability for reservation
  * helps know whether the tile is just done or actually should be visible
  * allow people to work only on tiles that do not touch one of their other tiles
* know how to add and extract the borders
  * you have to add outside borders when a person gets a tile
  * remove the outside borders when they upload
  * extract inner borders that would be given to others as outside borders
  * highlight non-square things when the board is hovered with the mouse
* teach people to make tiles correctly - harder than you think
* oh, and unit tests for most of the above
  * and a pony

Most of these things are what my brain wants to do as well, and I strongly disapprove because my brain likes premature optimization while the real world doesn't. It's making the general case before the particular case. I'd rather manually add square and hex tiles then worry about making it generic enough.

[Mathias]

chelu, these are just a few things in the way of proposed improvements, ideas. Take them as you will.



1 )  Scrollbar style. Default scrolbars lookin' tacky.
2 )  Rollover tile highlights (DONE)
3 )  Remove "showing all" and "showing only comments" text, use more minimal buttons instead of links as well  -OR-   could be one toggle button that changes per state.
4 )  Format artist list into columns (truncate usernames to minimum char count so cols can be standard widths?)
5 )  Live updates, w/o reloads - Auto-update comments/events, even artist list and tile quantities, every minute or so  -OR-  when something changes only.
6 )  When artist is clicked, show each graphical tile done, along with tile name.
7 )  Precede board events, in comment window, with a relevant icon, indenting them. My concern is better differentiating them from comments, since comments are most likely the higher priority when looking through that comment window list.
8 )  Tile names are great to have now but they still don't really allow you to quickly locate a tile when you only have it's name. Maybe number rows and columns, with little numbers at top/side of each col/row. Furthermore, hex tiles pretty much defy rows and columns. I don't see how a column-row naming convention will work for them. I suggest plain old numbers, ie: 01, 02, 03, etc.
9 )  Add time/date stamps to board events/comments
10 ) Thumbnails on main page are a nice touch but don't seem to help much if not up to date.
11) Imposed themes. Not sure about imposing themes to begin with really. You may've noticed that I completely disregarded the quack ducks pond theme for the first collab. It simply didn't appeal to me. Without doing this one might think that all collabs will just kinda look the same, which is probably not true. I can see the logic in having a theme - something to provide unity for the whole thing. Thinking more about it, I guess I'd like having themes, if I actually liked the theme; if it worked for me.
Some collabs theme ideas: Aliens/monsters VS. Robots,   Vegetables VS. Fruit (cartoon chars at war),   Underground,   Underwater,   Sky.
12 ) Convert links to clickable hyperlinks in chat.
13 ) Gotta remedy those color issues. Top-right of quack quack collab has obvious issues especially where there's blue on both sides of the tile seams in question.


-Great job on everything! You've really proved you're going the distance with this project and it's not some little random pet project born impulsively on the spur of the moment with no motivation behind it to see it through.

-Love how half-typed comments text stays put while clicking around on different tiles, instead of the typing window resetting/deleting what you've typed.

-I don't mind the black masks covering the approved tiles. But here's how using the bg texture would look:






Structured Collab Themes. With this type of collab the physical "structure" or "landscape" of the board is imposed, but only very generally. Only to give direction, or "structure".

Two pics to 'illustrate' the idea here:

#1


Imagine a painting of a simple horizon. A typical landscape. Sky on top, earth on bottom. Now divy it up into sqaures and let random people fill them each in, like we do with Tzigla now. But bind each artist to sticking to content indicative of either sky or earth. Those doing the transitions have freedom to include both, but in a logical way, where in the end the final result maintains a visual separation of sky and earth.


#2


Same thing going on here but there's an added layer of complexity. In the middle of the landscape there's a building, a castle. How in the heck this would pan out is beyond me, at the moment. But I foresee good potential for this idea.
People may be confused at first, but simply show them some visual examples of what expected of them and surely the idea would become clear and they'd jump in.

This concept adds more depth to the whole effort and gives all contributors a common goal of painting the picture. The same structure template could be used over and over and get wildly different results each time.








Tetris Tiles. Odd-shaped tiles using the shapes of tetris blocks. 'Nuff said.

If a board does not specifically say it's pixel art, it's not. Also, I assume that most pixel art boards will have a fixed palette.

Yes, all pixel art collabs should definitely have a pre-defined palette, or color quantity limit.

[Commander Gizmo]

@Mathias:
I think a few of your ideas might be possibly the responsiblity of the moderator of the board.

For example, I like your idea of structured boards.  If a rough image, much as you demonstrated, were placed as the background texture and the moderator simply enforced the requirements, wouldn't it work as the system is now?

[Mathias]

@Mathias:
I think a few of your ideas might be possibly the responsiblity of the moderator of the board.

For example, I like your idea of structured boards.  If a rough image, much as you demonstrated, were placed as the background texture and the moderator simply enforced the requirements, wouldn't it work as the system is now?

What is this Sec Specs? haha. (SUPER SECRET REFERENCE)
Actually Gizmodic I strongly disagree with my fists clenched as I type, which slows my typiing dramatically. Try it for second, you'll see what I mean. Allowing this feature but expecting the mod to custom create his own bg image in an image editor vastly reduces it's convenience. Non-artists are going to have a heck of a time creating a gridded image using the same grid as the collab. It has to be pixel perfect. The tile given for artists to download will need to have it's respective chunk of the bg image. Among other reasons.

But, here's how I see it working:

Mod is given a config page:
1 ) He chooses number of rows/columns.
2 ) Chooses how many tiles per row/col, which determines tile total.
3 ) If chooses structured theme, he then gets  a page where he creates his own custom grid.
4 ) He's presented with a level designer of sorts. 10 or so slots he labels and chooses a color for.
5 ) Then each tile can be color-coded as any of his labels.
6 ) So, on the board when it goes live, the artists see the grid all color-coded along with the color key and a description of the theme so they know what's what.



___________

When a board is complete it should register as a board event, therefore getting an entry in the comments panel. Maybe with a special green background so it's easy to find. Maybe the Tzigla account could even post the notification, but it should occur instantly, as soon as the board is done.

Concerning the comments panel, it would be nice to be able to temporarily "reset" the board back to the state it was in when each comment or listed event entry was made. Could be done by including a link or button in each comment panel entry you could click or rollover to momentarily re-mask the tiles as they were when the entry was made.





Board Creation. Will non-mod's, like me, ever gain the ability to start their own board? And, will they be able to make private boards, which are invitation-only?

[Argyle]

I just now found the original thread for Patratzel near the bottom of the first page of the general section of the forums.  I feel like kind of a jerk for not having taken notice of it until now, since I check Tzigla almost as much as I check my e-mail, haha.  Thanks for keeping up the dev work on this so ambitiously, even though the interest in it appeared less than what it might have been, just based on the reply count of that first thread.  <3 There's so many sticky threads that it's pretty easy to miss something new on the general boards I guess.

[evilchelu]

Mathias, thanks so much for the praise and ideas. You rocks our socks! Replying below:

1 )  Scrollbar style. Default scrolbars lookin' tacky.
Meh, kinda agree but on the other hand I don't mind so much => in todo, low priority

2 )  Rollover tile highlights (DONE)
YAY

3 )  Remove "showing all" and "showing only comments" text, use more minimal buttons instead of links as well  -OR-   could be one toggle button that changes per state.
Indeed, this bit of UI will improve, it was just added fast to please people

4 )  Format artist list into columns (truncate usernames to minimum char count so cols can be standard widths?)
Disagree. Having them structured will attract more attention from the board than having it look like text. We might add an option to sort by most tiles tho.
We're also thinking of putting them someplace else tho.

5 )  Live updates, w/o reloads - Auto-update comments/events, even artist list and tile quantities, every minute or so  -OR-  when something changes only.
Agree. On the list already as part of... optimization, if you can imagine

6 )  When artist is clicked, show each graphical tile done, along with tile name.
Disagree. It just doesn't fit in the interface without cluttering, well, unless we take the events stream away when viewing an artist.
Might not be needed since we'll be adding a separate profile page soon, then we'll have a links that says, open full profile in a separate page.

7 )  Precede board events, in comment window, with a relevant icon, indenting them. My concern is better differentiating them from comments, since comments are most likely the higher priority when looking through that comment window list.
Agree.

8 )  Tile names are great to have now but they still don't really allow you to quickly locate a tile when you only have it's name. Maybe number rows and columns, with little numbers at top/side of each col/row. Furthermore, hex tiles pretty much defy rows and columns. I don't see how a column-row naming convention will work for them. I suggest plain old numbers, ie: 01, 02, 03, etc.
Actually, whytf aren't we just highlighting stuff like 5-6 already (without the #, that is). It's not like people normally type 4-3, 7-2 and such in normal conversation.
Might add the little numbers, tho I'm not yet convinced they add that much. Would probably make more sense to have numbers directly on the tile, but that's too noisy. Maybe temporarily add numbers to all only when a tile is selected or hovered.
Hexes can be numbered almost the same.

9 )  Add time/date stamps to board events/comments
Will probably add just to comments. Events will be in context and they're less important.
Also, we'll probably add "2 minutes ago" style timestamps since everyone is on another timezone and absolute time is bleh.

10 ) Thumbnails on main page are a nice touch but don't seem to help much if not up to date.
We're annoyingly practical. It took less time to make some screenshots than to implement the feature We'll be making them work for real soon tho.

11) Imposed themes. Not sure about imposing themes to begin with really. You may've noticed that I completely disregarded the quack ducks pond theme for the first collab. It simply didn't appeal to me. Without doing this one might think that all collabs will just kinda look the same, which is probably not true. I can see the logic in having a theme - something to provide unity for the whole thing. Thinking more about it, I guess I'd like having themes, if I actually liked the theme; if it worked for me.
Some collabs theme ideas: Aliens/monsters VS. Robots,   Vegetables VS. Fruit (cartoon chars at war),   Underground,   Underwater,   Sky.
Debatable. I think themes must be generic enough and not really enforced. But it's nice when there's at least some sort of common idea. You theme ideas are better than ours

12 ) Convert links to clickable hyperlinks in chat.
Soon, but then we have to worry more about security. People can link to bad things, etc.

13 ) Gotta remedy those color issues. Top-right of quack quack collab has obvious issues especially where there's blue on both sides of the tile seams in question.
Already fixed for quack board, as you know. Working on a built-in fix right now.

re: the seethrough instead of black
My reply to gizmo saying "you may" meant... give me a suggested texture for the pixel boards cos i can't come up with one. But maybe ptoing or somebedy else that does pixels is a better idea, since gizmo only participates in the normal boards I think (hi gizmo )

re: structures boards
Already on the list. But high demand means we might work on it faster than we thought
First, I just want to say: really nice mockups!

But, I agree with gizmo. Uploading a pic is the simples solution that gives most of the desired features. You're trying to put too much structure on it.

Not every joe user will be an admin, so sketching something is decent is kinda easy. The sketch doesn't have to fit exactly on tiles. We'll just cut it up when a user downloads the tile and give them whatever happens to be there. If the idea is decently explained in the description (we might add a bigger field for that), people will kinda get it that they're around the castle, grass, underwater, sky, etc area. And the point of it's that it doesn't have to be exactly that, maybe someone decides to have a ladder starting from the castle and continuing up to the stars, you never know

re: board completed event
Nice to have, probably useless in practice. It'll quickly be overwhelmed by comments and fade away

[evilchelu]

I just now found the original thread for Patratzel near the bottom of the first page of the general section of the forums.  I feel like kind of a jerk for not having taken notice of it until now, since I check Tzigla almost as much as I check my e-mail, haha.  Thanks for keeping up the dev work on this so ambitiously, even though the interest in it appeared less than what it might have been, just based on the reply count of that first thread.  <3 There's so many sticky threads that it's pretty easy to miss something new on the general boards I guess.

Don't worry about it, it's all in the past. We eventually made it through that phase because we're crazy and just didn't give up. Thanks for loving tzigla!

btw: the best way to show your appreciation is making more people happy by encouraging them to make tiles 

[evilchelu]

ptoing is the first moderator and the only one for pixelation (unless he wants to propose more) and we love him cos he always believed in tzigla and helped us get off the ground .

Anyway, let's talk about non-pixel boards.

The problem with creating/moderating is that you shouldn't draw more than one tile (the first one). There's no real technical restriction preventing you to make more tiles, but you'd have an unfair advantage then. Also, it's unglorified work. You have to look at tiles fast, have accounts on twitter/facebook/pixelation, then contact people to nicely tell them why you sent back or rejected their tile, etc. It's practically more customer support than having fun.

We really want to have other people be moderators tho, but not too many because we don't want to have 10 boards going in parallel.

Now that I scared you, we really don't want to be moderating boards and we'd love someone else to do it.

Also, the actions of an admin will reflect upon tzigla, so for us is important who gets to be a mod.

Are you willing to put in the work? To promote your board nicely without spamming (as this reflects badly on tzigla), to try to find users for you board, to be nice even tho people are being nasty/hateful?

We have only two advanced boards(2 and 4) and one newbie board(5) up for grabs for now. And I don't want to add too many "in progress" boards so until we have enough users to make enough tiles on tzigla, we're not going to let you create boards yourself, just by request.

So, who wants to be a mod?

[Argyle]

With all the horrible tear jerking reasons NOT to be a moderator that you just listed aside, and even though I love Tzigla oh so much, I'm not consistently available nearly enough to justify volunteering.  Hope somebody comes along to free you up from having to do it AND develop at the same time though!