Tzigla Rocks!!!

[evilchelu]

Hey, pixel people... this is a personal appeal from that silly avatar founder of tzigla /end-wikipedia-joke

Pretty please grab some tiles on the checker board, it's really looking great so far and we're sad to see it stalling.

We promise we're working really hard on making tzigla more friendly and usable and we'd really really be encouraged if you'd keep using it. We're not getting anything out of all the hard work we're putting into it more than seeing people do nice tiles.

Also, this week we're starting work on brick style boards which are the intermediary step towards hex tiles. But I'm actually scared of working on that too fast since I'm afraid this board would die off and all the tiles worked so far would go to waste.

[Mathias]

1. COMMENTING.     I would definitely keep separate 'board events' and 'communication'. I can see your logic in combining them, but then I can also see a person wanting to see just one or the other. If you included a filter, or toggle, or something like that it might jive (you got a stream of comments and board events in just a big cascading pile, hit a button to hide either events or comments). Kinda depends on how your UI is being set up, though.


I know it's best to have all the parts and pieces laid out, and organized, before you start building anything. We seem to keep tacking on parts and pieces as we go. That's not a good way to go about it. Don't wanna end up with an unprioritized frankenstein mess - Like an old company web site from the 90's that never got a 2.0 redesign, but rather just keeps getting modified and added to. As you know, the typical result is a usability (and usually aesthetics) hazard for visitors.


LiGHTBuLB - Artist Description. Allow each artist a place to write a personal commment describing/explaing his/her tile.
Maybe only at upload time. Would you be able to modify your comments even after respective tile is uploaded? Would you need text filters for this?
Just plain text would do (no hyperlinks, formatting, etc available).
You already have a great place to put the artist description, when you click a tile and the left info bar appears. Right therr. Hide artist descriptions for still hidden tiles.

[Mathias]

Complaint - Not a huge fan of the name Tzigla. Don't know how married to it you are. Names ambiguous to pronounce correctly can be trying. I suggest a more user-friendly name. I want Tzigla to have mass appeal. The name is mighty important. Just a thought I've had for a while.

COLLAB IDEA - You're adding bricks soon. What about a collab type that comes in layers? Layers of submitted images stacked onto each other to create the final result. It would require alpha using images of course. Someone may create a background, then others foreground objects/gfx . . . I dunno.
Just an undeveloped idea scrap. Not sure what else to add to it, or even how it's useful. Anybody wanna expand on it?

On the upcoming Hex tile type, is it not just a matter of offsetting the top,left corner of each image by a certain increment?

[evilchelu]

1. COMMENTING.     I would definitely keep separate 'board events' and 'communication'. I can see your logic in combining them, but then I can also see a person wanting to see just one or the other. If you included a filter, or toggle, or something like that it might jive (you got a stream of comments and board events in just a big cascading pile, hit a button to hide either events or comments). Kinda depends on how your UI is being set up, though.


I know it's best to have all the parts and pieces laid out, and organized, before you start building anything. We seem to keep tacking on parts and pieces as we go. That's not a good way to go about it. Don't wanna end up with an unprioritized frankenstein mess - Like an old company web site from the 90's that never got a 2.0 redesign, but rather just keeps getting modified and added to. As you know, the typical result is a usability (and usually aesthetics) hazard for visitors.


LiGHTBuLB - Artist Description. Allow each artist a place to write a personal commment describing/explaing his/her tile.
Maybe only at upload time. Would you be able to modify your comments even after respective tile is uploaded? Would you need text filters for this?
Just plain text would do (no hyperlinks, formatting, etc available).
You already have a great place to put the artist description, when you click a tile and the left info bar appears. Right therr. Hide artist descriptions for still hidden tiles.

re: commenting. I'm not a big fan of options so we'll have to figure something out. We might just let reserving/uploading take a comment so they might be the same thing at some point. We'll see.

re: artist description. We had tile titles in mind, but if we end up doing the above, it might not matter anymore

[evilchelu]

Complaint - Not a huge fan of the name Tzigla. Don't know how married to it you are. Names ambiguous to pronounce correctly can be trying. I suggest a more user-friendly name. I want Tzigla to have mass appeal. The name is mighty important. Just a thought I've had for a while.

COLLAB IDEA - You're adding bricks soon. What about a collab type that comes in layers? Layers of submitted images stacked onto each other to create the final result. It would require alpha using images of course. Someone may create a background, then others foreground objects/gfx . . . I dunno.
Just an undeveloped idea scrap. Not sure what else to add to it, or even how it's useful. Anybody wanna expand on it?

On the upcoming Hex tile type, is it not just a matter of offsetting the top,left corner of each image by a certain increment?

re: the name. We had another one we liked but everything was taken so we changed to tzigla. At the moment I don't feel we have the energy to change the name so we'll try this one for a while. We recently realized that most US people are saying it like zigla, sigh.

re: collab idea. that's a completely different direction which we're most likely not going to pursuit. We're into tiles, baby!

re: hexes. Hexes are like bricks, not like a checker board with respect to number of neighbours and such. Also, we have to do code to stitch them together, extract contours, generate the tile you download, etc, it's not just a matter of offsets

[Mathias]

re: commenting. I'm not a big fan of options so we'll have to figure something out. We might just let reserving/uploading take a comment so they might be the same thing at some point. We'll see.

I know what you mean. Less gadgetry; more simplicity. But if you did separate commenting and events that's just an idea on how to do it.

re: artist description. We had tile titles in mind, but if we end up doing the above, it might not matter anymore

Personally, as an artist I wouldn't really care to come up with a title per tile, but I would probably have a few sentences to say.
These collabs are really fun to look at when done, and having some goofy or explanatory stuff to read about each tile would be nicely complimentary to just viewing them.

re: the name. We had another one we liked but everything was taken so we changed to tzigla. At the moment I don't feel we have the energy to change the name so we'll try this one for a while. We recently realized that most US people are saying it like zigla, sigh.

Let's see, you guys are in Romania, right? I'm located central USA, I pronounce is that way. As far as I know, that's the logical way to pronounce it. Silent T.

re: collab idea. that's a completely different direction which we're most likely not going to pursuit. We're into tiles, baby!

Tiles. Yeah. Having layers pretty much shatters your mold, I see where you're coming from.

re: hexes. Hexes are like bricks, not like a checker board with respect to number of neighbours and such. Also, we have to do code to stitch them together, extract contours, generate the tile you download, etc, it's not just a matter of offsets

I annoy my programmer friends by explaining dynamically rich code-intensive functions in an over-simplified way all the time.

[Mathias]

For whatever reasons I find these types of collaborative exercises very compelling. Here are some ideas that will evolve Tzigla more towards my ideal concept of collabs/challenges, which is hopefully shared by the majority.



Ranking/Rating. There's an issue with all art collabs that Tzigla could tackle, if it wanted to (Tzigla is now it's own entity apparently. . . I dunno). To illustrate it, think of boxing. Why are the light, middle and heavyweight classes in place? To prevent this:



Pitting Mike Tyson against mini-me might be amusing in the NES's Punch-Out game, but in real life it would simply not be fair. That's why the classes are there. In Taekwondo, does a white belt spar against a black belt?

Similarly, when artists combine forces and create collaborative imagery, such as with Tzigla, is it not equally awkward when your 8 year old brother makes a tile juxtaposed to a more experienced/skilled artist? Both tiles end up looking bad; your little brother's tile is put to shame by the rembrandt wanna-be and rembrandt's tile looks totally out of place, almost comical.

I'm hesitant to bring this to light, but it's a thought in most of our minds anyway, I'm just voicing it.

So, ranking/rating now. What am I getting at? Give people something to compete for and at the same time compel all involved to put forth max effort - Allow rating of tiles, maybe 1-10 stars possible. With this in place, you can now host invitation only collabs. Quite possibly only allowing artists with an average rating of 7-10, for heavyweights. Or hold a newbie competition for those maybe not as skilled, rating requirement 0-4.

Tiles could rated on multiple points - seamlessness, concept, how well the adjacent tiles were continued, etc.

What happens when someone logs in with multiple accounts? I could use my Pixelation and Twitter (which I don't have) account to contribute tiles to the same collab. Now one person is viewed as two, this is misleading.




Awards. For artists per collab: Highest rated artist on collab, artist with most tiles contributed, etc. This probably runs against the current Tzigla log-in mechanic, probably requiring a native Tzigla account. One person having multiple access accounts facilitates abuse too much.


Team Collabs. Two team captains pick their teams of artists, and these two teams compete against eachother, trying to get the highest user-rating once it's all done. Who does the next tile is decided by each team's rotation; all members take turns in a set order.
This is more in the spirit of digital art duels. Something I miss. Things like this could really boost the userbase because now it's not just a casual thing; kinda adds a layer to things. People like to compete.

[evilchelu]

Thanks for the long post and ideas!

First, tzigla is definitely its own entity. One that loves to integrate with others . It would suck to have it closed and just available to only one forum.

re: ranking/rating. I think that instead of making tzigla a competition and having newbie users feel sad that their stuff is not as loved, I'd rather have the admin pick a skill level for the board then handle people out of line through moderation. Newbs would probably not enter high end boards and high end artists won't enter newb boards by themselves. Less automated policing, more human interaction.

re: awards. We were thinking about badges or achievements or such, but that might again turn things into a competition. We will probably add some sort of simple like/favorite/start button. But its main use would be that so you can keep a list of things, raking tiles by it will be a distant second and most likely there won't be a top 10 or such.

re: team collabs. Same things as above about competitions. But teams might allow for more fun things tho

I agree that competition is a very good driving force, at least it is for me, but we'll be very careful about how we add it to tzigla, since having other motivations besides making nice things might push some to optimize for gaining points/badges/awards instead of making nice things. Competitions also mean that someone loses, and this is not what a collab should be about.

We're might even go in the other direction by adding some PixelJoint style collabs with all tiles visible, WIPs, CCs, allowing people to edit each other's tiles, etc.

After this week, when we'll finish the commenting/activity stuff and UI revamp, we'll then add hexes and then think about this kind of things.

[Mathias]

Ok, so you get my point at least. We seem to have a somewhat different point of view towards competition, which is fine. I think your philosophy is still going to take Tzigla in a successful direction, regardless.

Hmm, on the quack quack collab, you can't reserve a tile diagonal from one of your own? Hmm, I can see the logic, but I dunno. . .

(VICTOR+MATHIAS TAGTEAM ACTION!!!)

[evilchelu]

Hmm, on the quack quack collab, you can't reserve a tile diagonal from one of your own? Hmm, I can see the logic, but I dunno. . .

It's beeen dabated if the corner would influence much but the only downside is that the boards will be a bit slow in the beginning. And that's not so bad.

PS: quack quack board is 73% complete!!! wee