Tzigla Rocks!!!

[sakket]

idea! what if there was a mode so instead of just squares it was L-shapes? like 3 squares connected. that'd make for some odd combos, im sure.

Like L-shaped tiles, or an L-shaped board?

tiles fitted together, but an awkwardly shaped board would be fun too

[evilchelu]

Crazy shaped tiles are not coming so soon. Crazy shaped boards are not as difficult tho.

We basically want to add "void" tiles at some point, which would allow for non square boards, or even boards with holes in them.

[Commander Gizmo]

Just my two cents: It might make hiding the center of each tile look better if, instead of black, the background for the board showed through.  Much less intrusive.  Then it appears that the portion of the tile visible is added to the board, not just peaking from behind a block of color.  The eye is drawn to the positive addition of color, not the negative black void that appears to be interrupting it.  It's all perspective really.

[evilchelu]

Just my two cents: It might make hiding the center of each tile look better if, instead of black, the background for the board showed through.  Much less intrusive.  Then it appears that the portion of the tile visible is added to the board, not just peaking from behind a block of color.  The eye is drawn to the positive addition of color, not the negative black void that appears to be interrupting it.  It's all perspective really.

That sounds quite nice.

I'm worried about the pixelation board tho. Not sure if that stone texture will fit in nicely in those black holes.

[Commander Gizmo]

Might I suggest a better background color/texture for pixel board then?  It would also set them apart from the painting boards as well.

[evilchelu]

Might I suggest a better background color/texture for pixel board then?  It would also set them apart from the painting boards as well.

You may

[Commander Gizmo]

Another common feature with dynamically updated sites is highlighting where changes have occurred since your last visit.  This can be accomplished quite easily by storing a time stamp per board when a user last updated the page and comparing it to the time stamp of the last change.  A simple icon or border color to denote which boards have changed since the homepage was last loaded would be sufficient IMO.  Highlighting comments which are new since the last visit via a brighter text color would also be convenient.

Additionally, using a cookie to remember that a user has logged in between visits would be nice. I have my pixelation account set to stay logged in, and it would be nice if tzilga respected that choice as well.  Since the site that the user uses for authentication can worry about keeping me logged in, it seems to make sense that your site only has to either bind my session to my login credentials, or remember how I was logged in and attempt to renew it when I return.  If I have the option set at my authentication site, the attempt will work.  If I am not logged in, you can fail back to a guest status.

[evilchelu]

Another common feature with dynamically updated sites is highlighting where changes have occurred since your last visit.  This can be accomplished quite easily by storing a time stamp per board when a user last updated the page and comparing it to the time stamp of the last change.  A simple icon or border color to denote which boards have changed since the homepage was last loaded would be sufficient IMO.  Highlighting comments which are new since the last visit via a brighter text color would also be convenient.

Additionally, using a cookie to remember that a user has logged in between visits would be nice. I have my pixelation account set to stay logged in, and it would be nice if tzilga respected that choice as well.  Since the site that the user uses for authentication can worry about keeping me logged in, it seems to make sense that your site only has to either bind my session to my login credentials, or remember how I was logged in and attempt to renew it when I return.  If I have the option set at my authentication site, the attempt will work.  If I am not logged in, you can fail back to a guest status.

Thanks for the suggestions.

re: changes since last visit: Nice to have, but we have bigger fish to fry at the moment. Putting it on the todo list

re: remember login: Interesting idea. But I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of automatically trying to log you in on the provider site. We might make our cookie permanent cookie tho. But this would create problems when you change your avatar, as we won't be able to know about it.

[Commander Gizmo]

re: remember login: Interesting idea. But I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of automatically trying to log you in on the provider site. We might make our cookie permanent cookie tho. But this would create problems when you change your avatar, as we won't be able to know about it.

Forgive me if I am stating the obvious or running down the wrong path with this one.

I was actually thinking that you would basically store a cookie on my system and then, upon returning to your site, you could use the cookie to match me up to my last used user in your database.  Said database could store the site I last used to log in to Tzigla, which data could then be used to simply simulate my having clicked the button for said site.  The difference over my actually having clicked it is that upon a failure to find me already logged in to the partner site, you simply recognize me as a guest and let me worry about what buttons to click.  Or perhaps you can't prevent the partner site from showing a login screen?  In that case, you could simply have your own 'stay logged in' feature which removes the need to re-authenticate upon returning to the site for x number of days (two weeks?).  I can always sign out if I want to log in as someone else.

On the other hand, I may just be lazy.  The need to click a separate item to log in each time you click a link to Tzigla is certainly, at least in my mind, a big reason it doesn't feel like a smooth transition from Pixelation.  Thus it may have a rather large impact on how much your site is seen as an extension of this community or a separate entity.

[Geti]

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