DKC Atlas Forum

[Qyzbud]

Qyz would like that indeed... in fact, he's actually planning something of that nature for the avatar gallery, sometime soon. You could be the first! I may be able to help out with the sprites in a few hours, too.

I'm glad you at least somewhat liked my cyclone/swirlwind reference idea. That's très cool.

[nackhe]

I made a few using Qyz's GIMP tutorial.
Feel free to use and/or abuse.

[Qyzbud]

I'm glad to see my tutorial is being used. Good work, but they are taller than my tute's specification... The other Av's will be envious!

[nackhe]

Yeah, I realise they are taller, but that's because I like the way it looks that way better + some things wouldn't fit on the size you used/advised in the tutorial.

[Cyclone]

Any luck on those dkl sprites? Much appreciated.

[Kiddy14]

I was wondering....
Cody, can I use that Kiddy image you did? =D
I've had this one DKCp made for me (which I love)... but it has my old username and the kongs are hard to see.
And Kiddy kinda fits my username =P
So... can I use it?

Oh... and I was wondering if Sigs are going to be available soon =P

[BlueTronic]

I can spell out your username in the K O N G letters on it if you want.

[Kiddy14]

That'd be cool.
Is it ok Cody?
The thing is that your pictures aren't in the avatar gallery =P

[BlueTronic]

Will signitures be enabled soon?

[gamer_boy997]

Cody, is it okay if I use one of your avatars?

[Qyzbud]

Cody has been in touch with me lately, and apparently his computer access time is pretty limited. I will give you both permission on his behalf, as I'm sure that's why he made them in the first place - for the benefit of other DKC fans.

Signatures will be enabled soon, relatively speaking...

[Jomingo]

A little late, it looks like they are both using the respective avatars they wanted. Anyway, yeah I'm sure Cody wants his avatars used.

[gamer_boy997]

Signatures will be enabled soon, relatively speaking...

When you say "soon", do you mean in a few minutes/hours/days/weeks?

[Jomingo]

When he said relatively speaking, he meant soon for DKC Atlas, as in not that soon. Probably weeks. I don't see much use in signatures anyway, from a few of the forums I've visited that use them it seems they are just annoying, obnoxious, and get in the way. They really stretch the page too.

[BlueTronic]

I don't see much use in signatures anyway

I looked through some of the active profiles and some of the users that still have signitures are
Me
Kiddy14
Kowbrainz
Nickp17
gamer_boy
Diddy_Gal
Funky Kong
Stone
Raccoon Sam
Sonnicuz
Blakizen257

Out of those the only users with a picture signiture are
me
Kowbrainz
Nickp17
Diddy_Gal
Blakizen257

They really stretch the page too.

DKC Atlas has a 200x600 size limit, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Jomingo]

I still think they will get in the way and clutter the forum.

[Qyzbud]

I agree with Jomingo. Signatures are typically space/bandwidth/attention wasting clutter. I'll see how we go, but I won't promise to keep signatures enabled - especially if people can't exercise restraint and good taste when choosing them. More on this soon.

[Tiptup Jr.]

It's probably the Tylenol talking, but I think a proper sig really tells alot about a person. As long as they're not too big, I wouldn't really mind 'em.

[CaptainEddie]

And as long as they're something original that the maker is proud of, I don't mind.

[Jomingo]

Tiptup, although I'd like to believe the sigs tell a lot about someone, I can't. Most sigs are pointless little jokes that aren't really that funny, or they are just random images of there favorite shows/characters, and though I wish I could say they help tell about someone, I doubt we need to see this under every single post! I hate seeing the same images over and over again in a topic, they just get in the way and don't provide any usefull purpose.

[BlueTronic]

I have to agree with Tiptup. Signitures tell a lot about the user, and it gives people a chance to extend their creativity. If you hate sigs so much, maybe there can be a preference where you can choose whether or not you want to see sigs in posts. Then everyone's happy.

I like my sig.

[gamer_boy997]

Cody really likes my siggy. Take a guess why.

[Jomingo]

First of all, that is a nice sig but I fail to see what that says about you at all. Second, you seriously don't think that if we had a picture that big under every single post that they wouldn't make the pages look sloppy or cluttered? Third, I can already tell that sig (as well as probably everyone else's sig) is going to get very old, very quick.

[gamer_boy997]

Are you talking to me Jomingo? I have been on very many sites, and on some of them, siggys don't have to talk about yourself, in fact, some siggys just have random stuff in them.

[Simion32]

random stuff

Which is exactly what's "wasteful" about the signatures. Most of the time they are pointless to begin with.

I also agree with signatures not being needed, I can live without them. The most I'd put in my signature might be a link to the DKCLB topic or something. I can't think of anything else that there would be any real reason to put in your signature.

[Jomingo]

Sorry GamerBoy, I was talking to Kongfu, but your post intercepted mine.

I doubt that Signatures have any concrete value to them, they don't tell anything about who you are, and there's no reason to have it posted over and over again. Even in Simion's scenario of it having a purpose to advertise his level Builder there is still no reason for that to shown over and over after every one of your posts.

[Simion32]

Hmm... exactly my thoughts. I don't see why you'd want to have it repeated several hundred times, and it would just get in the way. Major page stretching would ensue, and it would make the forum look bad. I've seen several forums with signatures enabled; there is so much clutter that it's slightly difficult to discern where the content of each user's actual post is.

[Jomingo]

Exactly, you and me are definately on the same page Simion.

[Kiddy14]

I'm pretty sure something can be done. Like Kong-Fu said, there's an option already in the Control Panel to disable them.

Signatures are ok to me because they reflect the personality of the poster, if you see something like:
"OMG Diddy pwns y'all in Brawl!"
and then you see something like:
"A world without DKC, is a world without fun"
You can say the first poster is usually hyper and loves to brawl, but the other one is usually soft talking and loves DKC.

They're already random becaue it's most likely the user thought of it in a random moment. Even companies do it, like Nokia's Connecting People, or Kool Aid's OH YEAH!

And I'm pretty sure images in signatures can be customized so that the site would only allow a certain size, either in pixels and kilobytes, and disable font sizing so that the signature wouldn't be too big, even making it an small size.

Oh, and each user's sig is separated from the post by little lines.

[Jomingo]

That doesn't detract from the fact that they are obnoxious and they clutter the forum. Even if I could disable it for me to see, I wouldn't want them here anyway because if makes the site look very unproffesional. Even if I can't see it I don't want other people to see it and think we run a sloppy site.

[Simion32]

Then why not have them disabled by default? You would have the best of both worlds. Guests couldn't see them, and when users sign up they can only see them if they set them on via the control panel.

[Jomingo]

I thought you were on my side! Oh, now I lost my train of thought, um...they're unproffesional...and stuff.. oh forget it.

[Simion32]

Yeah I am, but I don't see how we could possibly stop people from complaining...

EDIT: Oh wait, if they complain incessantly about disabled signatures, ban them!

[Jomingo]

I know how. If Qyzbud decides either way the complaining will stop. As long as he takes a strong stance one way or the other we would have no reason to complain.

[Simion32]

having a purpose to advertise

There's another reason I'm against signatures. Advertising! And I could deal with not advertising the DKCLB via signatures, it's done just fine so far.

I don't want to see "click here for a free ringtone!!!1" or "free registry scan!!" all over this site. That would definitely be unprofessional.

[Jomingo]

Yeah, I agree that could be a problem. In the "Advertising DKCAtlas" topic it was suggested that we advertise DKC atlas on other sites through our signatures. Whose to say that people won't do that here? I've already made my stance clear that we shouldn't allow advertising of other sites here, though it's currently absent from the rules. And like you said about the Free Ringtones and stuff like that I can see that being a big problem.

[Kiddy14]

1.- I'm pretty sure people won't get here advertising ring-tones, I haven't seen anybody advertising that kind of stuff in any forum signatures.
2.- I'm also pretty sure if they advertise something it would be little, like: "Click here to take a look on my site", or "My YouTube Channel ".
3.- So, if your idea is to advertise DKC Atlas via signatures, but you don't want it to be viseversa? Gosh...
4.- The site's to have fun, not to be a boring forum with no signatures. phpBB have signatures in their forums, deviantArt has signatures in their comments!
5.- I understand your position, but you're like saying that as if everybody wanted to not have sigs. Qyzbud has the final decition, I understand that too; but in the meanwhile, we have to take on our position of wanting sigs as much as you take yours of not having.
6.- Simion's idea for being disabled by default is cool in my opinion.
7.- You can make a rule for prohibiting advertisements in sigs.
8.- If you're not going to add sigs to posts, why bother having them in profiles? People can advertise there too. Besides sigs are meant to be after each other posts because, as implied, they are SIGNATURES.

That's just my opinion, don't take it personal and that stuff (is not directed to anybody in particular, just, there's too many people out there that might just register to take it against you or me).

[Jomingo]

3- It's not my idea to advertise DKC Atlas via signatures. I said somebody came up with that, and I'm just saying it's just as easy for othersites to do it to us.
4- You don't think this site is fun without signatures? And most of those forums with signatures suck, I hate to say it like that, but all the good forums with actual intelligent conversation don't have sigs, and all the forums with terrible grammer and stupid discussions have sigs. Coincedence?
8-You're saying that as if I personally put them in profiles. The only reason they are their and not in posts is because Qyzbud probably just let them their to stop people complaining for the time being. You are right, they don't make much sense in the profiles, that's why if it were up to me they would be gone from there too. We don't need you to "Sign" each post, we know who you are and you're interests through actual conversations.

[Tiptup Jr.]

Alrighty then.

Jomingo: I agree with you when you say that some forums with sigs generally tend to suck. Muchly. And sometimes they make a site feel cluttered or claustrophobic... and if sigs were enabled, mine would probably just show Ty Lee shaking her fist at CD-i Ganon and screaming "ARGH YA BEAT MEH!". So maybe we should wait awhile for sigs and such.

Kiddy14: Advertising slogans and forum sigs are entirely different things, but I see where you're coming from with the whole expression thing. And Kool-Aid Man is awesome.

[Cody]

Sorry for not replying, everyone. As Qyz has said, my computer usage has been limited until now, since school's starting up again. (isn't it rotten how I can't use it much during the summer?)

Of course you all can use my avatars!

[Gnawzooka]

Can we have bigger avatars please? It only allows for 6kb, so my currect avatar would be less cut off.

[Stone]

That would be nice, but you can also upload it somewhere else like I did.
Just 6 kb are a bit to small nevertheless, but on the other site it encourages the people to use png. (which is the perfect format for SNES graphics).
Animated gifs like ours are a different matter of course. (At least mine is ridiciously oversized, but I like it so much )

[Gnawzooka]

Oh yeah, I can just upload it from an image hosting program or something.

[Qyzbud]

In response to your question, Gnawz... Sure. I've upped the file size limit to 16KB, which ought to be enough for any 'sensible' avatar. I'm also planning to relax the guidelines a bit, as I want to give people a bit more creative freedom. Anything up to 128px wide by 96px high is fine, and DKC-relevance is not essential.

I'll write this up properly when I can.

[Stone]

It's about time for Gnawzooka to make his Avatar bigger

Oh, Qyzbud has new Avatar. Watching the narrowed filesize, you could at least animate it. Something like a moving mouth or red shining eyes

[Jomingo]

So, if it's not DKC relevant does it still have to be Donkey Kong relevant in some way or another? Because if you want to allow any avatar whatsoever than I'm not sure I like that decision. We should at least keep everything somewhat Donkey Kong related, don't you think?

[Qyzbud]

Well, I'm not entirely sure.

At the moment I'm wanting avatars to be more distinctive. It's nice when you can instantly recognise the author of each post without having to read the username, and I don't know about you, but personally I'm finding that too many avatars in use here (or awaiting use, in the gallery) lack that personality/individuality that would allow them to clearly symbolise the member who chose them. I just want there to be more variety.

Obviously it's early days for this forum still, so I'm open to suggestions.

Jomingo, we were talking about using your artistic abilities to create Kong versions of members which could be used for avatars. I like the idea of that 'hand crafted' approach. Maybe we could encourage people to get artistic like that, so that their avatars are not only unique (and hopefully very recognisable), but they are the original creation of the member they represent.

It may be a lame or silly idea, but I'm also thinking we could each take a photo of ourselves and edit it into a small scene from a DKC-related game. Kind of like a certain... artist's impression of a certain dictatorModerator - but of course considerably smaller. Might be fun.

Basically, I think we need to get more personality into our avatars. Does anyone agree?

[gamer_boy997]

We could, but just make sure it's optional, because some people, (like me), don't want to share personal information about ourselves.

[Qyzbud]

Of course it would be optional. Avatars are completely optional. Besides, I want people to be creative, so I'm just passing around some ideas.

[DKCplayer]

As you all know, MY avatar is Chibi DKCplayer.

Yaaaaaaay!.gif (4.84 KiB) Viewed 171336 times

Cute ain't he?
I've been thinking if any of you want to have a chibi version of yourself...
What do you think Qyzbud?