Transparency

[Lunaria]

What with all the changes going on it seems that people are slightly confused what is happening in the background and where metconst will go. So, I figured I might as well try and explain what has been happening, what is happening right now, and what will happen in the future.

A few months back we started on revisiting the site and re-making it in order to make metconst the definitive place for metroid hacking. This means having a more modern/presentable site, among other things. The hack section will have more info on each hacks page, the hack database will be searchable, you'll be able to comment and rate hacks, etc. Me, among with some others were added to the site management team in order to help the current staff with this. It's coming along, but the new site is not going live yet in a while. But do stay tuned~


However, in the wake of zeke leaving forum staff, it was decided to re-organise forum administration as a whole. ZeroOne was placed in charge as head of the forum board. However, a lot of things are still going around in the backs with this, and not everything is final. It might be a bit bumpy for a while while things get sorted, but hopefully you guys can handle that!


In a more long term perspective we aim to integrate site with the forum more than it has been in the past. (Forum accounts for hack rating/reviewing, etc.) As well as in general streamline and cut off unnecessary things. This does of course not mean that we don't care about what users thinks, that was a reason why I made the thread discussing what should or shouldn't be on the new hacks pages. If you have any complaints, questions, or uncertainties, don't hold back, post a thread about it. Or if you don't want that, you can always send a message to one of the staff members and we'll look into it!

Any further questions in-regards to the sweeping changes happening? Don't hesitate, go ahead and ask!  :D!:

[Zhs2]

I do have a question! When does this post get edited? :pewpew:

[Mon732]

I never even knew that existed. XD

[RealRed]

Might as well just delete it. It's totally inaccurate and irrelevant now. only like 3 names stayed the same.

Anyway Lunaria, I saw people crying about changes and mod abuse and blah blah blah, but this is probably really good. People are motivated to do something different. I mean for me anyhow, when I came back from a multiple year hiatus, the only thing that changed was the number of docs and patches. Hacking is moving forward so there's no reason our home base can't either!

Oh, while I'm here though I do have an idea/inquiry. Would we possibly have, like, user based patch/hack submission? kind of like romhacking.net I suppose. There's two patches under my name that I DIDN'T MAKE and I've also been waiting about four months for my menu samus patch to go up, so that's pretty irritating.

[Lunaria]

I do have a question! When does this post get edited? :pewpew:

That was actually on the ball today Zeke. From my understand the post will be trashed and a new one will be made once the new staff is finalised. But we are currently in the middle of it so it might remain for a bit longer~

Oh, while I'm here though I do have an idea/inquiry. Would we possibly have, like, user based patch/hack submission? kind of like romhacking.net I suppose. There's two patches under my name that I DIDN'T MAKE and I've also been waiting about four months for my menu samus patch to go up, so that's pretty irritating.

I don't know about documentation, graphics, patches, etc, just yet. We will have user generated submission system for hacks though, assuming we can get it to work. So in the future the site staff will only have to approve/deny new hack entries as they come along. (Which should hopefully speed things up!) And for the record, hacks will only get denied for a lack of information or otherwise missing content (read: screenshots, readme.), or if it breaks one of metconsts rules. So, in other words, getting a hack on the site should be no problem for the wast majority of people, even if it's a shitty landing room halfhack.

[Quietus]

I have a question: Now that RealRed is back, how do we go about begging for new post count icons?  It's been a while, and I fancy some spangly, new ones. :cheers:

[Zero One]

I have a question: Now that RealRed is back, how do we go about begging for new post count icons?  It's been a while, and I fancy some spangly, new ones. :cheers:

Our Minister of Copy and Pasting Graphics (read: squishy) is currently making the graphics for a Roman numeral-type system, where a Missile is 100 posts, Super Missile is 500 posts and a Power Bomb is 1,000. Not new icons, but switching up the old ones.

[squishy_ichigo]

I've had the idea for some time, and we kicked the idea around a bit, and now its live! I rather like this system myself. We decided on using IIII rather than IV for ease of reading.  It allows up to 5000 posts atm, and if needed, we can always add an item for 5000! :awesome:

[Quietus]

we can always add an item for 5000! :awesome:

Ooh, the suspense is killing me.  I don't know if I can wait another two years (ish)! :bounce:

[RealRed]

suspense? they're all expansions. Obviously next in line is gonna be energy tanks.

[Quietus]

Not if I sequence break. :heheh:

[Yuki]

Good luck to all the new staff! Had no idea zeke stepped down, been away from the community a fair bit recently.

[JAM]

Hey, that's a good idea. Reminds me credits of Kings Bounty (Gold = 10000, Silver = 1000, Bronze = 100). But... these new icons are not transparent actually. Can we really make them transparent and PNG for icons... WHY GOD WHY? Maybe use GIF format for that?

That's what I saw:

[squishy_ichigo]

No clue why they are not transparent for you, they are for me, and presumably everyone else.

[Quietus]

Arr, they be fine here too, matey. :^_^:

[Zero One]

Transparent for me too, but I get the feeling we might be using the same theme. We should switch and check.

Also, PNG > GIF.

[Lunaria]

THIS IS THE WRONG KIND OF TRANSPARENCY!

[Quietus]

Who's Tran anyway?  And what has his parent got to do with anything? :O_o:

[JAM]

Alright, I'm using old browser. So, anyone with IE5 or IE6 (for example) will see this grey area as on my screenshot. Old images doesn't have grey area, so they are made right.

Also, PNG > GIF.

If talk about size when messing with small low-colored images, yes.

[Zero One]

Unless you're actually still using a modem whose speed is measured in baud, the filesize of a 16x16 image shouldn't be that big of a deal :P

[Lunaria]

Why the crap would you use IE5 or IE6 anyway? Browsing the web with that crap is not a security risk, it's suicide!

[Szandor]

Its a known "bug" in IE6 that it doesn't support PNG transparency. Instead of MS fixing it with an IE6 update or something, they just decided to let it sit until they released IE7. For a project I was working on I did find there are various ways of getting it working through js snippets, but they usually caused other undesirable side effects.

At work we have a client where about 50% of the employees are stuck using IE8 due to vendor lock-in of some enterprise database interface. So the front end devs now have to instrument a degraded version of our product for those users. Its a messy problem.

[adamf]

At work we have a client where about 50% of the employees are stuck using IE8 due to vendor lock-in of some enterprise database interface. So the front end devs now have to instrument a degraded version of our product for those users. Its a messy problem.

I know your pain.  Corporate overlords are just retiring IE6/XP support later this year company-wide, but our subgroup managed to abandon it after Heartbleed last year.  I can't wait for a time when my group can drop IE8.

I'm pretty sure there's a(n almost?) CSS-only fix for IE6, if you go set the alpha transform filter on PNG images.  Might not be worth bothering with in this day an age, though.

[Szandor]

I'm pretty sure there's a(n almost?) CSS-only fix for IE6, if you go set the alpha transform filter on PNG images.  Might not be worth bothering with in this day an age, though.

Yeah, for my little side projects I never bother with it. Messed around with it once, and they never quite looked right. Could have been some of the other stuff I was doing on the page didn't work well with it.

My group basically gets to use whatever tools we please, which for browsers tends to be Chrome with a bit of Firefox, but then we don't do much web development. I tend to have a half dozen terminal windows open on one screen with code or my analysis results open on another screen. Its a mess at times but it works well for me. :P