HBgames.org Graphics Gallery Ready for Open Beta

[So fist]

Well in case you haven't noticed we've been working hard putting a main site together to deliver all the services that could help all of us make better games and share resources and knowledge with one another. Today we invite you to take part in the open beta of our graphics gallery. It is now possible to share a hosted image and place it in our main site in an appropriate category with searchable tags so that it can be easily found by other members. The gallery has its own search engine with generic tags we hope author's will use. These will obviously change as some tags prove less popular than ones members tend to use. Anyway this is the first major step to a fully functioning website and we hope to learn a lot more on how to make it better from you our users.

Some things to note. All posts made to the website are on queue moderation and have to be approved by staff before they actually made public. Generally this shouldn't take long and is a necessary evil to ensure quality of content. To view the terms of Use Agreement for resources you can view them by clicking on the resources link in the top navbar of the site. To easily navigate to the Graphics gallery you can go to Resources > Graphics to get there. Also special thanks to Wyatt and Etheon for all the work they put in putting this together. Through the combined efforts of those two and myself we are finally delivering on some promises made long ago.

 

[Ellie]

Resource Submissions Guide

Submitting new resources to the resource manager is pretty simple, but here is a guide just to show you how it works...

On entering the resource submission page you'll see the following screen:





First thing's first, enter a short name for your piece of work, for example "Black Dog Sprite".

If you don't already have the file hosted elsewhere, use the simple image uploader above "edit post" to upload your image to hbgames. After it is uploaded right click on "direct link" and copy the link.

Paste a link to your image after the = sign, and then type a short description of your resource, including any credits or license needed.

Type in some tags to describe your image, seperated by commas. You may wish to enter your name as a tag, so that people can search your resources later. Other tags might be "rtp", "rmxp", "animal". You can click a link to choose from the most popular tags. You can choose any you think are relevant, but you might want to check the search engine for suggested tags.

Now choose a category for your image. Note: Only choose a resource category or your resource won't be accepted! Choose "tileset" for example if your resource is a tileset. Click "Graphics" to see only graphics tags; "scripts" to see only scripts tags, etc.

Finally, click "submit" and it will be sent to the moderation queue...

 

[Luthur]

This is looking good. Can we actually start submitting some resources to it? I'd love to start adding some content.

 

[Ellie]

Yeah, go ahead.

Hopefully the submission process isn't too complicated -_- I'm open to any suggestions.

 

[Luthur]

I've tried to upload a tileset I made, and all i keep getting with the uploader is 'Invalid file. Retry'. I can't think it is an invalid file because all it is is a .png.

 

[So fist]

vengeance should be able to take .png's wyatt do you have a size limitation set on the bb host?

 

[Ellie]

Huh? It works for me for very large PNGs. I don't know why it wouldn't.

What is the filesize of the image? (Though that shouldn't affect it as the limit is very high).

 

[Luthur]

Its 257 x 992 pixels and its 95.6KB.

 

[Ellie]

Ok that's decisively odd. There's a PNG in there currently which is 650kb, so I wouldn't have thought there'd be any problems.

You could host your image at bb.ohsk.net or bb.xieke.com for now though. Sorry.

 

[So fist]

or anywhere else for that matter. Just host it and use it in the img code

 

[Luthur]

Ok, I'll get that done some time tonight.

 

[coyotecraft]

I made an attempt today. When I uploaded a image it showed a link in tags. I wasn't sure if I was suppose to copy the whole link in the the [image=] tag. It seemed weird to copy a [img] tag into a [image] tag.
Your instructions said to click "direct link" and then copy the link. But when I clicked that it loaded a thumbnail of the image and there was nothing to copy.
Even though I had filled in the Title and caption, the preview still showed a white page with "New Resource" and "Short caption / credits"
After hitting the publish button it just reloaded the page. Only the status changed from Draft to Pending. Not really a clear confirmation.

 

[So fist]

Well yeah its pending review by a moderator, But thanks for mentioning that it isn't entirely clear that anything happened. We can try and modify so that you get a clear message that its been sent to the queue.

 

[So fist]

Also 2 new graphics published so far. Please tell us all about your experiences. Also one thing to note guys, In your filenames that you upload you should remove any spaces there are. Because in order for it to be read correctly the html needs the spaces to be changed into %20 to be read correctly. To make things easier just rid yourself of the spaces. I don't know why the default image tag doesn't change it as it should be but it doesn't.

 

[coyotecraft]

On the homepage; on the left under categories theres a "submit content" link that takes you to a slightly different page then if you click the main submit button. The fields are blank and there are extra options below it. Don't know what would happen if I used it.

I'm slowly submitting content. Do tags need approval? If I made a tag for example "female" and submit it; then before it's been approved make another "female" tag. Will it result in duplicate tags?

 

[So fist]

On the homepage; on the left under categories theres a "submit content" link that takes you to a slightly different page then if you click the main submit button. The fields are blank and there are extra options below it. Don't know what would happen if I used it.

It is essentially the same thing.

Do tags need approval?

Tags are added to the database as posts using those tags are published. So in that sense they get approval. However we want you folks to tag the crap out of them. The search engine has a custom tag search as well as a series of defaults we came up with that could every general thing we could think of. As tags become popular we'll adjust our default search tags accordingly.

 

[coyotecraft]

You've probably already seen this. From the homepage, clicking a recent resource takes you to a page like this:

The caption rolls over the tags. I wonder if having the marquee go sideways would fix this. Or you could move the tag list above the image, if that's something you can do. Strangely, I can only get to this page from the recent resource list.

I know from the submit page if I click posts I'll see all resources that are posted and pending. By clicking Author I can see what I've submitted. I think it would be convenient to have a direct link to this list from somewhere like the user control panel.

 

[Luthur]

Got a question, can you only have one resource submited at a time? Cause I've submitted one, and it's pending review, and when I click submit again, it brings up the same resource I just entered. Is there a way to get round that?

 

[coyotecraft]

When you hit the publish button it reloads the page that you submitted. While it's pending you are free to make changes and re-submit it or delete it before it's approved.

When I was submitting resources I just went back to the front resource page and hit the submit button to make a new draft.

 

[Luthur]

Umm, I now can't seem to submit a resource at all. I click the 'Submit' button on the resources page, and it takes me to a blank white page that says 'You are not allowed to edit this post.'