New Look, New HBGames

[Ellie]

It's been fully ten years since HBGames had any kind of theming work done to it (well, a couple of months off: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73902).

In that time a lot has changed both here and in the wider world of the Internet. It's time HBG caught up.

So, a new logo, a new look, and a new focus: Discord.

Logo

I wanted a logo that fits as an icon, particularly in places such as mobile phone desktop bookmarks and of course the Discord channel. It's an edit of a public domain image, and of course the H is for HBGames.

Forum Theme

The forums have had a light reskinning. Clutter removed, menus shifted about, new main menu.

Here's a before:

New Focus

You'll notice the big, obvious Discord logo in the top-right corner. This takes you right into our Discord channel, which I would like to be the main focus of the site going forward. Not only is it a replacement of our IRC channel, but it is quickly becoming the industry standard, and where most online activity for RPG Maker will be found (bar the official forums, which are a thing to themself).

There is now a bot in the discord channel that trawls the forums for content and dumps it on the discord. This includes images from the artwork forums, screenshots from the game making forums, and a feed of all new posts (for now, while we're this quiet). I'm finding it useful myself.

There's more we can do, and more we will do.

Future

Still some tweaking to do with this theme, and the homepage itself sorely needs a redesign. But that is for now a job for another day.

Anyway, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

looking good ellie, very style! I am a huge fan

 

[Jason]

Wow, I refreshed my tab after a few hours and was like "Hold the fuck up, wasn't I on HBGames? Did I do something wrong?" before it clicked... in my defence it's 3am and I've been awake a stupid amount of hours. Three of my most frequented sites (Yeah I still frequent here every day, just don't post half as much lol) have changed their appearance over the weekend and it's really throwing me off lol :huh: :cheers: :robot:

 

[Hybrida]

So far, so good. I'm happy with it.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Looks good.
Edit: Except when I click on a thread. The thread title needs some kind of background. Right now it's just text that's on top of and really close to the same color as the HBG logo background color.

 

[ZenVirZan]

PSA: ctrl+F5 if you haven't already, the site looks busted if you have any cached resources

 

[Ellie]

If anyone's stuck in cache, here's how we're supposed to look:

Will continue to tweak it; let me know if you have any ideas.

 

[Hybrida]

I'm satisfied. Although I did gather intelligence on seeing what members are looking at. It was kinda funny observing what threads 'guest' members are viewing. Too much time on my hands I guess.

"I wonder what thread is Ellie is looking at today. Hmmm, index page. Oh great."
--Hybrida--

 

[Ellie]

Oh any of our pages that aren't forums will show as index I think.

 

[Ellie]

Just want you to know I'm still working on this, I just have a little coursework and my birthday to get out of the way. Back in full swing from Friday night.