Important Introduction Changes + More

Hi chaps and chapettes.

Let me start by saying it has been heavily requested by customers to remove the advertisements in the top-right during gameplay, and to find a better place for Clockwork News (for admins) so that it doesn't spam their chatbox, as both of these things are immersion breaking during the actual roleplaying session.

I have removed both of those things, but to compromise with me, please accept a few changes I have changed (still some more work to do with configurable options):

• You can no longer turn the introduction off, this is the main compromise here. I understood that you wanted the advertisements in-game gone, but in return, the introduction must remain active.
  
• The Clockwork introduction is now loaded externally and can be updated dynamically to keep current.
  
• Schemas introductions can be loaded externally. The first example of this is for HL2RP, which can have dynamically loaded backgrounds and generally looks a lot prettier.
  
• The schema introduction will be MORE CONFIGURABLE to the server owner. You will be able to set the URL of the background, as well as the URL of the schema image you wish to display there. This is much nicer for you, and it means if you want to change the image you don't have to fuss around, you can just update the URL.
• The in-game Clockwork News and advertisements in the top-right have gone. To replace Clockwork News, a simple Message of the Day style dialog will appear before the character menu is loaded, if there is news for the administrator to see. They can then simply click off it, and they won't be pestered by chatbox spam for the rest of their roleplaying session.

I'm sure there'll be some hate, but this is my compromise in trying to listen to what customers wanted with respects to the immersion breaking in-game advertisements and news spam.

 

Hawt.

 

@Hydr0 Currently you can't, but I will implement the configuration options either tonight or tomorrow morning. They'll be config variables: intro_logo_url and intro_background_url

The schema itself can set its own default values with Schema.introLogoURL and Schema.introBackgroundURL or with option keys (haven't decided yet.) If the config variables are blank, it'll use the defaults.

When the config variables are in I'll add an entry to Clockwork News, so you'll know as soon as it's done.

 

Off: The thing that is greatly bothering me in your post is the usage of word 'compromise'. It's like you imply that the customers owe you something and that they need to fit under you when usually, it's the other way around while doing business.
You don't compromise with people when removing annoying ads which ruin the roleplay experience from the framework.

Or maybe I'm just an annoying guy who over analyses your post and who doesn't even speak English as his first language.

OT: Really great changes, I've been waiting for those for a while.

 

I say compromise because most games have intro screens when you start them up that include the company's logo, and even third party companies like "nVidia the way it's meant to be played" and so on, so I don't want Clockwork to go without it. However, I do understand people's frustration at the advertisements in the top-right and the chatbox spam from Clockwork News, and that's why I've tried to address them the best I can here and moving things to the intro screen.

 

Just a suggestion, at some point I'd like to see the Clockwork scoreboard UI overhauled. It's getting a bit old now and it doesn't render player profiles or (sometimes) playermodels correctly. I've been working a bit on it but can't really get anywhere with it.

Also, is there a Clockwork suggestions thread somewhere I might've missed?

 

I forgot to put 'sometimes' in.

But mainly for the fact it's getting a bit old and I think it'll look way cooler if we give it a tweaking.

 

@Vexus Clockwork suggestions at http://github.com/CloudSixteen/Clockwork/issues

 

Hi @prom queen, sorry, Fallout happened... I'll try to sort when I get home from work.