[Tohopekaliga]

Heya folks! I'm working on stuff, did ya hear?

I am plugging along at a fairly nice pace for the new Avatar Editor. Here's an image reflecting what I've currently got on it:

Working draft--styling, layout, and button looks are not final.
The buttons, from top left down, then to the right are:
Save, Avatar Closet, Favorited/Starred Items, Avatar Facing, Undo, Clear Avatar, Revert Avatar, Redo

I am, of course, not a web designer by trade, so when I do web design it ends up being simultaneously with my technical development...thus things look quite ugly for a rather long time.

As things stand, I have it properly displaying currently equipped items on the avatar, all items in user inventory. The avatar editor should overall load much faster as you jump through tabs now, especially for those of you with huge ass inventories. I still have more optimization and adjustment to do to ensure that'll go smoothly, and much more testing is needed moving forward, but it's there.



Let's talk a bit about how the inventory will be laid out in the editor.

You can see in the image there, I have a few tabs up top, and then more underneath. The categories and subcategories are still in a draft state, so are subject to change, but here's the full listing, if you're curious:

• Body - Physical features: Skin, hair, face, and fancy new bodies
  • Skin
  • Hair
  • Face
  • Mods
• Gear - Everything a character wears or carries
  • Head
  • Tops
  • Arms
  • Bottoms
  • Feet
  • Accessories
• Scene - Backgrounds, borders, and tagalong characters
  • Border
  • Scene
  • Companion
  • Special
• All - Displays items by acquisition method rather than type
  • Basic (freebie items: Pandora set)
  • Common
  • Donation
  • Event
  • Game/RIG

The key thing about this is that the categories will not be exclusive. Donation items in particular are likely to show up in multiple tabs. Should make it easier to find specific kinds of things.

If you're looking for an item in particular, there will also be an inventory search feature, where you can search by name or tags (which includes colors). That in itself will end up being a very large undertaking, because items at present only have a single tag on them, and we have many, many items.


Which means before I'm done with the avatar editor, I'm going to be working on another feature that I think people will like: Item Viewer. You will be able to view an arbitrary item like in the shop, whether or not it's currently buyable.

And I'm going to have a page involved in that which will present you with an item without tags and ask you to assign it tags. In return you'll get some aurum. (Or something else. Haven't quite decided, yet. This is a new idea as of yesterday.)

Naturally, a feature like that will have some oversight and approval, but "crowd sourcing" the tags will still make it piles easier for us, if people are willing to identify items for some Au.



Now, if you're curious about what kind of technical things I've been doing for this thing...

I recently planned out and implemented (portions of) a RESTful server for providing item information, which means page apps (like the Avatar Editor) can ping a single url that doesn't require a lot of parameters and mucking about and receive a JSON object containing what items they have in their inventory, equipped, in a closet entry, etc.

That will, as pages are updated, make it easier to manage shop things, the editor, inventory, trades, displaying to curious users what items a person has equipped (Ever wondered, "how the hell did they do that?" I know I wonder that often. Now you shall know!), and possibly other stuff.

Why a RESTful server? Well, I like the architectural style of it, and it also means it'll be easier in the future to replace server-side code without having to adjust client code.



As always, thoughts and comments are quite welcome!

[Tohopekaliga]

Discussion topic time!

As I mentioned, there will be tagging of items. So much tagging. Many will be used directly as tabs in the editor, but many will just be something you can type/choose when using item search. (Which isn't present in my current editor screenshot, but it'll be there.)

We will have a predefined list of tags, to keep things sane. An item can be tagged as having any or all tags, as appropriate. So, it can be both Black & White, for instance.

What I would like to know from you guys is...what do you think of this tag list, and is there anything else that you think should be on the list?

• Color
  
  • Black
    
  • White
    
  • Grey
    
  • Light
    
  • Dark
    
  • Red
    
  • Orange
    
  • Yellow
    
  • Green
    
  • Blue
    
  • Purple
    
  • Pink
  • Brown
  • (Tan?)
  • Teal
• Type
  
  • Body
    
    • Skin
      
    • Hair
      
    • Face
    • Tattoo
      
    • Mods
  • Gear
    
    • Head
      
    • Top
      
    • Arms
      
    • Bottom
      
    • Feet
      
    • Accessory
      • Belt
      • Earring
      • Gloves
      • Carried
      • Weapon
  • Scene
    
    • Background
      
    • Border
      
    • Companion
      
    • Clutter
• Theme
  
  • Animal
  • Plant
    
  • Scifi
    
  • Fantasy
    
  • Military
    
  • Food
    
  • Silly
    
  • Nautical
    
  • Holiday
• Emotion
  
  • Angry
    
  • Happy
    
  • Sad

[Potironette]

I like that there's a games section. What's the "basic" section for..?
---------
Color: Basic / Dust / Special / all the stuff that the shop options give ^^;;
-Because it's options in the shops

Holiday --> Specific holidays :o
-------
Sometimes I wonder, what a server, pinging, and JSON is XD

[Gallagher]

In this context, "Basic" refers to items that you can pick up in the shops for free. When the new editor is implemented, free items will appear in every user's inventory automatically, without the need to be purchased.


I personally suggested against doing our specific color categories because in a lot of cases, certain shades of some colors can be swapped easily for certain shades of another.

The best example we have of this is the darkest shades of pink being virtually interchangeable with the lightest shades of wine. Another would be how similar darkest blonde is to our lightest gold.

It might be warranted to have tags for particular color sets (namely Dust, Special, Faded, and Coral) but for the most part, I believe general color tags will work best for most users.

Y'all feel free to argue with me, tho.

[Tohopekaliga]

"Basic" in the screenshot refers to the Pandora set and free hairs. Those are all going to be removed from the shops and just be available all the time to users. Will also be part of user registration,


A "server" refers to a few different related things: The computer that is serving the website, and the programs that process the data and send the cool stuff to your computer

"Ping" is the time it takes for two computers to exchange information (your computer and the one that serves up Trisphee), or the act of finding out how long it takes

"JSON" is JavaScript Object Notation, and is just a way to represent information for your browser to process.

[Potironette]

If it just shows up in the search bar I feel like the categories would be useful for finding some things. Like lighter colored stuff for dust. I don't know if everyone looks for things the same way I do though.


Thanks for the answer :o -is curious about too many things-


Having a basics thing will be useful. I'm kind of curious if the colors for items will remain the same (ex: buying all the colors of some item in the token shop --> massive amounts of token shop items stuck together)

[Gallagher]

Toho is going to make items group more similarly to the way they do in the shops, so buying all the color options of an option won't be taking up half of your screen whenever you look through your items. The exact layout of everything I believe is still up for change.

I dunno how many people look through their items like I do, either, Potir. I kinda take things up a notch when I work on avis, haha.

[Kitarun]

Awesome work, Toho! Can't wait til you get it done, and it's implemented.
I'd be interested in helping tag things, though I'm not going to be very helpful with anything other than colors and what part of the body they go on, since I'm so new...

I think something like 5-10 au per item/tag would be a good idea... And maybe reward the really helpful people with bonus au or maybe runes? Like, 100 items, get X au or 1-2 runes? Idk...

[Potironette]

Ohh, that's nice. Getting too much of one thing isn't fun when it takes up so much of the screen xD

I just throw stuff together whenever I make an avatar :x

[Gallagher]

Originally Posted by Potironette

I just throw stuff together whenever I make an avatar :x

ya i can tell lol

[Illusion]

Originally Posted by Kitarun

Awesome work, Toho! Can't wait til you get it done, and it's implemented.
I'd be interested in helping tag things, though I'm not going to be very helpful with anything other than colors and what part of the body they go on, since I'm so new...

I think something like 5-10 au per item/tag would be a good idea... And maybe reward the really helpful people with bonus au or maybe runes? Like, 100 items, get X au or 1-2 runes? Idk...

Considering members would actually be putting work in, getting runes for helping out is certainly a good incentive. Not to mention I'm sure many of these people could use runes to buy certain items in the shops or in the market in order to tag them as well. Would be a great way to motivate people purchase and sell items in the exchange again, and since this isn't something everyone could do and these taggers would essentially be short time workers being paid in runes is definitely a good gesture and fitting for payment.

[Demonskid]

Originally Posted by Tohopekaliga

The avatar editor should overall load much faster as you jump through tabs now, especially for those of you with huge ass inventories.

O3o -whistles innocently and hides her huge ass inventory- >w> waaah its not THAT big

Questions for the Trisphee Times?! Will this editor have ways to save favorite outfits?


Like say we change our avatars for a holiday or something, and can't remember what all we had on our old avatar, an 'avatar closet' some people call it, built in to the system that saves outfits would be nice to have.

and if someone sells an item that was on the avatar that was saved, a message would pop up (Couldn't load saved avatar, item is missing from inventory)... o3o

[Tohopekaliga]

Yes, the editor will save outfits. If you get rid of an item in the outfit, it will still load up, but leave the missing item out and tell you what item is gone. :)

[Coda]

You still won't be able to sell items equipped to your current avatar.

Developer thoughts: Should the sellback command warn if it's equipped to an avatar in your closet?

[Tohopekaliga]

I think it should, but it should also allow the item to be sold. "Hey! This is saved in your closet! Do you still wanna sell it?"

[Kitarun]

I second that idea! Also for when trading it.