Posted by musicman2059 on Saturday, 03-May-2008 00:44 AM

Posted by musicman2059 on Friday, 02-May-2008 14:21 PM

Posted by musicman2059 on Friday, 02-May-2008 01:35 AM

You know, UGS is a bomb.  I just don't have the will to start up another site.  I really don't think I thought it through when I said I was gonna start up a general gaming site that's community oriented. I've wasted quite a bit of money trying to get that all started up, but now I just think it isn't worth going through with.

In the process of thinking of ways to get UGS off the ground, I completely shafted TAC.  This was a site that was the heart and soul of many users; A lot of people have put work into this site.  Lesley was the resident genius when it came to Lufia games, Ash made this awesome layout all by herself, and has an amazing talent for graphical work especially for someone declared legally blind, and the content this site put out was gradually improved from the rush job that I put together some five and a half years ago.  Forums were created, converted, restarted, and a lot of stuff went on.  Behind this site was a huge community, and when UGS came, and I wanted to use IPB with this and closed the forum down on the consensus of some other users, the community disappeared.  All that this site was is gone.

Honestly, I truly regret the whole decision to try to get something going with UGS.  In the end I figure out for my own skill level that it would be impossible for me to create the site I wanted to make unless I stole Chris' half-finished GamingMoz code. (As if that would've done me any good.)  Just today I was thinking to myself, "screw UGS; I want to move my whole forum back to TAC, reconfigure it, and try to restore the community I loved and cherished so much for four and a half years."  Unfortunately, though, I don't know if that's still possible.  The move away to UGS killed the community as we already are, and now a lot of our old members are in different stages of their life.

Even despite those facts, I'm seriously thinking of just forgetting about UGS, move the forum, (without any data loss) and just continue with TAC.  As much as the series is dead, there's always some sort of hope there and a fanbase that is always trying to stay together.  I honestly don't know what the status is of other fansites of its kind, such as Lufia World and Forfeit Island.  (Those two sites plus TAC are the only sites still listed on the series' Wikipedia articles)

I honestly don't know what I'm going to do at this point, but right now I'm really banked on just moving everything back to TAC.  Whatever decision I make I can only hope that whomever remains of this community is willing to back me up.

Posted by musicman2059 on Friday, 25-Apr-2008 01:14 AM

Sorry it took so long to get the gallery back online.

There was a problem with the upgrade which I had tried to do via fantastico.  As TAC isn't my first priority and that the amount of visitors went down I decided to leave it.  However, it is now fixed and the gallery is accessible yet again.

Do note that if you linked to anything before, you may need to grab the URL for it again because the main problem had to do with Friendly URLs and how they were being handled, and so I had to disable it.

Posted by musicman2059 on Friday, 05-Oct-2007 14:37 PM

Though for some the Lufia series may be long dead, it seems that there is still some consideration regarding the future of the series.

Cubed³ (http://www.cubed3.com) conducted an interview with Natsume where one of the topics brought up were as follows:

C3: Also, after the Lufia team has finished working on Rune Factory, are there any plans to resurrect the Lufia series, perhaps on DS or Wii?

GM: Nothing has been discussed. Neverland, the company that developed Lufia is also the same company that developed CIMA: The Enemy. Hopefully the next project we work on is a follow up to that series. 

It's a bit hard for me to translate what exactly this means, but what it seems to me is that right now there are no plans for Lufia.  However, Natsume wants to get Neverland Company to hopefully follow up on either CIMA or Lufia on their next project.  I would assume for now that this would me more of a CIMA thing, but it might work out for Lufia fans in the long run.

To view the full article, check out http://www.cubed3.com/news/7305/1/Natsume_Talks_Harvest_Moon_Anniversary_Plans,_Wii_Support_&_Much_More... 

Posted by musicman2059 on Sunday, 15-Apr-2007 00:41 AM

Aite, so now that the gallery has been migrated over to Gallery from CPG, (and also note that CPG has been completely removed) I can go about going into "detail" about this overhaul.

The only problem is... I'm not 100% sure about what exactly is going to be everything that I do to the site, though I'm sure about some of the changes that are going to take place:

1. A new layout
And this time I won't be asking for any help, because it'll be a more simple, less-graphical layout.  (And I'm fairly confident in my HTML skills to create a good-looking layout.)  I'm thinking a bit more similar to the updated v2 layout over at Symphonic heaven, to a degree.  (I'm not really someone who likes to steal layouts but I need my inspiration from somewhere as well.)  The only graphical portions of the site should be the banner and maybe a couple of icons here and there.  Otherwise I'll be using my semi-leet HTML skills.  (That and I need to teach myself some more advanced tricks and try out div layers as well. :P)

2. A new backend
...again.  I currently have the site as it is today ported over to MODx, a CMS system that was based off of Etomite.  My main reason for this decision was because MODx offers a lot more flexibility and would allow me to possibly add some extras in the future.  Shawn has already offered is help, allowing me to dive into SH's many snippets as well. :P  That being said, some of the features and little tidbits you might notice are available on both ends.

3. New content
One of the big things, and this is something I've been wanting to do for a while, are two things:  Add more detailed content, and update the current content.  Although the site has been running for four and a half years, the content hasn't changed all that often, and so this site looks like something that was designed professionally, but that's about it...  I don't know exactly what I'm gonna here, and I'll probably launch v5 before I start on the content, as I can do it as an ongoing thing, but if I don't sit myself down and do it, I won't get around it, so I'd have to be able to dedicate some time to it.

That's what I'm planning for now, but more things might come along.  I probably won't post about it so you'll just have to see when it's finished. :P 

Posted by musicman2059 on Monday, 02-Apr-2007 15:17 PM

I have finally gotten all the images ported over and such, and the new gallery is ready for everyone to see and use.

Uploading anything new to the gallery should be simple.  I should have configured all the galleries except the User Galleries to be uploadable by everyone.  All you should have to do is go into the gallery you want to upload to, and use the Add Items option to do so.  If not, I'll keep finding ways to allow people to upload.  (Also, remember that you must register before you can upload.)  Do note that uploading anything objectionable (porn, nudity, etc...) or anything copyrighted that isn't yours, will result in being banned from the gallery.

And, as I've mentioned before, this gallery is NOT integreated with the  forum, and thus will require separate registration for each.

I won't be touching the default template for now until the planned overhaul is complete.  As for the details on the site overhaul so far, I shall make a post about that soon.  Right now I'm too spaced out to say anything about it. 

Posted by musicman2059 on Sunday, 01-Apr-2007 15:26 PM

First off, allow me to say that the conversion from Coppermine to Gallery is coming along well on the gallery side of things; A bit slow, but it's getting there.  I have everything up to Lufia II moved over so far, so all that's left is just a couple more games and it'll all be good.

A recent overhaul over at Symphonic Heaven has inspired me to do the same with TAC.  This site hasn't seen any real change in its content ever since its launch four and a half years ago, and I felt that not only is it time for new content, but maybe it's also time to add onto the functionality of the main site as well.

I'm going to be toying around with ModX, a CMS based mainly off of Etomite, to see what I can do with it.  Any such overhaul, however, is probably going to mean having to either heavily modify this layout or create a whole new one.  (Something that I probably won't be able to do myself, but it's worth a shot.)

Right now, I'm only in the "thinking it up" stages, but right now it's a possibility for me to consider.  I have a LOT of resources to work with, so I might as well make full use of them, right? 

Posted by musicman2059 on Saturday, 31-Mar-2007 12:49 PM

Alright, so since it's not early morning now, I guess I can explain this better.

After fooling around with the "Gallery" script on another site, I ended up liking Gallery much better than our current image script, Coppermine.  Administration of its contents and managing the structure will end up being a whole lot easier from my end, among other things.

I just finished putting together the album structure on Album, as well as setting permissions.  (Users will be able to upload to any gallery other than the root album and another user's albums)  All that should be left to do is move all the images over and put them in their correct categories as well.

As I mentioned before, this gallery will not be bridged with the forum unfortunately, unless I can find a module that will allow me to do so.  This means that, obviously, your user account on Gallery for the time being will be kept seperate from the forum, and you will need a seperate login for both.  Before I launch the new gallery I will see if I can integrate the logins first, however.  I'm also going to see if I can embed the gallery into the website itself, making skinning it a lot easier.

Hopefully, if I can get a good moment, I should have this all done in the coming week.

Posted by musicman2059 on Friday, 23-Mar-2007 19:16 PM