Before, I expressed a problem I had with designing a website. Now, I am writing in a better, more confident mood about it.

Actually, the hardest part was finding colours that work together. A problem here is that it is relative. But a counter to that is that if someone is looking for particular content, they won’t sit and review the site’s theme. But again, to counter that, first impressions mean a lot.

The obvious is for the theme to look clear, so that the individual can find what they want as quickly an efficiently as possible. That would be one good first impression. No one likes visiting a site they haven’t been to before, and spending even minutes trying to find what they are looking for.

People who regularly come back to the site also don’t want to sit in front of a theme that makes their eyes bleed. For the background of the site, it was a tough choice – to go against the site’s main use of blue and peach, I tapped into green’s range, ever so slightly. The result was less taxing on the eyes than the same almost-grey-but-purple shade.

I’m also suprised at the detail added by simple drop shadows and rounded rectangles. They are small details, but they make a suprising difference. When using the old theme, the site feels old. The new theme makes it feel fresh, and also more robust, as if the quality of the theme reflects the quality of the functionality.

These are still beginner approaches, but they do make a difference. This has given me an interest in image editing to some degree. Finding my way around GIMP and Photoshop would make things a lot nicer when it comes to editing textures for the game engine.

Can’t Wait for Christmas

Ah yes, Christmas is not too far off. But i’m not looking forward to it for the presents and feasts – my partner in crime and I have decided to set aside a few weeks to work full time on the game engine. The result should be a significant part of a small RPG engine. That is, we should have procedurally generated terrain, with realistic grass, omni-directional shadow maps, a nice particle engine, an inventory system, convincing water, vegetation, and detailed texture mapping on the terrain (with the vegetation following suit). Anything less than the majority of those features would cause a bitter resent for the time and how it was used.