I spoke with Kris at ECCC...

[Mycohl]

Specifically, I asked him what happened to Web You.0, why he wasn't able to monetize it, etc.

In a nutshell, he told me during the panel that it took up too much of his time (which I can definitely sympathize with) and afterward that he would've liked it to be completely automated and more-or-less autonomous.

So, I reworked the Flash-based submission system I set up a while back to have a voting system and some other junk. I would really like to throw it at a community (you guys) and see if it works or breaks.

This forum is supposed to be for sharing your stuff, so I guess it isn't against the rules for me to post the link. Or is it? Oh well, the worst that can happen is I get banned again.

http://webyou.dancingdemon.net/

Please register, submit, vote, comment, whatever. Let me know if anything isn't working, or if it isn't working as expected. Also, there are still some entries in there from when I first made the thing; if one of them is yours, let me know when you are registered and I will associate it with your login.

Thank you for your time, and please don't ban me.
- Myc

 

Again? From here? What happened last time?

-- Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:05 pm --

And to add to this, we thought it would be something wonderful to be able to do something like this for our (woefully inadequate) front page. Because we have so many talented artists, we could have each AotM (drawing type of course) draw something that could be placed into Flash and ready for others to drop in their lines. Then we could keep an archive of the submissions. That could really be a draw if it's easy enough for people to use.

 

[Far]

Yeah I was wondering if we could make our own blank comics to be put into there as well.

 

[Mycohl]

@Endrondol

Not from here, from the pvponline.com/Image forums.

If you are interested in hosting it, that would be cool if you've got the bandwidth. Right now it's on my tiny box on a cable modem, so I'm sure it's not going to weather any sort of continued onslaught. The site is mostly php and flash, although the comments is ajax/php. You should just be able to drop it into your existing system with minor modification. The layout is all template-based.

@Far

You can submit your own custom comics by choosing "Custom Strip" from the list of styles. It lets you upload a gif/jpeg/png up to 700x700 pixels. Realistically, you could upload porn or something, but the design goal of the system is that it would get voted down or reported. I should probably add a "report" button or something for offensive content.

Or maybe you meant you wanted to add your own comic template? You can do that too; the system is designed to be drop-in, although I don't have a UI for it on the site yet. Basically you just have to have the right variables set in the flash submit and view swfs, and then insert which "lines" correspond to which "panels" in MySQL. I could come up with a system I guess, although it might be easier to add new comics manually.

 

[Twitch]

Well don't worry about a ban, not to speak for the mods but it's a different crew running things here.

 

[Far]

@Far

You can submit your own custom comics by choosing "Custom Strip" from the list of styles. It lets you upload a gif/jpeg/png up to 700x700 pixels. Realistically, you could upload * or something, but the design goal of the system is that it would get voted down or reported. I should probably add a "report" button or something for offensive content.

Or maybe you meant you wanted to add your own comic template? You can do that too; the system is designed to be drop-in, although I don't have a UI for it on the site yet. Basically you just have to have the right variables set in the flash submit and view swfs, and then insert which "lines" correspond to which "panels" in MySQL. I could come up with a system I guess, although it might be easier to add new comics manually.

Yeah the template is what I meant. This is kind of what we were looking to do before I believe?
When we were looking for a purpose for the front page.

 

@Endrondol

Not from here, from the pvponline.com/Image forums.

If you are interested in hosting it, that would be cool if you've got the bandwidth. Right now it's on my tiny box on a cable modem, so I'm sure it's not going to weather any sort of continued onslaught. The site is mostly php and flash, although the comments is ajax/php. You should just be able to drop it into your existing system with minor modification. The layout is all template-based.

@Far

You can submit your own custom comics by choosing "Custom Strip" from the list of styles. It lets you upload a gif/jpeg/png up to 700x700 pixels. Realistically, you could upload * or something, but the design goal of the system is that it would get voted down or reported. I should probably add a "report" button or something for offensive content.

Or maybe you meant you wanted to add your own comic template? You can do that too; the system is designed to be drop-in, although I don't have a UI for it on the site yet. Basically you just have to have the right variables set in the flash submit and view swfs, and then insert which "lines" correspond to which "panels" in MySQL. I could come up with a system I guess, although it might be easier to add new comics manually.

Since you know what you are doing and I don't, I'd be willing to host this here by all means.

We can do this one of a number of ways. I could let you have access, you could call me and teach me how to do it or you could point me in the direction and let me muddle through. Up to you. PM me with your choice and we'll go from there. This is SO something I think we can do!

 

[Mycohl]

As far as creating a completely fool-proof way of generating the templates (i.e. a random artist without a copy of flash can upload series of comic panels as images, set where the text boxes go, and it does the rest automatically), I'm sure it's possible with php, but the swf support isn't a module. You have to recompile your php binary with the support. I'm not sure that's something your ISP is going to allow you to do. Manually creating the swfs would probably be a lot easier, but then it would prevent "just anyone" from doing it.

I will do some more research, see if I can find an alternate method of doing it, and get back with you.

 

That was English, right? Seriously, I knw what language you are using and I'm even away of most of the terms, but I don't know what you said.

Speak "Old Man", please.

-- Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:06 pm --

Oh, and the front page is not phpBB but is Joomla. If I need to change that I can at my whim. I'd have to figure out what to do with the games, though.

 

[Mycohl]

Sorry about that.

Okay, to recap in lay-terms what I've discovered today while not working during my work shift: :">

The "SWF-making" support that I was talking about in my last post (where a script, written in PHP, can dynamically generate a shockwave flash file and save it in a database or to disk) is actually old and has been discontinued. The name of this old thing is php-libswf, which doesn't mean anything to anyone.

The new(er) way of having a PHP script create an SWF file is to use a library called "Ming" (Ming being the arch-nemesis of "Flash" Gordon, if anyone cares).

Ming is currently supported and being developed. It is also an "apt-get" package, which means you can install it on any debian linux (and probably other types of linux) without recompiling PHP itself. (Recompiling a part of the server program from source code is a pain in the ass, and probably not allowed with professional webhosting.) Ming will create a SWF that you can either store as a BLOB (binary large object) in MySQL or to disk, whichever is easiest. Now, all I have to do is write up a couple of PHP pages that will take custom comic strip panels from an author, wrap a SWF around them that can be used to type in funny dialogue, and then insert the appropriate entries for each panel/line into the database, and it should integrate fairly seamlessly into what I already have.

Don't worry about the details. I will throw something together this weekend if I can, and hopefully have a working demo to show by Monday. Assuming that I can do it, you should just be able to copy the PHP scripts to your webhost and be good to go. The system might be integrated into Joomla, but it would probably be easier at first to start with a completely new SQL database. I will keep you guys updated on my progress.

P.S.: Just as a clarification on "template", which I've been throwing around too much. The HTML code for each page is stored as a template in MySQL (which means that you type the majority of the layout in HTML, and then stick in PHP variables that get substituted for the important stuff). The comic templates are different. They are basically just SWF files that have dynamic lines of text (most of them are set to "blah blah blah"). When you view someone's submission, the flash variables are sent to the SWF using plain old HTML (the "FlashVars" keyword in the embed/object tag) and the SWF file itself sets those "blah blah" lines to be whatever the person originally typed when they submitted it. I don't know if that clears it up or makes it more confusing, but I just wanted to distinguish between the two types of templates.

 

[MindDetective]

We need this!

Also, you stole my project for teaching myself java this summer!

 

I'm even willing to pay in $$ or swag to make this happen.

 

[Calleja]

Oh wow, this sounds seriously awesome.. and maybe something we could even build a community around! Y'know, to stop our existing one from bleeding out eventually.

 

That's what I've been saying! This is something we've thrown around for a while but now it might get real.

 

[Mycohl]

I apologize for the delay. My Vista install decided to go balls-up on me,
and naturally I got distracted by the Windows 7 release candidate.
Of course it ended up blue-screening on boot once I had all my toys
installed, because that's just my luck. So, I had to roll back to Vista.


Anyway, on the subject at hand, I am having some serious problems
getting the SWF generated with Ming to behave properly with normal
ActionScript run-time methods (like the rather critical createTextField(),
for example) which are necessary to let the author move and format
the speech bubbles. I'm still investigating, but I might end up having
to either use a completely pre-authored SWF for formatting and just
use Ming to generate the end-result files, or do the formatting with
some CSS/DHTML garbage, which I am lousy at.

Again, sorry about the absence; I think the old girl is up and running
again smoothly now, so barring any further PC problems, I should be
able to put some serious hours into this.

EDIT: Never mind, I'm just an idiot. I was trying to create text fields
using getNextHighestDepth(), but you can't do that when you have
components placed, you have to use the DepthManager class. Rrrgh.
Anyway, I think I've got the user input part working, now I just have
to wrap it all up on the server side and spit out the SWFs. Shouldn't
be more than a couple of days before I have something to show you.

 

[Mycohl]

All right, I've got the formatting thingy prety much complete. A couple of notes:

1) Since Ming can only generate version 7 swf files, none of the functionality available with flash 8 as far as text is concerned can be done (like drop shadows).

2) Right now, I don't have colors in yet, all text is black.

3) It isn't going to save the final swf, it just displays it in the browser so you can play with it.

Anyone who wants to register on my site, I've set it up so new accounts have access to the creator on the "Settings" panel.

Once I get it into a more finished and featureful state, we can port it over here.

P.S. I dig the new color scheme for the front page.

 

Link? And I love you, man!

-- Wed May 13, 2009 1:34 pm --

If the link at the top is your site I have to say you have the worst anti-spam registration test in history. Seriously, what the hell IS that?

 

I made one and it's exactly what I want for our front page but I have some questions.

1) It still says "Presented by Halfpixel" on it. Would that pose a problem?
1a) I noticed that you have 2 comments on your post and they are from Scott and Kris. I know you spoke with Kris about this but I would like this to be ours and unaffiliated. I also don't want to tread on their toes or try and wrest something from them they still want to pursue.
1b) If they need me to, I can purchase the use of this from them.

2) Would we have the ability to create our own comics for editing?

3) What would YOU like for doing all of this?

 

If the link at the top is your site I have to say you have the worst anti-spam registration test in history. Seriously, what the * IS that?

That, my friend, is YoMamaAuth(tm), the premiere anti-spam CAPTCHA system. Not only does it prevent spambots from registering, it also prevents any lame-asses who can't take a "yo mama" joke from registering.

Did it not work? Were you not able to see the images properly? I know they are kinda small.

It took me a while to figure out that it's basically everyone except the three hot chicks. But the hint is that they are "ho's", so I clicked them a time or two. The way it ended up was that I got kicked out 3 times before I figured it out.