While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

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It is from the pilot of the Legend of Korra, the 4th season of Avatar: the Last Airbender. It was when spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler. Tune in Saturday, April 14th to see it and support Avatar :D
 
10 KB would pretty much cover anything you could create, but most pngs could be made to fit within 8 KB. I know when I run PNG crush, the PNG's are almost always under 8 KB, but few are under 6KB and so I then have to start discarding colors.
How would a move to 8 KB affect the server?
 
assuming everyone utillized it, it would be a 33% increase in avatar load.

I ran page 34 through a filesize checker as it had no external images beyond the banner adds, and came out with a total load size of 474KB and about 50 of that was supplied by the banner adds giving us 425KB.
If all 20 people switched from a 6KB avatar to 8, the page would be 465KB or an increase in load by 10%. This, however, is also assuming that the browser doesn't cache images, a rather bad assumption, so it would likely be much less than that. This is just the worst possible scenario and I pretty much guarantee that it would be a much lower increase than 10%.

Another option would be to allow hotlinking with a large or unlimited filesize allotment so long as the avatars stay within the 100x100 pixel constraint. I don't actually know if this is possible, but it would have a net result of lowering server load.
 
On the Topic of NESing...

What do you guys think about reusing good characters and/or names and/or ideas between different NESes you play? I've started doing that instead of making new characters for every NES' story (although I have been careful to kill them off before introducing them in another NES) because of the mortality rate of many NESes and characters. Example: Sir Peridor the Lycantrope is the calm face of Emeresan (who himself is the Green Death Characterized in my NES) and his hunters, and he got killed before I can fully develope him. Cue Sir Peridor of Aquitaine, a Baron in the service of his King, and the Straight man to his War Council (whose families I will introduce) and who will hopefully sire a line of advisors.
Another example is Pharon, the farseer. He dies in SkilLord's awesome NES, but I've already named a star for him in Nutra's NES.

Does it reduce the suspension of disbelief or the atmosphere of the NES, are you guys OK with it or even do it yourself? I remember getting slighty annoyed when players reused characters and concepts until they got Iggy-Punched, and I sometimes fear that I am walking down the same road. How far is too far?

I put these questions before the forum.
 
I personally LOVE reoccurring characters. I tend to just rationalize it as some sort of creative god-entity manifesting in various forms in the NESsos universe just because he/she/it can.

For instance, The Many in my current NES(IV.6) have featured in pretty much all of my NES.
 
Thanks.

Also, Blaze Injun, can you reveal why you always post as: Hey, Insert Post here, Blaze Injun ? It is unique and interesting.
 
Also:

I invite people to join my new NES-lite/pet project: StarsNES~Updates Without Number (Epoch I)

This is a multi-staged NES and a community world-building exercise. Taking a page from Eltain, I am running a low-commitment NES that has a group of NESers create a whole galaxy. Epoch I begins with players creating the interstellar backbone of the setting: stars, planets, and other cosmic do-dads. I will be posting update I at midnight, GMT-5, so hurry and express your GalCred¤ so you can post orders and make your stars and planets that will be the future home to your twisted creations!
 
I hate it when certain people use characters OVER AND OVER AND OVER again until I rip my eyes out. Not you SKILORD. (You should bring the Wovvolken into my NES, actually. I'd have a really good spot for them, too...)
 
Hey,
Thanks.

Also, Blaze Injun, can you reveal why you always post as: Hey, Insert Post here, Blaze Injun ? It is unique and interesting.

I started the "Hey," to express a friendlier Hello to a now disappeared member named Coinich. My 1st post was in his story and started "Hey," on my 3rd post and never changed it. It just sounds less formal to me. Now, if I ever wrote orders for you or PMs I use Hello. Plus story posts look naked without a Hey! :D

As for Blaze Injun. Helz I want everbody to know who I am. :groucho:



Blaze Injun
 
Why do you sometimes end with stuff like "CFb02" instead of Blaze Injun? I always figured it was an error in whatever script you might've used to always have Hey, Blaze Injun in your posts.
 
Hey,
Why do you sometimes end with stuff like "CFb02" instead of Blaze Injun? I always figured it was an error in whatever script you might've used to always have Hey, Blaze Injun in your posts.

That is a simple code for information of the stories. Times between updates is 1 to 2 1/2 generations and I use it to make sure characters don't live to long. Kinda had to do it after I was all hyped to write about Fu Shan.

CFb02 Simply means. Cin Fu, Ballistics, story number 02.


Blaze Injun
 
Does it reduce the suspension of disbelief or the atmosphere of the NES, are you guys OK with it or even do it yourself? I remember getting slighty annoyed when players reused characters and concepts until they got Iggy-Punched, and I sometimes fear that I am walking down the same road. How far is too far?

I put these questions before the forum.
So long as we don't get von Dunkelheits.
 
On the Topic of NESing...

What do you guys think about reusing good characters and/or names and/or ideas between different NESes you play? I've started doing that instead of making new characters for every NES' story (although I have been careful to kill them off before introducing them in another NES) because of the mortality rate of many NESes and characters. Example: Sir Peridor the Lycantrope is the calm face of Emeresan (who himself is the Green Death Characterized in my NES) and his hunters, and he got killed before I can fully develope him. Cue Sir Peridor of Aquitaine, a Baron in the service of his King, and the Straight man to his War Council (whose families I will introduce) and who will hopefully sire a line of advisors.
Another example is Pharon, the farseer. He dies in SkilLord's awesome NES, but I've already named a star for him in Nutra's NES.

Does it reduce the suspension of disbelief or the atmosphere of the NES, are you guys OK with it or even do it yourself? I remember getting slighty annoyed when players reused characters and concepts until they got Iggy-Punched, and I sometimes fear that I am walking down the same road. How far is too far?

I put these questions before the forum.
The IggyPunch usually gets brought out in cases where people recycle things excessively, although it's a bit subjective. For example, Kentharu and Kal'Thzar created nations named Gorin and Khemri in both of my NESes (LINES: World of Magic and LINESII: Into the Darkness). That's borderline, but their nations were very different in each, so they were spared my wrath. If people reuse historical nations in fantasy situations where they are inappropriate, or takes fictional entities from other peoples' universes, they get IggyPunched. However, recurring motifs are fine if they're still unique to each NES and don't diminish the originality of their respective universes, and recurring joke characters (Von Dunkleheit, NAO, Penguins, Polar Bears, Space Hamsters) are perfectly acceptable, as they exist in a strictly OOC sense.

I've used neither penguins nor IggyPunches very much lately- I'm concerned that I might be growing less silly than I used to be. ;)

As for wholesale recycling of nations and concepts: I think it's acceptable if their first NES was dead on arrival. For example, I recycled my very first NES application (a pre-JNES) for StKNES5, and both the Choon and Lauki-Maus from GalaxyNES were originally in one of Daft's projects, but it didn't pan out so I invited people to repost their ideas in GalaxyNES.

Need to get working on that update... GalaxyNES has a high enough turnover rate even when I am updating it regularly. :p

Hey,

I like to tie NESs together with not only character names but characters themselves. Such as.

Picking Up the Pieces: Kill Girl Miyabi, Tokyo Teen Survivor
Tournament: Kill Girl Miyabi, Stone Funny Killer
StarNes: Miyabi, A Star



Blaze Injun
And speaking of which, where is your Miyabi vs Chaos story? I've been waiting for that for nearly half a year! ;)

While We Wait: And pout because we don't want to post our updates at the bottom of a page.
I never understood how that was an issue- it's only a problem if they span multiple pages. People usually follow links to read old updates, I just post update links to the first post so NESers can read everything fine from there.
 
assuming everyone utillized it, it would be a 33% increase in avatar load.

I ran page 34 through a filesize checker as it had no external images beyond the banner adds, and came out with a total load size of 474KB and about 50 of that was supplied by the banner adds giving us 425KB.

If all 20 people switched from a 6KB avatar to 8, the page would be 465KB or an increase in load by 10%. This, however, is also assuming that the browser doesn't cache images, a rather bad assumption, so it would likely be much less than that. This is just the worst possible scenario and I pretty much guarantee that it would be a much lower increase than 10%.

I'm quite noobish in designing webpages, but my precentages or even the page size are greatly different than yours :/ Still, in the end, my results are the same - around 10% increase in page size, assuming that cache is empty.

I'm sorry but 400+ kb's for CFC page is difficult for me to believe, because I used a 1. something kb/sec connection to browse the CFC when I was visiting my parents and 400 kb pages would load considerably longer (even if CFC would already be in cache).

If it's not too much to ask, where did I go wrong, Is the page size realy 400 kb's? I understand that if you 'save page as', you get 450 something for its size, but it's decompressed size, while the server actually sends you a compressed version? Or am I wrong?

Spoiler probably wrong :

I'm using 'turnip green' them.

When I Manually ran page 34, I get the size fluctuating between 190-300 kbs, I do see ads but did not get any (large) flash banners during 4 refreshes, largest ad was around 60 kb.

I see 19 unique posts per page, not 20.

When I used series of tools (on my pc), I get page size about the same. Only one online tool (googled) gave me a result similar to you, a 450 kb's. Most other online tools give me a result of 160 kb's of raw page size.

There are 9 unique posters with unique avatars on that page. Total size of the avatars is around 29 kb, making average size of an avatar 3.2 kb.

Which, Going by assumption that my ways of looking at page size are not wrong (which they could be) makes up roughly

With 16 posters per page, in rare case that most posters are unique, it'd be around
55-60 kb for avatars. Which is roughly 10 % of page size (assuming page is around 250 kb's). If we take remove ads and go by assumption that page size around 180 kb's) then avatars would contribute ~30 % of page size coming from the CFC server. This is assuming that user has not cached the theme.(highly unlikely)

With increase to 8 kb limit, I assume that new average avatar filesize would probably be around 5.5 kb's, making all avatars (if every poster is unique) a total size of 104,5 kb's. Which is increase of page size to 290 kb's (with ads) or 220 kb's (wo ads) toll for CFC. Which is about 35% increase in raw page size.

This is assuming that user randomly goes onto the page 34 without any previous cache (visits to forum).

Assuming that user has visited forum before (and cached the theme), this increase in file size would not be noticed by most people. It'd increase average size of page (that has to be loaded) by roughly 10 %, probably around that precentage (+-3%).


Another option would be to allow hotlinking with a large or unlimited filesize allotment so long as the avatars stay within the 100x100 pixel constraint. I don't actually know if this is possible, but it would have a net result of lowering server load.

No. No. No. And no. If I visit CFC, I don't want someone other being able to see who views what posts/forums, when, how and from where. Adventiseremnt companies already see where I'm from, I don't need neighbor bob to know it aswell. Besides, this could probably be exploited against CFC (uploading a image to www.mypage.whtvr/horse.jpg and changing the picture to show different picture depending of IP requesting it. And getting an IP address would not be too difficult (IRC for one example). So, you could post with porn avatar without moderators (ever?) finding out about it.

Third option (unlimited filesize) would also seriously hurt CFC as one user with 1.5 mb avatar could slow down the loading beyond the reasonable-wait (5-10 second mark) for slower connection.
 
Ran it through this (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/) and came up with 465 KB. Honestly it seemed a bit big to me as well, so I guess I picked the wrong tool.

Its not possible to achieve a 1.5 MB image if the image must be 100x100. I'm assuming the CFC server would run the check when the avatar was changed, just like it does now. With an uncompressed 100x100 bitmap, you are looking at a 30KB image.

Besides, this could probably be exploited against CFC (uploading a image to www.mypage.whtvr/horse.jpg and changing the picture to show different picture depending of IP requesting it. And getting an IP address would not be too difficult (IRC for one example). So, you could post with porn avatar without moderators (ever?) finding out about it.
I hadn't thought of this issue, perhaps if hotlinking was allowed it would be restricted to select image hosts.

I'm by no means an expert on this sort of thing, and it sounds like NW has much more experience than me, so I'd favor his load calculations over mine.
 
Ran it through this (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/) and came up with 465 KB. Honestly it seemed a bit big to me as well, so I guess I picked the wrong tool.
No, the unpacked files (if you ctrl+s a webpage) are 460 kb, about half of that file are javascripts. I just thought that it's rather large for a forum page. If you take page properties (right click -> inspect page (or smth similar), then sizes you get are way smaller.

Its not possible to achieve a 1.5 MB image if the image must be 100x100. I'm assuming the CFC server would run the check when the avatar was changed, just like it does now. With an uncompressed 100x100 bitmap, you are looking at a 30KB image.
In theory have first few lines of the image contain jpg data and rest be gibberish that repeats itself to make your browser believe that it's an image file? Also, with current status, the check is ran only once (to see that image uploaded will match the parameters before saving them to CFC forum storage). With outside hosting this check would have to be ran constantly and even then I could simply show CFC IP a image matching the parameters and send image with a different pic to whomever is requesting my avatar

I hadn't thought of this issue, perhaps if hotlinking was allowed it would be restricted to select image hosts.
It's harder like that, yes, but hosts have bandwidth limits to user (anyone remember photobucket's "user has exceeded daily bandwidth limit", I saw that constantly in many threads on this forum, in paradox forums and even in taleworlds forums). Also there are commercial and juridical problems (is the image host hosted content being used in generating revenue? They want a share!)

I'm by no means an expert on this sort of thing, and it sounds like NW has much more experience than me, so I'd favor his load calculations over mine.

I don't have much experience, I just had a few numbers which I tried to make sense. It might be all wrong, I don't understand the higher levels of how web works (protocols, packing data, packets, compressing etc.) that well.

All I know is what I've learned by growing up with interwebs and designing a few wordpress and joomla sites for non profit organizations and my own small blogspace. So I don't realy know that much more of you, probably even less.

This does not seem wrong to me, but :dunno:, am no expert.

If all user get new avatars, not all will make a break for the new 8-10 kb limit. If we take average size (kb) of avatars, we'll probably get an average of 6 kb (instead of 3. something) filesize per avatar. 19 posts per page (can one change how many posts forum displays?) would mean roughly 30-40% increase in CFC page size (assuming that page is 160 kb's not 440 during each load). This also assumes a rather low (3.5 kb) average size of avatars currently, I dunno what is the average, but I suspect it's larger than 3.something kb in certain OT threads for an example. It could be 4.something or maybe even 5.(0-2). Probably not above that. With every increase to average avatar size, numbers and increases go lower.

If we have 3.5 increase to 5.5 kb, then This would increase page size from 160 something to 190 something. Which is ~25% increase. But it's rare to have all unique posters on page, all having large avatars. CFC default avatars are under 4 kb anyways and new user don't even get avatars until 50 posts and 50 days? So, in theory it's like maximum increase of 40 kb per page, if all posters are unique and forum has not been visited before. If posters are not unique or one has seen avatars before, the size will drop like 3% per avatar being seen (or ~5kb per not-unique poster).

An increase from 160 to 190 would not hurt most. (Assuming unique posters) And again, with constant browsing of CFC a cache of avatars has (most likely) been already created (and people don't change their avatars THAT often). So, yeah, it's most likely maximum of ~10% increase. A 10% or less than a 1 second increase in loading times when using a modem. And that's maximum :/

Servers are hosted by Atomic gamer anyways and they don't charge thunderfall AFAIK. One of the things I don't know how to account for are the cfc timeout periods and why they are create.
 
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