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Beyond All Reason website

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3 years ago
https://www.beyondallreason.info/

Holy smokes, it looks incredible.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/unit/corgator

Click and drag unit models to inspect

https://www.beyondallreason.info/compare/kbots

Interface for comparing units

https://www.beyondallreason.info/team

Every page is gorgeous!

Can anyone put a figure on what it would cost to buy in a web development to put together an animated, polished website like this?
+3 / -0

3 years ago
The site is pretty slow on my computer.
The main page is a standard bootstrap product / business website with some gifs and different fonts:
https://bootstrapmade.com/demo/OnePage/

The site has a distinct design, and 3D models, which are more a designer / modeler skill than web developer skill.
+0 / -0


3 years ago
https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/tips-for-supreme-commander-total-planetary-annihilation-players-to-quickly-grasp-bar-gameplay

This page is awesome work too
+0 / -0
3 years ago
Wow this looks pretty amazing, https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/50-upgraded-unit-animations-using-inverse-kinematics
+0 / -0
3 years ago
I like the Zero-K gameplay better than the BAR gameplay.
BAR has more eye candy, though.
+1 / -0


3 years ago
I'll play both (and others, too). I'll hope that ZK can also look that good in the near future. Cross-pollination between ZK and BAR can only be good for both.
+2 / -0


3 years ago
I had started working on a website overhaul a while back, to get the ZK site working better for mobile devices, and have recently continued my efforts. The BAR site is indeed amazing and I have no qualms about incorporating some of its good ideas. I've also been poking around at other well-designed sites for inspiration and ideas. (eg. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ and https://www.klei.com/)

However, it can be difficult to jam all the functionality the Zero-K site has into the sexy little dress BAR has. The forum, user profile, replays, commander configurations, planetwars, etc. bring a lot of design challenges with them. In addition, its just a lot of pages and content to go through and clean up (not to mention some sections have no markup at all, or hardcoded inline styles that ruin any hope of consistent styling).

If you were to hire someone to flesh out all of Zero-K it easily could go into several thousands of dollars (if this were a company I could easily see it get into the millions). I'm trying to limit my initial overhaul scope so I can actually get something released. Prolly won't be as good but it should at least be usable on both desktop/mobile. I would gladly help direct contributors' efforts if anyone with some design/web dev experience wants to chip in.
+9 / -0
I played this a bunch recently, I had forgotten how fun BA could be until I did (its pretty much a BA remake, although they changed a few things). BA/BAR and Zero-K are games that can coexist as far as I'm concerned, they have different focuses (Zero-K is more focused on unit tactics, BAR is more focused on grand strategy).

They do have a fairly nice website. Too nice perhaps, the 3D unit models thing feels unnecessary and slows the site down. And I think their unit stats page could use having more details. It doesn't have the energy upkeep of the mexes which is something I wanna lookup but keep forgetting to do so ingame.

On the subject of cross-pollination, just like chickens started as a Zero-K thing and were later ported into BA, they're developing a new PvE faction called "scavengers" which is quite interesting in its mechanics. Its something to think about porting into Zero-K eventually.
+2 / -0
3 years ago
The graphics look really nice, I didn't know the Sping engine was capable of such nice graphics although I guess it's partly because the models and textures are much higher quality. However, there seem to be some effects and shaders that could be applied to the existing Zero-K assets, no?
+0 / -0

3 years ago
Would be cool if Zero-K and BAR could share a lobby some day, surely the two projects make each other stronger.
+1 / -0
I think having a separate lobby for each game simplifies things. Certainly it has gotten a lot simpler to play Zero-K since it stopped relying on Spring Lobby. Spring Lobby is rather confusing for a new player.
+1 / -0
3 years ago
quote:
However, it can be difficult to jam all the functionality the Zero-K site has into the sexy little dress BAR has.
Definitely agree it will not be the same, but BAR website feels polished and modern. This website looks a bit like in-game ZK's menu, but think now people expect something else from websites...

quote:
I'm trying to limit my initial overhaul scope so I can actually get something released.
Share screenshots! Would be nice to see even if work in progress! (or, at least do that when you are happy with something, but before is ready)

quote:
Would be cool if Zero-K and BAR could share a lobby some day, surely the two projects make each other stronger.
At some point in the past multiple games shared a lobby - it was quite disruptive for people due to various development paces (meaning people were arguing/having issues due to being one lobby, etc.). Don't think it's a good idea to go back there.
+0 / -0


3 years ago
quote:
Holy smokes, it looks incredible.

Yes, and I think it gives them a lot of attention and credibility. Our non-logged in home page is static and pretty busy by comparison, and I think it hurts us near the top of the funnel. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel

quote:
However, it can be difficult to jam all the functionality the Zero-K site has into the sexy little dress BAR has. The forum, user profile, replays, commander configurations, planetwars, etc. bring a lot of design challenges with them.

The landing page and related pages are the important ones for conversion. The forums, replay lists, etc... don't really need to be put into the flashy BAR style. Bitrot is also a concern.

BAR has pages showing off the maps as well as pages for unit stats. I think this effort is well placed, as people who are a bit interested get to click around and see what the game has to offer in a frictionless way. The tricky part is that such lists need to be maintained, and we've barely got anyone updating the current wiki for stats changes. Running a website properly requires a powerful active web developer to be on the core team.

quote:
Can anyone put a figure on what it would cost to buy in a web development to put together an animated, polished website like this?

The BAR website is the result of the skills of an active core developer. This is someone with the knowledge and trust to follow their initiative, who is active enough to take on and complete significant subprojects in a timely fashion, and who is likely to stick around and maintain their projects in the foreseeable future. You can't just buy such a website. You would have to hire and retain a web developer to make the site and then fix or extend it when needed.

You would probably also have to hire a core developer to oversee the project, as the web developer would have no familiarity with Zero-K and no idea what the requirements are. A core developer who is also a web developer can just trust their knowledgeable and intuition to guide the design as it happens, but an external dev would require a lot of time consuming back-and-forth to produce anything.

Take the top of this page as an example. How did the animated windmills get there? Whoever made that type of page knew that the game was a good source of such animated images and knew that adding an animated image to the page was feasible. They had to have knowledge of the game and of web development floating around in their head for the idea to occur to them. If the relevant knowledge were spread across two or more people, then the design would be significantly harder. People who have to message back-and-forth to check up on what seems reasonable to implement or what sort of things are desired.

I think the most feasible option is some sort of explicit work exchange with BAR, the issues being:
  • we've already got USrankAdminmaackey,
  • Zero-K and BAR are sufficiently different in design philosophy that some back-and-forth would still be required,
  • the Zero-K website does a lot more than the BAR website, and
  • we would still just end up with a static, unmaintainable, website.
BAR already has these kinds of issues with adapting chobby (the ZK main menu).

quote:
The graphics look really nice, I didn't know the Sping engine was capable of such nice graphics although I guess it's partly because the models and textures are much higher quality. However, there seem to be some effects and shaders that could be applied to the existing Zero-K assets, no?

Not sure if you're still talking about the site, but a lot of the units on the sites are not rendered in Spring. The maps may even be worldmachine renders (I'm unsure).
+0 / -0
quote:
The tricky part is that such lists need to be maintained, and we've barely got anyone updating the current wiki for stats changes.


Wouldn't this be pretty easy to automate. It would take a while for this to actually save time over doing it manually, but it would save the hassle of having to do it every time a something changes.
+0 / -0


3 years ago
The parameters and layout of list entries are not necessarily static. Updating stats is the easiest maintenance task for these lists, and the fact that the wiki doesn't even get that is not encouraging for the chances of more involved tasks being completed. Automation is entirely possible.
+0 / -0

3 years ago
There already exists an script to update unit stats for the wiki AFAIK. Perhaps somebody can obtain from MYrankAdminHistidine the capability to run it more regularly.
+0 / -0

3 years ago
I must say that as someone who was impressed by the website the game is much less visually attractive.

Indeed it felt like I was tricked but that's just my personal opinion
+0 / -0
3 years ago
To be fair the game is still in Alpha, they may intend to work more in the graphics later, or may be waiting until they can optimize more before cranking things up.

I can never run anything at max settings so I can't comment. What I can say, though, is that the game is very visually clean and its easy to understand what is going on and who is killing whom, like in Zero-K. That is good, and is something I feel is very deficient in Supcom for example.

Aircraft still do that thing where they have no collision and stack on top of each other though, which sucks considering AA AoE is a thing. You have to spread your aircraft manually. I hope they fix that at some point prior to release.
+0 / -0
3 years ago
quote:
I must say that as someone who was impressed by the website the game is much less visually attractive.

Indeed it felt like I was tricked but that's just my personal opinion
That's their problem. ZK has the opposite: a game much better looking than the website and that could make players not even trying... (I personally look for games 90% on steam, so would not be affected by this, but I assume not everybody does the same).
+1 / -0
Edit: Doublepost. Second one is what I meant.
+1 / -0
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