Hi everyone

The last few weeks I've been slowly working on a new layout for the website intended to go live simultaneously with 2.10 final (hopefully next weekend).

It's recognizably similar, but somewhat more streamlined and more consistent with the the new 2.10 graphical profile (eg. featuring the parchment logo and the Black Chancery font for those having it installed). I've also updated the forum to phpBB 3.0, including a new template making it match the rest of the site.

I still got a few quirks to sort out in the phpBB template, but I'm interested in what you think of the new layout overall. You can see my work-in-progress at dev.civproject.net (I'm not hyperlinking not to attract the attention of google etc).

Please don't use the forum at the dev site for anything serious (but feel free to test the new capabilities), as it is just a (slightly dated) copy of this forum, and any changes will disappear when I migrate for real...

Ok, you want opinion, here it is:



- You might like the chancery font, but in my opinion it's a very bad font for this purpose. I looks very medieval to me. I would remove the font totally from this project. The Miandra fits much and much better.
(For my own purpose I'm even changing the Quickcharts to have this font removed too.)



- I do like the new layout of the website though. I's very clear
The new Forum-layout is somewhat too large to me. I'd even prefer the old look, eventhough it's outof place to the rest of the website.
You could decrease the header's font sizes one or two steps, for all pages.




- For the rest:
I would make a clear buton or direction to the download-section at the home-page.

At this point, things like historical links and images seem more important.
But I'd put the actual project more in importance.
For things like these I always make a top 10 of importance for each page to decide in which order they appear on a website.


- I'd put a nice photograph of the mapboard (IN USE - Not a graphic) (some that has not been posted yet) at the homepage. This tells each new visitor in ONE second what this website is about.
Thus a group of people playing the game, having fun.



- Is "Advances" now officially changed to "Advancements"? I have to update the Advances Strategy Explorer too, and some attributes texts too. I thought this change was off.


- Choosing the images for the commodities, I'd look for the best images. I'd prefer Gemstones, Glass, Marble, Copper and Gold. Opinions may vary, but there are btter options than the current. Lacquer, Livestock, Obsidian...

As stated before, I prefer medieval to modern, but if you find an antique-looking font I'd like that even better. But as noone has found anything in the last ten months (since I started asking for better branding proposals), I'm not too optimistic of finding anything for the next week, but I'd love to be proven wrong...


Thanks, that was the idea...


Unlike the old layout, I'm trying to use em rather than px for font sizes, so you should be able to use your browser to resize it freely (eg. ctrl++ and ctr+- in Firefox). Though I could set the default slightly smaller (1.0em rather than 1.1em) if you like.


Exactly what, except for the font size, is your problem with the new style?


Do you have Black Chancery installed? Because, unfortunately, the fallback fonts for the headings looks slightly larger than Black Chancery at the same font size. I'll look in to other options for fallback fonts...


Putting it in the menu, rather than having to hunt stuff down on each page, was done for exactly that purpose. Perhaps even more is necessary though...

Should I make the Download link stand out a bit (other colour) or should I add something to the front page? Or do you have a better concrete idea?


I placed "meta stuff" to the left and "project details" to the right. I could move "Mapboard" through "Download" to the right, below "Home", and "News" through "Images" to the right, below "Forum". What do you think?


Great idea!
Looking through the images I have, the best seems to be this one:

Not perfect, but probably better than nothing. I'll see if I can take a better one at LinCon in two weeks.


The change isn't off, it just hasn't taken place yet (as I've spent my time on the website rather than rulebook). So we are still in the limbo world between Advance, Advancement and Civilization Card.


I only worried about including both old (AdvCiv) and new (non-AdvCiv) commodities. But you are right, your list does look better.

quick reply: I would include both advCiv's and nonadv'civs. People coming for the first time will recognize the previous names and also see the new addition.

Exactly! That is why I worried about it (and made sure I addressed that worry).

Unfortunately I didn't worry about the visual impression, thus the poor one. But you fixed that for me...

By the way, forgot to mention, you're doing a great job restyling the website.

OK, on with the criticism!:D

Firstly, visitors of websites are lazy and ignorant. Please forget everything when it comes to: "Do you have this or that installed" Things should work without installing additional things. Even when you tell your users to donwload and install stuff, people won't do this. Just statistics. Even autodownload/install may be set as not permitted.

This is how it looks at my browser (firefox)

Current forum:

New Forum:



To me the new forum's font is way to big. That's why I prefer the current one. eventhough blue and white don't fit the look of the rest of the website.


When it comes to: "You can adjust the font yourself", I redirect to the lazy-ness or ignorance of the user as stated above.



About "Chancery Black". Taste is taste. Knowledge is Knowledge. I am a graduated Graphic Designer with years of experience and fonts like these are off immediately when discussing this with collegues. These are not used on websites, but maybe used as a single title or name, never several names. It just irritates.

(I see people wearing tattoos of words made of by caligraphed capital letters.

It just looks disgusting, but do they know? no, the tattoo-artist just only had those letters available, and you don't tattoo in arial. These letters are just so hard to read. Never made for (plain)texts in the first place, but the first letter of a text (miniature))



You might not like modern fonts, that's ok. But the only classical fonts that covers our game, is any Times New Roman-lookalike.
I would say something like this:


The font is called "Castellar"


This font is based on the roman/latin texts.

This is the first fonts looking like our modern alphabet.


The Phoenician Alphbet is too different:
(our modern alphabet was based on this.



This is all I have to say about the font. You don't have to listen to this ofcourse, but I strongly advise you to leave the Chancery behind.
(it looks amateuristically)


You don't have to keep the titles as 'text'. Making it all look better you could use images of the words. I can help you with this.


About the download link: Making it 'bold' or another colour could do the trick. You gotta experiment with this.

The new order of buttons is much better to me. more logical.


The photograph will do for now. But to promote the project, we should come up with a better one. Why not set the game up on your own in a room somewhere. check to get the best light, ask a few friends to 'act like playing a turn or so' and make a real good high-ress picture. This can ALWAYS be used for any promotional thing and is a real good eyecather on the website.

I mean, the board is what gets people's attraction in the first place. (this goes for any boardgame)






The new commodities look great. I think you've made the same descission for the advances. An old one a new one. Both one of the 'better' ones.
Maybe make clickable thumnails of those. I can hardly read the texts, and also this could attract people. (tha's why I started to make the whole project look good in the first place. A game is fun, but you gotta have enough enthousiast people to play it)

I've been playing a bit.

This took me just 2 minutes. Just an indication of the direction I'm thinking.

OK, so your only problems with the new forum is fonts and sizes. That can certainly be fixed. I'll get back to you when I have a new suggestion ready.

As for adjusting it yourself, that is very important to me, as I almost always have to do it myself to be able to read the text. There is more than one site out there which I had to abandon because the text was unreadable small, and it was impossible to increase it myself.

As for using images rather than text, that is possible on the main site, and in the menu, but not on the forum, as that is database driven user generated content.

I played a bit with the Download link, but colourizing it just made it look out of place, and bold/italic made it look too special (as if it was the only thing special about the entire parchment). So no cigar there...

I'll include the image. Do you think it should go before or after the introductory texts?
An image on that page is btw good for consistency, now every page on the left parchment has images...



Finally some concrete suggestions! I've been waiting nine months for these.

Actually I quite like them. I wasn't too thrilled about you Castellar sample, but this looks quite good. And the stone slab background would look great at a logo too (though one would have to find a larger stone slab image, so one can fit "The Expansion Project" on a second line under "CIVILIZATION"), and could probably bee extended too the the site links as well (using one single-line stone slab per link). For the rulebooks we should probably remove the parchment and just putting the logo on top of a blank page, with plain black text at the lower half (with the booklet name and version). Switching the logo on the map and the font of the quick charts is trivial. Don't know exactly what to do with the trade card back though. I don't think a stone slab is appropriate there, so perhaps keeping the parchment, but changing the text, or perhaps even include the stone-slab-logo on the parchment...

That is Castellar with outlines, isn't it? And do you have some stone slab images for me to play with? (I can't seem to find any good by goggling)

Or would you even like to elaborate this two minute exercise into a branding proposal yourself? I think I'd prefer that, as that gives me less work and probably a better result...

Regarding fonts.

I agree with Flo. A Garald (as we call them in Sweden, probably Renesaince Antiqua in english, though spelled correctly) is probably the best way to go. This corresponds to the old greek and roman eras way of writing.

I actually discussed the font issue IRL a couple a days ago without being aware of this thread.

Regarding fonts, I've been doing some reading on that subject.

To me it seams we should use an elaborate Old Style font for the logo and headings, and a Transitional font for printed text bodies and a Sans Serif for online text bodies.
Transitional and Sans Serif fonts are non issues (Times New Roman and Arial will do, or their free lookalikes Liberation Serif and Liberation Sans). Finding a decorative Old Style font seems harder though, as most elaborate fonts are Blackletter fonts (such as Black Chancery) and most Old Style fonts are very plain (such as Garamond). In fact, I haven't got any installed on my computer (emulated Windows installs not counted, haven't checked those yet) and found none through goggling, but Flo has shown us one (Castellar), so I guess it'll have to do.

one quick thing during my daytime job

I worked with a enlgish translator today and asked him about the "advance/advancement' thing.

In his opinion "advancement" is wrong in any way.

So "Civilization Advance" is the right word to use.

Well, I've looked it up in my brand new Concise Oxford English Dictionary (the closest thing to a normative source of the English language in existence), which I bought for the express purpose of solving subtle language problems in CivProject, and found (amongst other) the following definitions:

The word "advance" has nine different meanings (four as a verb, four as a noun and one as an adjective), while the word "advancement" has three different meanings (all as a noun). There is exactly one overlap between the words, and that is the meaning we want. So we could use either, but should probably decide for one and stick with it (as it is confusing to use multiple different words for one thing).

ok

I asked a professional translator, a native speaking englishman, explained him in what whay the word is used, and he replied with what I said.

Better listen to him instead of looking it up cause that way it's never applied.

To be honest, I've read enough poor professional translations that being a "professional translator" don't automatically earn you any bonus points from me. However, being a "native English speaker" does give bonus points, but then the authors of my dictionary are also native English speakers, most of them even professors at one of the worlds most prestigious universities (which imho gives more bonus points than professional translator).

That said, while I prior to your post thought "advancement" was the only correct option, I now recognize that both are correct options, though I'm not (yet) sure which one is optimal. The fact that "advance" is used more frequently than "advancement" in the current rules, and that I'm a bit conservative about changing the rulebook unnecessarily, is to it's advantage.

However, when I see the term "Civilization Advance" out of context (such as in a heading or link), my first association is always the verb form of advance (eg "make or cause to make progress [of a Civilization]") rather than the noun form (eg "a [Civilization] development or improvement"). That might only be because I'm not a native speaker, but if native speakers also make the same first association then "advancement" might be a better option than "advance", despite what your translator says, as both options are correct (though most certainly only one option is optimal, I'm just not sure of which one).

That said, we really need to clean up the rulebook in either case, as it currently is a mix of "civilization card", "advance", "civilization advance"...

How about translating all into hieroglyphs or cuneiform?