Comic CD

[AndersW]

A while back, there was a suggestion that a CD could be made of DMFA. Either done by readers or by Amber herself.

Well, Amber has been busy, and no one ran with the idea, so we (my minion and I) have decided to do it. Tick... tick... tick. Ok, we're done. Yep, a complete portable archive of DMFA.

And we're NOT going to give it to you. "WHAT! Are you insane sadists?" we hear you cry.
What we're going to do -- is to give it to Amber. We don't have a lot of money, so we are donating our time and work. Our hope is that the result will be something that Amber can duplicate and sell. Perhaps with additional content. That's up to Amber.

So why are we telling you now? To stir up some interest, and to give you a chance to look at a demo version. Go to
www.littlelevers.com/dmfa/AmberDemo.zip
and grab the file (13 megabytes) and unzip it.
This will give you a demo version of the archive, limited in 2 ways:

- it only includes the first 5 arcs, up through comic 63
- the color pictures in the Cast and Demonology sections have been degraded. (We ran them through the "Artist Vision" filter...)

The final version will of course have all the arcs and all the pictures in original quality.

At the moment, "Abel's Story" has not been included, because Amber was considering the idea of making it into a book. The idea of this project is to make money for Amber, not to ruin a possible market.

All the web-related links have been taken out, like the "Forum" and "Links." "Art", and the "Downloads" sections have been left out.

But something new has been added. There is now a "Search" function that gives you a page with all the dialog in DMFA. (Only first 5 arcs in the demo version.) You can use your browser's search capability to find text, and links are given for each page. Bonus!

So, download the demo and try it out. Comments are welcome - much better to fix problems at this stage, right?. And consider - would you buy the complete version on a CD from Amber?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

For the added features, yes.

[Damaris]

That's pretty flippin' sweet, Anders.  I'm going to have to check out the demo.

[Tapewolf]

Well, I'm a somewhat obsessive collector of DMFA memorabilia so if it did exist, I'd certainly be interested.
I notice that the secret stuff is missing... presumably the bonus material would incorporate those?

[GabrielsThoughts]

thank you for showing me how to set up a data cd....it's not much different than a webpage actually I'm kinda surprised.

are you planning to rig the CD to execute the website or are you just going to upload the folder to the CD?


EDIT: do you know if it is Mac/Linux/Phantom system compatible? 

[AndersW]

thank you for showing me how to set up a data cd....it's not much different than a webpage actually I'm kinda surprised.

EDIT: do you know if it is Mac/Linux/Phantom system compatible? 

Thats because it is a web page.  Therefore it should work on any system with a web browser.

I notice that the secret stuff is missing... presumably the bonus material would incorporate those?

We left it out because it would be too easy to find the secret pages using a file browser.


Some things we are looking at doing are making the image in the upper-left random like it is on the site.  The site uses php to make it random, but that won't work for the CD.  So we need to come up with some JavaScript to make it random.

Another thing we are looking at is the fact that the last time Amber talked about a CD she indicated that she might want to add commentary to the comics.  So for that we plan to use a show/hide commentary button to keep the page uncluttered.  An example of something like this is seen in the comic Conserned. It has a Hide/show Notes button under the image.

[RobbieThe1st]

We left it out because it would be too easy to find the secret pages using a file browser.

hehe. I would do that. Heck, if I did get the CD, I would probably go through it with a file-browser/image browser because that's just how I am.

Oh, on that note:
How are you organising your comic image files? One directory for each set of images(one for main DMFA, one for Abel, one for Bonus stuff, that sort of thing)?

Some things we are looking at doing are making the image in the upper-left random like it is on the site.  The site uses php to make it random, but that won't work for the CD.  So we need to come up with some JavaScript to make it random.

Random code? Here, this ought to work:

Code Select Expand


<img id='randomimage' src='./image_displayed_if_js_is_disabled.png'>
<script language='Javascript'>
var imageList = [];
imageList[0] = './image1.png';
imageList[1] = './image2.png';
imageList[2] = './image3.png'; //and so forth.


//active script
var randomValue = Math.round(Math.random()*(imageList.length - 1));
document.getElementById('randomimage').src = imageList[randomValue];
</script>

To add more images, simply add more "imageList[*NUM*] = '*PATH TO IMAGE*';" lines.

I could have probably done it multiple different ways, but I just typed this out. I tested this on both FF3 & IE6, so it ought to work on most browsers - and if JS is disabled, it would display the IMG SRC value right at the top there.

If you want to integrate this script into an IMG tag you already have, all you need to do is add the "id='randomimage'" segment to it. Also, the script portion has to be below where your IMG tag is or it won't work.

If you need multiple random images on the same page you are simply going to have to change all instances of "imageList", and "randomimage" to something else.


Simple, short & sweet. What more could you ask for?


-RobbieThe1st

[rt]

That's pretty sweet.

You might want to shove all the top level headers/.html/images in a drawer of its own (likely to break every thing else), since finding the index.html takes some looking. At 700+ comics its going to be even worse

(it also created a bit of a mess when i extracted with out the 'to its own folder' option *delete**delete**delete*)

[Faerie Alex]

Nifty. Just a couple of things. The "Hybrid Genetics" pages (except for the first one) lack the "-" between Archive, Search, and Cast. A quick (i.e. random) search suggests that the problem is limited to these.

The other question I have is in regards to the index.htm. Will the final version keep as its index file, a copy of DMFA's top page, or will it have some kind of different content? Just, what I thought was that it would become out-of-date quickly the way it is now. Besides, it might be cool to have something unique to the CD there. And I do agree with rt, it would be better IMHO to make the index file more obvious. Something even like an autorun.exe, although that would only work for Windows users. (There has to be some Mac/Linux equivalent, I just don't know what it is.)

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

(There has to be some Mac/Linux equivalent, I just don't know what it is.)

usually autorun.inf, if written well, will work for Linux as well. Spawning your favourite browser with the html file, etc etc.

[GabrielsThoughts]

would it be easier to make a pdf of all the comics, or is pdf not universal?

[RobbieThe1st]

would it be easier to make a pdf of all the comics, or is pdf not universal?

PDF might work, however HTML will work on just about anything. PDF is limited to things that have an Adobe plugin(I believe). Also, I find it just plain annoying attempting to read through a PDF - HTML is nicer by far.


Somewhat unrelatedly, this topic got me thinking in the direction of: When reading comics, what is important to me? The answer is being able to go through the pages fairly fast, generally without moving the mouse. Having to wait for a comic to load can be a problem, and having to find and click on a constantly-moving next/prev link is generally annoying if comic sizes change.

Now, comic load time will be negligible, being as this is reading off a CD(copying everything to your HD would improve response even more if desired).

Moving through the list of comics however *is* a problem - I really haven't seen much in the way of a good way of doing this - Sequential Art's method is the best I have seen in a webcomic.

Due to this, when I am reading webcomics I download the entire webcomic and use IrfanView to go through the comics. IrfanView allows me to use the left & right arrow keys for next/previous, and as long as the image doesn't fill the screen, allows me to use my mouse scrollwheel to quickly speed through the comics.

How could I implement this in a browser-based reader? JavaScript. Now, I haven't looked into using the scrollwheel yet, although keystrokes are entirely possible - I just threw together a Proof of Concept which works properly, although the graphical layout leaves something to be desired & there are a couple of bugs. Note that, due to it being a PoC, it only has a limited list of comics(I happened to have this list on hand), and there may be a few which don't work(in the <100s).
http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/DMFA/listofcomicsjs.html
Check it out. Its entirely done using JavaScript, and even though the images are web-based, I am getting good response with a Satellite connection(~800ms ping).


-RobbieThe1st

[AmigaDragon]

Somewhat unrelatedly, this topic got me thinking in the direction of: When reading comics, what is important to me? The answer is being able to go through the pages fairly fast, generally without moving the mouse. Having to wait for a comic to load can be a problem, and having to find and click on a constantly-moving next/prev link is generally annoying if comic sizes change.

Some comics have the navigation buttons above the strip, and some even have it both above and below. This way the buttons don't move with respect to the size of the strip.

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Now playing on Winamp: Gioacchino Rossini - The Journey to Rheims Overture (Classical Minnesota Public Radio)
via FoxyTunes

[RobbieThe1st]

Some comics have the navigation buttons above the strip, and some even have it both above and below. This way the buttons don't move with respect to the size of the strip.

That's true, though you still run into trouble if the comic is longer than the page. At least on the upper side, when you scroll back up to the top you go back to the same spot. Top or both is better than the bottom, I will give you that, but still... In this age of Javascript on everything, couldn't there be a Better Way, especially for archive-reading.

-Robbie

[Tiger_T]

You could always make the comicpage itself a link to the next page. Thus clicking on it would bring you to the next page.

[M]

This is really really cool. I'd totally buy a CD if it became available.