Our ReVolt Pub

Back in 2011 my website urnemanden.com closed down because of various reasons. One of them, though, was that I had no real goal with the website and neither had much valuable content on it.

A few months later I decided to try again and that's how I started this project.


Goals
I felt and still feel that the Re-Volt community is scattered across many different websites. We have no place specificially designed to introduce new users to our community as a whole and no permanent source for information and help. That was my goal with this project. I wanted a website primarily intended to introduce and help new users navigating around our community. And if possible, also help existing members by providing a source of information for everything Re-Volt related.



Initially I named the project revolt.net. Since then a lot have happened, though. I couldn't get in touch with the guy who had the domain. Meanwhile Re-Volt Zone Tracks is moving to rvzone.net and has been renamed to Re-Volt Zone. That means that my domain rvzt.net in the future no longer will function as a redirector to RVZT. So if I get to finish this project, I might move it to rvzt.net for the time being.


Visit
This weekend I managed to finish the core design. Currently there is only a front page as other pages has not been written yet. You will notice that no links will work, but that will hopefully change in the future.

visit revolt.net


Help
My abilities at web development is limited to HTML and CSS. While this seem to be enough to fullfill basic tasks, it means that the website will remain static and less interactive. If you are familiar with PHP and are willingly to help, you are more than welcome to send me a PM or reply to this topic. Anyone who master the English language is also more than welcome to help write and/or correct the content.

For the time being my own involvement in the project will be a bit low because of examns. I will make sure to respond to any suggestions and questions when I can though. As the design is still a draft, feedback/constructive critism is also more than welcome. Thank you for reading.

Some technical details:
The website is validated by W3C's validation service under HTML 4.01 Strict and CSS 2.1. While I support the use of HTML 5 and CSS 3.0 I do not want the core website to rely on it.

Everything is written from scratch using Notepad 2. Graphics are all home-brewed in Paint.NET and are subject to change anytime.

The design itself is of the fluid type meaning that a large part of the website rely on percentage values. in contrast to fixed-width designs the website adjusts and use up the whole browser window no matter the width. Fluid designs is more prone to errors though so if you find any issues, please shout out.

Compatibility
So far I have only tested the website in Chromium (WebKit) and Internet Explorer 8+ at resolutions from 1024x768 to 1920x1080. Pyves, Kenny and Jigebren reports that the website also works in Firefox and Opera. Thanks for testing!

According to arto and Phantom the website runs well from various phones. I have also tested the website on an old Nokia 7500 Prism, which shows the text fine (the browser does not support CSS). It should be said that the website isn't designed for such devices, nor any device with a screen resolution below 1024x768 though.

TO-DO:
Update images in the right menu bar.
Finishing design.
> Look into @font-face.
> Possibly merging body with background.
> Miscellaneous
Write pages.
> Link Library: Re-Volt XTG, RVA,
> Online Playing (In Progress.)
> Forums: ORP, RVL, ARM, RVTT. (Need help on the content.)
> Tracks & Cars
> Re-Volt 1.2
> Miscellaneous
> Re-Volt Videos: Search bar, Top 10, Newest Added, Submit Video. Simple version done!


Contributors:
KDL - Back-end development (php and javascript).

Well, I don't know anything about website design, but I'd certainly be willing to gather up (or create) Re-Volt videos for you. I'm totally 110% for this idea, as it's something this community definitely needs.

Also: I've got a few suggestions:
First and foremost, it could use a page on port forwarding for RV House. As we all know, it's a pain to set up, and it's a necessary evil for people to play Re-Volt. And since we've got no real definitive tutorial on it, revolt.net would be a great place for it, no?

Second, for ease of use in order to get to the IRC chat, maybe you should use this link to it?

Third, even though I know this is in an early stage of life, I don't suppose that you'd want to link people to Re-Volt Live as well as ORP and such, seeing as how it's just as active, if not in some cases more so than ORP?

Also, the site so far works fine on my Google Chrome with 1366x768 resolution. Cheers and keep up the good work Urne!

Dave-o-rama @ Feb 26 2012, 07:41 PM wrote: Third, even though I know this is in an early stage of life, I don't suppose that you'd want to link people to Re-Volt Live as well as ORP and such, seeing as how it's just as active, if not in some cases more so than ORP?

This.

---

And the site works fine for me in Chrome at 720x576.

Good website and nice design!

Works like a charm on Opera 11.61!

Works fine under latest Firefox (that is 10.0.2) though I didn't check every niche.

But what I found was this:

The sidebar to the left is also there to help you find back to any websites you may have forgotten over time. See you!

Oh and I also like the design very much. Though I still believe there are way too much Revolt websites out there, it would be much better to have a maximum of two source to go to (and for now there are at least 4).

edit: ok it seems that so far the main page is the only accessible page there anyway

Urne, all this community split-up started when some morons shitted on RVL at its beginning. I know what you're trying to do, and I have to congratulate you for that, since I've been also thinking about this splitted community some months ago. Though, I was thinking more about the French / Italian forums rather than the English Re-Volt community.

What I don't like is, although you want to make an united community as you say, that you limit yourself to ORP and RVZT. Just by looking at revolt.net site all I see is ORP links and pictures, and nothing about RVL, yet RVL is the most active forum right now with most posts and members, and you know it.

I've tried countless times to make something out of this, to try to make some ORP members join RVL, and maybe get the two forums together, but it's impossible. And unless this unite will happen, I highly doubt that anything else will work. Because let's face it, forum-related, ORP & RVL are at the "driving-wheel" right now. RVZT isn't a forum.

Our Revolt Life anyone?

Dave wrote: Well, I don't know anything about website design, but I'd certainly be willing to gather up (or create) Re-Volt videos for you. I'm totally 110% for this idea, as it's something this community definitely needs.

That would be really great if you could do that! Then I might be able to make a database of Re-Volt videos with different categories, a top 10 and a search feature. From my own experience, the first thing I do when I see a game is to find some screenshots or videos of it. So having something to show off, is very important in my opinion. ^^

Port Forwarding will definitely be a topic to cover unless Re-Volt 1.2 will switch over to WinSocket soon. As to IRC, well the link I currently use should open up the IRC client installed on your computer and connect to Austnet #revolt-chat. Thank you for the link though, I will consider switching as Zach did a quite nice job making a webchat out of it.

Of course Re-Volt Live should be mentioned. All active Re-Volt forums I can think of will be mentioned in the Forums section including RVL, RVTT, ARM and the like. I will also consider giving RVL its own space in the sidebar given its size. But personally I still consider ORP to be the closest-to-official forum though, since it is the home of Re-Volt 1.2, RV House, RVZT and the blender plug-in besides being the oldest active one too (AFAIK). This does not mean that any other forums shouldn't be mentioned though! They are all part of our community and representing the community is exactly what revolt.net is supposed to do.

@Pyves, thank you for testing it out in Opera!
@Kenny, thanks for doing a test in Firefox!

Kenny wrote: But what I found was this:

revolt.net wrote: The sidebar to the left is also there to help you find back to any websites you may have forgotten over time. See you!

Whoops, I meant the other left!
Should be fixed now.

I agree on the too-many-websites subject. I have realized though that there isn't much to do about it other than gathering them all in one place and give new users the opportunity to learn about them there. That is one of the said goals with revolt.net.

Let's just make some kind of... partnership between the two forums. ORP is rather for serious discussions, patches and stuff, while RVL is for online events, newbies and stuff like that. RVTT... does still exists? I don't think I've seen anyone there in ages! With ARM it'll also be hard, since most of the users there are clueless when it comes to English.

So yeah, I'm limited at the ORP - RVL - RVZT linkage only.
I'm truly optimistic with this project Urne, since it also was my intention to try to make something like this. Never got the time, motivation or clue about how to do it. I really hope you'll be able to!

Glad to see this project is taking good shape.

I can confirm that with Firefox it looks like your screenshot. The design is nice and clear, I particularly like the Humma banner...
My main advice for this project, as I already told you, is: keep it simple but keep it up to date.

urnemanden @ Feb 26 2012, 06:13 PM wrote:

Dave wrote: Well, I don't know anything about website design, but I'd certainly be willing to gather up (or create) Re-Volt videos for you. I'm totally 110% for this idea, as it's something this community definitely needs.

That would be really great if you could do that! Then I might be able to make a database of Re-Volt videos with different categories, a top 10 and a search feature. From my own experience, the first thing I do when I see a game is to find some screenshots or videos of it. So having something to show off, is very important in my opinion. ^^

So what type of videos exactly do you want me to round up? Gameplay? Soundtrack? Installation? Custom Tracks? All of the above?

he who hasn't finished the AI for our track wrote:With ARM it'll also be hard, since most of the users there are clueless when it comes to English.

False. When faced with crappy translation in my posts, the guys there told me themselves that most of them have an understanding of English, so that instead of crappy translation, I should just post in English. Crazy? Yes, and I'll even go fetch the link if you don't believe me, but it happened. Well, my point is that they do know English...

jig wrote:My main advice for this project, as I already told you, is: keep it simple but keep it up to date.

This. Very much this.

Jigebren wrote: My main advice for this project, as I already told you, is: keep it simple but keep it up to date.

I will definitely keep that in mind!

Dave wrote: So what type of videos exactly do you want me to round up? Gameplay? Soundtrack? Installation? Custom Tracks? All of the above?

If I can get some help on the PHP-side, all videos will be more than welcome. For now though, I think I will "keep it simple" /QUOTE and make a page with 4-5 videos showing some gameplay.

Here is my first layout sketch of the page if it was powered by PHP (ignore the danish doodles). The static HTML version will probably have a similar look, though none of the features described. In the future it could be really nice to have some sort of trailer of Re-Volt to show off as the first embedded video you see too but for now I guess we will stick to what has already been made though. What do you think?


And on another topic, how is the loading speed compared to other websites? Thanks for showing interest

urnemanden @ Feb 26 2012, 06:02 PM wrote: Initially I named the project revolt.net. Since then a lot have happened, though. I couldn't get in touch with the guy who had the domain. Meanwhile Re-Volt Zone Tracks is moving to rvzone.net and has been renamed to Re-Volt Zone. That means that my domain rvzt.net in the future no longer will function as a redirector to RVZT. So if I get to finish this project, I might move it to rvzt.net for the time being.

Wouldn't a new zackattagames entry be better, like http://revolt.zackattackgames.net?

There are a few suggestion for the site. Find a good script, and be sure to configure it on top of him. If you find a few people, and number 10 will be translated. D

Hey Urne, how's this group of videos, for a start as far as showing of Re-Volt goes? They're all 3 or 4 lap races on each of the stock tracks with decent quality, some with music, some not. Some of them are also in multiplayer, which never hurt anyone

Urne wrote:Here is my first layout sketch of the page if it was powered by PHP (ignore the danish doodles). The static HTML version will probably have a similar look, though none of the features described. In the future it could be really nice to have some sort of trailer of Re-Volt to show off as the first embedded video you see too but for now I guess we will stick to what has already been made though. What do you think?

I like that page layout. I'm not exactly sure how you're going to figure out how to reccommend videos to users, though. Are we going to have to track down every last RV video on the web and group them into categories for this site? Or do you have something else in mind?

EDIT: Maybe you should also throw in a rough gauge as to how many people are in RV House at what times? Mostly so when people come in for the first time at an odd time and find the place dead don't think something went horribly wrong in the installation process

Dave wrote: Hey Urne, how's this group of videos, for a start as far as showing of Re-Volt goes? They're all 3 or 4 lap races on each of the stock tracks with decent quality, some with music, some not. Some of them are also in multiplayer, which never hurt anyone

When I press the link youtube tells me the playlist doesn't exist. :S

Recommended videos are just handpicked videos that represents Re-Volt the best. Perhaps a video of a nice multi-player session, a video of a championship and a custom track to show off Re-Volt 1.2's features. Feel free to come with suggestions here. ^^

If this part of the website was powered by PHP, users would be able to submit videos by sending in the embed code. Currently, we will have to stick to no search bar and no new/submitted videos though. Instead we be showing only the the best videos that can give the user an idea of what the game is like.

And yes, I definitely think there should be a note in the Play Online section related to which time of day people play online.

rvtr wrote: There are a few suggestion for the site. Find a good script, and be sure to configure it on top of him. If you find a few people, and number 10 will be translated. D

If you are referring to javascript, that would be the last thing I'll add and only if absolutely necessary. Speed is also a priority for me.

nero wrote: Wouldn't a new zackattagames entry be better, like http://revolt.zackattackgames.net?

As far as I can understand, Zach is moving everything away from zackattackgames.net and over to rvzone.net soon. Besides, I think it's more convenient for me if the website is hosted on my own server. Maintenance and the like is in my own hands then, without the need to bother Zach every time I have to do something administrative.

I just searched for some Re-Volt videos on youtube and found a nice and pretty recent review of Re-Volt. It's a little long but pretty detailed and also WolfR4 and v1.2 are mentioned.

If you haven't seen it yet -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voj2M9lhGBA

urnemanden @ Feb 27 2012, 07:07 PM wrote:

Dave wrote: Hey Urne, how's this group of videos, for a start as far as showing of Re-Volt goes? They're all 3 or 4 lap races on each of the stock tracks with decent quality, some with music, some not. Some of them are also in multiplayer, which never hurt anyone

When I press the link youtube tells me the playlist doesn't exist. :S

Fixed.

Urne wrote:Recommended videos are just handpicked videos that represents Re-Volt the best. Perhaps a video of a nice multi-player session, a video of a championship and a custom track to show off Re-Volt 1.2's features. Feel free to come with suggestions here. ^^

All of this works for me. May I suggest the video for Nebula Girl for showing off 1.2's features (If I can find it, which for some reason I can't)?

OK, I give you only the suggestion.

@rvtr: No problem, I appreciate the input nevertheless. ^^

@Kenny: That was a great watch. Definitely deserves a space as a recommended video IMO!

@Dave: That sounds like a good idea. If you find it, please link it!
I also checked out the videos on the playlist and some of them will definitely be useable. Do you think you can narrow down the list further? The most important thing is that the video is either an entertaining watch or of good quality.

I found out that the download boxes wasn't centered properly, so that has been fixed now. I am also looking into making the gameplay videos page and a static version should be done by the end of this week.

Mayhaps include a video from there, too?
http://www.youtube.com/user/CWRVL
Just to have something that shows custom vehicles running on custom track.

Today I managed to finish the current static version of the Re-Volt Gameplay Videos page. It's still a little bit rough in the edges, so feel free to suggest changes. Thanks to everybody who has suggested videos, but for now I have only chosen a very few to represent Re-Volt. This is because adding new videos currently requires a new HTML page every time + updating all existing video pages with thumbnails. This can be automated through php, but as I do not have the ability to code php I will leave the static version as it is for now. If you think any video needs to be replaced with something better, please don't hesitate from suggesting though!

Thanks to Sebr, nuc, Kirbyguy222, TheDrSnoopy & phreakindee for the uploaded videos btw.

Citywalker wrote: Mayhaps include a video from there, too?
http://www.youtube.com/user/CWRVL
Just to have something that shows custom vehicles running on custom track.

I will add your channel to the list of videos I should add in the future for now. Thanks for the suggestion.

The next page I will focus on is the Forums section. Hopefully I can finish that in this week too. ^^

Good job and a useful web-page I think! Works well on Nokia N9's browser too, so good job.

Arto wrote:Good job and a useful web-page I think! Works well on Nokia N9's browser too, so good job.

Thank you! Glad to hear that it doesn't look that bad on cellphones either. It's not my primary focus, but I'll try to keep compatibility.

No development on the project this week, since my examns are getting closer. Instead I will show off my current plans for the forums section.



Each forum gets its own space, with a headline, an image, a quick overview of what the forum features, and a description telling shortly what the forum's key focus is / can offer. As the next week probably will be busy as well I might keep things more simple and only focus on the content for now and re-use the design from the front page. First I need to change my workflow though as everytime I do a change to the overall design, I have to repeat it on every single page manually. I also got some feedback from a web developer, who claimed there was need for more whitespace - I do agree with that, so I might make some design changes once I have solve aforementioned workflow issue.

By the way, could someone get me a large sized version of the Re-Volt Live logo in 32-bit *.png? I plan to add it to the sidebar soon. I will also change the front page so that #3 Join the forum discussions links to the forums section and speaks more generally about our community forums. I hope you like these changes.

I hope this one works for you my friend:



I'm in for any help you need in this project urne. I'm very excited about realising the goals of the site, since that is what most of us have been working on in the last years but without a permanent source for help with up-to-date info.

And yes, I definitely think there should be a note in the Play Online section related to which time of day people play online.

Basically, if we want to increase the number of players at one time and meet all together, europeans should come at night and americans in the afternoon. Asians come in the morning in a reduced number. I also consider critical for the site goals to make a focus on Setting up Re-Volt and Port Forwarding. I can help on that as you know.

Davey wrote:May I suggest the video for Nebula Girl for showing off 1.2's features (If I can find it, which for some reason I can't)?

Hil is still working on the RV1.2 video for Nebula Girl. Found the Phoenix version if you need it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yQnjDSYyB0

Edit: ReVolt.net works greatly on my Sony Ericsson Xperia with Opera Mini installed, and_it_loads_fast.

Hey urnemanden ~

Do you have any plans to create a section for tutorials that cover such subjects as car and track making? I have one for cars that is almost ready to post and we are trying to get information together about tracks over at RVL, so that will eventually need a home as well.

Did you want to include this kind of thing on this site?

Would you mind adding a link to Re-volt Wiki on your website, maybe add it on the sidebar of the home page?

@Phantom
Thank you for the logo, I appreciate the help! Also glad to hear that revolt.net performs well on your cellphone. I will add your test results to the list. ^^

Phantom wrote: I'm in for any help you need in this project urne. I'm very excited about realising the goals of the site, since that is what most of us have been working on in the last years but without a permanent source for help with up-to-date info.

Thanks for the offer! If you want to help, perhaps I could get you started on writing draft-content? How do you feel about that?

Phantom @ Portforwarding Guide wrote:I also consider critical for the site goals to make a focus on Setting up Re-Volt and Port Forwarding. I can help on that as you know.

MythicMonkey @ Track/Car making guides wrote: Do you have any plans to create a section for tutorials that cover such subjects as car and track making? I have one for cars that is almost ready to post and we are trying to get information together about tracks over at RVL, so that will eventually need a home as well.

Did you want to include this kind of thing on this site?

Such content would be great to have on revolt.net! Right now I am focusing on the website's primary goal which is to introducce new users to the Re-Volt community. But the secondary goal of revolt.net will definitely be to provide help for existing members too. Since it sounds like a help source is much needed, I might push this goal a little higher so we can get started on this part of the website sooner. If you have any content or wish to work on some guides, feel free to do so and send me them. They do not have to be HTML - BBCode (forum format), *.ODT or plain text should do.

Pranav wrote: Would you mind adding a link to Re-volt Wiki on your website, maybe add it on the sidebar of the home page?

I will do this when I add the Re-Volt Live forum to the sidebar too. If the sidebar ends up being too long I might just save the Re-Volt Wiki to the Link Library though. Thank you for the suggestion!

Nice urne, the website is looking quite good. As a small suggestion, don't you think external links should open in a new window / tab?

@Huki: I am not sure. If they were simply looking for a specific website and remembered that revolt.net had that website listed, it could be an annoyance for them that their browser is behaving differently when they left-click the link. I think most users would middle-click on the link if they intended to open the link in a new tab - that is at least what I do . If others share the same opinion as you though, I will change the behavior so external links always open in a new tab.

Time for some news. Thanks to KDL revolt.net is now using php which means that things such as the sidebar and the overall design has become so much easier to update for me. Furthermore he has automated the Re-Volt Gameplay Videos section making it much easier to add new videos for me. So while there might not be any visual changes to revolt.net, KDL definitely deserves more than just his name in the contributors list. That's all I can do for now though.

I have updated the sidebar with the Re-Volt Live logo - I will try to set time off for finishing the forum section page next week. Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far!

I'm with you, urnemanden. I prefer to make my own decisions about how to open links. I'm glad to hear things are progressing.

MythicMonkey wrote:I'm with you, urnemanden. I prefer to make my own decisions about how to open links. I'm glad to hear things are progressing.

In that case I will keep the link behavior the default. Thank you for the input!

Because of the Easter break I finally have had some time to work on revolt.net, today. The layout of the forum section is now almost done and as a result of that I have removed all forum related entries from the sidebar. The sidebar was getting way too large anyway in my opinion.



In the forum section the oldest or most active forums in the Re-Volt community receive their own space to show themselves off. Right now each space consist of a title, a thumbnail to the left, a short description and a link to the front page. The list is sorted alphabetically for now, but I am considering dividing the list up between international forums and country-specific forums. Any opinions on this would be wonderful. I initially also planned some way to show off some highlights telling one or two things about what sort of content you will find on the forum. For now I will keep things simple though.

Everything you currrently see in the forum section of revolt.net is just placeholders right now, so if anyone wants to help me writing descriptions or creating thumbnails, please feel free to do so.

I was planning to create a smaller banner for ORP with the current design, for example to update the mini banner on RV the Wiki. If you plan to use a standard banner size like those we can find on this page, just let me know and I can supply you the ORP one.

@jigebren
I have sent you a PM related to this. Thanks for the offer!

I have removed the sample text in the forum section and written some text for each forum. Since I am only active here at Our Re-Volt Pub, it is hard for me to describe the rest. Could someone please enlighten me on what each forum's purpose is? Anything else you may think is relevant or irrelevant to the forum section is also more than welcome.

Link to Forum Section

Contributions are also more than welcome. I have pasted each forum's text below so anyone easily can edit it and reply with the modified text to this topic.

revolt.net @ Alias Re-Volt Master wrote:Alias Re-Volt Master is a large italian speaking community founded by TheFactory82 back in 2006.

revolt.net @ Our Re-Volt Pub wrote:The place to be if you want to be kept up to date on the latest developments in the community. Our Re-Volt Pub hosts the discussion threads of Re-Volt 1.2, RV House and even revolt.net itself.

revolt.net @ Re-Volt Live wrote:Re-Volt Live is a large forum initially created because (?). Today the forum cover tutorials, tracks, cars and has been hosting several online championships.

revolt.net @ Re-Volt Tip Top wrote:A large site intended for the french speaking Re-Volt fans.

Sorry about the lack of and perhaps incorrect content right now but I hope it creates some sort of foundation for you to write on top of.

EDIT: I have now also updated the front page to reflect the new forum section.

Another update from me. I have discontinued working on the Forums section for now, but feel more than welcome to help me out at filling those blank holes for RVL, ARM & RVTT.

Instead I have begun preparing the first edition of "Play Online". To get started with this page will only provide some information on how to to play Re-Volt online over RV House and give the user a few external sources from where he can get help on the port forwarding. Later on this page will be updated to cover Re-Volt over LAN, Re-Volt over other clients than RV House and have its own guide on the portforwarding stuff besides the personal help offered via e-mail/chat/TeamViewer.



For now though Play Online is composed of content and the same layout as on the rest of the pages for consistency & simplicity. I have basically finished writing the text, so all there is left is to replace those placeholder images you see from the Forum section and improve the reception image. Will be done tomorrow if I get the time.

The link to Re-Volt 1.2 has also been updated so users now can download the latest version directly from revolt.net.