New features

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

I like it Richard, i think Construction HQ looks great - although of course I don't know what else you've got planned for it - i'd probably leave it as is. I do like the little flash animation between the photos, with the bubble effect - is it possible to randomise the effects so it does something a little different once in a while?

[Gazza]

Hmm, but if you mix up the transitions too much you end up with something akin to an amateur Windows Movie Maker clip, akin to the one made famous in this thread, sans Pete Murray of course. As for the flash thing, is there any way of speeding up the transitions, and making it so you can pause on a photo. The Bubbles thing does sort of match the paint splat theme you have going throughout the site though. The page itself works fine, good job.

[Richard]

I used the bubbles transition to fit in with the site. I do have a feeling it might get a bit tiresome after a while, in which case a standard fade will probably replace it. Unfortunately there's no way to pause or speed up the transition. I too would like these features. I also decided to reorder galleries so that each individual page goes from oldest to newest as well. I felt this made more sense with the way everything now works. Also makes going through construction updates a lot easier, a lot less back and forth and ties in nicely with the Construction HQ 'Parkz Updates' section which categorises all updates for each project by date.

[Richard]

Introducing ParkzTV Probably the question I get asked most is when is the Videos page coming back? As most of you will have seen, yesterday a new video player system in a condensed form was introduced to display some Hollywood Stunt Driver footage. In the process of this I came up with the design for a video platform and style that I feel is consistent with the site's overall image. As such, in the near future we will launch ParkzTV, our portal for theme park videos. It will be a staff-driven feature (though we may accept user submissions down the track, it won't be an automated process like galleries), made up of high quality widescreen productions. As technology progresses, HD productions definitely aren't out of the question. To give you an idea of quality, yesterday's Hollywood Stunt Driver footage will be the resolution offered initially, but in terms of picture quality you can expect much crisper images as that footage went through quite a process. Normally we'll be working with raw footage so less is lost along the way. Much like the video system on Roller-Coaster.com.au, it'll be Flash-based so all you'll need is the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. For subscribers wondering about the (ridiculously) delayed DVD, I think with the system here we have an opportunity to finally get it out there. The DVD was actually finished a long time ago but was lost in a harddrive failure so I ended up having to re-render the entire film and then redo all the menus etc. which is a very cumbersome procedure. With ParkzTV I'll be able to roll out segments every few weeks and make them available to subscribers to view first for a period of say 2-4 weeks. If any subscribers do want a hard copy of the DVD then we'll be able to arrange that down the track but it'll be after the footage goes live on ParkzTV. Unlike Roller-Coaster.com.au's system, with the exception of subscriber-designated videos (such as in cases as above, plus occasionally where we've got footage which for one reason or another we can't release to the general public), all videos will be available for viewing to all users. Whether it requires a login or not will depend how we go down the track with bandwidth. I'm not entirely sure when it'll be completed and unveiled as this time of year can be a bit hectic but if all goes well it won't be more than a few weeks away.

[themeparkgc]

I like the new homepage Richard. It would be cool if the image could be random every time the page loads up. If you picked a selection of about 20 photos I think this could work well. Just have the paint splats and logo in a different div layer on the webpage and have the image underneath. Just in case you didn't know, the increased thumbnail size for photos on the homepage has affected the latest photo iframe on the forum pages. Part of the image is cut off. EDIT: Fixed now. All in all good job, it looks great.

Edited March 14, 2010 by themeparkgc

[Richard]

I do plan on having the image randomised. Originally I was just mucking around to see if the idea would work but it looked good enough to go live. It'll eventually be a transparent overlay as you suggest.. most likely once I get around to sorting out a handful of images to do the job. Thanks for letting me know about the thumbnails... didn't notice that until you pointed it out. For anyone that's interested, I anticipate a few small changes like this happening over the coming weeks/months. Nothing terribly major but after a couple of years I figure the site could do with some freshening up.

[Gazza]

With the transparent overlay idea, you could do something like the pinboard of photos, but have one of the photos as a random one that sits behind a blank frame on the pinboard...You'd probably set some parameters like excluding construction photos, and positioning portrait photos to center themselves and crop the top and bottom.

Edited March 15, 2010 by Gazza

[themeparkgc]

^ or you could be really cool and make a whole load of div layers (embedded within one another) so all the images on the pinboard could be random:

1. Pinboard background
2. Random Image 1
3. Frame for Image 1 & pins
4. Random Image 2
5. Frame for Image 2 & pins
6. etc
7. Paint splats, "Your thrill magazine. Online"

I guess it would be similar to how the original Photoshop (or other image editor with layers) file would be like.