Bishoujo review website, seek advice

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#21

Whew, implementing stylesheets was not as hard as I imagined it would be, the unix command to change permission was killing me though, I was wondering for a long time why none of my external stylesheet CSS were being implemented :stuck_out_tongue: Anyways, now the reviews look a lot cleaner, I did minor grammar corrections here and there, made changes to the adverbial forms, now I need everyone’s feedback on the reviews, send me praises, criticisms, any kind of feedback at all and I will see to it that they be addressed. My reviews can be accessed at two sites that mirror each other’s content.

http://www.princeton.edu/~yeouhsu/bishoujo

and at

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~yeoushiu/bishoujo

Praises, criticisms, feedback, questions should be sent to yeoushiu@eden.rutgers.edu">yeoushiu@eden.rutgers.edu</A> or <A HREF="mailto:yeouhsu@princeton.edu.

^^ Thanks so much ^^

By the way, I’m not proficient in chatroom speak, what does imao mean?

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-19-2002).]

#22
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
By the way, I'm not proficient in chatroom speak, what does imao mean?

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-19-2002).]

laughing my a** (*cough* #^^#;)off

#23
quote:
Originally posted by Zorian:
laughing my a** (*cough* #^^# [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]off

Ahh, sou. How do you feel about the reviews Zorian? I hope I can keep the pace of my reviews abreast with my Japanese study. Maybe I should try to maintain a weekly diary on the website while I'm in Japan, keep people informed of the latest.

#24
quote:

Day 1 : Wow things are really stange here, I never expected it to be like this. Nothing at all looks like the way it did from B-games and Anime. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
Have good trip any how and remember any cute school girls you find are way too young to bring home. BTW send back lots of travel pictures too.

I had to write a one minute speech for my Japanese oral exam. Topic: Your plans for this summer (Natsu yasumi no yotei). I've always worn that T-shirt 'Looking for a Japanese girlfriend (Nihonjin Kanojo Gasyuuchu)' walking around the place and all the senseis have seen it, actually wanted to use it for the skit last semester but we changed the protagonist so it would be really bizarre to have her wear it. Anyways, I kept up the running gag in the one-minute oral speech:

Nihon ni sunda toki nani o shiyou kana. Watashi wa kanojo ga inai node, nihonjin no kanjo o sagasu deshou.

I wonder what I will do during my stay in Japan? I don't have a girlfriend right now, so I will probably be on the lookout for a Japanese girlfriend.

I was asked about my hobby for the last speech so I talked about Anime and Bishoujo games. More power to me, disseminating the gospel of Bishoujo games through the academic upper eschelons ^_^

It was recommended that we bring cameras, so I might bring a whole bunch of disposable ones since they can be developed easily as I understand, but I am not sure that I will have access to a scanner so you might have to wait until the conclusion of the program before you get to see the pictures.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-20-2002).]

#25

By the bye, I finished two more reviews, they are for Tokimeki Check-In! and Amy’s Fantasies. They have been uploaded as of 7:30 PM EST. Couldn’t get to a terminal with a functional floppy disk drive until now. I hope I can have the embedded image sources ready by tomorrow so that my reviews look a little bit spiffier, right now they seem so naked.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-20-2002).]

#26
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Ahh, sou. How do you feel about the reviews Zorian?

They're pretty good imo. ^^

#27

Here’s another question: what image compression format do you webmasters and webmistresses use? I only have 10 MB at my disposal at each site, so if I juggle it very carefully I can have one host the other’s and that way I can have more images, but space is still at a premium so I can’t host a whole lot. I notice Rowena has just thumbnail-like images at the bottom of the reviews and no full size images whatsoever, but I know what I likes and I like to see bigger images. Is JPEG the best, or are there better alternatives?

#28

How long does it take to download a 124 k image file through modem? I need to get an idea to decide whether or not to reduce the color depth for my images. They are all done but curse the crappy computers in my lab, the floppy drives don’t work so I won’t be able to upload the images until I get home.

#29
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
How long does it take to download a 124 k image file through modem? I need to get an idea to decide whether or not to reduce the color depth for my images. They are all done but curse the crappy computers in my lab, the floppy drives don't work so I won't be able to upload the images until I get home.

Around 30 seconds I'd say.

#30
quote:
Originally posted by Zorian:
Around 30 seconds I'd say.

Ouch, 30 seconds? What would you say is reasonable, 10 seconds, 15 seconds? How about the image sizes on animetric.com, how long do those take? I don't want to reduce the size too much because I can tell the images start getting a little bit pixelly and hazy, you can no longer make out the eyes or some of the details on the images.

Rowena, when you reduce your images to 100 px widths, do you change the resolution any? I was doing that on the laptop and felt that the characters' eyes became so blurry it would perhaps convey the wrong impression that the images are not very detailed or blurry.

Zorian, I have uploaded the updated reviews with embedded images onto one of my two accounts, now I give myself a pat on the back for having the prescience to mirror content, let me know how long it takes to download these images. I can't get ahold of a modem connection since I only have university ones. Give me exact time on how long it takes for images to download over a modem connection. I made a boo boo, the images are about 8 k to 20 k, but because the Kotobuki one looks so bad in reduced size I had to include some larger images.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-21-2002).]

#31
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Zorian, I have uploaded the updated reviews with embedded images onto one of my two accounts, now I give myself a pat on the back for having the prescience to mirror content, let me know how long it takes to download these images. I can't get ahold of a modem connection since I only have university ones. Give me exact time on how long it takes for images to download over a modem connection. I made a boo boo, the images are about 8 k to 20 k, but because the Kotobuki one looks so bad in reduced size I had to include some larger images.
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-21-2002).]

Give or take a second. ^^

Kotobuki - 17 seconds
Loveshow - 22 seconds
TCI - 47 seconds
Viper M1 - 19 seconds

Hope this helps. ^^

#32
quote:
Originally posted by Zorian:
Give or take a second. ^^

Kotobuki - 17 seconds
Loveshow - 22 seconds
TCI - 47 seconds
Viper M1 - 19 seconds

Hope this helps. ^^

That helps a lot. Did you think those were acceptable load times? Obviously the one for TCI is quite long, so maybe I need to drop it down to 4 images. I thought the images were adequately huge that people could scope out the graphics in the game and be swayed to buy the game. I can't believe Kotobuki still takes that long to download when I've reduced the images down to that small for thumbnails.

Incidentally, is anyone else interested in writing Bishoujo game reviews for my website? I don't expect it to be a committment like I make it (I think I bought every Bishoujo game known in existence except for the out of print ones) but if you want a chance to tell people about the games you love and why you love it, I would be more than happy to post those reviews, and will offer my services as proofreader and editor as well. I'm trying to keep the reviews fairly unobjective, not disparaging without just cause, and making sure nothing is unfairly represented. Perhaps it's just naivety, but I fully believe that if Bishoujo games is presented professionally in an objective, positive light people will cease to draw unsavory presumptuous conclusions about the genre, and we may win over a good number of Anime and 'dating-sim' fans for our cause.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-21-2002).]

#33

Does anyone here, webmasters or not, know StyleSheet? I’m having trouble having Netscape 4.76 read the StyleSheets correctly, I don’t know if it has something to do with its inability to read more than 1 (!) inherited class for font or paragraph formatting. When I gave the paragraph value two different classes, and correctly designated them separately, Netscape 6.1 will read it correctly, IE 4 onwards will read it correctly, but Netscape 4.76 snubs it and ignores one of the class values. Oh, and it completely ignores text-align: justify

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-21-2002).]

#34
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
That helps a lot. Did you think those were acceptable load times? Obviously the one for TCI is quite long, so maybe I need to drop it down to 4 images.
[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-21-2002).]

Yeah (besides the TCI, as you said ^_-) great load times imo. ^^

#35
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Does anyone here, webmasters or not, know StyleSheet? I'm having trouble having Netscape 4.76 read the StyleSheets correctly, I don't know if it has something to do with its inability to read more than 1 (!) inherited class for font or paragraph formatting.

Netscape 4.7x is somewhat screwed when it comes to CSS. For instance, if you turn JavaScript off, CSS won't work correctly, if at all (even though CSS has nothing to do with JavaScript). So it ends up into: CSS or Netscape 4.7x, but not necessarily both at the same time.

#36

I use Adobe Photoshop 5.5’s “save for web” function when reducing image quality. The secreenshots on my site are saved at 40% of their original quality. The title graphics are saved as .gifs, which gives me more control on how many colors are used and how big the size is going to be.

Whatever happens I don’t suggest using 100+k images on the page because not everybody has a fast connection / modem. Personally I try to keep the title graphics 12k and below (nothing more than 15k) and the screenshots 20k and below (nothing more than 23k).

#37

Sorry I’ve been putting up so many questions here, I’m making this a hot topic only because I need feedback, and incidentally if anyone knows how whom to contact to for the creation of a web forum I would appreciate it. I have zero experience in doing that and think I would benefit enormously from having one.

Anyways, to make a long post short, I need some way of tracking people’s reactions to the reviews, whether or not they are descriptive enough that they feel compelled to try it. I pride myself in proofreading these to death, editing it 5 to 6 times or so and having lots of people proofread and feedback (those who haven’t, just drop a short feedback ok? I need it, really) but I’m afraid it might not describe the game enough, I don’t think I can really describe them too much, since that would seem to be a merit.

Rowena, I think I recall that the gif format is only 256 colors, right? It doesn’t have a deeper color depth than that in its compression format.

[This message has been edited by bokmeow (edited 05-22-2002).]

#38

Sorry I’ve been putting up so many questions here, I’m making this a hot topic only because I need feedback, and incidentally if anyone knows how whom to contact to for the creation of a web forum I would appreciate it. I have zero experience in doing that and think I would benefit enormously from having one. [/b]
[/quote]

If you have your own broadband connection, you can do it yourself; it *only* requires you have a web server (apache), a database (MySQL) and some server side scripting language (PHP). Of course, I am being sarcastic here! Some commercial web hosting services offers that service as an add-on or
part of the package. And finally, if none of the above applies, there are always options like EZ Board

quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Rowena, I think I recall that the gif format is only 256 colors, right? It doesn't have a deeper color depth than that in its compression format.

GIF:
advantages: transparency, loseless (sic) compression
disadvantages: copyrighted, 256 colours

JPEG:
advantages: "small", more than 256 colours
disadvantages: lousy compression

PNG (aka "PNG not GIF" - recursive)
advantages: takes transparency of GIF and the size of JPEG, almost the best of both worlds.
disadvantages: Not that much supported format (in some cases, features like transparency will fail under Netscape 4.7x)

My take: if the program you are using to modify/make images support PNG, and you don't plan to make any image with a transparent background, use PNG. Otherwise, use JPG for images and GIF when absolutely necessary. And, most important of all, test your image loading time (and reuse them if possible).

#39
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:

Anyways, to make a long post short, I need some way of tracking people's reactions to the reviews, whether or not they are descriptive enough that they feel compelled to try it. I pride myself in proofreading these to death, editing it 5 to 6 times or so and having lots of people proofread and feedback (those who haven't, just drop a short feedback ok? I need it, really) but I'm afraid it might not describe the game enough, I don't think I can really describe them too much, since that would seem to be a merit.

Well, your review made me want to buy Love Love Show... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

quote:

Rowena, I think I recall that the gif format is only 256 colors, right? It doesn't have a deeper color depth than that in its compression format.

Yes, but I always use an average of 32 colors for my title graphics to keep the sizes small. Gifs are a no-no for images such as screenshots though...

#40

Well, I’m off to Taiwan now, taking the airporter first thing 5:00 AM in the morning (I shall not be sleeping comfortably tonight) and head off to Japan on 1 June. Will then have internet access, and try to maintain a diary and of course be taking lots of pictures, let everyone see Japan through the eyes of a quarter-Japanese but naturalized American. Dewa Mata!