Chatlands 2020 Kickstarter Updates!

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underdog
Chatlands Owner
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Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:05 am

Chatlands 2020 Kickstarter Updates!

Post by underdog »

Well, hello there, Chatlands! B)

It's time for me to start making what will hopefully be regular announcements about the progress on the CHATLANDS 2020 project. Over the past several weeks, along with getting the physical products sent out for the Kickstarter pledges, I have been working with members of my family (Luke, Jo and Robin) on the CL 2020 project. Luke has been instrumental in helping me with the programming and systems design. Robin has been doing the lion's share of the work on the fulfillment, getting things organized and sending out the stickers and buttons. Jo has been helping with the design and user experience. Like many businesses, we had a bit of a setback with the coffee mugs when the supplier went offline due to the COVID-19 shutdown. I have been using an alternate supplier with some success, but I just recieved word that the original sources are now back in (limited) operation, so I will try to get the remaining mugs sent out soon.

Much of my focus has been on the technical details and coding in order to reach the goals we set in the CL 2020 Kickstarter. One thing that I really need help with that will make CL 2020 a success, is better screen mock-ups that show us how the site should look. For now that focus is mainly on the chat interface itself, which is obviously central to Chatlands. On the current site, the interface is at best a bit "clunky" and there are some strange quirks (for example, if you resize certain parts of the chat window). On CL 2020, I want this to be much more configurable and comfortable to use. I've had suggestions over on the Chatlands Events discord server (https://discord.gg/yQYGm76). I'll upload them here shortly but in the meantime, if you have any inspiration for the chat room interface, please send it to me. I will post those here so we can keep them organized. We'll also create a section on this forum for user suggestions. Perhaps we can have a section in announcements for the offical goals based on those suggestions. As another option for screen mock-ups, we will start actively using Figma (https://figma.com) again for CL 2020 screen designs. If you want to help us with that, please create an account on Figma (if you don't have one already) and I will send you an invitation. It sounds like Luke is going to prepare some sort of quick introduction to Figma to teach newcomers the basics and how to create screen shots that use Chatlands colors and typography.

I have been focused on developing the chat room page, as well as doing preliminary work on the scene editor. I'll post more about that later. Most recently I've been working on an image uploader which we can use for the scene/feature editor and in other places on the site. That work is coming along nicely, however there is a LOT that still needs to be done before we can have any demonstrations, let alone alpha testing. If I am able to get a staging server set up, perhaps after that I will be able to present a preview for the chat room, possibly by late June. Keep in mind, that's a goal and not a promise.

That's all for now. I'll be posting more updates soon!

===underdog===
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