Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

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Taliis
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Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#1 Post by Taliis »

Hey, my old account is still active ^.^
*whoohoo*


I need some feedback. Mainly for the idea.
Backgrounds are only placeholders, because i'll start visiting this themenpark on 08-24-2016
Its a german themenpark relativly close to the Gamescom in cologne.

you need to decide, if its ok. the secound picture isnt even finished, as you can see.

Image
you guessd right: this one is based on "bar buddys".
Right: me // left: someone, i'll meet there (also a themenpark fanatic like me ^.^)


Image
and this was a joke, that was in my head for quiet a while. But i guess, other artists already
did something similar.


I also need this forum for something else (WARNING! it gets technical):
I have an idea for an interactive comic, that would work with any kind of forum.
And befor i post the final version on the dedicated themenpark forums, i would like to test it here, if you dont mind.

It might work like this:
when you enter my post with the final version, there will be a 1x1pixel image, generated by an PHP script.
As soon as this image gets loaded, the script will generate a session_id. this id contains a number, that represents your current page.
e.g: 0 = comic cover page. 1 = comic page one...

if the number is 0, the 1x1pixel image gets replaced by the actual comic cover.

on the bottom post, there are 2 images with [ URL ]-tags. The URL follows the path to an PHP script, that will increase the number for the pages.
a 3. image will delete your session_id and reset this comic to page 0.

It dosnt need lots of processing power of the server. At least not on this server, because my own server does all the work.
The comic itself would work like the TK-Comic on the main page here.
This is, at least, what im hoping for.

So, tell me what you think about the comic (and the technique behind it, if you could understand my bad explaination).

sorry 4 lots of text.
:potatoes:

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amenon
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#2 Post by amenon »

I like the art. Good homage to bar buddies :grin:

On the technical side: I don't see how you'd be able to get it to refresh the image without reloading the entire page, so I don't really see the point. Also wouldn't work without third party cookies, unless you wanted to get pretty evil. (Though, people usually have third party cookies enabled.)
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Taliis
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#3 Post by Taliis »

thanks for the feedback.

the "cookie", i'll use is stored at the apache server itself.
by clicking on the "NEXT" button, you'll get linked to my server and instantly get back to this page.
it would look like as if you clicked the refresh button.

the same type uses this forum already.
For example:
right now, im writing this text in an editor and without the $_SESSION["myPost"] (or something similar), this text couldn't be previewed.

Using this forum has the same risk, because the admin could also do some evil stuff. :D

But to be honest: i have made some improvments in drawing, just because the fanarts and official arts in this forum, so it would be very stupid, to damage you in any kind. Only the ones, who attack me first, gets counter-attacked (pls dont try it...).
Also: im not sure, how to do evil stuff with PHP. Only with java / java-script, but this is disabled, so you are safe.


BTW: my server is down for maintenance (wasnt my script, just if you are wondering) :D
it wont be stable until (sometimes it works, sometimes it wont):
08-23-2016 07:00+2 GMT

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avwolf
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#4 Post by avwolf »

amenon's point is that state's hard to carry across sites. The forum's login cookie is a first-party cookie: it belongs to the domain in the address bar. A third-party cookie (most commonly you can think of these as "tracking cookies," because they're used by advertising networks to track user behaviors across domains) is a cookie seeded on a system by a domain that isn't the domain directly visited. So while they're both cookies, their behavior and the way the browser treats them are actually different. Some users block third-party cookies (though, as amenon says, most people leave them enabled), so there will be a (probably small) segment of users for whom the comic browsing mechanism won't work.

-- Edit --
It's probably doable; I can't think off hand of any technical issues that would prevent that from working; at least if you're accepting the "refresh" behavior. Without Javascript, you probably don't have much for other options beyond full page refreshes to change content.
Image

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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#5 Post by Taliis »

its not so hard as you might think.
i already did something similar in another forum.

there you could get signature banners with stats of an game, but i didnt liked the "avatar" shown in it.
so, i created an php-page with .PNG header.
this page merged (via script) 2 pictures together.

if you see this picture, my idea would work for you (better try tomorrow, because of the maintenance... a bit unstable right now...):
Image
This picture got replaced by the script ^
Spoiler!
this is, what you would actually see:

Code: Select all

<?php 
            
            //define the width and height of our images
            define("WIDTH", 640);
            define("HEIGHT", 60);

            $dest_image = imagecreatetruecolor(WIDTH, HEIGHT);

            //make sure the transparency information is saved
            imagesavealpha($dest_image, true);

            //create a fully transparent background (127 means fully transparent)
            $trans_background = imagecolorallocatealpha($dest_image, 0, 0, 0, 127);

            //fill the image with a transparent background
            imagefill($dest_image, 0, 0, $trans_background);

            //URL of the down layer image 
            $a = imagecreatefrompng('https://aw.my.com/ub/72991b56-a7cf-4100-966a-332bdeb267d4.png');
            
            //URL of the replacement image
            $b = imagecreatefrompng('mergeIt.png');

            //copy each png file on top of the destination (result) png
            imagecopy($dest_image, $a, 0, 0, 0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT);
            imagecopy($dest_image, $b, 0, 0, 0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT);

            //this emulates a PNG image, but the code gets computed anyway.
            header('Content-Type: image/png');
            imagepng($dest_image);

            //destroy images to save memory. It was delivered, so i dont need anymore on my server.
            imagedestroy($a);
            imagedestroy($b);
            imagedestroy($dest_image);
    ?>
The code for the comic isnt finished yet, so i cant show you the version with the session.
First i'll visite the themen park and make some pictures for the backgrounds.
so we could test it in 8-9 days, if you dont mind. otherwise, i would have to set up a own phpBB forum just for one quick test.

here i would also get feedback from users with blocked cookies and "no-script"-addons.

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amenon
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#6 Post by amenon »

The problem is that it's pointless, and if you need refreshes, then...
Taliis wrote: It dosnt need lots of processing power of the server. At least not on this server, because my own server does all the work.
... this isn't true in any meaningful sense. You're wasting page loads here just to show a new page, and generating a phpbb page is massively more work than conditionally serving a single image. (Probably less bandwidth, though)
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Taliis
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#7 Post by Taliis »

Im Back. Took a bit longer and my email folder was flooded with work.
amenon wrote:The problem is that it's pointless, and if you need refreshes, then...

... this isn't true in any meaningful sense. You're wasting page loads here just to show a new page, and generating a phpbb page is massively more work than conditionally serving a single image. (Probably less bandwidth, though)
Ok... lets silence the skeptics:

1: this script remenbers the comic page and you dont need to search a specific page the next day. (imagine, you have 500 pages to read.)
2: It looks good. You dont have to scroll down lightyears to get to the last page

But your right with the performance.
On the other hand: Why should i care about it? i dont get paid by the admins. :/
Also there is no mention about it in the rules.
i guess i was thinking of another forum, where it could work.

And im sure, that the server can handle the size of all the user very well.

Image
ImageImageImage

Click on button and
Refresh page for new page ( F5 )
In case it dosnt work:
http://flash-fox.de/comic/phl2016/p0.png
http://flash-fox.de/comic/phl2016/p1.png
http://flash-fox.de/comic/phl2016/p2.png
http://flash-fox.de/comic/phl2016/p3.png
http://flash-fox.de/comic/phl2016/p4.png

Have fun.

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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#8 Post by avwolf »

Worth noting: Takes a click to build the session; so, at least for me, the first click refreshes without seeming to do anything. Otherwise, it seems to work okay.
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Taliis
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#9 Post by Taliis »

yeah, the problem, that the "first click does nothing" is a check, if a session exists.
The first click on "NEXT" generates a session and the secound click changes the picture.
The code was wrote in a few minutes anyway, so its not very well thought out.


Maybe: If there is no session, i could show the title and if the session is created, the first page is shown...

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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#10 Post by avwolf »

Are you storing state in PHP sessions? You might not want to do that (at least not without some significant modification of the default session handling) because the session timeout values are only going to be about twenty minutes or so (depending on server configuration). So after that time period, your server is going to forget where someone was in the comic.
Image

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Taliis
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Re: Review of an themenpark (Comic based) / work in progress

#11 Post by Taliis »

yes im storing the state inside of PHP, but only for this version here.
1: i wanted to see, if the change of each page works
2: its posted in the art-topic, so i had to give you some sort of "art" (even if its not very good).
(but in my opinion, coding would be some sort of "art", too...)

even the text in the comic is a bit different, because i wasnt very sure how much of techical terms (like: LSM, OTSR or SLC) i could include..
(ok... there is no SLC in this park, but i used it as comparision in the final comic ^.^)

btt:
i have planned to store the states of each user in an external file, but im not sure, how many users will watch this kind of review.
The targeted community is ... lets say: they aren't used to this kind of comic. So up to 50% will see the first page and skip the review.

Thats why the sessions only get generated, when the first page is opend.

I could also create a SQL database, but i think this might be a bit overkill just for a simple 5-page comic.
On the other hand: with SQL, i could create a trigger, that detects "dead session states"...

any good suggestions?

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