Games

[icycalm]

Also, and this is the more urgent task, because I am in the process of uploading this article right now, there are three screens in the following link that have the IGN logo in them:

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/fiveo ... tions.html

Any chance of removing it?

[ronan]

I decreased the resolution a bit to make the edit less obvious. Is it ok with you?

There was also a fourth image with a small logo, that I simply cropped.

[icycalm]

You didn't crop anything, right? You only decreased the resolution? If so, then yes, that will work for now, since the width I will use in order to fit them in the article is only 910 pixels. But I will eventually look for watermark-free versions, because I'd like the reader to be able to click through to the full res image.

But like I said this will work fine for now, thank you!

[icycalm]

There are also two headers in the previous page of this thread, which need some touch up. There's no hurry, I am just pointing it out in case you missed them.

[ronan]

Sorry, I will take care of them by the end of this week. (I am quite overwhelmed by work right now, although I regularly have a quick look at the site during my breaks.)

By the way, I will be in India during the next two or three weeks. I should be able to do things for the site during the evening, but my evening will be your afternoon.

[ronan]

Here they are:

[icycalm]

Great, thanks. I put the DmC one on the frontpage, but I will unfortunately have to keep the other one for the forum, because apparently the game looks pretty shitty. What a shame...

Anyway, how come you are in India? Business or pleasure? And where exactly in India are you? One question I've always had about India is whether it has a good ratio of cute to ugly girls. Let me know if you make any observations in that area.

[ronan]

It will be for work, in Surat. It is not the most attractive city for tourism anyway, but about 80% of the diamonds in the world are cut there, and one company has bought us a machine for that purpose. I will have to do the final acceptance and to help develop the process. (My company produces water-jet-guided laser cutting systems. It is a pretty cool technology.)

As for girls, I will probably mostly meet mustached guys, but I will keep my eyes open. (And only my eyes since I am married.) Do you already have a country rating list in that matter?

[icycalm]

Not exactly, but I am working on it. The number one spot goes to Sweden anyway, with Norway and Denmark close behind. After that it's a crap shoot, and mostly depends on what you like.

The thing with places like India is that, whenever you see them featured in a Hollywood movie, you always see mostly pretty girls, but you've no idea how that compares to reality. That's what happened with me and Japan. I had this idea in my mind from movies and anime (lol) that Japan was full of hot girls, and when I got there I was stunned by how few of them there were, and how ugly the population in general, whereas the Chinese, to whom I hadn't paid much attention before, ended up being orders of magnitude better-looking (at least if we take the population of Hong Kong as indicative of the rest of China, since that's the only place in China I've been to).

With Sweden it was kind of the opposite. I expected the rumors to be way exaggerated, and they turned out to be tame compared to the reality. To the extent that, when I stepped off the place and into a Spanish crowd back in Spain, I felt like I was literally in a subhuman country lol.

[ronan]

Like I thought, I have mostly met guys. But after some time in Surat, I can say that I have not been impressed by the general beauty of the population. I have seen some very beautiful girls, of course, but nothing special as a whole.

However, India is a huge country, with many ethnic groups that can look very different. I could therefore have had another impression if I had been elsewhere. As for the girls you see in the movies or in the advertisements, most are rather pale skinned, which is more typical of Northern India, I think...

What has most impressed me:
- the great hospitality of my customers
- the fucking mess on the streets
- the rudeness of the people when waiting your turn at a counter
- the damn policemen at the entrance of airports

[icycalm]

I am going to move our girl-related posts to the Girls thread in the Off-topic forum and continue that subject there, but for the moment I'd like some help with a couple of headers, if you can spare the time. First off the Ico header we use for the forum: I'd like that little thread that's hanging off of Ico's head and that of his girlfriend to be removed. And then perhaps you could make a decent Rage header for the review from the following new wallpaper?

[ronan]

Here they are. I can try again tomorrow if needed.

[icycalm]

Nope, they are perfect. I already uploaded the Ico one, and I'll use the Rage one when I give the review page a face-lift later on in the week, thanks!

[icycalm]

And by the way, I'll be updating the Deus Ex review to the new site, so if you can make a header for that, without the logo, that'd be nice. It doesn't have to be smashingly good, because it's not going on the frontpage, so perhaps you could update the old one to the new dimensions?

[ronan]

[icycalm]

Done: http://culture.vg/reviews/in-depth/deus-ex-2000-pc.html

I think it looks good enough. If you can work out something for Invisible War as well, let me know:

https://www.google.com/search?q=deus+ex ... 24&bih=537

[ronan]

[icycalm]

Good thinking! This will work nicely, thank you.

[icycalm]

Wondering if you could start work on some header material for the different hardware platforms. 360, PS3, PSP, DC, etc. Kind of like these, but at the new header size:

http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/xbox360/header.jpg
http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/dreamcast/header.jpg
http://insomnia.ac/archive/games/megadrive/header.png

I'll first use them for the staff forum threads, then the main forum threads, and then finally for the new one-minute review pages.

[ronan]

Sure, I will spare some time to work on it. I am thinking of getting some consistency by always using the system's logo and an image of either a gamepad or a whole system. In that case, would you prefer to always have the original design, or would a later design be OK if it is more elegant?

[icycalm]

Actually, the controller or the system are a last-ditch resort, to be used especially in the older systems, where there are no good high resolution logo graphics, etc. For the 360, for example, there are tons of logo-related graphics to be found that would look much more elegant than any kind of design based on the actual hardware.

But then again, you can make alternate designs, since there are so many pages, both in the forum and on the main site, that will require such headers, so the more I have the better.

[ronan]

[icycalm]

I especially like the first and last ones. The third one is also not bad. Are those red lines official PS3 graphics?

The thing with the first one is that it'd probably be better if the logo was off-center. Generally, perfectly centered headers don't look as good as asymmetrical ones. Perhaps you could try reworking that?

[ronan]

You are right.

As for the red lines, I am not sure that it is official. But this other image makes me suppose so:

ps3_slimfw342.jpg (39.06 KiB) Viewed 19737 times

[icycalm]

The new PS3 header is great. As for the 360 one, when I said asymmetrical I meant left to right, not top to bottom...