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Artwork by Lord Soth   AKA   Slothy

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Posts

Token_1
A few suggestions,
How about a little usability testing on this site?? It looks cool but I cant find shit and I do this stuff for a living...I cant even find where the hell to check out a new tile..Anyway this is an awesome concept but the site right now, and I realize it's new, is about totally unusable. I'll be back in a week or so to see if it's gotten any better, Slothy, suggestion; get 5 people you know, who aren't code punchers and who have'nt been to the site before, to go through the site and figure out how to get a tile, and turn it back in. See if they can figure it out cause I sure as hell cant,

Follow this link, buy it and read it,

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156205810X/o/qid=984416020/sr=8-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_1/107-7033480-6439753
nessahead
I'm new here
And I can figure stuff out just fine =) You check out a new tile by clicking on the tile image on the left underneath where the web page asks you, "Would you like to check out this tile?" Kind of obvious...
amgv84
Re: A few suggestions,
Yea i'm new also and i thought it was EASY to figure out, only thing that needs to change is where you sign up or log in, that needs a link at the top. Other than that its great.

- amgv84
levik
Re: A few suggestions,
I have to say I agree. While the idea and the artwork are amazing, there are some problems with the usability. The pages are just way too heavy with all the graphics and text that you're throwing on.

1. I don't think you should have the explanation of the quilts idea on every single page. People only need to read it once, so a link to a separate static page would suffice.

2. Same should go for sign up. While a login box (consisting of only two fields) can easily fit somewhere on the sidebar, sign up is something that only takes place once, so it hane also be in its own page. That way a user doesn't have to wait for the whole quilt page to reload just to see that he mistyed the confirmation password. (Same goes for when there's a login error BTW)

3. This site is a pretty brilliant idea, and will atract many people. The discussions are already getting pretty long. Putting them (in their entirety, at least) on the same page as the quilt seems impractical. It would be better if the discussions were in their own page, or at least if they are present in the quilt pages, somehow compressed in content (i.e. only headers shown for replies, with the ability to see everything else separately).

4. Finally (and this has more to do with functionality), I think it would be nice for an artist to be able to refuse doing a tile. If someone checked out a tile that they then see they are in over their head with, they should not have to wait for it to time out, but be able to just check it back in as available.
The ability to preview a tile full-size before checking it out would also be nice.

Sorry about the rant, like I said, you have built a truly nice site, I just think these things would make it a bit easier to use (especially for people on dial-up)
slothy
Re: Re: A few suggestions,
Thanks for the ideas, levik! I'd be glad to explain why I've done what I have, as most of these were things that I did very intentionally.

The reason we have the quilt explanation on this page is that visitors to the site don't understand it. If I move that explanation to another page, I'm killing the site. There is simply no way 80% of the visitors would find it. I could and may take it off the main page if you're logged in and you've done a few tiles. That's not a bad idea.

The login box only appears if you're not logged in. For people with cookies turned on, they should only see the login box once in their life and never again. Again, we want to encourage people to make an account. Right now 4% of the visitors are making accounts, if I move that login anywhere else, I would expect that to drop into the tenths or hundreds of a percent.

The discussions are only shown for the past week on the quilt page. It never grows too large with only a week of conversation. I added this feature because the page was getting large. But the reality of the situation is that no matter how much text I add or remove, the bandwidth is the meg or so of jpegs that get sent, and there's no way around that. Anything else would be like a 1% improvement on the site load time, which just isn't worth anything.

The reason I don't allow people to refuse their tile is that I want people to take it seriously. I don't want people checking out 20 tiles and refusing them. I want them to commit to doing the tile when they check it out. I may eventually change my mind about this, but for now I'm pretty set on this method.

As far as seeing the fullsize, that is kind of a holdover from the old site, where we didn't even let you see a preview, we just gave you a tile. I don't see how we could easily show the full size version other than eliminating the thumbnails and just showing the full size right there. If you have any ideas on how to do this in a way that wouldn't be a mess, please let me hear them.

Jon/Slothy
levik
Re: Re: Re: A few suggestions,
I guess it would be cool to make an intersticial page between the main quilt where you see the thumbnail and the page that gives you the tiles to download.
Something where you would see the full tile, with maybe a description of the rules, with a button to accept and a button to decline (return to the quilt without checking the tile out).

As far as reducing the pages, yes I realize that the bulk of the bandwidth requirements come from the tiles themselves, but the size isn't the only consideration here. I find thta I am forced to scroll up and down the page seeking out one piece of information or another. The page looks like it just has too much stuff on it. That's just my opinion though, and I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trying to push it too hard, I just wanted to see the site become a bit easier to get around.

I had no problem understanding the tiled game concept, but that's probably because I have seen something similar before.
ogre2112
Re: A few suggestions,
/me figured it out just fine. =/

slothy
Just for the record
I am not, as previously reported, a llama.

Test post :)

Jon
dubious intellect
Thank you
You have written a great piece of software, and I had a lot of fun working on this project. Thanks again, Lord Sloth!
Cyber X
Great Work!
Jon, whats up, Trent here (Cyber X) just checked in after a while, like the new site, the Tiles are a great concept! I plan on participating on one here in the new future! Been a long time, hope all is well with you, keep up the good work, hope to chat with you soon.

Trent
-CX
fizbin
Are tiles made available by hand or automatically?
I ask because I notice that, for example, the Up & Comers quilt will give me the "no tiles available; logjam" message even with only three tiles checked out. Following the rules for available tiles (that it must not be next to one done by me and must not be next to one that is already checked out), I can't place three tiles into the blank spaces so that those tiles being checked out would logjam the entire quilt. (All my tiles have been uncovered, so I know where they are)

Now given what I've done with tiles I've been given in the past, (m maybe there's some question as to whether or not I should be given any new tiles, but that's a different issue.

Are the tiles placed into some sort of temporary "pre-checkout" state when someone views a quilt and is offered a tile? Could that be causing the logjam? If so, one of those 1% enhancements you might consider adding would be a per-quilt preference of whether or not you'd like to be offered tiles when viewing a quilt. That's probably lower priority than the other enhancements people have suggested.

Also, do you keep any sort of statistics on how often people check out the tile that they are offered and how often they see the "logjam" message?
slothy
Re: Are tiles made available by hand or automatically?
I also replied to this on quilt 8, but I'll reply here just to make sure the information is spread :). Everything on this site is automated, I don't have to do anything at all. Unfortunately the quilt has changed a lot since your post this morning, so I don't know how it was laid out. However, if it says there are no tiles available, I haven't found any instances of that being incorrect yet. 3 tiles were deleted from quilt 8 and one was added today, so maybe that really broke things up. Because right now it's pretty wide-open, so there shouldn't be any problems for now.

I might get a new quilt going, since we seem to have so many active people here now that maybe we can sustain 4 quilts simultaneously. It won't be a surreal quilt, it'll be a different type though.

Jon/Slothy
levik
Re: Re: Are tiles made available by hand or automatically?
Cudos to that. Would really be a cool idea to be able to alternate doing tiles from different quilts.
fizbin
Re: Re: Are tiles made available by hand or automatically?
Except that I still have this problem, and I think it's related to the fact that I have a negative score (see messages on quilt 8). It appears that people with negative scores always get the logjam message.
slothy
Re: Re: Re: Are tiles made available by hand or automatically?
You need to make sure your browser supports cookies, and make sure it says "You are logged in as jito" on the top left of the page.

In addition to that, we use a Netranger to auto-shun people who are doing suspicious things. These should time out in 15 mins, last I checked. So don't do things like portscans, etc., or you'll get cut off from the box.

If you can still get to the web site, it says you're logged in, and you still can't check in a tile, let me know privately ([email protected]) and we'll resolve it. It'll help to know what browser you're using.

Jon
Belal78
Problem with the tiles on the newbie quilt
Dear Slothy

Could you delete this tile,

http://tiles.ice.org/tile_info_surreal.php?quilt_id=16&tile_id=5281

because it isnt the one i drew but it has my name on it, and frankly :) "suck
much?" yeah.. anyhow, i dunno how someone elses tile came to have my name on it, plus its tearing down my score because it has a -4.2 tagged onto it, which sux because if you look at my other tiles, even tho they are poor they aint that poor :)

anyhow hope you can help Slothy

Thanx
Belal78
chimericalgirl
Issue with the 'Girls Own Adventure' Quilt
Tiles on the upper edge are not becoming visible wehn they should.
So far, two tiles are affected. I checked, counting the tile height of the quilt, and it is six tiles high (that's its height limit).

I'm guessing that nobody's noiticed it yet ;)
Primal_r
Re: Issue with the 'Girls Own Adventure' Quilt
I can't see them...
Belal78
Suggestion for Quilt
"Industry": all things industry related like; pipes, cables, roads, rails, machines, mining, production lines, welding sparks, construction cranes, various tools powered or otherwise etc.


Belal78


root88
Re: Suggestion for Quilt
um... have you seen "The Incredible Machine" quilt?
lastberserker
Some suggestions, if you, please...
To the interface:

1. Add score / number of votes to alt tags.
At least in the title page.

2. Add number of checkouts to quilt main page.

3. Switch checkout list and recently updated
tiles in quilt page. The first is usually
short, while the latter is long and you need
to scroll it all way down.

To quilt's list:

Maybe, Douglas Adams' quilt? ;-) It's a pretty
surreal topic, besides, blues' one is almost done.
VeeRaw
KOMPLETED KUILTS
It'd be a great idea to put up not just the full image versions, but
HTML versions zipped as well. With PNG images instead of JPG.
It's important sometimes to see the borders and comments...
As the Genius freakboy imbecile said, "It's much much more fun!" (c) :))
Primal_r
just another suggestion...
Make it so that when only the first tile of the quilt is checked out, it says something like "this quilt is still waiting for the first tile to be completed" ... There is always somebody wondering about that...
lastberserker
Bug
A very pleasant one, indeed ;-) Check out my
score for "Mainquilters Revenge" - it's 18.75
for 4 tiles, although the sum of points is
supposed to be 4+3.75+3+3=13.75. That leaves
5 points for some unknown tile. I can guess
it is 6007, but I'm not sure what the nature
of this bug is.
root88
Re: Bug
That's not a bug. Admins can vote on tiles before they become visible. This vote is added to your score.
alec
booya
pimpin the php... thats the way to be

\\m// rock on osdn
Blue Indigo
Hello slothy,
so now that you know that you rule... you have to let me know if you would want to do this favour for me... The edges in the quilts are always desturbing me becuse if you don't know that there are edges you will do a sketch to de next border so that somebody else could do something with it, but if its an edge you would have work in vain so if you could do so that when it was an edge you could see that.. I don know if this makes cense but well hope it does.. //Erik
gecky
Re: Hello slothy,
Someone has already mentioned this a while ago and since the borders of the quilt change sometimes there's no real way to make it show which one is a border. It's pretty easy to tell most of the time through deductive logic where the tile you checked out is located. But you should always pretend like there's a tile bordering every side of your tile, even if you think it's on the border. Sorry for answering for you slothy, I just couldn't help it. :)
maxetormer
A drawer from the
can I fix my title?
i am the author of the title with this "Comment: I like the surrealism, so i tryed something oniric and dreamy"
i inteded for the drawing to bend along with the rest of the picture, but when i uploaded it it did not result well, i would really like to re-take it and make some corrections but, i tryed to upload a corrected version of the drawing but i canot do it, so sorry for the error.
well let the flames come.
thaks for reading this.

(if there is a way to upload a corrected version please tell me and if not well, at least i know now that once uploaded never chaged.)

i made another title this seame nigth, this one is correctly bended with the ones near him, but is not visible cause the other titles around him are not finisted, so i have to wait. Any way i would really like to be able to fix my first title.
best regards, Bora Horza Gobochul (my nick name is only "bora", and my name is Luis Felipe)
maxetormer
Little question...from bora
Does i always will get a -1 if i request for fixing a title, just to kown, if this is that the way things work here I am OK just curious.

thanks for sending the draw back i really apreciate it.

Bora.
slothy
Re: Little question...from bora
You will get whatever the score of the original tile was. In this case it was a -1. Those tiles still count towards your score (encouragement not to screw up ;). Scores are easy to repair though, so it's not a huge deal.

Jon
maxetormer
Re: Re: Little question...from bora
o ki doki thanks for the answer i under stand the low score.
thanks, hope that my other titles dont get a -1 he he he he.
best regards bora
maxetormer
Question about member ship
When the members of ICE says in the about section "You can do some art over at tiles.ice.org if you want to catch our attention," does it litteraly means that i can become member if draw good enough and long enough?
I am working in some not title related stuff but i wonder if the title drawing will help me too.
slothy
Re: Question about member ship
Yes, absolutely. People who work on tiles and show some perseverance and dedication really catch our eye. Doing more than a few tiles and applying is always a good thing. It shows you really enjoy our home and you really want to be a member. Often times it's hard to gauge how much people want to join the group, so since we're so jaded we assume they're not very interested until proven otherwise.

Jon
maxetormer
Re: Re: Question about member ship
Thaks for the answer Slothy, yep well i would really like to be member of ICE, as you migth think now ´cause i ask lot of questions about it,

I am preparing some thing to send to trye to get into the members comunity in the midd time ´ill keep drawing tiltes, they are fun and i improve my skills with ´em.

I wonder if you could check my site and write your opinion about it, the design is digitaly painted and the inside art is traditionaly painted.
(when i do more digital art ´ill make a seccion in my page for it.)


thaks for reading my post .


home page at:
http://www.geocities.com/maxetormer/
jito
Re: Question about member ship
are you female??

buhahahaha
maxetormer
Re: Re: Question about member ship
Why do you ask such a weird question?

Jito, are you a female?

buhehehehe
jito
Re: Re: Re: Question about member ship
was a joke


follow this link
then section = who join ice ?
maxetormer
Re: Re: Re: Re: Question about member ship
ye i understand, kool self picture in your info seccion,

i wonder do you have a degree in arts, where do you studied, cause your work is impresive man.
jito
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Question about member ship
i am happy that u like what i do
cause i am rarely satisfied
of my work.
i like your work to luis ,max ?

ps :i don't have any degree in art
and i dunno how to code...
but i think slothy rules !!!(hehe)
and have had a genious inspiration /creativity with
tiles.ice.org

maxetormer
having trouble
hello i am Bora (Luis) i have problem, i wanted to chage my login to maxetormer, but i can´t because is already taken.

The thing is that i am maxetormer, i must have maked an account here like one or two years ago, but at that time i had not interest in doing digital art, so i forgot about it, then later i wanted to make an accout here (in that moment i had fortgoted that i haded an account already) i use the Bora nickname because i did not wanted to make all this explanation, but i really like my original nick name, i mean maxetormer.

What i want you to do is to delete this maxetormer account so that i can change my nick name, after all i am maxetormer.

Write my any doubts in case i did not explained my self very well.

i hope this can be fixed.

(this will not hapen again, i am takeing seriously makeing art here)
maxetormer
Re: having trouble
thaks for deleting my old account i am very grateful.
fraxyl
Suggestion
Would it be possible to have the name of the last user to post in the active conversation panel to show up (the list of active conversations on the left side when you're looking at the current active quilts)
Primal_r
YAMOLSS (yet another more of less stupid suggestion)
Time of last login on people's userpages?
root88
Re: YAMOLSS (yet another more of less stupid suggestion)
That can probably be done. We are going to store that infomation anyway so that users have the option to view only new messages since their last visit.
Two Ravens
how do you start a quilt for everyone else.
will you please tell me just repley back if you could if you would
slothy
Re: how do you start a quilt for everyone else.
Email me if you want to start a new quilt. I hide it on purpose just to prevent having a million quilts going on at once.

Jon