Hello,

I spent last days to read the dev faq of Dexterity.com, & trying to improve my website : http://toogame.free.fr/tennis .

I'd need some feedback to know if the layout doesn't look amateur. Does it seem good enough ?

Is it clear ?
Will it prevent some people to buy the game ?


Thanks for your comments,

Well, the first thing I can say is that the copy on the page fairly clearly says "I am not a native English speaker."

Not that this is unexpected at a .fr domain, but it is something to consider. You may want to get someone to rewrite it for style.

In general... I don't really like the page. Have trouble putting my finger on why. The buttons are attractive in themselves, but as navigation tools they're sort of distracting - or perhaps I should say that the lined background is distracting and the buttons don't help. Small orange text on them is also not very eye-catching.

Game copy is awkwardly centered in an area with a very strange image... I guess that's a tennis ball, but with the tinting and patterning it's not immediately apparent. I think you really need some more friendly image here on your front page, a screenshot, a game sprite, or at least some clearly tennis-related pictures... Right now the page looks very dull, I wouldn't bother sticking around to find out more about the game.

The site looks like a good start, but you might want to refine it some. It's on the dark side, given the subject matter; and the navy blue buttons buttons meld in with the dark background. Also, the wording is slightly peculiar in a few instances:

- "a fun and realistic gameplay" -> "fun, realistic gameplay"

- The section starting "With its ultra-realistic ball trajectories..." may be too literal a translation from the French; I'm not entirely sure what you're saying in the paragraph.

- "The crowd turns the head during the point, applauds at the end of the point" could probably be expressed better as "Realistic crowd animations - members of the crowd turn their heads to track the ball, and will applaud during gameplay."

It may be worth seeking someone out who writes formally in English, just to smooth things out.

Finally, items such as "60 frames per second" and "20 sprites per strikes" are likely meaningless to the player, (who already assumes a smooth framerate and good effects). Concentrate more on touting items such as the effects of your 5 different court materials, the tournament rankings, and so forth.

Papillon,
u're tough with me, but I guess u're right. I'm going to try to fix the points u said..!
Especially the "weird" pic, as it should be just temporary. I'm waiting for an occasion to a pic of a real court. And if it won't fit, I guess I'll put no image, it'll look more clean.

Originally posted by MiceHead
The site looks like a good start, but you might want to refine it some. It's on the dark side, given the subject matter; and the
navy blue buttons buttons meld in with the dark background.

ok, I'm going to try to make it more bright.

- "a fun and realistic gameplay" -> "fun, realistic gameplay"

woh... In french, it sounds terribly weird... I guess it's why it's really not easy for me to produce a perfect english... :-S

- The section starting "With its ultra-realistic ball trajectories..." may be too literal a translation from the French; I'm not entirely sure what you're saying in the paragraph.

damn... :-|
I asked a US native with good langage skill to check that specific text, as I was really not sure of its fluency (but not for other part of the website). And he corrected a few mistakes, and then he told me it was alright...
And actually, it's not really literal translation, it's just strongly inspired.
My idea there is : "TE is the tennis game the most realistic, and it will give you the same emotions and impressions than on the court, coz :
1) the ultra-realistic ball trajectories;
2) the great AI controlling the CPU player;
3) the variety of the game situations"


- "The crowd turns the head during the point, applauds at the end of the point"

woh ! u went to read the complete doc ! :eek:
Thanks, I fixed that part ! :)

It may be worth seeking someone out who writes formally in English, just to smooth things out.

I'll try to find someone... could it be done for free ..? :p

items such as "60 frames per second" ...

corrected on the info page (but I let it in the complete doc).


Thanks a lot for ur corrections ! :)

Okay hmmm... here's some design issues/advice:

- Get rid of the buttons. They are pretty fancy and have a cool look but I don't seem them ever working with a site design.

- There is too much scrolling on the front page. It is fine to have fixed width content, but not when it results in 1 page-worth of material turning into 3 pages on the front page then this is wasteful.

- The navigation at the top should lose the striped background. Get some solid colors going and if you know how then get a nice tennis-related image in there, at least into a corner. For a game site you really lack images.

- Screenshots. This goes back to the content width comment as well. You have SOO much wasted space on the front page that you are filling with stripes while neglecting to put any game screenshots or artwork! If I come to your site, I might be interested in downloading your game, IF it jumps out at me. You have hidden your game (which by the way looks really good!) and basically used the front page area very poorly. Put some screenshots right on the front page, I should be able to see right away if this is a game I'd be interested in. As a visitor, I would never actively hunt for game info unless I got to your page through a recommendation from a friend.

- Too dark for a tennis site. The colors you have chosen are dark and completely unrelated to tennis. Take a look at your screenshot page, and use it the screenshots there as a source for your site palette. Pick "FUN" colors.

- Get rid of the random backgrounds and effects. I can tell by the site you enjoy the various "advanced" features of your image editor. Unfortunately these are rather cliche and the inconsistant and busy look you are creating with your backgrounds is distracting and looks unprofessional. I refer to this as Geocities syndrome, where your page looks like it is a typical free Geocities site. Would YOU buy a product from a site that looks like this?

- Site is kind of slow. Not sure if you are in a position to do anything about this, but loading times for me were fairly poor.

Sorry for tearing up your site so much, but your game looks really good and you can probably get much better results from it with a better site. Remember that when your visitors come to your site, your site is often their first impression. How you go about creating a better site is a bit tricky. You could pick up some site design books and read some site design articles, as well as examining the types of layouts, colors, fonts, graphics, etc that popular professional indie game sites use. There are plenty of people on these boards with very nice looking sites, browse around and take careful note of what visually appealing sites do. Alternatively, if you have a couple hundred bucks or so lying around you could get a professional site design. If this is something you are making a decent amount of money on, or have realistic plans to be doing so, this would be a good investment.

Good luck with the site!

Originally posted by Lizardsoft
Okay hmmm... here's some design issues/advice:
[...]
Good luck with the site!
thanks for so much detailed answer !!

I changed the style of info (main) page now, according to all opinions here : it was too dark...
It just a kick fix, but I hope it's on the good path to a better site.


I can tell by the site you enjoy the various "advanced" features of your image editor.

glooops... u caught me ! ;)

It's time to sleep for me, so I'll work more tomorrow... 8-)

Thks again !

Sorry, I'm not gonna help with the site (which displays really badly on my non-CSS browser anyway).

However I'm just wondering if you get many downloads, because I wonder how many of them does Free tolerate. I'm myself pondering the idea of selling my game from a free.fr page for a start.

Thanks.

What is ur browser ..?
Maybe I should handle this case.... :-S


About Free, the stats page shows almost 10 GB since the start of the month (so it's almost 2'000 dls). And I wonder also if they will warn me or not. If yes, I'll host the files on my provider site.

But maybe I had more dl, coz my counters say 3'300, and the free hits counter give 11'700... 8-o
Maybe there's some caching in proxy or something like that...

Ok, I finished to change the design of the site...

( but I still didn't correct the "silly" english :) )

If someone could tell me if it's better like this than before....?

(French site is still in previous style, if u want to compare with the new one)

Thanks

PS : I still have to try to change the size of the text on the buttons...

Thanks for your answer, it's already a decent number of downloads :-)

Don't bother about my browser, I'm using an Amiga :-).

You are getting on the right track with layout. Getting rid of the striped background and putting screenshots on the front page are both positive moves. I think the screenshots could still be placed higher (shrink the Introduction box?). The navigation buttons at the top now definitely need changing, since the jaggy edges on them are very apparent against the lighter background. Instead of going for a "photorealistic texture look", make some nice colorful FUN looking buttons. The thin orange text on the dark blue buttons doesn't create excitement or interest, and is in fact a bit depressing. You are trying to sell a fun colorful game, so your site should be made to match.

Also on the demo download page, clicking the picture should start the download, not take me to a larger version of the screenshot. At that point I've committed to downloading the game, and most actions on the download page should result in me downloading game.

The rest of my previous comments about things that aren't changed yet still stand.

Originally posted by Lizardsoft
- There is too much scrolling on the front page.
is this point OK, now ..?

- Site is kind of slow. Not sure if you are in a position to do anything about this, but loading times for me were fairly poor.

often, Free is fine, but lately, during rush hour, it's damn slow... :-S
(maybe coz the PHP server is overwhelmed...)

Also on the demo download page, clicking the picture should start the download, not take me to a larger version of the screenshot. At that point I've committed to downloading the game, and most actions on the download page should result in me downloading game.

oh yup, u're definitively right about that. When I did this, I hesitated between the 2 choices, and I picked the wrong one... :-|

I made a little tried of background on the "Free demo" screen. I hope it doesn't look like "Geocity" style this time... ;)

It still misses a button to subscribe to a newsletter...

Ok, so far, I think I'm almost done with the website. I can't do better by myself without long long days (maybe weeks) of work, as doing any asset, or any color arrangement is killing me... :o (I'm not a graphist ;) )
And till now, I don't have enough money to pay someone to do it.

So I hope it won't repeal too much people ... :cool:

Looks much better -- I like the lighter color scheme, and especially like the way you've zoomed in on the screenshot thumbnails.