I've updated my website with a whiter brighter look n feel in case anyone cares to comment on the new one. There's still a number of things I want to add and change. This is down to a bare bones site now.

http://www.twilightgames.com

- Steve

I think it looks good. Even your thumbnail screens look exceptionally crisp. :)

Steve,

I think the overall site looks great. I especially like the Home page with all your games listed - very easy to see what's on offer to visitors to the site.

The only thing I had a problem with was with the download links!?! From the Home page I clicked on 'DOWNLOAD' which took me to the free downloads page. I then clicked on the 'download now' link for A Snakes Life which gave me a Yahoo Website Services - File Not Found!! Trying this for other games also gave the same results!

Yes the download page is broken. Will fix. I tested the links when you download from the individual pages but not from the big one and I'd at the last minute changed a directory name.

OK. It's fixed now. Wasn't the directory thing after all... a naming change. Thanks. Good catch.

Just tested again - works fine for me now.

Very nice.

I like the new design and how the site focusses on the games.

I also like that you can immediately choose to download/buy/view each game with one click instead of having to go to a game specific page and then searching a download button.

You have a good and clear user guidance throughout the whole site.

I also like the new color scheme. Has a nice technical & modern feel.

The logo is a bit hard to read though because of the bevel effect and the low contrast. Is the logo always like that or is it just an effect for the site?

The download and 'buy games' buttons are a bit too large for my taste, but that is just a personal thing, I always feel large font-sizes look cloddy.

A little unimportant thing I noticed is that the main menu bar 'jumps' left and right a tiny bit. Seems it sits a pixel further to the left on the homepage.

>The logo is a bit hard to read though because of the bevel effect >and the low contrast. Is the logo always like that or is it just >effect for the site?

Just an effect. I thought it looked neat. I always warp the logo in some way it seems. I can't look at it without it being obstructed in some way. Really it's just a 3 tone thing with lettering over a black and white background. I'll consider simplifying it. I probably should make it clear.

>A little unimportant thing I noticed is that the main menu >bar 'jumps' left and right a tiny bit. Seems it sits a pixel further ?>to the left on the homepage.

Yeah it's because the game rects are a little larger than they should be. It didn't figure it mattered.

I would have made the game rectangles smaller.
not everyone has 1024x768 like me and its still too large.

still, i like it.

It's designed to fit on 800x600 and should on regular text settings. It does on my monitor anyway...

Wow, it looks a lot different. I like it. Two comments:

1. The top banner seems a little stark. Have you tried using a dark background there only? Perhaps a checker pattern to match the back of the logo? Or making a non-buttonized logo so it blends some more? Also maybe there is too much area in the banner, you could try reducing the height.

2. I like the boxes around the games. It reminds me of the advertisements in the back of boy's magazines where you can peruse the x-ray glasses or whoopie cushions. I think it'd look better if the boxes were all the same size. Did you do it this way to prevent there being an empty box in the lower right? Maybe you could fill any remaining boxes with offers or quotes about your company.

>1. The top banner seems a little stark. Have you tried using a
>dark background there only? Perhaps a checker pattern to
>match the back of the logo? Or making a non-buttonized logo so
>it blends some more? Also maybe there is too much area in the
>banner, you could try reducing the height.

Yes I agree. I just haven't figured out exactly what I'll do with it yet. Maybe a marketing paragraph or something. I have to give it some thought. I will likely stick something up there though.

>2. I like the boxes around the games. It reminds me of the
>advertisements in the back of boy's magazines where you can
>peruse the x-ray glasses or whoopie cushions. I think it'd look
>better if the boxes were all the same size. Did you do it this way
>to prevent there being an empty box in the lower right? Maybe >you could fill any remaining boxes with offers or quotes about
>your company.

They should all be the same size actually. I'm not sure what you're seeing. Maybe you're using a larger text size in your browser and it's giving you more lines in some boxes? It does that at the largest font setting. The only way I can limit the height is to force a font size using stylesheets but I'm not so sure I want to do that. What browser are you seeing different sized boxes on?

The site looks great, very straightforward and easy to use. I would just agree with the other comments about the logo. It looks a little out of place, with the dark background, and also hard to read.

It looks like you have a lot of projects going, are you doing all of those yourself, or do you have partners or employees?

Just curious, be sure to let us know how the new design affects sales... :)

Originally posted by svero
They should all be the same size actually. I'm not sure what you're seeing. (...) What browser are you seeing different sized boxes on? Ah, ok, forget it. I'm using Mozilla 1.1 on my laptop and 1.2a on my desktop. It looks fine on my desktop so I wouldn't worry about it.

Nice and clean. I agree with others on the logo, you need to change it so it is bigger. Theres to much white space being wasted.

Also on your "Download" and "Buy Game" mouse over graphic is in a different shade of aqua when you mouse over it. Not sure if this is intended or not.

John

>It looks like you have a lot of projects going, are you doing all of
>those yourself, or do you have partners or employees?

Well altogether there are about 10-11 people working on various parts of what is Twilight Games. There are 3 core people, 2 of which are full time (including myself) and 1 part time partner. The rest of the people are either working by contract or for royalties. There are a couple of guys who're working on ports of Aargon to pda and mac which isn't mentioned clearly on the site yet. Ratmaster is being developed by a friend of mine from a previous company I worked at. Mahjongg variations is being developed for contract and royalties by another friend from the same company. There are 2 artists working part time for royalties and 1 level designer (who's responsible for many of the aargon levels) who works by contract on and off and so on... It may sound a little unwieldy but in fact everything is going really well with all the projects. I attribute that to having the "right" self motivated people helping me grow the company. Part of that is luck as some great people literally fell onto my lap, but many of these people are past work associates who ended up having some free time and wanted to make games or work on some stuff with me, so I knew what they were like before we started.

>Just curious, be sure to let us know how the new design affects
>sales... :)

Actually I doubt the design will have all that much effect on sales since I didn't really do much in the way of fundamental marketing changes. My main motivation for redoing the site was that the old code I used to generate the site was kind of messy and needed to be redone from scratch. Also the old site design couldn't really nicely accomodate all the titles I had to display in a reasonable way. I also wasn't too happy with the look and feel before, but I doubt the new look will have a noticeable affect on sales. Who knows.. maybe I'm wrong.

Originally posted by z3lda
Nice and clean. I agree with others on the logo, you need to change it so it is bigger. Theres to much white space being wasted.

Also on your "Download" and "Buy Game" mouse over graphic is in a different shade of aqua when you mouse over it. Not sure if this is intended or not.

John

The color change was intentional. Maybe I should rethink that if it's not clear though...

I know I told you this in email, Steve V, but I think it takes too long to load. Here is the combined size of the images for 3 example sites: mine, Pavlina's, and yours:

1. www.retro64.com
42k. Acceptable, but I think this is still too big, and I am trying hard to get it under 40k.

2. www.dexterity.com
27k. That's very good, right about what it should be. It used to be much bigger, but getting all the games off of the main page brought it down to a very nice 27k :)

3. www.twilightgames.com
119k! In my opinion, you need to AT LEAST cut it in half, maybe even more.

I understand that design is important, but you most users are still on modems, don't make'em wait :)

-Mike

Is there an easy way of telling how big your page is? how are you determining these numbers Mike?

I know you can do it in IE and Mozilla by selecting File -> Save As -> Web Page Complete. This gives you an html file and a directory with all the graphics referred to by it. Throw the HTML into the directory, do an ALT-ENTER on the dir, and Windows gives you total file size. Or pretty close, because both Moz and IE will edit your html a bit to make it display locally. You'd have to do a File -> Save As -> HTML to get the real accurate file to download. Also I don't believe this method will download any referenced CSS or .JS files, which you should probably count.

I do a Save As->Web Page Complete in Internet Explorer.

It does save all externally dependent files in that folder too, just not the main web page html, which I did not include in the file sizes. Once saved, i just right click on the folder and do "properties".

It sure comes in handy for optimizing a site! :D

Originally posted by Mike Boeh
I know I told you this in email, Steve V, but I think it takes too long to load. Here is the combined size of the images for 3 example sites: mine, Pavlina's, and yours:

1. www.retro64.com
42k. Acceptable, but I think this is still too big, and I am trying hard to get it under 40k.

2. www.dexterity.com
27k. That's very good, right about what it should be. It used to be much bigger, but getting all the games off of the main page brought it down to a very nice 27k :)

3. www.twilightgames.com
119k! In my opinion, you need to AT LEAST cut it in half, maybe even more.

I understand that design is important, but you most users are still on modems, don't make'em wait :)

-Mike


I'm on a crummy modem connection in southeast asia, and the site loaded pretty fast for me so I wasn't too concerned, but I haven't spent any time trying to optimize the size as of yet. You're right of course. Anything I can do to speed it up is worthwhile. I tried shrinking the images after you sent me an email and it really hurt the look and feel, so I'll eventually get around to trying some other more sophisticated approaches. I plan to shortly move the games off the main page into categories and just highlight the one or two latest titles on the front page.

Hi,
This is my first post on these forums! I got interested in shareware developing a while ago, but I haven't really had that much experience as yet. It's the same old story - I bit off more than I could chew at an early stage :)

One thing I do have experience with is graphic design/web design. After reading your post Steve I thought I'd add my bit of feedback but the idea of writing reams of text was too daunting so I decided to grab an image of your page onto the computer and do some changes straight to that.

I redid the banner, moved the side navigation bar to the top, resized the game pics, reformatted the text, rearranged the buttons a bit, and generally made the whole thing more 3d and impactful. Take a look at the (much reduced) .jpg attached to this post.

Whether or not the whole thing would make your site sell any better is, as you said, debatable :) Some other changes could be made. For instance though the current design is kind of bold and impactful - which is fine - the game images themselves could do with a little generification to make them easier to sort through.

Getting slightly off topic, would you or anyone else be interested in taking me on as a web designer for their site? I have a full time job already so this would be more of a hobby, but I'd like to branch out a bit if possible. I could do the work on a kind of 'pay by results' basis. If the redesign increases traffic/sales, the owner could pay me whatever feels suitable under the circumstances.

I'm not trying to pull a fast one or anything :) :) It would just be nice to get involved with games making/build up a bit of a portfolio/make some money on the side.

Regards,

Mattimc

Just to say I sent the full-sized image to the 'info' address on the twilight website, SteveV (the reduced image is so hard to decipher). Let me know what you think.

I've already made several changes to the site locally. I've reduced images sizes to make the load times a little quicker, and I've changed the whole banner area. I like your suggested changes though. I think you're right about making the logo much larger, but of course that brings me back to the image size problem again. I'll see what I come up with...

If you like the changes I made, would you be interested in having me work on your website? I understand you have a team of people working at Twilight, and I have quite a bit of web design experience and would be willing to go into things on a donationware basis, - ie. if you use it and like it, you pay whatever you feel is appropriate.
Plus I like making websites (up to a point) and am interested in getting more experience.
Of course you don't know me from Adam, but I hope the fact that I knocked up those 'suggestions' in a bit of spare time might serve as some sort of collatoral. If you haven't checked out the full-sized image then check your mail at info@twilightgames.com.
Anything that I produce would be strictly tailored to whatever you want to accomplish..
Anyway, I won't go on any more :) Send me a mail if you're interested.