Neocolours

Hello everyone!

No doubt you'll have seen the changes we've made to the site today, and if you haven't, we encourage you to take a look round the Neopets section in particular, because that's going to be the blueprint for this site from now on.

The changes are necessary because we've recently been informed by our webhosts that they will be changing the fee structure for hosting. Previously, the agreement was that providing we didn't exceed a bandwidth cap, a flat fee would be charged to cover the hosting of this site. However, for the new financial year, they've implemented a policy designed to drastically reduce their image traffic: they've decided that they will now be charging by the metre for images. This, unfortunately, hits us fairly hard, because by my calculations, this site uses approximately 408 square feet of pet images alone. This is the same size as a stegosaurus, so you can see why we're concerned.

Ty and I have been searching for a solution, and we believe this is the best compromise available: we will continue to provide the site, but it will be stripped of all images, and pets will be displayed as text only.

You might be balking at this, but don't worry: we've worked hard on the quality of our display, and feel confident that you will barely notice the difference. We have had to sacrifice some detail, but the overall viewing experience has hardly changed!

For those of you who are thinking that only the Neopets section of the site has been updated, this is true for now, but the forum and Subeta section will shortly be converted to match. We have prepared some sample pages to show you how this will look for our Subeta pages, starting with Field, Glade and Scribble. People have always pointed out how similar certain Subeta species look, and we've listened to you in producing our new graphics! Technical limitations have also forced us not to include buttwings on pets, but we're sure you won't miss them. We considered wiping the pet ratings and making people re-rate them after the updates, but we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be necessary given how faithful our versions are to the originals.

We hope you appreciate the need for these changes, and look forward to your feedback

Sample pages:
Subeta Field pets
Subeta Glade pets
Subeta Scribble pets
Post-customisation Neopets
The Neopets pose viewer

*snerk*


Ahem. I mean, I understand completely the need for the changes, and I applaud you and Ty for the obvious thought put into coming up with this obviously reasonable and rational compromise. *nods*

You've done a really awesome job, Jazzy. You can't believe how hard it was for me to keep this all secret. I think it's a great way to make sure we keep on running. But now that the images are all gone, don't you think we should reset the ratings? There are some pets that haven't changed much, like the aisha, but some like the field torrent have a different sort of feel to them now.

Holy... wow... This took a lot of time to make... WOW!

Is it too late to ask for a refund on my donation please? I think I'd prefer to hang out on a site that doesn't give in so easily to bullying over something like Neopets pictures when they're so central to the site.

If anyone wants me, I guess you'll have to come and find me on neoitems.net

(I'm so disappointed :0( You've not even recreated the pets well - I can't see one single eyelash on the female pets, they're just the same as the male ones. Can you say half-arsed job? 'cos you can certainly do one.)

Bacon wrote:Holy... wow... This took a lot of time to make... WOW!

A lot of time? Are you serious? She hasn't even bothered to recreate the buttwings. "Oh, putting wings on the pets will be hard, lets just not do it."

Took me awhile to figure it out, but I must say, you have captured the essence of the Jollin quite nicely. Rah would be proud. =)

Best one yet.

Errr. Change to the site I mean. Yes.

This is a terrible shame, but somehow inevitable given the current financial situation.

Having said that, I would like to extend my congratulations to you both - in many cases the resemblance is indeed uncanny. While some of the images will be sorely missed, it's fair to say some have actually improved.

EDIT: There's something aesthetically quite appealing about ruddy big Courier proportional characters isn't there? Or is that just me?

Please, don't rush to calling our work half-arsed--it's not that we're too lazy to make buttwings, it's just that it's hardly efficient to include them. After all, so many pets have them, you can just imagine them on any pet you see, and it'll probably be right. Why waste the space, which is so precious to us now?

AngharadTy wrote:Please, don't rush to calling our work half-arsed--it's not that we're too lazy to make buttwings, it's just that it's hardly efficient to include them. After all, so many pets have them, you can just imagine them on any pet you see, and it'll probably be right. Why waste the space, which is so precious to us now?

I'm sorry, but that argument just doesn't hold any water.

The bandwidth bullying is over images. The pets are now text, to circumvent that. Duh. That's the whole point? So buttwings wouldn't take up any of your 'precious' space.

Of course if amount of text is also a problem, then that argument would stand. But I'd be (even more) disappointed to learn that that were the case and Jazzy didn't even have the good manners to tell us that straight from the top.

Mght i sggst we strt tlkng lyk ths 2 ctrl+S mor bandwith if thrs lso an ishu ^ txt? i no buttwings r evrywer on subby, but evn so this wud b a mor efishunt use of ' '.

Oh what's that I see, a hasty retraction from Ty in light of my watertight logic? Why yes, I think it is. (Do I get an award for the first person ever to win an argument using chatspeak? 'cos I totally should.)

(^)
^^^
/ \
~~~~

*offers*

What? It's totally a winged victory statue.

Totally.

(^)
^||^
~/\~
~~~~

Thank you for making it so easy for me to demonstrate how our great tyrannical leaders could have so pissing easily added buttwings, if they really cared about doing a good job.

Yeah, I want a refund on my donation too. Part of my payment went so that I could view all the butt-winged pets I want in one place!! This is an outrage and I'll not stand for it.

Though I'd totally own that Aisha and some of those Glades. But still, think of the buttwings!

I never realized that buttwings were such a sticking point. I'll bring it up to the other mods privately and see if we can come to a consensus. We're not a dictatorship, after all! Perhaps we can run a poll.

Thank you Seerow! At last someone else with the balls to actually stand up against this travesty, instead of rolling over.

Also, and I really don't know why I'm even still here:

/\o/
/( )

Irion.

\o/\
( )\

Eyrie.

LAY-Z. Although frankly not sure who is lay-zer here - you, or Neo for copying Subeta's pet. Keith should sue or something. It's just, like, flipped. And a couple of really minor changes here and there. If I were to take some other journalist's article, change the order of the paragraphs and replace a few "it is" with "it's" and so on, I would be in so much trouble.