New feature requests?

[Jazzy]

After Tuesday, I have a week and a half of holiday, so if there are any features you'd like to see added to NC in that time, speak now or forever hold your peace.

I will not do the following:
- add a chatroom - I'm waiting for the one we normally use to come out of beta for phpbb3.
- skin the site or the forums - if you'd like them to look different, you can use a custom stylesheet yourself.
- create a database of the new pets by manually screencapping each one.

I will consider:
- creating a database of the new pets by allowing people to enter URLs to official Neopets. I've not been playing properly for a long time now, so someone else would have to say if that's feasible.

I am looking for new forum, Neopets or Subeta features. If they are Subeta, you might have to explain to me a little better what exactly it is the feature will do. Don't assume I know, for example, what a legendary is, or Blackheart Hollow; while I might know these names, I haven't actually played in four years.

[Wingsrising]

A little tinkering makes me wonder if this wouldn't be doable. You can save the image location of your pet, ie:

http://pets.neopets.com/cp/rfv7rm3d/1/2.png

and unlike with the Subeta wardrobe, it doesn't appear to break when you change the pet's outfit. (Ie, that link still goes to a picture of my Eyrie in her last outfit even though she's now wearing something different.)

I don't know if it changes when you re-paint a pet or not, but it at least suggests that it MIGHT be feasible for people to upload the official images of their pets (either naked, wearing only the clothes that come with their PB, or both) and that the images might stay, even when you re-paint the pet. Hard to be sure, of course... and no way to be sure Neopets won't re-program the wardrobe so that the URLs change, but... well. I don't see other way to do it without screencapping everything, which I agree seems like it would be a royal pain in the butt. It looks like the old images in the custom Neopets thread didn't change when they added expressions, so I think there's at least a fighting chance they'll stick around for a while.

I really would like to see the pet color database back up again, personally... with expressions, if possible. This is Neocolours, after all. So if there's a way to do that, letting people upload the URLs themselves so no one had to do all the work, I think that would be great.

[daisybell]

Unless it's changed since I tried it out, the url for a particular pet is the same- so if you had a male blue flotsam and it was wearing nothing and if I had a male blue flotsam with no clothing on, it would be the same url.

It must be possible to create a database of the basic pets and their expressions, remembering that male and female are different- but coloured pets would be harder. Not impossible, though, if there were several of us contributing the image urls.

[Jazzy]

Well, since there aren't really redraws anymore, I'm less concerned about having every single pet available - I think it's most important to have happy/sad/angry/ill (are there those four poses?) in r/g/b/y, and if necessary, copies of those can be kept at Neocolours in case the URLs do change. Having the rest of the colours is a bonus, I think, but it's not the end of the world if we don't.

[Silverevilchao]

- skin the site or the forums - if you'd like them to look different, you can use a custom stylesheet yourself.

How do you do that? There isn't a place on the site where you can input such code...

[Jazzy]

Custom stylesheets are a browser feature, not part of this site - people here have been using them for years to block Neopets' ads and so on. Google is a better resource than I am, because it's browser- and operating-stystem-specific.

[Sagrei]

Would it be possible to throw in a link to the new/active topics pages at the bottom of each thread? Makes things flow easier than backing up two or three times to get back to it.

[Joey]

Oooh, I second Sagrei's suggestion if it's possible. I've been using the new posts list since the layout switch and it's kind of hard to get to.

[Wingsrising]

Honestly, I'd like to see as many of the colored pets as we can get into the database. They're aren't as many redraws anymore, but there are some (mutant/maraquan/baby) and it's not like the the non-redraw pets are all identical. It would also let us see what clothing comes with the clothed pets.

I used the various new-neopets color sites heavily when I was picking new colors for my pets. I just don't think the database will be that useful if it only has R/Y/G/B, at least not for selecting what pet to get.

We may not be able to get all of them, but I bet we could get most of them. Some of us post on other forums -- once we've gotten all the pets we can from people here, we could always post on PPT or IDB with a list of pets we don't have yet asking people if they can contribute. (I'm not suggesting letting people on other forums modify our DB, or anything, just asking them for the URL..)

If it were possible I think it would be cool to show pets that have PB clothing naked as well as clothed, although I don't know how that would work with the non-clothed pets. I think it would be very useful to people trying to decide what they're painting their pets, although not as essential as having the colors in the first place.)

[Cranberry]

It's pretty easy to find a pet in (almost) any color with a Google search, too. I do it when I want to see how a pet looks in its bigger size. I just search:

"the baby gelert" male site:neopets.com

I'd like to see all colors of pets in a DB, too. I find myself checking this site all of the time to see what clothing items come with the different colors. There are actually quite a few reposes out there, too.

[Wingsrising]

It's pretty easy to find a pet in (almost) any color with a Google search, too. I do it when I want to see how a pet looks in its bigger size. I just search:

"the baby gelert" male site:neopets.com

I never thought of doing that. That's so cool! It might still be a problem finding ones that aren't dressed and don't have BGs (and that have all the clothes, for PB colors) but it could certainly fill in the gaps.

[Madge]

I agree with Wingrising, we do indeed need to have every species and colour combination on this site; it's Neocolours, so if it doesn't have all the colours of all the pets, what on earth DO we have?

I definitely agree with having all the colours, all the expressions, and clothed/unclothed variants on the site. Perhaps you could add something like &clothed=false? I have no idea how to code in php so my suggestions can mostly be ignored.

But, yeah, if we are not doing everything we can to provide a database of all the neopets colours in all their various poses and such, then we're not doing everything we can to be the best damn colours/species browsing fansite there is. Of course, whether you want to put effort towards this goal is a different story and more a question of how much time and effort you can afford to give a site you're not making any money from, rather than a question of what Neoclours should have.

[Jazzy]

Okay, there's now a system to submit clothed male and female post-Customisation pets:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7750
Any other ideas?

[EofS]

I don't suppose there's any way to control the behaviour of forum announcements is there? I'm not quite sure what you'd want to do, but I'm just wondering.

My memory of when the first forumwide announcement went out was that it flagged as a new post in every single forum. However the new one about submitting post-customisation pets appeared as a new post only in... I believe it was AaToW. When people are replying to it, it's showing up as a new post in Subeta. I suspect this means that whichever forum the announcement was accessed through, that's where it shows as new (did you create it through AaToW perchance?)

This means that right now an announcement about Neopets related stuff keeps showing as new in the Subeta forum. Which is slightly counterintuitive. And if you're ignoring the Subeta forum you might not notice it's getting replies.

Like I say, I'm not really sure what could be done to get round this. Is there a way for the latest announcement (or the last one with a reply) to show at the top of the board index perhaps?

Was that even vaguely coherent?


(Oh hey, since when has quickreply included these little + - buttons to make the text field change size? They're nifty! Please don't tell me the answer is that they've always been there. I don't normally use quickreply much.)

[Jazzy]

They really have always been there, sorry

I created it in here and it's now showing up as a new post everywhere; I know it didn't when I created it, but I'm not sure why not and really, I don't want to go digging. Reason for that is any fix I make will be overwritten in the next forum upgrade.