JsARCLIGHT

Here is the "fixed" icon: That is about as good as I can get these little guys at home with the tools I have. Before I turn in for the night I'll try to shrink some of the others and see what they look like on here. Edit: Here is Lockeroo Skully I need to book for the night, everybody jump on these... give me color suggestions, icon suggestions, you name it. Hell, other people get down on this. Let's get a nice new icon scheme cooked up before the weekend is out if we can pull it off.

I don't have the same tools at home that I have at work... currently this little bugger is my test icon: It's losing a good deal of detail in the shrink and I think I accidentally saved it off center so the alpha is messed up a bit. Edit: sorry, had to post this reply to see for myself what it looked like on the cream blue field. Yeah the alpha is dorked... damn... but I can fix that. I'll also need to make a tiny line between the kite sides to boost that reveal some more. This is about the best I can generate at home at this tiny of a size. I fear the skull and crossbones will be recognizable but very "off" at this small size. I'll try nonetheless... give me a few more minutes here.

I can goose the colors to any palate people want... personally I always go with muted pastels. Especially when looking at the default skin of MW, which itself is a bevy of muted pastel blues. I just think the current red kites we have are a tad too RED if you know what I mean. Anyone know the by icon size we need? I swiped one of the new kites and it is I think 27x27. I can scale down some of my icons to that size and GIF-afy them to see how they read and post them here. Also if folks could give me pantone color ranges they like or just post a picture of a color and say "make the -blank- icon THAT color".

Another thing to keep in mind is that these icons look good full size as they are now but when you shrink them and GIF-afy them they loose a lot of detail. I always liked how color and basic shape theme where the topic identifiers. Getting too complex with the design will make it a jumble at 30 x 30. The idea of the Skull Flight icon for locked topic is pretty nifty, if it was just that. Superimposing it at such a small resolution might get too muddy to see what it is. If I had my drothers I'd change the grey "lock" to a greyout Skull Flight for "locked topic"... but then the question persists would people know what it meant? Edit: Oh and thanks for the praise!

Fast and dirty Skull Flight topic Icon:

I can work skull flight symbols into the mix... I just kept it all one icon because a few people are complaining about too scattershot of an icon system.

OK here is my fast and dirty button design. Colors are not so "in your face". Click HERE to see the icons I tried to hit all the bases so we will have icons for everything we currently have. The second icons behind the main icons that have the white "crosshair" boarders on them are icons that indicate to the MW user that they have posted in that topic. Let me know and I can grind these to the right size and make GIF's out of them... or I can flush them down the toilet. Up to the peeps in charge and the people of MW.

I'm doing up some really quick here. I'll post them when I'm done so peope can poo poo them. I'm going with the current board color scheme for post icons but using the UN symbol and going all glassy ball on it. Give me about another fifteen minutes...

I got quake 4 to run in native res on my monitor... check out widescreengamingforums for the workaround. It works perfectly... if you have a good graphics card backing it up that is.

Three words: Sony Mini Disc. I bought a player/recorder in the early '90s and have felt the Sony Sting ever since. The Sony Sting feels almost like the Sega Sting, just more expensive back then.

I'm sure Graham and Roy appreciate constructive criticism. Perhaps with some tweaking we can get the icons less "punchy". When I get home from work tonight I can help with icon creation as well if someone can provide me with some direction.

I'm just trying to keep all feedback of the site updates in one place.

Already got two different topics going about this. Please voice your opinion here: I Like The Kites

The key is inside the sections at the bottom. As for the little red Minmays those replaced the "go to last undread post" button.

My dell's native resolution is that "untrue" 1680 x 1050 widescreen and I try to run all my games in that res... mostly because it looks the best in that res. Lower resolutions will look muddy. I have a Pent4 3gig with 2 gig of DDR ram and a X800 PRO card and every game I run in 1680 res looks just fine. Admittedly some of the new games I have to disable antialiasing down to lower settings and fiddle with a few settings here and there to increase framerates but the games look wonderful. Right now I'm running Oblivion in 1680 mode and it looks great.

Guys, let's please avoid another fight here and also please leave Macross Nexus out of this for now. You can't judge one forum or site based on the opinions and statements of only one person. Let's get back on the topic of Macross World and it's kites.

It is best to not judge a forum by one outspoken member and at the same time it is also best to appreciate the actions of others even when they may not be to the level you want.

I'm planning to get the 30" version when I get my new computer... and I'll get my new computer when the new 64 bit shenanigans start coming out... which by that time Apple might have a 42" cinema display.

That is my exact monitor. While I enjoy mine I will caution you in buying that model from anyone but Dell. That monitor had a rash of bad builds when it first came out and unless that retailer can prove the one they are selling is from a recent lot I would be quite wary. I used to know the difference between the generations of this monitor... I think it is the serial number has an A followed by a number. If the number is more than 1 I think those are the better quality ones. I'd do some checking before buying that particular model of monitor... make sure it is from the good batches first.

Easiest test in the book: grab the mouse and move it around fast, but not super fast. See how far behind the pointer the ghost image is. If it is really far behind then that is a very low refresh monitor and would be terrible for gaming. If the ghost is quite close behind it, making it look like a blur and less like a whole sepparate after-image, then that monitor might be suitable for gaming. Another trick is to open a browser window and go to a website like MW that has large mono color stripes running side to side and then scroll up and down and watch the stripes... if they blur or ghost too heavily then the monitor might have issues. Sadly places like CompUSA and Best Buy always try to put things on the monitors that will not draw attention to their weaknesses... hence why most places run that obnoxious "fish tank" screen saver. That thing hides flaws in monitors well while at the same time making a cheap monitor look really good.

I deal with dell on an almost weekly basis as I buy their stuff for my business. I have been on the phone to more dell customer service reps than I have with members of my family. Certain models of dell LCD monitor are under a "7 or more" return policy. It is sort of a known fact (well now anyway) that dell had a big rash of bad LCD monitors a few years ago. It got to the point where almost every one of a certain type of monitor (sadly the model I bought) was shipping with dead or stuck pixels. Dell could not replace the monitors so they created a sliding scale of dead pixels and what dell did was they did not come right out and tell you that right away, first they will offer you discount coupons and all sorts of other things before they finally pipe up and say "7 or more and you get a replacement". I have not had that problem on other dell LCDs, only on a certain few... the problem is that dell will not tell you which ones are under that umbrella so it is sort of a crapshoot. Many companies who make LCD monitors do not have a dead pixel policy... so dependent on who's monitor you buy you may not be able to claim dead pixels as a reason for warranty replacement.

While my monitor is far from "brand spanking new" I can say that most of the main problems have been "reduced" in this gen of dell flat wides that I have. The key factor sadly is just getting used to the monitor. It is by far nowhere near the blacks of a CRT and getting used to the slight ghosting (even 12ms and lower monitors still ghost) takes time. But as soon as you are used to it you will never go back to a CRT. I use a CRT at work just because I need pantone calibrated colors but I now prefer widescreen LCD. My next computer I really want to get one of those great Apple cinema monitors... those things are outstanding... but pricey.

I've been using a Dell 20" widescreen for quite a while now and love it. It really adds to the cinematic quality of PC games when you play "wide". Here are some pointers that I have picked up while shopping for my monitor long ago and other things I've learned owning one: Pay close attention to three things on your monitor selections, Native resolution mode, refresh rate and Hertz. I think every LCD monitor runs at 60 Hertz so that should not be much of a sticking point but the native resolution and the refresh rate are massively important. Some widescreen monitors are "true" 16 x 9 widescreen resolution and support almost all those resolutions when playing games. Other monitors (like my dell) are an "untrue" widescreen which is actually 16x10. Using a 16x9 res on a 16x10 monitor causes distortion and likewise the other way around. The native res of my dell monitor is 1680 x 1050 and it looks outstanding running that res in programs that support it. Some games do not support that resolution so I either have to suffer running a lower, off res res or I have to do a little "adjusting" to hack the games to run in 1680 x 1050 mode. The other important item is refresh rate, that is the rate at which the monitor updates itself. Low refresh rates create the phenomenon called "ghosting" which means moving images on the screen leave ghostly trails behind themselves. A good widescreen LCD will have a higher refresh rate than a cheaper one so ghosting will be cut down BUT it will still be present. If you are ultra nit-picky about your images then ghosting will drive you up a wall... unless you just get used to it like I did. Two things to do immediately upon getting a widescreen LCD monitor are to use only DVI connections if possible, as this allows for the sharpest picture you can get, and do what I call the "bleed test". Leave the monitor turned on for about half an hour and then call up an all black screen. Turn the lights off in the room and see how bad the light bleed is. To be honest there is really no such thing as an LCD that does not have light bleed, the question is "how bad will it be" and it almost varys from unit to unit even within the same model line. Two nasty things to beware of with an LCD monitor are color flasking at angles and dead or stuck pixels. My dell flasks to a purplish color at steep viewing angles but when viewed head on is just fine. This dell monitor also has a few dead pixes on it. Beware dell's "dead pixel policy", if you get a dell monitor and it ships with dead pixels they will not replace it unless it has more than 7 dead pixels... from the horse's mouth I kid you not. As for actually playing your newer and older games in widescreen check out the widescreengaming forums for workarounds for many games that don't support native widescreen resolutions. A big kick in the balls is that a lot of very recent, high tilt games DO NOT support native widescreen and have to be hacked a bit to work right. FEAR, Star Wars KOTOR 2 and a few others leap to mind right away. The best advice other than all this rot I just typed is the advice given to me by someone else when I was debating buying a widescreen LCD monitor: try before you buy. Go around town and see if any local shops have monitors on hand that you can look at. Failing that ask friends if they have one you can test. Failing those two buy from a place that has 100% refund return if you find you hate the monitor. Never buy a monitor on eBay unless you feel lucky.

Nice to see MW looking more and more like the MW I remember.

I do find it annoying the see things like Dwemer weapons in the hands of Goblins or a gang of Theives in which the leader has a full suit of Mythril armor with rare enchanted weapons yet his cohorts are wearing regular steel armor with iron weapons. It also bugs me that the second you find a new armor class in the game (Dwemer, Orcish, Ebony, etc.) it shows up in some capacity in the shops. It's like you have to fight till you burp to get the junk then you drag it back to town thinking you will be selling rare stuff and then everyone has the stuff for sale. Edit: and thanks to my botching of several dungeons and playing through them several times I discovered the enemies are somewhat randomly generated. One time playing through I found a lot of good stuff but got killed... then when playing through again telling myself "watch out for that guy he's going to have a Dwemer longsword" it turns out now he has a silver warhammer instead. Weird.