NiaD Award badges

[pigfender]

There's been a bit more interest of late in the forum 'award' badges, which as gotten me thinking about their future. In case you're not familiar with the award badges, these are the little lines of mugs* that people use in their forum signatures after each Novel in a Day, such as:
When I first introduced the badges, I set up a template that makes generating these images simple (time consuming, but simple). The trouble is, I never imagined that we'd still be running these events ten years later! While it's pretty straightforward to generate whatever additional badges are needed for 2020, we're going to need a redesign to cope with the 1,024 additional combinations needed for 2021, and a whopping 1,047,552 additional combinations to last us another ten years.

So... I wanted to give plenty of time to get your views on what you'd like to see happen to the mugs. At the very least, we'll need to expand from two rows of five to some other configuration... or possibly just move to each mug being it's own discrete image (so that instead of adding a single image for years 4 and 9, you'd add an image for year 4 and an image for year 9).

Thoughts, comments and suggestions gratefully received!

(* - ceci n'est pas une tasse)

[thegirlclaudia]

I think it looks nice to stack mugs up every 5 or so years. Since it would make the signature look a bit taller, the labels of "years active" could then be on the right side of the stack of mugs.

mug 2014
mug 2015
mug 2017
mug 2019
MUG
2020

This is my crude rendition of a single 5-year mug stack with labels to the right. Probably need less work to generate the image, since it's only the space on the right and the final mug that need labelling.

[ConradG]

I've spent some time thinking about this, and I think discrete images for each year, with forum member adding all the appropriate images in a long string is the only way to go — for your own sanity.

There are probably fancier CSS-based solutions of a full row, dropping out specified years that don't apply ... but we want you to have time to do the plotting for the next novel!!

Thanks for all that you do for us; we love being part of this madness.

[Jaysen]

The problem is the limit on characters allowed in the signature space. I’m not sure how it counts the URL. Might be worth engaging L&L for that.

Piggy, drop me a line about how to u are doing this and I’ll see if one of my UI guys can whip up something simpler for you to manage.

[pigfender]

The problem is the limit on characters allowed in the signature space. I’m not sure how it counts the URL. Might be worth engaging L&L for that.

That was what drove the original decision to create combined mugtree images.

Piggy, drop me a line about how to u are doing this and I’ll see if one of my UI guys can whip up something simpler for you to manage.

It’s all pretty low-tech... an Adobe Illustrator vector graphics file, with ten mugs, all switchable on/off, all switchable to show any year, then exported using ‘art boards’. So each individual mugtree is set up and exported by hand (hence only producing the combinations people have taken part in rather than all possible combinations).

It’s simple, but labour intensive - increasingly so as extra years increase the combinations. We added roughy 25 additional combinations this time, and that number will get larger every year — plus the AI file will need a substantial redesign if I continue to use the same method.

Or we could just stop at 10!

[Jaysen]

Bah! Nothing like doing it the easy hard way.

I’ll talk with the smart guys and see if we can’t make it simpler to generate the files from f we can’t just do it “on the fly”. Not sure your hosting arrangement so dynamic might not make you happy.

[gr]

Me and my rogue mugs should probably just sit down and be quiet here ... but that never works.

A dynamic solution sounds like just the ticket — then you would only need to generate a single individual mug image for each year.*

There are websites out there which offer to hammer together jpgs. If any of those has a protocol which enabled you to send instruction via url that might be a possibility.

It is easy enough to set up a webpage that will present singleton mug images arranged in any combination a user requested. Then, I assume everyone's computer has a built-in facility for grabbing a user-specified area of the screen and saves it as a jpg. So, though it requires some user doing, it puts the appropriate custom icon into each user's hands. Does that help?

gr

* But if it doesn’t include a bonus flaming white mug, Camy is going to be pret-ty disappointed.

[pigfender]

I still miss the moustache mug from 2015. Is there an archive of past rogue mug offerings available anywhere, or have these moments bean lost in thyme like tiers in reign?

[gr]

When falls the last tier of the last reign for the thyme bean, a great knurl of weltering photoshop layers will rise from the earth like an onion and remember all that has gone before.

(These rogue cups are not actually prepared as separate graphics, but they certainly could be! Yes, the moustache cup is the best of the lot.)

[homeport]

I like the idea of individual design for each year if its Christmas and we can choose, but the very fact we have any we have you to thank for that Pigfender so grateful for anything

[gr]

I agree. Funny cups have a short shelf life. While I make a custom cup for each year, I only keep it around for a relatively short time before reverting to standard.

[Camy]

Me and my rogue mugs should probably just sit down and be quiet here ... but that never works.

A dynamic solution sounds like just the ticket — then you would only need to generate a single individual mug image for each year.*

There are websites out there which offer to hammer together jpgs. If any of those has a protocol which enabled you to send instruction via url that might be a possibility.

It is easy enough to set up a webpage that will present singleton mug images arranged in any combination a user requested. Then, I assume everyone's computer has a built-in facility for grabbing a user-specified area of the screen and saves it as a jpg. So, though it requires some user doing, it puts the appropriate custom icon into each user's hands. Does that help?

gr

* But if it doesn’t include a bonus flaming white mug, Camy is going to be pret-ty disappointed.

"He has a quivering lower lip," said the mirror, knowingly.