In another thread there was a mention of stuff people would like me to spend my time on improving. It'd be cool if I could get a list of this stuff. Here's what I'm slowly working on right now:

• better character art categorization
• four panel comics
• trying to fix the firefox background/character overflow bugs on stretched comics

Stuff I sort of want to add but am not convinced it'd be all that great of an idea or it's just kinda hard:

• comic tagging (add keywords to comics, etc)
• a comic contest area
• better way to view comic comments
• open up comic comments to non-donors

Feel free to hit me with your suggestions.

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www.bradsucks.net

Brad

I'm having trouble. I printed out a bunch of them then cut them up and made a paper maiche bat, but it's kinda flimsy. It doesn't even seem to do any damage to the cat.

Would it be ok if I like wrapped the suggestions around a pipe and hit you with that?

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100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

Four panel comics would make my life complete.  I have some other ideas, but of course, I can't think of any when I want to.  Here are the few I can remember:

Foregrounds.  Like backgrounds, but they'll sit on a z-index between the characters and the dialog/narration.  Basically, it would be a comic-panel-sized, trasnparent background GIF with things like rain drops, a steering wheel, etc.

Bottom narration.  In addition to the top narration box.

Maybe the ability to replace the narration box with some sort of comic standards, such as sweat droplets flying from the head, or a huge question mark, or circling stars, etc.

And I still think non-donor voting is a bad idea unless their votes count 20% as much as other people's votes, or some other way of accounting for their inferiority.  (But mostly to keep trolls' votes at bay.)

More as I think of them.  Probably while on the crapper.

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peddling the funny around since 09/24/2002

Please Brad, for the love of Christ, the CAR! The car chararacter that inny and me worked on and I have pm'd you about incessantly since it;s conception.

It's a whole other avenue in comics. Trust me, it's killer!

 

Pur-fucking-lease dude! 

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GOVT. Warning: Do not smoke around children they will badger you for fags.

not_Scyess

This is doable, even with drag and drop these days. I'm just not sure how the interface works.

I guess that'd be possible, but I'm fairly anti-narration as it is.

Seems like that'd be covered by the overlays wouldn't it?

Voting or comments? I think voting's out but comments might be still on the table, I'm not sure.

smamurai: the car is now online in the props category.

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www.bradsucks.net

Foregrounds would be cool, but if you were going to code in an extra image layer I'd rather see it used to add multiple expressions to characters- just add a new image over the old character with everything transparent but the face. Each overlay would just have to be character dependant.

Doing something with the contests is something that seems like a good idea, but since the system works well now there are things I'd rather see.

And make sure comments by non-donors don't get picked up in search engines to avoid spam.

What I'd like to see:

A separate profile page instead of a field above our comics (the field could then be limited in size so the comic always appears completely on the screen).

Google ads below the comics, or an option to pay for these to be removed from our individual pages.

An experimental donor-only maker that doesn't use transparencies and renders comics. And then sell me the code.

A new homepage layout that features the full comic of the day.

A way to open up the dropdown comics lists, and 'find' the next comic in the list that starts with a letter by pressing that letter.

Fix the bug that makes the last line of text giant.

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Dinosaurs had eggs bro, the chicken came way later.

not_Scyess

Ditto.

Maybe the authors of the comics should get paid by google to have ads above their comics and profile if they have a large amount of viewers.

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The dictator of love and his weapon of mass destruction

HotRodDeathToll

For that we'd have to pay to use the site, since I very much doubt the donations cover the operating costs here, let alone kicking anything up to Brad for the time and effort he puts in. I don't know what the agreement with google includes though, so I thought I'd ask.

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Dinosaurs had eggs bro, the chicken came way later.

If its possible could you extend the character thumbnail browser to the backgrounds aswell?

 

Id also like to see more backgrounds, but I guess thats more of an art request than a feature.

 

Forum Post editing?

 

Brad

Seems like that'd be covered by the overlays wouldn't it?

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It would... but only if all the characters are the exact same height.

Injokester

How is that different from just having characters with different expressions?

Injokester 

That wouldn't eliminate spam; it would just make it pointless.  I doubt the spam bots are smart enough (or care enough) to know that search engines can't find the spam.

Injokester

Now that's a good idea.  I think I can dig up some JavaScript / AJAX that does that if you're interested, Brad.

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peddling the funny around since 09/24/2002

Brad

 

That is the best thing ever, holy shit!

 

Would it be possible to have an option to remove the splitter lines between panels so that the comic is one big vista of a panel. Imagine the classroom as 1 big seamless panel.

 

The car is awesomeness.

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GOVT. Warning: Do not smoke around children they will badger you for fags.

not_Scyess

Sure, even if you can show me an example. I'm not quite sure what it would be like.

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www.bradsucks.net

not_Scyess 

To the end user it'd be the same (although I'd expect it would be easier to code into a new drop down to make sorting easier), but it's the only practical way I can see to make it happen on more than a few characters here and there.

Splitting up the images would save on bandwidth and disk space (as well as the loading time for users)- as it means each expression and pose would only have to be saved to cache, not each expression/pose combination.

To give you an idea- I can easily provide 2-3 poses for each character I've drawn (or more if Brad allows it) and up to 15 expressions (which is the most you need to cover practically any emotion).

So to put it in context: 15 expressions (which would have a much smaller file size) would take up about as much space as 2 characters, so instead of having 5 versions of a character we could have 3 bodies and 15 expressions for a total of 45 variations.

All this means that it might actually be possible to get that much flexibility with the art- I don't see Brad adding 45 versions of a single character any time soon. Not to mention that it's the only way I'd be willing to work up that much art- converting characters to transparent GIF's is a major pain in the ass, all of which has to be done manually one image at a time.

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Dinosaurs had eggs bro, the chicken came way later.

Brad

Actually it does what I want now, but only for the first digit of the date. If there's a script to fix it that'd be cool, otherwise just putting the date after the name in the list would work too (though look messier).

What I meant was like in the 'character category' drop down on the maker, if you open it up and press 'k' you can cycle through just kaddar, kaddar2 and kofightclub. Even knowing the name of a comic, without any method of filtering it can be near impossble to find it in the list.

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Dinosaurs had eggs bro, the chicken came way later.

What about a "Clone to New" button.

This button would have an "are you sure message" then would recreate an entirely new ready to run version of the duplicated toon.

 Perhaps you could only do it from "edit Toon" mode.

 It would be great for set pieces. 

 

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"I intend to live forever -- so far, so good."

BobRogers

 

Brad made a feature similar to that a few weeks back

http://www.stripcreator.com/make.php?templateID=10000

 

whereby you put in the id of the comic you want to clone and it'll set up the background and characters for you.

That works magnificently and is exactly what I suggested. Perhaps a button... followed by a way to input the # without having to hunt down the code?

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"I intend to live forever -- so far, so good."

i'd love to have a sent folder for PM's

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what if nigger meant kite

mandingo

 

Yes, you sent me a message in a drunken haze asking me to dress up like Bea Arthur and fellate you.

God I wish I hadn't been drinking that night, too.

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100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

The ability to quote PMs in replies would also be nice.

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peddling the funny around since 09/24/2002

gabe_billings

 

Yes, you sent me a message in a drunken haze asking me to dress up like Bea Arthur and fellate you.

God I wish I hadn't been drinking that night, too.

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if this is your way of calling off the wedding, you can forget it

Scyessi second this. i'd third it too, but that would make me look too eager

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what if nigger meant kite

BobRogers

 

I've got a few templates saved as bookmarks with the system you worked out, but if possible and not terribly hard to do, a clone to new button would be great in my opinion. Or a drop down menu on the "Make a Comic" page?

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It was such a waste of everyone’s time and money that even the Tokyo stadium’s rape robots apologized– something they were programmed specifically never to do.

BobRogers

No, no. If you want it to be easy, you're just being lazy. We went over this already.

Could there perhaps be a change which forces people voting on other users to comment while doing so? Has that idea been discussed and shot down/loved/been found to be so controversial as to wreck relationships in the past?

I ask because I recently rated a new(ish) person good and saw that a few others had done the same before me, but the user's stars remained at four, indicating one user had rated him/her bad without commenting. I agree that people have the right to do so, and certainly don't owe me or anyone else an explanation of why they do what they do, but my curiosity about their motivation for voting bad was utterly piqued. This just doesn't sit well with my Communist bent. And if I ever did that while drunk to anyone else I apologize and am getting help.