1911 Beta

started getting into photoshop and webdesign so i fiddled around with design ideas for the tpg website and a logo...

Update: So according to the person who started TPG, someone contacted him claiming they owned the rights to the name "the proving grounds." I wonder if we are still able to simply use the name "proving grounds" without "the." Anyway... just thought it would be cool to have a legit looking website instead of what we have now. Your thoughts?

I offered to redo the website a couple seasons ago but was turned down. Apparently the guy who created the site is super protective of it and not willing to relinquish any control of it.

There was no reason for them to drop "the proving grounds", and Snipper essentially got trolled pretty hard. The only registered trademark for "the proving grounds" I think is some construction company in kentucky or something, and I think the trademark expired years ago.

RIcky did code a full backend for a new league site (codename: sta), and we could have that up running if we wanted to, but there is no reason to put all the effort in to launching a new league/site when everyone is used to using the old one.

It would be really nice if the guy who owns the current tpg site would let us simply re-design the front-end to give us something that actually looks nice, without losing the decade worth of data we have in the backend.

But, he won't.

thats a bunch of tom foolery right there

Sears pretty much nailed it. From my understanding, the guy that created the site won't give up control of everything or whatever. With Narc being pretty much done for now, I have limited/No contact to these mysterious people. The guy that can actually do things to the site and is still active is actually Bullet Fodder. I am not sure what he can and can't do, but feel free to talk to him and ask him, bounce some ideas around. We're always looking to improve. One thing Narc asked for submissions for a few seasons ago and, no one responded, were for someone to create a new banner to replace http://www.tpgleague.org/images/Classic ... Banner.gif, which would still be nice to replace with something a bit nicer/newer/updated. Feel free.

I thought I remember rizzo did the tpg site, or was that a few sites ago?

billbsod wrote:I thought I remember rizzo did the tpg site, or was that a few sites ago?

He did this:

Sears wrote:There was no reason for them to drop "the proving grounds", and Snipper essentially got trolled pretty hard. The only registered trademark for "the proving grounds" I think is some construction company in kentucky or something, and I think the trademark expired years ago.

If this is true I don't mind putting the words "The Proving Grounds" in there. I would like to see the T in the logo though since the league is TPG and not PG.

The way the site was written the content that gets pushed to the site is expecting certain dimensions from the banner, menu, etc... What would be easiest for me is if any new banner were the same size or smaller as the existing banners. If they are bigger then it will take me more work to change them out. Not saying I won't just saying same size and smaller is as simple as copying a file for me.

the middle letter of the logo is a conflation of 't' and 'P'

I had started working on this a while back (for STA) but I never followed through with it: https://github.com/cgdangelo/staleague.org I think I finished the user profile pages (viewing, updating fields, etc.) and quit.

In my limited free time I've been messing around with making a new league atop Ruby on Rails, because I am fucking sick of PHP and how bad it is. I'm down for moving forward with it; I'll probably be doing it anyway just to get a handle on the language and framework.

scorch- wrote:the middle letter of the logo is a conflation of 't' and 'P'

^this

motive wrote:I had started working on this a while back (for STA) but I never followed through with it: https://github.com/cgdangelo/staleague.org I think I finished the user profile pages (viewing, updating fields, etc.) and quit.

In my limited free time I've been messing around with making a new league atop Ruby on Rails, because I am fucking sick of PHP and how bad it is. I'm down for moving forward with it; I'll probably be doing it anyway just to get a handle on the language and framework.

I'd be down for this, ruby > php.

Sp3c-BuLLeT wrote:

billbsod wrote:I thought I remember rizzo did the tpg site, or was that a few sites ago?

He did this:

Haha.

Worst. Logo. Ever.

Some terrible paint logos to spark some more ideas!

stevehisey_ wrote:

scorch- wrote:the middle letter of the logo is a conflation of 't' and 'P'

^this

Not saying these look good. You could do better, but do you think there is a way to make the T stand out more such as a second color or adding spacing between the T and P?

stevehisey_ wrote:

For the record I really like this

Sp3c-BuLLeT wrote:

stevehisey_ wrote:

scorch- wrote:the middle letter of the logo is a conflation of 't' and 'P'

^this

Not saying these look good. You could do better, but do you think there is a way to make the T stand out more such as a second color or adding spacing between the T and P?

i like that second logo a little better... but maybe i could make the line in the P go out a little farther to the left?

no 3d logo, no care. learn to 3d steve.

unreal design. I cant understand for the life of me why someone would not want to update their website... if the guy is this stubborn it might be time to put him in his place and just move on from them.

Rambizzle wrote:no 3d logo, no care. learn to 3d steve.

|3d|Rambizzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Yeah, hisey's logos are pretty sexy, and I love skinntos paint brainstorms haha.

stevehisey_ wrote:i like that second logo a little better... but maybe i could make the line in the P go out a little farther to the left?

Whatever you think will work. I trust your judgement

Rambizzle wrote:no 3d logo, no care. learn to 3d steve.

I think you mean 3D that spins and shoots fireworks out its sides

i trust in steve hisey

in hisey we trust

I agree, a website refresh is definitely needed.

Who owns these imaginary rights to "the proving grounds" ???

We need something to attract new players into the league. When eric redid 1911 and I saw it, i was super hyped and made me start playing dod again because of all the heads that were around. I had been away from dod maybe 3-4 years at that point.

Maybe the same thing will help with league play...

defrag wrote:We need something to attract new players into the league.

Quite hard I would say. There is no flow of new players around and even if we had, the skill gap between a good player to someone who never touched DoD abyssal. Suffice to say, DoD isn't even an "user friendly" game, bad engine (if compared to source/unreal engines/cryengine) since it's already part of the last decade games. Newer players are more interested in playing cool gfx games, with a cool single player mode and what not. Unfortunately, team based FPS's are slowing dying in the terms of competition (RTS's are on the rise since their broadcasted streams managed to caught up with users attention) and even CSGO is more focused on being a crossover between CS with COD rather than focusing on pure strategy that CS/DoD games developed through the years. It's unfortunate but fact is that the game peak was already achieved and given all the odds and circumstances it's amazing to have 50+ teams from USA/SA/Europe still playing DoD. I'm enjoying my last two season until I call it quits.

Moving to the thread subject, I liked hisey's ideas. Changing is good. That would sure bring a new look into the website, even though we all know we are already used with the orangey 2000's style.

Btw, chuck/ricky, I really think we could use the brand new STA environment to run the so called fast cups / night cups, having a limited number of teams in just 2, 3 matches. After TPG Classic is done, we should really start having this idea ongoing.

Lots of maybes floating around, I'm getting nervous!

I took a crack at this and made various different examples to chose from, not just one, like a real designer.

multiple designs are dubious. i see what i like and stick to it

forgot this one, tenks (which I think is the clear winner)!

acetamino wrote:forgot this one, tenks (which I think is the clear winner)!

I really like what you did there with Stephen Forbes. Very provocative design ace

stevehisey_ wrote:multiple designs are dubious. i see what i like and stick to it

i was kidding, but good luck with having clients and that mentality

defrag wrote:Who owns these imaginary rights to "the proving grounds" ???

I spoke with Haiku he said there was another gaming league back in the day that claimed to have the name first, so Haiku avoided using the phrase and just went with TPG. He said that league has long sign folded and even purchased their domain name. I asked him about this whole situation when this thread got started and he told me he was going to contact a lawyer and file a trademark claim on "The Proving Grounds" for the purpose of an online gaming league. It sounds like the league has been around long enough that he shouldn't have any issues with that.

like anyone is going to care that an online gaming league for day of defeat is using their name LOL

I wouldn't be a fan of the new logo but the webpage and the design itself looks amazing.

Attempted years ago, won't budge.
I supposed it also didn't help that I have zero coding knowledge, just a CS3 wizard.

Sp3c-BuLLeT wrote:

stevehisey_ wrote:

For the record I really like this

me likey

bootstrap does all the work but it looks so stock for now :<

Briefly, let's go over what we need/want in a league website, whether for regular users or admins. I don't know what goes on in the backend for TPG so admins will have to fill in the blanks for me.

User registration
Multiple leagues
Player suspensions
Support ticketing system
News posts/blog thing
Match scheduling
User levels: super admin, league admins, team captains, schedulers, normal users, unregistered idiots
Match comm
Match results
Uploading screenshots/demos

New code if anyone is interested: https://github.com/cgdangelo/tpg

Sears wrote:

Sp3c-BuLLeT wrote:

billbsod wrote:I thought I remember rizzo did the tpg site, or was that a few sites ago?

He did this:

Haha.

Worst. Logo. Ever.

Call me crazy, but I think this is one of the better logo's posted sofar.
The other one (rounded shape) feels like a logo for a cs or css community (maybe because of the C shape I don't know).
Straight suits dod better. Also the order is more logical. Left-right, instead of centre - outwards.

Even better may be a simple but straightforward logo. Much like the current one but better looking.

nik wrote:Call me crazy, but I think this is one of the better logo's posted sofar.
The other one (rounded shape) feels like a logo for a cs or css community (maybe because of the C shape I don't know).
Straight suits dod better. Also the order is more logical. Left-right, instead of centre - outwards.

Even better may be a simple but straightforward logo. Much like the current one but better looking.

My problem with it is that is looks like the alphabet having an orgy.

My problem with the one hisey did is it is too hard to make out the T and the G. At first glance it looks like a P in a circle, but I still like it better than the alphabet orgy.

why can't we tie everything into 1911 much like ESEA's website?

Might be a lot of work but def worth it in the long run.

seanality wrote:why can't we tie everything into 1911 much like ESEA's website?

Might be a lot of work but def worth it in the long run.

I agree.. It would be nice to have everything in one place. Obviously, the league name would change to 1911 also which I doubt anyone has a problem with. Like you said, it could take a while with all the testing that has to go on to make sure the league part is bug free.

Personally I think they need to remain two different entities. First, it would take an enormous amount of work, and we know people have lives outside of this. Secondly, I'd hate to see any type of "politics" go awry, and we end up with a huge cluster. There are so many more reasons that this could end badly. League site and the forums need to remain separate.

php is entirely too dumb for me to put up with in my off time, so that means they're gonna be separate

that site description and the intercontinental idiot battle killed me.

DoD in 2012 (almost 2013) doesn't need an ESEA type framework. If we had wanted to build our own esea/gotfrag type site, I would have skipped phpbb all together, and built something like the team fortress guys have in teamfortress.tv (also ruby on rails), in addition to a league component, but that was never my intention.

1911 has already grown far beyond what I ever expected it to, or wanted it to even, as my intention was just to have a throwback phpbb forum for us to use in lieu of the desserted gotfrag. It's supposed to be a little ghetto and ironic, and a throwback to the old school phpbb forum we loved (and loved to hate), we aren't supposed to be taking this too seriously.

We've flirted with starting a different league before. Ricky and I could have a new version of STA or something up and running without much more effort, but it just doesn't make sense for our community right now. People are so used to using TPG, and the time/effort/resources needed to launch a new league is totally overkill for us. It would be nice to run some cash prized "donate to play" short-season tournaments in partnership with TPG though, which is something I'm still quite interested in.

However, it is fair to say that the communities acces to the TPG side of things could be greatly improved. Like I said, I offered to take on re-designing the front-end of the TPG site over a year ago, and was flatly denied.

I have no qualms about investing more time than I should to make a new league site, because I'd only do it as an excuse to learn Ruby. Whether it ever gets used or even finished is like lolwatever to me.

also that teamfortress site is the most blatant rip-off of gotfrag ever

motive wrote:also that teamfortress site is the most blatant rip-off of gotfrag ever

yup

Oh yeah total rip off, but is nicely done, and the the ruby on rails backend is really fast.