ORG's emoticons

My all-time favorite is the smiling & bowing ashigaru. :bow:

But honestly I feel most smileys we have feel a little outdated (they belong to the age where people need to spend 2 seconds to load a 8 kb gif picture), and many of them are rarely being used. I wonder whether we can look forward to a new set of emoticons?

I was born in Taiwan, so I'd like to mention this set called "onion heads" done by a Taiwanese artist.
http://www.gyps.tyc.edu.tw/gy500/rex...ic/index1.html

What's your favorite emoticon sets?

I cannot draw comics, but I can use some photoshop. So if we decide on a new set but decides to keep the Bowing Ashigaru, I can PS the hat on an existing bowing model.

The little yellow guy is a bit of an .org tradition and I would hate for him to go away completely, but I do agree that there is room for some more graphically advanced sets. I do not know anything about integrating such sets into the site, though. :vanish:

Smilies - with bodies?

Some corruption begs not the cloth, but the knife. Sin is sin...

All smiley suggestions will be considered.

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Originally Posted by Maltz

I was born in Taiwan, so I'd like to mention this set called "onion heads" done by a Taiwanese artist.
http://www.gyps.tyc.edu.tw/gy500/rex...ic/index1.html

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For some reason only four of those images load. The rest all display broken image notification. Does anyone else have this problem?

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

All smiley suggestions will be considered.


For some reason only four of those images load. The rest all display broken image notification. Does anyone else have this problem?

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I only have four load too. Only in the upper row. You're not the only one.

I also don't really like those smilies.

It used to work fine. Here is a screenshot (but they are all animated):
http://7.blog.xuite.net/7/0/0/b/1155...28074863/0.png

I am also open to other emoticon ideas.

Hello, Maltz.

I asked staff to take a look at the suggested set. The general feeling was that because they are so cute they do not fit that well with the site's visual theme, e.g. our avatars and the S2TW skin. We'd probably also have problems getting them integrated with the board software, as none of us can see the animated versions properly. Are there any others you would like to suggest?

(I loved numbers 42 and 96 on that set!)

No problem - just a suggestion. I don't have any other set in mind, and I will be happy to see if other people have suggestions or ideas about how to improve the existing set.

Maybe we can work out/modify a set that fits the theme? (What's the theme?)

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Originally Posted by Maltz

Maybe we can work out/modify a set that fits the theme? (What's the theme?)

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We are a fan site about a war game with currently a Japanese cycle.
But maybe a bit less cute could already work. :wink:

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Originally Posted by Maltz

No problem - just a suggestion. I don't have any other set in mind, and I will be happy to see if other people have suggestions or ideas about how to improve the existing set.

Maybe we can work out/modify a set that fits the theme? (What's the theme?)

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The theme is a reasonably mature styling with a faint hint of history. Doesn't particularly matter which era of history, or which country. The mature part is more important than the history part, although both can (and have) been bent where there's popular support for doing so.

Overall, it's probably easier to say what doesn't fit. The obvious, easy one which goes without saying is: nothing which would fall under 'not safe for work'. Anything themed to a non-TW game, TV series, etc would be rather out of place. I'd like to have a dancing Prinny (from the Disgaea series) smiley but alas, undead penguins don't fit in. Whilst there's no particular cartoon style we wouldn't accept, a lot of Westerners do tend to view cute as childish or aimed at women. A lot of our audience here consists of males, late teens and up. Anything too flashy would be turned down: no busy animations which the eye will find difficult to ignore. We prefer smaller icons as they do not distort the text layout as much, although there are a few notable exceptions to this such as the jawdropping smiley. After that it's mostly a case by case basis, see how people feel about the suggestion and decide from there.

Comparing the ORG with other forums, I don't think that the ORG lacks in the smiley department. Quite the opposite, in fact.

What Tellos says, sometimes it takes me really long to find the smiley I'm looking for, maybe we need more categories or so.

Then again, more is always better but I'm not sure what kind of smilies we could or should add, the vintage ones are usually my favourites because they're not excentric, overdone and don't make you look crazy for using them. Also the first person to suggest ICQ smilies gets instagibbed. ~;)

On that note though, and now that you got the gears in my head turning and swirling around (it's really loud...), how about more symbols? As in not faces that show emotions but signs with text or symbols like the hammer and sickle, a star, a car, a cat, a dog etc.
I'm not sure how often they'd be used but creative people can make funky posts with them if there are enough to choose from, right? Right? :stare:

If anything, there are too many smilies. Sometimes a situation calls for a very specific one you remembered and you have to spend several minutes trying to find it in the list.

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Originally Posted by Kralizec

If anything, there are too many smilies. Sometimes a situation calls for a very specific one you remembered and you have to spend several minutes trying to find it in the list.

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When you first click the smiley box, you get a set list of specific smilies and then you have to click 'More' to see the rest of them. At some point, I put in a bunch of smilies that I thought I had seen used regularly into the quick access selection, but there wasn't much thought put into it. If there are smilies you'd like to have added to that selection, or which you think should be removed from it, let me know and I'll adjust it.

At some point in the past (prior to the vb4 upgrade maybe), each member could personalize the quick access smileys. We could select 20-25 of our favorites. Is this possible with the latest version of vB?

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Originally Posted by TinCow

When you first click the smiley box, you get a set list of specific smilies and then you have to click 'More' to see the rest of them. At some point, I put in a bunch of smilies that I thought I had seen used regularly into the quick access selection, but there wasn't much thought put into it. If there are smilies you'd like to have added to that selection, or which you think should be removed from it, let me know and I'll adjust it.

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The "commonly used" section seems to cover the vast majority of smiley usage. The point I was trying to make is that there are so many smilies, that everytime you need a particulary outlandish or specific smiley, it's probably in the list there somewhere. More of a luxury "problem" actually.

Just check Pizza's last mafia game at the gameroom: there are plenty of emoticons and they are very funny ^^

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Originally Posted by drone

At some point in the past (prior to the vb4 upgrade maybe), each member could personalize the quick access smileys. We could select 20-25 of our favorites. Is this possible with the latest version of vB?

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Yeah, unfortunately that was a vB3 module which was never ported over to vB4.

Wouldn't categorizing smilies (as mentioned before) make it a lot easier?
Categories like shogun, holidays, emotions, ...

They actually are categorized at the moment... just poorly. If someone wants to help figure out a new categorization/organization system, I'd be happy to implement it.

Is the current system ranking smileys by their usage? It might be a way to get the more popular and useful ones bumped to the little window.

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As the thread opener here is my honest thought.

I understand and fully respect the maturity to keep the smileys simple, varied, and not too visually distracting. Actually not a lot of people even use smileys in their discussions in many ORG's topics. It almost feels like that people think using too many smileys looks childish and purposely refrain from it. It is perfectly fine.

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream.

I also recognize that the ORG are currently mainly patronized by western users who in general equate cuteness to childish or feminine. But at least in East Asia, where more than 1.5 billion people live and start flocking to the internet, cuteness or gender neutral appearance is actually quite acceptable among males. When I walk in the malls in Osaka, Japan, 25% of men wears pink shirts. Movie stars often appear gender neutral. Maintaining a masculinity image is not very important in some cultures.

A great thing about the smileys is that it is optional. So I hope people are still open to the introduction of fancier systems - if you do not like them, you do not use them. Having some catchy or cute smileys attract mainly the younger fans, but these people will grow up to become the next generation of ORG primary contributors. And at that time they will talk like you do today.

In addition, cute emoticons are very useful in stories.

They are currently ranked by my own fickle whims. :laugh: There's no way to get them to auto-sort based on usage, so it's just a question of figuring out what to put where.

On a technical level, I don't see any reason why we couldn't just have more sets of smilies. Unless we were able to find a replacement for every single existing smiley, we'd have to keep the current ones anyway, otherwise old threads would have their smiley images broken. So, we could just add a new set of more 'modern' smilies to the existing one so that all options are available. Old fuddie-duddies could continue using the traditional ones, and those fancy new jive hepcats with their bellbottoms and their boogaloo could use the new fangled types.

Boogaloo? :inquisitive:

What in Andres' name is "Boogaloo" ? ~:confused:

It's that thing the young-uns do in the disco these days.

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Originally Posted by Maltz

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream

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Could you give links to some of the sites? Then we can take a look.

Attachment 5411

Here is the "onion head" set that we talked about earlier - the full animated versions that I downloaded straight from another forum. There are also others around but I think this one is very representative. Please feel free to suggest others.

We'll investigate both of these points, see what we can do.

Thanks for proving the zipfile.

:bow:

:on_hi:

Smileys should be implemented now, let us know if you find something wrong with them, I tried my best to make the descriptions fit while keeping them relatively short.
They can be found under Onion Heads and all replace a text like :on_[description]: where the [description]-part is replaced with the description chosen for that smiley.

:on_bye:

Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii :on_totallove:

Big thank you, Husar-chan :on_aww: I have always found a big affection for these smilies.

Now to list each forum member by smilie.

:on_hero: - ACIN
:on_soccer: - Left Eye Nine
:on_harhar: - Askthepizzaguy
:on_devil: - Andres
:on_idea: - TinCow
:on_glasses: - Secura

More to come!

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii :on_totallove:

Big thank you, Husar-chan :on_aww: I have always found a big affection for these smilies.

Now to list each forum member by smilie.

:on_hero: - ACIN
:on_soccer: - Left Eye Nine
:on_harhar: - Askthepizzaguy
:on_devil: - Andres
:on_idea: - TinCow
:on_glasses: - Secura

More to come!

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I hate everything. :on_tantrum:

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii :on_totallove:

Big thank you, Husar-chan :on_aww: I have always found a big affection for these smilies.

Now to list each forum member by smilie.

:on_hero: - ACIN
:on_soccer: - Left Eye Nine
:on_harhar: - Askthepizzaguy
:on_devil: - Andres
:on_idea: - TinCow
:on_glasses: - Secura

More to come!

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Desu desu desu desu desu desu desu.

The implementation is fast! Thanks so much and I hope the cuteness will ease our mind a bit and paint a better future for the ORG. :on_whistle:

Are they really outdated? I can think of 5 different forums I've gone on from time to time in the last few years. All are quite big with a lot of posters. I believe 3 are newer than the Org. All but one are heavily populated by users in their teens. They all use the small yellow smilies, often with some additional sets that vary in appearance but still fit in more or less in size and style (like the Warhammer Ork smilies on dakkadakka). Oddly, only the one with the older base (where people in their twenties make up the bulk of the "younger" posters) has much in the way of smilies that are both higher in detail and much bigger than the little generic yellow guy.

I don't doubt there are forums that use entirely different types of smilies, but I'm not sure most people see a yellow one and think "old fashioned" either.

At any rate, no complaints about the new smilies, except maybe their size. Must admit I thought at first they were supposed to be that cat from the old Pokemon cartoon, not onions. :clown:

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Originally Posted by Maltz

But since I just returned to the ORG after maybe 6 years of absence, I have noticed that how the "outside world" has been changing. The ORG's small smileys really look outdated today, although they did look superb and were the mainstream.

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Nice work, Husar.

So, what do people think?

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Originally Posted by Zim

Must admit I thought at first they were supposed to be that cat from the old Pokemon cartoon, not onions. :clown:

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Gasp! You mean Meowth!

Yes, I did play the original pokemon game to death, and watched the cartoon series when I came home from school. It's etched into my brain.

Nope.

:on_harhar:

The smiley system has undergone a minor overhaul to try and improve its usability. It is now divided into the following categories:

Commonly Used
Expressions/Moods
Thread/Post Commentary
Actions/Situations
Alcohol
Violent/Aggressive
Objects
People/Creatures
Shogun/Japanese
Christmas
Zodiac
Onion Heads
National Flags
US State Flags
Canadian Flags

Of these Expressions/Moods, People/Creatures, and National Flags are still pretty bulky, clocking in at 210, 122, and 217 smilies respectively. People/Creatures and National Flags contain smilies which don't get much use, so I'm not too concerned about the size of those. Expressions/Moods has lots of commonly used smilies though, and it's still pretty large. I'm not quite sure how to further categorize it though. Also, there is no organization at the moment within these groups. If anyone has any suggestions on further reorganization, or would like to assist in doing intra-category organization, please speak up.

Oh, and when you hit More on the Smilies button, you no longer get a giant list of the smilies. Instead, there's a dropdown menu that allows you to select from the Categories so that you only see those. It defaults to Commonly Used. Staff testing has shown a display error for this feature for a Chrome user, but I have been unable to replicate it. Please let me know if you experience any oddities with this feature; the more information I get on it the better.

:on_thumbup:

Great work TC.

Can we get a "desu" button? Ctrl V gets tiring.

Yuck.

I have a minor problem to report of the new category formatting: when I use IE, the emoticons are all right-shifted and only a fraction of it is displayed. But in chrome it appears normal. Is there anyway we can do about it?

Confirmed, I experience this as well with... *shudder*... IE. I will see what I can do

More onionhead smilies have been added. Including my favourite from the static image at the start of this thread: :on_read:

Enjoy.

After a while.I must confess.Im loving the onion heads!:on_thumbup:

:on_pigdance:

Is is possible for the national flags to be organised alphabetically? Rather annoying looking for a particular flag when there appears to be no sorting geographically or otherwise.

Control-F?

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

Control-F?

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Doesn't work for me, you?

Mont is talking about using the browsers in-built "find" function to get the flags you are wanting. For example, with Chrome, it would look like this..
https://i.imgur.com/rEqyY.jpg

Whilst it doesn't solve the issue you are voicing, it is a possible "workaround" solution to quickly find what flags you are after in particular.

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Originally Posted by Tiaexz

Mont is talking about using the browsers in-built "find" function to get the flags you are wanting. For example, with Chrome, it would look like this..
https://i.imgur.com/rEqyY.jpg

Whilst it doesn't solve the issue you are voicing, it is a possible "workaround" solution to quickly find what flags you are after in particular.

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Ahem. I knew that. Like, totally. It, erm, didn't work first time, but is fine now. Totally. Weird how it didn't work first time, when I totally knew what I was doing. Totally.

Some of the code for smilies can be updated to general use. I mean :p and :lol: are much more user friendly than :tongue: and :laugh4:

The flags can be arranged alphabetically. I'll see if I can find some time to sort them, though I hope you'll understand that it will be low priority so it may take a while.

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Originally Posted by classical_hero

Some of the code for smilies can be updated to general use. I mean :p and :lol: are much more user friendly than :tongue: and :laugh4:

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The problem with that is that doing so will remove those smilies from old posts that used the old codes. For that reason, it's generally a bad idea to change the code substitution for smilies.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

The flags can be arranged alphabetically. I'll see if I can find some time to sort them, though I hope you'll understand that it will be low priority so it may take a while.

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Seriously, don't worry about it, Control F is a more than convenient method of finding them. The posts I need the flags for contain the country name anyway, so it's just as quick to copy paste, then put a colon at each end.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

The problem with that is that doing so will remove those smilies from old posts that used the old codes. For that reason, it's generally a bad idea to change the code substitution for smilies.

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Can't you make so that either old or new codes work?