Ideas on the header banner and color theme

**Maltz** · 04-26-2012, 16:53

I really like the current theme and I can see a lot of quality work put in there. Just a few suggestions:

(1) On the very top - the "ORG" + Japanese castle banner. Personally I think the winter theme is a little strange as our general wallpaper shows spring time and a different color theme. Maybe we can find another season of the castle to match the orange background better. Also I remember in the opening moments of the intro movie (before "the old shogunate is ova!") there is a nice wall paper showing hand-drawn cherry blossom.

(2) The winter background is probably here to match the background picture for posts, which is also a little blue, as well as dark blue bold font for links... How about we make the color a little warmer?

I know some photoshop so if the staff passes me the specifications of size and possibly the originals, I can come up with some modifications and see if it will work out.

By the way, some of the submissions in the screenshot threads would make excellent materials for banners and wallpapers of the site. We can even let people vote on them...?

**TinCow** · 04-26-2012, 18:11

Is the banner winter? I thought it was a spring thing due to the leaves or cherry blossoms or whatever on the tree on the left. Regardless, this is the path of the full image:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...ds/header2.png

The dimensions are 1,920px × 178px. 1920px width is required so that it properly scales for all common resolutions.

For the post background, do you mean this?
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...unds/paper.png

If so, that's an image of the in-game paper or fabric. It's designed to match this top bit of each section/post/etc:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...ounds/flag.png

So, changing the 'paper' background would screw up the look of the skin unless the flag pole bit was also changed to match it.

If you'd like to create some alternatives, please go right ahead. I cannot guarantee that we will use them, but anything anyone produces will certainly be seriously considered.

**drone** · 04-26-2012, 19:00

Originally Posted by TinCow

Is the banner winter? I thought it was a spring thing due to the leaves or cherry blossoms or whatever on the tree on the left. Regardless, this is the path of the full image:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...ds/header2.png

Pretty sure it's cherry blossoms.

**Maltz** · 04-26-2012, 21:22

Yeah the picture is what I am referring to.

If Japanese Castle + Cherry Blossom is what we aim for, I might be able to find something... I can also photoshop the ORG logo with various effect for staff to choose from.

I can modify the background color and let the staff decide whether to change or not.

By the way, is there a higher resolution version of the wallpaper? (the one that obviously shows cherry blossom?) It looks a little blurred.

**TinCow** · 04-26-2012, 22:26

Originally Posted by Maltz

By the way, is there a higher resolution version of the wallpaper? (the one that obviously shows cherry blossom?) It looks a little blurred.

Yes, the one that is displayed has been compressed to keep page loading times down. Here is the raw image:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...background.png

Here's another raw image that was experimented with during design, but wasn't actually used:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...s/kanagawa.png

Also, here are various versions of the current logo:

**Maltz** · 04-26-2012, 22:35

Yeah that wave picture is very famous. I understand the need to keep the load times down.
One way is to tone down the color constract of the pictures and make it more like a watermark. This way the file can be smaller.

By the way, I went back to the Shogun 2 screenshot thread and found a few awesome candidates for the header picture.
I wonder whether it is a good idea to simply contact the original authors and ask them to come up with designs based on their pictures?

**TinCow** · 04-29-2012, 16:18

Those skins have been on the site for many years. If you are just now having issues with them, it's probably a local configuration issue.

**caravel** · 04-29-2012, 22:15

The rounded corners and shadows came into being in vbulletin 4.x, independent of any forum skin... they did not exist in vbulletin 3.x. Please read the link I posted earlier. It's certainly not a "local configuration issue" (on three - actually more - different PCs - are you having a laugh?). Anyway, as ever, just forget it...

**Beskar** · 04-30-2012, 02:56

Hey Caravel, are you able to screenshot to demonstrate what you mean, so I have a better understanding?

Not sure exactly on how the skin system works in vbullentin, but having this option turned off on a plain skin or similar to compensate for this issue might be a simple change.

**Kagemusha** · 04-30-2012, 12:38

As i am the "guilty" party as creator of the TW2S skin. I would like to comment that great pains were taken to scale down file sizes for each image being used for the skin. TC made lot of work to find optimal file sizes with best compromise between sharpness and file sizes.

Maltz, if you are interested on doing creative work with skins. You should contact staff and they can help you to start creating entirely new ones. I would rather keep this one as it is, as now the skin is like i intended it to be.

Caravel, am i right that you mean we should disable shadows and rounded corners from all the skins we have in order to enhance scrolling? From my part.I dont remember running into such option from the skin variable options for individual skins, so if there is such option to turn those off, it would had to be controlled somewhere else in the admincp.

**TinCow** · 04-30-2012, 15:44

Originally Posted by Kagemusha

Caravel, am i right that you mean we should disable shadows and rounded corners from all the skins we have in order to enhance scrolling? From my part.I dont remember running into such option from the skin variable options for individual skins, so if there is such option to turn those off, it would had to be controlled somewhere else in the admincp.

There is no individual shadow option for the entire skin, there are just many individual ones for all the separate areas. It could be done if someone wanted to do it, but I really do not think it's worth the time it would take. Those skins have been exactly as they are now, with shadows and rounded corners, for over two years without any issues or complaints. If it was truly a "huge" slowdown for multiple people, there would have been comments on it before now. We already have some very stripped down skins anyway. Morbid has some shadows and rounded edges, but far fewer than the others and it is blazing fast. For a really stripped down version, Lightweight cuts out all graphical frills. I don't think it's possible to get any faster than Lightweight.

If I have some time, I'll see if I can find another really basic skin without any graphical enhancements at all.