TPM MAIN SITE REVIVAL PROJECT!

[mr_pikachu]

Yes, that's right. After careful consultation between me and some of the other moderators, we have decided to start a major project... to restore the main site of TPM!

Some of you may remember the old main page. For those of you who don't, it was filled with useful information from episode guides to Pokedex stats and everything in between. (Want a visual? Visit an archived version (http://web.archive.org/web/20050604025009/http://www.pokemasters.net/). Just beware of popups.)

We plan to bring it back and then add some additional flavor, including updates and spotlights for all the various subforums. From EV calculators to anime analysis, and from RPG reviews to ASB trainer spotlights, this site will have it all!

But we need your help to make it happen. We've made a tentative list of areas in which we'll need help with content and how much has been done so far with each item. It's provided at the bottom of this post. (Some things will be added to the list after the site is restored; we want to get the standard content done first and then build on that.)

And we're open to whatever suggestions you may have for the site. Have an idea for a new section? Let us know! Do you think we should shift our focus from what's been planned? This is your site, so give us all your input! Think you have something to contribute? Please, post here and tell us what you can do!

Also, we're currently working on the overall layout of the site. The current version of the web shell has a sidebar with links for navigation; other ideas have included a header bar, two sidebars (or a sidebar with links across from an empty sidebar), an image with embedded links (like a Pokeball split into wedges), or using each letter of the Pokemasters logo as a link. What do you think? Let us know by voting in the poll above and posting your thoughts here!

That's all for now. If you'd like to help us out, please let us know so we can send you the material that's been done so far. Many, many thanks to everyone who participates!


General Pokemon/Pokemon Anime
Pokemon Background (partially complete)
Character Guide (partially complete)
Episode Summaries & Ratings (episode list completed, summaries/ratings tentative and yet to begin)
Movie Summaries & Ratings (movie list completed, summaries/ratings tentative and yet to begin)

Video Games
Diamond & Pearl (content has not been determined)
Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald (content has not yet been determined)
FireRed and LeafGreen (content has not been determined)
Gold, Silver, and Crystal (content has not yet been determined)
Red, Blue, and Yellow (content has not yet been determined)
Other Pokemon Games (content has not yet been determined)

Trading Card Game
Rules (yet to begin)
Set Lists (yet to begin)
Deck Lists/Deck Ratings/Card Ratings (tentative, may not begin until site is established)

Miscellaneous
Pokemasters Logo (yet to begin, Bulbasaur4 will help)
Site Design (partially complete, mr_pikachu working, may need additional help)
Possible Additional Content (do you have any suggestions?)
General Editing/Critiquing (will begin once sections near completion)

[DarkestLight]

O.o Well hrm. This is a nice surprise.

For the Vid games section, of course a Pokedex is needed. That much is known. Dunno how you'd make it any different from the other Dex's out there... (make it downloadable like that one other place long long ago, GHPD I believe??} but that's a necessity for any Poke-related site.

Umm all the other standard content -pics/stats/moves/locations/movesets-all easily obtainable/createable. Meh. All ya really need is to just figure out the focus of that section and it'll fall together on its own.

All in all, was not expecting this, lol. Awesome, nonetheless

[Knight of Time]

I agree with DarkestLight, in the videogame section, a new Pokedex would certainly be required. But, that could take a long time to set up alone (we'd have to go through every single Pokemon, with all the attacks they can learn from each game, basically), a picdex (showing pictures of all the Pokemon from all the generations and versions, remember, each Pokemon sprite changes from version to version) would also be great to see.

As for movesets, well, I know Psypokes has recommended movesets for the first 386 Pokemon, but they're mainly based on the advanced generation, and unfortunately, they haven't upgraded them with D/P/Plat Pokemon or D/P/Plat moves. Maybe someone who is a veteran of the new games should give recommended movesets for all the final form Pokemon, as well as the ones that aren't part of an evolution chain.

[firepokemon]

Sounds like a complete disaster. Don't even bother you lot will fail.

And you want it to look like that piece of shit? If you're gonna bother at least do it based off the 1999-2001 site. Not some horrible 2002/2003 piece of shit.

[mr_pikachu]

I go back to TPM's heydey and I see so much stuff from back then that is 100 times better than the majority of stuff that exists today. To me today is the perfect time for a site like TPM to return and it could be even better.

Yes, this is the perfect time to revive the website, I agree. :)

[firepokemon]

I am curious about some things.

When did this idea exactly come up?

Has Kevin given permission?

Exactly what is going to differentiate this from other pokemon sites?

Why if you are going to bring the site back is the only content done so far is the anime?

[mr_pikachu]

Good questions, all. Let me answer them in order....


1. The idea has been intermittent. I started this particular instance myself over a year ago; it was brought up for discussion, but other business overtook it. Eventually we approached the issue again, and the staff as a whole got on board earlier this year.


2. Why, yes. Yes he has. ^_^


3. Much of that depends on what everyone here wants this site to be. Kevin had an idea, for instance, of an automatic "Pokemon team creator" for sigs and such. Other ideas have included member blogs, integration with the forums (announcements, for instance), as well as just having better, more comprehensive content than our competitors. But again, it's largely up to you. How do you want it to be different?


4. That's the only content done so far because I'm not an expert on everything, and the only reason I did that much was to prove that the website wouldn't overwhelm our website. (It won't, if you were wondering.)

We haven't done anything more, simply because we want everyone here to be involved from the development process onward. I'm really trying to drive home this point: this is not the moderators' website. This is your website. Make it into what you want it to be, and other people will realize it's what they want as well.

[Blademaster]

TPM is coming back!?

HOLY SHIT!

Count me in! However I can help bring this place back, just tell me. I want this place to stay alive. It's my home.

How can I help out?

[firepokemon]

Hmm well I certainly have suggestions or things I would consider doing with relevance to the games and such. I won't share them now and I'm not sure about this project. I would love to see TPM return but I really don't want to see another average and rather pathetic pokemon site on the internet.

[mr_pikachu]

Count me in! However I can help bring this place back, just tell me. I want this place to stay alive. It's my home.

How can I help out?

That depends. What do you want to contribute? :D

[DarkestLight]

I'm down for Member blogs. As a rabid ASB'er, I'm sure I could throw some fun insight up there.

[Blademaster]

That depends. What do you want to contribute? :D

Well... I dunno what I can contribute...

I'm a video game reviewer for an online magazine. Mostly retro stuff and second looks at things that most people deem to be either 'good' or 'bad.' I also used to review YGO cards at Pojo.com.

If that could somehow be translated into Pokemon terms, I could push my uninformed, biased opinions onto the site... or something...

[mr_pikachu]

Hey, whatever you have to offer. TCG mostly deals with YGO stuff now anyway, and general video game knowledge would probably be good if we decide to do a section on that.

What does everyone else think about branching out to such areas? Chime in!

[Bulbasaur4]

I'll do anything art-related, RPG-related or ... creativity... related?

*sagenod*

[Blademaster]

Hey, whatever you have to offer. TCG mostly deals with YGO stuff now anyway, and general video game knowledge would probably be good if we decide to do a section on that.

What does everyone else think about branching out to such areas? Chime in!

That's my section. Video games are my specialty. If there's a video game section, including or excluding the Pokemon games, put me there.

[mr_pikachu]

Kalah: Excellent. I think we've already got you listed for working on the logo; we could probably use some aesthetic help for the site design, as well.


That's my section. Video games are my specialty. If there's a video game section, including or excluding the Pokemon games, put me there.

Hey, the last time I checked there were six prospective sections for Pokemon games. :)

[mistysakura]

Sounds good. My gut feeling still says that to differentiate ourselves from other Pokemon sites, we should at least include, if not focus on, what TPM is best at -- Fanfic, Fanart, ASB, RPG. But as those are more forum-based things, I'm not sure how they'd be included.

[mr_pikachu]

Well, to sort of tie in some of our preliminary discussions, one of my ideas was to integrate it with the proposed member blogs. That is, individual members could all have their own blogs, and any forum that wanted one could use it for announcements, important long-term information, and so forth. It would be the go-to place to visit for hot information across the forum.

[Dark-San]

Hmm well I certainly have suggestions or things I would consider doing with relevance to the games and such. I won't share them now and I'm not sure about this project. I would love to see TPM return but I really don't want to see another average and rather pathetic pokemon site on the internet.

No worries, Firepokemon. If you hadn't realized this project is painfully thought out and planned in details, besides it is the main ingredient that kept us being at disadvantage compared to other main pokemon sites like Serebi and Bulba Gardens. I can personally assured you that whatever ideas that came across in our tables will not be forgotten. Besides Brian had already gave his word that this project will not be handled from a top-down vertical approach, whereby a few people from the top giving orders to people below. Instead in its place, it will be a more horizontal approach whereby everyone is seen as equal and be able to contribute their fair share of inputs into this project.

@Brian ~ I would personally go for what Ada had mentioned. We should treat what features that we had that have similarities with other pokemon sites as a norm, and differentiate ourselves using what we are best at. That would mean your RPG, Fanfic, PCG and ASB.

Also from your below inputs, I would sadly say that there is nothing I could contribute to. In the past, I would played Duel Monster aka YGO and could be used to input some tips on effective buildings. However the ban list and rules had been changed much, so my knowledge would be irrelevant since I had quit the game some one year ago. From the way I looked at it realistically, the only sections that I could contribute in would be

1) Pokemon Diamond and Pearl

The second last pokemon game that I had played recently. It could use a few trainer tips. Oh well if you are looking for someone to write a walkthrough, I could do it but you have to wait until November 5th for it to be started. *I have ...erm ... coughs... exams....*

2) Other Pokemon Games

For this section, I would say nothing else I could input here except for the game, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon- Explorer of Darkness. I am still playing the game so do not expect any review of it soon. It also might take a bit of time since I am a slow gamer. You might want to look at other people's review if you are unable to wait. ^.^

3) Possible Additional Content/ Members' Blog

I heard someone mentioned blog here. It is a hell of a good idea but you will have to be careful here. We are talking about Pokemasters not some XXX's web blog. The problem of blogs is that will the individual owner be happy if the person in charge would be to vet his/her blogs as to what is relevant and remove those irrelevant ones?

Also like what say about this, Brian. Do take this suggestion (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/announcement.php?f=20) into consideration as discussed earlier. It has nothing to do with shameless advertising for OA but I think this will help out as in the quality and number of 'fun' we can inject into the new site. Also know that Kalah is in China, so she might have something to add in here. It would be fun for fellow TPMers to read about the holiday and adventure of their comrades in other countries. ^.^

Well, there is nothing that I could further offer to the site now, unless of course you decide to throw in an 'Other Anime' category.

[Jeff]

Cool, I remember TPM's heyday. Back then it was the pokemon site for me and I'd love to have it back.

One thing that was memorable for me was the GS countdown back in 2001. I can't think of any other pokemon site that has something like that right now, so that would be one cool thing to have. I happen to have a countdown script that I wrote, I'll be glad to contribute that. With a little modification, it should be able to support multiple countdowns on one page.

I also have some icons that I made for a fake website that I made a few years ago when I was playing around with HTML. They include things like the pokedexes from the first 3 generations (separate icons for each one, both opened and closed) and small 16x16 icons representing each version's cart. I'll have to dig those up. If anyone's interested I'll post some samples of those and maybe we can see if we can use them for anything. Come to think of it, my fake site had some pretty interesting ideas, I'll have take a look at it. Once my brain really gets going I should be back with some more ideas.

[mr_pikachu]

Dark: Yeah, I sort of agree with Ada on that too. My personal opinion is that we still can't really afford to pass on some of the more traditional stuff, or else it'll be hard to get new members, but using our core strengths to differentiate ourselves sounded good to me before. What does everyone else think?

(The phrase "What does everyone else think?" will probably become very common in my posts here.)

You make a very good point about blogs that we'll have to consider at some point. Personally, I'm for minimal restrictions there as long as we stay away from XXX territory, but that's something we may need to work out. And if we end up scrapping the blog idea entirely, then so be it.

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention your idea, as it's what reminded me of my blog thought in the first place. One of the things we've been thinking about for the site is a sort of "TPMers abroad" section, particularly since Dark will be visiting Japan in December. So... yeah. I'll let you explain your thoughts on that further if you like, Dark.


Jeff: Wow, that sounds awesome! So, just to confirm... do you want to become a contributor? :D

[Charles Legend]

Cool, say Brian if the site is coming back dose that mean the Reports and Editorials well come back as well? Because if they do we should call the Mastery 104. ;)

~Charles Legend

[mr_pikachu]

That depends on what everyone else wants. What do you all think?

[Dark-San]

Dark: Yeah, I sort of agree with Ada on that too. My personal opinion is that we still can't really afford to pass on some of the more traditional stuff, or else it'll be hard to get new members, but using our core strengths to differentiate ourselves sounded good to me before.

You make it sound so much like what my lecturer from Strategic Marketing would say. 'Building on the company's core competencies and achieving a strategic competitive advantage over your competitors.' is the sentence that he had mentioned like thousands of time. It is still even ringing behind the back of my ears.

However as much as I believed, instead of using a differentiation strategy, we could even evolved further by considering a preemptive move using a first-mover advantage strategy. In the first place when we think of this, why would people still visit our site when we have the same features and facilities as those of other veteran sites? Instead I am actually believing that we should more on downplaying the traditional features and focus more towards catering to a totally different need by emphasizing on our strengths on RPG, ASB and Fanfic.

Although it does involved some risks since we have not really research if the general public's opinion, but nevertheless my suggestion would probably prompted some serious discussions and thinking.


Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention your idea, as it's what reminded me of my blog thought in the first place. One of the things we've been thinking about for the site is a sort of "TPMers abroad" section, particularly since Dark will be visiting Japan in December. So... yeah. I'll let you explain your thoughts on that further if you like, Dark.

I have still in the mist of my final semester examination revision (>.<); and have not give much thought into it yet. But needless to say, I would be recording every moments of the holiday. These will include the places where I visit, the incoming anime and manga trend (OA forum inputs), cosplaying fashion (OA forum inputs), things that I would be consuming and of course Tokyo's very own busy transportation system. Another that is for sure is that I would be updating all my events in a daily basis during my two weeks stay there. The final thing to mention is that I already have my itinerary all planned out and I would not posting them until much later.

[Jeff]

Sure I'd like to be a contributor!

OK, I just made some screens of the fake site I made (PIC = "Pokemon Info Center" if anyone's curious). I think we could use some of the info that I compiled for it. Like in these two screens:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/7592/rbycheatsmissingnoboxtrqn7.th.jpg (http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rbycheatsmissingnoboxtrqn7.jpg)
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/1650/gsclegendssuicunelugiafv7.th.jpg (http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gsclegendssuicunelugiafv7.jpg)

Also, I started an SVG pokedex as a test of SVG+Javascript. I think it would make a pretty nice complement to a PHP-based pokedex. The bad news is that it ran slower than molasses on my old laptop (the main reason why I stopped working on it) and not all browsers support SVG yet. But we could probably do something like it in Flash. The question is, does anyone here know Flash? Anyway, here's a screenshot of that.
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2223/svgpokedexpx9.th.jpg (http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=svgpokedexpx9.jpg)

[firepokemon]

I fail to see how member blogs and a focus on ASB, fanfics and fanart is going to get TPM anywhere. I know that sounds negative. I know I came in with a bad attitude. I do have genuine suggestions and stuff. But right now I'm just seeing ideas centered around well crap.

There is one fact that has to be remember, TPM was known as the place to get game information, tcg information and the like. The forums were always a bonus while fanfiction ratings was a bonus as well. At the end of the day TPM was number one because it focused on content and news. That must remain the emphasis. I believe in the need for there to be fanart and fanfiction aspects. I have some solid ideas around that type of stuff myself.

I believe the site has to be comprehensive. It needs to mould old TPM (1999-2001) and aspects of the newer site (2002-2003) with aspects that have changed since TPM was number one. I will have a list of things I feel are necessary for the new site, what directions to take and several other things later today and/or tomorrow.

Nifty things such as GS countdowns and the likes are irrelevant without real and proper content. Fanfic and fanart or ASB stuff is irrelevant without proper and real content. You can't ignore those aspects. We can't be the Smogon of the internet world. We need to offer what TPM was and why in my opinion TPM still stands as what a pokemon website should have been.

As for going the route of other videogames and the like? We can't even go there until the site has pokemon content. I'm sorry but its true. Likewise we can't do fanart and fanfiction without proper pokemon content. I hate to say it. But we need the content up. We need to emphasise the comprehensive knowledge and data available with the older games. In fact something I'm particularly upset about is the lack of information for older games. You try looking up TCG for Game Boy information on the internet its simply not there.

Today or tomorrow I will have a full list of information TPM needs to have. And things necessary for the site. These would include the games, pokedex, berrydexes, locatordexes, itemdexes etc etc etc. I also as said earlier have ideas relevant to fan art and fanfiction and other sections not done well by other pokemon sites.

One should not forget, that there is a rich resource in not only the site from 1999-2001, but also 2003-2004 TPM. That information is rather unique to us. With walkthrus for TCG for Gameboy and the like. Most of it one can be accessed via web.archive.org. I say why not use that. Anyway I'm rambling on but I'll have that list made up today or tomorrow. I seriously considered buying TPM and bringing it back myself, I've felt that way for several months and thus I do have strong ideas. Things I already were sorta comtemplating, but just never got round to it. Since back then it was a pipe dream. Today it is no pipe dream. The fact is, Mr. Pikachu and it would seem others have made the idea of bringing back TPM a reality. I do want to help, I do want it to succeed. And from time to time I may sound like a bastard. But I can assure you that I want to see the main site back up and running. And if there is anything I can offer towards this project. It is that.

Edit: Since it would appear Kevin approves of this. What information does he already have, or what information from the old days does he still currently possess?

[Andrew]

Jeff, I don't understand the hexagon with the stats.
Apart from that, the third screen, for the Pokemon Info, go for various dropdown menus, otherwise you'll have an infinitely long screen for all 400 odd. I do like how the other stff is arranged.

It also needs to appear more professional.

Colour pallette. I want something regal, traditional and slick. Deep reds, silvers.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I read this very quickly and wish the best for you. This has ben tried out earlier, and I put some effort on it as well but was disappointed when I realized the main site wasn't returning. The work was in vain, unless you count I learned many things about English-Finnish translating. I am talking about me translating all the Pokedex entries from RBYGSC into Finnish. It was below a Pokedex project thread and I don't know if my work can be found somewhere.

[Jeff]

The hexagon is a chart for the stats, like in the old Nintendo guides. I like having something more visual than just looking at numbers.

The list on the right is divided into pages, but I was considering replacing that with a search box since that will allow you to search for a pokemon by its name instead of by number as with the list or a dropdown menu.

I wasn't too worried about colors when I made it, I just wanted to have something that I could use, so yeah, that will need some work. Oh yeah, I know you didn't mention this but I thought I'd point out that the blue area at the bottom is for evolution info, which I never added.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Oh yes and I did Ruby and Sapphire, too. Before they were released in my own country!

[MToolen]

This is a careful line to tread. With so many sites come and gone, it's hard to make something original nowadays. For our Pokédex, for example, ours should be comprehensive and strategically organized yet it also can't look like the one from serebii.net. I don't have much knowledge in computing or individual games, but I am willing to be a devil's advocate for plagiarism, grammar, and spelling.

Also, if we wanted to do a section on Junichi Masuda's work (i.e., game music), I'd be happy to help in that endeavor as well.

[Gavin Luper]

I'm glad we're another step along in the process with this. I'd love to see the main site up again.

I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made so far. We need to incorporate the creative elements of the existing forum - Fanfic, Fanart, ASB, RPG, etc. - into a content and news-based core site. I think we have to not only match sites like serebii in terms of content, but surpass them in terms of quality, depth and layout if we're going to draw people to a new TPM. As Andrew implied, it has to look impressive as well as being impressive.

I don't know what I can contribute in terms of content - a few years ago I could've majored in Anime, but probably not anymore - but I'm willing to help in any way I can. So, if anyone needs a hand along the way to construct the site, boring manual labour jobs or discussing or whatever, I'm more than ready to chip in.

[Number1ChanseyFan]

mr_pika, I know that the G/S/C games are pretty much dead but since there is going to be a section for it, you are more than welcome to use the info in that sticky thread that I have in the G/S/C forum.

[Dark-San]

But right now I'm just seeing ideas centered around well crap.

Well, you could be patient about this wouldn't you? We are just only in the beginning stage.


I fail to see how member blogs and a focus on ASB, fanfics and fanart is going to get TPM anywhere.


There is one fact that has to be remember, TPM was known as the place to get game information, tcg information and the like.


At the end of the day TPM was number one because it focused on content and news.


I believe the site has to be comprehensive. It needs to mould old TPM (1999-2001) and aspects of the newer site (2002-2003) with aspects that have changed since TPM was number one.

Wow, you do have multiple concerns here. But it all narrows down to one thing that you have in mind. You strongly believed that TPM's approach should go for its past reputation as a Pokemon Information Data hub. That is a good strategy too. But stop for a moment, and think deeper for once.

My reasons on focusing more on the differentiation side with fanworks taking more priority is because,

1) TPM hasn't had a decent site for at least the past five to six years or so. During this period, many other sites using the same concepts has emerge and took off from where we last ended. So if we are to use the same idea as we had some 5 years old, would we be branded as being old- fashioned and view as a replicate for these sites?

2) There had already been established sites with the same concept same as TPM did. These sites would include Bulbagardens and Seribi.net. Why fight for the same target audience, when we could cater for the other of their needs? Instead of a direct confrontation with these sites, I strongly believed we should take another approach as what a marketer would say, venture and create a new market. As of now, I hadn't seen or heard any other pokemon sites that concentrates solely on pokemon fanworks. If we come in, take the initiative and start it. I believe we would have a serious advantage.

Of course, my idea could involved serious risks to be undertaken. There are lots of uncertainty around it but I would loved to hear your idea first.

@Jeff ~ Your idea is good too. But the problem is that I think like Andrew had said, we would probably need a more 'mechanically' colored format since it is after all a pokedex right?

[firepokemon]

Bulbagarden is a bulbapedia and if you actually use that Bulbapedia you will find it is crap.

Serebii.net does not do news, it no longer does TCG, its gaming information while comprehensive can be troublesome at times. They do not do fanworks. Information on older games is seriously missing.

I'm not saying don't do fanworks. But a site that focuses on fanworks won't go that far. Particularly when one can use BMG forums, Pokecommunity forums and SPP forums.

http://sneaselplushie.legends-station.com/
http://www.thepokemontower.com/tpt.shtml

Don't tell me there are no places for fanart and fanfic.

It is clear you don't even know what the state of the pokemon community looks like.

[Blademaster]

It is clear you don't even know what the state of the pokemon community looks like.

And you do?

Then why aren't you helping us? You said you'd post what we need yesterday, so what do you have to offer?

[firepokemon]

I am compiling what the site needs as we speak. Give me time.

[firepokemon]

This is my opinion and thoughts and really is rather what I would have done with TPM. These areas I really feel must be completed to a professional level. If anything it can give us an edge. The new TPM site needs to focus both on the old and new games. Trading Card Game, the anime, the manga, fanworks, articles and columns and solid and proper dexes and calculators and the likes. I apologise for the format with which I will show my ideas. But bare with me, because I think it’s a sensible and necessary approach.

News

One thing I have noticed is that a few pokemon websites cover the news fairly comprehensive. Those being Bulbagarden, Pokebeach and Pockemonsters. However, I still feel that news overall could be covered more comprehensive. There is plenty of news whether it is game releases, anime dub titles, new opening and closings for the anime, TCG reports from competition in North America. There is also game ratings from major video game websites not to mention pokemon appearing in major Newspapers and the likes. This is somewhere where I feel I could help when the main site is up.

Articles and Columns/reports

This isn’t something necessary straight away. But I believe TPM could do a bulbapedia of sorts. The difference we cover articles in a more professional way. Where they are proof read, criticized etc and ultimately amended. One could have articles looking back at pokemon, pokemon and academia. Pokemon shippings. Articles on pokemon canon, the TCG, the games, fanfiction, fanart etc etc. This could prove a real asset to the site in the future. Think of is a pokemon encyclopaedia.

The other thing is to bring back the columns from TPM’s past. Most of those can be found largely intact via archives. And eventually regular columns could become a feature on TPM. From what I understand, Serebii.net’s POTW (Pokemon of the Week) is popular and gets Serebii.net a number of hits. People continue to go back to sites with regular updates. This is something TPM could offer in spades.

General Gaming

TPM needs the following:

· Pokedex
· Berrydex
· Locatordex
· Game Mechanics
· Itemdex
· Walkthrus
· Calculators
· Trainer Database
· Attackdex
· Abilitydex
· Gym Leaders and Elite Four

Pokedex

We’ll need both a normal pokedex and one that follows the Mystery Dungeon Games, Trozei and ranger games. Now I say have two pokedexes.

The normal one could be like how Smogon does their movesets. This would have a simple tab from D/P/Pt to RSEFRLGXDC to RBY/GSC. It looks decent it means someone doesn’t need to go click in several places and it just makes sense.

The Spinoff likewise would use the tab effect for easy navigation.

As for movesets, unless they’re going to be detailed I would not bother. They will just look crap otherwise. What I have found lacking on several websites, is movesets for WIFI battles and the like. You’ll notice at Smogon and elsewhere they talk about Hidden Power and the like and certainly one can have those over wifi. But its much more difficult. So movesets that work for wifi battling is something I feel could work.

Berrydex

Pretty much says it all. Most berrydexes currently online do 3rd gen and 4th gen only. I wouldn’t mind seeing one for GSC as well. Likewise I feel the tabbing effect could work here as well.

Locatordex

Something I have yet to see but something I think would work wonderfully. Many people don’t like to use walkthroughs. One can get spoiled and often one doesn’t need it but surely on Route201 for instance one wouldn’t mind knowing what pokemon and major items can be found there or where one has Honey Trees and the like. This is where I think TPM could offer something new.

It’s a simple idea, one is playing Diamond so they look up Route 202 and in the dex contains what pokemon available during the day, during the night, what pokemon are available via the rader, swarm or GBA inserts. This Locatordex could I think greatly benefit the site.

Game Mechanics

Says it all. Rather like articles they have comprehensive information on breeding, natures, IVS, Evs, certain pokemon, certain attacks in more depth, abilities, Trading Mechnics, Experience Points etc etc.

Itemdex

A database with every item from berries, to potions, to pokeball to things like Choice Specs and leftovers. Locations, information etc etc.

Walkthrus

TPM always had fantastic walkthroughs. I know RBY and I think GSC are still available via archives. There is also an archived Ruby/Sapphire walkthrough. Not too hard to do the others. Walkthroughs work, people like to use them and TPM always had a strength in such an area.

Also we could do walkthroughs for the Mystery Dungeon Games and the Ranger Games.

Calculators

We’ll need EV calculator, Iv calculator, damage calculator. Once again calculators for the first two generation of games are already available via archives.

Trainer Database

Certain websites have such a thing for the 3rd generation. But there really isn’t anything for the first two generations or 4th generation. Its pretty easy. Works like a database, find the trainer you’re about to face has what level pokemon that trainer has and what movesets the pokemon have. A long term project certainly, but a point of difference again and means more people will come to our site.

Attackdex

Makes sense, once again the tabbing effect could work for attacks like Bodyslam that have been around for all four generations. Has what pokemon learn them by levelup. Long term project but would be great.

Abilitydex

Once again works the same as any other dex.

Gym Leaders and Elite 4 I would love to see a database that has information on Gym Leaders and the elite 4 and battle tower leaders etc with what gym they’re in what pokemon they have and what moves/attacks those pokemon have. And in latter games if the gym leader uses potions and the like.


Red, Blue and Yellow

http://web.archive.org/web/20010801150645/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/red_blue/
http://web.archive.org/web/20010801234117/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/yellow/

The old data albeit get it fixed up to look more professional. Perhaps we could include a page about Nidoking/Nidoqueen and the like, Mew and Mewtwo. Perhaps a look at theories and the likes. One could perhaps have an article about how the game stacks up now and stuff. I really feel something TPM can offer is not only comprehensive information on old games. But also add more data and information to it. Too many other pokemon sites have the old information but its left largely forgotten. I would like to see Red, Blue and Yellow be as good as any current Diamond and Pearl section.

Oh and lets not forget about Pokemon Green.

Gold, Silver and Crystal

http://web.archive.org/web/20010713120617/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/gold_silver/

http://web.archive.org/web/20010801143219/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/crystal/

Same as RBY only more comprehensive and more up to date as per diamond and pearl pages and the like.

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and Leafgreen

There is some information in the archives. But TPM really never covered as much. So once again thorough information on contests and the like, pokeblock, information relevant. It needs to be absolutely comprehensive. Serebii.net covers a lot of this. But look underneath the surface of that site and you’ll find most of it is written crap. We MUST have comprehensive information over everything.

Diamond, Pearl and Platinum

Same as RSEFRLG. Needs to be comprehensive, completed and relevant. Serebii.net and Psypoke and Pokezam and GameFaqs covers a lot of this stuff. But most of it underneath it all is written pretty badly and lacks much data and information.


Lets not kid ourselves. The game sections are necessary, they will take time, they are covered by other websites. But we must ensure we have all sections comprehensively covered in a professional and easy to understand way.


Pokemon Pinball

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611021639/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/pinball/index.html

We already have it. Perhaps just look for grammar, spelling mistakes and the like and any extra information one could cover.

Pokemon TCG for Gameboy and TCG for Gameboy 2.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611025555/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/card/index.html

I wouldn’t mind seeing some type of card scans. Also I wouldn’t mind seeing a section dedicated to TCG for Gameboy 2. Which is not covered well anywhere, while this was not released in North America or anything. I don’t think we should forget about it.

Pokemon Puzzle Challenge

http://web.archive.org/web/20010802034453/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/puzzle/

Unfortunately it was never well covered. Not a priority I will admit but we need something here surely.

Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire

Needs to be covered. Not a priority. But needs to be worked on.

Pokemon Dash, Pokemon Trozei

Likewise can’t be called a priority, but nevertheless, will need to be covered.

Mystery Dungeon Games and Ranger Games

While these are certainly covered elsewhere, something tells me they are treated as an afterthought. If we can make a huge difference it is in these areas. We need to ensure they are covered absolutely comprehensively, with walkthroughs, heaps of data, heaps of information on everything. I really don’t think we can afford to ignore these games. Its something that could give us a bit of an edge, if we covered them comprehensively.

Pokemon Stadium

http://web.archive.org/web/20011007085134/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/stadium2/index.html

Once again we already have information on this. If it could be more up to date and stuff. That is all that would be necessary.

Pokemon Stadium 2

http://web.archive.org/web/20010604185337/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/stadium3/
Same as above.

Stadium released only in Japan

http://web.archive.org/web/20010611021255/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/stadium/index.html

We already have it. ^_^

Pokemon Snap

http://web.archive.org/web/20010805052007/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/snap/index.html

Can’t ignore this section, particularly since its been released on the Virtual Console. Include the old, add to it via the new stuff only on VC. Make it comprehensive.

Pokemon Puzzle League

http://web.archive.org/web/20010609055852/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/puzzle/index.html

Once again covered already. But like Snap was released on VC. So have the updated stuff from there. Make it look a bit more professional. Perhaps have a review based off the VC game.

Hey You Pikachu!

http://web.archive.org/web/20010609055330/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/hey_you_pikachu/index.html

Clean it up, include more screenshots, a bit more data and done.

Nintendo 64 Smash Bros.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010609060546/pokemon.vgf.com/n64/smash/index.html

Already have it covered. Just make it more professional.

Pokemon Box (GameCube) My Pokemon Ranch (Wii)

Cover them. Particularly My Pokemon Ranch. Not that much to do here. Just make it clear and consise.

The other two smash brother games. The GameCube and Wii

I’m guessing many here are familiar with both games. I’m sure between many of you, you can have all this information sorted via databases and the like to be comprehensive.

Pokemon XD and Pokemon Colosseum

While older games, these two games must be covered comprehensively with information on everything including walkthroughs and the like. Because through those two games one can get access to Pokemon that can be traded onto the 3rd Generation games. Not a pirioty, does not need to be covered straight away. But is necessary.

Pokemon Battle Revolution

Must be covered.


Once again many of these games are not a priority, they do not need to be done straight away, particular for ones with no data on them. But nonetheless over time we should ensure all are covered. I really think we need the older games to be just as comprehensively covered as newer games. Because many still play the older games, they sell often for high prices over Ebay and the like, so people are still playing them. People still need data. And for many of the older games, we have information already.


Computer Games, the mini Pikachu pocket thing etc etc

Most certainly not priority. The Mini Pikachu thing we have information already. Nonetheless over time once other sections are more settled we could have sections on this. With information that one just can’t find elsewhere. But like I’ve said. Its not something to be done now but something we could do in the future. Perhaps even do something on the Snes game with pokemon characters and the like. Also eventually the e-readers part will need to covered.


The Anime

· Episode Guides
· Episode ratings
· Character Guides
· Gym Leader/Pokemon Contest information
· Song Lyrics
· Episode pics
· Release information
· Movies
· Articles

Pretty much says what needs to be covered. I see Mr. Pikachu has already started on this, but we need to ensure that many characters get covered and are comprehensively covered. What I mean is we don’t want here is this character and it has five pokemon type of thing. We need it to be thorough. Lyrics for the opening and closer will be needed. I would’t mind articles about the anime, looking at theories from the anime and the likes. Everyone seems to be doing episode pics now days, perhaps we should look at that.

Basically we can’t have just another anime section with episode guides and character guides. We need more than that. Certainly at first focus on what is necessary for the site. But then overtime make it something people will want to return to. Will elaborate if necessary.

The Manga

Not a priority but nonetheless we would be stupid not to cover it. Chapter guides, characters and also eventually do the TCG manga and the like. I see the manga section as a long term project. But we can’t ignore it. Should be covered but like I have said certainly not a priority. Would also be keen to have information on the Scholastic Books and likes that have been released.


Trading Figure Game and TCG

Not something I know much of. But we need to cover it. We should have scans and the like covered already for the older sets. We would need a cardex, articles, deck reviews, scans. Competition play, competition info. TCG has to be treated as a long term project. I’m not sure how much expertise exists here on the subject. It must be thoroughly covered. But I don’t think it has to be a priority. Its something I have ideas on but TCG so huge that it’s a whole entire project on its own. Will elaborate if necessary.

Likewise TFG or Trading Figure Game, we’d be stupid not to cover it.


Trading, wifi battling and general WIFI

Since 4th Generation, one has been able to trade pokemon over wifi, battling people over wifi and Ranger games and the like have wifi aspects to it. If we want to be a website with a difference. This is one of the areas I think should be considered exploring. I’m sure some of you could make up a program of sorts where one could talk to others and trade and wifi battle. I wish I had more to say on the subject. But I see a need for some type of program where trading and battling could take place. Incorporate some type of chat thing, forum thing. This could prove a real asset.


Pokemon Merchandise

IS NOT A PRIORITY. But in the future we could have a whole section dedicated to pokemon merchandise. There is so much out there, so much that could be covered. This is once again long-term thinking. But its something you just don’t see anywhere. I think that is a real shame. And think something like this could prove beneficial.


Fanfiction

Something TPM use to have was a section dedicated to fanfic ratings. I would love to see something like this return. My own thoughts about such a section is perhaps different to others. I would like to see articles on fanfiction writing. Use assets TPM already has in the Fanfic E-Zine. Sort them into articles perhaps. Also have other stuff on how to write a fanfic, how to work with characters. A look at different genres and the likes one can do with fan-fiction. Mr. Pikachu and others already are brilliant at this stuff. I think it would be great to have fanworks return.

Now the old way of fanfic ratings didn’t work. Every day one would get 20 fanfics they had to read and rate. It wasn’t enjoyable and people never lasted long. I think if there was a focus on short stories or completed fanfics with a one page review. It’s this that I think could be a boon. Have it so only stories deemed worthy enough to make it are put there. So have fanfic ratings, but have it so only proper written stories are there and actually get meaningful reviews. Perhaps something similar to what is offered via the fanfic competitions on the forum.

You have the experts already for this type of stuff. Why not use it. It it’s possible I would love to see older fanfic stories posted on the boards in 1999-2001 included somehow.


Fan Art

Treat it the same as fanfiction. Review people’s art. Make sure its quality art to start off with. Have articles on how to make art. Perhaps get 1-3 people and do art galleries like the site did previously. This likewise could be a boon to the site.

Roleplaying and ASB

I see others have ideas. I think one huge RPG centered around pokemon could get a number of new people to the site. I agree ASB can be an asset. Once again articles would be great to see. I think others will have this covered better.

Other fanworks

Perhaps get a few pokemon comics/manga. It means people come to the site, could be rather exiciting. On one hand you could have fans posting their comics/manga with them reviewed. But also 1 or two monthly, bi-monthly, fortnightly manga/comics posted on the site could be beneficial.


OTHER

Where else could TPM eventually go? Certainly we could cover certain elements of Manga and Anime and games. But these can hardly be priorities. Other elements of pokemon could be radio plays, theatre performances. Influence of pokemon in other anime, manga and games. Blogs could work, but having 1000 blogs isn’t going to work.

I would love to see some type of section dedicated to TPM history and pokemon history itself. This is a project I have always had my eyes on and could work on the overall site. Its something I feel would be great to have on any future TPM site.

I would also like to see the site be more community friendly. So Serebii.net or Psypoke post something, why can’t we report it? I think a problem with the community online today is there is a lot of me first that I just find displeasing. W should not be afraid of pointing out what other sites have. Site reviews or something of the sorts could be something to look at in the future.

Also what about utilizing new technologies such as podcasts, youtube videos and the like?


So that is what I think TPM needs to cover. I’ve said so much and yet I still have many ideas and stuff. I would like to see TPM become the comprehensive site it once was. But I personally see much more than that. I see a site that engages the whole of the pokemon community, that covers interesting stuff one does not see elsewhere. Pokemon has been influential in society, it is covered by academics and there is so much that can be explored. Certain things need to be prioitised over others. But I think we need to be as comprehensive as possible.

Edit: Fixed links

Edit 2: http://web.archive.org/web/20010608181428/http://www.pokemasters.com/ A good archive with most links working.

[mr_pikachu]

I admit I haven't read through your entire post yet, fp - I will do so in the next couple of days, but right now I'm frantically doing a bunch of grading work, and I have too little time to procrastinate on it. However, I did want to comment briefly on your suggestion for TCG.

I agree wholeheartedly that having card scans and such would be awesome. However, that could call our bandwidth and (much more likely) server space into question. Most features of the website don't require too many pictures, but if we were to do something extensive with card scans, we'd have to watch some file size issues.

...Of course, maybe I completely misinterpreted that comment in my haste to blitz through everything while I should be working. If I did, I completely apologize, and I'll read more carefully in the next couple of days.

For the moment, take away the discussion, everyone! What do you think about firepokemon's analysis?

[Jeff]

I definitely think we should include info on all pokemon games past and present. People still play the old games, and now with the DSi coming out and the possibility of a GameBoy virtual console, there could be even more demand for info on old pokemon games. The best part is that we already have the content as fp pointed out.

We also need news on the main page. We had that for a while, around 2004-2005, where anyone with posting privileges on the main site could post news items. That would fit in perfectly with the community-driven concept we should be going for. Of course there would have to be some measure to prevent posts such as this one:



So Cute!!!
Posted by: Kojiro on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 03:34 PM PST
General News Okay, me and my brother were at Walmart, and I saw the cutest thing ever. Pokemon plushies, Omigod, they were so cute. There were big o*nes of Treecko, Torchic, and Mudkip. And Small o*nes of Treecko, Mudkip, Torchic, and Plusle & Minum. I suggest anyone to get these little cuties! They were o*nly 9.99! Get them now! Did I mention how cute they were!

[firepokemon]

Well perhaps one could ask what bandwidth and server space is available currently. and possibly what could be available in the future. I just can't see a TCG section with card scans. Though clearly if bandwidth and space is such an issue. Its something that would need to be discussed. Because also one of my idea was the return of TPM's picturedex. Which had sprites, TCG scans, anime pictures and the like. I'm not sure what the viability is into a small additional server that carries pictures and the likes.

But I know one of things people have been talking about is Fan Art. I guess that could be a problem in regards to bandwidth and the like as well.

I do think the TCG section will need TCG scans. But that is something for the future too.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Locatordex

Something I have yet to see but something I think would work wonderfully. Many people don’t like to use walkthroughs. One can get spoiled and often one doesn’t need it but surely on Route201 for instance one wouldn’t mind knowing what pokemon and major items can be found there or where one has Honey Trees and the like. This is where I think TPM could offer something new.

It’s a simple idea, one is playing Diamond so they look up Route 202 and in the dex contains what pokemon available during the day, during the night, what pokemon are available via the rader, swarm or GBA inserts. This Locatordex could I think greatly benefit the site.

Yes, this is a good idea. Then one can't miss any Pokemon found in the location if we have a dex like this.


The Anime

· Episode Guides
· Episode ratings
· Character Guides
· Gym Leader/Pokemon Contest information
· Song Lyrics
· Episode pics
· Release information
· Movies
· Articles

Pretty much says what needs to be covered. I see Mr. Pikachu has already started on this, but we need to ensure that many characters get covered and are comprehensively covered. What I mean is we don’t want here is this character and it has five pokemon type of thing. We need it to be thorough. Lyrics for the opening and closer will be needed. I would’t mind articles about the anime, looking at theories from the anime and the likes. Everyone seems to be doing episode pics now days, perhaps we should look at that.

Basically we can’t have just another anime section with episode guides and character guides. We need more than that. Certainly at first focus on what is necessary for the site. But then overtime make it something people will want to return to. Will elaborate if necessary.

Hm, would translating TVTOKYO previews help? Also, song lyrics? Do the English Pokemon episodes have ending songs, i.e. outros? If you meant the Japanese ones, we would need translations, I know many people who read Japanese lyrics want to know what they mean. Of course, we could point them to sites like Anime Lyrics dot Com. What comes to our own translators, I'm sorry, but it seems two our potential translators Murgatroyd and Zak are out of the game. Murg hasn't posted for ages and Zak doesn't seem interested. Of course I could step in, but I've tried translating Pokemon stuff before and have found it difficult. Perhaps I should try again now that I have knowledge and experience.

[mr_pikachu]

Well perhaps one could ask what bandwidth and server space is available currently. and possibly what could be available in the future. I just can't see a TCG section with card scans. Though clearly if bandwidth and space is such an issue. Its something that would need to be discussed. Because also one of my idea was the return of TPM's picturedex. Which had sprites, TCG scans, anime pictures and the like. I'm not sure what the viability is into a small additional server that carries pictures and the likes.

Yeah, I totally understand your point on that; it would be hard to have a TCG section without cards. The main reason I excluded it when I first looked at it was that I only had a rough idea about our server limits... the calculations could have been troublesome depending on what end of my very wide range was reality. I'll dig back through my records and see if I can find what I first uncovered all those months ago. We might be able to make better use of the information now.

Also - I like the locatordex idea Mikachu quoted from your post, fp. What does everyone else think about it?

(Told you I'd be saying that phrase constantly. ^_^)

Regarding ending songs, most of them in America are (sadly) just shortened versions of the intros these days. Actually, WB stopped playing the "true" ending themes after awhile; we only saw them when episodes were aired on Cartoon Network. On the other hand, that does make listing the lyrics even easier, if a little redundant.

[Jeff]

The locatordex sounds like a good idea. Just to build on that, I propose we set up the index page for it as a clickable map, where you can click on a route or city and be taken to its page. I already have images for the maps up to Ruby and Sapphire (and Emerald). We would just need someone to do the ones for FR/LG and DPP. And if anyone is wondering, I already tested this idea out, it works perfectly in Firefox, IE, and Google Chrome.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

And may I add I won't do Babel Fish translations unlike those we mostly saw in Pokemon Anime section back there. I'll post my own translations no matter how much they take my time and energy.

It seems that my international Team Rocket Motto Collection-topic is lost, but I could find them from my own folders. That is, I could bring at least Finnish, Swedish and Japanese mottos to the site with my high-quality translations. The same goes for Pokemon song lyrics from those countries, perhaps.

[Weasel Overlord]

You know for the card pictures? Couldn't we just use an image-hosting site to... well... host them? I'd be willing to offer my photobucket for the purpose. And I know that with imageshack you can put a clickable thumbnail in. I mean, if that'd be too shoddy, fair enough, but it seems to me like the only options if we have limited bandwidth, which we do.

[mr_pikachu]

Jeff: Awesome! Thanks for the beta testing help. :D I'll get the current framework to you as soon as possible... it could probably use a fair share of tweaking, really. We'll know more once our discussions make the preferred structure perfectly clear.


Mikachu: Many thanks for the offer, Mikachu! You rock. That will be unique content that no one else will have... always a plus. ^_^


Weas: Photobucket's risky, as they have a tendency to delete pictures that they feel push the limits of the terms of service (see: copyright laws). Imageshack might work if we had to do outside hosting, although we'd have to be ready to re-upload any images that were lost by the servers. A few of mine have vanished in the past, personally. I'll track down the numbers I found previously so that we have a better idea of where we stand.

[Jeff]

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/5741/hoennmapyp6.th.jpg (http://img76.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hoennmapyp6.jpg)

There's the map in action. I should probably mention that it uses the <map> tag, which I'm pretty sure is widely supported. Like I said, this worked in 3 different browsers: IE, Firefox, and Chrome (which uses Apple's WebKit engine), JavaScript and all.

Unfortunately the Prnt Scrn key doesn't show the cursor as I just found out, but as you probably guessed I was hovering over Slateport in that screenshot.

[mr_pikachu]

Okay, I have now read all of fp's post and have composed my reply. Here it is. :sweat2:



Articles: I'm all for it. One of the things I've been meaning to do for awhile is catch up on DP so that I could resume my weekly Pokemon episode analysis. And the anime's hardly the only area that could use regular articles and such.


Tabbing Effect: Is this distinct from clicking a tab at the top of the screen to switch versions of stuff, like you described in the Pokedex suggestion?


Locatordex: You know, I used to use the Pokemon Fan Universe Pokedex (had to switch eventually, since we no longer had one), and the guy always talked about how he was going to set up a locatordex. It sounded great, but it never happened. I think we could do it, though, especially since we already seem to have a start with Jeff's map script.


Walkthroughs: Sounds good to me. In fact, I was a big fan of the old TCG video game (still pull it back out on occasion), so I might help with that if we take on that idea.

I do think we need to clearly distinguish between "absolute must have on launch" things and "we should work on these" things - this is true throughout the site, but it's perhaps most true in the walkthrough section. It's an important distinction to make, because I think one of our primary goals (and certainly the first big one) should be just to get the website running.

Part of the reason some people are skeptical is that they've worked on similar projects that set the initial bar too high and never even got to the initial upload stage. I think it's fine to put the site online even if it doesn't yet have every section we want, simply so that we get the project off the ground. There has to be a point at which we say, "This is enough to get the ball rolling, so let's put it up."

None of us wants this to slow down and be forgotten; let's figure out what information we need for a respectable initial upload - some things can probably still be "under construction" - and that way we'll have a very clear goal in mind.

But I digress.


Anime and Manga: The first one's so vast that it'll probably require many people working on it to get all the information. Manga, on the other hand, is a bit smaller... I can contribute a lot to certain series, not so much to others. Like you said, some things have lower priorities than others.


Fanfiction Reviews: Yeah, we'll have to figure out that one. One idea might be to incorporate it with the FFRO somehow... not sure, though, with the FFRO's current inactivity.


Fanart: Makes me wonder what happened to the Oekaki page, heh.


Other Fanworks: I'd be happy to periodically post WotF there... might draw people to the forums, too. ("Ooh, they have more pages here!") It'd definitely be much better to have a variety, though, provided we could get enough contributors.


History: In Fanfic, we've been working a little with the "TPM's History" thing for use in the Fanfiction Hall of Fame. It's tougher than you might think to actually find old information, but if we had some 2000-era veterans who would remember it....



Now. I have posted. You know what's coming next...

What does everyone else think? :D

[firepokemon]

I couldn't agree more with getting the website up. And with deciding what needs to be prioritised over others. So really the question is what needs doing now, what we leave for after the main stuff is up. And perhaps most important what content needs to be up before the website becomes public?

Manga, Merchandise, articles, certain games, TCG, added anime features, fanfics, fanart I would say can wait for later.

Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, the pokedex, Locatordex, basic anime information, perhaps the ranger games, attackdex, abilitydex, berrydex, perhaps a few calculators and a basic games mechanics page is what we should focus on before unveiling.

Though I'm not even sure we need to do that much before unveiling the website. As long as when the website launches its constantly getting updated with stuff and we keep a good record of news and forum information then the website will be a success. Any long term success surely will be measured by our 5th generation information. If perhaps we focus on most thing up before 5th gen arrives we should be doing well.

As for that tabbing effect. I was thinking something like this:

http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/alakazam

I was thinking of something like that, see how one can go to RBY info easily or GSC etc etc. I think this could work with the spinoffdex, berrydex etc etc.

----

Anyway I'm easy with what we focus on first to make sure the site is up. But I guess you or we or TPM or whatever need to decide on several things that need doing.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

If we have a section for translations, we should perhaps have songs and other stuff also in other languages than just Finnish, Swedish and Japanese. Of course if we are short of material, there could be just a section like 'Finnish fun' but I don't know if it would be intersting enough. Anyway, here's an example of my translations. The regular Finnish Team Rocket motto.

Finnish original
Mikachu's English translation

Jessie: Meitä on kaksi...
Jessie: There's two of us...
James: ...kammottavaksi.
James: ...to be feared.
Jessie: Maailma kaipaa pelastusta!
Jessie: The world yearns for salvation!
James: On kansamme loistavin, sielultaan musta!
James: Our nation is the most splendid, black from its soul!
Jessie: On totuus ja rakkaus raukkoja varten...
Jessie: Trurth and love are for wretches...
James: ...vaan tähdet ja galaksit kuningatarten.
James: ...but stars and galaxies of queens.
Jessie: Jessie!
James: James!
Together: Rakettiryhmä!
Together: Team Rocket!
Jessie: Me tähtäämme vasamat taivaisiin!
Jessie: We aim the bolts at skies!
James: Astu alas tai tartumme aseisiin!
James: Step down or we'll take up arms!
Meowth: Miau! Juuri niin!
Meowth: Meowth that's right!

Now I don't know if this would be a good idea or a boring idea, but I think it would be original at least to include a vocabulary, perhaps in an attachment, like this:

me = we
meitä = of us
olla = be
on = is
kaksi = two
kammota = fear
kammottavaksi = to be feared
maailma = world
kaivata = yearn
kaipaa = yearns
pelastus = salvation
pelastusta = for salvation
kansa = nation
kansamme = our nation
loistava = splendid
loistavin = the most splendid
sielu = soul
sielultaan = from its soul
musta = black
totuus = truth
ja = and
rakkaus = love
raukka = wretch
varten = for
vaan = but
tähti = star
tähdet = stars
galaksi = galaxy
kuningatar = queen
kuningatarten = of queens
Rakettiryhmä = Team Rocket
tähdätä = aim
tähtäämme = we aim
vasama = bolt, divine weapon
taivas = sky
taivaisiin = at skies
astua alas = step down
astu alas = step down (imperative)
tai = or
tarttua = grab
ase = weapon
tarttua aseisiin = take up arms
Miau = Meowth
juuri = just
so = niin

[shazza]

So let's assume the site becomes incredibly popular again, so too will the message board. How do we feel about having the forum like 2000/2001 or Serebii? Inactive moderators and administrators would either need to lift their game or resign.

[firepokemon]

Do people here even remember 2000 or 2001? Crazy times, barely no rules, flames, flames, flames. Good times ^)&

[shazza]

Yes, how I miss those crazy times when I used to fear you due to your age, intellect and great debating skills.

Where have those days gone?

:lol:

[mistysakura]

I still think that RPG and Fanfic and ASB are where TPM can differentiate itself from other sites, but firepokemon's right; most of the activity there will take place on the forums. So the parts of the site to put up first would be the games and anime (and news, of course). I really like the idea of a locatordex, and really getting up-to-date with fifth gen. As firepokemon said, if we can provide quality, comprehensive information, we could gain an edge there. Regarding the amount of material at launch, I think that at least the newest generation of games and anime should be fairly complete before launch. If visitors see "under construction" everywhere, especially where they need the information most, they're less likely to come back. However, I agree that it would be impossible to have all information up at launch, and it's a daunting task. So if we have the information that people are most likely to look for -- news, new generation information -- the rest of the stuff can wait. It's not like there's a lack of RBY pokedexes out there. Also, perhaps we could upload our work in progress somewhere, so our forum members can see where the project is going, see that it's not just a load of talk, and chip in. It's encouraging to the content creators too :)

[mr_pikachu]

The great thing is that, as others have said, we do have a lot of content stored in archives. It shouldn't be too hard to get certain things up to snuff.

Are we ready to start divvying up tasks and stuff? Seems a little fast, but I actually didn't realize so much of our information was still easily accessible... we may be ready to go after the real work for phase one, even as we debate how to go beyond the standard content. That might be the best approach so that we don't lose our momentum in endless discussion. Thoughts?

As for posting the site, what does everyone else think? My initial reason for not doing so was that certain other Pokemon sites might be apt to steal our thunder, but if the rest of you think that's an irrelevant concern then we'll make the entire process more public.

(Alternatively, I could post a link to the current material to prove it exists, but only give the password to contributors. What's the best approach?)

[firepokemon]

Well I can't speak for others. But I'm very interested to see what there is so far. I don't think everything should be revealed publicly either.

Also keen to see the divvying of tasks and the like get up to speed. As for contributing towards the site, well if I knew where it was going I could say what I can contribute.

[Andrew]

Honestly, I'm a good bossy person. So I'll tell you guys what you want/need to change to make it look pretty. We can at least be the sexiest Pokemon Site!

[Blademaster]

Firepokemon, that is one LONG fucking post...

That probably means whatever is in it is a good idea. Good work. :yes:

[Dark-San]

It is clear you don't even know what the state of the pokemon community looks like.

You forgotten about sites like this (http://veekun.com/). I could have swear I had found more sites like this in the net. They are all our competitors, all using the same strategy as being a pokemon hub. Although ours are more comprehensive.

Like I had mentioned earlier, I do not quite agreeable on what firepokemon's proposal had to offer totally. Although, he have some interesting ideas that we could take note of but I feel that we are somehow on another missing out on the whole point here.

A project does not goes like when one person decides something and the whole followers goes with it without proper analysis done. There is a danger that the project would fails and eventually dropped and forgotten halfway. It is not like I totally disagree with firepokemon's idea but I feel that I should have make a point here. If we go ahead blindly, we will be at risk of losing the the forum's identity.

My whole point of idea came from the fact that, sure we are from The Pokemasters. Although we are somehow a group still affiliated with Pokemon, we are still have our own individual forum identity. Firstly, our identity is stemed from the fact that we are all former fans or still a fan of pokemon. Fans that does fanwork, Fans that adores pokemons, Fans that writes Fanfic, Fans that draws Fanart.

Hence instead of positioning ourselves as a hub, I strongly feel that we should assumed a position that is more fanbase. In another, downplaying on all those walkthroughs and technical stuffs of Pokedex and focus more on fanwork. I have an idea or two that I had been writing down, although I doubt it would be more comprehensive than firepokemon. I would post it up like in a day or two after I am done with my Strategic Marketing revision.

[firepokemon]

Veekun is not comprehensive. It has a pokedex and an ev calculator and one or two other things. It has nothing on the ranger games nor does it have information on the mystery dungeon games. Half the info rby/gsc and parts of 3rd generation we already possess. Why not use that. I never said my way was the only way to go. I dont think for a second either that people blindly followed what I have to say. But clearly there were elements in my proposal that made people wake up and say. Yes that will work or that will work.

Also I already pointed out sites that focus on fan-work stuff. Its not going to get that many hits. Fanworks are great but to have the whole focus on fan work? Forget about it. Fan work should be a part of TPM sure but you can't possibly have the site about fan work. We do that and we become just another small pokemon website on the internet.

What we can do is use things from my proposal, things that other people wish to see and combine it into a comprehensive and fully worked out website. That means you can have the fan work stuff. But having a whole website centered around fan work? Forget about it. I don't think there is a huge interest out there for that. People can do that stuff already on serebii.net forums, pokecommunity forums, bulbagarden forums and the sites I mentioned earlier. Not to mention such places often and will continue to see places such as deviant art or fanfiction.net and the like.

Also if we concentrated on pokemon fanwork and pokemon fanfiction. What is going to happen? As far as I can see no successful pokemon RPG has happened for months. There are very few people here writing pokemon fanfiction. Pokemon fan art? Besides a a few trainer sprites there is none. ASB itself isn't that active and one can easily go to Serebii.net for that where its much bigger than we got.

I don't mean to be rude to your thoughts Dark San but like you I have strong opinions of what I want to see in a new TPM website. And I can't see a whole focus on fan work to be viable in either the short or long term. Sure it can play an important part on the site. But fan interaction largely takes place in forums or via chat rooms.

We go with fan interactions and a real emphasis placed on our forums and how are we meant to get new members? Right now we don't get new members because we have nothing to offer them. I hate to say it but I feel like too much emphasis placed on fanwork and we lose any chance we have to renew this board.

The fanbase goes where the pokemon information goes, doing fan art and fanfiction is a bonus sure. But can hardly be what is emphasised. People stick around for the bonus that is forums and that is fan work. But we won't get those people doing in your way Dark San. They'll keep to SPP and Bulbagarden that offer pokemon information and forums to express their fandom.

I'll hear your proposal, but right now I'm at a loss to see how can we possibly go the way you wish to see TPM.

Edit: Also where has it been stated that we're going down the route I suggested? People like some of my ideas. But never has it been expressed we're going down the route firepokemon said.

Edit Number Two: Also you seem to think that we'll just be the same as everyone else. But very few of the big websites have anything on fan content. So there I agree we can make a difference in offering fan work and the like. Also there is the articles which means people will come back.

At the end of the day TPM was a pokemon website, that is why the majority of us came here. For a number of years we have not had a main page. We are now a small and struggling community that has been offered that last chance to resurrect what we once had. I came here the day this forum opened and I'll be here till either I die or it dies. I've seen this forum change in so many ways. I've been in the chat room. I've worked on this site before. I've seen the changes happen on this forum. I know what this forum is like where its breathing, for years I've also seen its long decline. Any changes will change this community we have. But unless we get new people, we won't have a community left. We can't be a video game site or an anime site. We can't be a site that focuses on fan works. We can have fan works, we can have anime, we can even have video games. But at the end of the day we TPM the pokemasters a website and forums centered around pokemon. Lets not lose track of that. We don't have a fanbase, we won't get a fanbase again until we offer something fans want.

[Dark-San]

Thanks firepokemon, I seems to get your own pointers with your concise explanations. Some good points you brought up had me thinking on the flaws of my own differentiation plan. Thought I might bring them up just in case,

1) Lack of core competence

Sure, I had my mind fixed on this one to us skewing towards fanworks side. But the problem is that in some of our forum fanworks departments particularly in Fanarts and RPG, where activities are at its minimal. Before we can go into the differentiation on fanworks up, we would need to tackle more on our internal forum problems. Particular the lack of fresh blood injection into our staff positions, since the activity of the moderators indirectly links to our performance indicator as the site's vitality.

2) Lack of long term vision of what we want to achieve

Right now, I must say we are just rather aimlessly operating within the Internet in our small little world. Hopefully with firepokemon's plan, we can get ourselves standing up first before we start to think about differentiation. In metaphor term, it would be more appropriate for us to learn on how to walk before we can run.

3) Lack of administration involvement

Let us just say the administrators are not as active as they used to be, given reality's circumstances. My plan would probably required them to update the site instead of a weekly basis, a daily basis would be more appropriate. Hence, this would further push my plan into more of a disadvantage side

Although, there are much more I can't simply be bothered to sum them all up. The above 3 factors would probably be the gist of it.

Also given my concerns here on the plan we have here, I think it is best we need to get someone who have relevant IT skills that would assist Brian into designing the site. We should have no problem into getting the members to contribute content into the site but the priority should be put more into the designing portion and yes of course the work allocation needs to be work out too.

[mr_pikachu]

Glad to see some good discussion here. It sounds like we're coming to a greater understanding of what different people want, which is excellent. :)

Regarding getting someone to help with site design, please, please do. I don't profess to be a web design expert; I've tinkered enough to know how to start this project, but we'll definitely need someone with true knowledge for the technical stuff.

As for the updating thing, I've considered that before and believe it's something to discuss with Kevin. A lot depends on how the site's security is structured. Ideally, we could sort of treat the main site and the forum as two different "folders," with the forum maintaining its normal protection and the website having certain degrees of editing privileges granted to people who are both active and highly trusted. (Some might be limited to certain sections of the site, while others might sort of oversee everything.)

That's about the full extent of what I've developed. I'll try to contact Kevin in the very near future; he and I may be able to discuss some ideas. Now that we've got the ball rolling, I'm not about to sit idly by while it comes to a stop.

Regarding the overall direction of the site, it may be simplest to at least get an idea of what people think it has to include first. As such, I propose a simple straw poll. Out of all the individual topics we've discussed so far, from 4th generation walkthroughs to character guides to a locatordex, just pick five of those specific things and post them here.

(Yes, go specific, if you could... that way everything will get a fair look, including smaller applications and sections. Otherwise we'll end up with everyone voting for five broad categories like "Pokemon anime," which won't help us focus on specific goals at all.) I think that may be the fastest way to determine our initial direction; we can determine the breadth of the project as we go.

Is everyone else agreeable with that proposal?

[DarkestLight]

Sure. Once Im able to see whats needed first hand, then I 'll know what and how much I can contribute :O.

[Jeff]

I think things that other pokemon sites don't have, and things that they do have, but we could do better should be a top priority for us. Those are the things that would give people incentive to visit TPM and therefore allow us to re-establish ourselves in the community. Given that, here are five things I think we should have:

-News on the main page. A good Pokemon fansite should keep fans updated on what's going on in the world of Pokemon, and just like how video game sites list news items on their main pages, we should make this accessible as soon as visitors come to the site. Plus, this would be consistent with the old format of TPM, allowing us to keep another part of TPM's old identity.

-Fanworks section. I like the idea of emphasizing fanworks, but it should only be a part of TPM, and not be the sole emphasis. Organizing info on the fanworks going on in the forums onto a section of the main site would be a great way for visitors to, for example, find fanfics they like and keep up with them even if they slip off of the first page in the forums. It could also serve as a gateway into the forums for members who came for the info.

-Game info should include old games. I would like a Pokemon site that I could go to and find out, for example, where I can find HM02 in Silver. Like I mentioned in another post, people still play the old games.

-Locatordex. I'm pretty enthusiastic about this idea. This is the kind of thing that Pokemon sites usually don't offer, but is IMO, a much better way to organize information on the games.

-Pokedex. Yeah, it's been done to death, but what's a Pokemon site without a pokedex? This is one of those cases where we could probably do things better than other sites. Instead of trying to throw everything (including the kitchen sink) into the 'dex to one-up the other guys, we should try to focus on making it more usable. Being able to find pokemon via a search box would be one great idea.

As for the site design, I don't claim to be a web design expert either. I can write some pretty decent HTML/CSS/JavaScript, but getting it to look nice is another thing for me.

[firepokemon]

I have to say I pretty much agree point on point with Jeff.

In regards to news, I would like to see extensive news. Of the main new sites, pocketmonsters, pokebeach, bulbagarden.net, serebii.net and a few others. They post some news but I always feel more could be posted. Now news is something that many people could do. Since previously Kevin has used newscripts and the like to enable several people to post news. This is an area where I am very interested in helping.

Fanworks I'm a bit iffy on. There seems to be many wanting something on this, I want something on this. Dark San has some proposal on it. We need to find a way for this section to work. And so far we've seen people wanting to see it but no one has really been able to pinpoint how we make use of fanworks. Someone needs to write up something about how this will work on the site.

Game info. We will need some game info on launch. But we can't possibly have everything done and polished by game launch. If the sections need to be a bit empty for now with some quick info about the game. I say do that. We can obviously enhance the sections at a later date. Where we do have a strength, is that RBY and GSC is pretty much sorted and could basically be copied straight from the old archives. There is the other gameboy colour and Nintendo 64 games that can be pretty much copied across.

As for ruby/sapphire we have some in the second website with the archive available at the top of this post. And diamond, pearl and platinum are a necessity.

As for other games, Firered, Leafgreen, Emerald, XD, Colosseum, Mystery Dungeon games and perhaps the ranger games may have to take place at a later date. We will do them, but is it something we can get done before the launch?

Diamond, Pearl and Platinum we should be working on.

Locatordex. I had the idea, I'm glad people like the idea. Question is how comprehensive do we make this, how far do we take it, and what information do we really want for it?

Pokedex - Has to be done really, can't get away without not doing it.

I also feel an attackdex, abilitydex and berrydex would need to be done on launch as well. But I don't feel these things are as necessary as other sections. For now we could simply have an attack list for each section. Ability list for 3rd gen and 4th gen. And a berry listing.

I think we need something from the anime, but that section can be fully completed at a later date.

----

Other things, TCG, Manga, Merchandise, Articles, Columns, calculators, extra game mechanics and the like can be handled at a later date.

I guess we need to think about what we need to include on launch for Diamond, Pearl and Platinum since it requires a lot of work and we can't possible have a fully comprehensive section on start up. What in D/P/Pt must be prioritise?

[mr_pikachu]

I guess we need to think about what we need to include on launch for Diamond, Pearl and Platinum since it requires a lot of work and we can't possible have a fully comprehensive section on start up. What in D/P/Pt must be prioritise?

A walkthrough section would probably be unfeasible at launch, so a location/gym/main character list might be sufficient as step one. Thoughts?

[mistysakura]

Sounds good. My five things:

News
Pokedex (inc. D/P)
Locatordex
4th and 5th gen game info
Pokemon anime character guide and episode summaries (I know it's ambitious, but we can put up an episode list at launch and add summaries from most recent down as we go)

[Drago]

Fanworks I'm a bit iffy on. There seems to be many wanting something on this, I want something on this. Dark San has some proposal on it. We need to find a way for this section to work. And so far we've seen people wanting to see it but no one has really been able to pinpoint how we make use of fanworks. Someone needs to write up something about how this will work on the site.
Just off the top of my head, I would think that the best way of addressing fanworks would be to treat them as though they were official; a listing of the more established fics or RPGs, rankings, character lists, reviews, the whole kit and kaboodle. Of course there aren't a great deal of thriving RPGs to speak of at the moment, but longtime 'franchises' like Eeveelutions could get that treatment; it's a tradition of sorts that could feasibly return at any time.
The great thing about a thriving fansite is that, at least back in the day, an interest in the theme would generate an interest in topics related to that theme. I liked Pokemon, so I would read the stories people had to write. Whether that's changed nowadays I don't know, but it certainly couldn't hurt. In my case I can't contribute a great deal towards the more practical topics that you desire, simply because I personally don't possess any greater information than anyone else; that's why it's best for people like me to focus on our community; something that I could help contribute information about.

[Bulbasaur4]

On Fanworks...

As far as Artwork goes, there should be a main page for Artwork that displays users who have submitted art. The latest artwork they have uploaded will be an icon for their name, so people can click on what they'd like to see. On this page should be a link to the forum, for discussion/ranks/giftarts etc...

On RPGs...
If RPG doesn't get its own board, then I'd leave it teh way it is. Trying to focus it on pokemon will not get anymore people active in it than if you left it general. I absolutely detest the set-up of having a Pokemon forum where they have a little topic for every frick'n town and what-not... it's plain annoying and lacks the quality that RPGs were based off of. The most successful RPG forums that I've seen, have no such stucture but use the structure we do now.

If the RPG were to recieve its own forum/board, THEN I'd suggest making a seperate forum slice for different genres. :3



OH OH OH...
TPM, WHAT POKEMON DO YOU WANT AS THE MASCOT?
... Just wanted imput, because I thought having one would be a good idea if I wanted to create banners/etc.

[mr_pikachu]

OH OH OH...
TPM, WHAT POKEMON DO YOU WANT AS THE MASCOT?
... Just wanted imput, because I thought having one would be a good idea if I wanted to create banners/etc.

I am so incredibly tempted to yell "PIKACHU!" But I don't want to risk turning TPM into a cliche by pushing for my personal fave... nngh! *twitches*

I'll look at some of the archives this weekend. From what you all have said, it's very likely that we can draw a lot of material from our own past and just make it sharper. Strong writers, thankfully, are something TPM has in abundance. Now that we're getting a clearer picture of what we want on launch, it sounds like that resource will lighten our workload dramatically. Editing isn't easy, but it's simpler than creating new content.

[firepokemon]

Bulbsaur4: No I'm not saying you have to focus on pokemon. And I'm not sure I get your point. I'm just wondering what about RPG can be done on the site? RPG highlights? RPG reviews or what. Though interestingly I though Dracoknights thoughts were interesting.

As for pokemon mascot. I've always been a fan of flying pokemon, I recall Lugia (which is lol psychic) was a popular choice. I think there would be something quaint in having RBY/FRLG starters. Charizard?????

----

Anyway in regards to what information necessary for Diamond/Pearl/Platinum.

- TM/HM list
- Major items (do a more thorough item list later)
- New pokemon (ie. the new lot for 4th generation)
- Gym Leaders
- Elite 4
- Legendary pokemon
- For Platinum rotom formes.

I think that would be sufficent for now. Clearly eventually we're going to want to cover Pokemon Contests, Honey Tree, All items, Secret Base, The Underground, Battle Tower, Swarm, Radar etc etc. We're gonna have to cover a lot. But if we focused on a few things now and kept adding to it. I think that would be suffice.

[firepokemon]

I would edit the page. But TPM colours traditionally are black and blue. Now I'm not sure what colours we're using for the actual site. But if we keep colours largely to what the forums are. Surely it makes sense for the pokemon to be Suicune or Blastoise or something blueish and TPMish?

[mr_pikachu]

At present, the color scheme is similar to what we have on the forums. That can certainly be changed if we like, though; I mostly just wanted something to show upon the initial proposal. It's a framework, and that framework can easily be adjusted.

[firepokemon]

Well I'm happy to stick with TPM's current colour scheme ^)^. But for me as long as it looks right I'll be happy.

---

So my thought train is running. We gotta start submitting stuff. Gym Leader pages, tm/hm list, looking through old sections of TPM and fixing things up and like. Writing pages on Natures, compiling pokedex data etc etc. And right now there is no space for it.

I'm not sure if admins themselves can create forums, or super mods or what. We could I guess use the pokemasters.net forum. But I think a new forum with access granted to members known. Ie. just make it so you either must be registered to view the forum so we got no randoms looking in. Or even going further than that and granting it to members known to everyone else. Ie. No random new person with 1 post by his name able to access the forum.

In that forum, could be a post for the locatordex, a post for the pokedex, a post for natures, a post for diamond/pearl Gym Leaders, a post fixing up a section in Gold/Silver/Crystal. That way we can see what people are working on. But also edit things or point out areas that may need to be elaborated on, changed or fixed. That way content is getting done and people are posting real things down and others can review what people have posted and the like.

To me it makes sense and means we're actually getting the process down. So thoughts? Comments?

To me this makes sense

[Roy Karrde]

Well I don't wanna really repeat what I have already said before in other topics ^^ I really think our strength is the creativity of the forum and that any website should play to that instead of one upping Serebii. Also if anyone wants to, there is a program called Keyhole TV in which you could watch Pokemon as it airs and probably get the info on before Serebii by a few hours.

ANYWAY if anyone wants 3D Models of things like Cartridges, Cards, etc, I would be more than happy to provide them.

[Blademaster]

OH OH OH...
TPM, WHAT POKEMON DO YOU WANT AS THE MASCOT?

Something that represents us. Something that was on top of the world for awhile, then kinda went to shit and vanished, and now is coming back...

Perhaps... an Aerodactyl? A Ho-Oh? Maybe a sturdy Bastiodon?

[Jeff]

I was thinking either Moltres or Ho-oh. Given that we're rising from the ashes, I think a phoenix would be appropriate. Also, both are old-school pokemon, Moltres being a first-gen pokemon and Ho-oh going back to the first episode of the anime. I'd prefer to use an old pokemon as our mascot than a new one since TPM goes way back to the early days.

[Drago]

I'm liking Ho-oh as the mascot as well; not only for the phoenix reference, but a partial throwback to the old Mewtwo/Lugia/Ho-oh logo.

[Andrew]

I am proposing Jynx! Or Aerodactal.

Failing that, Squirtle for being adorable! Whatever it is, I reckon it should be one of the original 151

[Charles Legend]

How about Squirtle Ho-oh, and Lucario?

Squitle do to the fact not only it a fist gen pokemon, kevin has an Avatar of one, that and it is a lot more useful in Brawl then ether Ivysaur or Charizard...

Ho_oh because not only for the phoenix reference, and a partial throwback to the old Mewtwo/Lugia/Ho-oh logo, but it's by far one of the more known second gen pokemon besides it being a legendary under lines the fact that TPM iself is some what of a legendary pokemon fansite.

Lucario he replaced Mewtwo in Brawl, is easily one of the most popular Pokemon, and People thought he was a legendary, but of course there is a legend about Lucario..that and he was most likely based off of Anubis since he looks like a jackle waling on two legs.

~Charles Legend

[Jeff]

I'm not sure if admins themselves can create forums, or super mods or what. We could I guess use the pokemasters.net forum. But I think a new forum with access granted to members known. Ie. just make it so you either must be registered to view the forum so we got no randoms looking in. Or even going further than that and granting it to members known to everyone else. Ie. No random new person with 1 post by his name able to access the forum.

In that forum, could be a post for the locatordex, a post for the pokedex, a post for natures, a post for diamond/pearl Gym Leaders, a post fixing up a section in Gold/Silver/Crystal. That way we can see what people are working on. But also edit things or point out areas that may need to be elaborated on, changed or fixed. That way content is getting done and people are posting real things down and others can review what people have posted and the like.


I think this is a good idea, I'm working on a site layout and it'd be nice to have somewhere to share it with other people working on the project.

[Jeff]

OK, here's the layout I mentioned in my last post. It's still far from complete, but I thought I'd show people what I came up with and get some input on it.

[DarkestLight]

I like the approach so far Jeff , and I'm sure that of course there will be much more to add....

This is just a standard nitpick. Every site in the world has that layout. Can't fault what works, I'm just always noticing the side column on the left side, and then the spaced center and right areas for bulletins/snippets/what have you. It just..works.

Again, Your base layout is great, and I'm sure we can work with that very much :O. Maybe have the banner (the new banner?) NOT be a rectangle persay, but like, get a tad thicker toward the right side, so it has a more fluid look to it? But that's just cosmetic...doesnt change the layout any.

Ima..shush now.

[Jeff]

I don't think the "getting thicker towards the right" thing is even possible. Whether the site is laid out with tables or CSS (I used CSS), everything's a box.

As for the layout, the sidebar layout got the most votes in the poll so that's what I went with when I started designing this concept. It makes sense to me, like you said, it works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Number1ChanseyFan]

Hmmm, I guess I am a little bit nostalgic, but what about bringing back the old Mewtwo/Lugia/Ho-oh logo for the forums section? And as for the actual website, didn't we used to have different pictures and Pokemon for different times of the year? I think something like that would be nice.

[Dark Scizor]

Oh wow. I like it. Just for the nostalgia if nothing else.

[mr_pikachu]

Jeff and I have already discussed layout ideas a bit, and I can honestly say I like his creation a bit better than my original draft. For comparison, here's a screenshot of the original.

For the record, I think we need to get some idea on the layout as soon as possible. That way we can devote our focus to obtaining and organizing the data. It's especially crucial since we already have quite a bit of the necessary info.

[Drago]

At this time, I believe I prefer Jeff's layout. The sidebar looks pretty slick, maybe the headings could be a mite bit fancier though - textures and the like - pardon my lack of Interwebs knowledge.

Additionally, the links are alligned a bit low to the Pokeballs, but I'd think that's less a layout matter, more just a bit of tweaking. Anyhow, it's looking good! I'll keep observing and throwing in a couple thoughts as they come to me.

EDIT: One our last layouts (http://web.archive.org/web/20050117004639/http://pokemasters.net/) had a member login sidebar off to the right... It kinda closes things in nicely I feel, though some may not like the amount of vertical space it then makes in the middle. Brian mentioned, if editing privileges go to non-admins, a login bar might be required.

Additionally, I may be alone on this but I like the blue headbar/white background style, and think it could be incorporated into the headlines, as well. I guess I just kinda like the 'closed off' look of having the text in a different scheme from the background.

[mr_pikachu]

I sort of concur with Tony in that certain aspects of the color scheme probably need to be changed if we go with Jeff's layout. Personally, though, I'd be fine with just lightening the shade of the main section to one of the grays in our forum layout, just so we don't have such a contrast between the sidebar and a pure black background.

I liked the use of "Dexter" as a primary heading in the sidebar, though. Very nice. The sidebar as a whole rocks (aside from the Pokeball thing Tony mentioned); it just clashes a little with the black background, in my opinion.

What does everyone else think?

[firepokemon]

I can't offer much to the layout. Overall its pleasing, once we get a picture or two. The only thing is we're going to offer a substantial news service and yet because we have so much to do we'll be having dozens of website updates. I'm just curious if there is space in the current design for that. As for the countdown. I would prefer to see moved to the right side since its kinda in your face at the moment. Overall, though its pleasing.

Though we'd need to get our sections sorted a bit more. I like that fanworks and the forums are first, then we have the pokedex, locatordex and the like next. Then the games. Just wondering whether in future when or if we have articles, columns, anime and the like whether there will be the room for them.

Anyway I see the forums have been slightly changed with Other Pokemon Games being made an archive forum. Any news about whether a forum for site updates is being made, has it even been discussed? Since the pokedex and locatordex compiling of data is going to take alot and lots of work. And more work than I think anyone currently realises. I'm just curious since I haven't really read any thoughts about it except by Jeff.

Also rather curious when you say we have a lot of the necessary information already. Since as far as I know we only have some anime data. Unless other things are taking shape behind the scenes?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Just talking about myself, this is quite irrevelant while you others discuss layouts and such...


Mikachu: Many thanks for the offer, Mikachu! You rock. That will be unique content that no one else will have... always a plus. ^_^

Perhaps putting a vocabulary linked to each translation isn't a good idea, but what do yo think of my previous post? And now, the following link goes to Spoilers forum. I don't
know if I rock after you have read this, but...

http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?p=373869#post373869

[mr_pikachu]

Sorry, apparently I wasn't very clear about us "having the information already." I was referring to your long post on page two of this thread; specifically, the archived pages on the games and such. We do have a significant amount of the episode listing done, though, and it appears that we also have two good initial ideas for the layout.

I think what we may want to do is figure out which layout everyone prefers, then make tweaks to that one while adding content. That seems to be the logical next step, to me at least.

Regarding a separate forum being made for the 'dex stuff, I have not yet approached the admins about that. My computer was actually cripplingly hacked a couple of days ago, so I spent most of my weekend backing up my data and wiping it. Sorry for the delay, but I couldn't even get online for awhile.

I agree with you that they'll take tons of work in comparison with everything else. It may end up being the last thing we finish before we post the site. (On that note, should we prioritize information on RSEDPP and work backwards? If we do, we might be able to afford having the 'dexes only partially complete on launch... as long as the new information is there, we may be fine.)

As for subsections under the main sections, I think there are a few ways in which we could handle that. One would be to have a drop-down menu when you entered an individual section... say, for instance, you entered the RBY section. On the sidebar, there might be additional indented links to "Walkthrough," "Attacks," "Items," etc.

Alternatively, we could do it like this archived page (http://web.archive.org/web/20010801150645/pokemon.vgf.com/gameboy/red_blue/) and just give the path above the content (i.e. Pokemasters / Red & Blue / Walkthough).

Your suggestion on the countdown sounds a little like how this layout (http://web.archive.org/web/20050117004639/http://pokemasters.net/) worked. We should probably keep it higher on the right side if we do that, but it's clear that that structure does work.

(Other Pokemon Games, by the way, still exists. Online Pokemon Battling is the one that was archived.)



Mikachu: It's an interesting angle. I think we should probably keep our audience in mind, though. I'm not sure we'll get many visitors who rely on Japanese and can't speak English, so full summaries in Japanese probably aren't necessary. For the people who may want to have Japanese episode titles on hand, however, I have compiled a list of them through about nine-and-a-half seasons (plus Chronicles and the movies).



Okay. For now, are there any objections to picking one of the two layouts and working with it?

[Jeff]

Obviously I'd be a bit biased as to which layout to use :P. Anyway, I've been tweaking the page a bit. So far I've fixed the Pokeball issue and started a login bar. Thanks for the input everyone, I'll try playing around with some of the other suggestions tomorrow.

[firepokemon]

Eh hold on. In regards to the logn page for people who can update etc.That can be handled without that being visible to others. Ie. at the back end. Where that login piece could work is if the like last website we allowed others to comment on news and updates. Which I think is something we should welcome.

[mr_pikachu]

Eh hold on. In regards to the logn page for people who can update etc.That can be handled without that being visible to others. Ie. at the back end. Where that login piece could work is if the like last website we allowed others to comment on news and updates. Which I think is something we should welcome.

Precisely. I agree that there needs to be some sort of backdoor for actual updates. Comments, on the other hand, could use a login bar. The same goes if we have something like the earlier blog suggestion or a team creator (though the latter is probably doable without a login, now that I think about it).


Jeff: I'm biased, and I prefer yours anyway. The aesthetics are much better in my opinion.


Everyone else: Shall we pick a layout?

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Mikachu: It's an interesting angle. I think we should probably keep our audience in mind, though. I'm not sure we'll get many visitors who rely on Japanese and can't speak English, so full summaries in Japanese probably aren't necessary. For the people who may want to have Japanese episode titles on hand, however, I have compiled a list of them through about nine-and-a-half seasons (plus Chronicles and the movies).

I got it, but where do you get the English translations for the titles from? But it's just that I don't rely on my own translations, and I think it would be good to have the original Japanese kana/kanji AND romaji to back me up. Tv Tokyo doesn't have romaji in its page anyway, so this could be something we'd have as an advantage, I think.

What about the Team Rocket mottos and vocabularies I talked about earlier? I found some printed pages from my collection and I'm considering posting them at Pokemon Anime.

Again, just my own thoughts, not related to the matters mostly discussed here...

[firepokemon]

Go with Jeffs as long as there are some amendments.

[mr_pikachu]

I got it, but where do you get the English translations for the titles from?

You know... now that I think about it, I actually don't remember. It's been quite a long time since I started the original draft... maybe a year ago. I'll have to look through some of my information and see if I can figure out where I obtained it. We'll need the newer episode titles if we continue along that route, after all.

As for the mottos and such, I think that could be something we feature. Not sure exactly where we'd put it... maybe as kind of a worldwide area under the anime section? It's something to discuss.


fp: Just to be clear, we'll undoubtedly make some changes to whichever layout we use. The key is figuring out our starting point. It'll be easier to make changes quickly once we have an initial layout. (That will also make organizing content much, much simpler.)


I'll start trying to get some information from the archives and organize it. That way, we can spend more time focusing on other, more important tasks.

[firepokemon]

Yes in regards to the anime, eventually one could begin to explore more canon type things and areas such as mottos and the like. Be interested in that myself.

I've been going through the archives myself Mr. Pikachu, just have a looking at everything, noting a few things, some things to be expanded on and the like. One thing I have noticed is that some links are missing in the walkthrus for RBY and GSC. These give extra information and help for those walkthrus. I don't think one should be too worried about. I wouldn't even fix them up at this stage. Just something to note and to clear up at some stage.

Also of note for RBY at least. Haven't checked GSC, is that for items and HM/TMs list many of those link to the actual walkthru. Just something that should be noted.

Have we clarified as to what things we'll specifically work on for the debut of the site?

As for me in general, at this stage not doing anything substantial. Just exploring things, thinking about things. But when the time is ready, happy to help compile data and the like. Am looking forward to any discussions of some type of private forum for the compiling and writing down of specific pages and that so they can be commented on and edited etc etc.

[mr_pikachu]

I don't think we yet determined exactly what will be developed first. I did note, however, that pretty much everyone mentioned the Locatordex in their list of five things, so that definitely becomes a priority. (That's the reason I asked people to do that.) Aside from that, it seemed to be mostly basic information across the spectrum of the games. That leads me to believe we should go for standard information (much like what we had on previous sites) as a starting point. That can be our initial direction, if not a step-by-step plan.

If we have some people who want to work on other things as well (haven't heard too much about fanworks in the last few days, but that's something we'll eventually want to cover, I think... the translations are a good idea, too), then those plans can probably be included. I'm fine with casting a wide net, if that's what people want. But the things that most people mentioned in their lists should probably take precedence for the rest of us, at least at the start.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

The format I've used for mottos and such, has been BB code so far because I'm most familiar with it and then I can post it here in the forums first. But should I do HTML or something? I've had one HTML and Internet course when I was still at school and can't say I know much.

Edit: And by the way, what will the international section look like if there is just Finnish stuff?

[firepokemon]

Yes so far the one thing noticed by most people have been the locatordex.

I can start compiling some of the data for each route etc in each game. I presume start with a map of RBY, map of Ruby and Sapphire. Maybe a separate map for Emerald. One for FireRed and Leafgreen and then one for Pearl, Diamond and Platinum??? Those are obvious. I don't know much about XD or anything do they have maps and the like? Even if they do, if we just focus on the main handheld games for each generation would likely be the best thing to do.

Edit: Just to clarify. This won't be actual HTML code or anything. Just simply going through each route, underground etc for each game and typing up the pokemon there what percentage they are, a note if a DS insert is necessary or if they're a swarm pokemon etc.

[mr_pikachu]

Mikachu: I wouldn't worry too much about the format. If you've got the information, the people who are more familiar with HTML can handle the coding. ^^


fp: Well, I was thinking we might want to take a present-back approach, starting with the fourth generation and working backwards. Starting with the newest games would probably help us cater to a wider audience. And the handheld games should probably take precedence; Colosseum and XD can come later. (They were third-gen anyway, so we likely won't have as many visitors looking for that information.)

EDIT: See my note to Mikachu. :)

[firepokemon]

Yes that makes sense.

So I'll make sure to compile data for D/P/Platinum. I can do RSEFRLG. And I want to see RBY and GSC and maps for those are easy to get hold of. So I'll just start compiling some data for each of those generations. And sorry but like Mikachu I don't have much experience in HTML coding and the rest. So that isn't an area I can help in. Compiling data is always important and necessary and that is something I can offer.

[mr_pikachu]

And I want to see RBY and GSC and maps for those are easy to get hold of.

Try this map (http://web.archive.org/web/20010609060712/pokemon.vgf.com/walkthru/rby.html), at least for starters.

[firepokemon]

Yeah that map would be perfect for whoever will do the actual HTML coding or whatever programming language. And I can pretty much use that map for each route and the like. So yes do RBY first. I'll just do sorta what I was thinking in the first place. Then I'll post it and people can edit it, change it, say what they don't want. Add whatever and see what happens from there/

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Edit: And by the way, what will the international section look like if there is just Finnish stuff?

I'm sorry to bother you again with this, but in case I was ignored. So I know only one Swedish and one Japanese motto plus less than 10 Finnish ones. It will be one-sided if there's just me to post. But the following little Finnish-only stuff only I can produce, would be fun, I think, taken from one of my General Discussion topics:


Johto = a Finnish word meaning 'lead' (as a noun based on the werb 'to lead', 'johtaa'). Pronouned quite differently from Japanese 'jouto/jooto'.

Kanto = a Finnish word meaning 'tree stump'. I think it is pronunciated with two os in Japanese though.

Pika = a suffix in Finnish language, meaning 'fast' or 'quick', for example, 'pikaruoka' = 'fast food', 'ruoka' being the word for 'food'.

Paras = a Finnish word meaning 'the best'.

Minun = a Finnish word form meaning 'my, mine', the stem being 'minä'.

So you can say like this in Finnish:

Ash johtaa Johto-Liigaa.
Ash leads the Johto League.

Paras on paras!
Paras is the best!

Minun Minunini!
My Minun!

Tuo Minun on minun!
That Minun is mine!

Tässä ovat Minun, Paras, ja minun paras Pokémonini, Parasect!
Here are Minun, Paras and my best Pokémon, Parasect!

[mr_pikachu]

Ah, the stealthy edits elude me once more.

Well, to refer back to a previous comment I made on the subject... I don't really know yet how a "worldwide" page would look. I doubt we'd limit it to Finnish information, though; it seems only fitting to have some Japanese stuff if we go that route. Heck, I've already collected tidbits of episode data, myself, so we could get something together.

But I'm really not sure exactly how it would emerge or what information it would host... right now, I just don't have a better answer than to say we need to discuss it. Anyway, it's not my decision to make, but everyone's.


Side note: I'm doing a bit of work on the attackdex right now... it's tedious, but worth it.

[Jeff]

I've already started working on the maps. I have a GSC map to use, and thanks to the link to the RBY one, I should be able to do them all now. I have the actual map images done for Hoenn and Sinnoh, and the Hoenn map is already coded, I just need to get it into the TPM format, which I'm still working on.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?p=374110#post374110

I did also this. The first post contains all the mottos I was able to find.

[Jeff]

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/971/tpm2gu8.th.jpg (http://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpm2gu8.jpg)

There's the revised layout. The biggest changes are the new bar on the right and the lighter background. There are also, of course, some minor tweaks like the pokeball fix I mentioned before.

Regarding fp's comments way up the page, I wouldn't worry about there not being enough room for things; new features can always be added to the sidebar, which will stretch to accommodate them. As for squeezing in all the updates. In the early days we could have a single announcement posted that will list all the latest features, then after the onslaught of initial features dies down we can post individual announcements for each feature.

[mr_pikachu]

This just continues to get cooler. Alright, um... one small tweak: could you make the top and bottom of the page (pure black) match the discussion area) dark gray)? I think that would make it look more cohesive and help the announcements stand out even more with the contrast.

And another really, really small thought... do you think we should make the thin blue borders on the left and right of the announcements match in terms of width? Or is it better like that for the effect?

Otherwise, this is looking awesome. I like the availability of comments, too... I assume the blue "Comments: 3" sections are links to make them viewable? Fantastic stuff you've developed here, man.

[Jeff]

Like I said before, but I'll say it here for everyone else, the Pokemasters logo that I've been using has a black background, which is why I had to use a black background for the page. I'll likely do alot more tweaking once I get some of the images we're going to use.

I didn't think about the borders, it made sense to have them off balance when there was only content to one side of the main area, but now that the page is more balanced, it makes sense to balance the borders too.

As for the comments, yeah, I'm just not sure how we'll do it. I'd prefer them going to a separate page where someone can view/post comments on the story, but having them on the main page and making them visible when the link is clicked is another option.

[Andrew]

Jeff, my main issues are:

1) It looks far too much like Serebii.
2) The Left Sidebar should be skinnier.

Also, I suggest we use creative commons. It's a much more advantageous avenue than copywrite. And it can help us more, should nintendo ever want to shut us down.

[RedStarWarrior]

Jeff, my main issues are:

1) It looks far too much like Serebii.
2) The Left Sidebar should be skinnier.

Also, I suggest we use creative commons. It's a much more advantageous avenue than copywrite. And it can help us more, should nintendo ever want to shut us down.
The farther from Serebii, the better.

Anyway, I can help if needed for anything. I can do web design and graphics design (or I can be a simple editor for articles as I do have an English degree).

[firepokemon]

Jeff, my main issues are:

1) It looks far too much like Serebii.
2) The Left Sidebar should be skinnier.

Also, I suggest we use creative commons. It's a much more advantageous avenue than copywrite. And it can help us more, should nintendo ever want to shut us down.

Creative commons for what? Information?

[Dark Scizor]

Just make sure you guys keep it clean, simple and as clutter-free as you can.

[mr_pikachu]

Agreed. Simplicity is crucial.

So, we have some complaints about the site looking too similar to Serebii. How would you suggest we change the layout to distinguish it from theirs?

[Jeff]

I did a side-by side comparison this morning after reading Andrew's comment, and the one thing that stuck out at me as being similar is the lines between the news items. I'll try out some other ways to visually separate them, such as the boxes used in old TPM layouts.

[firepokemon]

How is the layout going Jeff? Just though I'd respond to the thread because its gotten a bit quiet.

Am working on compiling data for RBY and Locatordex. Have been going through TPM's walkthru at the same time. I've noticed its rather problematic in several places and have been noting down any broken links and the like. What really surprises me is how long simply basic compiling of data is. Either I am slow and/or lazy or it truly does take a long time. I'm not even close for a rough draft. And certainly feel sorry for whoeever will be doing the HTML coding and the like for each route etc.

So I'll keep working on it. Though one real and relevant point. Would one prefer the percentages for each pokemon rather than Many, Common, Few or Rare?? Also and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it at this stage. But for each pokemon surely the levels of such pokemon available would be of help as well??

Edit: Bah I think I'll start playing Red or Blue again and then play Yellow. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll probably start playing tonight or tomorrow.

[mr_pikachu]

Yes, it does take awhile... I'm still working on GSC right now for the attackdex (RBY basically required copying and pasting a table). It's tedious, but it will all be worth it.

Broken links are tricky... I'll offer whatever help I can with that, if need be. We may be able to find ways around it.

Regarding the more detailed stats, I'd suggest starting with the information that's easiest to compile. Once we've got a complete list - whether or not it has the levels, and whether it shows percentages or descriptive words - then we can judge where we are in the process and decide whether to refine it before or after the launch.

[firepokemon]

Sorry I'm a bit confused when you say attackdex or attack list?

Since if its an attackdex you'll have what pokemon can learn that attack and a bit more. Mind you it is RBY isn't much to RBY. Good luck when you get to 3rd generation and beyond.

[Jeff]

Right now I'm working on a layout that combines the one I've been showing with the 2001 layout. Suffice it to say, it looks nothing like Serebii. It does look pretty bland though without any images (other than the TPM logo and the pokeballs in the sidebar).

For the dexes, one option would be to write a quick program to generate the HTML files, which would avoid the need to code all those files, but it doesn't avoid the need to upload all of them. I think the better option, however, would be to write the entry pages in PHP, that way there can be a single file for hundreds of entries. This would also save quite a bit of server space. I'm not sure how much space the databases would take up, but I'm sure it would be less than hundreds of HTML files. PHP doesn't look that hard to learn, it's basically HTML with a programming language embedded in it.

[mr_pikachu]

Sorry I'm a bit confused when you say attackdex or attack list?

Since if its an attackdex you'll have what pokemon can learn that attack and a bit more. Mind you it is RBY isn't much to RBY. Good luck when you get to 3rd generation and beyond.

It's starting as a pure attack list; eventually it will have links to the attack entries (which, in turn, will show such information as the Pokemon that may learn them). That's my current plan, at least. It may undergo some changes later.


Jeff: I look forward to seeing the new layout you have planned!

[firepokemon]

Do we actually have people that are capable of extracting data from both the old Gameboy games, the GBA games but also the DS games?

EDIT: Does anyone have files or anything on the old tpm pokedex. Out of everything on web.archive.org its the one thing I have not been able to find. I don't even remember if the pokedex was downloadable with the GSC information. I know one could download the pokedex with RBY but I really cant remember if that was the same with GSC. Its sad cause I don't even remember the pokedex much. But I really want to see it. Not just for the information it contains, but I'm sure it had a great design as well.

----

Edit Number Two. Did some digging up via the archives. Here's what I have found.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815090532/http://www.pokemasters.com/pokedex/ Just what it looked like. Did have Pokemon Gold and Silver info. This looks like it was before the English release.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000816174135/www.pokemasters.com/pokedex/pc_pokedex.html[/url] - PC Pokedex page.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010616004324/www.pokemasters.com/cgi-bin/image.pl?pokedex/pc_pokedex1.jpg - Pokedex data screen

http://web.archive.org/web/20010615234202/www.pokemasters.com/cgi-bin/image.pl?pokedex/pc_pokedex2.jpg - Pokemon Location Screen

[url]http://web.archive.org/web/20000930101811/www.pokemasters.com/cgi-bin/image.pl?pokedex/pc_pokedex3.jpg - Attacks and Evolutions Screen

http://web.archive.org/web/20000930101759/www.pokemasters.com/cgi-bin/image.pl?pokedex/pc_pokedex4.jpg - TMs&HMs Screen

http://web.archive.org/web/20010616005057/www.pokemasters.com/cgi-bin/image.pl?pokedex/pc_pokedex5.jpg - Stat Comparison Screen

More edits. Think I've found a way to access all 251 pokemon

[Dark-San]

Do we actually have people that are capable of extracting data from both the old Gameboy games, the GBA games but also the DS games?

I am pretty sure some TPMers are willingly to volunteer to help out if we approach them. The Pokemon games I have at the moment are Pearl, Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team and Explorer of Darkness. Might need some instructions to get those data that is required.


EDIT: Does anyone have files or anything on the old tpm pokedex. Out of everything on web.archive.org its the one thing I have not been able to find. I don't even remember if the pokedex was downloadable with the GSC information. I know one could download the pokedex with RBY but I really cant remember if that was the same with GSC. Its sad cause I don't even remember the pokedex much. But I really want to see it. Not just for the information it contains, but I'm sure it had a great design as well.

I think I will code from what Brian had mentioned earlier.


fp, stop for a bit. One of the other staff members just told me that we still have the information from the old Pokedex Project... that would almost certainly be easier to work with. I'll get back to you as soon as I've tracked down everything.

[Jeff]

OK, here it is. It's based off of the 2001 layout per DragoKnight's suggestion, and I think takes care of the "looking too much like Serebii" thing. Yes, I know it needs more images.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7986/tpm3mm1.th.jpg (http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpm3mm1.jpg)

Edit: ImageShack, I didn't tell you to do that, :angry:

[mr_pikachu]

Hmm, I like it. In some sense, maybe it's a good idea to keep the color scheme of the main site different from that of the forum... this definitely works toward that goal.

We've talked about this before, so I know your reasons for the current logo setup. Once we get a logo with a white (or transparent) background, though, I'd suggest putting it within the white area. It just seems a little odd at the top, all alone. (Maybe a larger logo wouldn't look so weird... I dunno.)

That's just my opinion, though. What does everyone else think?

[Heald]

I'd just like to say that, since I had no means to reply to this because of my lack of Internet, this has my full support, and if you need a hand on anything feel free to drop me a line.

[Jay Umbreon]

good work guys :)
its awesome that you're taking the time out to do this.
much admiration.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

First of all, let me state: WHOLLY MOTHER O' WTF!! It be back?? Inform the newspapers!!!

Anyway, one aspect of the site you're really gonna have to work out, from the beginning I'd say, is security. You're planning on allowing blogs, where people have to log in and what not, and you're planning on creating another of many sites with sprites prone to "save as"-malice.

Serebii has one way of avoiding its content being ripped off so easily (no right-click), but there might be others...

Whoever mentioned we might be able to stand out by our Forum-related topics is right according to me.
Maybe a monthly newsletter or homepage post on recent "masterpieces"?

Next up, linkage. Tsuyoi's Lair, Deviart, ... Having direct hyperlinks leading to and from those sites may up our click count considerably.

As for content, I support firepokemon's suggestion to use old content from web.archive.org. Outdated? Only for the newest games. (Only 151 Pokémon, what?) Useful? You bet.

Apart from that, localisation. What's Chimecho's French name? How do I order my Dutch Sentret to do Sand-Attack (in the Anime)? May be that it's useless, but they're fun facts non the less

Might I ask, what technology you are planning to use? Of course, revealing it is a breach of security as well (:P), so if you'd rather PM it, that's okay.

Personally, I'm uncertain what I could contribute myself. As you may have noticed, I've been rather "non-existant" lately (again), partly because the of "working 9-2-5" routine.
Recent Pokémon Spin-Off games I've played are Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

[mr_pikachu]

I'm not sure I responded to the question about the Pokedex Project threads, so let me just say that the question's been posed. I don't think there will be a problem with that; the bigger question is how much useful information there is. We'll just have to see.


Heald and Jay: Many thanks! If you find a particular area in which you want to contribute, please just say so. We're pretty much welcoming anyone who wants to help! ^_^


Mike: I'll make a point of responding more fully to your post once my midterms have concluded (should be Monday, woo!), but I like your ideas on security and links. We'll see whether implementation of those would be good and if so, how we'd go about doing it.

[Jeff]

I remember seeing a free script somewhere that blocked right clicks on images and kept people from dragging and dropping them onto their desktop (I showed a while back that Serebii's script doesn't protect against drag and drop). And since it only blocks right clicks on images, then the visitor will still have access to the right click menu, just not on images. I'll have to see if I can find it, if not I can always write one.

Edit: OK, it wasn't that hard, I just threw a script together that blocks the right-click menu on images only. It also gives an alert telling the visitor why they can't right click images (instead of confusingly having the menu just not pop up with no feedback). It doesn't prevent drag and drop though, that seems to be pretty tricky to block, but at least we'll have some security.

[firepokemon]

In regards to status of RBY Locatordex. The fundamentals are done. But its lacking a few things. Don't have levels of pokemon, for some sections don't have percentage just have whether they're common, few, rare etc. Also seriously missing much on fishing. Since I was literally taking information from the TPM walkthru. Lacks explantions for the trades etc and basically I need to go through all three games just check everything etc etc.

But just to show you how I was thinking here is a few examples.

First Safari Zone:

Safari Zone

The Warden lives beside the fishing guru and will reward you with the Strength HM.
To enter the Safari Zone you must pay $500, and the first area you'll come to is the entrance that'll connect the three areas.

Entrance
Red: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Rhyhorn (15%) Venonat (15%) Nidorino (10%) Nidorina (5%) Parasect (5%) Scyther (4%) Chansey (1%)
Blue: NidoranF (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Rhyhorn (15) Venonat (15%) Nidorina (10%) Nidorino (5%) Parasect (5%) Pinsir (4%) Chansey (1%)
Yellow: NidoranM (25%) NidoranF (15%) Exeggcute (15%) Parasect (15%) Rhyhorn (10%) Nidorino (10%) Paras (5%) Tangela (4%) Chansey (1%)
Nugget

Area 1

Red: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Doduo (15%) Paras (15%) Nidorino (10%) NidoranF (5%) Parasect (5%) Kangaskhan (4%) Scyther (1%)
Blue: NidoranF (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Doduo (15%) Paras (15%) Nidorina (10%) NidoranM (5%) Parasect (5%) Kangaskhan (4%) Pinsir (1%)
Yellow: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) NidoranF (15%) Tauros (10%) Nidorina (10%) Cubone (10%) Marowak (5%) Chansey (4%) Scyther (1%)

Carbos
Max Potion
TM 37
Full Restore

Area 2

Red: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Rhyhorn (15%) Paras (15%) Nidorino (10%) Nidorina (5%) Venomoth (5%) Chansey (4%) Tauros (1%)
Blue: NidoranF (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Rhyhorn (15%) Paras (15%) Nidorina (10%) Nidorino (5%) Venomoth (5%) Chansey (4%) Tauros (1%)
Yellow: NidoranM (25%) NidoranF(15%) Exeggcute (15%) Kangaskhan (15%) Rhyhorn (10%) Nidorina (10%) Cubone (5%) Scyther (4%) Pinsir (1%)

TM 40
Protein

Area 3

Red: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Doduo (15%) Venonat (15%) Nidorino (10%) NidoranF (5%) Venomoth (5%) Tauros (4%) Kangaskhan (1%)
Blue: NidoranF (25%) Exeggcute (20%) Doduo (15%) Venonat (15%) Nidorina (10%) NidoranM (5%) Venomoth (5%) Tauros (4%) Kangaskhan (1%)
Yellow: NidoranM (25%) Exeggcute (20%) NidoranF (15%) Tauros (10%) Nidorino (10%) Marowak (5%) Pinsir (4%) Tangela (1%)

Gold Teeth
HM 03
TM 32
Max Potion
Revive (Hidden)
Max Revive

--

Clearly in actual HTML you could have sprites and done in tables so it looks cleaner. But I guess you get an idea at least.

----

Example - Route 2

Route 2

Red: Pidgey (Many) Rattata (Many) Weedle (Few)
Blue: Pidgey (Many) Rattata (Many) Caterpie (Few)

Available after Digletts Cave:

Blue/Red: First house a guy will trade you Mr. Mime for Abra.
Yellow: First house a guy will trade you M. Mime for a Clefairy.

In the second house there is one of Professor Oak’s aide. If you have caught 10 or more pokemon he will give you the HM05 Flash.

A moon stone and HP-UP can also be found.

----

Here you can see that I don't yet have the percentage of where those pokemon can be found. Needs to be cleaned up and hadn't settled on the format for the items either.

----
Now Cinnabar Island.

Cinnarbar Island

By leaving the fossil with the professor here and coming back a little later, you'll receive Kabuto or Omanyte depending on which Fossil you chose in Mt. Moon. You can also drop off the Old Amber you got from Pewter City's Museum and get Aerodactyl. Since this will take a little time, explore the Fire Mansion next to the local gym. Inside you'll find the Gym Key and new Pokémon.

Red/Blue:

Trade Venonat and get Tangela
Trade Raichu and get Electrode
Trade Ponyta and get Seel

Yellow:

Trade Golduck and get Rhyhorn
Trade Growlithe and get Dewgong
Trade Kangaskhan and get Muk

TM 35

Additionally on Cinnarbar Island is the Mansion which contains many fire pokemon.

[/i]Pokemon Mansion[/i]

Floor 1

Red: Koffing (40%) Ponyta (40%) Growlithe (10%) Grimer (5%) Weezing (4%) Muk (1%)
Blue: Grimer (40%) Ponyta (40%) Vulpix (10%) Koffing (5%) Muk (4%) Weezing (1%)
Yellow: Rattata (35%) Raticate (25%) Grimer (20%) Growlithe (20%)

Escape Rope
Carbos

Floor 2

Red: Koffing (40%) Growlithe (25%) Ponyta (25%) Grimer (5%) Weezing (4%) Muk (1%)
Blue: Grimer (40%) Vulpix (25%) Ponyta (25%) Koffing (5%) Muk (4%) Weezing (1%)
Yellow: Rattata (35%) Grimer (35%) Raticate (25%) Muk (5%)

Calcium

Floor 3

Red: Koffing (40%) Ponyta (24%) Growlithe (15%) Weezing (15%) Grimer (5%) Muk (1%)
Blue: Grimer (40%) Vulpix (15%) Muk (15%) Ponyta (14%) Magmar (10%) Koffing (5%) Muk (1%)
Yellow: Rattata (35%) Grimer (35%) Raticate (25%) Muk (5%)

Max Potion
Iron

Basement

Red: Koffing (50%) Growlithe (15%) Ponyta (15%) Weezing (14%) Grimer (5%) Muk (1%)
Blue: Grimer (50%) Vulpix (15%) Ponyta (15) Muk (14%) Koffing (5%) Weezing (1%)
Yellow: Grimer (40%) Raticate (40%) Muk (10%) Ditto (10%)

TM 14
Full Restore
Rare Candy
TM 22
Secret Key

--

After defeating Gym Leader Blaine you will receive the Volcano Badge and TM 38

------

Once again pretty much same as Safari. Needs a few bits of extra work.

Further example - Power Plant

Power Plant

Red: Voltorb (35%) Magnemite (25%) Pikachu (25%) Magneton (10%) Electabuzz (5%)
Blue: Voltorb (35%) Magnemite (25) Pikachu (25%) Magneton (10%) Raichu (5%)
Yellow: Magnemite (40%) Magneton (20%) Voltorb (20%) Grimer (15%) Muk (5%)

You'll encounter Zapdos when you reach the end of the Power Plant.

Carbos
TM 33
TM 25
Rare Candy
HP UP

------

Last example -

Caledon City

In Celedon City there is the Department Store. A six-storey building where you can buy basic Pokemart items, TMs, evolution stones and Ability Increasers.

On the 3rd floor you will find TM18.

Buy 3 drinks from the refreshment machines on the sixth floor and give them to the thirsty little girl and in return she’ll give you TM13, TM48 and TM49.

In the Huge Mansion to the left of the Department Store has a secret entrance in the rear. There you will find an Eevee.

The house directly under the Game Corner has a man who will give you a Coin Case which will allow you to carry coins and purchase Pokémon and TMs at the prize station by the Game Corner.

The house by the Game Corner is accessible only by Surfing across the water. The man in front of it will give you a TM41 for your troubles though.

Inside the Game Corner you can find a total of 250 coins using the Item Finder. Each slot machine has a varying win/loss ratio so be sure to experiment until you get to one you like.

Game Corner

At the top of the screen, you'll find a Team Rocket member in front of a poster. Beat him then search the poster to open a secret entrance to the right.

There are 4 floors to the Game Corner's Team Rocket hideout. Check all of the rooms to make sure you get all 12 items from the PokéBalls scattered throughout the place.

There are 10 rocket members as well as their leader, Giovanni. To open the gates to the elevator, beat the Rocket in the 4th basement and then talk to him afterwards. Before confronting Giovanni you'll have to battle Jessie and James again (Yellow only). Then you can go confront Giovanni and recover the Silph Scope.

By defeating the Gymleader Erika you will receive the Rainbow badge and TM21.

-

If you collect all 150 Pokémon and then go to the Guy in the Celadon Mansion you'll receive your Diploma!!

-------------------

Clearly it needs to be cleaned up significantly. Needs to have levels etc. Will continue to work on it. I should be able to extract the percentage in locations and fill in the fishing stuff via extracting data using hex. Still to work on it. Will continue to work on it. Of course will be playing red, blue and yellow to make sure certain things are right and things are explained better in areas etc.

Will start on GSC which should be a hell of a lot easier, information on locations and pokemon seems to be way better. And I'm starting it because I'll only have a day and then I'm off on a weekend holiday (be away two-three days). And when get back will begin playing red etc and making sure details and everything are better.

[mr_pikachu]

Excellent work, both of you! Jeff, we'll see if we can get the drag-and-drop problem solved. There are some others here with programming knowledge, so they might be familiar with that sort of script. Thanks for taking care of the right-click, as that's the way in which most people swipe images.

firepokemon, that looks awesome as a starting point. I'm amazed you've been able to gather so much information so quickly. It needs cleaning, yes, but that's simpler than actually getting the data. I do wonder whether using sprites to identify the Pokemon in the locatordex is a good idea, as too many sprites on one page could affect loading times. We'll see as we get closer; it's not a concern for now. I can clearly see where you're going, and it should be sweet.

I'm continuing to work on the attackdex... progress has been slow with midterms taking up most of my time this week (I got less than two hours of sleep last night), but it's clearing up now.

Now, I have a question for everyone. I've been trying to figure out what elements are the highest priority for us to have at launch, and I'm just not certain from the range of responses. It does seem like it would be helpful to have a clear "to-do" list, though, for which people could volunteer.

Should we try to make something like that? If so, should I just make up a list and then let people suggest adds/drops? Simpler solutions are probably better for this... what do you all think?

[Phoenixsong]

Phoenixsong has crawled, slowly and painfully, out of the depths of intermittent lurkdom and would like to say...

Holy shit yes people are trying to bring TPM back whoo! No, really, I'm quite ecstatic that there's a serious revival effort going on. The TPM mainsite was probably my very first Pokémon site (probably one of the first websites I ever visited, actually) and I would be absolutely over the moon to see it up and kicking again. I think all of the ideas proposed here are wonderful and are definite steps in the right direction.

I'd really love to contribute, although I don't know how much help I'd really be. I can't find news, can't extract game data, can't program, don't like the animé, haven't touched the TCG since Rain Dance was king and Slowking was banned, can battle competitively but am not especially stellar at it, can't string two words of fiction together to save my life, haven't TPMASB'd in a year... I am, generally speaking, a useless lump of sod. ): That said, I do still draw/critique art, so I suppose I might be able to pitch in with a Fanart section when the important stuff is taken care of. I also know a little bit of web design and some self-taught HTML and CSS, so I might be able to lend a hand here or there. The main site design process should probably be left to Jeff, since I get the feeling he's better with this sort of thing than I am, but I dunno.

Uh, what else, what else, trying to be helpful here... um, as I said I haven't touched TPMASB in about a year (I would like to get back into it, though!), but as I am still active in TCoD's ASB I'm not entirely out of touch with the game. I wrote a sort of rudimentary article on the basics of ASB for my own website: general tips, common mistakes newbies make, tricks new members might not think to try, etc. I tried to keep it as general and ASB-unspecific as possible. While I'd rather not just hand that over to anyone, if you thought it was a good idea then I wouldn't mind someone modifying it to be more TPM-specific and letting the revived site have that. Alternatively I could revise it myself, given enough time to re-familiarize myself with the rules. Little donation, I guess?

Oh, and I have Platinum. I'm currently writing up a (horribly lame, I'll be the first to admit--apparently I am no good at blogging) sort of blog about it, but as soon as I'm done with that playthrough I could revise parts of it and eventually start another and use all that to write a walkthrough. The going would be slow with school and all, but if you can't find anyone else to do it then I can. Oh, and I can't read Japanese, unfortunately. The walkthrough would therefore have to be fairly general until the English release, but from there it wouldn't be hard to update at all.

One thing I have always wanted to do was a sort of "trivia Pokédex"... or... something. God, I never know what to call that thing. But, um, it's sort of like a Pokédex, only instead of focusing on specific game data it focuses more on the design of the Pokémon, where it got its name, interesting facts you might not know about it or maybe cool thoughts/theories about it that can be inferred from said facts/design influences/etc. Not as generally useful as a statistical dex, but as an artist/attempted writer/nerd I'd find a resource like that relatively helpful, and if nothing else it'd be something vaguely interesting to flip through while you're bored. Other than Bulbapedia's little trivia sections at the bottom of their articles this is something I've never seen, and certainly not in any staggering amount of detail. I wanted to do it for my own website, but since it isn't currently attached I'd be willing to do it for TPM instead, if you all don't think it's too lousy an idea.

I realize that with the exception of the web design kindofhelp and the Platinum info none of what I've suggested is high priority, and I agree that the game/cursory animé info should come first. (I'm afraid I don't have any suggestions for the to-do list at this time, Mr. P; maybe if I come back after giving the thread a more thorough readthrough instead of just skimming it...) But if you need a little help here and there when the appropriate times come, that's what I can offer and I'd be more than happy to.

On the subject of security, I do have something I'd like to say. Someone mentioned preventing people from saving/dragging and dropping TPM's images, and I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) they cited sprites as an example of something they'd like to protect. I... have mixed feelings about that. The thing is, the sprites, etc. aren't TPM's. Someone might spend a great deal of time ripping the sprites from games, and I'm not saying that that hard work means nothing and shouldn't be, say, credited where appropriate, but... it's not like you made it or have any real rights to it. :/ Now, I know you might be thinking "So what? TPM isn't a sprite resource. If they want sprites, and someone like PE2k is willing to offer them, let them go get the sprites from PE2k!" And yeah, they can, but... they're still getting the exact same image. In the end, you haven't prevented them from doing anything, so what's the point? (This is also why, incidentally, I don't see what's wrong with using at least the most basic resources for things like this. Why rip the sprites again when it's been done a hundred times before and there are people that don't care if you take them? Why reinvent the wheel?) Being miserly about an image that you have not created or modified in any way is rather silly, I think. Besides, sprites, Sugimori images, etc. that people can use for things can be a resource, too. Providing more resources certainly won't hurt the reborn TPM. I don't remember how TPM's old Imagedex worked (all I remember is that it was there), but why not let it double as a resource gallery if that wasn't already the plan?

Things like individual screenshots taken from games or episodes, on the other hand, are a little more personal and I can understand not being as willing to share those. And, of course, there's the fanart; there's no need to go around letting everyone have at that if that isn't what the artists want. I have absolutely no qualms about protecting those, for the record, and think it should be a priority (especially in the case of the artwork).

Then again, I don't know whether or not it's possible to prevent saving of only select images while being lax about it with others, so for the sake of the more original images the entire site will probably have to be save-protected anyway. I'd certainly rather that were the case than just allowing people to take those and other images that are definitely not up for grabs... I dunno. Maybe it's just me being needlessly nitpicky, but I guess what I'm trying to say is be careful about what you're saying you really want to prevent people from getting to. Being protective of things like the basic game sprites or Sugi art may not have been what people intended, and so I'm sorry for adding the tl;dr ramble to the already tl;dr post if that's the case, but... yeah. Urgh. I'm not sure why I even bothered editing this in, but there you go.

...I guess maybe you could protect the on-site images, but maybe offer downloads of sprite packages and things if people want? I'm just running my mouth here at this point, don't mind me.

On the other hand, since server resources are obviously going to be an issue, I think it would be a great idea to have a hotlink-protection script. Even if right-click and drag-and-drop are prevented, to the best of my knowledge it wouldn't be impossible for a particularly determined person to figure out the url of the image and link to it offsite.

As a random, totally unimportant thought, a cool idea for an article or something might be listing what cues the main games and TCG have taken from one another--Blastoise's Rain Dance power becoming an actual attack in GSC, for example. It would be small and is obviously bottom-priority right now, but I figured I'd mention it now before I totally forgot. Someone more in-tune with the current face of the TCG would be better equipped to write that article than I, of course, but...

[mr_pikachu]

Okay, it's been over three days, and no one's objected to me making a list of must-have components and opening everything for discussion. As such, I'm going to go ahead and do so... we want to keep this moving, after all. Please feel free to comment on items you think should be moved around, added, and removed.

I'm very open to discussion on these. In fact, some of the things in the "Eventual Features" section are only there because no one has shown interest in doing them... if you think you can take a major section and have it ready by launch, then say so and we'll all talk about it.

Once it's clear what features we're prioritizing for launch, we can make good use of this new subforum by making threads for each major section. That's why this needs to be done as soon as possible. We just need to know how to move forward!




Launch Priorities


-Primary Components

-Website Layout (Jeff working on this)
-Security (Jeff working on this)
-Future Release Countdowns (Jeff working on this)
-Logo/Other Art (Bulbasaur4 working on this)


-Games

-RBY

-Walkthrough(s)
-Locatordex (firepokemon working on this)
-GSC

-Walkthrough(s)
-Locatordex (firepokemon working on this)
-RSE

-Walkthrough(s)
-Locatordex (firepokemon working on this)
-FrLg

-Walkthrough(s)
-Locatordex (firepokemon working on this)
-DPP

-Walkthrough(s)
-Locatordex (firepokemon working on this)
-Pokedex (game stats)
-Attackdex (mr_pikachu working on this)
-Itemdex


-Anime

-Background (mr_pikachu working on this)
-Character List (mr_pikachu working on this)
-Episode/Movie List (mr_pikachu working on this)




Eventual Features


-Games

-Pokedex

-Pokemon Descriptions
-Translations
-Additional sprites (different games, shiny, etc.)
-Picturedex


-Anime

-Episode/Movie Summaries
-Episode/Movie Reviews


-TCG

-Rules
-Set Lists
-Card of the Day/Week
-Strategies
-Major Tournament List/Countdowns


Forum Sections*

-Advanced Generation
-Fanfic
-ASB
-RPG


*-I've only listed information for sections in which the moderators have expressed interest. We haven't done much discussion about what will be in each section; since this ties back to individual forums, the moderators of those forums should probably lead the discussions.




Phoenixsong: Love the enthusiasm! Let me just look through this...


Contributions: Well, you said you're still working as an artist, right? Remember how the old main site cycled through different logos and such? We may end up doing something like that again. If you think art might be an area in which you'd want to contribute, talk with Bulbasaur4. She's sort of heading the development of that section right now.

Some ASB stuff would probably also be cool for the forum-based information. And I like the idea of trivia, as well. We'd have to think about how to implement it - could we get enough information to have a distinct section for it, or should it be integrated into the Pokedex? - but it sounds like something worthwhile.

As for Platinum, I'm sure very few people here have a copy. If you think you could make a walkthrough, go for it! I've seen plenty of good import walkthroughs that ignored the actual language and used stuff like "1st option" to denote choices, so the method works.


Web Design: First, we'll probably be looking for plenty of help on this. The site's eventually going to have a lot of components, and I doubt Jeff wants to do everything. If you think you'd be competent for some tasks, we could probably use the support.

The images, I agree, are a tricky situation. I think the member art is what really makes us have to think about protection. We also have to think about, as you mentioned, individual screenshots that we've taken and such. Pokemon sprites can be grabbed from any site, but for me the big concern is trying to keep someone from being able to grab our information and just copy and paste it into their own site. We don't want to open the door for that. Hotlinking is also annoying, but I don't see that being used much against us (unless someone's trying a DDoS... ugh).

That being said, I'm aware of a few techniques to grab information that go beyond copy-and-paste and the like. I might talk to you in private about them, Jeff, to see what we can do about them... don't want to give away too much about our security in public, as we've said before. That's the critical aspect of the site we have to keep private.

[Phoenixsong]

That looks like a solid list from where I'm standing.

Out of curiosity, are there plans to create the news system by hand or use a premade script? If you're going with premade, all I can suggest is that you avoid CuteNews like the plague. There are better free ones out there (and, of course, paid ones, if someone's willing to spring for that on top of everything else), although I don't know for a fact whether they're as secure as they claim to be. Hm.

A simpler method of doing it, actually, would be creating a special news forum here and simply inserting a feed of that forum into the front page. (Pokébeach does this, for example.) As long as the project higher-ups feel that the board's security is adequate as far as this goes, it takes care of the registration issue (just sign up for an account with the forums, and that way people don't need to keep track of two accounts). The news forum can have special permissions so that only trusted news writers can post threads, but then other users can be allowed to comment. I've never actually seen a specific way to do this with vBulletin (aside from whatever normally needs to be done with feeds, and that may be enough for all I know), but I'm sure it's out there.

As for my specific contributions, well. I'm still kind of swamped/distracted, so for the time being the images would be the easiest thing for me to commit to. I'll go talk to B4, yeah.

I don't see any reason the trivia couldn't just go straight into the Pokédex, as long as it was on its own tab. Some of the Pokémon are fairly simple and straightforward, but I can imagine a section on, say, Jynx, or perhaps some of the legendaries, getting pretty detailed and unnecessarily lengthening the main page. Yes, given how short some of them have the potential to be integrating it into the main dex sounds like the best course of action.

Hm, well, as far as the hot-linking goes, I guess that would depend. I wasn't really thinking of DDoS, honestly, though that's obviously something else that should be considered; it's more the fact that a full-blown born again TPM is going to have a lot of images, and considering the fact that a lot of people just link to images willy-nilly the bandwidth could potentially drain quickly. Most of them won't be especially large (maybe the occasional 3D game screenshot and perhaps the card scans, if those are implemented), but all of them combined will still eat up a lot.

[Jeff]

Man, that would be great if we could tie the news into the forums. As long as it's possible to set up such a forum in vB, then I'm sure someone could just write a PHP script that accesses the forum database for the news forum and displays the most recent threads.

Hotlinking is definitely an issue. I've found ways to prevent/discourage it, but of course I don't feel comfortable discussing our site's security here where everyone and their dog can see.

[Knight of Time]

I have a question myself,

For anyone here that is familiar enough with Psypokes, is Tonberry King there a TPMer?

I'm asking because I remember a TPMer here by the name of Blue Tonberry, and I was wondering if he and Tonberry King are the same person, can someone possibly confirm this, please?

[firepokemon]

In regards to walkthroughs for RSEFRLG/DPPT. Are we not being a bit ambitious to include these on launch? Red, Blue and Yellow and Gold, Silver and Crystal are fine since we have walkthroughs for those already. But to write whole walkthroughs for the newer games is a lot. And perhaps a bit too much on launch. Particularly, when no one has said I'll do it or anything to that effect.

I'll have a think about it today and tomorrow. But I would imagine instead of doing a walkthrough (which a locatordex half covers anyway) would it not be better to do a Gym Leaders Page, an Elite 4 page and a few other things. Like I said I'll have a think about it.

In regards to eventual content? That list looks small. But have you just done it like that so people can get an idea of what we will eventually include or what?

---

Edit:

Also who is going to be playing the ranger shadows of almia game? I wll eventually buy it but I won't have wifi access for ages. Its just as you know there will be additional missions to download and these are only temporarily. Thus anyone playing Shadows of Almia and who do download the additional missions. It would pay if you keep some diary about them so that when we do ranger sections we have that information.

[Knight of Time]

Well, I already talked to Jeff about this on AIM, but how about making a recommended moveset page for each of the final form and non-evolving Pokemon?

On the site called Smogon University, you can find recommended movesets for all the final form and non-evolving Pokemon, spanning all four generations, for example, there is a page with recommended D/P movesets for Absol, right here (http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/absol). Though they have information for each of the movesets (there are multiple movesets, depending on what roles you want to use, such as physical sweeper, special sweeper, Choice Band, etc), we can come up with our own comments for each of those movesets, which no doubt, would probably need plenty of in-game testing, and on top of that, I don't think there are too many more Pokemon sites out there that give recommended movesets for all the final form and non-evolving Pokemon, from all four generations, so I'm just hoping the movesets could become a major part of the games section of the new TPM site.

Anyway, that's my two cents, for now.

[firepokemon]

Knight of Time I like that suggestion. I think we can have a really good pokedex with recommended movesets and the like and have trivial additional information like was said by Phoenixsong. My only concern about this, is do we have the experts who have the skill to do such movesets and we don't want just another Smogon lite moveset type thing.

I think we could do something in regards to wifi, many of Smogon's movesets are easy to do since its via a pokemon battle simulator.But in reality, hidden power moves, moves from XD etc etc are much more difficult. So if we could do it with wifi players in mind, that would be a good thing.

[Black Twist]

This is a complete waste of time.

Do you honestly think TPM is going to relive its glory days when SPP (as much as I hate Serebii and his website), Smogon and Bulbagarden already have all the in-game, competitive gaming and anime information you need?

All you guys have suggested is copying Serebii's layout of information and taking ideas from Smogon. Can't think for yourselves?

[firepokemon]

Who are you?

[Black Twist]

You could probably guess who I am.

I can just see this project turning out like Marriland where only the odd 50 or so regular forum users are going to use the site - everybody else will just go to SPP/BMG/Smogon for their daily Pokemon fix. None of this seems worth the effort, especially when Kevin nor Chris care about TPM's future.

[firepokemon]

Well I had a go at figuring out who this was. Using BMG, Smogon and SPP forum birthdays to see if it matched your birth date. Unfortunately that didn't work. I am rather intrigued now.

As to what TPM can be. Until we set up the site, we'll just keep losing members. If we set up the site and have basic info or info basically similar to others. Sure we won't gain that many people. If we do comprehensive information, sure we're still in competition with the three sites you mentioned. Sits that have had a main page for years now and thus have a fanbase already. TPM doesn't have that privledge anymore, we only have a few members from the forums nowdays.

Basically I do agree with you. That right now what we will be doing and essentially what is planned is rather similar to already established sites. That can't be denied. At the end of the day, we just want a main site up again, that will give us a few more members and keep the forums alive and kicking for more years. If we can do that, essentially we've succeeded. Also Marriland doesn't seem that bad, 4th biggest pokemon site is nothing to sneeze at.

[Jeff]

A few years ago, there was a Pokemon site that was pretty much in the same position we are in now. Its forums were the only part left of the site, and losing activity. So the members started a project to re-create their main site. That site is Bulbagarden, one of the very sites you mentioned. Yes, I think we can come back. Maybe not to our glory days, but at the very least we can stay alive. After we relaunch though, who knows what will happen. Maybe increased forum activity will get more people in on improving the main site allowing us to get better, allowing us to have more members and so on, or maybe we'll just end up with something to attract a few more members than we used to, and thus let these forums stick around. At this point, we don't know for sure what will happen.

[mr_pikachu]

Ooh, a guessing game! I like games. Let's see, for the win, is this... Jay?

Those of us who are working on the website don't really care about outside expectations. We're doing what we can to bring back TPM. That's the long and the short of it.

So! Everyone who wants to work on the site. Comments on the priority list, please!


KoT: Hmm, that might be doable, actually. I think we had a thread for this awhile back in Classic Generation, so we could at least have suggested movesets for those games. As for the newer games, I might be able to track down a couple of our stronger battlers. There are one or two people in particular who might be capable of really good insights on the subject.

What does everyone else think about including movesets? Should I add it to the list? If so, which one? Launch priorities or eventual features?


firepokemon: Well, that's a good point. Walkthroughs take a lot of time to write. I think the question is, how much information do we already have at our disposal? I'll do some digging through the archives in the coming week to see what we've got.

Everyone else, what do you think about firepokemon's point? Should we delay walkthroughs that haven't yet been written until post-launch?

Also, the "eventual features" section is short largely because several areas haven't yet been discussed - the forum sections, for instance. Beyond those, are there any particular features you'd like to see?


Jeff: Should I start a new thread for the to-do list whenever the launch priorities are finalized?

[Jeff]

Yeah, and I'll go ahead and sticky it.

Thanks for reminding me of the GSC move recommendations, I completely forgot about them. I'll see if I can find the thread. (edit: nevermind, it's stickied, that was easy) Which reminds me, what do people think about a sticky thread here where people just post sources of information? You know, things such as archive pages, and the moveset page. Would that make it too easy for other people to just take all our old info, and thus not be worth it?

We'll probably have to delay the walkthroughs that haven't been written yet. Unless someone has absolutely way too much time on their hands and can get them done by launch. I think the Locatordex would be a semi-suitable substitute until they're done.

[Phoenixsong]

Oh, wow, I hope I wasn't giving you the impression that I'd be able to have the Platinum walkthrough done by launch. o_O No, no, I certainly don't have time for that right away, which is why I said for now I'd be better off just helping out in the art department. It sounds much too ambitious to try and get new walkthroughs done so soon.

[mr_pikachu]

Phoenixsong: Haha, gotcha. No worries; just let us know when you're ready to begin work on it. We can probably substitute the Locatordex until we have the newer walkthroughs ready. (Incidentally, how is that progressing, fp?)


Okay, it sounds like we're getting a pretty good consensus about delaying the incomplete walkthroughs until post-launch. I'll glance through the archives within the next two days and see what we have done and what we'll have to write from scratch. (Or someone can do it for me, if you'd like... hint hint.)

[Chris]

You could probably guess who I am.

Hey Jay, long time no see :)


I can just see this project turning out like Marriland where only the odd 50 or so regular forum users are going to use the site - everybody else will just go to SPP/BMG/Smogon for their daily Pokemon fix. None of this seems worth the effort, especially when Kevin nor Chris care about TPM's future.

It's not that I don't care about TPM - I do what I can for the forums - it's just that I don't have enough time or access (I can't FTP or SSH, for example) to help with development of this project, so unfortunately there's not really much I can give. If others have the time and the dedication to do it, though, I'll certainly help them as much as I can.

[firepokemon]

Been a bit hectic here as of late, so really haven't had a chance to work on the locatordex. But will restart work on it tonight.

As for archives. I have extensively gone through much of what both older sites have (aka the 1999-2001 site) and what the (2003-2004/2005 site). Its in like six different word documents, but I can compile it in the next days if you so wish. Basically, anything pre 3rd generation is rather good. We do have some stuff on Ruby and Sapphire but its relatively minor and not entirely sure how worthwhile it is. The articles themselves seem good, its just that its based off the Japanese version and is before any of the english names etc were released.

One thing that does seem missing is there is no Ruby/Sapphire walkthru. That site is rather hard to work out with the archives since it runs off some weird program Kevin used for the site. Thus, web.archive.org hasn't been able to archive the site terribly well. I suspect some pieces from that site (the 2003-20004) version are missing and were not archived.

[mr_pikachu]

I can help with translating the Japanese names into English. That should be simple enough; I'm pretty familiar with the third-gen games, anyway. As for the compilation of the data you've collected, there's no need to rush yet. That doesn't mean we should slack off by any means, but we're still finalizing the to-do list. Don't burn yourself out, because I'd like your help throughout this project if possible. When you can get it done, get it done and let us know. ^^

I kind of figured we'd be missing some of the archived information. That shouldn't be too big of a problem, though. We can fill in the gaps as necessary... it's writing an entire walkthrough from step one that's difficult.

Quick question, though... was there an FrLg walkthrough? I haven't had time to check, myself; like I said, I planned to do that this coming Tuesday.


Art Department: How is the website logo coming? The sooner you can get that to us, the better. I'm sure it will help Jeff in crafting the layout.


To-Do List: Are there any other suggestions, or should I go ahead and finalize the list (with the RSEDPP walkthroughs moved to post-launch)? The quicker we can move forward, the better.

[Knight of Time]

Quick question, though... was there an FrLg walkthrough? I haven't had time to check, myself; like I said, I planned to do that this coming Tuesday.


Well, I do remember there was a RBY walkthrough on TPM a while ago...let me dig it up.

Ah, found it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000511211602/pokemasters.com/walkthru/rby.html

Being as the walkthrough for RB (I'm not mentioning the Yellow version because it's different than the other two, and besides that, there's no remake of it either) is basically a "downgrade" of the walkthrough for Pokemon FR/LG, maybe this one could be used as a base, even though some things would definitely need changing, such as the wild Pokemon locations, the new moves from the second and third generations, and of course the Pokedex would have to be updated to show the new things like genders, abilities, natures, etc.

One final note on this, will the walkthroughs for FR/LG (and subsequently, RSE, and D/P) have picture screenshots? I recall that the site RPGClassics often has picture walkthroughs, but unfortunately they don't have any for any of the Pokemon games, which is a shame, but oh well.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Picture screenshots? Is that a copyright issue? We could draw them ourselves if yes.

[Knight of Time]

Picture screenshots? Is that a copyright issue? We could draw them ourselves if yes.

I basically mean taking screenshots from the games, getting your own screenshots is simple if you're using an emulator, you just have to make sure you own the game you're getting screenshots from.

[Kirby]

I can see you guys being enthusiastic about this for a month or two before thinking "fuck it" and eventually disregarding the entire project. Good luck anyway.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

I can see you guys being enthusiastic about this for a month or two before thinking "fuck it" and eventually disregarding the entire project. Good luck anyway.

Please realize that with such a short reply, you fall in danger of being a typical case of "Takes one to know one". Thanks for the best wishes, any way.

---

Well, taking RB as basis for the FRLG games may not be worth it if we're just going to C/P it; maybe referring people to that old walkthrough is a better way at first (with a warning à la "Slight differences may occur - if you end up on a seven-islands archipelago that's not in our walkthrough, don't worry (it's not Glitch City).")

Well, it may be best to end compiling that todo list already. Wrapping things up already let us keep the momentum our adversaries would be gleeing about if we lost it, and we can have this sticky thread around for people to discuss features in they'd like anyway.

[firepokemon]

Ok why not just leave our a firered/leafgreen walkthru till later. Most people aren't going to use a walkthru for a game that is older now. Basing it off the old walkthru makes no sense to me whatsoever.

In regards to the RBY walkthru. I am compiling that. It started with like 14 pages or so missing. So far I have managed to cut that a fair bit.

[mr_pikachu]

Okay, so we're moving back the RSEFrLgDPP walkthroughs for now, using the locatordex as our launch substitute, correct? I'll go ahead and make the to-do list thread.

Oh, and I don't think screenshots would be a copyright issue. We used the RBY map screenshot for the archived walkthrough, after all... nobody had a problem with it then.

[Jeff]

Copyright wise, as long as we're using them to provide information on the games as opposed to using them in our own game, then it counts as fair use. That's why Nintendo doesn't go around shoving C&D notices in all the fansites' faces. Of course it can also be argued that fansites help Nintendo, but fair use is the legal reason that we can use screenshots.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

I've found the thread Mikachu had been looking for (namely the Team Rocket motto's in different languages), and a bonus thread to boot:

http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16985 : TPM in other languages
http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=12550 : Pokémon songs is different languages

I've already told him here (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?p=375782#post375782), but I thought I'd mention it here too - it might be part of those threads full of armed-and-ready TPM content that could be moved to this forum.


Apart from that, I've been compiling a list of features that might be worth the while putting under the "Eventually" label:

Wi-Fi connectivity: common troubles you may have during connecting + solutions
Trading Figures Game: pictures of (groups of) figurines, taken by someone simply by use of his cell phone, for instance
Misc. Pokémon Merchandise: pictures of commons T-Shirts, or the special Pokémon Airplane
Coverage of the live-action Pokémon Live show
A link to Google for searching the site
Pokémon in popular cultures: VG Cats "Super Effective" web-comic, for instance
In the Animé section, we could start with a Lead Character Guide and Episode List (starting from the most recent backwards + a review of key episodes, take the recent Sinnoh episodes where Jenny and Joy "family issues" are shown)


As for the site in general:


The Forum section could hold a list of Top XX Fanfics by Postcount/Chapter Count/Views;
Popular fanfics could be sorted by genre;
We could do a short presentation of writers with more than 1 ongoing story ATM (or with the highest percentage of archived Fics)
The LocatorDex should be closely linked with the PokéDex, so it's easy to look up what level(s) Pidgey can have on Route 1
My vote for TPM's mascot, goes to any Pokémon with strenght, attitude, and a matching color sceme, e.g. Electabuzz/Lucario/Dialga/Dark Lugia.
I think a BreadCrumb menu, like we have at the forums, is a must, seeing as how we're bound to excluded "RBY Screenshots" from the menu, a person needs to have a way to find his way back "up" the menu without having to rely on the Back button of his browser.
Any login functionality provided is best located in the (top) right of the page, again tying in with the forums.


... And that be my two nickles for the moment.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

OK, if you find them useful, you can use those topics or at least my posts under them at the new site. I have an impression that not among the first things you'd put to the site. BUT the first Team Rocket Motto Collection from 2003 is gone. It was one of those where every second post was Hanada Tattsu's.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

For the checking of archived websites, I thought it might help to use some add-ins, to gain some time, you know?

Now, I don't know if there's a real add-on for this, but there are sites (spiders) like this one (http://www.dead-links.com/check_links.php) or this one (http://deadlink.tv/en/index.php) (the latter seems more accurate) that could crawl a given page in the archive and check it for broken links. That's to say, so long as the page isn't protected through a robots.txt access control file. Also, links that are counted as broken don't reply within a given time, so they could still be working.

[Jeff]

All the info we're compiling from the archives and threads is going in the "Compilation of Pokemasters" thread. As for crawling the archive pages, it would be even more useful if we had some tool to pick out all of the functioning links, then we'd end up with a list of working links to archive pages. Of course, what fp has found so far is pretty impressive, so I wonder how much more we'd be able to find with something like that.

[Lady Vulpix]

I'm here at last!

Are we going to include damage calculators? Because I have a couple, and I could make more on demand. Stat calculators are also a possibility.

[MeLoVeGhOsTs]

I'll be happy to help around with anything like movesets, teamrating or walkthroughs. Just leave D/P out of it, I'm not fully worked up on competitive sets there.

I can also handle translations into Dutch.

MLG

[Jeff]

LV: Calculators would be great. They may not be on the to-do list, but I think whatever people are willing to contribute would help.

MLG: We've put off the walkthroughs until after launch, but if you want to start working on them now, I don't see why not. We've also plan on doing movesets for the pokedex, so that would be helpful too.

[mr_pikachu]

Posting in agreement with Jeff, aside from a small correction: the RBY and GSC walkthroughs are still on the list for launch, as most of that information seems to be recoverable. We just don't want to delay the entire site while we write the third- and fourth-gen walkthroughs from scratch.

[Lady Vulpix]

I can also handle translations into Dutch.

MLG

Translations? Is the site going to be internationalized?

[PancaKe]

Posting in agreement with Jeff, aside from a small correction: the RBY and GSC walkthroughs are still on the list for launch, as most of that information seems to be recoverable. We just don't want to delay the entire site while we write the third- and fourth-gen walkthroughs from scratch.


The walkthru's were actually what attracted me to tpm in the first place. its how i completed gold and silver in jap :P hahaha. Bit of nostalgic trivia for you guys.


Hey - if you guys are planning to feature fanfiction on the website again, i'm more than happy to help out with that. But I don't really have anything else that I'm good at and can help with sorry :( If you think of anything, let me know!

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

I ask the same thing as Lady Vulpix, I'm really intersted in the issue. Sure there seems to be no need for languages other than English right now, the probable target group are the English-speaking people out there, because those who don't speak English aren't likely to drop in a Pokemon site, I think. Another aspect, my first language is one that covers less than 0.1% of the world's population so it would be unreasonable to have just English and Finnish. Even if we add Dutch, it still sounds odd. There should be at least some languages such as Chinese, French, Spanish, Japanese and perhaps Arabic, before less common ones can be added. What I think.

EDIT: So when I said it sounds odd, I didn't mean Dutch sounds odd, I meant the idea itself ;) or did I?

[Jeff]

We were talking about doing translations as a feature like the Team Rocket motto translations. It would just be something cool to have. Not sure if that's what MLG means though.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Yes and I know having all those languages I mentioned would be too much work, actually it's impossible.

[Lady Vulpix]

Well, I can do Spanish.

[Knight of Time]

Hmm, I have an idea for the translations, although this might make it too easy, Mikachu, have you ever thought of using the BabelFish translation service on Altavista? They can convert languages of many kinds, so it might be handy, even if it doesn't turn out to be 100% accurate.

[mr_pikachu]

Babelfish is less than 100% accurate. (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9353)

:)

As for the walkthroughs... I don't personally mind someone starting on those tasks immediately. Actually, that might be a good thing. We're going to have a lot of material prepared well before the ones for the recent games are done, though. That's the tricky part.

To be perfectly honest, I'm tempted to take one of the third-gen walkthroughs myself (either RSE or FrLg). The only problem is that I'm having a positively hellish semester that's preventing me from taking on any more work than what I've already accepted for this project. Maybe winter break, though, will provide time for that.

[Jeff]

If we are going to make translations, we are the best ones to let to human beings do them since the machines are infamous bad in him. (If we are going to do translations, we are best off letting human beings do them since machines are infamously bad at it.)

[Lady Vulpix]

The automatic translations are much worse than the manuals, because the computers cannot even interpret the context and except the semantics than it is written.

(Babelfish'ed from Spanish.)

[Blademaster]

Halo meme + Italian + Babelfish =

"Task that Babelfish is a enough cold type, eh mangles the languages and ago not frightened of some thing."

[Lady Vulpix]

Halo meme?

Ok, I guess we agree that using Babelfish for the site's translations is not a good idea.

[Jeff]

Yeah, we already have a thread for the Team Rocket mottoes in other languages (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17750), so that could be turned into a feature on the main site. So, does anyone have any ideas for what else could be done as a special feature like that? This is one area where we could be different than other pokemon sites. One idea I had is to use Master Kirby's battery replacement thread (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15464). It's been so popular that some people registered just to comment on it. There's also this thread (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16928), which helps people preserve their save data while replacing the battery.

[Blademaster]

Halo meme?

Before Babelfish mangled the line into and back from Italian, it read out as:

"I think Babelfish is a pretty cool guy, eh mangles languages and doesn't afraid of anything."

[DarkestLight]

o.O I call Pokemon Ranger Vatonage :O ...Wel no no I don't. I gotta beat the game first, find everything, so when I do the second run through I can speed through most of it. I can't do screenshots or any of that fun stuff though, Maybe in a weeks 'time I can start on it though :O.

[Drago]

If we are going to make translations, we are the best ones to let to human beings do them since the machines are infamous bad in him. (If we are going to do translations, we are best off letting human beings do them since machines are infamously bad at it.)
If we had some money to throw around (which we don't), freetranslation.com has professional translating services available. I got a quick quote, 100 words from German to English for example is $65 US ($75 with proof reading). Other websites aren't so quick to just give out an easy quote, so I don't know how much the average rate is.

Anyway, it's incredibly overpriced and probably not worth it in the long run, but I'm just throwing it out there.

[Crystalmaster Mike]

Well, you could try out Google Translate; I tend to use it if I'm looking for the right English word for some technical term in Dutch.

TPM MAIN SITE REVIVAL PROJECT! (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?p=377832#post377832) (English) >

TPM hoofdvestiging revival project! (Dutch) >

TPM principal revival project! (English)

"hoofdvestiging" = main building/address for a company, like Microsoft's in, what, Silicon Valley?
"revival" = not even translated :P

... on second thought, it might be best to only consider using such sites when you hand the resulting text to a motivated dubber.

You know, so people can be encouraged to help, and they don't have to fear having to translate the WHOLE text, just check it for grammatical and semantical errors and mistranslations.

There is a word that comes to mind here, the word for mistranslated Dutch-to-English. Like the Asian have Engrish, the Dutch have Dunglish.

[firepokemon]

Just so people know. The Projects End that Serebii has unveiled now known as Pokeearth is very similar to the locatordex we've got going. I kind of always knew that the Project's End he proposed was something along the route of a locatordex.

His is different to what I am working on. Mine will have pokemon and items but his has a preference for images while I won't be using that many images. Mine will also be more walkthru-based while his has route maps. He also has trainers I always thought a separate trainer database would be better and something I was going to work on after the locatordex. To be honest I've slightly started a trainer database.

Anyway his Pokearth won't stop me from working on our own. Though I have had a number of personal issues as of late and thus have not been working on it. I do apologise for that but my head has been elsewhere. Though am ready to work again on it and I believe we can still offer something similar but also different to what Serebii has done.

[Lady Vulpix]

Understandable, firepokemon. Thanks for all the work you're doing.

There is a word that comes to mind here, the word for mistranslated Dutch-to-English. Like the Asian have Engrish, the Dutch have Dunglish.

Dunglish? That sounds like dung. Is it intended?

We have Spanglish here (which is becoming increasingly common).

List of mixed languages so far:
-Engrish=English+Japanese
-Dunglish=English+Dutch
-Spanglish=English+Spanish
-Franglais=French+English
-Portuñol=Spanish+Portuguese
-Cocoliche=Spanish+Italian

[Jeff]

Looks like Pokearth is meant to be similar to Bulbapedia's location pages. I don't like the idea of having a single map like that, I'd prefer having separate maps for each game and having the links on those maps link to information for that location in that game. The way Serebii has it set up, each page has information for all the games that that location has appeared in. If you're playing FireRed, why should you have to scroll through RBY and GSC information? This is one of the shortcomings of the way Bulbapedia has things set up, and now also applies to Pokearth. It's things like that that we can improve on. Like I said, instead of trying to add piles of features to one up the other guys, we have an opportunity to rethink everything from the ground up and make it all work better.

[Houndoom_Lover]

Awww, look, how cool.

Houndoom_Lover's willing to help. Not sure how I can though, but she is willing to do something. That's something. I have my thumbs stuck in a chinese finger trap as I'm typing this.

I would love a history section myself. I like reading that stuff- Hm, in A.B.S land, I think attacks should have a place all its own. Continuiously updated. That stupid link never EVER takes me to the attack list, and I have to go fishing. And I'm not a fisher man. Typing it really hard with a Chinese Finger Trap.

I'll read through some more posts and see if something moves inside me as an idea. Not sure what I can contribute to this glorious task, but I'm going to try and help!

[Jeff]

Welcome aboard HL! By history section, do you mean the history of TPM? That would certainly work seeing as we're one of the few pokemon sites with a somewhat interesting history. Or do you possibly mean the history of pokemon itself? Either one would work, heck we could even do both. They'd be nice additions to the special features section I've been proposing.

[Houndoom_Lover]

Thank you!! ^,^

I meant of TPM- but the history of ALL pokemon stuff would be really neat too. A nice touch for the pokemasters and all!

What else do you have in store for the special features.

Nice stuff like this makes a site seem more like home ^_^

[Jeff]

I mentioned a couple other things further up the thread:


Yeah, we already have a thread for the Team Rocket mottoes in other languages (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17750), so that could be turned into a feature on the main site. So, does anyone have any ideas for what else could be done as a special feature like that? This is one area where we could be different than other pokemon sites. One idea I had is to use Master Kirby's battery replacement thread (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=15464). It's been so popular that some people registered just to comment on it. There's also this thread (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16928), which helps people preserve their save data while replacing the battery.

[Jeff]

Just to let everyone know in case you've been discouraged by the slow trickle of posts in this forum, work is still being done, and ideas are still brewing. TPM will live!

I personally was hoping to get some work done over Thanksgiving break, but that plan got borked due to my grandfather being in the hospital. Thankfully (in more ways than one) he's doing better now, but now I have finals coming up and am finding myself with little to no time to work on the site. As finals week winds down though, I should start getting some stuff done. So since I'll be diving back into the code later this week, this is your chance to get in any further comments on the site layout! Here's a sample so you don't have to go digging back through this thread:

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/7986/tpm3mm1.th.jpg (http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpm3mm1.jpg)

[mr_pikachu]

Looking good, Jeff. The one suggestion I might make would be to border the whole thing with that top bar (i.e. wrap it around the left, right, and bottom) to make it look more cohesive. I don't think that would look too obtuse, but then again, I haven't seen it anywhere but in my mind. :P

All in all, though, it's coming along very nicely. I'll be cranking out a bunch of work on the Attackdex starting next Tuesday (when my finals end). fp, I haven't heard from you in awhile; how's the Locatordex going? And Kalah, what's happening with the logo?

[Phoenixsong]

I like the way it's coming along, Jeff. A bit simple, but that isn't really a problem, especially not now in the beginning stages. The only suggestion I have would be to try adding borders to the side navigation (or just the main one on the left if not both of them). It just looks a bit odd with the light gray running directly into the white background, especially when the update boxes look so nice and neat with them.

Or not, either way. Just my two cents.

[Bulbasaur4]

I think the logo is going to end up being a trio logo with three pokemon in it. I'm thinking starter pokemon from 3rd GEn, but I've also done some other collabs as well! I rough sketched them and I don't have a scanner, but now that I have several, several ideas put together the rest should be easy.

As for the size, I'm thinking 300 pix - 350 pix tall- Jeff, how long do you want? It'll be easier to know length instead of resizing it because... well, it'll just look nicer! xD Mwha mwha! OH OH and I'm really sorry for the delay. I finished my art contest piece but now I'ms wamped with finals and haven't drawn a lick on my computer. After my final (this tuesday), I plan on Wednesday to take a breather and I'll draw then. Who knows... *teaser teaser* maybe I'll really get in the groove and finish some thing!!

[Jeff]

300 pix is alot of vertical space. I'm thinking somewhere around 200x800. That'd be plenty tall, but not take up half the screen.

[Asilynne]

Ive wanted to help but I didnt know how to, until Jeff said that you guys wanted to integrate rpg/fanart/fanfic/asb in with the main site too. So I had an idea, Ok you know how mostly everyone in asb has their own persona for asb and a history for their trainers or something, what if we wrote a TPM type fanfic using those characters of everyones and practically make it TPMs own pokemon based series of sorts? Kinda like how instead of misty and brock and whatever other char being famous, its a story that revolves around the characters we have in asb right now. That also might encourage people to join the forums so they can play asb, because who wouldnt want their character in something "famous" lol

Idk just an idea ^-^()

[Ultimate Charizard]

Chris 2.1 has just finished doing something just liek this however it was more of his plot incorporating people from the Boards. I see what you mean about an ongoing timeline sort of basis, including members of the forum, recording battles that way and having them actually mean something.

[Asilynne]

Yeah and I was thinking that that way if someone in asb wants to have a friendly rivalry with someone that can be part of the ongoing story lol

[Jeff]

Alright, in keeping with what I've been doing, here is another look at what I have so far.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/2839/tpm5fi2.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpm5fi2.jpg)
Hey, you got Bulbagarden in my Pokemasters!

That's the new news script in action, using Bulbagarden's feed as a test. Once Chris sets up our news forum and feed, it probably won't be too different, if at all. I've also made some other modifications.

The banner at the top is animated. I set it to animate once when the page is loaded. We can thank Telume for that (or Vash as those who have visted IRC know him as). It's really just a test so it's not that good yet. Also, I think in addition to whatever flash stuff we have on there, we'll still need some artwork, so anyone who's offered to help in that area, we still need you!

Edit: made some late modifications. I mainly moved the links to the main sections of the site to the top, and left the community-based sections in the sidebar.

[mr_pikachu]

Hey, looking good! So, you're saying the RSS feeds will be easily established? If so, that's excellent.

In terms of aesthetics, I'll just reiterate my earlier suggestion of wrapping that top blue bar around the whole information box. I'm thinking that might make it appear more cohesive, if we can do it. Of course, I could be wrong on that. What does everyone else think?

[mr_pikachu]

Okay, I'm in a bit of a rut with the Attackdex and I could use some advice.

I don't think it'll be too difficult to finish collecting the basic data for RBYGSC, as we've got a lot of that stuff already neatly compiled. But, as you well know, we have no information on the moves from the third and fourth generation. Obviously, we don't want to rip off anyone else (like SOME Pokesites do), and I'd rather we not go around begging FAQ creators for permission until we absolutely have to do so. This leaves me with two options: figure out how to hack the game myself, or collect the data manually (which would take ages and have a large risk of missing random info).

So. Does anyone have any suggestions? If not, I'll probably have to go ahead with game hacking, or something.

[Jeff]

I remember someone saying they were going to get someone who's hacked the game before. It was probably in this thread somewhere. I don't remember what came of that.

[Jeff]

OK, found it. It was in this thread (http://www.pokemasters.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=55). fp suggested that Arty2 of Serebii help us, but apparently didn't actually ask him.

[firepokemon]

Arty2 isn't of Serebii. He just provides data information for the site. And I don't know what the deal was with Arty2 other than I got a memo via irc asking to get his forum password back.

I did say a long time ago we needed people capable of hacking into the games. And we still need that as evidenced by Mr. Pikachu working on the attackdex.

[Houndoom_Lover]

I'm lovin' the new PM set-up who ever did that! Great job!! ^_^

[Mikey]

LOL seeing as how my alter ego was GoldenNoctowl77, I was the dominant episode guide writer for both English and Japanese episode guides for Serebii.net for like 3 years. I haven't written any since like mid Hoenn, but you are welcome to everything I have. :D They are all still on my hard drive somewhere! Good luck! The Pokemasters was one of my all time favorite sites!

<3 Mikey

[Jeff]

Sounds cool, but I'm hesitant about it. If these are the same guides posted to Serebii, I'm sure people would be making a fuss about it. What it comes down to is who owns the guides, you or serebii.net?

HL: What do you mean by new PM set-up? I didn't notice anything different. :confused:

Edit: Was just digging through Serebii's episode guides to see if I could find the ones written by Mikey and found one written by Zak! (http://www.serebii.net/anime/epiguide/johto/257.shtml)

[Mikey]

I wrote the guides, so I own them lol!

[PancaKe]

Hey guys, just a question. How are you guys going with the website? Do you have a timeframe in which everything is going to be completed, or is the actual uploading of a main site still too far away??


And do you have a marketing strategy to compete with other main sites, such as Serbii and Bulbagarden? Lol.

Seriously though ; I'm just curious as to how far we've actually come.

I feel bad asking cos I'm pretty useless when it comes to the website :( Sorry all.

[Jeff]

Well, without revealing too much here, let's just say that we've recently hit a snag that we're trying to take care of behind the scenes.

As for promoting ourselves, I was thinking about posting a thread at Bulbagarden about us as we get further along. Yes, we'd have to get Archaic's permission, but he did the same thing here when he brought back Bulbagarden so it shouldn't be an issue.

[mr_pikachu]

To expand on what Jeff said (again, without revealing too much), we're pretty sure we've found our way around the snag. Right now we're just making sure everything will work so that we don't waste our time if there are better alternatives.

Assuming that we're right, then we're moving quickly on the road to publishing the site. There are a few sections that will take a little longer than others, but now that we're streamlining the whole process it should be a snap. With any luck, we may have version 1.0 complete and uploaded within a couple of months.

[PancaKe]

Yay that is way exciting!! :D

[Telume]

Aside from the snag, I'd say it's looking pretty good.

Edit: I think that for IRC we should revive what Fanha used to do. If anyone remembers that.

and if they don't

Basically: He used to run this thing called the battlearena and he used to have 2 bots RBYBot and GSBot (for Red, Blue and Yellow and Gold and Silver (crystal hadn't come out yet.)) and people used to be able to construct teams and battle them.

If anyone knows how to script in mIRC maybe we can create our own so people aren't only stuck doing one thing on the IRC?

Just throwing that out there.

[Jeff]

Sounds like a good idea. Even though most people use wifi to battle these days, it would be a nice alternative to having to spend hours IV breeding and EV training. I have almost no experience with anything IRC-related so I can't help in that department unfortunately, but if anyone can do it, I'd love to see it happen.

Also, it's been a while since I've given a progress report, so here goes. To be honest, I haven't been able to get online or work on the site nearly as much as I'd like to this semester due to the heaping amounts of homework I've had. I have 3 weeks left until spring break though, so I'll see if I can start getting some more pages put together then.

[Jeff]

Just a quick announcement. Thanks to a snow day and two tests this week, I've been granted a rare homework-free weekend, so I plan on spending my time working on the site. I'll also make it a point to get on AIM and IRC in case anyone wants to chat.

[Telume]

I'll see if I can get a friend on-board with the bot idea and maybe we can have a few people volunteer to test it out? You guys don't mind if I post a recruitment thread to test it out do you?

[Jeff]

Go ahead. Also, I'll be glad to test it out if I get the chance.

[Roy Karrde]

Since no one has really posted here I did want to ask if you guys wanted any 3D Models for the project. I can provide Pokeballs, Pokedexs, Pokegears/what ever with photos with a Alpha Channel layer for easy use.

[Jeff]

Roy, that sounds cool. We could still use some images, so anything anyone can contribute would be great.

Alright, time to take care of some business.

First of all, just wanted to let everyone know that this upcoming week is my last week of classes, after that is finals week and when I'm done with finals, I'll have plenty of time to start working on the next phase of the site, which is getting some of the old content into the new site's format. Once that's done, the initial site will be ready for upload and the next phase will be developing the pokedex, etc. So, if all goes according to plan, the site will be launched sometime this summer (or winter for those of you in the southern hemisphere)

Telume suggested a while back that I use brighter colors for the site, so here's (http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/7792/tpm8.jpg) what I've come up with so far. What does everyone think? By the way, the gray links are just dummy links to pages that aren't done yet.

And finally, you'll notice that in that screenshot, there's an Oekaki link. That's no dummy link, it actually functions and links to TPM's Oekaki. This is a dirty little secret that project contributors have known for a while and I've finally decided to spill the beans. Yes, TPM's Oekaki is alive and well, and what's more is that there's still an active community there. If you're interested, check it out at http://www.pokemasters.net/oekaki.

That's all for now, and of course we could always use some more help. If you have anything you want to contribute be sure to mention it!

[Heald]

The Oekaki still being alive without anyone realising is perhaps the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while. The fact it is just as active as the forums is kind of sad. Is there any way of bridging the gap and trying to get that activity over here? We have a fan art section for a reason, seems a bit of a waste if we have a separate board for it when we could so desperately use the activity.

[Drago]

So if we don't know they exist, do they know we exist? Is this like a parallel universe where there's an evil DragoKnight? I find it hard to believe (and kinda embarrassing) that an entire community that come from the same site don't know about us at all... It's rather odd.

Now then, with regards to the new colour scheme... I've got mixed feelings, Jeff. I like the blue/yellow motif on the left, and the red/white isn't so bad either, but I'm really not liking the striped grey background. Feels very... popup advertising to me. I don't know if I'm being picky here, but that's what I reckon.

Comparing this scheme to the last one you showed, I think my final opinion is that it is less neat and clean, but certainly more eye-catching. Could just be the TPM black/blue loyalist in me being picky, but I'm not so sure which I prefer. I certainly appreciate the attempt at trying an alternative though, Jeff. Thanks for all your work so far!

[Jeff]

The background was actually a late addition because it looked too plain before. Here's (http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/3971/tpm7.jpg) a link to the older version with a very pale gray background. I'm thinking about going with a solid blue background now, that would fit in better with the forums and oekaki. I'll keep tweaking it and see what works.

[Phoenixsong]

It's a good, clean layout, but eh... I'm just not digging the bright primary colors. Like DragoKnight it may just be me clinging to the good ol' days of blue and black, but it just seems a bit... elementary school, you know what I mean? Nice sort of homage to RBY, but really a bit much, I think. :/ Are there any other color schemes you could use to "brighten it up"?

[Jeff]

Yeah, I kept thinking the same thing when I was looking at it but couldn't figure out how to fix it. I'm working on it now though and the problem seems to be subsiding. I gave it a light blue background and have started playing around with gradients in the headers. That seems to have cut back on the kiddie feel. It's actually starting to look a bit like the Oekaki come to think of it.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

Yeah the Oekaki thing is a bit scary. I was actually wondering if it was still around and then I heard it is. What comes to the colors in the new site, I have some mixed emotions as well. But in my opinion one of the most important things is that it should look different from our competitors, which it does as far as I know. On the other hand, other sites just imitated TPM in the first place.

[Jeff]

Here's the latest design. (http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2825/tpmhgss.jpg)

[Number1ChanseyFan]

Awesome work Jeff, the site is really looking good!! ^_^

[Heald]

IMHO, looks much better than the previous build. Once we have some banners up, it should be awesome.

[Joanna of Castile]

So if we don't know they exist, do they know we exist? Is this like a parallel universe where there's an evil DragoKnight? I find it hard to believe (and kinda embarrassing) that an entire community that come from the same site don't know about us at all... It's rather odd.
Maybe they don't want to associate with a bunch of pretentious 30-year-old men, which seems to constitute the majority of this forum now. I know I wouldn't!


But in my opinion one of the most important things is that it should look different from our competitors, which it does as far as I know.
Besides the colour scheme, tell me how this website differs from SPP. That hackneyed three-column layout is the quintessence of every hideous and unsuccessful Pokemon website out there. I'm aware TPM used the three-column layout once upon a time, but that's no excuse to not try something unique that will simply WOW your visitors, and thus compelling them to return.

We'll see if all this hype was justified soon enough, but it'll probably turn out to be another failure SPP clone. Just wait and see.

[Heald]

We'll see if all this hype was justified soon enough, but it'll probably turn out to be another failure SPP clone. Just wait and see.
That's funny, considering originally TPM came before Serebii and Serebii is often accused of ripping off other sites. Had the situations been reversed i.e. Kevin the one who found a benefactor to save the website and Joe the one forced to scrounge for a living, TPM would probably be the dominant fan-site.

Also, I'm interested: who are you?

[toucheiruka]

at least you guys are bringing it back again, I was once known as Leader Dan 8 or 9 years ago, but after those years passed my name has been wiped off the board, and then now, almost a decade later, things have changed drastically, and to see you guys bringing it back is just plain awesome.

[Dark-San]

We'll see if all this hype was justified soon enough, but it'll probably turn out to be another failure SPP clone. Just wait and see.

Don't trip on your way out! ^.^;

Seriously I don't know why you are here for and what makes you think that SPP is better than us in any sense. If your sole purpose is to stir up trouble here, please don't. It just makes my work harder.

Anyway I can't offer any news about Pokemon but if it is news that you required from the scanlation community, let me know. I could get first hand information from there.

[Jeff]

Also, I'm interested: who are you?

If I had to guess, I'd say it would be someone TPM has had trouble with in the past, perhaps someone who has trolled before in this very thread. Yeah, I'm going with Jay.

Whoever it is though, in response to their comment, Serebii is pretty much a one-man show. At the other end of the spectrum is Bulbagarden, which is all about the community. However, Bulbapedia suffers from the same problem as Wikipedia, in that there aren't enough quality controls in place to filter out some of the lower quality stuff. TPM should strive to strike a balance. Looking at the old site, that's pretty much what it was, it had community-generated content, but didn't give full control to everyone over what makes it onto the site. That's what makes us different, and what would make us more than just another "SPP clone". As for the layout, just about every site you go to uses that general layout, it's best to give the users what they'll expect.

Oh and one more thing: Not all of us are 30, just Gabi and she's not a man. So there.:P

[Lady Vulpix]

OK, the offender has been banned. Let's move on and get back on topic.

[shazza]

Joanna of Castile is constituted as an "offender"? Now they are banned? Good fucking God. My views on the revival of TPM aren't as negative as theirs, but they offered a valid alternative opinion on the outcome of the website and it was hardly considered as mindless "offensive" trolling. The fact of the matter is, SPP is extremely popular and is constituted by most internet Pokemon fans as the central fansite to look up information and be involved in the community; they don't know about the past controversies surrounding Serebii, and I'm sure they don't particularly care.

There's a difference between pointless trolling and a valid opinion, and based on that post Joanna of Castile did not go past that line. But why do I even bother? It's a well known fact that Lady Vulpix's style of authority has always been extremely strict, stemming back from the days when she help run Dragon Tamers. There's no point teaching an old dog new tricks, I guess! (The puns in that sentence are countless: Vulpix = dog pokemon, her age etc!)

Anyway.... The website looks pretty sweet and I hope the efforts Jeff and everyone else involved pay off in the long run. It would be fantastic to see it reach the pinnacle it did during the late 90's/early 2000's, but I'm not going to be blindly optimistic about it as these days internet users stick to the most popular sites and ignore competition.

Also, my mind was blown knowing that there is still an active Oekaki community that is still rather active. Wow!

[Jeff]

Just to shed some light on this, Joanna of Castile was actually a ban evader.

[Lady Vulpix]

Also, shazza, if you have a problem with me, PM me or IM me and we'll discuss it privately. Posting cheap and unfounded insults on a public forum won't do anyone any good.

[PancaKe]

Aw I feel like a meanie, but I'm not a huge fan of the colour scheme :( I think we should stick to one primary colour, or two, but not three. I feel like I've typed in the wrong website address and it's shown up instead.... :( I'm sorry !!!! :(

If it was just say, a shade of blue with yellow writing for the left column heading, and then instead of red, yellow with blue writing... make more sense

[Jeff]

It's supposed to be HeartGold and SoulSilver themed, and the Japanese logos for those games are red and gold, and blue and silver respectively so that's why there are multiple colors. Also, I tried a layout with just shades of blue before and it turned out very plain looking.

Here's the latest screenshots. The design's been tweaked a bit since last time, also I started working on content pages so I have a sample of that too.
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6164/tpmmain52509.th.jpg (http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpmmain52509.jpg)

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/388/tpmed52509.th.jpg (http://img17.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tpmed52509.jpg)

[firepokemon]

I LOVE YOU SHAZZA

[shazza]

If you are insinuating that my light-hearted pun was a "cheap insult", then I apologise, but that was only my attempt to trying to put a humorous spin on my opinion on your moderation; how you reacted to that in the first place only reestablishes my criticism. I don't have a problem with you personally, and I'm sure you're a fine person out of this internet community; but it's well known that there is growing opinion and resentment, even from fellow Moderators and Super Moderators, that your adherence to enforcing restricting rules on a Pokemon message board does more harm than good.

That's just my opinion; I'm not attacking you, I'm simply offering advice.

And yes I know this is off the topic at hand, but it's not going to impact on anyone's lives, or how this forum operates in any substantial way.

I LOVE YOU TOO FIREPOKEMON

And now back to the website... :)

[PancaKe]

Have we got a launch date in mind?

That might help things speed along.

[Jeff]

I wish I could nail down a specific date, but like I said in another thread, it's going to be whenever everything is ready. There are still a few things that need to be done, most importantly, we still need the banner, which Gabi, Blademaster, and Telume are working on. I'm also going to need Chris to set up the news forum after we get at least a few people to sign up for news posting duties. After that, I'll have to fix my news displaying script to work with our news forum. Of course, we need to test this thing, I've only tested in Firefox3, IE7, and Chrome. I've yet to see how IE6 rapes displays the site, so that should be fun:P. Of course, there's also the About Us section, and the HeartGold/SoulSilver section (which admittedly, won't be very big right now). And finally there's the all-important issue of getting ahold of Kevin for access to the server (or just the URL if we're going to get someone else to host), so we can go live.

So yeah, no definite release date, but there's a look at what still needs to be done.

[Kirby]

That web design is absolutely beautiful. I love that we're still using the same logo and basic layout; thank god we're sticking to the basics and not trying something different, that would be highly perilous. Remember guys, it's not the people who made TPM as great as it was, it was the actual website.