New Sims2 site up for early development

[Vchat20]

id like to introduce you all to The Sims Park Mall. this is one site i have had on my ind for the past 3 years but never had it put online. this time it is a reality and is under heavy development. the frums still need sections put up, but once they are, feel free to join and any suggestions for the site are extremely recommended.

check us out @ http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/

btw, for those who are questioning our relations to Mall of the sims, none whatsoever. personally, i dont like mots simply because of the fact that you have to buy a subscription just to get access to the majority of the stores. the only things i may charge on are renting store space in the mall.

[Vchat20]

I would also like to point out that we are recruiting people who are fluent in Flash. the main part of our site is (going to be) completely done in Flash, which i know very little of. anyone who is willing to help out, id greatly appreciate it.

[ManagerJosh]

People who know Flash is almost slim to none. Most know just basic HTML.

[Vchat20]

same here. i know basic html as well. i did the whole site pretty much by hand. but i just plain suck at flash.

[suitemichelle]

couldn't enter the mall...

[Vchat20]

yeah. thats because there is no mall yet. lol . its still heavily under construction.

[Vchat20]

btw, got a few new logos done. just need some advice on which looks better.

http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo2.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo3.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo4.png

[Vchat20]

Forum Logos

http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo_2.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo2_2.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo3_2.png
http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/img2/logo4_4.png


btw, feel free to join the TSPM forums and provide suggestions.

[Vchat20]

i would just like to point out that ia hev put up a temporary domain for TSPM. you can now visit it via www.thesimsparkmall.tk . once i get the money im gonna get a full blown domain for it.

i will also have one of those pics put up as the new logo on the site within the next 10 min's.

[ManagerJosh]

Your site reminds me a lot of killersims shopping center.

[Vchat20]

wouldnt know. never visited killersims. only seen mots.

[FaeLuna]

Long long ago when it was free my friend had a shop in mots and I let her put some of my first wallpapers up there... sigh... waaaay back... I'm glad someone is doing a free shopping mall again. :D

[Vchat20]

well, if i can get something going well this may even end up being interactive where you can see the other visitors and interact with them like a chat. but that may require more than just flash.

[Vchat20]

made a last minute change to the whole plan. now its not gonna be done in Flash. instead, its going to be done in Adobe Atmosphere. since i have managed to get a slow hang of it, i can probably get some progress made. if ayone has a decent undertsanding of 3D and can work proficiently in 3D, feel free to say so and post some proof of your work. im starting to hire some staff to help with managing the mall.

more info about adobe atmosphere:
only software required for visitors is a free plugin for IE. then the world displays right inside the web page.
thanks to the publically available atmosphere servers from adobe, up to 20 people can be in the mall at one time and be able to interact with each other
a plethura of file types can be embedded into the world like flash, streaming audio/video, etc.
system resources are moderate. but compared to the requirements for Sims2, noone who can take advantage of the items available at TSPM should have a problem viewing the mall.

ill try and get what work ive done so far put up on the site for people to test.

[FaeLuna]

This sounds like a really interesting project! I wish I'd gotten better at meshing... :p I'll have to look up adobe atmosphere and learn more about it, I hadn't heard of it but I love photoshop... is it the same adobe?

[Vchat20]

yep. same adobe. really adobe atmosphere is just another 3D modelling software but more focused on its own format which can easily be put in a web page and is like a chat room in a way.

p.s. the site is temporarily down since our host launched a new service. i have no idea when its coming back online, but for now you can go to http://vchat20.jaywebdesigns.com/tspm/ until its working again. ill have to edit the 3D world page though so it works with the mess up.

[FaeLuna]

Thanks for the url, I'll go take a look! :D

[suitemichelle]

all i see are boxes with x's

[Vchat20]

well, the current domain (pokeradio.com) is messed up. but the majority of the site should still work on the link i posted above.

[FaeLuna]

I had fun picking a female avatar and wandering around the empty mall! It should be lots of fun when there are stores to visit! :D

[ManagerJosh]

There is no website configured at this address

[Vchat20]

as said above, the domain pokeradio.com is currently messed up. but you can still access the tspm site via http://vchat20.jaywebdesigns.com/tspm/

[FaeLuna]

Keep working on it! Will it eventually be at your pokeradio url when that's all straightened out and working again?

[Vchat20]

yeah. im hoping to get some money coming in soon so i should prety well have a full blown domain up by next year.

im working on it constantly but what i do is little details here and there. one thing i seriously need fixed is to remove the stupid portals for the bathrooms. they link to a totally different place and you cannot get back unless you refresh the page.

[Vchat20]

btw, josh you may be of some help here. but anyone is allowed. im having some hard time on my sample php script. its very simple and the idea is to help get myself started in php. its supposed to connect to a mysql database which simulates what the database for tspm would be like. ill attach it to this message.

[Vchat20]

i would just like to point out that ia have been very busy working on a new site design which is almost complete. any and all changes i make to the site go public immediately so my progress can be easily tracked.

[Vchat20]

sorry for not posting any updates, but i have been busy trying to work on a php solution for this since manually editing each and every page's navigation bar has become a complete chore and pain to do. and as much as id like to go with phpnuke on this cause of its pain free easy administration, i dont like the fact that its got that nuke feel and it can be spotted as a nuke site out of a group of websites. feel free to post your opinions on this decision. cuz a php solution is definitely in TSPM's future just has yet to be found.

[FaeLuna]

I've been wanting to learn .php for a while, good luck with finding a solution that works for you! I had trouble getting my computer set up to be able to work on .php pages offline but now that I have a friend suggesting she could give me a small part of her site to learn with it's on my list of things to learn this year. Let me know if you find a good setup for learning .php and if you wouldn't mind me learning as I go I might volunteer to help you a little if I can. It might be just the learning expierience I need. ;)

For the navigation bar could you use a frame or cascading style sheet or a flash navigation so you could just plug that in where you needed it instead of having the code for navigation over and over on each separate page?

[Vchat20]

well, frames i have wanted to stay away from as much as possible. so far the only thing that does use frames is the forums page and right now im considering embedding the main grpahics of the site into the header of the actual forums. dont know about css. flash may be a possibility but i really have no flash knowledge at all even though i do have flash mx at my disposal. i did have it running as php once already but it was causing many problems all over. at this point id rather go with a portal or content management system like phpnuke or postnuke but their are so many its hard to find one that is a perfect fit.

[Vchat20]

well, i did do the transition to phpnuke and quite frankly the transition went very well. even though theres alot of stuff that still needs put in, what ive gotten in so far looks great imo. the 3D mall needs readded, but rest assured its coming back very soon.

[FaeLuna]

I'll be looking forward to wandering the halls of your 3d mall again, let me know when you've added that part back, I want to show my hubby! :D

[Vchat20]

yeah. its been a pain coding the dang module for it. not to mention getting the popup working correctly. phpnuke is such a pain to work with when coding original stuff.

[Vchat20]

well, after some painful work, ive finally managed to get the 3D Mall back online. you can now visit it again. just go to the site, click 3D Mall on the navigation panel and then click launch.

[Vchat20]

also, i just had a quick brainstorm. do you think it would be a good idea if i tried to get major sims sites like killersims and such to run kiosks in the mall as well as having brand new stores and such as originally planned?

[ManagerJosh]

Very interesting. Only thing is that you need to reoptimize the coding for Dialup users. Oh and your idea sounds very mallofthesimsish

I hope you have an idea on how people can maintain their own set of stores.

[Vchat20]

what exactly do you mean by maintaining their own sets of stores? like being able to have their own store front webpage? if so, thats what is planned so far, its just i havent had much of the time to go in and code the massive module for it yet.

edit: what exactly needs optimized for dialup users?

[ManagerJosh]

the loadtime seems to be excessive.

as for kiosk/storefronts, I was getting the impression you were duplicating something like mallofthesims where people have their own stores to maintain.

[Vchat20]

the whole sites loadtime, or just the 3D mall or what? cuz if its the whole site, im kind of stumped as to how im supposed to go and optimize that.

well, kinda yes and no. of course the store owners would have to come through with the downloads and such. but as far as keeping their list of downloads updated, that would be my job for the most part. for the big places like killersims, what would probably happen is the indivudal kiosks would link directly to their sites. we wouldnt host their stuff or anything. but of course this would be arranged beforehand so both of us would know of the linking going back and forth and it wouldnt be a simple link database or something. but the original stores would be all hosted and stuff on the TSPM site.

[FaeLuna]

Did mall of the sims ever get a navigable 3d mall with avatars walking though?? If they did it changed a TON since my friend had a store there!! hahaha (I sometimes feel like I'm waay behind the times... sigh.)

[Vchat20]

i dont think so. unless the subscription and free versions are different. ive never bothered getting a subscription for that exact reason. i dont think sims downloads should be put up as payware. even maxis doesnt do that. why should fan made downloads be any different? i will research though and see if it has changed. but if anything, i think its still the same.

oh, and if i can get some people helping out with the 3D mall, part, many MANY new features may be added. for example, the original mall that the TSPM 3D mall was based off of had a movie theatre in it with all the screens actyually working with full motion video and audio right on them. not to mention directional background music will be added. this way they the music can actually be coming from any one speaker in the halls. so if you get closer, it gets louder and so on. if more floors are added (may be later on), working elevators are definitely possible. not to mention automatic doors. Adobe Atmosphere worlds are very customiable compared to other 3D engines like this.

[Vchat20]

lol. sorry for the double post, but MOTS has pretty much died. i was skimming their forums and from what few posts ive read and the lack of recent posts, its pretty much went down the tubes. i have no idea why, but it has.

[FaeLuna]

Is Adobe Atmosphere the program you're using to make your mall? (it's almost 6am as I ask this, and I'm suddenly not sure if I already asked it... but I don't remember... so bear with me!) Does it have a template or something you're working with to customize something that's already set up or are you having to do this from scratch?

I never got to see the pay version of mall of the sims either, that was about when my friend quit the site. :p It always bothered me a little to think my stuff might still be in the mall and people were having to pay for it!!

[Vchat20]

yeah. Adobe Atmosphere is what im using. and the current mall is heavily based off of an old mall i found while searching through tutorials for atmo. but it has been majorly edited since then since alot of portals linked back to their atmo worlds like the restrooms and such.

also, from what i can tell, Killersims is partly a paysite as well. even though it has much more of a free download selection than mots, it still has mainly downloads for pay there.

[FaeLuna]

I may have to look into Adobe Atmosphere and see if I can adapt it to a sort of medieval fantasy world game idea I've been working on for a while now... :D How expensive is it, and was it hard to find good tutorials?

I got the impression a lot of sites went pay or partly pay because they decided to do that to deal with the cost of bandwidth. Which makes me wonder... do any of the paysites actually make a profit, or do they even just break even? (that looks very funny and repetitive now that it's 7am for me and I haven't slept....)

[Vchat20]

im not sure how expensive it is right now as a matter of fact, previous version were actually free from what i read. not sure about the crrent version though. and really i didnt have a hard time finding tutorals. just a quick google search.

im pretty much guessing those sites made a profit. cuz to tell you the truth, bandwidth and space is not that expensive nowadays. you can probably pay about $20 a month and come out with a very decent setup which imo could very easily run a site like mots or killersims.

[Vchat20]

for those who havent read already, updates @ TSPM have come to a halt till we get the site transffered over to our new host. once the site is transffered, we will have a bunch of new screenshots up as well as a new site theme and the 3D mall will be updated as well.

[FaeLuna]

I hope the site transfer goes well! Good luck! :)

[Vchat20]

well, in an ironic twist, with our recent host going offline (im hoping just temporarily as i have 2 other site hosted over there), we did make the transition over to our new host. it is not complete as i used a dated database backup. but it is not a major difference to what the latest version had in it. so we will stay with the current database and continue on. the new site is now hosted @ http://tspm.alpinesims.com/ . the promised updates have not been set in yet, but they are being worked on as we speak and will be up by the beginning of the week if not tuesday.

(ps. note to admin's: plz change title to "The Sims Park Mall")

[Pixie]

Hey Vchat.. I'm a member at TSPM! :-D I love getting involved!