January 2004 in the Life of Ben (Blog)
New Vice Cars (29th January 2004)
I have gotten a sort of amnesty with my parents which allows me to have the PC on for some of the daytime. This has meant I have been able to move the FnF style Nissan Skyline converted by Omega007 to the Racing section on the Vice page. A lot of people have gotten in touch with me about this car, so I expect they will welcome this update!
Additionally, I have added BigFoot’s Chevrolet Caprice to the City section of the Vice page. Just this minute I submitted my handling setup for Sin5k4’s brilliant Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 7, so expect that up here soon! Now then, when was the last time the words “brilliant” and “Sin5k4” did not appear in the same sentence?! c{:¬D
Progress with Forum Skin (29th January 2004)
The increase in time I can spend on the computer has meant my skin for Invision 1.3 is slowly making progress. So far I am pretty undecided what the actual theme will be but rest assured it will be as optimised and efficient as Tropical was…but not as intensely bright.
I am displaying this skin in a few places to get feedback
Forced Absence #2 (25th January 2004)
Yes, for the second time I have gotten banned from the computer. Do not ask why, trying to make sense of my dad’s decisions will only make you lose faith in the intellect of humanity. However, you can read about this in detail in the topic on GTAForums.com.
This means that just as I had secured a whole bunch of fantastic opportunities to design modifications people are making to GTA:Vice I can not actually go ahead with them. Additionally, having only just fixed Curveshire so that it at least shows up in GTA 3, I now can not follow through with that either! I was working with Sadisticmachine on getting a really fine handling setup for the skateboard he made and planned to work with Barton to give it some additional stunt functions, such as being able to ollie. I had only just started re-making my Tropical skin for Invision v1.3 so now that, which would have been VERY useful to talk about in job interviews, is denied of me!
All I can do is say that to those who I said I would work with is that if I had a choice in this issue, I would be working flat-out to achieve the things I promised instead of leaving you all hanging like this. c{:¬(
Community Stunt Video Submission (21st January 2004)
After missing the deadline for his first Vice stunt video, I sent my compressed replay files yesterday for his new edition. You can check details about this event by viewing his thread on GTAForums or by visiting his website. Hopefully this will ensure me a place in the video for my five seconds of fame! c{8¬P
Myriad Landscape Assistant (21st January 2004)
People who are making landscapes and/or buildings for Myriad islands can contact me via private message on GTAForums, or via instant message through Windows messenger to come up with ideas for their properties. I have already helped Illspirit with his bridge by suggesting the staircase down to water level and I have supplied design concepts to TRN and Gangsta_Killa’s properties.
Workshop Tidy (19th January 2004)
I have managed to whittle down the cars listed in the Workshop area of the Vice page to just a few - from there being over a dozen just last month. I have also updated a couple of the remote vehicle download links as the host had recently changed location.
Minor Scheme Changes (19th January 2004)
I have tweaked the Home and News area styles so that the CSS uses elemental references (such as body instead of news_body) as well as refining the colours a little. The blueprint blue is now less overpowering and the colours used on the homepage now tie in together, I think.
Tropical to Technical (19th January 2004)
As GTAForums has now upgrading to Invision 1.3 I have seized this as the perfect opportunity to carry out the complete colour scheme overhaul for the Tropical skin I have made. As I am very happy with where the mechanical aspects of the skin have turned out, the revisions will be almost entirely about the aesthetics.
The new direction I want to take this skin towards is engineering in motorsport. Tachometers for topic icons, carbon fibre for title backgrounds and a colour scheme reflecting legendary liveries from historic races such as le Mans. Dup has expressed some initial interest with regards the graphics but I am open to other offers as well.
Site Interface Revisions (11th January 2004)
After reading a selection of the articles from the Alertbox column, I have decided 2004 is the year that I shall make a more serious effort to make this site a miniature icon of internet sensibility.
This means I am making the page titles more descriptive, altering the layout of certain common features and you will now notice that the navigation links have been set up so you can no longer navigate to the page you are already on! c{8¬o
New Car Added (10th January 2004)
Turpuli has done justice to another classic motoring icons in the form of the Ford Mustang from 1965. Go to the classics section in the Vice page to get it yourself and start enjoying the epic powerslides it gets in to!
Guestbook Progress (10th January 2004)
This is taking a little longer than expected to complete as Illspirit has had to spend so much time maintaining the GTAForums server with Tank. However, we have a working system which supports registrations and message posting with smilies. We will be adding the ability to edit posts you make, allow members and IPs to be banned by the administrator and set it all in a layout consistent with this page. c{:-)
Vehicle News (6th January 2004)
I have received some confirmations from the car makers that I sent reminders to. The cars from Superfly Driver have been taken down from the Vice page as they are unlikely to be finished soon, whilst I have received a couple of new cars to do handling for. Circle of life and all that?
Area Icons Added (6th January 2004)
If you have saved any pages from this site into your Bookmarks or Favourites it would be a good idea to delete those references and re-set them. This is because I have uploaded a set of icons which means that the shortcut icons you will see now correspond to the theme of that area, rather than just being the standard IE HTML icon. c{:¬)
Vehicle Updates (4th January 2004)
Yeah, I have actually updated the Vice page recently. I have fiddled around with the category titles and have done a check-up with absolutely every author with a vehicle listed in the Workshop section. I am awaiting their replies to see if any cars are dropped or released.
Abusing Opius (4th January 2004)
Opius, who agreed to get the Curveshire District Project mechanically set up to be used in-game, has agreed for me to send an abusive private message to him via GTAForums every day until he actually gets this done. I will be sending the first this evening and hope that it will finally allow Curveshire to crawl out of the unfortunate period of inactivity it has been stuck in recently.
Site Overhaul Official Release (1st January 2004)
As you can see, as promised I have made some changes to the site! First off, that quite ghastly colour scheme I used to have for the news area is gone in favour of this new blueprint style that I put together. Much easier on the eyes! c{8-P
In addition to the cosmetic changes, there are a series of mechanical differences. These include the creation of a new homepage, news articles being separated into their own folder, the CSS file being devolved into a separate file for each area of the site, the integration of the ImporterPlus page into the GTA 3 page, the Tutorials page being moved up from the GTA 3 area into a folder in the main root and changing the page code to lowercase for the entire site. Whew!