jQuery Clone?(moved from Welcome&Test)

[ambrose1987]

Ok, so, as the people monitoring the overhaul thread and my introduction thread already know, I've been working independently on a project intended to mimic the functionality of the of the Charas-Project Charaset Generator interface using asynchronous Javascript instead of PHP. I think this would have many advantages, among which are:

    The oppourtunity to update the look and feek if the charaset generator
    The ability to update the sprite without updating the page.
    Decreased workload for the charas-project servers.
    Separate presentation from mechanics(eliminate the frames and make the whole thing prettier and easier to maintain)
    General increases to the end-user experience and utility


and I would absolutely be honored if I could just give to you.

However I have had some difficulty accomplishing this project for several reasons, partly my own workload rarely permits me working on it(However this is slowly easing), but also there are several things about how the site currently works which I do not quite understand and I'm reaching out to find someone who does to help me out.

First and foremost, where exactly are the paper-doll images and their clothes located on the server(and incidentally, what it the licensing situation there)? My goal is to create something that can plug-and-play with the site's current file structure but with the generator, I cannot seem to figure out where the image is actually coming from, and contacting the PHP server to ask for them seems really unecessary. Ideally, it would be awesome to have an overview of the file structure underlying the charaset generator.

Since I started this thread on Welcome I've been going through the Archive and looking at old posts related to managing the board. Hopefully I can find what I need there. Thank you for your help.

[DragonBlaze]

I agree with you that javascript is a much better approach for the generator. Ten+ years ago when this site was created, the industry standard was to have the server do most of the work and the client's main responsibility was to display what the server told it to display. Since then computers have gotten faster and javascript has become more powerful, so the industry has moved towards doing all of the display work with javascript (or some derivation of javascript) and leaving the server to just send and receive requested data.

I was looking at the traffic coming from the server, and yes, all images are coming from php requests and thus it is hard to get the resources through javascript, but I think this is the point. If you could just pull the resources without the server, then anyone can make their own generator on their own site, point it at charas for the graphics, and steal all of our bandwidth. Unfortunately to solve this would require a rework on the backend.

After volunteering to rework charas, I noticed that to overhaul charas would require a complete redesign of the site. In fact, it would probably be more difficult to redesign charas than to create a completely new site as migrating charas data to a new system will most likely prove very troublesome.

[ambrose1987]

Then that's what I'll do. (I don't mean that aggressively, I'll just do it and offer up it when I'm done.)

[Archem]

Have I mentioned how much I love your enthusiasm?

[ambrose1987]

Dude I dig this project. I've been using it since I was... I guess about 13 or 14, about the time I met my first regular D&D group, so almost since the beginning(I'm a month off 26 now), but I was a chronically shy child so I stayed off the forums mostly. It actually inspired my game, which is now almost done code-wise. I'm feeling optimistic. Plus, the art created for the charaset generator is a simple imagemagick one-liner away from being identical to the  art I use in my game, which is the pretty much the last hurdle before I can release, and if I can help the community, maybe I can attract a few interested artists who do not have a new family to focus on(which is what happened with the last artist.).

[ambrose1987]

Wow, this has been a while. Putting together a jquery clone of Charas has been slowgoing and I've had some heavy family stuff, bills, and various sorts of disasters and biohazards getting in the way. I should have never moved to West Virginia. There is a reason like a third of the episodes of the X-Files are set here. I don't even live in one of the moderately redeemable country parts, either, I live in urban WV, so most of the local economy is driven by people with prescriptions for OxyContin. Anyway, fingers crossed nobody else will drop dead and the water in my residence won't literally attack my skin for a few more weeks and actually be able to get something meaningful done on it. Right now it's just getting to the point where it isn't totally obvious that modern web apps are fairly new territory for me. Anywho, still alive(ish), still trying to make a jquery charas clone.