Improbable Island Message of the Day (MoTD)

Our new default desktop skin is finally live!
Admin CavemanJoe – 2021-09-10 02:16:56 [Permalink]
Hey folks! After months and months of development, our new desktop look is finally here!

Lots of you have been following along as I made little changes to the Beta skin, so for many (most?) players this won't be a surprise. For those who logged on today and went "Wait WHAT THE" let's have a look at what's changed and what hasn't.

First, new fonts! Take a gander at the Display Menu at the top of the page. Under the Fonts submenu, you can choose from four different fonts in both serif and sans-serif flavours, and OpenDyslexic is there too for our players who find it helpful. Anything you click on this display menu should take immediate effect.

Second, we've got background graphics now! If you check the Colours & Backgrounds submenu, you can choose whether the game will always have the background you select (from the classic leather backgrounds or the snazzy new graphical backgrounds) or whether the game should change the background based on what your character's doing. The default behaviour is to put the Jungle background on the Jungle, the Outpost Walls background in Outposts etc and use your chosen background if the game can't decide on what background to use for the specific scene you're in. More scenes will be wired into the background-changing system in the coming weeks, and Place owners will be able to play with this system via Contraptions and Contrivances this winter.

Third, the Layout submenu will let you change the line spacing, whether your stats are across the top of the screen or down the right side, and spread out the navs for easier poking on tablets etc.

This new look isn't completely done; I've still got a lot of places where I need to tell the game which background to display, and I've still gotta wire in the night-time/sunny/rainy bits that'll give a real sense of space to the Island, but we've got to the point where the "Beta" skin has been tested so thoroughly that we know it works well, and in many respects it works better than the old "Horizontal" skin. Having said that, not everyone was testing the Beta skin, so if you find any rough patches or bugs please do use the Problem Report link and let me know about them.

This has been a long, long project and a lot of work done late at night, and I'm so glad I can finally show you all.

Have fun!

~CMJ

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