New website design?
0 voters
I’m very happy about this engine and think this is the BEST ever. However, there are not much very good-looking examples, and that is a pity. Even the website looks a bit hmm It’s nice, but a bit… cartoonish I think.
What do you think, does panda3d.org website need a new design, except just good-looking examples?
it needs a new look definatly. I will not link any one to this sorry looking site.
I don’t see a problem with it looking cartoonish. A lot of the best games of all time (in my opinion) have cartoonish graphics: Pretty much anything by Nintendo, Worms Armageddon, Rampage, Marvel vs. Capcom, ect…
Still, I do think Disney should put up some screenshots of the games they make.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with it being “cartoonish.”
I think the site’s fine- I would expand the gallery with fresh screenshots of varying projects and get rid of the constant screenshots on the side panel. (they are the same ones from when I first started using Panda)
i agree with T Rex & mavasher. Cartoonish is not a problem, the commercial game using panda3d toontown online is cartoonish so it is an important reason for their looking i think. but i hope to see more beautiful examples & screen shots.
Yes I agree examples are very much needed to help nudge new uses to use panda3d game engine. Ogre has a ton of nice examples although clearly yes not all of them are linked to active websites,- which basically mirrors this situation just minus many examples 
ONe of the best IMO is the road runner game, yet there is no downloadble binary which is a massive shame considering how kewl it prob. is…
You could of course compare panda3d.org to:
…as you can see one ‘could’ be seen as average, while the other is a Multimedia extravaganza
…of course someone must do the redesign in the first place so I think a good idea is to :
If we had what disney.com , along with actual examples ( and their working downloads ) of completed/semi completed games you can bet panda3d game engine would be on the map alot more.
cheers
g.leej
aka: neighborlee
I’m going to have a team of artists working for me in the fall. I think you guys have convinced me that I should have one of them redesign the website.
Oh - and as for screenshots, you guys have no idea how time consuming it is to prepare good screenshots. BUT, if you were to send me screenshots, I would post them. Please take the time to do a good job. It’s not enough to just find a nice scene. You have to position the camera carefully, make sure any faces are nicely framed, and so forth. Also, make sure the aspect ratio is 3x4 and that the size is at least 800x600.
Sample games is something we really need. Airblade just ain’t cutting it. To make it work, I’d have to insert these games into my CVS server, and keep them up-to-date with each new panda release. (Rather like the sample programs). Are any of you willing to submit games for this?
As for the games you already see in the gallery - most of them cannot be meaningfully distributed. They are designed for crazy I/O devices like head-mounted displays with motion trackers. They just won’t work on a normal monitor-and-mouse PC.
Well, I wouldn’t go all crazy about improving the look of this site.
The design is efficient and simple. That’s actually good, if you consider that using this side is a great part of using panda. Bloating it with a new design could make things painful.
I would probably just redesign the starting page and the galleries, the banner too.
Make it a little more interesting. Leave the rest alone (or maybe just adept the colour scheme of the newly designed start page).
That being said, I’m totally for more content in the form of fresh screenshots and more available games(or at least some samples… there’s enough in the forums, if the creators are willing to share)/game content(like models, textures, sounds…).
I would be happy to give my game to the community once it is ready (that could take a while, since I’m not constantly working on it)… It will be a multiplayer only game, so it’ll be interesting for newbies interested in networking.
Speaking of which, I’ve got a working proof of concept for a multiplayer space shooter. It’s not pretty, or a complete game by any standards. But it’s a working sample on networking, it can be played by at least two players over the internet, and it’ll answer a few other basic questions, that frequently appear on the forum (like how to use a mouse for input, how to implement a simple radar, correctly applying transforms and rotations…).
Currently it’s not in a good shape(there’s no directory structure, so one would have to place the files in the correct folders manually) , but I would fix it up a little and make it more usable if there’s interest on your site, Josh.
I also have no problem with sharing my game content (though I’m not the best designer)…
I could upload all the models and the few avi textures I’ve made for my game so far.
I know, it’s probably not the best to start it all with semi-completed work, but I’m willing to give everything I’ve got, if you want to use it on this site.
In fact I would be proud to see some of my work on this site.
So let me know, if I can help…
Speaking of which, it would be nice to have a page for uploading samples/games/content. So you could review it and decide whether or not it should find its place in the download section of this site.
Josh Yelon, you can expect one game after then end of the 1st week of September. I will be participating in the pyweek competition. Which produces complete games. http://www.pyweek.org/5/
I hope more panda3d’ers will join me 
in the competition.
PS: I will also give screen shots of the my AFF:G game with only one condition that it will not go on this site as it looks currently and please drop the cartoonist look. The site is not for kids its for developers it should looks like a 3d engine not a toy-engine-thing which the cartoonish look gives. Panda’s site kept me a way from using it for years! I am really angry at that!
I agree with Legion- especially about having a place where projects for download could be reviewed. (Maybe that’s what panda3dprojects is going to be about. )
One thing that I’ve noticed is that Panda3d is incredibly powerful- but the examples available don’t really show that. The tutorials are good for learning how to do individual things but when I first started in Panda3d that’s all the forums seemed to be about- how to do individual things- there really weren’t any examples of projects to show what could be done. Airblade was one- but it’s hard for a beginner to get into its code.
Since then the showcase section has improved dramatically. I think some of those projects deserve some attention:
*cody’s Flight sim (his website says he’s willing to provide code to individuals but I’m not sure about providing it to the site.)
*Edwood Grant’s Rez clone
*Legion’s semi-complete network space shooter
One small suggestion I have for any website updates is to request that all links in the menu bar at the top of every page be made to work like standard links.
Most of us I imagine used tabbed browsers nowadays, but these links don’t open in middle clicks from Firefox. I have to open a new tab manually, copy the current page, and then click the menu link I want to follow. Extremely frustrating when browsing the documentation, such as looking something up to answer a question here in the forums.
The upload section will be there /could be there once we get the panda3dprojects frontend up and ready… pro-rsoft is working on it. - A preview is there but bug fixing and minor changes do take time 
I hope, we get that stuff ready soon.
pro-rsoft - anything about an ETA?
About the website layout… well, I am used to it - maybe thats the reason why “I don’t care”. For some pages a new layout would suit - for others it wouldn’t. In general I do like the simple style. - Everything is there and you can reach ith without toooooo much effort. So what do you need more? 
Regards, Bigfoot29
Bigfoot29, we still need a website layout too and urgently
Well, maybe we can integrate the layout somehow into/with Panda3D - but that for we should at least start a Beta to have the functionality
Heh… guess we should talk better in IRC ^^
Regards, Bigfoot29
A place for submitting samples/demos would be VERY cool.
This is an area where Panda3D really needs improvement. Currently, all the cool samples are scattered around in the forums, and it’s hard to find (and sometimes: install) them. Compare this to the PyGame site. There’s a whole bunch of samples, each one with a nice screen shot and a short description, and you can comment on them. I’d like to see something like that for Panda3D.
Currently I’m in the process of writing a simple 3D-pacman-styled game using Panda3D (just for fun). I’d like to submit it once there is a place for user-contributed code.
It’s nothing crazy or so, but (at least for my 7-year old son and his friends) it’s fun to play with. Since this is my first Panda3D program, I am still learning how to do things properly with Panda3D, and I’m working on it in my spare time in the late evening hours, it’s far from perfect (for example, the code is a mixture of German and English).
Things to note about it:
sorry its late and i will continue on this based on the forum response … this is they layout i put together as a proposal it still not finished but i think it looks nice.
suggestions welcome
ouch @ Disnay ^^
Looks nice… even if the Panda is kinda like for childs
Regards, Bigfoot29
ouch @ Conatact… ^^
Treeform, your layout looks very nice. Much better than the current one!
But perhaps the “Panda3D” text in the header could use a slight gradient, or border or so.
lol making stuff after your bed time makes spelling mistakes … oh wait i make them all the time!
after:
i still like the non gradient text better it looks more structured on the chaotic background
also current logo is this?
i propose we replace it with this :
oh and here is the icon file for it http://www.freewebtown.com/eiforall/panda3d/panda.ico
well so that file system looks like this :
