At the Gates of Death: Quake III Arena
Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:44 pm
So, through the years, I've ended up making several small sites to my favorite characters from Quake III: Arena, which I keep together in their sub-collective site. I'd like to revamp all those sites at some point, but I'm facing a few struggles in conceptualizing how to tackle this project.
My problems:
1. To understand each character, the background information about the game and its universe is a prerequisite. Right now, that information is repeated on each site about each character. See for example the opening paragraph of the Orbb site and then the Conjectures subsection. This results in a lot of repeated information throughout each site, and I don't like that. I would like to only have to say that once and make that the starting point from which each individual site branches from. So, the most natural conclusion to me is that I should have At The Gates of Death as not really a collective but rather the opening page of all sites, and so have this section that all sites share right there, but there's one problem: the way each character relates to the universe's background is different and important to each character and worthy to be discussed within each character's site. So, I don't really know what to do.
2. If I choose to go on the route of having the collective become the starting page of all sites, there's one problem: the fact that, right now, I have three sites about characters, and then I have the quote database which is an information base sort of thing. If I revamp At the Gates of Death to be focused on character analysis, I think this does a disservice to the quote database, which is an important and useful resource which I end up referencing a lot in the characters' individual sites. I don't want to give the impression that the real meat is the character sites and the quote database is less important. Also, in the future I might add more sites that aren't pure character analysis, so I'd like this revamp to take that into account. What would you do to avoid having this slant?
3. Design question: I still want each site to have its own layout which is completely different from the others, would you be weirded out if you were to visit a site like that? Would that make you think of each site as completely separate from the others? I really would want to avoid having three or whatever many different sites as much as a larger project about Quake III: Arena.
I hope I've managed to explain myself, and thank you in advance for any thought you have to offer on this matter.
My problems:
1. To understand each character, the background information about the game and its universe is a prerequisite. Right now, that information is repeated on each site about each character. See for example the opening paragraph of the Orbb site and then the Conjectures subsection. This results in a lot of repeated information throughout each site, and I don't like that. I would like to only have to say that once and make that the starting point from which each individual site branches from. So, the most natural conclusion to me is that I should have At The Gates of Death as not really a collective but rather the opening page of all sites, and so have this section that all sites share right there, but there's one problem: the way each character relates to the universe's background is different and important to each character and worthy to be discussed within each character's site. So, I don't really know what to do.
2. If I choose to go on the route of having the collective become the starting page of all sites, there's one problem: the fact that, right now, I have three sites about characters, and then I have the quote database which is an information base sort of thing. If I revamp At the Gates of Death to be focused on character analysis, I think this does a disservice to the quote database, which is an important and useful resource which I end up referencing a lot in the characters' individual sites. I don't want to give the impression that the real meat is the character sites and the quote database is less important. Also, in the future I might add more sites that aren't pure character analysis, so I'd like this revamp to take that into account. What would you do to avoid having this slant?
3. Design question: I still want each site to have its own layout which is completely different from the others, would you be weirded out if you were to visit a site like that? Would that make you think of each site as completely separate from the others? I really would want to avoid having three or whatever many different sites as much as a larger project about Quake III: Arena.
I hope I've managed to explain myself, and thank you in advance for any thought you have to offer on this matter.