Occasionally Effective 2.0

[Qwerty Kun]

Greetings all,

Qwerty here with one hell of a poll. University is out for holidays, and so I find myself with 2 weeks with very little to do. I intend to use this time to seriously overhaul the graphical elements of the Occasionally Effective live stream.

Now, whether you are fans or haters, you will likely have opinions on what can be improved and changed and so I am requesting this information en mass. In the above poll are most of the changes I am considering making to my stream and I would love to get some mass opinions to find out what my audience (you) wants.

If you have any suggestions that are not listed above, even if it does not related to graphical elements of the stream (say running order or intro or something), just put a comment in when you vote. Hell throw a comment in anyway giving me some idea of what you might like to see with the changes you vote for.

As I develop the improved elements I will edit this original post.

Cheers,

Qwerty
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New OE Header

Something that is being changed regardless of opinion is the header on the twitch.tv page. I did not like the current one and thought it looked pretty tacky thus will be redesigning it. This is a first draft of something that is simpler and cleaner cut. Fits with the black and white of the first 'Away' image shown later. I'm not really happy with it though.



Give me opinions on this one
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New OE 'Away' Image

This image will appear whenever the stream is offline and will likely server as the intro screen to news videos for the YouTube channel. There is meant to be no information on this page other than the logo displayed. Honestly it is just the logo with a few added blending options, but makes it a little fancier and visually appealing.



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New OE 'Game' Image

The idea behind this is to have a OE logo that is photo-manipulated to suit each game as I play the intro music. Each image would fit the game being played and would be different from each other, all featuring the OE logo however.

Guns of Icarus OE Logo:

This is an example of what I mean. This would be displayed for with the music in the intro to any Guns of Icarus Live Stream.



As per Helmic's recommendation I have added a GoIO logo to this second image. Which do you all prefere



As you can see the orange/yellow colouring sort of matches (I think the colour pallet of the game and original GoIO logo) and it has a 'ruined' or 'apocalyptic' feel.
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New Twitch.tv Background

I wasn't expecting to do this myself however when mucking around I stumbled across a way to make something interesting. This is the new background as it stands now.



You can go to the stream at http://www.twitch.tv/qwerty2jam/old to see what it looks like with the stream

[Helmic]

The in-stream overlay as it exists right now only serves to clutter up the screen, a simple logo in the bottom right is more than enough watermarking and lets us see more of the pretty spectator UI Muse gave us.  Webcams are iffy, they might be fine before a match when there isn't much going on anyways but during a match they're more clutter piled on top of an ugly overlay making for a very cramped viewing area.  The new logo looks a lot better than the old black and white logo, but it'd probably be good to put "Guns of Icarus" or the game's logo somewhere just to make it clearer what it is everyone's waiting to watch.  Certainly a lot more "professional" than just stamping your own logo on top of the GoI logo.

More Guns of Icarus, obviously, that's what we're there for.  It'd get annoying if unrelated streams were being constantly promoted, though a quick mention about your regular schedule during the week would probably be fine.

[Skrimskraw]

As to streaming other games.

Yes you should, but I'm  not entirely sure what games would be interesting to watch.

League of legends streams tend to be watched because people take note of the pro's playing.
same with many other games.

the way you do guns of icarus are good, because you know the people ingame, can talk about what they usually do etc. etc.

I think if you want to do more games, singleplayer games are probaly the most unique.

[Sgt. Spoon]

Well, the new background, banner and game images certainly look more professional.

Have to agree though, the overlay would be better a little more minimalistic, without that much cluttering up the screen

[Helmic]

The new OE header looks terrible, you're spot on.  It doesn't fit with anything else on the page, it just looks like you picked a font and added some filters.  I can't really say much about it other than start over with a new one and see if you can't find something you like.  At the very least, use another font.  If you can't be assed to make another, it's still better than the current header.

The twitch background looks really cool, though that logo on the cards isn't yours.  Might want to edit it out and either replace it with your own or leave it blank.  It's also too wide for my 1600x900 monitor so a lot of the image is cut off when actually viewing the page - I don't know whether this is a problem with how Twitch handles backgrounds or not.  It still looks fine even cut off, though, and I don't know how forceful twitch is going to be with the new UI down the road.

The Guns of Icarus logo looks like it'd look good if it weren't for that emboss.  Looks like you just did it in Word.  Aside from the greyscale clashing with the rest of the warm-colored image, it looks like the GoI logo is lit from some other light source instead of the warm glow of the OE logo.

[Coldcurse]

cool images but something doesnt feel right.

change the header into something steampunk, that would be amazing.

change the card logos in the corners into your logo.

we need more fanfix.

[Lord Dick Tim]

I'm easily impressed by flashing images and bright colors, like a small child that has keys jingled in front of them for amusement.
But I will say something is missing...


...Whales!  Needs more whales.

Bu really, I'm a minimalist when it comes to any kind of design (just take a look at anything I've drawn, I don't color half of it)
I do really like the logo, very umm, round?  I'm not sure why I like it, I just do.  Kinda how I like purple, and birds.   And whales.

[Sgt. Spoon]

change the header into something steampunk, that would be amazing.

Well, the lack of steampunkiness for the general stuff is probably becuse he wants to handle other games as well. Even though focusing pretty much on GoIO atm

[Qwerty Kun]

Well, I'm almost done all graphical upgrades and I'm thinking it looks pretty damn good
However I still have one problem in the form of this %$^& HEADER!

Dammit I can't find a single thing that friggin' works.

I'll keep trying, if any of you have any ideas be sure to let me know because im pretty stumped here.

[Helmic]

You're having trouble with that header because you're going at it thinking it has to be a font with special effects tacked on.  That's just not going to work.  That GoI waiting screen is done with so much more love, why not take a similar approach with the header?  Focus on making the header itself a logo rather than just text with a funny font you found on your harddrive.  Break it into two lines, make the first O into something like a crosshair or whatever, incorporate the OE symbol somewhere, anything to make it more like artwork itself.

Here's Newciv's Twitch header as an example, courtesy of our resident artist Beck:

[Qwerty Kun]

Just though I would throw this in here, I have made the decision to start casting GoIO daily when I get back to uni either this week or next (depending on when I can get access to my rig).