A Project for Alternity!

[stormyhearted]

Hello all! Hope you're doing well.

I have two weeks off, thanks to my trip getting cancelled by the present pandemic. (Alas, I work in retail so I can't revoke my vacation request.) I've decided that I'd like to spend some of my time on bringing Alternity back to the web in a semi-interactive format that would evoke the spirit of the story when it was live, watching posts and comments go "live" with each click. It'll take much, much longer than my two weeks off, but I figure it'll be a nice chunk of uninterrupted time to get it started and work out some of the kinks.

But first I want to ask the players: are you okay with this? Is there anyone who'd be okay with me checking in with them periodically, or to ask general questions of?

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Ooooh.
(I have the bundled month PDFs that I just reread!)

[lapin_agile]

Wow. That sounds like a huge project. For my part, as a player, I don’t have any objections (and you’re welcome to ask anything you like). I’m hoping others will also respond here. I know you’d like to get started if it’s okay with others of the players.

[gwendolyngrace]

Hello!

I made sure the players were aware of your idea and we are intrigued and delighted! If we can help or you need information to get the project moving, let us know.

Thanks for your continued love of Alternity.

[queenbookwench]

This sounds like a lovely idea and I'm intrigued!

(Also thanks to Gwenlygrace for posting it to the old listserv and reminding all of us players to stop in and say hello)

[stormyhearted]

I've made a start! The first 24 hours, per the timestamps.

http://thelittleseawitch.net/alternity/

At the moment, it's only optimized for viewing on a desktop; once I'm done tweaking that, I'll make a second stylesheet for mobile viewing.

Things I would love player input on:
* Timestamps - I'm using the times as saved on the PDFs, but I remember from a previous post that a player wanted to fix some of the wonky timestamps that were the result of writing in different time zones. Do these times look accurate to you? (I feel like midnight is a little late for first years to be up and journalling, especially with classes the next morning?)

* Avatars - I've used the avatars that were present in the PDFs, but since some of them had been changed to older images by the time the PDFs were taken, they're not all age-appropriate.

* Post content - I'm copying the posts and formatting verbatim, but if there's anything you'd like edited, just let me know. (I know there's an upcoming post with the twins telling Percy not to type in capital letters, when really it should be write, but I won't be making any edits without being expressly told.)

* Name formatting - My original intention was to have the journal name in the sidebar be whatever they are legally recognized as, and then the name in their entries and comments reflect how they see themselves- so Ron would be "Ronald Weasley" in the list and "Ron Weasley" in entries, maybe just "Ron" later in private messages and the ISS lock. However, I'm not sure if that's cool with you all, and I'm also not sure how to address, say, Hermione and Terry. I also thought it might be fun to list just one of the twins in the sidebar, but have it alternate randomly like the magic can't figure out which one it's supposed to be, and then their in-entry names being GredForge, or Quintus and Quartus when responding to McGonagall, etc.

* Finally (as if I haven't already given you all a laundry list!), I'd love to do a kind of "commentary track" from the players, if any of you were interested in participating. My plan is to put an unobtrusive icon in the sidebar when there's commentary that could be clicked on to show it, or ignored, as a reader chose.

Last but not least, for anyone at all reading- I'd love if you took a look and let me know what you thought! Is the navigation intuitive, are the entries readable, does the layout feel comfortable, etcetera.

Thanks so much! I'm so excited to see it start to take shape the way I'd imagined it.

[naomikritzer]

So this looks really cool but it took me a couple tries to (maybe) understand the navigation. One usability note: in a post with a lot of threaded comments, it would be nice if there were a "Revelio" button down near the end, instead of having to scroll back up!

I'd be up for providing some commentary, if you want. Sally-Anne was my first character, so I won't have anything to say until her posts start showing up.

[sporky_rat]

batrachian and I were just discussing Sally-Anne in Y1 and how she was very good at being a halfblood Slytherin.

[stormyhearted]

Thanks for your feedback! I'm taking notes for when I start on edits & modifications.

[gwendolyngrace]

This is super cool.

The time stamps look...okay? I do know that we attempted to put all the posts in GMT, so seeing a "4 PM" is a little odd, knowing that I was posting (Sirius) at, say, 11 AM, but I think that's the time difference talking. The stamps may not work perfectly, since there are times when we were posting mindful of the time shift, and times when we were on our (mostly east-coast but not entirely) "real-time" schedule. That is, the journals were set to GMT, but we (the game) ran on Central time (because at one point 1/3 of the players were in Central, 1/3 on the east coast, and the other third were elsewhere (Mountain or Pacific mostly), and we were all running on our real-life schedule where 10-11 PM was (usually) bedtime (except for crazy me who was up til 2 because I was having too much fun not to). Also - we had "class schedules" but it was RARE for us to actually be able to post on that schedule. Because jobs, transportation, errands, life. So there will need to be fudging for time now and then.

Avatars...yeah, do your best? For a while many of us had paid accounts which allowed for a lot more flexibility. (And thanks to Dreamwidth for helping us maintain multiple paid platforms for most of the duration of the game!) But when we dropped the paid accounts that meant we couldn't keep all the icons. I have files with *most* of the characters' icons I controlled, but I did mysteriously lose several of them in computer replacements, changed jobs, etc. I wonder if we could provide you with our icon sets and if that would help, but honestly I'm not sure we could remember all the choices that were made.

Names...I don't really have a preference, but we can point out that Hermione and Terry both still had surnames (though I would probably use "boot" for him in the beginning). As for Fred/George I'll leave that to their player, but I think for the sake of consistency I would default to the name you can use consistently the most often. (A hint might be to look at the later posts, as you mention, for ISS and Order and see what people write in the PM headers.)

I'm happy to provide commentaries. I can tell you right off the bat that some of these early posts are pretty cringe-inducing now, but we were figuring things out and settling into a consistent voice and tone, so there's bound to be some misfires. It's kinda like the first 4-6 episodes of a TV series in that sense.

I will say again THIS IS COOL THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS

[stormyhearted]

I'm glad you think it's cool! I'm just happy to give something back to the players, who gave me years and years of daily entertainment.

I will keep that in mind re: the timestamps, and adjust as necessary. I'd love to get whatever icons the players still have saved, and anything else I need I'll probably just make if need be.

Re: commentary, I don't have specific questions; it can be memories from the time, stories, images that inspired you, whatever. Commentary can have spoilers- they'll be marked.

[(Anonymous)]

Hallo! Alice/Frank/Pansy/A Few Others Now and Then here!

The wonky timestamps only really kicked in during Y7 -- I moved cross country, and there were some battle sequences where we were posting quickly, and I forgot to change the timestamps (usually Alice)! I'd say it only crops up now and then, I was two hours ahead, I can let you know which ones were particularly egregious :)

[lapin_agile]

I’m pretty sure I have icon sets saved for the characters I played. (Madame Pomfrey, Ron, Regulus, Lana, Barty, Blaise, and, for an interim spell, Tonks)

I would be happy to provide some commentary as you go along. I joined the cast midway through the first year, so I can’t comment on any of the play or plot or characterization until then.

One other thing to mention about timestamping: there were a few sequences where we had to rethread or replay a conversation because some game-breaking error crept in that we decided we couldn’t leave. I’d guess those spots have some wonky time stamps.

[stormyhearted]

I've made some edits based on feedback so far!

- I've added an "Ascendio" button that appears when you start scrolling, which takes you back to the top of the page;
- I've added a collapsible element to every comment;
- I've added a brief guide to the "spells" used at the top of the Read section on the main page.

I've also adjusted the timing on Sirius's second post, placing it after his conversation with Harry instead of before. (I figured if Sirius had heard three hours earlier that Harry was in Slytherin, he wouldn't be replying to Harry with an all caps "WHAT?")

From here on out I will probably post longer updates in my DW journal, so that I don't clutter up alt-fen (if anyone wants to follow along- you won't have to worry about weeding through a bunch of other posts because I only use DW for communities). I'll probably save my alt-fen posts for letting people know when a new month has been completed and uploaded.

[jenett]

I've kept forgetting to comment, so thank you for the update. I'm fascinated by how this is going, and it's amazing.

(I do not have commentary yet on the character front, but I bet I will moving into Y3 or Y4.)