Chasing A Starlight – Sheena Fujibayahi

[Emma]

Chasing A Starlight – Sheena of Tales of Symphonia

I actually finished something for an Amassment event this year! Like I mentioned in the sign-up topic, I recently switched hosts, so I'm taking this time to fix up my old sites to what I consider a more acceptable standard. So this event is nicely timed for me, and I can't believe I finished this so quickly.

This revamp consists of a new layout, a couple of new buttons, and some content tweaking. Mostly minor rewrites – it's been so long since I've played Tales of Symphonia I wasn't really able to add much. Mostly I just got emotional over Zelos. I actually ended up removing some of the gameplay stat pages – they were just lists that can be found anywhere. I also removed the media section for now but that probably be something I revisit in the future if I ever get around to replaying ToS on Steam and taking screenshots.

I'm still not 100% sold on the sliding content! I couldn't quite get it to how I imagined it would work in my mind but I didn't want to abandon the idea. I'd love any feedback on that specifically.

And now, on to the next revamp~

[Robin]

Congrats on getting this revamp done so quickly!! This looks gorgeous and functions well (as soon as I actually paid attention and saw the clicky buttons below the section text ^_^;;;;;;;)

I see what you mean about the "sliding" content sections--when you click one button to view one pane's content, and then click another button that opens a pane of content that falls later in the file, the first one stays up at the top and makes it look like nothing happened when you clicked the button (except the scrollbar on the side gets smaller--that's how I knew I wasn't screwing up or that Firefox wasn't being a turd xD).

I battled something similar in my last wmw.org layout, which made use of DynamicDrive's animatedCollapse.js script. What ended up helping was a tip from Lethe about "grouping" divs together, like so:

Code: Select all

animatedcollapse.addDiv('FIRSTDIVNAME', 'fade=1, speed=600, hide=1, group=GROUPNAME')
animatedcollapse.addDiv('SECONDDIVNAME', 'fade=1, speed=600, hide=1, group=GROUPNAME')
animatedcollapse.addDiv('THIRDDIVNAME', 'fade=1, speed=600, hide=1, group=GROUPNAME')

This way, when one of the divs in the group was opened, and then a second div in the group was opened, the first div would automatically close back. It gave the smooth sliding/replacing action I was looking for, and made my life a LOT easier. Maybe there's a similar hack for the script you're using?

[Emma]

Oooh, thank you so much Robin! Yes that is indeed my issue with it. I will definitely check this out this evening and see if I can get it to do that. (OR just switch to the script you mentioned, it sounds like it's exactly what I want).

[Samantha]

Ahhhhh I love it!!! I really like the way you set up the content, too!

Makes me miss Symphonia... I hope I can get around to replaying it one of these days. Stares at Kratos site that hasn't been updated in like 6 years

[Emma]

Thank you Samantha! And same – what revamping this site really made me want to do was replay this game ASAP. :X (And make a Zelos and Colette and and all the sites) And I LOVE your Kratos site so much as it is but totally support updates too. Gimme it all.

I ended up changing to the script you linked, Robin, I like how it works a lot better. Thank you again for the help, this is a super nifty piece of code.

[Robin]

Omg it looks great @Emma ! I may or may not have spent the last few minutes playing with the sliding divs ^_^;;;

[Emma]

Thank you both!

[Megan]

The layout is so fun! It reminds me of cotton candy and happiness with her cute lil demon friend <33 Congrats on the revamp, everything looks wonderful! I like how you have each main page with a basic info and then the links below. Makes it look a lot neater and easier to navigate through!

[dubiousdisc]

I was still finishing the game when you posted the revamp, and now that I'm done I could finally read this!

It was a great read. :D

A few thoughts (hidden so nobody accidentally sees spoilers):

Show/HideSPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

On the time she failed to make the pact with Volt. Yeah, right, she was seven, and there's an entire village somehow holding grudges towards a SEVEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD??? Like, I get Kuchinawa (at the time, since he was a kid too; but to keep thinking like that as an adult...?), but what is wrong with the people of Mizuho anyway?

Great point that they might have been using her, actually.
Why do you think they even wanted her to make a pact with Volt, anyway? What for? And why Volt in particular?

When in the timeline do you think she met Corrine?

She is also very upset when/if Zelos dies, although the scripting of the game makes it appear that everyone forgets about him shortly after he dies. I do, personally, feel like this is a failing/limitation of the game and not how Sheena (or the others) would really react.

THANK YOU so much for saying that out loud. Seriously. This game simultaneously had branching storylines and yet it was so painfully obviously written with one storyline in mind, so things don't make sense if you pick the other branch. They wrote it with Zelos surviving in mind, so things make sense if he lives and his lines are simply not there if he doesn't. It's just ass writing, yeah.

For the record, my favorite characters were Colette and Zelos, so I HEAR YOU A WHOLE LOT on the getting emotional over Zelos. The poor asshole.

About the new layout: I love how it looks like in general! The navigation works wonderfully. But one thing I'd do with it is to amp the text contrast a little bit, especially on the navigation links. They were a bit hard to see.

tl;dr WELL DONE

[Emma]

THANK YOU DUBS

And thank you on the feedback about the text colour – I fiddled about with it so I hope that's a bit better!

Ooop also some spoilers below:

Show/HideSPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Yeah, I wish the game went into more detail on WHY they want Sheena to make the pact so bad and why it has to be done when she's so young – maybe wait until she's an adult? It's a pretty fucked up situation. Mizuho is so shady when you think about it! It's awful what they put her through and how they treated her afterwards.

It's been a long time since I've played the game so I may be misremembering, but I think she met Corrine a relatively long time before the start of the game, considering how strong a bond they have and how Sheena was the only human Corrine trusted because Sheena let her out of the Research Lab in Meltokio and Sheena was working with them for a long time, I think? I can't imagine Corrine would trust Sheena if she'd left Corrine in there for years? But tbh, it's been a long time since I've played ToS so I'm not sure if I'm misremembering anything.

AND YEAH as much as I like Kratos and having him in your party is very interesting considering his relationship with Lloyd but oh my god I cannot stand how no one even talks about Zelos especially when THEY KILLED HIM IN BATTLE. But I get that it's a limitation. I didn't realise that the game was written with Zelos surviving in mind (I mean, it makes sense but I hadn't thought about it!) but it is very lazy to give a choice for him not to survive and then not follow it up AT ALL in the narrative.

I don't have any system capable of playing ToS right now. Otherwise I would need to replay write now and make a Zelos site.