Site upgrade v2021 early plans

[iKarith]

So no "switch to the mobile version of this site" button then?

In Firefox or Chrome, hit F12 for inspector and click this button



it'll pop up this bar



When the site is completely done, there won't be a "mobile version" and a "desktop version". The mobile version is the same website, just with different CSS.

I haven't considered the ramifications, but should a Facebook button/link also be included in the future? It may help with the spacing. Maybe a bit more space between the lines of the blue buttons/links and the gold bars would also help with the layout and clumsy thumbs. As another layout to try, two columns of gold bars might fill the page nicely and scroll quicker.

Probably a facebook button should be included. For the moment I haven't added anything, I'm looking to recreate what's there and make it more modern under the hood. Lemme throw this up:

https://www.yeoldeinn.com/inntest/layout.html

That's … a mess. Like ideally a site should have one or two such navvy elements on the page. Ours has FOUR. In the grand scheme of how do you do that right, this is not doing that right.

Something else I can't test myself … A friend looked at it in 4k…



Yeegh. That background really doesn't like 4k. I am working on that.

[iKarith]

[Edit by HispaZargon: Next eight posts were moved from thread 'Re: More Published HeroQuest - The Brazilian files']

Saved it and will be using it for the new downloads page.

For those curious how I'm handling the editions, I'm doing it basically by year:

• 1989 (UK rules)
• 1991 (JP rules)
• 1990 (US rules)
• 2021 (US rules*)

Japanese before US because it is really an outlier. Everything else is based on 1989 rules or 1990 rules. If people wanna start translating The Quest, the UNofficial Brazilian release, to other languages … technically it's not any kind of official, but my intent is to include fan translations to all of the above under those edition categories where (a) we can get away with it, and (b) the translations have made effort to be faithful to the thing they're translated from. There may be some errata where errors have crept in until we can get them fixed.

When I get there I might need some help tracking down the scans and recreations that never made it to the Inn's page, as well as in many cases to whom I should be giving credit for some of the scans and translations.

All of this stuff is gonna be on one page so you can see at a glance that we have versions of X edition rules in r, s, and t languages. We know u and v versions exist, but we don't have them yet.

And basically, they're going to be the best version of each we can get. If that's low res, then it's there at least. If it's 300 DPI scan, okay. If it's a digital recreation with nothing added or changed save for typos fixed … that. (Though if we have both a 300 DPI scan and a digital recreation that's smaller and prints more cleanly, I've got to think about how best to have both.)

One of the problems with the current language sites is that the British and American English sites are first-class in terms of content available, and the rest haven't been. I want to see that change. If we're all looking at the same page, maybe people will be inclined to do what you guys have been doing with Japanese, Brazilian, and other releases and fan translations.

[Kurgan]

1990 EU (UK 2nd edition) rules?

Fan translations of sets that never had them is always a cool thing. HispaZargon was pointing out discrepancies in the Remake editions vs. the classic editions in some languages.

[iKarith]

Maybe. Though at that point it starts getting a little hard to follow what's a different edition and what's a printing revision.

[Kurgan]

Yeah but we're talking some significant rule changes (not just new assets or adjusted spells and a different 1st quest), so I consider it a new edition. The EU expansions don't assume you have one or the other, that was a topic of some discussion.

[iKarith]

Yeah but we're talking some significant rule changes (not just new assets or adjusted spells and a different 1st quest), so I consider it a new edition. The EU expansions don't assume you have one or the other, that was a topic of some discussion.

As you know, I grew up with the 1989 rules (and The Maze), though in fairness we never played it as heroes were in competition with one another. It was very much a "I found it, but you can use it more than I can, so it is yours," sort of attitude. Seemed like the right spirit.

Is there a convenient summary of the changes (he asks because Kurgan's likely got it bookmarked…)

I mean in terms of the system page, my expectation is that there's a general outline for all systems, then specifics focusing on the differences between editions, then you get down to the assets:

• Rules of Play/Instruction Manual
  I hadn't intended to make the premiere rules literally their own category here, rather just an extra entry under 1989 for both versions, but I totally could as it's just an extra line in the versions matrix. Japan rules will be here as well … what I'm debating is whether to include stuff from The Quest, since that's totally a fan creation.
  
• Quest book
  Was going to have the versions with The Maze and The Trial for UK rules and the US version. Since Hasbro's published it literally in a version for mass printing themselves … both this and the rules are going to be available in 2021 as well. Japan's quest book will also be here, with whatever translations we've currently got by the time I get around to it.
  
  Additional resources … The Maze and The Trial separately from their books. Perhaps some translator's pack we can improve over time with SVG or EPS files to produce a translated Quest Book in your favorite art style. How best to do that I'm not sure … I'm going to need feedback from people who are capable of producing such things as to what the best formats and things are for doing it.
  
• Game Screen
  Classic artwork front, possibly higher resolution than we've had before if someone out there is willing to help us get clean scans to help improve what we've got. Back in original instructions form and later useful form, with translations.
  
  I don't have scans of the 2021 version yet, but I intend to add those to the archive, but we can't post links to them unless we somehow obtain permission to actually do 2021 gamepiece translations.
  
• Character boards
  
  Both styles that exist. If someone creates a modern art style version of the character boards for some reason (I don't think that's necessary), I'll add 'em. Would like to have a translation kit as before for people to make the boards in their own language or create new characters. That means taking the various versions and layering them on top of each other to remove the text and character artwork, then "repairing" the missing bigs of background and … y'know what, how best to do that is probably best left for later and another thread. Those of you who are possibly able to help with this probably already have some idea of how to do it.
  
• Cards
  Unsure how I'm going to divide these up, but I am going to divide them. Part of that is that I'm somewhat unsure the best format(s) to put them in, and that might affect the best way to divide them up. We'll have to see.
• Other components
  Like with the current page, I intend to have as many components of the game as possible in as many languages as possible. I understand we now have 3D print files for some or most of the minis … or suitable proxies. Those that we can post, I'll post. The specific Oldhammer sculpts use for the HQ game were released under MB's copyright, but others they were based on aren't, so we'll have to be careful. Original oldhammer style sculpts made of the HQ figures belong to their creators who may or may not want us hosting them. I'm sure some folks would appreciate 3D printable rats if someone's got a bendy resin to print them in, and furniture parts would be nice too.
  
  Again, I can't post links to any 2021 stuff that hasn't been released by Hasbro for all online … but I can archive it for the future.
  
  Oh, I do want to still have the leaflets and promo material. And possibly full-res box artwork if we can find/create/restore them. Let's preserve it all since Hasbro can't make the old stuff anymore … and make sure none of the new is easily lost to time as some of the old doubtless is today.

What about the Mythic exclusive stuff? Or new expansions large and small? Daedalus and I were discussing that yesterday … they're going to need their own pages. I don't have that content, so I can't make scans of it. (DO NOT POST THEM HERE, again…) But if some of them wind up in my hands … I'll have more options for laying out low res graphics of bits so you can see what was included. Intentionally nothing that'd let you reproduce full quality replacements/replicas can be on or linked to from the page … but the low res stuff may be enough to let you proxy the heroes and monsters in your own adventures. C'mon, you're all dying to run that game with four Orc Bards…

That's what I've got in mind: Preserve the old, allow people to make new content for their old or new copies of the game, and make it as easy as possible to create components translated into your language if Hasbro hasn't.

[HispaZargon]

I agree with Kurgan. I think 1990's European 2nd Edition added enough changes to the original one to be considered another version of the game rules. In my opinion, have been existed up to five different versions of HeroQuest rules, which are the following ones:

- 1989 1st European version, released in several languages (English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, etc.)
- 1990 2nd European version, released I guess in the same languages as 1st Edition. This rules version was re-released in Europe in 1992 for Advanced Quest edition of the game, again in several languages.
- 1990 American version, originally released in English for North America. This version was also released in Portuguese in 1994 for Brazilian Edition.
- 1991 Japanese version, only released in Japanese language.
- 2021 Remake version, based in original American rules system, but released in both American and European countries.

[iKarith]

I wasn't aware that multiple language versions existed of both sets of UK rules. That pretty much settles it, we'll need to rows. You wouldn't really want to call 2021 a "2nd edition" as some people have, nor even a third or fourth. Since there are three rules sets being released in parallel it'd actually pretty complicated.

I was originally intending to keep track of them by year … but that's actually going to add to the complexity. Japan's already one Pacific island chain sized outlier in that regard, and with UK 2nd edition being released in 1990 as well … it complicates things a little. (I actually thought it too was from 1989…)

I thought I had a clever and "standardized" way to tell which version a given digital asset belonged to based on part of the file name, something like TOSEC tags. It'll not be done so easily, it seems.

[HispaZargon]

Yeah, I don't consider 2021's version as American's 2nd Edition, because I think it is a different case compared with original EU editions. All expansions released in Europe during early 90s I guess were fully compatible with both 1st and 2nd EU editions, but in case of 2021 remake, I am not sure if all the expansions they are going to release in the following years will be also fully compatible with 1990's 1st American edition. I bet they will not be, so that's the main reason I think we should consider the 2021 as a fully different rules system than 1990's American one.

[iKarith]

Yeah, I don't consider 2021's version as American's 2nd Edition, because I think it is a different case compared with original EU editions. All expansions released in Europe during early 90s I guess were fully compatible with both 1st and 2nd EU editions, but in case of 2021 remake, I am not sure if all the expansions they are going to release in the following years will be also fully compatible with 1990's 1st American edition. I bet they will not be, so that's the main reason I think we should consider the 2021 as a fully different rules system than 1990's American one.

The 2021 edition kind of gets to be its own thing just because all of the formats of everything are different. Bigger minis, bigger board, bigger cards, a couple new tiles for which we have no purpose. (Maybe it'll be put to some? Maybe not…) More heroes (granted it's stuff we homebrew anyway, but it's canon now) … The text of the rules might be only slightly changed, but literally everything else about the physical game has been altered to fit with modern manufacturing and art standards.

The thing is … naming the files on the server. Now, if we're going to have eventually 14 (or more) translations per edition, there's gonna need to be another level of subdirectory there than just "downloads/system/" … See what I mean with just the English versions and Japanese for the Japanese book:

downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_en-1989(Premiere).pdf
downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_en-1990(UK).pdf
downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_en-1990(US).pdf
downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_ja-1991(JP).pdf
downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_en-fan-1991(JP).pdf
downloads/system/HQ-Quest-Book_en-2021.pdf

That's six. As I said, most of the 11 other languages got at least one version of UK rules, but US rules were already regarded as "more advanced" (read: harder), so there would've been interest in translating those to other languages. May have actually been done on HQ forums in those languages, I don't know.

That's gonna be a lot of space because each of those quest books is gonna be like 85MB as all images. And you've gotta keep the image scans of the ones we have if you can. If you don't, people are gonna riot. But that's not the version I'd like to encourage you to download. Instead, I'd like to do a Phoenix and recreate the original documents, except in a way that allows us to just translate the text and specify the fonts to use and most of the work of converting it to that language is already done.

That's currently a far future project … my hands are full enough already.