Episode 265 - Drunk Duck updates and the future
Apr 4, 2016
For Quackcast 265 I wanted to steer the direction toward the idea of future fixes and features for Drunk Duck! We talked a bit about the 2nd wave of fixes that will be happening now- HippieVan worked to gather people's suggestions for the most important bugs that needed fixing (with our limited funds), and features people want added, and then did a survey to find what people though were the highest priority. It was a lot of work and took a few weeks to come up with the results. Bellow is a summery of what she learned:
Topics and Show Notes
Top results in bug fixes:
- Numerous issues with pre-uploaded comics – 61%, 14.5 points
- When browsing the “comics” tab, the first page of comics is listed by rank, after which it switches to alphabetical. – 32%, 6.5 points
- Multiple page/bulk uploader sometimes ends up with pages out of order. – 25%, 4.5 points
Top results in new features:
- A reply feature for comic comments. – 21%, 5.5 points
- Improve the comic search function – 21%, 4.5 points
- Add the option to choose the exact time/hour when pre-uploading comic pages. – 21%, 4 points
- Active/On Hiatus/Complete tags for comics – 18%, 4.5 points
- More options/more customization for page layout – 21%, 3.5 points
“Specific results aside, it looks to me like the main issues people are concerned with generally are: pre-uploaded comics, dealing with comments, and browsing via the ”comics“ tab. Issues concerning the front page were surprisingly not in any of the top results - I suspect partly because most of the survey-takers are heavy users who don't rely on the front page as much as newer/more casual users.”
Though in all we had about 17 bugs on the list that people wanted fixing. I put all the priority ones at the top of the list but also kept the rest on there because I'd prefer bugs are fixed no matter what. Unfortunately when I gave that list to Alexey, our programmer he said that just fixing all the bugs would eat up most of the budget with very little left over for features (which are a lot more complicated to work on). I might ask him to drop some of the bugs in favour of a couple of the features though because that's really what people would prefer to see added to the site: something new, visible, a tangible benefit.
On that subject though we would REALLY love to get into planning for the future features for DD! The sorts of things we're talking about for THAT are BIG changes: like changing the front page to modernise it; choosing a better colour scheme; having a really useful notification area for DD members that have all your info, notifications, favourites, PQs, comic comments and reply comments all in one single place so you can manage all that easily and naturally in one go-for ALL of that we need our DD community to decide what the want out of that stuff and to help design it, not have the designs just forced on them as in the past.
Above all we want to capitalise on the two things that make DD stand out above the pack: Our focus on community, and our oddball reputation as a site that welcomes and promotes the diverse and the weird, we are truly DRUNK DUCK, not really some corporate, slick “The Duck Webcomics”. We don't all think in the same way as they seem to on some comic sites, our artists don't work in the same styles; there's a slightly grungy, irreverent, off-centeredness that has always characterised the essence of DD and we'd like to reflect that in any redesign.
You can also still donate to our Indiegogo to help us with these future developments!
Gunwallace gave us a lovely track for the comic Wounds!
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Undead 20XX - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Undead_20XX/
Donate to our Indiegogo - http://igg.me/at/DrunkDuck
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Kawaiidaigakusei - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/
Pitface - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/
Featured music:
Wounds http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Wounds/, by caleb131, rated M.
- See more at: http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2016/apr/04/quackcast-265-drunk-duck-updates-and-the-future/
Episode 255 - Drunk Duck Improvement Drive
Jan 25, 2016
We're trying to fix up Drunk Duck, adding the the comic statistics back in, fixing forums, adding notifications to PQs and MORE, but we need money to do it. In this Quackcast, Ozoneocean, Banes, and Pitface talk about the improvements we want to have on DD, and what YOU can do to help us out. Please consider donating to our Indiegogo fund-raising drive to help us pay our programmer: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/drunk-duck-webcomics-improvement-drive/x/4410947#/ There are a LOT of cool perks you can have including your own Quackcast interview all about YOU, original art from The creator of Modest Medusa, Charby the Vampirate and others, a 126 page Modest Medusa comic for only $10 and much more! If you can't spare any change, please consider spreading the word to your readers. Remember, these fixes are for everyone, by donating to DD you're helping yourself. :D
Episode 184 - The Trevor Mueller Hour
Aug 18, 2014
Trevor A Meuller, author of many astounding comics including Albert The Alien, @$$hole and Temple of a Thousand Tears came on to tell us about some of the different projects he's working. Banes and I were highly impressed by his professional approach and his amazing radio voice! Trevor is a Drunk Duck graduate who you might remember working on @$$hole and Temple of a Thousand Tears in the early days, he's since moved on to bigger and better things, working with the award winning artist and colourist artist Gabriel Bautista Jr on the gorgeous all ages comic Albert The Alien. He's also involved in the great comics based educational reading initiative readingwithpctures.com as well as may other joint projects. he's definitely worth listing to for his exciting motivated approach and the advice he has to offer beginners in the field.
Episode 175 - Endings, part 2
Jul 14, 2014
Arrrr, this be the second part of our discussion on writing ENDINGS in stories of all kinds, particularly for webcomics! But we discuss a few movie and TV endings here, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, No Country For Old Men, True Detective, and Dexter to name a few. Writings endings is the hardest part of the writing process, so it's lucky we had some wise contributions from people on how to do a good job of it! As well as giving examples of likes and dislikes... This is the second in our 3 part series on endings! I must apologise for the low quality of the recording here, there were very weird delay and repeating effects going on, Banes seems to be singing his own little madrigal at a couple of points. There are a a few parts I had to rerecord later; just a warning about the change of style.
Episode 173 - The Marvelous Tomorrowcast!
Jun 30, 2014
In the AMAZING world of webcomics tomorrow Chromium printing presses will print out up to 6 pages an hour!!!! In all 3 colours! Black, White AND yellow!!! For your viewing pleasure comics from many different creators are all able to be viewed AT THE SAME TIME, fully updated every day on our state of the art pin-boards! Comic pages are affixed to a state of the art cork backed board with only the finest drawing pins and tacks! Well, that's not actually what we were talking about... In this DD community webcomics podcast of the future we talk about all the possibilities that will happen down the road for webcomics: the mobile space, more money for creators, the professional and amateur worlds of comic making getting closer and closer together, net neutrality, and the possible pitfalls that may befall us. We had some great contributions from some wise guys.
Episode 130 - The Art of Comicbook Movies
Jun 24, 2013
Banes and I talk about some of our fave comic book movies! That is, comics that have made the creative transition to the medium of film. We missed out a LOT but what can you do? It's a popular field. We discuss many modern superhero comicbook films like Watchmen, Batman, The Phantom etc, as well as non-superhero comicbook films like Brenda Starr, Modesty Blaise, Ghost in The Shell, Tank Girl, Asterix, Conan the Barbarian and so on. We talk about the different approaches they take to represent a vast comicbook cannon in the short space of 1 and a half or two and a half hours that a film goes for: sometimes they go for the origin story approach, sometimes they'll spoor the character, sometimes they'll depict a normal everyday representative adventure to show, and sometimes they'll show a condensed version of the entire story.
Episode 48 - It Came From The Internet
Oct 23, 2011
It's the horror time of year, and for once we get a Quackcast out in time for the holiday! PIT_FACE is our guest this week, and as DD's queen of horror she has plenty of expertise and opinions on the subject.
Episode 47 - The Show About Websites and Design Stuff
Oct 18, 2011
oz is the expert on this one, which focuses on advice about designing a comic website which makes your comic look good and is easy to navigate, as well as some advice about logos and branding. skool has her own opinions as well!
