For those of you who know a thing or two about web designer, servers, and coding, I was thinking about having these guys put a site together. Their price is $1650 for the initial build and $75/mo for full service maintenance. They’ve told me they can embed playable video games, hard coded into the actual site. I also wanted interactive 3d tours of the studio facility, and sketchfab. I’m going to do the studio tour and gear list like this:
CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON.
Where you click on the number in the 3d model and it opens a dialogue box explaining what stuff is and what it does.
The other thing that was really important to me was having little robots and goblins like this that you can click on and play with, without having to download an app and install it.
I also asked for payment and calendar system, and social media integration, along with an android based mobile app that connects to the back end of the site, so I can manage accounts and activity.
These guys seem to have a pretty good reputation and seem to be offering a lot for the price. Just thought I’d run it by ya’ll! Thanks.
What is this website for? Be careful not to stray too far into the gimmicky side of web site design. Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it’s a good design.
Game audio and cinematic post. I’m trying to get out of broadcast, and I’ve been moving completely away from music recording for the last few years, though I still do it for a few people. The music recording services aren’t worth advertising whatsoever. So I’m keeping all my music production gear, but not advertising the studio as a freelance service. I’m using the facility and gear to creating tracks for theater groups, film cues, or game environments.
Nothing as impressive as impressive things that don’t work. Site has twice conked out saying limits of my browser has been reached. On a killer, 16mb, ultramodern laptop.
Total wank, in other words.
Boz makes a very important point. Often times the extra frills, bells and whistles can contribute to a less practically useful site. Don’t make your site too bloated so that it takes long to load…In fact stay clear of anything excessive. Make it simple, clear and easy to navigate. That’s the most important aspect.
The price of that you mentioned seems a bit excessive to me…, but I didn’t look at all the features that you’ll be getting for that money. Maybe it’s worth it…but I’m not so sure.
?? That level of front end code writing is way over my head.
My first question would be how to migrate a fully playable game app onto a server so it can be run from different browsers without downloading natively and being installed on someones computer. I don’t want to use flash to open it as a standalone page. I want it embedded into the actual page so that as soon as the user drags their mouse over a window, they are automatically inside the game without leaving my page.
I didn’t realize this was easy to do. What would you use to host a project like this and what is the best language to write this in? Techbear said if I build it in Unity they can mount it directly on the server because of similarities in the code. What do I check to make sure the Unity 3D format is compatible with the server software so that I can mount?
The 3d studio tour with click points I can handle. And I can stream the model from sketchfab.
I’ve dealt with these fuckholes before. It was a goddamn nightmare. Broken images, broken links, and when I called them repeatedly to get them to fix it they wanted to charge me extra monthly for maintaining the site because I “exceeded my monthly allowance of repairs” by wanting the site to be functional. Be afraid. Be very afraid. That was quite a while ago, maybe they’re better?
Jonathan, I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but… you have gone mad.
I tried to click on the stupid Skokloster (I have been there in the real world) image above and my work computer hung so bad I had to pull out the power cord.
SQL and stupid 3D games.
Buy Xara Web Designer and make your own functional website with hosting from Magix. Dirt cheap, fun and it works. Focus on your core business instead of these excursions into la-la land.
Goddamit.
Sven
PS - If you REALLY want to spend money I will sell you a black box for $20,000.
I’ve never had this happen. That’s good to know…heres the thing. I assumed that most of my clients are going to have decked out computers that would easily run these graphics. I should look into this though.
This is very much not lala land. You may have missed the gist of this whole concept. I’ve been training for almost a year now to expand from a declining broadcast audio client base and a nonexistent music recording industry into the game audio post production space. It has a similar enough tool and skill set to cinematic audio to where I can use most of my current knowledge and equipment, but it has a different buyer base. The idea was to design and implement a website that would showcase audio design and implementation chops but present it in a way that was different enough to stand out from other audio designers that just use generic wordpress or weebly sites.
Again, its not lala land, because I’m absolutely certain that a sound designer with even a basic understanding of how game engines work, has a significant advantage over a sound designer that merely drops sounds from a DAW to a piece of game audio middleware. Because they can contribute to the implementation process. Believe me, there are a BUNCH of unemployed audio engineers that wish they could get into this line of work. But very few of them want to put the time into understanding graphics and code. You really bring more value to a team of a developers who are making a video game, when you can speak their language, and when they’re comfortable enough with your skill set to trust your creative ideas.
And for what its worth, I really appreciate everyone’s feedback on this so far. I’m reading these very carefully. @Midge says they’re overpriced. @Sven, you told me the sketchfab upload doesn’t work. @bozmillar cautioned me about this not being gimmicky. And my boy @Clownpenis.fart appears to have had some not-good experiences with this web dev group.
OK, as long as you know what you’re doing…
And being at the cutting edge of something has both risks and potential wins… (probably 90 to 10 per cent)
Case in point, and story that I will write soon, to everybody’s embarrassment…
The local council and the state roading authority have invested in three radar-activated and solar powered signs that warn an oncoming car by flashing a slow down or turn message, depending on speed.
At 20,000 a pop.
They were great for the first two months - then they stopped working. And only one of them because locals stole the solar panels…
So that’s $60,000 of junk decorating the roadside…
There have been a number of bad ideas I’ve tossed on the table and people were quick to tell me what was wrong with them. I don’t really…I have a hunch that game designers might appreciate an audio guy taking another step forward with my website, but I realize the importance of if I do this, it really has to be done well.
Pioneers get slaughtered - settlers prosper? Very true…in many cases, but not all
ok, wait. I may have misspoken a bit. I was looking at that 3d site you linked to thinking that’s what you were going to be paying for.
I actually looked at the developers site, and I’m a lot less skeptical. Here’s the thing when getting a website design. Designing a website is easy with wordpress themes and whatnot. What is not easy is getting the site to look and act just the way you want it to. I’ve been designing and maintaining my own site since I started, and it shows. There’s no consistency on the product pages. There’s no real reason to visit the site unless you are buying a plugin. It offers nothing to people other than a bunch of different “buy my plugins” banners.
My site is poorly designed, but it does function. If you want to have a site that is well designed and functions well, you either have to put the time in to do it yourself, or hire someone that will do it for you. $2000 is not a ton of money if it means not having to deal with formatting, content and upkeep. This is the kind of thing you have to look at as an investment rather than “how much would it cost me if I did it myself” because in the professional world, it doesn’t work to measure things by that metric.
I honestly don’t think you are going to get a design for much less than that. It doesn’t matter whether or not they are tossing up a template that they bought for $100. They would be doing work for you that you wouldn’t have done otherwise.
That’s cool! Good thoughts. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to start putting something like that together. Part of the $75/month is that they take care of tweaking it to accommodate all browser updates, hosting the videos and audio clips natively, managing the SEO, and working with me to keep content new and fresh. The idea I had tossed at them was every time I start on a new game, I can take a spaceship, goblin, robot, or helicopter out of Unity as single animated asset (with the project directors permission of course), hand it to the web developer, and say here…place this single object in black strip on my own site. Then I can announce, “Hey!! Look at this cool project I’m working with right now for the Such-and-Such game company!”. Then there’s a VERY interesting looking game piece sitting right on my site, with a link to the teaser trailer to the game.
But as you can see, these animated 3d playable game assets also make sound from right in your browser and when you drag your mouse over it you can play with it! lol. The TechBear guys thought this would be a fabulous way of keeping new and fresh content coming to the site.
As far as your website goes, I would have thought its purpose was to be a sales checkout point. How would it actually benefit you to pimp it out the bozlabs site into some uber awesome looking thing?? lol. I mean…wouldn’t it still just be an online cash register?
Ever bought a video game off steam? Their website is atrocious looking:
But it doesn’t matter because you go there to buy or download the game (as far as I can tell), not to learn about it.
Regarding your comment on the price, I was getting quoted from $5,000 - $12,000. Others offered to do a $1400-$2000 build out, but had monthly maintenance costs at $300-$400/month. Another high appeal benefit is that the Techbear contract allows me to own the right to acquire the code. So if my humble little film and gaming audio operation grows to where I can afford to in-house the IT work, I can migrate the entire site onto a private server.
@Midge said he thought this was easy to do. I wonder if he didn’t look at the full scope of the project, or else he thinks my programming chops are a HELL of a lot better than they actually are! lol.
That’s sad. Getting a site to look consistent is the easiest thing with PHP includes as tip and toe and basic HTML5.
And I was saying it’s easy building from scratch up without touching Wordpress (a nightmare on speed) or any other template led system
But I confess my skepticism to you @Jonathon may have been misplaced.
I still think those guys are throwing a line charging that much, and you will have to be making serious cash to get a return if you are charged that much.
And I have to ask you how the built in game that you’ll be using as a sample of your work will work? I mean: How will the visitor know that’s what it is (a job where you worked u=inside the coding instead of lobbing the sound onto an existing game) unless you tell them; in which case, you could be lying. You could just have embedded a game that you worked on the “old” or “easier” way.,
I was selling some fluoride free homemade toothpaste locally and hired these clowns to make a website. I was making a shitload of money, so I tried to expand and it didn’t work out. It stemmed from my hatred of all things mint flavored so mine is either coconut or cinnamon flavored. I’ve never worked for them, but I’ve dealt with them. They weren’t nasty or anything, just a bit greasy trying to raise my monthly rate to fix the site. I dumped them after four months and just sold it around town based on reputation.
Thanks.
