THIS IS A FLIGHT RISING BLOG @amazonite-fr - Tumblr Blog

Baldwin’s Bubbling Brew

The master alchemist, Baldwin, has relocated his workshop of experiments and set up a site at the Trading Post. Baldwin’s special cauldron can transmute items into alchemical compounds that can be used to materialize brand new ones. What will you drop into the brew? Click here to learn more about this update.

#my first ever liked post btw

sp1derc1der

Is there a speedrunning Hard Mode Glimmer & Gloom part of the Flight Rising side of Tumblr? Because I managed to finish a game of Hard Mode G&G within seven seconds

#my hard mode record is 4 moves but 💔 i do not remember how many seconds it was

new icon for me... welcome back belisma my love

#flight rising #frfanart #my art #was too weird not having her be my icon lol #she's my brand

fairyoctopus

#i'm saying like #if i had her job i'd have killed someone in real life by now

saltminerising

how I imagine the dev chat must be these days

.

listen i don't even smoke but at this point.

🚬🫩

you know

#flight rising #passing out metaphorical cigs to everyone who's tired of this shit #or candy if you want idk #but especially to staff because hoooooly shit

888-fr

FLIGHT RISING REFACTOR: No, you're not going back.

I am seeing a lot of people ask for a toggle or a way to go back to the old site design, in a way that implies such a thing should be easy to implement. It does sound easy to implement. We have three different colour modes we can switch between, right? We can go between mobile view and wide view? They have all the old code and assets, why can't they just let people pick in their settings to look at the old site again? It's not how it works. It doesn't really matter what your feelings about the refactor are, and I'm not going to give my opinion on it here. I just want to help people understand what exactly happened yesterday and why it's pointless to ask for it to go back.

i. HOUSE

Imagine a house.

It's an old house. It's been around for a while. It was built many years ago, and it's creaky and weird but it's our house, and we like it. There's leaks and the wood is a little aged and it stands out in the block of modern flathouses, but it's still our house.

As much as we love this house, there are issues with the house. Not everybody can get into the house, or navigate in there while they're around. There are things about this house that we can't change while it's made of the same materials that it is.

This is a structural flaw inherent to the house. The house is two-storied. Not everyone can get to the second story. In terms of the site, there were features that were unfriendly for people with visual impairment, people who could only play on their phones, etc.

ii. DARK MODE & INTERFACE

What did the old site look like? Why couldn't we have dark mode? The site was built out of layers and layers of PNGs made to look exactly like the light mode interface. All the NPC images, the old message and friend request icons, they all had white backgrounds or white fragments around the image because they were made assuming the site had a white background.

You couldn't just make the background of the site dark, because every single feature and image was created assuming the background was and would remain white.

This is why the logo was 'doubling' upon itself when the refactor first launched. The Flight Rising logo was a part of the banner image. Now the banner has been removed from the image and it's a floating element on the top of the page. This means it can react when the screen is made smaller. This is the equivalent of being able to move our lightswitch.

What did the site refactor do? Among other things, it decoupled all of these in-built images and features from each other. They added repaintable 'drywall' separate from the site's structure. This was necessary so the site could be reactive. For example, the iconic red sidebar of the page was actually a background PNG with a white part for the site content and a red sidebar, built into one single background image. Now these parts are defined with CSS, which you can think of as the 'wallpaper' of the site.

Every single surface of our house can be repainted now!

iii. Rollback or toggle to old site pls??

This is the refactored site. Among other things, it's been changed to improve accessibility for everyone. It now looks a little bit more like every other house on the block, but it is still the house that we live in. It no longer has two stories to climb. It has a ramp, so people can get in and out with ease. It even has some additional rooms, and renovation is still ongoing. (The contractors are still fixing up the washroom.)

Yes, the site is now designed to be mobile friendly. It no longer has a second floor. It's going to look 'designed for mobile' (people who can't access a second floor.) It's going to look more 'modern' (because the materials people use to build houses has changed.)

People are not used to the new site, of course. Can't they go back to the old house? Why has the door location changed? They keep walking into the walls of the new building. The light switch isn't there when they reach for it anymore. This is understandable. It takes some time to get used to living in a new house. It's a big change. You're going to be fumbling at where the light switch used to be for a long time.

You may even hate how the new house looks. You may not want to live in it anymore. But you can't go back to the old house. It isn't there anymore. You can't have a toggle, because the new site is the infrastructure uploaded to the site's servers, where it is built, and while you can change the colour of the wallpapers or even move the location of the light switch on your own, the house is rebuilt and you cannot 'toggle' it back to the old house.

The database calls, the HTML, the js on the front and backends of the site are completely different. The walls and shape of the house are different!

iv. Conclusion

There is a reason there are bug threads and feedback forums for the refactor. You still have time to request that the washroom is a different colour, or the ramp should actually be less steep because the people it's meant for can't actually use it as it was intended. But the ramp, and the accessibility features are here to stay. Don't ask for a toggle or for the site to go back the way it was. It will not be going back to the house built a decade ago. Instead, figure out why the old site worked for you while this one doesn't.

Maybe the ramp was intended for you, but you can't actually use it. Maybe the way the door is positioned now makes it actively harder for you to use the site, in ways other than 'I don't like where it is now and I want it to go back'. Ask for the site to be repainted and improved in ways that would help you.

Cutely articulates my biggest problems with the UI update

First of all, I don't mind most of the changes! I just wanted to put down a few of the things that were really bothering me (without necessarily making a whole forum thread since the forums are already going a mile a minute with complaints) (Aequorin if you're out there... you're braver than any US marine).

Problem #1: Wasted space

Lots of pages (in this case the Hoard) feel so much less grounded. There are no containers here, and a lot of empty white space – just text and icons floating in an endless void. It feels unanchored and awkward. Like a bunch of Skittles loose in my purse. I'll acknowledge that this does probably make it easier to rearrange icons when switching between desktop and mobile, but visually it's kind of a nightmare! Here's what I'd do to tighten it up:

The hoard has it the worst in my opinion, but the clan profile could benefit from a similar box around the lair location (and wasted space reduction):

Problem #2: The user info thingy

This little tab is your constant companion no matter what page you're on, so it makes sense that changing it would cause a bit of a crisis.

I don't mind most of the changes! I just think it's floating a little too far above the red bar. Again, it makes the layout feel unanchored. Also, please god let us see our exact treasure amount instead of the k sign. Not relevant to me right now because I'm broke, but please.

Incidentally, reattaching the tab to the red bar would create some room to bring back the achievements and bestiary numbers if we decide to do that. Though I personally think it would be neat if we had an easily accessible statistics button in that region, which would open a dropdown displaying numbers for dragons owned, bestiary, achievements, etc. Just my fun thought.

Bonus phone mode problem:

I'm not likely to use phone mode personally, just because I've been using the desktop site on mobile for so long that I'm used to navigating it that way. But I did check it out briefly! My only concern is how the forum topics are interspersed:

I just don't think this was the best way to merge the two columns. Hate hate hate how the flight forums are separated instead of being all in a line.

All that to say, here's my wishlist, devs please take notes:

More visual containers, especially in the hoard

Bigger text and/or smaller spaces, especially at the tops of pages

Reattach the user info (or at least make the gap smaller)

Show exact treasure/gem counts

Better forum topic arrangement

Low contrast gray theme (but I'm sure that's already in the works <3)

#flight rising #fr #not my Only problems mind you. just things i haven't seen other people mention #also devs if you ever want to take beta tester applications... i do have prior experience and i'll accept payment in gems

oasiscourt

I miss the chunk of the original sites feeling, but I think people are being really cruel for no reason. It's not even been an hour.

#i think a solid 50% of the complaints stem from the fact that this is an incredibly neurodivergent website #and speaking as an autistic individual myself. we tend to hate layout changes. and we can get very dramatic about this #i refused to update my discord app for like 2 and a half years because i hated a ui change they made #i hate to say it but. give it two weeks. you will get used to it i promise #and then you'll be able to discern the things that are actual problems

Gently takes the word "corporate" from the hands of flight rising players and puts it on a shelf

#flight rising #it's okay to not like the modern minimalist look. ok #but modern ≠ corporate. ok #i'll write out my full report after work but had to get this out immediately.

flightrising

I think we're being watched...

Video description under the cut. Discussion thread.

#ah damn another ancient #kind of burned out on them #oh well

sandcastle-clan

flight rising staff do the right thing add a solitaire-type fairgrounds game and you will be reincarnated as a grove of willow trees

realized i still have my golden bantam fangar and i could make bank off it. i like it and i like having it as an old player badge... but the idea of having all my gene projects paid for without having to work and make skins....... Tempting

#flight rising