maybe it would make sense to post about this
so I like to have my "secret projects," things which will be publicly posted when they're done (or otherwise at some later point of development), because I value the experience of suddenly having a Big and Complex thing dropped onto the internet to discover. but I also value talking about what I'm working on, and there's probably some "good practice" in posting consistently about my work. and, like, I have other projects I can stay quiet about. I think this one is at a point where I can present it in a wip form.
so of course you know about The Concert. that's my sprite animation machine where the Sunsetters (my fictional band of OCs) plays Sunsetters songs (midi music written by me and my friend). I'm working on a v2 of it right now which will be fleshed out contextually, with some new cool features for the animation itself. that's not ready. that's not gonna be posted until it's ready. that's not what I want to talk about.
let me tell you about The Circus.
Sunset Circus is an "internet forum" from the "2000s." it is where "fans" of the "Sunsetters" gather to talk about their "favorite band."
it has skins:
it has threads:
it has user profiles:
and, crucially, it is 100% fictional.
the Sunsetters are just midi music, they don't exist. but the artistic point of the Sunsetters Project is to pretend their music is real rock music played by real people. and a real rock band from the 2000s, particularly one that makes elaborate prog music and concept albums like Sunsetters do, would have a fandom. and that fandom would gather on the internet to discuss.
so, I did the natural thing: I decided to build an entire fictional forum.
I spent about a week figuring out the shell of the thing first, of course. I have enough HTML experience to know that making a page for every thread and user profile manually would be an absolute nightmare. we have programming languages for that, so I learned some basic python and made some template HTML pages that can be automatically filled out with the fictional content. this process separates the Circus into a Shell and the Content-- I can tweak the shell, the forum's appearance (and any new features, such as that search feature that doesn't work yet but I plan on making work) without risking screwing up any of the content, and likewise I can write as many threads and forum posts as I want and they will in fact just work. this system excites me. this is my playground now.
of course, it's not done. the shell is pretty advanced (as that has been my focus), but the content is like.. not even 1% written. forums are big. forums have lots and lots and lots of posts. hell, forums have lots and lots and lots of users, and I have made like.. 30. this forum does have a total span: it runs from June 2002 to like.. December 2011, before it is shut down and archived. (and we, the readers of the final product, will be reading the forum archive, hence why we can't make posts ourselves.) but I've made only a handful of threads. and also it's gonna take some higher-level planning and shit, really? I'm currently at the "wow, I have a fucking awesome shell in place for a fucking awesome idea!!! ...now where do I start" phase.
and of course I'm gonna be making threads! it will take time! a picture of a community will gradually form! and I'm probably gonna want to publicly post about some of the cooler things, so it does make sense to make this post right now introducing the concept. keeping this a secret project would have been annoying, not logistically but, like, in terms of pride.
I also, uh, I also have a system in place for other people to contribute to this. o:
like, as I'm automating much of this with python, the actual contents need to be written in JSON format (or, specifically, HTML nested within JSON), and yeah that's doable, but it gets in the way of the conceit of "I'm posting on a real forum!" so, during that week of setup, I also came up with two webpages that act as UI.
this is cast.html. this is where you can add fictional Users to the forum. make a username, add an avatar, decide on your role, make a signature! make as many users as you want! and then, when you're ready...
..go to office.html and make a thread! the text box is dynamic rich text (I'm using Quill, it's very robust), I wanted it to feel like what you'd see making a new post on an actual forum.
these are the tools I use too! (well, okay, I have separate offline versions of these pages on my computer, along with an offline build of the whole forum, so I can work much faster. the Circus has been a crash-course in python for me.)
so! so yeah!
that's what I'm working on now. The Circus, or Sunset Circus. technically a hypertext novel? I'm working on this concurrently with The Concert, because both are subsets of The Sunsetters Project as a whole. we're into phase 2 of the sunsetters story-- this is the part where we flesh out the world! even The Concert is there to flesh out the world, it gives you a visual performance to help you pretend that Sunsetters are a real band, to help you imagine what fans in this world are seeing.
do you want to see the forum itself? or try out the user/thread builders? well, there are URLs in the pictures above, so your first task is to get those URLs yourself and plug them in. :3
