The New Web, One Year Later.

Published by Animelove_1105 about 10 hours ago.

One year ago today, the rw-designer website had it's biggest update. After the revival of the cursor and icon editors, it was about time the website was updated too. Most of the pages were redesigned, new features such as karma and the market came along, and despite the website being modernized similarly to the flat, simple styles of the modern web, it still held it's identity as the 20+ year old inde website that people still use today. And with that comes the frequent updates we continue to see today. More software was updated years after their previous updates, old features such as assemblers were revived and became more accessible, and more features and fun stuff were added amongst the things still existing on the website.

As I explained, a lot of things have changed since the release of the new web update. In my initial review of the update, I mentioned that were still some things to be fixed and be added. The old site's themes were gone, and there were some things to be fixed. And almost a year later, those and more were resolved. Look, themes other than the light and dark ones! And people can easily make and submit them now! Ain't that nice. Since I haven't touched my blog in a good while, I'd thought I would make a follow-up post to that review, talking about what's changed and what I think could be tweaked or whatnot.

Themes

Ah, it's nice to see themes come back. I suppose it made sense to not bring the classics back with the changes of the new web update. I do still miss the classics though. (The jellybean one was pretty neat... *sniff*, at least we have a dark mode now.) But despite that, I do like how easy it is to make and submit a theme now compared to back then. The themes have always been one of the many things that have given the style that the site was known for. And with how easy it is to get a theme of your own out there, we're more likely to get more themes in the future. We haven't gotten much of them since the chunk of them that were created since the system's initial release. Maybe I should make one sometime...

Comments, forums, and contests

Comments and forums haven't really changed much since the update. And it's been working well; I've been trying to use my up/downvotes more lately. But one thing I do want to touch on is contests.
Wuh-whaaaat??? Theme of the month is back???!?!?!?!!???!
It's really nice to see ToTM come back, and with official support as always. With Nalexnu (the former host of ToTM) basically being gone from the site, there really wasn't anything to give it life. But then, Vlasta woke up one day and decided to bring them back. And they're still being ran to this day! I've gotten back to participating in them recently, and it's been fun to finally have some ideas for new sets again. It's also cool to see that users can run their very own contests now! Well, we've always been able to, but now there's a system for it with entries and a prize pool and everything. I've been thinking about starting a contest of my own, but I don't know what to base it on, and I technically have enough buttons for a prize pool but I also want to save for a claw machine... I'll figure it out eventually.

Karma

The karma system hasn't changed a lot, it's still pretty much the same. But I do like the addition of karma blobs. I'm a fan of it's many uses. Making pets sentient, selling on the flea market for around 100 buttons, putting it in the magic bag for a bunch of goodies, etc. It's a valuable item that you can get just for being active enough.

The Market & workshop items

The market has changed a tad bit since the new web release. The most prominent one being the introduction of Ikeyyana and Dungster. Those came along with some new items as well. I think the memory game and text adventures are a good addition, they offer more things to do on the site.

Ikeyyana's selling wallpapers and pattern rollers now, which are the main way themes other than the main 3 themes are being distributed. I suppose it's kinda reasonable that themes cost buttons now (at least the theme creators make buttons out of them!), but I feel like having just those wallpapers on you is kind of risky when it comes to keeping the theme applied. Themes don't apply to the account, they apply to the current session/device, making it easily clearable. If you clear cookies or log out, the theme isn't applied anymore and you'd have to buy another wallpaper. They are pretty cheap though, but the cost does rise as you need more. If there's a single user-created theme you want to use, then get a pattern roller. They aren't that expensive, it may take a bit to get the buttons though.

The suspicious magic bag was also something that came along after the update. You put thing in, it gets deleted, and you maybe get something out of it. Interesting that it was supposed to be associated with a different character that Vlasta scrapped. I KNEW IT!!! THE MAGIC BAG IS A GAMBLING ITEM, I FRICKEN KNEW IIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!! I'm a fan of how you can get some pretty rare items out of it. Unique spray paints, a new trophy, heck, a sandpaper roll?????? I thought that was an admin item!

We also got 3 new trophies since the release of the new web, the first new trophies since Nalexnu's special theme trophies. Neat to see the regular old trophies still be around.

Now about spray paints, it's pretty cool to see some of the previously unobtainable colors become obtainable. They never really had a purpose other than being a unique color until now. It would be cool to see more of them become obtainable eventually.

It's also pretty cool to see pets become usable now after years of being useless. Well, they still don't really have much use up to the manager pets, all you can do with the normal and sentient pets is talk to them. (There's also inspiring a sentient pet to become a manager pet.) And you can sell normal pets, but not sentient ones. Huh?? But either way, neat to see them actually be usable.

Groups

Hey, people have figured out groups now! Although we have quite a few groups, not much activity seems to be coming from them. Hey, at least people are using them.

Usage of AI

Ooooh boy. This one's a tough pill to swallow.
With AI becoming a more prominent technology within the last few years, a lot of bigger sites and entities been adapting it for their own usage. That can include smaller sites, too. Starting with it's usage with the shopkeepers, AI has been used to assist with some parts of the site. Now, with how AI as been used as of late, I have a lot of risk when it comes to it's usage. A few years back, I did use it a few times to play around with the models which were still just coming out at the time. But as I grew older, and learned more about what these machines are doing behind the scenes, I drove away from the little usages I had with AI. It really doesn't seem much of a good thing to use anymore. More people are using it to completely replace human-ran jobs, spread misinformation/disinformation, make "art", ugh. Not to mention all of the environmental (it's very heavy water usage) and economic (stuff like the RAM crisis) issues it can cause.

There are ways to use the technology responsibly, though. I am glad Vlasta is being very cautious about his use of AI. He's aware that people aren't using it for good. He's only putting it in places where it can assist, not replace. It's a lot more responsible than the typical big entity shoving AI down my throat, and I'm more comfortable about that. I remember when Ikeyyana first arrived, I did start to get skeptical about how her and Scunkie's blog posts were being written. They seemed a lot more distinguished compared to how Vlasta writes. I know it's supposed to be different than the usual official announcement post, but knowing that Vlasta isn't that good with English and all that, it made me a little suspicious. Then he made that blog post confirming such thoughts. And the AI usage continued from there. Again, for the most part, AI on this site is only used on the parts that are more assistive rather than replaceable. However, there are certain uses on here I'm not as fond of.

My main criticism of it's use is on the memory game. When the memory game was first released on the site, there were two options for card art: Vlasta's Color Ideal icon set and the "Animals" set. Most of you may have seen that this "Animals" set contains AI-generated imagery. You can see some complaints about it on the game page's comments. This decision I was disappointed about. This is a site that has been focused on human-made graphic design since it's inception, and now this new thing on the site is using these images??

Things did change a little bit since the game came out on the site. We have a lot more user-made icon sets for the memory game now, and with there now being a good selection of sets to choose from, it would make sense for these "placeholder" animal images to be removed, right? Well, the default art for the practice cards were changed for logged-in users, but not for those who aren't. If you go onto the site with a fresh session, logged out of course, and go into the memory game, you can see that the animals set is applied. I feel like a random user-made set should also be applied for the memory game when you aren't logged in, otherwise newer users without an account are gonna see that and suggest that such art is what this site's all about. I really feel like the animals set really doesn't really hold much of a spot anymore. There's just about enough icon sets to be used with the game now, and it's just feels like slop amongst the rest of the sets. Also, I am aware that Vlasta mentioned that he plans on using these AI placeholders in any other customizable features he plans on adding. If it's going to save him development time, then that's up to him. Just please don't use these in more finished versions once more user-created art is available.

This type of imagery is also seen on the two currently existing text adventures. I know that the "art" is more AI-assisted rather than just flat-out fully generated as Vlasta explained, but still, I just don't feel satisfied looking at the images. That's why I like the option to hide the images in the Old Castle Treasure Hunt adventure, I feel more satisfied going through the whole thing, and I actually get to imagine what the imagery of the story is like, which makes it more fun for me. I am a bit disappointed that this option is gone from Leet Tradeguru, but if it's for keeping whatever imagery is needed for some part of the adventure then that's a bit reasonable. But at least users can make their own text adventures. However, it does take a lot more compared to things such as themes. Up until we get some easy-to-use adventure creator, it may be a long while before we get our first user-made text adventure.

Other than that, most of the other uses of AI are more fine for the most part. I do feel better knowing that Vlasta is being responsible about how he's using it.

Conclusion

Wow, that was a lot longer than I thought.
Since the release of the update, I feel like we've gotten so much compared to what we had before the update. More features to use, old features becoming more accessible, the site becoming more user friendly, the list goes on as Vlasta adds more stuff. Like before, the new web has its ups and downs. But mostly, the new changes over the past year have been pretty great! The site feels more user-friendly now, and there's more to do. I'd say that things from the update have improved quite a bit since the launch one year ago. As much as I miss the old site, I continue to enjoy the things this little site has to offer. I do hope Vlasta continues to be cautious when it comes to using AI.

In the meantime, I'll continue to regularly visit and see what's next as usual. Thanks for reading. ;)
P.S., Happy first, new rw-designer!