Thinking outside the box
Thinking outside the box by @ragukokarn

Not meant to replace the use of the "wish list time" thread. Go there with your ideas first. This should serve a different purpose and be more of a brainstorm out of pocket area with as absurd range as possible. Mainly my own ideas to start with as I come up with them, but I welcome everyone else to join in if they wish. Don't mean to steal anyones thunder, just had this idea for a while.
Decided to do this a little differently to create an atomic pseudo thread that will not spill over into the forums.
Instead of clogging the forum with levels of crazy never seen before, clog my submission with additional ideas if you wish.

Because I am not a particularly well spoken person in a language that is not my first one, please consider some of the derps and quirks to be a consequence of language barrier rather than a mental one :)

Preface:
I have been thinking about where we are heading and what will be of importance for the sustainability of this amazing platform.
Other than user influx and engagement, a good and easy to use platform is key.

One of the direct comparisons to side7 will always be deviantart. The reason is because - let's be genuine here - it used to be really good. If not the best depending on what metrics you use and when/how you used it. Then they did very badly and the rest is a flaming dumpster fire of dysfunctional modern design history aaaa. I'll leave it at that.

So the "simple" goal is to make an even better site and community than that. Not a copy, but an even better one.
When I say better, I mean with features and tools (etcetera) that are unique to this platform. 
We don't need an exact clone of deviantart. We need the things it was good at and the things we missed having that could have been even better. The less usefull stuff we'll just not even bother with. This progression is already happening on side7 which leads me to think about the next step to take it even further.

There are limitations of course, but the general idea is for us to think outside the box and be a little playfull. Imagine having no restrictions what so ever. Not just "what did xyz have" but also "what if we had something completely different that doesn't even exist?".
That is the purpose of this. To gather those kinds of ideas that are unfiltered and unhinged. Ideas are not needed to be good or usefull. Just inventive enough to crack the shell for new ideas, is what I am saying.

I know. This is kind of complicated. Because a frame of reference is always going to make it hard and stop any completely radical ideas from spawning or copy something existing. Often these ideas become very micro detailed rather than macro concepts. But let's try it out without the need to explain "how" or "why" at this point. 

Main part for teal deers:
I have divided these into 4 categories. Tools, community, toys and absurdities. There is obviously not a strict discrepancy, have mercy and don't @ me.

Tools:
Being able to post HTML pages as submissions
Sandbox area where you can try all sorts of things out at
Audio visual post where you can attach optional sounds to your images/writings
A "bookmark" popup that allows you to go back to something
On desktop: right click integration for quick access stuff
Create a slideshow feature
Being able to drag and drop virtually anything you want for doing stuff

Community:
A separate market section that will have all sorts of commerce for commissions, resources and all that
Collaboration folders for sharing an art piece with more than one artist is working on (kind of like cloud storage)
Weekly/monthy spotlight of an artist to get to know them better
Multi language support
Introduce more intresting art categories like programming, skinning, game mods (...)

Toys:
Being able to adopt a site pet that you can interact with
A mini games section for passing some time (including the obviously comming side7 game...?)
Optional screensaver that kicks in after a few minutes of inactivity
"Make me an oc" generator
On desktop: Draw your own mouse cursor that your personal page will use

Absurdities:
A MIDI composer/sound tracker to create your own page backgroud music
3D printer integration
Easter egg hunting and creating
Mario Paint integration

You have more inventive things on your mind? Don't be shy. Bring them on here if you like! But rather in the "wish list time" thread if they are actually good suggestions 😛


If you wish to be an obvious troll here, knock yourself out. I'll kek all the way to delete comment land where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.

Category:
Rating:
Everyone
Class:
Finished Work
Submitted:
152d31m ago
Tags:
Other Work By @ragukokarn

Comments & Critiques (34)

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Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 04:58 PM

Tools:

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 09:10 PM

@ragukokarn:

✴️ Color combination generator, kinda like this one I borrowed from elonbird - copyright by idontknowanditsjustabunchofcolorswatches

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 09:51 PM

@ragukokarn

✴️ Side 7 browser extension 

Imagine having a little toolbar or whatever for quick access to stuff onsite. I wanted to make a mockup to convey this idea and why it may be a decent enough idea but maybe later.

Posted: Tuesday, 25 June, 2024 @ 05:15 PM

@ragukokarn: Seconding my support of posting HTML pages as posts. It'd be cool to post CYOA stories made with Twine, TiddlyWiki, or other "cram everything cool into a single webpage" type programs.

In addition, I'd like for there to be a way to batch pre-fill in draft submissions with a text file. When entering in a lot of data (like for migrating between sites, for example), it's often easier to prepare all of that information beforehand instead of flipping back and forth between the original gallery and Side7. I'm not sure how to counterbalance this tool idea with spam throttling.

Finally, a way to convert a group of Side7 posts into an easily readable epub would be cool. There was another artsite I remember having this feature, but I can't remember its name.

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 04:58 PM

Community:

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 04:58 PM

Toys:

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 04:49 PM

@ragukokarn: "Toys"

this might be me being a pain in the butt because this was already patiently discussed with me earlier and the ways in which it just might not be feasible but I would be all over an "editable" branch of oekaki here. 👀 this is a comparison to a website that's not DA however; this is me coming from my experiences with oekaki over on "chicken smoothie," where oekaki can be posted to an "editable" forum - (i.e, you can draw something, post it, and other people can come along and click a button that opens a new canvas for them to create their own version of the drawing, pre-loaded with what you already put into the file.) 

I have used this on CS to create oc-makers, room-builders, birthday-cake-makers, banner-makers, etc. it is SO MUCH FUN. and if we had it here we could use it to make things like oc-makers exclusive to side7. >:] and people do come to platforms solely for easy art tools sometimes!

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 09:39 PM
Rating: 4

@ragukokarn: How about a drawing idea / art prompt / writing prompt generator alongside a character creation generator? A site that used to have it before it shut down was Wysp, I believe. It's an underrated feature that not many art websites possess, despite being an essential tool for any artist, especially to ward off creative block. Aside from dedicated sites, one of the only websites I know with a feature like this is CharacterHub. To add more uniqueness, users could select a category such as objects, creatures, environments, situations, aesthetics, themes, etc. That way, it can function as a designer prompt generator & a general idea generator that could apply to existing characters (including personal characters that have already been created/designed). More art websites could definitely use one and I believe it could be a good addition to Side7! Especially since, to my knowledge, deviantART had never added one and still hasn't yet. This could be among the first art websites to integrate a feature like this (that still exists, that is).

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 10:33 PM

@ragukokarn: A puzzle lounge! Something like a chatroom/oekaki board area where we could create an interactive, digital jigsaw puzzle from our artwork. A single person could play alone, or others could join in and help to assemble it. The puzzle artwork (or photography) could be pulled from a site library of user-submitted works that meet certain requirements, such as dimensions, resolution, and which have been correctly tagged and rated. Square, circular,  portrait, and landscape options should be available, so users could decide which layout works best for their phone, computer, or tablet. The number of pieces should be customizable, also.

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 11:13 PM

@ragukokarn: A lightweight music app could be fun. Just a simple piano, perhaps, that users could play either by clicking keys with a mouse, using their computer's keyboard, or by touch, for devices that support such input. A piano would be a good starting point, and maybe after it was thoroughly bug tested, other instrument tones and layouts could be added. If those things work smoothly and don't completely crash Side7, a Jam Room could be the next step. Multiple users could collaborate together in a music making session.

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 01:18 AM

@ragukokarn wrote:

Toys:

 

A daily login streak micro/mini game. If a user logs in consistently and clicks on a daily streak link, it would generate one point of progress towards a goal each day. Examples of goals could be a seed that represents a plant, an egg that represents an animal, or another small item to represent the starting point for a crystal or mushroom or a fancy badge. I'm imagining pixel art, and keeping the images small (300×300 pixels, maybe) so that they would all always be the same size. Depending on each goal, a certain amount of daily check-ins would be needed to germinate, incubate, sprout, hatch, bloom, grow, and reach its final form. The current/active goal item could either be displayed on the user's profile page, or, if that's a pain to add to the site code, it could be kept on a newly created tab of their account for such things.

 

A user could only hold one active goal at a time. If they miss a day, nothing happens; unless there is a hard mode or ultra tricky item, which would cause the goal to fail and be lost, if the creator has a sadistic streak. After the goal is fully completed/acheived, the item could be moved from the "active goal" zone to a newly created tab on their profile which lists their successes, like a trophy display case. The items would appear in chronological order, like how our art submissions appear in our gallery, and each would include stats about when that goal was started and completed.

Side7 artists could apply to submit their own hatching login creatures, and those that are cleared for being of decent quality would be made available in the Credits Store. Artists would be agreeing that their creation was made in support of the site, with no compensation expected, and all proceeds/credits would be paid to Side7. There should be a limit on the maximum price, perhaps no more than 50 credits at most. The artist could set their own rules about how many daily clicks are required to unlock the next stage, how many stages there are, when it's available (for example, some goals might only be purchaseable during the Month of December, or they only appear in the Credits Store during full moons). They would be account-bound an untradeable.

 

For no-cost starting options, there could be goals that are claimable upon completing other small tasks, such as a site orientation, for making a certain number of forum posts, as an annual birthday gift, and for Side7's anniversary.

 

There wouldn't be very many limits on what could or couldn't be created. Someone could make something that begins as an egg, turns into a fish, and becomes complete as sushi. Someone could make a teddy bear that gradually becomes very creepy looking, sprouts claws, and drips blood. Simple animations could be allowed, if the artist feels like putting in that much effort.

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 01:47 AM

@Cynicallia: Re: daily login streak tamagachi thingy

Some items might have a small chance to be of an alternate form. For example, something that normally evolves like Seed > Vine > Grapes > Jelly could have a one-in-ten chance to instead evolve as Seed > Vine > Grapes > Wine. Why that particular example? Uh.. I dunno, it just felt like the easiest way to explain it. There would be no indication that it was a rare form of the item until after it reached the point of revealing itself.

 

+ also, obviously, there would be rules in the application process that discuss Copyright law. Nothing based on pre-existing, Copyrighted characters or franchises, or based on characters that the artist doesn't own and can't legally offer for sale. I could, as an example, make a special goal to celebrate my own birthday, and set the rules so that it's free, but only awarded to users who login during that week. It might feature Wizl, the feral/chibi form of my main character, Nova, going through the steps of sprouting a birthday party hat, and finalizing with her eating a sausage. There could be a fifty percent chance that it has her snowy alternate "Snizl/Snova" colors instead of the usual green. Since she's my character, I could legally consent to allowing her to appear as a redeemable Side7 asset. If she was still being portrayed in the Mobian style, as she was when I initially created her, that would not be allowed because I don't have any legal claim to any part of the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. But, since I've overhauled my characters and updated them to my own style, removing all previous fandom lore from their story and adventures, they are 100% mine.

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:01 PM

@Fihyn:

That sounds like fun! It is a bit like the shared collaboration idea but with a more specific tool dedicated to it. I don't really see why an alternative to this - or even this exact thing - couldn't work here?

It would essentially be like an on site app just like the one already available that could open a document file instead of an image (or both) in my mind.

This got me thinking. Couldn't something like Photopea be used in the same way with some extra steps or workarounds..? It is not as stream lined or integrated as you describe the feature of course.

Not the same but kind of possible maaaybe?

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:12 PM

@Grimmgall: This is a great idea in concept! I wouldn't quite know how that would work exactly, but I can cetainly see what you mean. The prompt idea could be somewhat "easy" to do with some database and random number generator (probably more sophistication that that) where 3 or more keywords are put next to eachother and result in some intresting prompt. That shouldn't at all be complicated (in my mind, not a developer lol).

The character generator would be trickier if it were to output an image. A textual representation of the same thing would not be as hard I suppose.

I wanted to sketch some sort of mockup of this idea just get a sense of what that would look like. I'll see if I can do so soon so we can further this idea.

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 10:49 PM

@ragukokarn:

✴️ Badges/trophies and collectibles. Just giving this already mentioned idea another level of detail because it is fun to think about it and what kind of potential it has. I for one just love this whole collect-a-thon. Using the emojis here just to have something that I don't need to flesh out myself. Wether this is at all possible or not.. well, let's just imagine for a little.

💯 Artist posted 100 works of art! Amazing!

🧐 Artist has a good taste! Favourited 100 pieces of art!

🎶 Artist posted music or sounds!

🦖 Artist being here for more than a year!

🎨 Artist is using the tools of the site to make art

🍄 Artist have an extended gallery

 

ragukokarn 🧐🎶🍄 (example on profile page)

 

Posted: Wednesday, 19 June, 2024 @ 11:27 AM

@Grimmgall: Thanks for posting this. It has reminded me that I need to update my ★ OC Social ★ group. It was created with those ideas in mind, both to suggest prompts and to promote open collabs. Anyone can feel free to submit a challenge to the group.

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 04:59 PM

Absurdities:

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 09:44 PM

@ragukokarn:

✴️ Winamp skins section! Side 7 is where art meats application.

This may not be quite as absurd as it seems with the open sourcing of winamp coming soon and retrograde post streaming phase that is slowly picking up. Just speculation but we may actually be going back to something of the past for real.

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 06:27 PM

Ah, so this is the "fantasy football" to the league astrologists? ||||||:^{3> You may want to plug this in the thread and/or ask if BK would like to link it in the OP, so it reaches the right traffic.

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 06:36 PM

@Thorvald:

I was hoping to randomly snag someone along with my kind of good click-baity image :) I told BadKarma on discord about doing this and explained a little why I wanted to test this out. Wether it is to be connected to the thread or not, we'll see. If I don't get any sporadic ideas here, I will keep filling it up with my own insanity as I figure things out. It serves both purposes. (psssst! You should definitely pitch setting a side7 game development crew up!)

Posted: Sunday, 16 June, 2024 @ 09:39 PM

@ragukokarn: (yeah I wondered if that was a call-out XD )

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 10:03 PM

@Thorvald:

This post was/is mentioned in a news announcement (well, duh) so now ideas are popping in here. It didn't go as neatly as I hoped for, but it is working atleast :)

Posted: Wednesday, 19 June, 2024 @ 06:20 PM

@ragukokarn: Moments like this I'm really feeling the lack of multilevel comment nesting. :P

...HMMMM...

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 10:17 PM

It is important to me, personally, that with whatever may happen, a simple experience is always still possible. I use anti-trackers, popup blockers, and other privacy centric tools. I don't like sites with a lot of non-optional bells and whistles. Disabling frivilous and invasive code often leaves me with broken or barely usable sites, but I would rather have a broken toy than one which attempts to take hold of my motion controls, or discover my location, or lag my system with its heavy memory requirements.

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 10:41 PM

@Cynicallia:

That is a very good point indeed. I did not even consider this kind of angle here, so that should definetly be something to keep in mind with what ever (if anything) can be thought up here. I instantly imagined a little switch where you can turn the site from  "classic" to "advanced" mode or something like that just so there can be as broad of a use for the site as possible even with an extended feature set.

I don't know what is technically feasible, but I think having some sort of control over the feature set for making the experience customizable for all sorts of needs and wants without forcing anything is really a good principle.

Obviously we don't want to overdo things and create chaos "just because", that is not the amount of imaginative I thought of. (That would be like deviantart for sure.)

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 11:05 PM

@ragukokarn: I still experience jarring flashbacks to Gaiaonline whenever I hear fireworks.

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 11:17 PM

@ragukokarn: A Gambling House, where players could wager their Side7 credits in a game of cards. Granted, anything of that nature is risky due to legal issues, and the very real possibility of gaming addiction, buuuut.. why not mention it?

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:17 PM

@Cynicallia: Now that is thinking outside the box. There  is some dark sense of humor going on in my mind about this one. It would be very funny if this could be a thing. It is just a tiny bit controversial perhaps :D

Posted: Monday, 17 June, 2024 @ 11:18 PM

(I do apologize if my comments aren't going where they're supposed to. I tried to keep them as replies to your topics, but I'm on my phone and it's possible that I'm misclicking. Sorry!)

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:14 PM

@Cynicallia: No worries :) I put those categories that more as a help to organize thoughts a bit. It is already rather chaotic, so eh x)

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 12:32 AM

pretty much anything that old!Deviantart used to have, but no longer exist in current deviantart

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:42 PM

@Masonicon: I think that is pretty much where we are going. That is what most suggestions have been about - trying to get all the good things back in place. So I don't doubt side7 will have nearly all of those things in a few more updates.

There will be limitations because this is just a one single guy developing the entire platform and some services would require hefty investments (I imagine). Still - most things are plausible to implement in one way or another.

Posted: Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 @ 08:37 PM

This comment section is already a madhouse - I love it!

Posted: Wednesday, 19 June, 2024 @ 11:29 AM

@Cynicallia: Of course I forgot to insert the link. 🙃

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