Icons for The Sounds Resource?

[Garamonde]

what if you don't know anything about the game you're ripping from, though, and there aren't any pictures of any suitable in-game objects especially for those real obscure games?
I'm just coming up with possible issues to iron out.
I mean, don't get me wrong, icons would LOOK nice but may cause unnecessary issues at the same time.

[Ton]

True. Dammit.

[Dazz]

I think a decision has been made. And I agree with it.
Games get icons, archives do not.

[Petie]

I feel like the issues of an icon being very difficult to find would be extremely few and far between. To me, it seems senseless to set up every other aspect of all four sites nicely and then leave this one detail out. Yes, it would be a big undertaking up front and may have little moments of difficulty in the future but for the most part, it doesn't seem like it would really be much of an issue.

[redblueyellow]

I feel like the issues of an icon being very difficult to find would be extremely few and far between. To me, it seems senseless to set up every other aspect of all four sites nicely and then leave this one detail out. Yes, it would be a big undertaking up front and may have little moments of difficulty in the future but for the most part, it doesn't seem like it would really be much of an issue.

The main issue that I see is that I remember some sound files such as "Footstep noises" that I feel would be very difficult to translate into an icon. I'm sure that character voices and such would be easy, but others would not.

Also, audio isn't a visible thing. But I feel like instead of an icon, maybe a preview of the sound file would better suit the Sounds Resource? (i.e. similar to how iTunes has the small button to listen to a segment of the song)

[puggsoy]

I can kind of see where Petie's coming from, and while I can imagine lots of sounds that would be difficult to give icons, I do think it would be cool to at least give it a go. We could have a sort of "Sounds Resource Icon Project" and see how many icons we can make for sounds.

Or, we could also just have a generic image used for icons of sounds that we can't find an icon for, like a speaker or something. As Petie said, these would probably be really few and far between.

[Petie]

The main issue that I see is that I remember some sound files such as "Footstep noises" that I feel would be very difficult to translate into an icon. I'm sure that character voices and such would be easy, but others would not.

Also, audio isn't a visible thing. But I feel like instead of an icon, maybe a preview of the sound file would better suit the Sounds Resource? (i.e. similar to how iTunes has the small button to listen to a segment of the song)

This, of course, is just a quick example but I think it shows my point quite well - even obscure concepts like footsteps wouldn't be terribly difficult to find.

I can kind of see where Petie's coming from, and while I can imagine lots of sounds that would be difficult to give icons, I do think it would be cool to at least give it a go. We could have a sort of "Sounds Resource Icon Project" and see how many icons we can make for sounds.

Or, we could also just have a generic image used for icons of sounds that we can't find an icon for, like a speaker or something. As Petie said, these would probably be really few and far between.

Thank you. I was pretty much thinking the same thing. Generic icons as placeholders and rarities where an icon really is impossible to come up with (though I honestly doubt that will ever happen) and a small project to get the site up to speed icon-wise. There are 382 games and 2,620 files that need icons created for them so I didn't expect this to be an overnight thing but with a little help from the community, it really shouldn't be a difficult goal to achieve.

I realize I'm pushing this kind of hard, and against popular opinion at that. I'm not by any means saying that it has to be done, just expressing my opinion that it would improve the site. I'm rather proud of my work on the new system and while I think the text mode feature is great, I hate to see this one aspect differ from the rest of the network when it really doesn't need to. To me, it makes tSoR look like it's of lesser importance - the home page just looks less interesting without images and I feel like that might drive less people to take advantage of what it offers.

[Nero1024]

A file list preview listing all of the files in an archive would be nice (or better yet be able to download the individual files w/o having to download the .zip file).

Example:

Code:

-Archive.zip
├ -FolderWithSounds
│  ├Sound001.wav
│  ├Sound002.wav
│  └Sound003.wav
├ +SomeOtherFolder
└Readme.txt