Credits................ who is responsible for this?

Icon Guide................ what all the icons are supposed to mean

Construction Details................ how this gets done

Contributions................. hey, any help I can get, eh?

Credits

Design, Art, HTML writing, Source Writing, Maintenance, anything else that needs doing
Barry Beldam, Jr

Metroplex Co-Development
Eric Graves

Contributed Content
Wes Knight
Jeff Tomaselli

Development Assistance
John Day
Ryan Anderson
BlueMax, for pointing out that S.F. is north of L.A.
Rob S. Rice, for correcting my atrocious Latin

I have gathered from some feedback and E-Mail that some people were under the impression that I have a team working on this. In fact, there is no staff, just little old me, but I certainly don't work in a vacuum. Various people have helped, contributed, suggested and encouraged since I have started. I only wish I had space to thank everyone.


The Icon Guide

This section explains what all the icons mean (and yes, they do mean something). Hopefully the icon system allows users to more easily navigate, helping to define how the source material they lead to is categorized.

NETBOOKS
Netbooks are defined as stand-alone environments. The Dimensions Netbook Arcadia, for example, contains its own world data, OCC's, equipment, magic, etc., and can be the basis, on its own, for an entire campaign.


BACKGROUND INFO
Background Information files include data which adds to the game in question, but which does not offer any hard and fast rules. Timelines, social information, and the like fall into this category.


SUPPLEMENTARY RULES
The opposite of Background Info, Supplementary Rules include specific rules for the game system. New weapons and rules designed to plug gaps in official works are categorized as Supplementary Rules.


HEADINGS
Headings are pages which lead to other pages, largely for organizational purposes. This icon is also used to designate Link pages.


SYSTEM PAGES
System pages are things like this Help section; that is, info on the Realm of Hades itself, and not any particular game.

THE HEADER

At the top and bottom of almost every page, is the following header:



This bar makes it easier to navigate the Realm. Given that it composes 360 odd files spread across 3 servers, steps like this are absolutely required.

Return to Realm: This link will take you back to the main page of the Realm.

Return to Rifts: This link shifts depending on where you are. It will return you to the main subsection you're in.

Help: The help button takes you to this help section.

E-Mail: Quick link to drop me a line. I love getting mail, even if it takes me forever to get back to you :-)

Building the Bar

The guide bar at the top & bottom of the pages is actually six discreet graphic elements, drawn as one and subsequently cut up so that I could link to them. They are each defined in terms of percentage of the screen (%screen=apparent graphic width/apparent screen width) so that they should go from corner to corner, no matter what resolution you view them with.


Construction

Just in case you were wondering . . .

This page is initially written in ASCII Dos Text. Once completed, the various sections are converted to HTML by hand. This is because, after all, HTML editors are immoral.

Graphic elements are composed in Autodesk Animator Pro. This excellent program came out many moon ago but is still, for my money, the best Gif-Slinger going. Hand-drawn graphics are scanned in on my trusty Dexxa 8.5x11 flatbed and manipulated on Graphics Workshop, an absolutely incomparable program whose shareware version can be found on Tucows, which is produced by a Canadian company, which works for me.

The Realm is currently rather large and growing, and spread over three servers; Geocities, Tripod and the Wave server of Cogeco Cable in southern Ontario. The front end of the page is on that server, since it's so damn fast, being hybrid coaxial cable and fibre optic. Snazzy.

NOTE: Recently, Geocities has begun putting little floating geocities logos on member pages. This irritates me, so I've deep-sixed them.


Contributions


I'm more than happy to include the works of others in the Realm. However, if you want to send me something, please take a look at the following guidelines first.

• Always send your work in ASCII Dos Text (.txt) format. Preferably, attach it to an e-mail message describing what it is. If you have graphics you want to include with it, describe them in the message but don't send them along just yet.
• If you want to contribute something other than written articles, drop me a line and talk to me about it.
• Anything of yours which I include will have your name and e-mail address on it unless you specify otherwise. At any time, you can ask me to take it down, and I will. I'm just hosting it; the rights to it belong exclusively with you.
• If, for whatever reason, I don't want to put your contribution up, I will always explain why. Don't take it personally if this happens; it's not a criticism of your work, or of you yourself.

As always, comments and suggestions are appreciated. You can get a hold of me at hades@cgo.wave.ca.