FAF Website Main Video
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@furyritchie said in FAF Website Main Video:
@Katharsas Hosting a video of this size ourselves doesn't really suck.
- It will be cached by browsers.
- It is streamed not downloaded.
YouTube is out of the question for a background video.
You are also an edge case that blocks the existing background image. We cannot design a webpage for someone using an adblocker to block existing images.
What we can do is keep this file super small and make it so that it falls back to an image for mobile phone users. We can optimize the current fallback image somewhat too.
Our webpage i supposed to be our landing page right? This means, it is supposed to make the best possible impression the first time a user lands on it, when he has nothing in cache. And we are, unlike Youtube, not using a CDN for self-hosted.
Yes, it is streamed, and if you go down this route please make sure that an Australien user with 16 Mbit downstream shared by family can experience the page without problems (but i will assume that nobody will test that, because this is what usually happens). Most likely they will end up with a stuttering, buffering background, because a full HD video stream can easily require 5-10 Mbit.
Also the ad-blocker story was not supposed to be a "case", i just wanted to tell you that even a 2 MB image on a landing page has the potential to effectively break the page, and that we have already had problems with content being hosted by our servers being slow to download in the past.
If whatever end-result will work on 3G mobile phone in a country not close to Germany, as well as on a 3-5 Mbit desktop connection im gonna stop complaining, but this whole idea is in my mind still really bad from a technical standpoint, and likely to end up with people coding something that "works for them" an then being called "good enough".
And all of that just so that things move in the background. I really don't get it. A good web page is fast and lighweight, and does not include a auto-on video.
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@katharsas said:
Yes, it is streamed, and if you go down this route please make sure that an Australien user with 16 Mbit downstream shared by family can experience the page without problems (but i will assume that nobody will test that, because this is what usually happens). Most likely they will end up with a stuttering, buffering background, because a full HD video stream can easily require 5-10 Mbit.
The C&C demo we're testing with is 3.2mbps and Rowey has experimented with making it even lower than that.
Also the ad-blocker story was not supposed to be a "case", i just wanted to tell you that even a 2 MB image on a landing page has the potential to effectively break the page, and that we have already had problems with content being hosted by our servers being slow to download in the past.
Good call out. We're going to fix all the images because of your comment. The main image is 1.6MB when it can be 190KB. The footer image is also 1MB when it should be 100KB.
If whatever end-result will work on 3G mobile phone in a country not close to Germany, as well as on a 3-5 Mbit desktop connection im gonna stop complaining, but this whole idea is in my mind still really bad from a technical standpoint, and likely to end up with people coding something that "works for them" an then being called "good enough".
Yes it will default back to a static image for mobile phone users.
And all of that just so that things move in the background. I really don't get it. A good web page is fast and lighweight, and does not include a auto-on video.
The world has moved on from that. We want to showcase what the game is.
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- People still trying to save some traffic.
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Not even about traffic, I have like 900 mb/s internet and it still takes me 30 minutes to download 10 mb patches from the server, if this website will also be hosted on the perpetually bottlenecked server I pretty much expect a third of the US to have a problem with the video.
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@ftxcommando It will actually be substantially faster than it currently is since it streams the video.
Though we're optimising images and taking 2.6MB out of the page load so the comparison evens out once that is sorted out.
We also need to look at a CDN for at least the main faforever domain. Some of the hold up here was the possible issues with Cloudflare and MSI files but we can just move them onto a separate subdomain (edit: the main page links to github, I can't recall where the client pulls them from but putting them on a separate domain away from the webpage/news would remove that as a problem).
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@eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:
- People still trying to save some traffic.
Are you kidding me. Just because YOU have a decent internet connection at YOUR house in YOUR city does NOT mean that every other person in the world has the same experience. The internet is inherently flaky, and you must ALWAYS think about bandwidth requirements when creating something that will be served over a pipe which you have no control over.
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Ok well im glad you are making sure that the bandwith for the video is small enough. Still depends our server being fast enough, but if the images are optimized a lot, then its not gonna be much more traffic than before i guess.
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@askaholic Let's be honest, you've never been bothered by the current site before.
The site loads quickly, the picture loads gradually.I tried to block the banner, and it won't be so easy, it will take some manipulation to get to the desired element. Therefore, I don't believe the guy who blocked it all: DDD
Video will also sink gradually and it will work as it loads. But it depends on the scheme of installing it on the site.
And yes, I use mobile internet for my laptop, it uses 3G connection, and it's about 1mb-2mb at the moment, out of town and i have no problem with site loading.
As FTX said, it is not a problem with user connection. It is a slowly server work.
If you want users to see the fully load site, then make loader that will show the site after load.
as example: www.theseawebreathe.com
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@eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:
It is a slowly server work.
We should already be using a CDN and we will discuss that separately to this but it would completely remove that as a problem.
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I guess, if main idea to show gameplay to attract people, it must show also on mobiles, and best option then is just youtube player as was said before.
Something like on this good game site: https://www.factorio.com/And for background some image which will not attract any attention, just organic background
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@eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:
I tried to block the banner, and it won't be so easy, it will take some manipulation to get to the desired element. Therefore, I don't believe the guy who blocked it all: DDD
Are you are talking about me?
Do you want me to make a short video about how laughably easy it is to use uBlock origin element picker on current background image (if we ignore that i am basically a web developer so i can block whatever i want)?Browsers priority implementation (which resources get loaded in what oder or in parallel) is btw. potentially quite different, so in case of slow server you can run into some problems with certain browsers only.
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@katharsas okay, I believe you
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@katharsas what do you use the website for specifically to the point you blocked the main page image which would suggest yo me that you visit the page regularly
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A silly idea with no real benefits draws out several pages of stupid arguments, already outweighing any benefits it could provide. The website is the one area of FAF that is pretty much fine and not in need of any work. The only things broken are the clan app filters and the unit database being constantly out of date. At this point, the unit database should just be removed because it is only updated when I personally complain about it in zulip after every server update or outage.
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The website is broken in so many ways.
Logins and steam linking randomly failing very often for no obvious reason.
League stuff is catastrophic from a performance point of view (caused a few faf downtimes in the past)
Leaderboards also broke plenty of times. -
@thomashiatt said in FAF Website Main Video:
A silly idea with no real benefits
The benefits are that we modernise our website and it follows current gaming industry trends. It will demonstrate gameplay which cannot be achieved with a static image as well.
draws out several pages of stupid arguments
If you don't like discussing the issues then you don't have to but people came up with some legitimate concerns that we can incorporate into the solution. It also brought up the CDN discussion which needs to be revisited.
The website is the one area of FAF that is pretty much fine and not in need of any work.
Well for starters we are using an image from a different game that we are going to replace.
At this point, the unit database should just be removed because it is only updated when I personally complain about it in zulip after every server update or outage.
Any chance you want to help us update it?
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@rowey
I think i used to check the newshub from time to time, by googling "FAF" and then clicking the news link on the landing page.
