Hence we’ve held it back so late. The rest of 2004 was spent reviving the SSMB and TSS from its shock, which was in my view the most important thing to do. No work was done on the upcoming remade TSS nor Sonic Smash Cards. I hope you can all understand my decision in doing that, otherwise we’d have had no SSMB left to be waiting for Smash Cards still.
December 2004 came. During the whole “SSMB go GRRR” period, I was in a fix. I wanted to progress with development of TSS, but I had slowly lost contact with Fuzz because of timezones. Enter the wonderful wonderful B’man. Mid-December, we began work on what was to be known (unofficially) as “TSS Interactive”.
TSS Interactive is basically TSS as you know it already. No real big design changes will be made, because “TSS Ultimate” (final design name) was already released as the last design ever last year. The main difference would be the ‘backend’, or in other words, the way the site is coded. At the moment TSS is being coded by HTML and simple PHP scripts. The new TSS will allow myself (and set ‘staffers’) to post news, articles and sections on-site, sort of like a custom made PHP Nuke, but much much better (because it’s custom made, doi). This will allow faster and more dynamic updates.
Obviously, MAKING such a system would take, and is taking, a long time to fully establish. Behind the scenes, I can reveal to you now that B’man and myself have only started work on an Interactive Links Database and the Video Games Archive, both of which aren’t really finished. With the whole site to do, that’ll be soooome time to complete. And no, launching it “in bits” would just be confusing and horrible.
“So where’s Sonic Smash Cards then Dread?” I hear you ask. Well, this new TSS Interactive has Sonic Smash Cards in mind, and THEN some. You see, the general idea was to have Sonic Smash Cards work when people logged into TSS, not the SSMB (although a ‘Black Market’ Card Shop for the SSMB will be made). Also, the TSS Account is going to made as “future proof” as possible.
What this means, is that if I get any more crazy ideas like Sonic Smash Cards that will use a member’s TSS Account, we can easily add it as an extra feature rather than making a whole new system for it. Sooooo, technically, we HAVE to make this TSS Interactive system BEFORE we can even begin to make Sonic Smash Cards. I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but that’s exactly the way it is. I can’t give you a date on Smash Cards, because until we finish the TSS Interactive I jsut won’t be able to know. And I can’t really give you a specific date on when the new TSS will be done either, due to college/uni and work and stuff.
Also, I know you’re all dying to know specific details and things on what I have planned, but apart from teasing you with unspecifics, I can’t really say much.
It’s very humbling to make inventive things for the Sonic online community and have other sites “borrow” those ideas and have them commonplace (Sonic Site Awards anyone?). But there are some places that go so downright cheeky that they swipe such platforms before they’ve been released a week. I’m referring to Sonic News and your ability as SSMB members to post comments of course. Although the concept of Sonic News and member comments is nothing special, to have another site do it literally the day after SN was re-launched is just proof that someone’s trying to ‘Shadow’ (no pun intended) my work and take credit. Again, I hope you can understand why I do not reveal so much shortly before I release things.