10th Anniversary

The 10th anniversary updates continue!

Ah, Mechanical Maniacs Lite. That was a backup site on Geocities made when Planet Megaman, our longtime host, suffered one of it’s frequent outages, taking us along with it. Rather than simply disappear I had that site inform people on when we’d be back. It was simply a front page with the bios, but it served it’s purpose and I rather like the NES styles banner. The old NES and WW based layouts were nice and unique until every single other Megaman team copied them. Because, naturally, everyone needs a similar layout when they already have a similar idea behind their sites.

Dr Wily’s Last Stand!? Part 3 continues the retelling of Megaman 3. But that’s not all! Topman has written an all-new epilogue – No Newbs Is Good Newbs. This one has actually been on hold since very early on in Series 6, but the work has definitely been worth the wait!

And there’s even more art in the galleries. I had missed some of Raijin’s older Mechs art, but no more! Actual pictures of Lennon’s Evil Eight are now in his gallery along with a few other pictures, as seen below. My gallery has been updated with even more S6 pictures as well.

10th Anniversary

The 10th anniversary coverage continues! The logo up there was created by Nightmare Zero back in the day. It was used for the longest time.   Makes me misty eyed to see it on the main page again after so long.

The epilogues continue with Dr Wily’s Last Stand!? Part 2. Here we see Megaman facing off against the Mechanical Maniacs! But who’s that tagging along with him? And why is he even there?

More sketches this week. First up is one I made when I planned to sing an english version of the Airman song for Auto. Kept procrastinating on that until it died … and all I have to show for it is this unfinished picture. Speaking of unfinished, the nest is an unfinished sketch of an early Mechanical maniacs poster! I think I just never got around to this one. After that is the sketch I made for the Crorq’s Castle sprite, pieces used for the Airman scene in the S6 video, an unused scene I sketched for that video, and the larger image used for Series 7.

10th Anniversary

10 years. Wow. You know, it seems like only yesterday when I saved all the files on the Geocities site in order to kick off updates after a six month long hiatus (a record down time back then). Our site had background MIDIs, a common team layout shamelessly copied from the Sinister Six (made by Skullman of Cossack’s Creations), and me working vigorously to get all the epilogues I’d written onto the site and the forum cleaned up from the mess it was in thanks to the admins being too busy to really deal with the problems therein.

Now the site is incredibly large. The epilogues have given way in terms of focus to my exploring the more obscure areas of Megaman (which I was always rather interested in). The layout went from a simply frames-based mish-mash of images to using all sorts of PHP and CSS tricks. The forums went from the text-based Senac forum to a modest Invisionfree forum (while stopping by PHPBB, EZboard, Ikonboard, Proboards, and possibly others I’m completely forgetting about). The galleries have went from a simple set of images made by myself and some fan submissions to HUGE archives of screenshots and fan art way beyond what i ever hoped to have when I first started the ‘Maniacs.

And now it’s 10 years. And I’m going to post new things throughout the month. Starting with Issue #1 of Series 7 – Dr Wily’s Last Stand!? I had actually started this story years ago, as a fanfic, but never finished it. When I realized we were hitting our 10th I thought of no better way to celebrate than to finish off a story about the game that started it all (for us, anyway). And, to my knowledge, no other team has ever retold the events of their game. So it pleases me to be the first!

But that’s not all! I’ve also saved up the artwork I’ve done for the MM3 PC music video for a special occasion … and this is it! I’m starting off with the first two pictures shown in the vid.

So keep coming back all month long for more art and more parts to the story!

Hello, WordPress

Say hello to our new WordPress format! I actually had a WordPress blog briefly before choosing Blogger for the ‘Maniacs, so WordPress was my natural second choice. And, unlike Blogger, WordPress actually uses databases and our very own server, so it’ll never have to be replaced.

Uh … *knocks on wood*.

Either way, Blogs are definitely the way to go when it comes to day-to-day updates like this. I’m hoping to keep it this way forevermore.

So Long, Blogger

I just got an e-mail from Blogger and it seems that they’re shutting down FTP support for their blogs on the 22nd. What does that mean for the Mechs? Well, no more Blogger, that’s what it means! I’m pretty annoyed by it since I had to make a whole new layout that accounted for Blogger’s backwards policy of uploading actual HTML files onto the site (rather than have database support or something). It was tricky and annoying, but it was done. And now it’s over. Ah, well. Look forward to a new blog format in the near future.

In the meantime, this last post from Blogger will feature some more art from the archives of Gauntlet! It seems I missed a couple of gift art things as well (sorry, guys!). Well, here they are, alongside some more ‘Maniacs art.

More MMPC3 Superadventure mugs by discoduderock.

Shadowman VS Shadowman by Glider.

A small sprite of the super computer Crorq featuring custom emoticons made for the MM3 forum. By Snakeman (Raijin).

MM Team girls by Cyros

A bigger version of “Who is holding my hand?” by Spark Chan (Classi).

A few of Topman’s sketches.

The design choices for the shirts worn on the first ‘Maniacs Meet (and every other one too, but mostly the first).

A sketch of the Mesmerman crew. It looks better in full size…

An unused idea for the ‘Maniacs logo.

To view previous gift art submissions see the Miscellaneous Sprite Gallery and for more ‘Maniacs art see the Team Galleries.

Entering the Blogosphere! – or – How to use PHP with Blogger!

Yes, it’s about time to try something a little …. different with the site. Everyone’s Blogging now, and let it not be said that I do not bend whichever way the wind blows! So I’ve spent some time and made a blog to seamlessly fit into the existing site. No content will be lost, and new content will be added … only we have a blog now too!

Why blogger? I could probably program a blog myself, but most everyone I know of uses Blogger. I’ve even commented on Blogger-run blogs. So Blogger it is.It’s always better to use an existing tool familiar to most than a new tool, I always say.

That said, this post will deal with using PHP in order to mesh Blogger into your site as well as some of the problems I ran into trying to get Blogger onto the site in the first place. Forgive me if I get a bit technical.

  • Read this. gives a good starting point, but there was no part two (at least that I could find). My site uses PHP, so I had to wing this part on my own.
  • By the way, that last step, publishing via FTP, does not come on at once. You have to save your domain name and then come back. Nowhere I have seen has been clear on this point. Hell, my memory is already fuzzy.

I have to admit, I don’t like the bump that Blogger throws you when you get started. But don’t let it deter you.

The way I have MM3 set up is that the headers and footers are placed dynamically via PHP. The challenge is that the files aren’t all put in one folder, or even the same level. Some are in root level, others are two folders into the site. So just putting “../” won’t work. And neither will putting an absolute link, not for your includes.

To add to the challenge further is that I don’t want the blog to interfere with the way my main page is set up (namely the sidebar with a ton of links; it has no place on my main page), but I *do* want it on every other blog-related page on the site.

Both problems have the same solution. You need php to check what page you’re and do something depending.

  • First, you want to go into Blogger and into “Settings” > “Archiving” and change the “Archive Filename” to “archive.php”. This will make all the pages .php pages.
  • <?php

    $thisPage = $_SERVER[SCRIPT_NAME];

    if ($thispage !=”/index.php”)

    {

    <insert code>

    };

    ?>

    • This is the code you need and, basically, the linchpin of making your own Blogger template using PHP. I’ll attempt to explain.
      • $this page – This is a variable that stores you page’s name. In this case we’re looking for “index”.
      • The next line of code tells the page to do something if the page is not the index page.
    • After that it’s a matter of putting in what code we want. FYI: “==” is what you want to use to check if something is the variable you’re looking for.
  • This is what goes in the “<insert code>” area. Or at least what i put.

    echo “<style type=’text/css’>

    #sidebar {

    display: block;

    }

    #newsBlog{

    float:right;

    width:570px;

    }

    #sidebar{

    width:175px;

    float:left;

    position:relative;

    margin-left:0px;

    margin-right:0px;

    font-size: smaller;

    }

    #sidebar h2{

    text-align:left;

    }

    #powered-by, #blogfeeds{

    text-align:left;

    }

    </style>

    <a id=’#Top’ name=’#Top’></a>”;

    echo “<h1>Previous Posts</h1>”;

Okay, scary big code up there. Don’t let yourself be intimidated! All this is is the styling format for the pages that aren’t the index page. Since it’s placed below the regular css file I use for the rest of the site, it overrides it.

  • “echo” is php for, basically, writing. In this case it puts everything in double quotes (” <- this) to show up. When you have quotes inside of quotes use a single quote (‘ <- this) to make it work. After that I put in a title because my format requires one.

    This is why the other blogger pages look different than my index page.

Using the method above you can make the blogger pages look differently than your index page. Which is the key to integrating it into your site. This includes the “Back to top” links and “View previous Posts” links I put in my own layout. Blogger only lets you have one layout, so it’s best to think things through.

  • if (file_exists(“../layout/top.php”)) {

    include “../layout/top.php”;

    } else if (file_exists(“../../layout/top.php”)){

    include “../../layout/top.php”;

    };

    • This is the second linchpin in my Blogger template. As I said, the files are at many levels in my site structure and they all share the same header. Dynamic linking like this would normally just break, however this code checks to see if the file exists or now. I think it’s pretty obvious.

      Basically, the code checks one link (“../top.php”)
      and if it doesn’t work it checks the next (“../layout/top.php”). And if it does work, include it.

So, there you have it. That’s how you integrate Blogger into your site structure using php. Or at least how I did it.

New Layout!

Welcome to the drastically different looking Mechanical Maniacs! Now you know why there hasn’t been any updates since December! I’ve been busy at work creating this new layout you see before you. And it isn’t one of those cheating new layouts where I just changed the graphics to Power Battles or something. No, this is 100% new, 100% created by me (save for the new Annihilation banner created by Raj). Even the various watch parts were scanned by me; they aren’t from the internet at all.

This is a 95% table-free layout. Finally! The only table used in construction of the layout is the one housing the affiliates … divs just can’t grow width-wise.

More than just the general layout files have changed. I have painstakingly gone through each and every file on the site to ensure that they are all up to code. And there’s a lot of them.

Why all the work for the layout? Mostly because the old layout …. got old. Sure, it was the very best I could do … in 04. And it got a graphical overhaul in 06. But the thing used tables – which are no longer industry standard. And, although I thought using game graphics was a terribly clever idea it’s time to face facts: there’s a lot of pages that do that and I didn’t draw it. I wanted to do something 100% my own. And now it’s done.

There’s a lot of bells and whistles in the layout, And I’m glad to finally present it.

Annihilation

Bet you weren’t expecting an update from yours truly. I’ve been working on a new section here for the Battle Network 3 team, Annihilation. This team is still going on, but the webspace we used before was a pain. Since the Maniacs are gradually broadening their scope and since my two teams are essentially two sides of the same coin, it only seemed natural that we bring them together eventually. You can find the link to the new AXE site down near the Affiliates list where the link to the old site used to be.

Image Gallery, Contacting

The Image Gallery sees a long awaited organization update! See, I wasn’t quite sure how to integrate the “odd” galleries like Needlegal’s Cosplay or Megaman 9 or My Art Contest or our famous Hentai Gallery into the Coppermine Image Gallery system. These galleries held the entire project up. Well, no longer! Now they can all be found in the main Coppermine Gallery. Which is now just the plain old Image Gallery.

Furthermore, I’ve uploaded Lennon’s Gallery into the system as well as the Box Art Gallery. I’ve also made the Manual Art Gallery to house all the manual scans I did for the Nintendo Power gallery. THAT was an update long in coming.

And that’s not all! The contacting page is now run in Flash. Because I can!

Captain N galleries Online! Massive Image Gallery Overhaul!

What!? Oh, yes, you read me right …. over 2,000 screen caps from Seasons 1 & 2 of Captain N with a LARGE focus on Megaman are now housed at the Mechanical Maniacs in our very own Captain N Galleries!

Sadly, season 3 is not yet here, but rest assured: when it’s finally released for this region there’ll be even more screen captures. That’s something you can look forward to.

And to go along with this massive update is an equally massive upgrade to our image galleries. We’re now operating out of a Coppermine gallery because it’s a pain to make a page for over 2,000 images of Captain N. I may as well upgrade the entire system. In the future, the sprite galleries might also be added to this, but not all of the image galleries are found on the Coppermine gallery. Simply put, it isn’t the best way to host every image gallery we have, believe it or not. But it is the best way to host MOST of the image galleries we have, hence the change.

And now, if you’ll excuse me …. I’m pooped.