Updated artwork for BadgeGen_v4.0.c [closed]

Question

Hi everyone!

It has been a week since BadgeGen v4 BETA with its new design and features has been introduced. We have had massive feedback from you guys and many people wished for more colors, more contrast, and more lively icons.
We have sorted all that feedback and I went back to the table and redid most of the artwork. It is a bit going back towards the old design, with keeping many of our modern ideas. I tried do add more contrast as well as more "shine". I opted against going too realistic, because then the icons would have looked bad on them.
Reasons for the change and a lot of feedback, critics and suggestions can be found in this Q&A-thread.

Today, we're launching the redesigned artwork in BadgeGen_v4.0.c (so still a BETA) and again wish for your feedback. Please be constructive, if you don't like something, please tell us what we can improve.
If you spot some smaller errors in the artwork, please make me aware too, then I can change this in a later update.

Country badges will be tend to later, as soon as the general design is done.
Badge requirements may also be reworked in some cases.

Please note that changes might not immediately visible to you, due to cached data in your browser.

clappy

UPDATE 1: The ribbon font is smaller that it is supposed to be, we are aware of this.
 

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With a new update rolled out today, we will close this thread.
Feel free to post feedback here: https://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=23154/update-badgegen_v4-0-f

Comments

This version is great! Spot on for me. Far better than v3. Thank you for your work.

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The v4 design is much better. Thanks. Still it is not perfect, but it should be a case of habbit - give me 5 years and I'll tell you :-D

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Hi Clappy,

Great job so far and thank you for all the effort!  I've read through most of the threads and would like to offer some of my own feedback. I hope the following list helps.

1. Geocacher - I liked the coloring in the logo.
2. 81 Matrix - just right with the grid background and the number size.
3. Author - keep it and keep the looping shut down.
4. Favorite/Favorited -  heart color washes out if same as background so lighten.
5. D5 5T - make the 5s black to help draw attention since that is the purpose of this reward.
6. Long Distance - Lighten the blue background of the globe prevent washing out.
7. High altitude -  consider jagged peaks like original.

Everything else is coming along very nicely and I really like the new concept.

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The new ones are very colorful. I have to get used to it first.

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The latest version of the new badges is MUCH BETTER. Thanks.
Everything is better - new edges, colors, larger images, and especially the belt located more down.

Answer 1

According to my opinion is a change for better 

Answer 2

How about introducing a new and separate shutterbug badge for TBs? Photos uploaded for caches, although valuable, are very often pretty similar. I'm sure TB owners would appreciate more pictures with places visted by their TBs.

Answer 3

I much prefer these to the previous beta. A few minor comments:

1. The base of the cup on The Achiever isn't flat. I'll have a play with it a little later (should be an easy fix)

2. The white cross on The Geocacher looks a bit strange to me. I would have thought a transparent cross between the four segments would look better.

3. I've been given the leap day addon for The Travelling Cacher, but all of my 29 February finds have been in my home country. I would have thought that addon would be for finding 29 February in another country (or in two or more countries).

Comments

Thanks!

1. Achiever is a little messed up, the base should have been "rectangular" not rounded. It will be fixed.

2. I'm not yet super happy with the icon, it will be reworked. Personally I'd prefer the all-white one. The HQ vector is one path-only (open to the middle cross) so I'd have to fudge it a bit.

3. Seems to be right now 29 is awarded for finding a cache in 1 country on 29/2. We'll look into it.

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I rewrote the Leapday addon for Traveling yesterday. It was faulty implemented from the start. The idea in the first implementation was to require two countries, just as you suggest. But instead it required two cache finds. Not really the same thing.

When I rewrote it I added support to use the home country we have calculated, and as a fallback require two countries. I did some sloppy copy/paste errors and counted the wrong thing, again.

I have now corrected this in the development environment. Thank you for informing!

Answer 4

Two thiings I would llike to add that nobody has picked up on -

Could we have the cache size images reflect the cache size? Thus the image for the bucket would be larger than the image for the ammo can, which is larger than the small, which is larger than the micro. It will probably require the micro image to revert back to the film can, but as that is the GC reference, and as it will be much smaller that the bucket it should be not a problem.

The badges seem to have lost the value of white space. Even making the images within the badges 10-15% smaller should make a huge improvement (except the bucket  - buckets are large! Breaching white space guides for that would work well). Making the images a little smaller within the badge would reduce the "busy-ness" and cluttered feel that others have mentioned.

Others
Personally I would prefer D5T5 - the fact that it can be read in other directions is irrelevant as the rest of the page does not follow that guide.
Remove the white cross from the geocacher badge, and to be consistant, make sure the geocacher badge and D5T5 have same sized squares.

Love the improved colouring!

Answer 5

New badges are very nice, thanks.

Just one comment re Country Badges - Sark country has only text "The Sark cacher" w/o picture;-)

Answer 6

With a new update rolled out today, we will close this thread.

Feel free to post feedback here: https://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=23154/update-badgegen_v4-0-f

Answer 7

I think the Author badge should be done away with as its just giving rewards for long cut and paste logs, nothing worse than looking for a bit of help from a previous log while on a series to find a long identical  log on each cache of series totally irrelevant to the individual cache

I don't mind the new look of the badges, I like all the add ons

Comments

I agree, I am ignoring the badge completely.
Length of my log reflects the experience I got from the cache.
I am not writing a 1000 word essay as a found it log for a micro  with wet logbook, that's hidden in a ugly location. Simple TFTC is enough in that case, otherwise the log is often longer than the listing.

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The Author is "only" 100 words required for Diamond. The possibility to loop the badge has been removed, and with that most incitement to create unnecessary large copy/pastes.

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I like the author badge - I might be weird, but I really like to write individual texts to appreciate the effort of the owner. And these texts usually exceed the 100 words by a significant margin. It's sad, that the "loop" has been removed ... it was nice to have that. But fortunately I still get positive feedback from the owners.

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@Stuttguy - There is no doubt the intentions was good when the badge was created. Sadly, some Geocacher's can't bear that responsibility that such badge requires. That's the reason we chose to remove the loops.

I personally don't think we should lower the limits, 100 words isn't that much. If so, the badge should rather be removed, but I know that won't be popular, so probably not happening.

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My diamond-level Author achievement is the badge I am proudest of, at least to date. Until I learned about BadgeGen I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I paid almost no attention to my logs and how they were read or used by the CO and other cachers. Now I've become a storyteller among the local caching community. I was excited to finally get past the 100-word average about a year ago, and keeping it maintained requires vigilance, unlike every other badge.

For what it's worth, I do no cutting & pasting and every log is written to be relevant to the cache at hand and I've gotten nothing but positive feedback from CO's about it. The profile stats say my logs have a similarity index of only 23% -- I don't know how that's measured, exactly, but it's the lowest such figure I've seen when comparing to other caching luminaries in my area.

At any rate, just wanted to stick up for The Author achievement along with @StuttGuy. It's well-intended, and it absolutely inspired me to change the way I wrote logs for the better. Thank you for having this badge!

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I have the diamond for The Author, but not near looping, so the removal of the loop is no issue.
My logs tend to be in two parts.  Above the line is a cut and paste sort of blog of my day.  Below the line are my comments specific to the cache.  The top is for me, the bottom for others, and other cachers can easily skip whichever section they aren't interested in reading.
For most caches BOTH sections are over 40-50 words.
I do agree, though that logs that are identical for each cache found on a day that barely mention the individual experience on each find are pointless, if not annoying.

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Like the author badge. As an owner myself, I like longer logs. Shure-some cachers uses paste&copy. But some not. So I like the CHANCE for them to get a 100 word diamond by writing a logtext for my cache.

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Please do NOT do away with it.The author badge is a useful reward to help encourage people to spend a little time to write useful logs instead of TFTC or just an emoticon.  I actually enjoy reading logs that tell a story or offer real-time advice.

Discontinuing the looping on this badge was a good decision. Even I found myself adding useless information in logs just so I could build to that next loop.  I have since stopped and now only post useful information.

I disagree with the logic that it will cut down on the cut and paste because power-trails and geo-art are becoming more popular and people will always take the easier road and post duplicate logs.

I will always give the CO a decent write up just like I expect for my own hides. My duplicity is 60% thanks to the geo-art copy and pasting.  I am working on reducing that % and plan to avoid power-trails and geo-art. Geocaching is not about the numbers but is about the experience.

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I'd really miss the Author badge. It was my 1st Diamond and it made me start writing much more elaborately than before I knew about it. I understand the arguments against it and I agree that it causes people copy&paste useless texts in order to get the diamond. Maybe it's possible to include the similarity into the calculation: if you reach an average of 70 words with a similarity of let's say >50% the gem graphic turns into a pile of sh*t, adding a cloud of stench for each level above ruby. Loops are welcome :-)
This would honor "real" authors and embarass the uninspired copy guys. I'd really like to see the "TFTC in 100s of languages" and other repeated nonsense disappear quickly :-)

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I forgot to mention that it was my first diamond, as well.  I was proud of it because I always took the time to write about my experience finding the cache.  Sometimes I went a bit overboard and had to edit out information that was too revealing.  It's all about the learning experience in this hobby.

I will miss the second loop that I earned but I do recognize and accept the reasons why looping was eliminated.  What I would like to see is a special add-on unique only to the Author that rewards you for keeping duplicity < 50%.  It would inspire me to work on reducing my current level of 60%.

Answer 8

I found the old badges much better.  I would like it if the user could decide which badges to display.  If you stick to the new badges, I will no longer be a premium customer in the future.

Comments

If you refer to BadgeGen v3, then it's available here:
https://project-gc.com/ProfileStats/Bavariashark67?bgv3#BadgeGen

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Thanks a lot for this.  How can I display version 3 in the profile?

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You can currently keep the old badges: https://project-gc.com/Statistics/ProfileStats?bgv3#BadgeGen

Obviously you won't get the new badges or any addons then, though.

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You edit your existing HTML code to replace the link there with one that has the ?bgv3 parameter included.

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Wow did it works?

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I have the same opinion, but my wish for configurability was declared as not constructive critism :-(
Of course configurability should be easy to implement and would be necessary for the Badge-Statbar that I've deleted from my profile on gc.com yet...