New Feature: Custom Display Names
 

Alrighty, first off I'm going to credit this idea to AcerBandit, who came up with it in this thread.

Two additional fields have been added to your profile. Go to your User CP, choose "Edit Profile", and you'll see them at the bottom:

UPDATE: The name display options have been moved to Edit Options, under Thread Display Options. To activate the feature, you have to go to both your profile and option pages, and press 'save'.

http://www.bigblah.net/upload/customdisplay.png


The display name will override your default username on the postbit. You will see a white asterisk that indicates a custom name, plus you can still see the original username by opening the menu, like this:

http://www.bigblah.net/upload/pancakes.png


Right now there is no way to restrict duplicate custom display names, so it's possible you'll end up with 20 DATAGONKS running around. For people who are distressed by such delinquency, the other profile field setting comes to the rescue! Just set custom name displays to "no", and you'll see regular usernames as usual.

UPDATE

You have now four options to choose from to display the custom usernames! Take a look in your profile options:

http://www.bigblah.net/upload/displayformat.png

(Ignore the field below it, hrhr)


Please report any bugs/comments/suggestions in this thread.

THIS IS THE GREATEST FEATURE EVER INVENTED IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.

I HEART ACERBANDIT AND BIGBLAH. <3333333333333333333333333333!

Would it be possible to implement Ultima's idea from the same thread? That being, during times when there are no active theme weeks, the display name feature can be shut off.

You can shut them off whenever, Capo, this isn't just for theme weeks.

The idea is to let people decide for themselves, but if there is enough abuse going on, I could implement an admin-controlled variable. Let's see how it goes.

Well, this is going to be abused to hell until the novelty wears off.

Is there any way to personalize this and give other users aliases, a la DeadAIM?

Ahahahaha, PANCAKES. That's pretty cool. =o

Hey I switched them off but the custom username still shows. ;___;

That would require a change to the database. I'd rather not code something like that just yet.

Miles: it's working fine for me here. Force refresh?

Edit: Oh, I get the problem. Fixing right now.

Ahahahaha this is the best thing ever! Yes! =D

Thank you so much, PANCAKES. =)

The boards are one step closer to being IRC.

You guys are the fucking MEN. No longer must we resort ot asking admins for name change help. <3333.

Did I mention <3.

Requesting my user name changed back to what it usually is so it never has to be changed again!

PS this is gonna bring SO MUCH SHENANIGANS. <33333

I'm easily amused, so this is never going to lose its novelty value. :(

I just broke the postbit. You might want to lower the maximum limit by one since the * takes up a character.

changin my name to applebees, right the fuck now.

Double Post:
aaaaaaaaaaaaa

EDIT: Feature need to be added to the Lite Set, apparently :/

Also is this going to be integrated into our profiles or the "who's online" or the journals in any way shape or form?

Alright, I've fixed it so that turning custom display names off actually works.

Yay!

Skills: Currently it only shows up on the postbit. Won't be too hard to integrate it elsewhere, though.

Nifty feature. If only we had this feature during the Ace Combat week. :(

Is there someway to make it so the display names don't fuck up the "User Box", a la Skills, currently?

This is the best thing since open custom titles. Great work!

Reading is fun!

I changed it to 14 characters instead of 15. Now Skills just has to update his profile field.

Lovely. Can't say as I'll put this feature to frequent use, but it's a wonderful compromise for everyone involved in the name changing business.

Bitchin'!

Except I wasn't even talking about that, asshole. Blah fixed it already, though, so it's all good.

That's nice.

Don't you have a soundtrack to be working on?

Blah on the ball. Fucking AWESOME work dude.

As for the integration into elsewhere, that'd be fucking hot. I am not kidding. Journaling would be a BLAST using this.

Edit: Shit, gotta make it 13 I suppose.

This is fucking excellent. Acer is teh <3 for the idea, and blah is teh <3 for the implementation.

Awesome, I suppose I can be a little more creative with my theme now =D.
Thanks blah and Acer!

I'm just glad that all the people who bitch about name changes can shut up now. Thanks Acer and Blah!

Here's another thought because I like to talk a lot as I get ideas.

Quotes. Since they are just text and not a dynamic reference to a current username, perhaps they should be altered so when the quote button is clicked, instead of generating [quote=<username>], it could output something like [quote=<displayname> aka <username>] or something of the sort?

That sounds nice. It probably has something to do with me being drunk, though.

Actually, since there's a possibility to turn it off, not to mention the *, then I guess it really is a good thing, even if it's actually nothing but a thinly disguised way to avoid having to change a hundred usernames for the "name yourself after a videogame week". Lazy admins.

GIGANTIC E-LOVE GUYS. This is hilariously awesome. =D

Alright, I'll work on that.

It would be pretty neat if you did just the opposite for the people with this turned off, and, with a click of their username, you could see what they changed their name to.

Nice one. I had a feeling it was something that could be done without too much hassle.

This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

='D

Either that or start bugging Blah to make the postbit wider. :D

No, I think the postbit is perfect how it is.

It wasn't what you'd call the most serious suggestion I ever made in my life.

On a completely separate note, I like how you can now name yourself nothing, now. Or even the same as someone else.

EDIT: OK so you can't name yourself " ". Then how the hell did Elixir manage to do it? His name was a space a few seconds ago...

Hi guys so since we got this done so quickly, can we start work on a new (preferably lighter) Gamingforce theme? I'm sure many people would appreciate it since this blue is really starting to irritate me.

Yeah. Please. I'm begging you.

The same way I don't have a custom title, and the same way I can reverse my level/member number status.

I'm really surprised to hear you say that. I find these dark, muted colors really easy on the eye. I definitely hope that if the admins ever do introduce a lighter theme, this one remains available.

This is the coolest idea ever! I just wish I wasn't so drunk so I can fully apreciate this awsomeness!

Yes, I'm so proud of myself for being so considerate.

Anyway, the feature has been implemented in the Lite Set.

You realize this is WAY too much fun and some of us are going to be changing our nicks ever 10 minutes, right. =ooo

This was such a bad idea.

This was such a great idea.

You are full of complete shit.

This is the best idea since FOREVER. The BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE was not this awesome.

It was an amazing idea!

The answer is so obvious I'm not even going to say it. Plus I said that slightly sarcastically.

Nice one! It'll make theme weeks at al way easier for all. Me like it.

Well, it's a good idea, but you know it'll just be used only in a way that will make it a chore rather than a blessing. Just like admin made name changes were eventually used for all kinds of lameness.

Thank goodness the feature is off by default so I can let other people have their fun and not be bothered by it myself.

How do you people feel about removing the asterisk and instead making the custom display names appear in white?

[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.
[02:08] <+Capo> The asterik next to the names needs to go.

^

If you took it down, it'd be just like having a theme week! And the shenanigans would be NON STOP HILARITY.

Edit:

Sup Blah posting at the same time. <33333

I'm all for that. Heck, I'd be even more for leaving it exactly like a regular name, but if you feel the need to have it displayed differently in some way, colour seems the best way to do it!

Hmm, white seems a bit too close to the light blue it is now.

What about yellow?

Requesting a piss-yellow color in replacement of the asterisk.

Edit: Oh shit <3.

Yellow works AWESOME. AWESOME AWESOME.

Lovin' it. Ahahahaha. Beats the jesus snot out of * any day of the week.

Gee, thanks a lot. Maybe white would work nicely? Hell, it'd be better than this yellow.

yellow FTW!

EDIT: awww compromise...

Hahaha, this is so awesome. I feel so anonymous.

I think we need a feature which allows you to choose whether or not you want the "Last edited by Elixir on 6/6/06" message displaying. I find it quite annoying sometimes.

Oh God Blah I love you. Leave the Blink. PLZPLZPLZPLZPLZ

oohh, yellow, white blink, now white marquee, wait back to white blink!

I don't think the display name thing is working for me. Everyone has their normal names for me.

You need to go activate it by clicking save changes in your user CP profile thing.

Try going to your profile and save the settings once?

Edit: Original usernames now show up as tooltips on avatars too, just to circumvent empty display names ;)

Very nice feature, Blah. I'll try this out later.

Yeah, that did it. Thanks.

but that would be no fun!

I humbly request that Devo be ignored because half the fun is gonna come from me naming myself Tails and Tails naming himself Colonel Skills.

Requesting "Shut up Devo" button that bans Devo for a 2 hour period.

Button needs to replace boardtop.gif and be 500 pixels by 500 pixels.

For some reason, the N no longer displays in my name. Did the length change?

I request devo and skills both shut it before they get thread bans! >=O

The marquee/blink/asterisk/normal options aren't working for me. ;_;

Blah you have made GFF legendary today. Feel proud, sir.

Okay people, help me test whether the normal/asterisk/blink/marquee options are working properly now!

Confirming all four options work as planned.

OMG Lurker

How'd you do that

UPDATE

You have now four options to choose from to display the custom usernames! Take a look in your profile options:

http://www.bigblah.net/upload/displayformat.png

(Ignore the field below it, hrhr)

DOCTAH. =DDD

Oh god yes, this truly is the best feature ever. I take back anything negative I've said about it.

SO ENVIOUS.

Can you make the gif marquee?

That is awesome.

Someone replace my name or custom title with http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/7851/gonk4jf.gif. PLEASE.

I'm going to name myself a Naruto wallpaper

I formally request a name change to ▲▲▼▼◄►◄►BA

What the fuck.

Double Post:
Anyone who thinks this is awesome needs to thank me for bringing this up, lol

Double Post:
I'm wondering if this is a joke-feature that will be eliminated.

I mean, if it was just custom display-name, that'd be one thing. But the whole marquee/blink/etc just makes me think it's a huge ruse.

It only affects your display, anyhow.

Also, Enable Display Names and Display Name Format have been moved to Thread Display Options rather than profile settings.

GFF will nevar be da same

The entire internet traffic is laughing at us :D

I think the pictures and .gifs in the username space is a bit overkill. It looks ridiculous.

OKay I understand; I thought that if I set it to marquee it would make my name show up to other users as a marquee; which is over the top. I figured it out.

I'm having mixed feelings about this as, of course, many users changed their usernames to something incredibly obscure. Hopefully after the feature becomes solastyear then people will utilize it more effectively.

Like I did.

Because I'm the model of perfection.

Just make me a mod now.

Thank goodness it's staff-only, then!

It's funny how you guys used the fuck out of the feature as hard as a regular user would.

You should make it so that people over a certain level/people with a certain number of votes are allowed to have an x by x image in their custom title.

We considered that once, but you failed; 10 yes votes were required but you only got 9. Oh well :(

Wait what

really nice feature, it's fun...I just like the turn off feature even more >.> (but still now everyone is happy)

Sarcasm.

Well it just lacked sarcastic tone. Okay.

What do you mean, 'sarcasm', do you have access to the Mod Hut or what?
We were looking for some more nazis, and I was like "Eleo has a Hitlar avatar lol"

hope restored

Eleo can't be a mod, he's not a white gamer or an asian anime fan.

mod me up! :)

Hell hasn't frozen over, though.

damn, had my hopes all up...
not really

It's not like my username is :biggestmiu:.

Just saying.

Pure awesome.

edit: well it doesn't work for me. Didn't check previous replies since I'm lazy.

Hey, I really like this. People who want to have their name change fun can do so, and I can turn it off (already done).

Also, I don't know if this has been mentioned, but in order to see the names in the first place, I had to go into my Edit Options and Save, even though the Enable Display Names option was already in the Yes position.

Big thanks to Blah, Acer, and Eleo. <3

Ah! That was the problem.

Holy shit Mario Paint Mutant Baby is gonna follow me everywhere now.

Well around, when I set the Display Name Format to 'marquee' it doesn't work on

a) staff-members
b) images

I don't know which, since only staff is using images.

Just as a suggestion, I think the default setup should be either Display Name On with Asterisk, or Display Name Off with Normal. Display Name On with Normal for default is confusing.

Nice job with the implementation. Now to try and keep up with the scrambled names.

Just one thing is missing from the Lite Set, as far as I can tell.
Avatars don't have any alternate text, unlike those under the regular theme. As you said the tip for them would have the regular name of the user, this becomes a bit of an issue.

Though, avatars also aren't links directly to profiles either, like they used to be. Quite a handy shortcut, that was.

Totally best ever. EVER. Whose dick must I suck now in gratitude?

Display options don't work on images, but if a staff member is using a display name it'll work as usual.

Updating now.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...sthisajoke.jpg
Is this some kind of joke
Where is the ON switch.

The on switch is in the Edit Options panel.

SLICED BREAD IS INFINITELY INFERIOR

(Just testing to see if this works. Mr. Blah is my hero.)

I definitely like having the name being white instead of the asterisk. This is such a great feature, someone please immortalize this in the wiki.

Requesting my displayname gets hacked to http://spcows.ae2t.net/emot10bux.gif.

It's only fitting.

http://spcows.ae2t.net/emot10bux.gif to mods EVERYWHERE

Did you change it back to asterisks or have you just not edited the display options into the Lite Set?

Also, while we got a thread where shit is happening, can you make it so clicking the avatar links to the user's profile? I always liked that feature...

Okay, thanks!

Oh wow this is awesome. Why does all the awesome stuff happen when I'm sleeping :(

I've moved the display options into your option settings instead of profile settings.

I'll get to work on the avatar link.

Awesome! The avatar link works now. =)

Gonna have to think of something cool for an image. Awesome job, blah!

Looks like it's working pretty well. I prefer differently colored usernames instead of an asterix (white wasn't bad, maybe a slight tint of another color), but so far I like it. Good job person that came up with the idea and person that implimented it into the site (yeah, you have names, but you know who you are).

One advantage to displaying custom names in a differerent color would that it would allow one extra character for the name. The asterisk is occupying a space as it stands.

Yeah, that would be nice to have the extra space back. It would be nice if you could put in your own custom color that you'd like it to display in.

I have no desire to change my username except for theme weeks, but cool idea nonetheless.

....Oh, I forgot I -am- participating in a theme week! Okay, now to try out this feature.

Update: I don't see my name changed...

Another update: Oh...I figured it out...

Ahahahahahaha. BEST GIF NAME EVER. Holy crap, that's awesome.

I've figure'd out that 19 pixels high is the limit for not breaking height.

Now to figure out width. =)

Yeah.. anything except the standard color would allow people to know you had a custom name. I think it would be a good idea if users were somehow prevented from using the color for standard usernames.

Hey, it's their choice. If I want all custom names to be magenta then they'll be magenta. If you want it the background color than hey that's your choice. If you complain it sucks than you just pick another color. Not a big deal. *shrug*

Double Post:
Okay I've figured out the dimension limit. 131x19

I will hopefully be able to pull some fun stuff in that amount of space. =)

So you'd be able to put images into your custom title as well? Sounds cool...so...I could for example use this for the theme week? :)

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j4...i/userlogo.jpg

Or is this going to stay a staff-only feature?

I stretched the tables with one image I tried to use. I think I'll stick with this custom image for now.

Good to know the size limit though.

Well done! Lucky mods with their cute images :S
Now I can parade around as ValkyrieProfile and only the laziest that can't bother to click will complain >=)

Putting pictures in your name is staff only, yeah.

Wow, I thought having names displayed in marquee would be cool, but after only 5 minutes it's starting to get annoying.

I wish the color wasn't white, it's hard to differentiate it from blue sometimes.

Other than that, *thumbs up*.

I like how mo0 is the vonage lady, but he still has the angel from America's Got Talent.

Also. Acer rules.

Are the gonks planning to leave their "real" username as _____GONK indefinitely now we have this feature? I'm still confused as to who some people are...

I imagine they'll ask the admins to change their official names back eventually.

I hope so. On a separate, but related note, your new username image is confusing at first, and then increasingly awesome. For a second, I thought maybe I needed sleep badly. Hey, it changed again. Now you're just fucking with us right? :D

No, seriously, how did you do that? It keeps changing everytime I refresh.

IT IS A MYSTERY OF MAGIC AND AWESOME.

Now I've had a chance to think, it's not too much of a mystery... the magic and awesome are still there in spades, though.

Trying to submit any sizable unicode string fails, and comes back as garbage.
.I wanted to use.⠑⠸⠑⠉⠞⠗⠊⠉ ⠎⠓⠑⠑⠏, but only the first character shows up.

Firefox doesn't even display that . . . and firefox displays stuff that windows doesn't wanna read.

Yeah, because the Unicode characters get escaped when put into the database, so you end up with ☯ taking up the space of seven characters as "&#9775;" and so forth. You can usually only get one or two awesome characters in at most. :(

Nice feature. I have to say that everyone using unicode symbols now looks like a box to me but if you guys want to be Wapanese fags, be my guest.

Shin, you should reduce your image displayname to 19 pixels. The dimensions for that space is 131x19 pixels. Your image displayname is currently 22 pixels and that is why there is a tiny bit of space below it. It's not that big a deal but I thought I'd let you know.

Ehh just wait a couple of weeks and everyone will be able to use images. It has been like that with custom titles, it will be like that with user name images (I guess)

It depends. Right now I could put biggermiu in there. We need to put a few restrictions in place before that happens because it will probably get abused if we don't. Right now it's under control being staff-only.

Anyone can put biggermiu in his or her signature.

Well true. All they'd need at the moment is webspace to manipulate or a php script that would load biggermiu. But people already know that isn't allowed. Hmmm I think I see your point.

Cool feature... I have yet to know how to use it. So, has my name has been changed?

Double Post:
<3<3<3<3<3
Sexy

Wouldn't just limiting the image size to something that doesn't stretch the postbit be a good solution?

(Other than the dynamic-loading stuff that was mentioned earlier, of course.)

Hardly I can wait. How do you guys implement such feature like these?
this is amazing.:biggrin:

I dunno, you need to ask upper management about that. Also, I didn't say that it was definitely going to come, it was just a guess ;)

Storing the image on the server, as with avatars would limit the max size nicely.

Of course, keeping it staff exclusive is a far better idea...

I agree with Shin. Why whould we always have the same things as the mods and supers? We got custom names and titles.
Sure, it would be nice, but I say let the mods have something special. (Aside from banning and messing around with us, that is...)

I think it would be cool if admins or smods could give people special image titles though. It'd be fun to mess around with. I still wish smods could mess with people's custom titles. I mean we can mess with avatars and sigs so why not.

Well, there's always the possibility to give it to contest winners or other special members like custom titles back in the days when having one used to be a priviledge.

That would be easy to do, since the ability to use images as your display name is based on usergroup.

Usergroup name: :10bux donators:. Bobo just mentioned that he needs some extra money, am I right.

That sounds like a really good idea actually. We just have to put some limits in place.

Hell I'd put :10bux: down if I could have higher ava/sig limits. I'm serious.

Holyshit. I just found out about this. How could I've missed such a wonderful thread ;__;