the my ex-wife is a real bitch update

1 files changed, 43 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/news.txt b/news.txt
index 7135789..eb34939 100644
--- a/news.txt
+++ b/news.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,46 @@
+Name: the my ex-wife is a real bitch update
+Date: May 12, 2021
+Directory: the-my-ex-wife-is-a-real-bitch-update
+Body:
+    <i>Wait, what?</i>
+    Aranoyas! Wow, we sure have no idea how <em>that</em> got in the release title field! This update brings a redesign to the album sidebars, and lots of data fixes and additions across the site. Much thanks to everyone in the Discord community for throwing in suggestions and additions all throughout this update - details, as ever, past the split!
+    <hr class="split">
+    <i>As ever, thank you to everyone who sent feedback and kind messages during development! We're also very grateful for all [[static:donate|supporters of the wiki]], including: enchantingHunter, leo homestuck, and Nights!</i>
+    Like mentioned in the summary, this update is brought to you in most significant part by everyone in the [[static:discord|community Discord server]]. So, for these release notes, I figured I'd go over the contributions of everyone who threw a hand in!
+    From <b>Niklink</b>, we've a variety of additions and input:
+    - The new [[album:psycholonials]] complete album has been released, and with it, we've added information about the original releases of many tracks from the game, most from earlier, since-unlisted releases by [[group:clark-powell]]. Niklink located all of these throughout the release of each EP, and helped with the track lists for the [[flash:psycholonials]] flash/game pages!
+    - Since suggesting album banners and wallpapers [[media:misc/changelog/niklink-lyric-shenanigans.txt|back in December]] (as added in the February and April updates), Niklink has also taken a major role in refining assets across the site. This update brings remasters to the banners all across the site, with improved upscaling, better rendering, and a variety of other tweaks. He actually wrote a summary of the changes, which we've included towards the end of this news entry, if you're curious on all the details!
+    - Ever on top of album aesthetics, Niklink also prompted the redesign for album sidebars, offering comments and input throughout that design too. (Thanks go out to <b>Megatti</b> for additional feedback here!) Details on the refined layout follow these contribution credits.
+    <b>LowDeath675</b> went through every official album, as well as several from the fandom, and caught countless missing or misplaced character tags! Especially improved are tags for minor characters, like [[tag:sawtooth]] and [[tag:squarewave]], plus species tags, like [[tag:horrorterrors]] - though there are more fixes all about. Now's a better time than ever to give tags a visit and explore the excellent art of Homestuck's official and fandom discographies!
+    <b>foreverFlummoxed</b> helped out with tags too, catching a number of missing dancestor appearances throughout [[album:beforus]]! Both Low and FF also caught a bunch of typos in commentary for the albums they reviewed.
+    An anonymous contributor also let us know about the commentary booklet for [[album:alternia]], which we'd totally missed until now - so there's much commentary and composition notes on the early solo album from Toby Fox now!
+    Lastly, thanks to Low, Niklink, and <b>Mixolydian</b> for catching a variety of track references now newly brought to the wiki.
+    To everyone who helped out with the update, together - I'd like to thank you again, for all your feedback and kind messages. It really bears repeating: this wiki wouldn't even be close to what it is without you, without everyone who's brought their ideas to the table, built upon updates and suggestions from others, or just shared kindhearted comments about the wiki. We've come a long way since release, and it couldn't have been done without each and every one of you. Thank you!
+    <hr>
+    Now, tweaks to the album sidebar layout! As mentioned, the biggest push for this (and much accompanying input) came from Niklink. (Thank you!) Ever since adding groups as part of the [[news-entry:traversing-fandom]] update back in January, there have been two sidebars on most album and track pages - one on left, one on right. This was a pretty neat look, but having two sidebars meant there was considerably less space left for the main content area than prior. Unfortunately, this left album and track art squished to a much smaller presentation than had always been intended!
+    So, we've finally revisited that layout, and done a sweeping refinement to fix that issue and make album and track pages be both better looking and more functional than ever before!
+    Most notably, we've combined the right- and left-hand sidebars into one. Group boxes are now displayed above the track list on the album page, since there's already a full view of all the tracks visible in the main content area. On track pages, they've been moved beneath the track list - and if an album's part of more than one group (e.g. [[album:psycholonials]]), group info will all be combined into one compact summary box! (Much thanks to Megatti for this suggestion - we feel it helps a bunch to make the new layout feel focused and clean.)
+    For albums (like [[album:coloUrs-and-mayhem-universe-a]]) whose tracks are divided into groups (i.e. "track groups", not to be confused with <em>groups</em> like [[group:fandom]] and [[group:official]]), we've tweaked the track list part of the sidebar as well. Previously, track group headings (like "Side 1", "Additional Mayhem", "Bonus tracks") weren't especially interactive - if you clicked them, they'd just bring you to the first track under that group. With this update, they're now collapsible/expandable - clicking toggles the full list of tracks in that section! This should make navigation between tracks in an album a nice bit smoother, skipping the inconvenient step of visiting the first track in the desired group or just heading back to the album page.
+    And last off, on album pages, where we'd previously have the sidebar show <em>every</em> track all at once, track groups are now collapsed by default - making it easier, we hope, to navigate between, visiting tracks from whichever section you're looking for. (Since the main content area shows a full track list anyway, it didn't make much sense to just repeat that same view as part of the sidebar!)
+    <hr>
+    As regular, some quick notes on the meta around the wiki:
+    - We're pleased to announce a new, spectacularly <s>spiteful</s> <s>salacious</s> speculative partnership: Homestuck Music Dot Wiki has now been acquired by <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=man+i+love+fishing&iar=images">MILF</a>! <small><small>/joke</small></small>
+    - On a more <small>(less? lol)</small> personal level, I was dealing with feelings of burnout for a while this month, and ended up writing an entry on where I was at in the #devblog there. (It's a few weeks back in the channel, if you'd like to give it a read.) Although my energy and motivation have been returning in the last couple weeks, the general conclusion still stands: since I'm one person and the wiki is a hobby project (as I'm happy it is), code development time will generally be put where and when I have motivation to work. There won't be as many self-imposed expectations to complete huge sub-projects, though they'll still get attention when the time comes! And monthly updates will remain, though they'll likely be less focused than prior releases, in service of giving the wiki the time and space to breathe and develop more naturally.
+    As ever, thank you for the support and feedback. Besides the Discord, [[static:feedback|our usual channels remain open]], so you're much encouraged to share any comments or music suggestions for the coming releases!
+    <i>~ Quasar Nebula</i>
+    <hr>
+    PS: Here's the banner remaster commentary from Niklink!
+    <i>Niklink:</i>
+    depending on the banner, alterations fall within a few different categories:
+    - better upscale: better than bicubic! umspaf banners were saved as pngs so the difference is very subtle, but the official banners benefit a LOT from this ([[album:homestuck-vol-5]], [[album:homestuck-vol-6]], [[album:homestuck-vol-7]], [[album:homestuck-vol-8]], [[album:homestuck-vol-9]], [[album:symphony-impossible-to-play]], [[album:one-year-older]], [[album:genesis-frog]], [[album:cherubim]], [[album:tomb-of-the-ancestors]], [[album:sburb-ost]], [[album:lofam2]], [[album:lofam3]], [[album:beforus]], [[album:weird-puzzle-tunes]], [[album:ancestral]], [[album:lofam4]], [[album:xenoplanetarium]], [[album:moons-of-theseus]])
+    - extend background horizontally: some umspaf banners were a logo over a simple background so it was easiest to just extend it horizontally ([[album:gristmas-carols]], [[album:cosmic-caretakers]], [[album:diverging-delicacies]], [[album:friendsymphony]], [[album:shortcuts]], [[album:p-s]])
+    - reconstruct: for simple banners where I can just make the damn banner again but without shitty compression or resizing ([[album:alterniabound]], [[album:coloUrs-and-mayhem-universe-a]], [[album:coloUrs-and-mayhem-universe-b]], [[album:psycholonials]] and EPs)
+    - draw more of the background lmao: photoshop is really good at autogenerating more of the image ([[album:jailbreak]], [[album:ancestral]], safening which is still missing on the wiki) but [[album:lofam]] i did myself
+    - font reconstruction: one thing the upscalers are not good at are upscaling normal fonts, i guess because we can tell so easily with standard letters when something's slightly out of place. so after the upscaling i remade the lettering on these ([[album:homestuck-vol-5]], [[album:homestuck-vol-6]]). oh and [[album:the-wanderers]] i put the font over the big letterless version of the banner to make it match the version that was used, as a possible option. <span style="font-style: oblique">[QN: I ended up keeping the original! Letterless looks cleaner to me, but thank you for the choice and attention to detail just the same! :3]</span> the fonts are all a little bit different but no one's gonna notice unless you compare em yourself
+    the only one I'm not satisfied with is [[album:homestuck-vol-7]] because it has aliased images with transparent antialiased stuff over them
+    so I have to pick to make either the aliased stuff or the antialiased stuff look bad depending on how I do it
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Name: Solo Albums Aplenty
 Date: April 12, 2021
 Directory: solo-albums-aplenty