The Dink Network

SuperWolfman's Button Pack

July 25th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 9.1 exceptional
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IceMan
Peasant He/Him
 
Superwolfman's first file that has been released to the Dink Network is indeed a very good file, and indeed a VERY original file. A button pack! No, nobody has thought about doing this yet! Which makes it outstanding from the other DEV files. I really do adore some of these buttons, and here's why...

Strengths
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There are loads of buttons here, each button set, and there are five sets, comes with yet another 6 sets of colours. Thus, to start his strengths off, there are loads of possible choices to choose from here. Great. Now then, I mostly liked the futuristic buttons here. Very well done. I was very pleased with the way he has done the first set. With the letters enlarging on mouse-over. This was a very funky effect, made me laugh when I saw it. Small letters then BOOM! big letters. Ooooh, I feel all special. I did happen to enjoy viewing the 3rd set. The futuristic style set. This was very well done to make it look, well... futuristic. I'm not quite sure why everyone didn't like the colour silver with any of the sets however. I thought the silver looked very sweet, very sweet indeed. I can see why some people do not like it, it's because none of the silver ones fit in with the "set" they are in. However, the silver ones give you a different 'feel' anyway. I really liked that, lots One of the reasons I felt having lots of different colours was good, is the fact that, if for example, you have an orange title screen (for some strange bizzare reason, this is only an example though) and you want to use a certain button, you don't just have one colour. If he did it with only orange buttons, then you'd be pretty stumped as you couldn't use the buttons, they'd look strange. This way, you can DEFINATELY use your favourite "set" without having to worry about how it will fit in with the title screen. There are plenty more strengths I'd love to discuss, but have to move onto the weaknesses section now...

Weaknesses
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I guess he puts silver in each of the "sets" is kind of a weakness, he should add a new "silver set". That would have been better. I felt that all though they were good, some of them used kind of the same 'bases' as others did. For example, number 3 had some of the same qualities as number 1 did. It's not that this is neccesarily bad, it's the fact that they're not 100% unique, and I like unique things. I really can't think of any more weaknesses as Superwolfman has made a very good pack, applaud...

Overall
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An outstanding orignial set of buttons that can be used in any D-MOD to make the title screen look more proffesional. A very well done set here, that obviously shows a) the amount of time that Superwolfman has put into the set, and b) his great art skill. Good artwork here Superwolfman, I'd also like to see another set!

Total 9.1
Grade A (Passing greatly by my standards)

End Comment "Beautiful buttons that you can use in your D-MOD"
July 17th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 7.5 good
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This is a pack of start, load, and quit buttons to replace the original Dink's buttons or Mike Snyder's Skeleton's. There are 5 different designs and each design has six different colors to choose from.

Overall, this is a pretty decent file that contains some of the buttons that you can definitely use in your dmod if you don't want to (or can't) make them by yourself. Depending on the overall color of your title screen, you can do some good matching with your title screen. All buttons have the same dimension 150 x 40, the same as Mike Snyder's buttons in his Skeleton B. So in principle, you don't need to worry about the depth dot in dink.ini if you used Skeleton B, although it would be still better if the author can mention the correct dink.ini setup, because it would be handy for people who use other Skeletons or do not use Skeletons at all.

Most of the designs in this file are very simple. Simple designs usually won't go wrong, but some of them are very similar to each other. For example, design 1 and design 3.

Now I'm going to go through each design and maybe some of the colors:

Button1: The words on the button would be magnified while being touched by mouse. The size of the texts in the untouched buttons is relatively small (about 1/6 of the whole area of the button). Also it looks blurry. (Probably I should get a new pair of glasses. ) The design is OK, but I only like the blue, purple, and green ones. Unless your title screen is full of bright red or yellow or orange, I don't think the red or orange buttons can be fit into your title screen well.

Button2: The basic design of this button is nice. The text would catch fire while being touched. The texts have nice kinky boundary that resemble fire. However this is the design that I least like. Why? Because when the texts are on fire, the shape of the texts is more blury. I really don't like the look of the texts. Although it resembles fire quite well, I think in a way it destroys the buttons. And when the texts are on fire, the background remains the same. That makes it even more unrealistic, especially for the backgrounds that are not red and orange.

Button3: The basic design of this one is similar to No. 1. However, this one always has the gray/silver background. This pack of button is best suited for the dmods that are NOT in the dink universe. It might be better to be used in a flight simulation or star war scene dmod. I guess Jamie's Beyond the Galaxy dmod might be better to use this pack instead of his own. But, again, the background is not matching well to the touched buttons. They do not look very good.

Button4: This is the best design in my opinion of all 5 designs. Unlike the previous 3 designs, the buttons do not have an oval like box as a background. Unfortunately, I still have 2 negative comments about this set. First,half of the colors (blue, green, and purple) in this set seem to be too dark to be seen. Second, the thickness of the texts and the curves is too thin. They might look better if they are BOLD or something similar to bold.

Button5: Basically they are just plain text without any decoration or background. The type and the size of the font are nicely chosen. The color of the texts in the touched buttons has some shadow in it. They are not simply single-color MSPaint products. However, as many of the whole pack, the untouched buttons are blury, (Oh, I really have to get a new pair of glasses, don't I?) but the touched ones are excellent! They have light grey outline to make the texts clear and highlighted. But that makes the blury untouched ones look even worse.

I did not talk about the silver ones in my previous paragraphs. They are strange! All texts or background that are NOT colored are "grey". So in principle, the silver buttons in all designs are pretty much in grey scale. Unless you have very special needs, I found the silver ones are not as good as it "sounds".

For all the first three designs that have background, it is kind of disappointed to see that the author did not do anything for the background when the color of the texts changes.

In short, you have 30 different sets of buttons to choose from for your dmod's title screen. However, most of them are not very satisfactory. Either the untouched or touched buttons have some problems. Overall, this is a useful file and the quality of the buttons is fine, but in my opinion, they can be improved a lot. And unless you cannot make your own button of good quality, it might be better for dmod author to make their own buttons. I might be a little harsh here, but I think a 7.5 score is a reasonable score.
July 16th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 9.0 exceptional
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Binirit
Peasant She/Her
 
This Button pack contains 5 different kind of start, load and quit buttons, in directories button1 - button5. Each kind of button comes in 6 different colours, namely blue, green, orange, purple, red and silver. All the quit buttons are But3-01 and But3-02, the start buttons But7-01 and But7-02 and the load buttons But9-01 and But9-01.

Buttons from pack button1: The text on all the -01 buttons is a bit small, but the text on the -02 buttons is easily read. Both the -01 buttons and the -02 buttons have the same colour for the background (in the 6 different colours mentioned) while the text is grey, but the difference between them is that the text is much larger on the -02 buttons. The buttons resemble real keyboard buttons and have a nice shading. They look very realistic, but the funny thing is that in the -02 buttons the text is bigger then the button itself.
When testing them, I found the orange, red and silver ones a bit too bright to the eye.

Buttons from pack button2: the text on all the buttons is easily read. Both the -01 buttons and the -02 buttons have the same colour (once again in the 6 different colours), but on the -01 buttons the text is in grey and on the -02 buttons the text resembles fire. The buttons have an oval shape and are quite simple, but because the text isn't, that makes a fine contrast.
When testing them, I found the green and purple ones very nice, but my number 1 from this pack is the orange version.

Buttons from pack button3: the text on all the buttons is easily read. All the -01 buttons and the -02 buttons have the same colour for the background (grey), but the -01 buttons have grey text and the text for the -02 buttons comes in the 6 different colours. These buttons are in science fiction style, both buttonwise and in font.
When testing them I was a bit disappointed to find out that I don't like this pack.

Buttons from pack button4: the text on all the buttons is easily read. All the -01 buttons and the -02 buttons have the same background colour (black). The text on the -01 buttons comes in the 6 different colours and has some white lines in an oval shape surrounding it. All the -02 buttons are vice versa: the text is in white, but the lines are in the different colours. These buttons are really very artistic. Because the background is simply black, all the attention goes out to the text that has a beautiful font and to the nicely drawn lines around them. The only button that is somewhat dull is the silver one, since the colours silver and white resemble each other a lot and therefore there is not that much difference between the -01 and the -02 button.
When testing them I really couldn't tell which one was the nicest since they are all beautiful.

Buttons from pack button5: the text on all the buttons is easily read. All the -01 buttons and -02 buttons have the same background colour (black) and the text comes in the different colours. The text on the -01 buttons is somewhat blurred, the text on the -02 buttons is sharply edged. These buttons are the plainest of the whole pack.
When testing them I found out that, although they are the plainest of the whole pack that's exactly why they are the most versatile.

Overall: The buttons are carefully designed, work without any problems at all and since there are so many of them in different styles and colours there is always one which suits ones needs. The only problem perhaps could be to choose one out of so many! My favourite pack is button4, but my favourite buttons are the ones in orange from button2.

Fit for: This pack is very handy for those who are not skilled enough or just too lazy to make their own buttons. And for those who are skilled enough and not lazy at all, this pack is also worth the download!
July 18th, 2007
v1.00
Score : 9.6 exceptional
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This button pack is very nice and the first of its kind in The Dink Network, which makes it nice and the buttons themselves are also very well done. If you want some good buttons to use in your D-mod download this dev file.
August 26th, 2003
v1.00
Score : 8.5 good
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SimonK
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
Buttons, buttons and more buttons. 5 styles with 6 different colour types for each style. A huge choice for those that can't make/can't be bothered making their own buttons, but still want to give the start screen a fresh look.

Button style 1: Keyboard like with gothic lettering - no appeal for me
Button style 2: Circular shape with letters on fire - like the fire, hate the shape
Button style 3: Silvery background with blue computer-like lettering - suitable for sci-fi dmods
Button style 4: Mystical ring around gothic lettering - I like this one
Button style 5: No background, outlined letters - didn't appeal to me

Not a bad file, and in general I think style 4 should be incorporated into a new skeleton DMOD (ideally skeleton S with the bugs fixed).

8.5 out of 10
July 18th, 2003
v1.00
Score : 8.5 good
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I Love The Buttons In This Pack! If The Colour You Want Isnt There You Can Edit Them!
THE GOOD
this button pack has a wide selection of buttons in diffrent colours
THE BAD
the silver buttons dont look very nice
THE UGLY
some of the buttons only look right on black backgrounds
so if you want a textured background it might not look as good
but overall this file rules!
i give it a 8.5