Category talk:Dynamic comics
To me "Dynamic" is too flowery and abstract. I don't like this as a category, having out-of-the-ordinary, Interactive, and Large Comics categories is both more specific, and more helpful for finding like comics. Calling them Dynamic(!) sounds like a marketing term.
Now, if Randall ever comes up with a purely non-deterministic comic (something that randomly generates content for each pageview/ip address/time-of-day/geo-location/position-about-the-sun/lunar-phase I'd consider that Dynamic. However, none of the comics currently in existence are that. Umwelt comes the closest, but each one was still hand-drawn, and not absolutely non-deterministic.
-- lcarsos (talk) 19:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Can I just say that the (presumed same) author of all the "Explain please" things (latest: {{Incomplete|Review and fix explanations for the comics please.}}, but luckily I had already set about overwriting what they were asking for with something that may still need updating but was actually useful) really gets my goat. Almost always it's a demand for a list that either needn't be listed or doesn't need separate listing. And they add the magic word "please" as if that excuses the request and makes it more reasonable than it originally was. Anyway, just releasing my pressure valve on this issue. Carry on. (Except for the "please" guy, hopefully.) 172.70.58.5 23:47, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
- Agreed. Sometimes their suggestions are weirdly on point tho. --FaviFake (talk) 10:39, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Ok, the sub-categories...[edit]
If we must ellucidate 'types' of dynamic comic, then at least work out what we can do/what we need to do. And I'd prefer these to be either member-/sub-category of the Dynamic set or just co-Categories (allowing for overlap and multi-membership), if we go that far, but that's open to discussion.
Ignore "April Fools' Comics", that's already a category, and you can probably assign every Dynamic+Fools comic into one (or more) of the following. It may be the inspiration for a DC, but it explains nothing about the form of the DC.
Cyclic animations (roughly Category:Comics with animation, but perhaps that needs an overhaul, re: Hoverboard, etc): Covering everything from the Dot one (two frames, relatively quick full cycle) to 1335: Now (technically a 24-hour cycle of otherwise static comic rotating) to 1116: Traffic Lights (multiple 'independent' changes in the same comic) to 1331: Frequency (composite of multiple 'simple' animations, creating a vaster least-common-multiple repeating length).
Revealing animations: Countdown/Time/Landing are dynamically changed static frames (as an animation, perhaps only by fan-led efforts to compile the frames into a series).
(For the next two, especially, we again currently have sub-cat Category:Interactive comics, but may need to examine its members as there are quite different 'beasts' of interactivity...)
Explorable/interactive environments: Most(?) of the 'games', or drag-and-scrollers. (If you want, could separate those with 'aims' (Interactive) from any that are merely "a small window on a larger world" (Explorable), but these do also so often overlap/double-up so maybe no reason to split thus.)
Interactive decision-trees (perhaps a sub-cat of Interactive(-without-'explorable', in the classic sense?) : Those that progress from interaction (typically with the comic-pane). Could further split these into ones that are repeatedly redivable (start from scratch with Right Click, 8-Ball, etc) and those that head towards an end (like bracket-voting ones?).
...off-hand, I think that'll cover everything. But we'll only know if we seriously work out which one-or-more categories (of the four-or-more types I suggest above) apply to each Dynamic comic, see if any doesn't fit anything else. The SMBC one is "Interactive", but not much more, some may end up with multiple memberships (especially as April Fool, obviously, if that still counts). Anyway. Just putting it out there. Not because I think it needs to be done, but better than what just has been forced on us. 172.70.163.71 16:59, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
