Better than Adventure! Forum

Somebody has already made a forum suggestion topic, but I figured I'd make my own focused purely on the forum's style and UX, since it's still a work in progress.

I'd love to hear your feedback on how the forum looks and feels to use in its current state. Feel free to post below with any elements you think are hard to read, or look off, or potential changes you'd wish we'd make to the stylesheet. I'll take this feedback onboard and work it into future versions if I agree.

You can also manually create a pull request on our github repo for the forum style itself, but that's really only for those familiar with PHP and CSS.

I am biased as I like these older PHP based site styles, but I like it a lot as-is.

The stylised buttons are an incredible touch, it's simple but makes the forum feel unique.
If it's doable the standard webform buttons could do with the same style, but I am not familiar enough with phpBB to tell how difficult this is.
The website and interfaces around are not over-padded and the simple 1px border gives some nice separation of elements.

I do feel that the current dark theme background colour is a touch too light and the green accented text colour a touch too dark,
This makes for poor contrast, which makes the highlighted text a bit harder to read and parse.
Posts can also do with the same 1px radius used by interface elements in my opinion.

I have a CSS hack to force 0px border radiuses on websites and toggling between this, I prefer this over the current rounded frame.
The blur to the right of the title banner looks a bit hazy and weird, it does look like a vintage lens which is out of focus, but a more computer-y blur seems more fitting.
And the green below the search buttons looks wrong, but that is nitpicking at this point.
Finally, the favicon is blurry on low resolutions

The site is lacking a backlink to the main BTA website, this seems useful to add.
A shared navbar with the main BTA site would be nice, but other subservices also lack this and the compact phpBB one is also nice.

Well, For starter's I'd remove the blank background and replace with a world cross-section like on the wiki. Then remove rounded corners FROM EVERYTHINGGGGG.



Then i think these inlaid info boxes could do well to have a minecrafty frame too.



instead of

kheprep wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 19:15 Well, For starter's I'd remove the blank background and replace with a world cross-section like on the wiki. Then remove rounded corners FROM EVERYTHINGGGGG.



Then i think these inlaid info boxes could do well to have a minecrafty frame too.



instead of

Oooh I'm liking this. I did make some icons. Maybe those could be implemented along side this?

kheprep wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 19:15 Well, For starter's I'd remove the blank background and replace with a world cross-section like on the wiki. Then remove rounded corners FROM EVERYTHINGGGGG.

No offense to your personal preferences but to be honest I think the Minecraft background looks bad. For the wiki it’s fine, but for something you’re actively interacting with I guess it just doesn’t look nearly as fitting. A little tacky at best. The grey background looks really clean and unobtrusive to me overall which I feel like is one of the most important factors when it’s a completely separate background from the functional part of the site.

Then i think these inlaid info boxes could do well to have a minecrafty frame too.



instead of

I also feel like with a forum it should be form over function, and a little box like that significantly complicates matters. I’m quite skeptical of how you could fit everything from the bar into a box without the separation between directories and links being very very unintuitive. Besides that as someone who’s typing this out on her phone right now I’m a little unsure of where the box would go. If you have an idea for that I’d be curious to see it though.

RedWyvern wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 18:59 I do feel that the current dark theme background colour is a touch too light and the green accented text colour a touch too dark,
This makes for poor contrast, which makes the highlighted text a bit harder to read and parse.

As a light mode user I slightly worry that if the UI gets any darker I might get consumed by the void

neb wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 20:56

RedWyvern wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 18:59 I do feel that the current dark theme background colour is a touch too light and the green accented text colour a touch too dark,
This makes for poor contrast, which makes the highlighted text a bit harder to read and parse.

As a light mode user I slightly worry that if the UI gets any darker I might get consumed by the void

Perhaps there could be a separate light and dark UI? Kind of hard to please everyone with just one theme.

No offense to your personal preferences but to be honest I think the Minecraft background looks bad. For the wiki it’s fine, but for something you’re actively interacting with I guess it just doesn’t look nearly as fitting. A little tacky at best. The grey background looks really clean and unobtrusive to me overall which I feel like is one of the most important factors when it’s a completely separate background from the functional part of the site.

Will second Neb's comment here, I am also not a fan of the cross-section background if I'm honest. It's a tad played out as far as Minecraft themed websites go and I want to keep things as minimal as possible.

Silvycakes wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 20:59

neb wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 20:56

RedWyvern wrote: ↑30 Nov 2025, 18:59 I do feel that the current dark theme background colour is a touch too light and the green accented text colour a touch too dark,
This makes for poor contrast, which makes the highlighted text a bit harder to read and parse.

As a light mode user I slightly worry that if the UI gets any darker I might get consumed by the void

Perhaps there could be a separate light and dark UI? Kind of hard to please everyone with just one theme.

User defined custom themes are possible, so I can easily make a light variant.

I think it would be nice if it was possible to collapse posts, and if the browser or account could remember this choice too.
Especially in threads with lots of images it can be quite the scroll trying to find my way back to where I left off.

camoweed_ wrote: ↑02 Dec 2025, 14:06 I think it would be nice if it was possible to collapse posts, and if the browser or account could remember this choice too.
Especially in threads with lots of images it can be quite the scroll trying to find my way back to where I left off.

That's a good idea! I'll look into it.

It would be awesome if the forum could support other languages. As a player from China, I think it would make the forum a lot more accessible to the global BTA community. I could help translate some key sections if that's useful.