I created this PlayStation game fan site in early January 2001 to serve an online community that had grown from the popularity of the futuristic racing game “Wipeout.”
The site enables users to register then update their lap records for different tracks in the game, take part in forums, polls, chat rooms, and read feature articles, as well as download screen savers and wallpaper submitted by members.
The site does require a large amount of my spare time to run, but the positive feedback I have received from the community and from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has made the effort very worthwhile.
The site was designed in Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Fireworks then hand coded in Allaire Homesite in HTML and PHP. I use CSS to format the content extracted from the database. The navigation bar was created in Macromedia Flash, as it provided the effect I wanted for the button roll-overs.
The style of the site is in keeping with that of the Wipeout games and I decided to go with this to make it instantly recognisable to fans of the game.
At the time of writing, WipeoutZone has approx 250 registered members, hopefully numbers are set to increase when a new version of the game is launched for the PlayStation 2 in February.