Hey everyone! I’m James, the developer of Wall of History. At 12:00 AM EDT this morning, Part One of the Skybound Update, our largest update ever, finally launched. In this post, I’ll be summarizing the changes made to the site. To begin, let’s look at one particular page, on which several of these changes are noticeable.

For starters, the site has received a significant UI redesign. Whereas the main menu used to be a popup accessible by clicking a button, it’s now contained in our new side menu, as are the buttons to increase or decrease font size and change color palettes. This side menu also features a search bar, meaning you no longer have to navigate to a dedicated page to search Wall of History’s library — you can now do so from anywhere! On story pages, the side menu also features a descriptive snippet, a release date, and a word count, where applicable (all of which are also featured on our lovely new link cards, along with a summary of alternate versions available). Last but not least, the side menu also features a button to activate the highly-requested Matoran Mode, which changes all text on the site to a Matoran alphabet font.

Aside from the side menu, there’s one more new feature you can see on this page, which I’m particularly excited about — you can click on the cover of the book to reveal an interactive 3D model of it!

At the moment, this feature has only been implemented on Tale of the Toa (as it was a fairly recent development, not originally planned for this update), but additional models will be coming soon. On pages for works that don’t feature a 3D model, you can still click on the cover to get a closer look at it (which you can also now do this on comic pages).

Let’s move on to another page, and take a look at some more new features.

Starting with the side menu again, you’ll notice that any works adapted into (or from) other works will have a link to their adaptation (or source material). Certain works, such as the BIONICLE movies, now also feature slideshows of extras (such as concept art, storyboards, or trailers), accessible through this menu.

Also worth noting is that all three of the BIONICLE movies on Wall of HIstory now feature toggleable closed captions!

Speaking of the BIONICLE movies… remember how the comics always included those little cross-sells? Like, “To find out what happens next, watch BIONICLE: Mask of Light, now available on DVD!” Well, where applicable, those are now functional! As an example, check out this page, and flip to the second page of the comic — the cross-sell is now a functional button, leading to the page for the Mask of Light movie.

Visiting a comic page, you might notice that there are now multiple versions of most of them. This is because we’ve added several of the Papercutz graphic novels to the site! These are included as a part of our new “collections” feature, which also includes the BIONICLE Chronicles Collection, and eventually things like BIONICLE Adventures: Volume 1.

By far the biggest addition to the site in Part One is our upgraded reference integration. You can see this on practically any text-based story page, where any location, character, or item in our guidebook database can be clicked on to display a popup modal with all their guidebook information. While these were previously text-only, they can now contain both images and animations, where applicable.

Before today, these modals would also simply exclude any text that potentially contained spoilers — now, however, these sections of text are present, just collapsible, and already collapsed by default. This means readers already familiar with the story can go ahead and see that information if they’d like to, while new readers can safely avoid it.

The upgrades to reference integration also extend to the dedicated reference page, implementing navigation similar to what we use for the main table of contents. The reference homepage also contains a full list of unique subjects currently in the database, allowing you to visit a single page containing all the information we have on them.

Additionally, we’ve begun dividing novels into their original pages, per the requests of several users. This has currently been implemented on several chapters of Tale of the Toa (see this page for an example), with similar updates to the remaining novels pending user reception of the feature.

Finally, several additions or corrections have been made to various pieces of content on the site. For example, the MNOG walkthrough now correctly identifies Mark Durham as its author, and the 2005 animations are now referred to as Quest for the Mask of Light, the name used to refer to them on BIONICLE.com when they were released. We’ve also added the “Mata Nui Rising” animation, which has taken the place of the short podcast “The Rising” in the recommended reading order. Numerous other small fixes, such as correcting spelling errors, have been made as well.

That about does it for Part One. We really hope you enjoy this update! We’ll be back on 810NICLE Day, just one month from now, with Part Two, which will feature the restoration of several pieces of Flash content. Until then, be sure to join our official Discord server to give us any feedback you might have, and follow us on Twitter for the latest news!