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ZFGC.com => Feedback => Topic started by: Starforsaken101 on March 10, 2013, 03:27:15 pm

Title: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Starforsaken101 on March 10, 2013, 03:27:15 pm
Good morning ZFGC,

Lately the community has been quiet, and I realize there really isn't that much going on to excite the community as of late. We already have a thread listing things people hate, but...what do you guys love? What would you like to see more of? More contests? More collaborative works?

I invite you all to throw in your suggestions!
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Kami on March 10, 2013, 06:29:28 pm
I think we need more contests, collabs, activities as well as other things to try and help improve some activity on the foums.

The forums there really any insentive or motivation to really do anything other than to idle,

I'm thinking we could do some sort of comps weither it be for drawing, making minigames, charactors and such.
We probably could have the return of badges and awards to try and boost peoples willlingness to do things.

It'd also be nice to see more projects in the works, but that's more or less related to motivation, time, and etc, depends on the person.

Quote from: 'Walnut'
<Kami>: brb going to add more things to my suggestions list
<Walnut>: Suggestions list for the CMS: Sack it and write a new one
<Walnut>: For the forums: Switch to a non-vaporware software
<Walnut>: 
<Walnut>: Wiki's good tho
<Walnut>: Basically the ZFGC3 plan

The sites resources are quite stale with barely any actual rips from any official games. I'd suggest starting over and going through the resources and have a more organised resource system.
I'll personally help add in more complete resources via from some original games.

Maybe a way to filter the content via games it's related to or by graphic type(eg sprite sheet, tileset ect.) and such.

I also think it's be helpful if the themes weren't nearly the same and that most of them work.
I'll probably add more to this as I think of things.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: BlazeBigBang on March 10, 2013, 06:48:06 pm
The forum is quiet, mostly because there's no much people on it. I mean, we have, like, 1000 users. And not all are active users.

Anyway, answering to the main topic, I'd like to see more projects, and stuff, something that would make me to keep looking at it every day.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: 4Sword on March 10, 2013, 07:17:12 pm
- create/monitor list of useful/helpful engines, making sure to have a copy of the source here
- promote coding/template/engine practices that make an effort to be usable/helpful for others
- have contests that challenge people to code things like game features that haven't been coded before
- while full-scale engines can be considered like projects, make an effort for them to be in the Coding boards instead

- emphasize dungeon design and collaboration, especially to where those dungeons could be incorporated into fangames
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Martijn dh on March 10, 2013, 08:48:39 pm
Personally I'm all good in my little project corner (updating it once a week), but I agree that more organised activities will help spark more ... activity. We have so many admins / moderators that surely something can be organised. And also, my advice would be to make a schedule the activities planned troughout the entire year, rather then just the upcoming week. That way (new) people will see that a lot of things are planned, which in turn will make the site seem more alive / active / interesting.

Like: april = dungeon design challenge;  may = character design challenge; june = new staff picked project; juli = spriting challenge, august = music challenge; september = whatever.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Starforsaken101 on March 10, 2013, 09:13:10 pm
Personally I'm all good in my little project corner (updating it once a week), but I agree that more organised activities will help spark more ... activity. We have so many admins / moderators that surely something can be organised. And also, my advice would be to make a schedule the activities planned troughout the entire year, rather then just the upcoming week. That way (new) people will see that a lot of things are planned, which in turn will make the site seem more alive / active / interesting.

Like: april = dungeon design challenge;  may = character design challenge; june = new staff picked project; juli = spriting challenge, august = music challenge; september = whatever.

I really like this idea a lot Martijn.

- create/monitor list of useful/helpful engines, making sure to have a copy of the source here
- promote coding/template/engine practices that make an effort to be usable/helpful for others
- have contests that challenge people to code things like game features that haven't been coded before
- while full-scale engines can be considered like projects, make an effort for them to be in the Coding boards instead

- emphasize dungeon design and collaboration, especially to where those dungeons could be incorporated into fangames

Yeah, I agree with this too. Our engines and whatnot are currently all over the place and we don't seem to have a static list of useful stuff. Dungeon design would be really good too!
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Kami on March 11, 2013, 08:43:57 pm
If we go along with the comps and such, I doubt people would want to wait an entire year for lets say a sprighting comp or a Gam-Jam esque comp. We probably could have the Smaller ones like spriting and drawing and such be more or less start up the next one a few days after the the previous one. and have a Larger Comp monthly that could be different depending on the month like Martijn said.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Starforsaken101 on March 11, 2013, 08:51:22 pm
Actually Kami, you know what I would find cool? Starting a ZFGC art blog with weekly themes or themes every two weeks. We could vote in a theme, do something for it (whether it's a sketch or a full out awesome pic doesn't matter) and submit it in a thread with the theme name. Would you guys like that?
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Kami on March 11, 2013, 08:54:53 pm
That seems a pretty good idea ash.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: FrozenFire on March 12, 2013, 07:19:33 am
Personally, I've been hoping for a character comp soon.

Actually Kami, you know what I would find cool? Starting a ZFGC art blog with weekly themes or themes every two weeks. We could vote in a theme, do something for it (whether it's a sketch or a full out awesome pic doesn't matter) and submit it in a thread with the theme name. Would you guys like that?
Ever since I started to learn how to draw anime and to model and texture, I've found that I love art a TON, so I'm all for this. I'm just not too good/quick at drawing art quite yet.

There is one thing I'd love to see on ZFGC, and I'm working on it right now. It will be a fan game community project, specifically designed so that even the laziest and most unmotivated people will be able to make an addition to the game via an awesome editor that will take me ages to program! Yay!
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Sinkin on March 12, 2013, 08:59:34 am
Actually Kami, you know what I would find cool? Starting a ZFGC art blog with weekly themes or themes every two weeks. We could vote in a theme, do something for it (whether it's a sketch or a full out awesome pic doesn't matter) and submit it in a thread with the theme name. Would you guys like that?
^That, would actually be awesome. I really love art, but when I start to draw something I lack motivation to actually finish the piece I started, but this whole "weekly theme thingy" could work as a motivation for me :P
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Kami on March 12, 2013, 07:16:00 pm
I've kind of thought of a collab/activity we could do, but before I post anything about it, since this is more or less about suggestions and ideas, Would any of you guys think a non-serious kind of collab would be a good thing,(I mean effort is hopefully still going to be used, but it's fun us to more or less to make for the fun of it and see what it comes out as.) It's not a lets plan everything out at once but a lets put our ideas togwether and expand upon it and see what happens.(But what we do probably should be double checked to make sure nobody is making any overly innapproriate things. ;P)
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Martijn dh on March 13, 2013, 10:25:11 am
There is one thing I'd love to see on ZFGC, and I'm working on it right now. It will be a fan game community project, specifically designed so that even the laziest and most unmotivated people will be able to make an addition to the game via an awesome editor that will take me ages to program! Yay!

Ooh? [wakes up] I'm getting interested. Mind sharing some more information?
I love stuff like this, Much like I loved/love the concept of GMare.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: FrozenFire on March 13, 2013, 11:39:38 pm
There is one thing I'd love to see on ZFGC, and I'm working on it right now. It will be a fan game community project, specifically designed so that even the laziest and most unmotivated people will be able to make an addition to the game via an awesome editor that will take me ages to program! Yay!

Ooh? [wakes up] I'm getting interested. Mind sharing some more information?
I love stuff like this, Much like I loved/love the concept of GMare.

Unike GMare, this editor will be specifically designed for just one game, so there will be specific boundaries due to the game's core structure in which everything will be built off of. Once I do my part in programming the engine and the editor, the community will basically be able to make up the bulk of the game's content on their own. They will be able to submit their work to the QC team for evaluation. Any accepted community works will be added to the game, though some works may be required to have certain revisions before being accepted. There are a lot of details to consider about the editor and how the community can work together to make some of the larger and more involved portions of the game, but right now I'm just focusing on making the engine that will run it all. That will be more than half of the battle right there. But even before I can really begin with the engine coding, I still need to complete certain resources, which is what I've been working on for a while now. Progress is being made. I'll be making a thread about it once I get to the right point in development. That's all the information I will say. I'd rather spend my time working on it than talking about it. :P
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Mirby on March 14, 2013, 03:40:46 am
I love the mystery behind Demo 4.

WHAT IS IT? DOES IT EXIST?

IS MORTAL MAN CAPABLE OF HOLDING IT WITHOUT GOING INSANE?

these are important questions
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Theforeshadower on March 22, 2013, 01:51:09 am
Hmm.

More content is always nice...however the Zelda fan game community seems to be struggling the last few years.  I attribute this to Nintendo partly due to the fact there is no fresh 2d content(easiest to work with).  Minish Cap was 2004...that was 9 years or so ago.  Yes, I know about FSA, but no one embraced it as it was less accessible than Minish Cap is.

Less hoarding - there are people here that have awesome ripping skills...I have seen the 3d models on their youtubes or screenshots.  They are hardly if ever released in a nice format.  I think Wind Waker's resources were released by Soapy once.  TP's was released ocne too, but no skeletons were released...Why bother giving a userbase that you know isn't awesome at 3d the models but not the skeletons to go with it?  Makes no sense...That's like giving someone a model car for Christmas but not giving them any paint or plastic cement to go with it...

Meh, i know I didn't state what i love..kinda turned into what I want to see happen in zfgc 3.

What i love is that there are all sorts of flavors of programming here.  This isn't a neo nazi (insert language here) only community.  We have embraced everything from Game Maker to Rpg Maker to C++ to Visual BASIC to Java.  All sorts of flavors, which allows people like me to see the possibilities in each, instead of elitists in one.

:D
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Whitay on April 02, 2013, 03:30:35 am
What i would love to see here is more people sharing how they come up with some of there amazing work. this is one of the most helpful websites ive been on, but sometimes i see someone with a super spriting gift or an art topic where someone goes "oh i just whipped this up in 30 minutes" and the art looks like god. lately ive been trying to learn and ive asked around on new art forms and such, but i think it would be cool for someone with great talent to maybe show there steps for it. i know one person make something like this going
first i very broadly outline what im drawing
then i add different color shades to the layers
add a base of shading
blah blah blah with a picture to go on it and it helped me out in spriting pretty well just from that. i know there is C+Cs, but i would love to see some people show an example of there work and show how it gets created.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Walnut on April 02, 2013, 05:43:11 am
Lamp
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: 4Sword on October 04, 2013, 05:11:44 pm
One of the things that I love about ZFGC is when it has contests or events - my preference tends to be towards development-related events, but any kind of big event around the end of summer/winter or that celebrates days of/around a holiday-time are cool too. These usually give people a unique reason to be active on ZFGC. Are there any contests/events planned for the remainder of the year?

Otherwise, I really loved the coding/engines which appeared on here. It has been good to see how the King of Thieves project has its code open-source so that anyone can use and learn from it, but beyond that the Coding board under Resources has really had its activity stagnate. I remember the board once when it seemed like you could go to the board at least once a week and see a whole series of new topics. Albeit, a lot of those topics were requests or quick questions on how to do things, but some of them did show how to do something or were engines with creative implementation and/or a bevy of features. Are there things we can do now to sustainably increase the activity in the Coding board?

(I know that I bumped this topic after about 6 months worth of time, but much of what was discussed in here is still applicable in a recent context - so I hope that it was alright to do so).
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Jeod on December 04, 2013, 09:26:10 pm
I've always loved the tolerance for many different languages, even smaller ones like MMF and RPGMaker.

About the fan game community, I can't recall a single good fan game that was actually finished. This is why I always pushed the Gameboy Color engines. They were the easiest to work with, had loads of resources and it was very simple to make new (custom) resources. Instead of wishing for new content (2D era is over for Nintendo), the community ought to be working with all we've been given. There is no rule that says we're limited on our imagination.

Re: Gameboy Color, think about it. You're developing fan games made to be played on a PC. You have a mouse now and a keyboard with far more than the few buttons we had for the Gameboy. Add that in with the ease of access, and easy ability to make custom content, and you have a surplus of new gameplay mechanics and story elements you can include. The only lacking thing is imagination.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: FrozenFire on December 07, 2013, 11:25:52 pm
... The only lacking thing is imagination.

For me, I've never lacked imagination as much as I did motivation and time. My motivation often got killed because I lacked the experience to get certain things done properly. I was never satisfied with something unless it was really nice, so I ended up spending too much time on one thing and I'd get burnt out. I've since gotten a bit smarter and I take time to be aware of my hang ups and I find solutions to get things moving regardless. Motivation isn't really the problem anymore, but it's having the time to spare. I've been focusing on learning music stuff; mainly sound design and mixing and mastering. I've got a goal to make a little money on the side by producing EDM for a new company, so it's been my focus right now. But I've got a Zelda fan game in my future plans and I'm determined to make it happen.

More on topic: I love that even the original Zelda and Zelda II get fan remakes and such on here. MC hasn't taken over everything, but people still go back to the classic stuff.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Whitay on December 21, 2013, 05:41:23 pm
For me, ive always loved just the feel of this site. Everyone always is so nice and thoughtful on here when you ask for help, opposed to some websites when i was just beginning coding i would actually get responses like "if you cant do this you are a !@#$% coder, so maybe think about stopping." so yeah, here is alot better. i also love everyones talent, like the horn of balance game, that super zelda engine, majora, yoshi, and leduardo.

What i would love to see is some more order though, i saw THIS:
http://z9.invisionfree.com/LOZ_OOT2D_CP/index.php?showtopic=26
and i loved how this was setup, and i wished we had something like this somewhere. now maybe not as in depth, but having all the custom link sprites and enemies in one big file or place could be really cool. in the process of creating my game, i have a massive(and i mean MASSIVE) paint file with tons of random things from link animations to enemies to tilesets that i have seen and collected, and it was pretty hard to find some of them when they were very good sprites and sadly went unnoticed.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: BlazeBigBang on December 21, 2013, 09:48:41 pm
Pretty much what whitay said, I like the community pretty much. I've been in some other forums, and people are not always nice with new people. I remember that I joined to ask Max to use his sprites x3. And then I saw a post from KoT, and got to know the rest of the guys here.

So, to answer the question, I love cookies :3
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: DIFTOW on December 22, 2013, 12:49:08 am
I agree with the above.
Also, I've been a member since 2004 and still see alot of original members even after all these years.
Other communities just feel like constant recycling of members.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Koh on December 22, 2013, 01:56:56 am
I loved seeing the community evolve over all the years.  I may not have posted much, but lurking can be entertaining and enlightening as well.
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Starforsaken101 on December 22, 2013, 03:05:03 pm
I agree! I think the strongest point of this forum is it's everlasting community and how friendly it is as a whole. We are a sort of long distance family of sorts that grew bigger through the years. Some of my best friends are from here!
Title: Re: ZFGC...what do you love?
Post by: Kami on December 31, 2013, 01:49:06 am
Zfgc is a good community, though I haven't been on here as long as some people, It's still fun to hang around people of similar(and different interests), which make it a good place to be around(when people post or do things~)

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