ZFGC
ZFGC.com => Feedback => Topic started by: Koh on April 20, 2014, 04:54:27 pm
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Posts are pretty stagnant here. One to 4 posts per day total, and it's a tad disappointing to not have a lively community as we used to have. The site has gotten some upgrades before to make it more project-friendly and such, but we need more members to put it to use. What sort of things could we do to attract more people here?
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Coding Board Activity / Usable Resources
Outside of Graphics, I would like to think that the Coding board is something that most helps fuel fan-game development. When no one is coming out with new features or comprehensive engines, people then rely on existing engines which may become deprecated or are no longer in a language that they want to code in (e.g., someone knowing C/C++ who no longer wants to code in Game Maker cannot really progress because the support for doing so is not there as much). We should target and provide examples of that so that people can grow that way.
Additionally, having more Resources that can be imported into peoples' games is also useful and makes project development easier.
Featured Project <-> Wiki
The Featured Project is something that is neat to have, but the effort that goes into the Wiki entry for it is somewhat wasted due to the Wiki's poor visibility. I would suggest highlighting the Wiki entry by having the Featured Project announced in the Updates board and/or having the link to the Wiki entry in the Recent News fader - more visibility for it would be good for everyone.
Have Regular Contests/Events
There has not been any major contest/event on ZFGC for 2 years. It would not be that complicated to have a Character Contest or some holiday-based event. The NCFC Event that happened at the end of last year was good, but we need to work on getting our involvement up with that - which we could enhance by having project development-related contests/events as well.
Community Project
There hasn't been that much visible activity with the Community Project in a while. It would be nice to know where that stands to see if there is anything that can go towards it soon - when the Community Project is more active, the activity level of the forum also tends to go up. Going back to a previous idea, why not have contests/events based around the Community Project in some way? Not sure.
Unhide Community Boards from Guests
The only Community Board visible to guests currently is Entertainment. While the activity level on ZFGC has been sparse, a lot of that activity has been in Community Speak. If a guest cannot see that activity, they might perceive the forum to be even less active than it is. Making Community Speak, Tech Talk, etc. available to them might help them to see the forum as a little less dead and thus incline them to register and post here.
Remove the Site Resources Boards
These appear on the board index and have virtually nothing in them at all except for one-topic. While not related to increasing activity, getting rid of them would at least help show that the forum is "cleaned up".
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It's all quite simple: start a project on the hype level of OoT 2D or Shadowgazer.
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Community Project
There hasn't been that much visible activity with the Community Project in a while. It would be nice to know where that stands to see if there is anything that can go towards it soon - when the Community Project is more active, the activity level of the forum also tends to go up. Going back to a previous idea, why not have contests/events based around the Community Project in some way? Not sure.
This is a big one I have to agree with. We're at a very good point in the game (story arc is finished, decent engine progress, all minor enemy npcs and bosses documented) but the project has halted? Go figure. Many of the people who were large contributers have either become inactive or have stopped contributing. The biggest obstacle to the project is artwork. I'm actually coding the engine as I type this.
Featured Project <-> Wiki
The Featured Project is something that is neat to have, but the effort that goes into the Wiki entry for it is somewhat wasted due to the Wiki's poor visibility. I would suggest highlighting the Wiki entry by having the Featured Project announced in the Updates board and/or having the link to the Wiki entry in the Recent News fader - more visibility for it would be good for everyone.
This is good. I do notice the featured projects do tend to have more Wiki views, but I don't think it's enough and it could do better. The announcements will be a good place to catch attention.
Also I'd like to get the resources back into a user-friendly view, but time has been scarce lately >_>
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Community Project
There hasn't been that much visible activity with the Community Project in a while. It would be nice to know where that stands to see if there is anything that can go towards it soon - when the Community Project is more active, the activity level of the forum also tends to go up. Going back to a previous idea, why not have contests/events based around the Community Project in some way? Not sure.
Maybe it will help if you post weekly or biweekly statusupdates, like I do with my game? It doesn't have to be anything major, but people (like the contributers) will know the game is slowly but surely progressing. That might help to keep their interest. Also, showing that the project is alive might entise new people to start contributing as well.
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The issue with the Community Project is its visibility. The site doesn't really offer the best form of distribution channel. The CMS was built before the Wiki was even installed.. There was an idea internally tossed around where Wiki would become the effective CMS, which kind-of makes sense I suppose, so that might be an idea right there to reintroduce as a possibility to improving its visibility.
Another thing is the question of Zelda.. I know many people are against this, and that "ZFGC" should stay "ZFGC".. you are shooting yourself in the foot by sticking to a niche market. Though that COULD have benefits, but only if you have stuff to offer nobody else has. ZFGC used to provide that. It's what drew me here. Not OoT2D. I do think another OoT2D would help, but it would be a sensational type of thing. If you had a community of developers, their output would bring in a community of gamers. Of course that is me speaking in an ideal sense. That was the beauty of ZFGC circa 2005. It hit that balance pretty !@#$% spot on.
The idea behind the Community Project was to act as a standardized codebase for the community to work off of.. like, a golden standard. It was supposed to be the best of the best. So to the users eyes, it was a challenge from the admins to do better than them. There _are_ a good amount of people still active here, but lurking, who can do that. Some of the 3D Zelda concepts I've seen floating around in all honesty, prove that enough. (Not intending to bash on the CP, I am referring in the case of scope. 3D is a wider scope than 2D in terms of developing and designing)
Last but not least, commitment. ZFGC has always had a problem with this in its users and staff alike. People get hyped up and then the hype dies down. Usually because of drama or life gets in the way. This can be solved by cherry-picking a group of people who to this day continue to remain loyal.
ZFGC needs a !@#$% facelift too. It looks like a site built in 2004. xD There are better software stacks out there for you guys to go with, over SMF. MediaWiki in all honesty can stay because it isn't too bad of a software for what it's worth. But design should totally be something that should be visited. Having a new face-lift may help attract old and new users. I've tried this in my time as an admin and it actually worked. Problem was, I followed up on it fairly horribly. xD It is all in the execution.
Great thoughts to everyone else, by the way. Not surprised by Diminish's post because I can clearly see he deduced this from observing ZFGC. I actually agree completely with your post :)
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Many of the people who were large contributers have either become inactive or have stopped contributing. The biggest obstacle to the project is artwork.
Oops : (
Sorry about that, by the way. Some life stuff came up and I fell off the bandwagon pretty much right when there was the slightest sense of finality (we finished the plot). Some life stuff has calmed down a bunch recently and I stumbled across discretionary time (gasp), so I'm gonna try to help out again a bit.
One thing that I've always been perplexed due to its absence is actual discussion about making Zelda fan games. I mean, we've got individual games like Martijn's, and that's discussed in his topic, but we don't see many topics coming up about how to actually design games. I remember several months ago there was one topic about dungeon design, and although it didn't last long, I was pretty excited about that.
I think having real, live, useful discussion about how to do the thing this site is dedicated to might be nice. There is very little information (that I've found) online about topics like how to design maps or overworlds, how to put the right number of enemies on a screen, how to increase the difficulty of a game as it progresses, the advantages of gameboy-style screen division vs. bigger alttp or minish cap areas, etc.. There's a lot of discussion that could be useful and relevant to people on this site that for some reason, doesn't happen.
I feel like somebody should start a few topics where active discussion of designing zelda games can actually take place. I know Martijn must know something I don't to put together such a difficult and coherent dungeon like he has in Horn of Balance. We could have topics or a forum to facilitate this type of discussion and sharing of ideas/knowledge.
Oh, and I also second the "competition" sentiment. Every few months I sift through the "screenshot of the week" forum at Zelda Classic's website. I've always failed miserably at even getting that program installed on my computer, and even then I lost motivation to figure out how to use it because it seemed super limiting, but their forums are really active, to the point were a sizable contingent of developers can put together a screenshot of a game every week. I think having a pretty basic, accessible interface for them to design games within might be helping them, while we're more of a "you're on your own, build your own engine" group. So our games are probably more versatile with more powerful engines, but we loose quantity for quality.
So perhaps a monthly or biweekly (every two weeks. Every week seems preposterously ambitious for a community as slow as ours) competition of some sort could be beneficial for our site. We could steal the idea of screenshots, because those can be easily mocked-up by anyone, even if they aren't developing a game. Or we could do maps, like this month, put together a kakariko village, next month, put together a lake hylia, etc..
Oh, you posted at the same time as me gm or whoever you are these days :p
you are shooting yourself in the foot by sticking to a niche market
We do have a non-zelda projects forum, does it get any particularly more activity? I'm not against other games and that could be cool to encourage, but I will point this out: the Zelda Classic site I mentioned, pure zc I think it's called, is even more of a niche than us. Not only is it pretty much just zelda games, but it's just zelda games built in a specific program that modifies the engine of a specific zelda game (Zelda 1). And they seem to be comparatively brimming with activity.
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We need more discussion about how the Charlotte Bobcats will sweep the Miami Heat, and then the great $tern in the sky will ascend from commissioner heaven to bring fangames and joy to all
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We do have a non-zelda projects forum, does it get any particularly more activity? I'm not against other games and that could be cool to encourage, but I will point this out: the Zelda Classic site I mentioned, pure zc I think it's called, is even more of a niche than us. Not only is it pretty much just zelda games, but it's just zelda games built in a specific program that modifies the engine of a specific zelda game (Zelda 1). And they seem to be comparatively brimming with activity.
Heh, true that. Which was why I said "Though that COULD have benefits, but only if you have stuff to offer nobody else has. "... and you notice their community it has has something in common: they have a standard base. I've argued this for a very, very long time and I feel it's important to having a developer community, you need to have something in common. Right now, we're dealing with probably fragmentation wars where we've tried moving away from GameMaker to "more serious pro" software plus an unclear direction as to what ZFGC should do. Or at least, there was a small subset of anti-mentality against GM a few years ago. Things have laxed on the Game Maker flame(probably for the better) as of late and the focus somewhat shifted back to making games. Martijn is an example of that, I feel. (plus several others) In the end, it's all about making the game. Right?
Sonic Retro does the same thing with their ROM Hacks, kind of. They expose the power of MediaWiki to teach a person how to do things the "Sonic Way".. hell, even broken up into sub-articles geared towards how specific Sonic game mechanics worked.
So I'm going to assume that the problem to chase would be.. resources. Interesting how we keep on revisiting this conclusion. Don't you remember our long discussions when KoT was closed off to the public, Max, when we discussed making KoT the repository for Zelda assets? ;p
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I'd like to see more competitions here myself. Mockups, perhaps enemy codes, etc. I may not be able to participate in every single one, but it's a great way to practice. As for site related things, I wouldn't be able to give proper feedback, other than I agree it does look a bit dated.
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Don't you remember our long discussions when KoT was closed off to the public, Max, when we discussed making KoT the repository for Zelda assets? ;p
Yowza, how long ago was that even? Honestly, I don't remember that exact discussion. Was it something along the lines of making the code from KoT adaptable to use as a base for other games, like Zelda Classic and hopefully the RPGMaker XP zelda engine would be?
The way everyone's using different languages and programs and stuff to make their own Zelda games inherently fosters a barrier to the kind of help that people can offer at that sonic site and other "standard base" sites, as far as like "how can I code this?" or "how can I get this mechanism to work". But what we are unified on is Zelda, so our strength is more like theory than application. Maybe coding your bow to fire arrows can be done a bunch of different ways, but what makes a successful arrow puzzle? How far should a hookshot reach? Etc..
I guess in a way, this kind of theory stuff is a resource. Well, that's what you were saying :p
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Well, tight butthole, activity sparks activity, I mean when there were more things going on people were more interested, what I think we are lacking is somewhere to begin with some people, like there are some people that already started learning a programming language etc, but it may be a good idea to update the tutorials or guides so people can start learning maybe and if needbe can get some feedback and critism on things etc. We have all the areas for the things themselves but there just doesn't seem too much of a motivation to actually do things.
It is a slightly complicated problem that require multiple solutions to help it along. Site-wise it does seem that it needs a Visual update or revamp.
tight butthole lately I myself haven't been visiting much because there has been rarely anything going on.
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I have been in the past, and still am, very against removing the Zelda name from the forum. We'll lose a big part of our image and we'll be thrown into the mix with other generic development sites. Do we really want to be overshadowed by Gamedev.net? ZFGC's name is also a bit more known than you think in the Zelda community. Plus, we've tried it before. Does anyone remember the outcome of DSR? ZFGC was revived in no more than 2 months.
Sorry about that, by the way. Some life stuff came up and I fell off the bandwagon pretty much right when there was the slightest sense of finality (we finished the plot). Some life stuff has calmed down a bunch recently and I stumbled across discretionary time (gasp), so I'm gonna try to help out again a bit.
Life happens, nbd ;)
We need more discussion about how the Charlotte Bobcats will sweep the Miami Heat, and then the great $tern in the sky will ascend from commissioner heaven to bring fangames and joy to all
Agree times 1000.
I think having real, live, useful discussion about how to do the thing this site is dedicated to might be nice. There is very little information (that I've found) online about topics like how to design maps or overworlds, how to put the right number of enemies on a screen, how to increase the difficulty of a game as it progresses, the advantages of gameboy-style screen division vs. bigger alttp or minish cap areas, etc.. There's a lot of discussion that could be useful and relevant to people on this site that for some reason, doesn't happen.
I would love to have a guide section or a tutorial series of some sort! If we can get enough interest from people who would write these up, I'd be all for it!
The issue with the Community Project is its visibility. The site doesn't really offer the best form of distribution channel. The CMS was built before the Wiki was even installed.. There was an idea internally tossed around where Wiki would become the effective CMS, which kind-of makes sense I suppose, so that might be an idea right there to reintroduce as a possibility to improving its visibility.
I can't disagree with this at all. We've never had any means of promoting things other than the PoTM. The site wasn't designed for anything else. The Wiki could still absolutely become the new CMS and would actually be a great time saver while providing a user-friendly interface.
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I think having real, live, useful discussion about how to do the thing this site is dedicated to might be nice. There is very little information (that I've found) online about topics like how to design maps or overworlds, how to put the right number of enemies on a screen, how to increase the difficulty of a game as it progresses, the advantages of gameboy-style screen division vs. bigger alttp or minish cap areas, etc.. There's a lot of discussion that could be useful and relevant to people on this site that for some reason, doesn't happen.
I would love to have a guide section or a tutorial series of some sort! If we can get enough interest from people who would write these up, I'd be all for it!
I don't really think guides are the best way to go about this per se. As Max said discussion of these topics would be nice. A discussion where anyone can chime in with their thoughts on the topic and others can add on anything they've tried, and what they think worked or what seemed to fail. Pretty much just whatever comes to mind about the topic. As a discussion continues you could also maybe even add a wiki page for it to kind of save the best of the best during the discussion. Essentially a bit more organic than just someone writing a guide themselves. Plus more people are willing to actually join in a general discussion of a topic rather than try to discuss it in reply to a guide.
I mean look how much more active just a thread discussing how to get more life on the forums has been :P
Also, removing Zelda from the forum name isn't going to change anything for the better. I think it's long past the stage where doing so would make any sense at all.
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I mean look how much more active just a thread discussing how to get more life on the forums has been
Haha, yeah I was going through the recent posts thing and counting, this topic has brought more life to the forum than any other topic in the last month. That's a good sign, 'cause we apparently really do care a lot about our site. :D
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I'm noticing a consistency between each post. Everyone seems to be in agreement that unifying some form of community-agreed development standard is one solution. Which in turn, answers the next thing would be "activity sparks activity", as Kami put it.
If that's the case, then why aren't everyone giving KoT some love? Is it because of visibility or is it an issue with the codebase itself?
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A lot of people already brought up points that I was going to. I think it would be awesome if we all made some sort of effort to post statuses on personal projects and stuff to spark activity. This post brought all of us back, so why can't legitimate activity?
In terms of the community project, I'd like to just throw my two cents in about this: community-wide development is not ideal and we will not progress if literally everyone is developing it. I don't mean to say that everyone should be shut out; I just feel like we should have a dedicated team but the rest of the community can still voice their opinions and ideas. The team will discuss together and choose to use their ideas or not and progress. Having any programmer just jump into the project and code is a disaster. However, if you guys want to allow more than 10 programmers on a 2D fangame, by all means, go for it. Just don't expect much progress to be made.
I think everyone here is aware that this is not solely a Zelda forum despite the fact that we are "ZFGC". There's no need in scrapping the Z, just have fun and continue doing what you want to do.
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That's how it works, though, doesn't it? :P You have the "dream team" who can either say "eh, we don't like it" or "eh, we LOVE IT!" to the masses.. and if someone don't like it, they can either suck it up or go walk their own path. That's the beauty of open source! I think what everyone was trying to say was that they wanted to help the team out, not so much the community take over the project. It'd be what you just said, !@#$% wouldn't get done if the horde tried solving one problem.
Though, it's always good to keep that in mind as people lose direction really easily when the place becomes like the Stock Exchange.
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I agree that not everyone should be working on the Community Project - in how if everyone was putting ideas and effort into one thing that it would be a chaotic mess going in many directions. To that extent though, and as others have alluded to, the Community Project itself should be a means that also "inspires" or helps benefit other people working on their own fan-games. While one project can have many creative aspects, multiple projects can achieve creativity in faster, more active ways. The Community Project works as a backbone and not as a whole body.
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It's all quite simple: start a project on the hype level of OoT 2D or Shadowgazer.
Also have a ZFGC channel on Youtube and users submit their videos to the owner's channel and we had links to said project on zfgc and so on (plus link to project creator's channel and thread).
I remember when I stumbled on to Shadowgazer and the hype that it had, I came straight here, after a bit I became a member, so something in that sort.
EDIT:
As for the zfgc channel, it will feature videos/game play of someone's project and or trailers of it. For example, we have Horn of Balance, I know Marty has a channel, but if he wants, he can provide the channel with a video, or if someone is playing the demo, submit the gameplay to the channel with links including The Horn of Balance Thread and or link to zfgc with/out it's wiki page.
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I'm glad to see this as a topic here, since it is something that needs to be addressed. The big ideas have already been mentioned, such as more competitions and stuff, while other ideas have rightfully been shot down (like removing Zelda from the site's name), but there has to be more.
I do agree that the Wiki needs to be more visible; hell, until recently I didn't realize that's where my little intros for featured projects were being posted simply because no one told me. And if they did I probably forgot, so either way.
I think having free resources available for people to use would go a long way as well. We've had such a system available in the past, and I think it works to centralize the resources (sprites, tiles, music, etc) here to really match the name. I've always liked that idea, because it made the forum feel less like just a place to talk about games and more of one to share resources and stuff to help others build their game. I mean we still have stuff like that with the Project Zelda Engine, but I think being a hub for projects would serve us well in the long run.
That's really all I can think of.
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This is just my thoughts, I think that the community project in some cases is overly bureaucratic. Too much time spent on planning, and too less time spent on proper development.
If I look at the repo, nothing has been pushed to master for 10 months, not to mention XNA is a dead technology, nobody is going to want to learn XNA now.
I'd recommend following a more agile approach, break things down into separate units of work that can be handled easily. Just as an example, in the KoT board there's a proposal for a bottle item, you could start off with a story like, "when i open my inventory i want to see 6 bottles taking up slots in my inventory", then you could create a follow on story such as "when i use a bottle containing a red potion my health my hp is restored and the bottle is emptied". This way you start to go through a phase of continuous deployment. If you couple this with something like TDD you end up with a living document on how the code is designed to perform.
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I agree with you in a way, but before plotting tasks, we need to compile a dedicated team together. We have no structure in development and this is something I would like to address once we have the team. Equally, the development branch should be the most important branch at the moment. Regardless, the agile way might work but it might not. I don't know where I'm getting at, but yes to pretty much all you said based on the TDD and agility.
You're right, XNA is dead. We're working on figuring out an appropriate new thing to switch to. I would have suggested Unity but I find it non-ideal if you're working with more than 2 people due to the fact that scenes and prefabs just don't merge well at all. Somebody mentioned Monogame.
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The problem with the team was that we never had any dedicated programmers other than myself. I would love to get 1 or 2 more people on board with consistent coding. If others want to contribute to code, they may, but it has to be done on their own fork of the repo (this is basically what larger open source softwares do, Linux included).
equally, the development branch should be the most important branch at the moment.
Correct, development is the ONLY branch that people from create their forks and branches from. Master is a stable release which is merged with development when releases are ready.
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I actually believe that the page itself isn't very attractive. I mean, just a blue scheme with a board with the latests posts. And I'm saying it in a good way, when I first got into here, I thought this actually was dead, it doesn't seem very alive. Of course, the aesthetics aren't the main priority, I know, but if someone finds the page, it may not seem very attractive to stay over here.
Other than that, I guess that it's pretty much because there are little to no useres loggin in here. I myself have actually stopped visiting the forums, though from time to time I come and check.
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I actually believe that the page itself isn't very attractive. I mean, just a blue scheme with a board with the latests posts. And I'm saying it in a good way, when I first got into here, I thought this actually was dead, it doesn't seem very alive. Of course, the aesthetics aren't the main priority, I know, but if someone finds the page, it may not seem very attractive to stay over here.
I agree, the site could use a redesign, make it nice and modern like the landing pages for APIs, Libraries and Engines we get nowadays. With their fancy scrolling effects and flat designs.
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Time for this topic again is it? lol
I doubt there is much you can do for this site at this point, the site is too niche and to low a user base to sustain much active discussion. Focusing on shallow aspects like a new project, or a prettier design won't get you anywhere, the site needs a complete refocusing.
I still check in on this site occasionally, but never post because there is nothing interesting to post on, and I know topics I create will not get discussed either. Its the catch-22 of having such a low userbase.
The site needs to give something to people they are not going to get elsewhere, something interesting or unique enough to maintain interest, something you can advertise around on other websites and have people flow in, rather than just relying on people who stumble on the site.
And yeh, design is ugly (my bad lol), but its not something you should really be worried about at this point if I were you, there are more important things to deal with.
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The problem with the team was that we never had any dedicated programmers other than myself. I would love to get 1 or 2 more people on board with consistent coding. If others want to contribute to code, they may, but it has to be done on their own fork of the repo (this is basically what larger open source softwares do, Linux included).
equally, the development branch should be the most important branch at the moment.
Correct, development is the ONLY branch that people from create their forks and branches from. Master is a stable release which is merged with development when releases are ready.
Here's another problem. Good coding standards are great and all, but trying to do this with the level of programming knowledge of most of the people that visit this site is going to heavily put people off contributing.
If you want to setup community projects, make them as simple to contribute to as possible, don't get into bs like forking source bases.
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The problem with the team was that we never had any dedicated programmers other than myself. I would love to get 1 or 2 more people on board with consistent coding. If others want to contribute to code, they may, but it has to be done on their own fork of the repo (this is basically what larger open source softwares do, Linux included).
equally, the development branch should be the most important branch at the moment.
Correct, development is the ONLY branch that people from create their forks and branches from. Master is a stable release which is merged with development when releases are ready.
Here's another problem. Good coding standards are great and all, but trying to do this with the level of programming knowledge of most of the people that visit this site is going to heavily put people off contributing.
If you want to setup community projects, make them as simple to contribute to as possible, don't get into bs like forking source bases.
I agree with this, though I think forking and pull requests aren't nearly as big an issue as dealing with branches, with regards to people who don't have the prior experience with source control. A better solution I think would be to make master your development branch an set up a separate branch for milestones or release candidates. The fewer steps people have to go through to get their hands on the materials they need, the better.
This is exactly the reason I've been restraining myself from suggesting writing an engine in C++ (again) as well. Most users in the community simply don't have the experience or time to contribute to something being built from scratch. Honestly, I recommend not even writing the engine from scratch in C#, and finding a decent engine (such as Unity, Torque 2D, Construct or even Game Maker - with the first two being free). Yes, it's true that scenes, prefabs, textures and other binary files don't merge well - it's a fact of life with Git. But that's going to be the case regardless of what engine you use - you're going to have merge conflicts with binary files at some point or another (this is why I like Check in/out-based solutions, like Perforce). Using an existing engine will at least give you an easier time of dealing with cross-platform stuff (even (especially?) with Mono, it can be an !@#$% to deal with yourself), and allow you to focus on writing game code rather than engine code.
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I agree with this, though I think forking and pull requests aren't nearly as big an issue as dealing with branches, with regards to people who don't have the prior experience with source control. A better solution I think would be to make master your development branch an set up a separate branch for milestones or release candidates. The fewer steps people have to go through to get their hands on the materials they need, the better.
Yeah, every project I know of uses master as the development branch for the reason of simplicity for contributors. Going against the grain so that contributors have to learn something different then every other git based project definitely doesn't help.
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We could also try scheduling some community events as a stop-gap and see who shows up for stuff
Like play a steam game online together or something, or even an MMO like FF14 (Which I know is pretty popular amongst the userbase here)
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The only problem there is not everyone will have those games. Any competitions I'm for though, like creating mockups or game jams (make a game in a week), etc. I probably won't be able to get into all that until the middle of May though, when the semester finally ends.
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What we need is obviously Demo 4.
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Well clearly not everyone will have those games - doesn't mean you can't go with something a majority has/something free to play and let the poor saps left out wait for the next week or buy it :P
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I think a game in a week is very hard but what about a mini-game in a week?
The Zelda games have their classic mini-game. Imagine how many different and complex may arise.
Could be card games, dance, jokenpo, shooting, racing, sports, fishing, bocce, billiards, rings, etc..
That would be a fun competition.
Some examples are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIvm-_yOv8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxld7V1b2Ow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0PJvWy1lo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gyj-rrG-Bw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jruE7tXLnio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UegO4Twah8Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMSoHoYGY0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lShIGwDEI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa9W3p9FVpw
See 9:18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcVSHhZA8NE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Em-MolonHo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk_M3ZykIyg
See 7:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiSgOrdqyi4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOj2mYkxpo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uKlkEgmEsM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoamDHKUR0A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-daxzVxrQI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJAHMUrGQmw
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its not really helping for ideas or anything, but im still here. :D
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Respected User Crim that helps far more than you could ever know
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As someone who once made a craptacular collection of Zelda-themed minigames (it was tic-tac-toe, Pac-Man, and something else that I forget), I second Leduardo's suggestion.
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I also second Leduardo's idea. Minigames are a great way to get used to game development and whatnot. Maybe a Zelda-based card game?
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I also second Leduardo's idea. Minigames are a great way to get used to game development and whatnot. Maybe a Zelda-based card game?
Zelda Poker FTW
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I also second Leduardo's idea. Minigames are a great way to get used to game development and whatnot. Maybe a Zelda-based card game?
Zelda Poker FTW
yes.
Respected User Crim that helps far more than you could ever know
glad to help.
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I want to play a game with a Blue Eyes White Ganondorf
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Zordon's Funky Grass Cutters plz.
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We could also try scheduling some community events as a stop-gap and see who shows up for stuff
Like play a steam game online together or something, or even an MMO like FF14 (Which I know is pretty popular amongst the userbase here)
Don't forget about the OoT speedrun race idea we had a while back!
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Yeah I still think that's a good idea. I think we'd have to adjust it to being just a ZFGC dealy though I have too much going on to try to get GDU in on it esp with how much membership bleed over we have
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Minigames are always interesting.
The one thing that could be done is create minigames to defeat bosses.
The Crash Bandicoot franchise takes it very well. A lot can be learned from these bosses.
Two competitions could be created, one for minigames and one for unprecedented ways (minigames) to kill the bosses .
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Try pushing some things that aren't Zelda more. The saying that there's no such thing as too much Zelda is false, especially when hype is slow to generate due to the amount of sub-par games the forums see. Once in a while you get OoT2D and The Shadowgazer tier, and all others lose their motivation.
This place isn't a corporation, so stop having ridiculously high standards that treat it as such. Push smaller games that are easier for new developers to build, rather than require something that Nintendo would make. There's a reason Mario fan games are abundant, and that's because they're simple to build. What you want to do is lower standards to motivate newcomers, and promote tutoring that pushes them to add new elements to the simple stuff to make it more interesting.
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Try pushing some things that aren't Zelda more. The saying that there's no such thing as too much Zelda is false, especially when hype is slow to generate due to the amount of sub-par games the forums see. Once in a while you get OoT2D and The Shadowgazer tier, and all others lose their motivation.
This place isn't a corporation, so stop having ridiculously high standards that treat it as such. Push smaller games that are easier for new developers to build, rather than require something that Nintendo would make. There's a reason Mario fan games are abundant, and that's because they're simple to build. What you want to do is lower standards to motivate newcomers, and promote tutoring that pushes them to add new elements to the simple stuff to make it more interesting.
Jeod, you talk as if we control peoples' creativity. We do not. People can make whatever game they want and post it here and we'll discuss it.
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All I'm saying is that the atmosphere is intimidating.
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All I'm saying is that the atmosphere is intimidating.
Well there isn't much that can be done about that. There will always be a project that comes every once in a while that blows peoples minds.
It is not us that sets those expectations, it is yourself. You see those projects and the reactions to them, then you get the idea that in order to get the same reaction you need to do the same thing.
You cannot compare a zelda game to a mario game, the barrier to entry will always be higher because zelda games by definition are a lot more complex. What you need to do is become smarter about the ideas you choose to develop and how you go about gathering perceived interest.
People get demotivated not by those hyped up projects, but by the fact they spent the last few weeks coding something and nobody is interested. Imagine if that at the beginning instead of coding something, they put aside some time to mockup some screenshots, maybe even produce a trailer to give it that "I've been working on this for several months" sort of feel only to get the same response. Now instead of spending a few weeks on a shitty idea, you've just dodged a bullet.
In the end you realize that zfgc's expectations are actually rather low, after all, this whole website was based on a game that never even reached beyond the stage of a basic engine test.
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I think the main thing that inhibits ZFGC is the fact that most game creators would rather create something new and original that they would be recognized for rather than a fan-game that they could not sell and would probably be seen by a very small amount of people. At the same time, a large number of us have been here for almost if not over a decade and are tethered here more by our overall love of games rather than our love of Zelda. Maybe we should just let ZFGC continue the way it is and enjoy the time (however infrequent) that we can spend together. :)
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In the end you realize that zfgc's expectations are actually rather low, after all, this whole website was based on a game that never even reached beyond the stage of a basic engine test.
Like I said, we need Demo 4. That'll solve everything :P
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Sorry for the lack of responses guys, grad school was KILLING me for the last few weeks. But I have survived it and I have free time again! With that, my current focus is on the site resources. See the thread in updates for whats going on with that :)
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I know this thread has been silent for a little over 2 weeks, but I have a few things to say, and I just got in a little late (been completely inactive for a while, so I only recently saw this thread). In my defense, this is a topic that was started because of lack of activity. :P
My thoughts on the community project and why I haven't jumped in to help
I am so far behind the project's current status. I don't even know the story of KoT. I just know a few small details. And when I go into the CP section of the forums, it's just a big confusing mess in my eyes. Probably not to the people who have been working on it, but it really is confusing for someone like me who has barely been able to keep up with it. That's a big reason why I haven't helped in the past; I couldn't help because it was too hard to know what I needed to know to actually help and not just contribute something unnecessary or a double of something or something stupid like that. The other part of the reason was that it seemed like everyone was getting the story moving along well and no help was needed there. I spent a little time in the past couple of days trying to figure out what the current state of the project was and how I could get caught up on it in a way that I would be informed enough to know how to contribute, but really got nothing. I could probably do some concept art or maybe even some sprites, but I've been unable to do so, mainly because of the above reasons.
As far as the programming goes... yeah, I'm not familiar with GitHub and I honestly don't know if I could really help anyway as Steve and most every other programmer on ZFGC are much more knowledgeable on programming than I am (i.e. I mostly just know GML, and very VERY little JavaScript and so little C# knowledge that it's pretty much useless, plus a couple pretty outdated things like QBasic in DOS, and Visual Basic, plus some very minor knowledge on using GLSL for shaders). Pretty much can't get passed "hello world" on anything except with GML. XD
And one more thing: All the resource links and a lot of submission art and graphics are dead links now too. I know that resources have recently begun to get moved, so there's that, but I'm just saying that the whole CP section is a bit too cluttered and broken, and it makes it confusing and time-consuming to try to figure out what is going on.
Did someone say "mini game compo"?
Oho yes! I think the mini game competition is a great idea.
What would be really helpful is if we could start a thread, and - in addition to the rules and whatnot - we would have a section with lots of links to RESOURCES. I mainly just know Spriters Resource, but I know there are more places to get really good graphics, but then there is music and sfx too, and also game creation programs and tutorials for everything from the basics of spriting to various tutorials on things like Unity (and I think I just saw a thread that started and has some stuff like this?).
In addition to links to any/all good resources we can gather, a list of game types to help get people's minds going would be another great idea. My thinking with this stuff is just to remove as many hindrances to developing the games as possible. There are a ton of snack-sized games out there, and they can be used as base ideas to spark a mini game idea. Or maybe just think of a specific item from a Zelda game and make a mini game that is centered around the item. Mini games with the bow are like, duh, but what about the Hookshot? "Hookshot Havoc". There, and a game can easily come out of that. Or even a Sokoban clone with a Zelda dungeon setting, cuz Link loves to push blocks. Very easy to think up stuff. A mini game based off of an enemy or an NPC could go some place too. The monkey from ALttP? Something could come from that. Syrup and her broom. The timed silver rupee rooms that you find in OoT (and possibly other Zelda games that I'm forgetting). Lots of mini game ideas can come from Zelda-themed stuff. I think it would be cool to just stick with Zelda themes for the first mini game compo, but obviously it's up to everyone. I just think it'd be nice to have ZFGC be more... ZFGC. :P
I want to play a game with a Blue Eyes White Ganondorf.
Strangely, all that came to mind for that one was a simple trolling mini game where blue and white Ganondorf is the exact opposite of the normal version. You play as him, and he is always stupidly grinning and prancing along in a horizontal scrolling platformer in which everything is all green and sunshine with rainbows and there are flaming enemies that are trying to set ablaze little bunnies that Ganondorf is holding in his arms as he takes them from one side of the stage to the other side (which is the safety zone where the bunnies are safe for some reason). And that's it. I doubt that's what you had in mind though. :P Oh, and there is a dorky happy-go-lucky version/arrangement of the OoT Hyrule Field theme song that plays as background music..... yeap, someone other than me should be the one to make a game with blue and white Ganondorf, obviously.
Final thoughts with reasons why I think we definitely should do the mini game competition
I already have an actual good idea for a mini game, so I'm in if and when the compo happens. Really need something to warm up my programming skills, so it seems like an awesome thing to do for me personally, and I think it could help a lot of people here to make something small which can become a "stepping stone" so that it's easier to make something bigger next time; something like a fairly standard 2D Zelda fan game. It really can take a toll when you are constantly working on something huge for YEARS with nothing to show, and taking a little time to complete a snack-sized game can really bring up your spirits.
( ehh~ sorry, I talked a lot, and I do try not to bore people to death ::) aw well)
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Strangely, all that came to mind for that one was a simple trolling mini game where blue and white Ganondorf is the exact opposite of the normal version. You play as him, and he is always stupidly grinning and prancing along in a horizontal scrolling platformer in which everything is all green and sunshine with rainbows and there are flaming enemies that are trying to set ablaze little bunnies that Ganondorf is holding in his arms as he takes them from one side of the stage to the other side (which is the safety zone where the bunnies are safe for some reason). And that's it. I doubt that's what you had in mind though. :P Oh, and there is a dorky happy-go-lucky version/arrangement of the OoT Hyrule Field theme song that plays as background music..... yeap, someone other than me should be the one to make a game with blue and white Ganondorf, obviously.
No no no I think you're the perfect person to make that game. :3
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My thoughts on the community project and why I haven't jumped in to help
So the biggest issue I see you have here is that you basically can't find anything. I won't even disagree that looking at the forum is an ugly mess and there's no real good way to be directed to the design doc (which is basically a series of Wiki articles). The solution for this would be something directing users to said document. Maybe a stickied thread on the King of Thieves board with a consolidated list of all information that someone interested in the project could look at.
The other part of the reason was that it seemed like everyone was getting the story moving along well and no help was needed there
True enough, this seems like a positive thing though. Luckily, group think didn't hit us too hard there and we were able to complete the story arc.
All the resource links and a lot of submission art and graphics are dead links now too.
Aware and working on it!
I could probably do some concept art or maybe even some sprites, but I've been unable to do so, mainly because of the above reasons.
This is definitely the most pressing area of the project and has probably seen the least activity. I would have to update some of the "resources needed" lists for people to look through and see what they want to do.
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Meh, I thought I would just throw this idea out - why not right, brainstorming and such. Maybe we could change the layout of the Projects/Resources boards to be more intuitive/accommodating?
Development
- Zelda Projects
- Other Projects
- Graphics/Audio
- Discussion
- Recruitment
Resources
- Requests/Rips
- Beginner/Simple Coding
- Advanced/Complex Coding
Zelda Projects and Other Projects would also contain engines. A lot of the time when people have posted engines, they have posted them into either Zelda Projects or Other Projects boards. Instead of there being ambiguity as to if they should be in Coding or in Zelda Projects or Other Projects, let's encourage engine development. This would also ease up on the project rules with regard to story writing and game features; namely that if a project demo was not too great in terms of its story or game features, essentially this would make it like an ambiguous engine. Addtionally, as you can see I did not include Completed Projects - this is due to there just being fewer projects that meet this classification - and because from an active hobby forum standpoint, project development is more crucial than project completion.
I think Graphics/Audio should be promoted up from Resources and combined into one board, similar to Mario Fan Game Galaxy. This should not cause that much confusion given that Graphics topics outnumber Audio, it would mask the low activity of the Audio board, and it would promote creative graphic and audio works as not just being something to use in a project but being something for which creativity/effort was put into that can stand on its own right.
Things like tutorials would not need their own separate board under a scheme like this. A tutorial for a Graphics or Audio style would fit well within a development board. A tutorial for coding would essentially be coding help which would be best in a coding board. If someone had a request for a tutorial that did not exist at the current time, they could post it in Requests/Rips and if the topic is solved (meaning that a tutorial is provided), the topic could be moved to a development board accordingly.
The Requests/Rips board would allow people to still request graphics, audio, coding examples, etc. which would help them out. It would also be for rips of resources from existing games. I think that this distinction would make the board very practical and helpful to have. Additionally, and most importantly, topics in this board could be more ably managed - request topics that get completed could be locked with the solution to the request topic uploaded to the Wiki, rip topics could also be uploaded to the Wiki. There are a few benefits to this: 1) these topics are forum searchable, 2) we could keep track of commonly requested items, 3) we could promote the Wiki, 4) in promoting the Wiki, we could help upload resources to it to help avoid broken URL links.
Finally, I was thinking that Coding could be broken up into Beginner/Simple and Advanced/Complex. This might not be the most ideal division but practically it would be divided between most efforts made in Game Maker / other RAD tools, simple questions/how-tos, HTML, where to start topics --- compared to more "difficult" efforts in C/C++/etc., complicated Game Maker setup questions, etc. Well I am not too sure exactly about this but separating out C/C++/etc. efforts and/or promoting them more so they grow would be beneficial to the forum - and keeping it to where when the coding boards are more active that the simple topics didn't bog down their activity would be nice to have.
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Wow, I love all of those ideas. Especially the stuff about graphics and audio.
Only thing I'm not sure of is how well it would work to have...
- Beginner/Simple Coding
- Advanced/Complex Coding
Just because there needs to be clear distinction, and there are times when it's hard for a person to know if their problem is a basic one, or an advanced one. It might be worth it to have separate child boards for Game Maker, C++, RPG Maker, (insert other common ones here), and other. So it'd be more based on division by programming language.
I dunno. I honestly don't even like what I just said. There's got to be a better way to do it so that it's not confusing while remaining simple and efficient.
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Thanks! Of everything I said, the Graphics/Audio and Requests/Rips boards would be the easiest to implement, providing the quickest return benefit and lowest perceived drawback. The more prominent of those possible drawbacks would be that users may perceive Graphics/Audio to be less active without rips in it - but I do not think this is a modern issue. The majority of rips for 2D games have already been done, or the ones which could be done would need to be redone so that they are developmentally-useful. The lower perceived activity level in Graphics/Audio would also be at the expense of hiding Audio's low activity level while boosting the activity level of Requests/Rips (increasing the Requests boards functionality to include Rips and other different kinds of resources).
I guess a better division of the Coding board that would make sense in terms of current board content and activity levels would actually be Game Maker versus everything else (everything else including C, C++, C#, XNA, Java, HTML, Javascript, BASIC, etc.). This is to say that Game Maker is so monolithic as to support itself in terms of activity level and that we have enough stuff that isn't Game Maker to support having its own board - that low activity board might seem small but at least it would not nearly be as barren. A simple name would be difficult but enforcing this board's division would be extremely simple.
It could look like this:
Development
- Zelda Projects
- Other Projects
- Graphics/Audio
- Discussion
- Recruitment
Resources
- Requests/Rips
- Game Maker
- Misc. Coding
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I guess a better division of the Coding board that would make sense in terms of current board content and activity levels would actually be Game Maker versus everything else (everything else including C, C++, C#, XNA, Java, HTML, Javascript, BASIC, etc.).
That certainly makes sense. Well, I'm totally down for these changes. Of course, it's obviously not up to me. ;)
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This is a Zelda Fan Game forum in the year 2014. You've been dead for the past 4 years. Just let it go.
It really is interesting, now that I really take some time to look at what has happened in the past few years. When people say "dead", it really just seems like they mean one thing: "No new completed Zelda fan games". But there's been a lot of development, like Horn of Balance, Echoes of Aurelia, some more OoT2d attempts, the Project Zelda Engine, and Atom finished his Zelda game. Also, the King of Thieves community project made a nice amount of progress, and there have been some awesome 3D projects in the style of WW and TP and more. There was also some kind of Skrillex Zelda game, which was completed, I guess, lol. So there is still plenty of development going on and a nice amount of creativity and talent here.
So, as far as fan game completion goes, yeah, kind of dead in that regard, but development is still plenty fresh and going fairly strong. The truth is, ZFGC offers stuff that you just can't get anywhere else. Closest thing would be the Zelda Classic (PureZC) forums or something.
I've got a proposal:
I was going through all the completed projects, and most of those are so old that all links are broken. But dang, I was unaware of many of those and how impressive some of them actually were. My proposal is this: If anyone still has some of these lost Zelda fan games on their HDDs, we could make a topic where we try to save them. The first post would have a list of currently "lost" games as well as a list of "recovered" games. Obviously, people would upload the "lost" games and then submit a link to the DL on the topic, and the lost game would then be moved to the recovered list with the link. The "lost" games list would serve to show people what games are still missing so that someone might think "oh hey! I have that on my HDD! (or SSD, whatever)".
This idea came about because I was planning to start up a Let's Play series for Zelda fan games and was saddened to find that all the ones I wanted to play were mostly just screenshots and descriptions and accompanied by a broken link.
I think it would really be beneficial for ZFGC to try to gather up as many completed Zelda games as possible and have one topic for all of them. If people actually saw what has been done, it could really help people to get inspired and motivated with developing their own games.
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This is a Zelda Fan Game forum in the year 2014. You've been dead for the past 4 years. Just let it go.
Shut up, Lunar ;)
As for 4sword's suggestions, I'm not sure how I feel about the advanced and novice coding sections. Splitting them up seems a bit weird. I get where you're going with it, but maybe a "beginner's code" child board within the coding board makes more sense? This way beginner questions (and I mean beginner -- what's a loop) won't get mixed in and lost with the not so beginner questions.
Merging graphics and audio seems cool, like you said it would mask the lack of interest in the audio board. But it may also cause audio to get drowned out (no pun intended) all together.
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This is a Zelda Fan Game forum in the year 2014. You've been dead for the past 4 years. Just let it go.
Shut up, Lunar ;)
As for 4sword's suggestions, I'm not sure how I feel about the advanced and novice coding sections. Splitting them up seems a bit weird. I get where you're going with it, but maybe a "beginner's code" child board within the coding board makes more sense? This way beginner questions (and I mean beginner -- what's a loop) won't get mixed in and lost with the not so beginner questions.
Merging graphics and audio seems cool, like you said it would mask the lack of interest in the audio board. But it may also cause audio to get drowned out (no pun intended) all together.
I agree with all of this (especially the shut up Lunar :P hehehe).
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Thanks for the replies. And yeah with what you and FrozenFire said earlier, the division of Coding into Beginner and Advanced would be awkward and difficult to enforce. One might have something that they deem to be advanced but done in Game Maker, or a beginner question about starting in C++ might seem weird going in an advanced board.
Other than that, the only division that could be done, I think, would be splitting Coding into Game Maker and Misc. Coding. This would allow infrequent things like web scripting languages like HTML/Javascript/etc. and observed difficult/niche languages like C/C++/C# to share a board keeping the perceived level of activity above non-existent.
I see your concerns about Audio getting drowned out. In some ways by idea is based on the current state of Audio being so low that tutorials and active, somewhat frequent development of audio works are unlikely to happen - this is to say that if Audio ever did get frequent that it would deserve its own space. However, even with Graphics in its current state, I don't think that Audio topics when put into the activity of the Graphics board would go that unnoticed.
Thanks again for your responses.
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ZFGC will die the day I find a bottle of Diet Coke with "ZFGC" on it
cuz lord knows you can't find your own name on those things let alone ZFGC
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ZFGC will not fall... there's a picture
(http://31.media.tumblr.com/16a670f19204837206d5c067f789498a/tumblr_mwxfiwX9LO1rshtpdo1_500.jpg)
its named: ZFGC falls no more ;)