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Author Topic: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?  (Read 32711 times)

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Mirby

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #20 on: April 22, 2014, 09:56:48 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #21 on: April 23, 2014, 11:51:59 pm »
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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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Starforsaken101

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #22 on: April 24, 2014, 03:13:25 am »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #23 on: April 24, 2014, 10:09:59 pm »
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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).

Quote
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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #24 on: April 26, 2014, 01:56:43 am »
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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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Broojo02

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #25 on: April 26, 2014, 01:00:29 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #26 on: April 26, 2014, 10:52:01 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #27 on: April 26, 2014, 10:53:32 pm »
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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).

Quote
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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #28 on: April 27, 2014, 01:50:42 am »
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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).

Quote
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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #29 on: April 27, 2014, 05:03:27 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #30 on: April 27, 2014, 07:38:44 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #31 on: April 27, 2014, 09:28:32 pm »
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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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Mirby

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #32 on: April 28, 2014, 12:01:03 am »
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What we need is obviously Demo 4.
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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #33 on: April 28, 2014, 03:28:13 am »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #34 on: April 28, 2014, 03:50:50 am »
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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:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIvm-_yOv8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RIvm-_yOv8</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxld7V1b2Ow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxld7V1b2Ow</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0PJvWy1lo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te0PJvWy1lo</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gyj-rrG-Bw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gyj-rrG-Bw</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jruE7tXLnio" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jruE7tXLnio</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UegO4Twah8Q" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UegO4Twah8Q</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMSoHoYGY0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMSoHoYGY0</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lShIGwDEI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lShIGwDEI</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa9W3p9FVpw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa9W3p9FVpw</a>
See 9:18

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcVSHhZA8NE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcVSHhZA8NE</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Em-MolonHo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Em-MolonHo</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk_M3ZykIyg" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk_M3ZykIyg</a>
See 7:52

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiSgOrdqyi4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiSgOrdqyi4</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOj2mYkxpo0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOj2mYkxpo0</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uKlkEgmEsM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uKlkEgmEsM</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoamDHKUR0A" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoamDHKUR0A</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-daxzVxrQI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-daxzVxrQI</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJAHMUrGQmw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJAHMUrGQmw</a>
« Last Edit: April 28, 2014, 04:39:41 am by Leduardo »
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Crim

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #35 on: April 29, 2014, 05:52:06 am »
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its not really helping for ideas or anything, but im still here. :D
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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #36 on: April 30, 2014, 01:34:05 am »
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Respected User Crim that helps far more than you could ever know
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ROLL TIDE WHAT? **** YOU!!! Geaux Tiga

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Mirby

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #37 on: April 30, 2014, 08:51:59 am »
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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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Starforsaken101

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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #38 on: April 30, 2014, 01:33:41 pm »
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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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Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« Reply #39 on: April 30, 2014, 01:46:09 pm »
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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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