ZFGC
ZFGC.com => Feedback => Topic started by: Vash on November 10, 2007, 10:51:51 am
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Alright! I wanted to do a townhall style meeting on Windfyre, however that was ultimately poopooed by other people. So we'll start here with a basic discussion.
The purpose of this thread, like so many other threads in the past, is for users to voice the concerns, ideas and suggestions for ZFGC, and if they have an idea of how they would fix or implement the said concept they would take the time to discuss that, so it could be discussed and deliberated by other users within the community. The goal of this exercise is to allow the staff to see how the users feel about various subjects, ideas, suggestions, problems within the forum and how we can go about fixing / resolving / implementing the said discussion.
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Isn't this what the entire Feedback board is for? :P
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Well, hmm, I was thinking and here's what I came up with. Not too much, because I like things the way they are.
Spam board - Yeah, this issue comes up all the time. They usually end up really shitty and just not worth having. But, if the proper care is taken of one, things should be alright. I'm suggesting maybe 3 local mods to watch over just that board, and a set of posting guidelines for it or something. Something like that.
Inter-fan game community events - NCFC was a great idea (I know it wasn't ZFGCs), and I'd like to see more events like that that span across the fan game communities across the internet. It'd be pretty cool.
move #zfgc to lostmoment - do it, you know you want to
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Drop the Z, F. :P
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Not true. Many forums have spam boards and have had them for years. Zelda Power, for example, has had a spam forum for over five years, and they're still up and running. These things just take careful moderation and a definite set of rules. Just because it's a spam form doesn't mean that you can get away with anything.
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Isn't this what the entire Feedback board is for? :P
The Feedback board is for users to come to us and give us their thoughts/ideas/suggestions/complaints independently. This is me coming to you saying 'please give me your thoughts, ideas, suggestions and or complaints structured and moderated in an organized way'.
Vast difference.
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Not true. Many forums have spam boards and have had them for years. Zelda Power, for example, has had a spam forum for over five years, and they're still up and running. These things just take careful moderation and a definite set of rules. Just because it's a spam form doesn't mean that you can get away with anything.
A brave man there, saying "ZeldaPower" <3, Its my home zelda site.
None the less, If properly managed I think a spam board would be fine. Its just figuring out the key to proper management.
The guys at NCFC agreed there 1) would be another NCFC 2) there would be a 'network' or some sort of 'affiliation' between NCFC websites. (Not network in the sense we all get bought and managed by the same person, but network in the affiliation way).
NCFC was quite awesome, I was really impressed with the 1) chatroom turn out 2) game turn out 3) Kingmob 4) OoL It was quite awesome.
Kesha, If LM wanted to Join Windfyre (or collective?), I'd have no issue with it. :p
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Drop the Z, F. :P
I second that! If anything I'd like the focus to shift from fan games to the indie gaming scene as a whole. I realize that's what this place was made for to begin with, but I honestly don't really have any interest in fan games anymore. If we took that route I think we might get a lot more use of the main page, (for instance, maybe an indie gaming blog/news site).
I'm guessing that doing this would !@#$% off and alienate a good portion of the users here, similar to what happened with GA, so this idea probably won't fly. Then again, with GA we tried to become a gaming site similar to IGN or Gamestop...An indie gaming blog would be more along the lines of Joystiq or Kotaku, but with a bigger focus on the forum and community. This seems a lot more feasible than what we tried to do with GA, (i.e. less work and less oversaturation of similar sites).
Those are just my thoughts, but I give you all permission to flame me about it. 8)
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Even though ZFGC isn't the best idea when it comes to the ZF part, its better to leave it alone.
A spam board...If we had SMFShop, you could buy a thing that made the spam board visible to you for a week or something.
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Drop the Z, F. :P
I second that! If anything I'd like the focus to shift from fan games to the indie gaming scene as a whole. I realize that's what this place was made for to begin with, but I honestly don't really have any interest in fan games anymore. If we took that route I think we might get a lot more use of the main page, (for instance, maybe an indie gaming blog/news site).
I'm guessing that doing this would !@#$% off and alienate a good portion of the users here, similar to what happened with GA, so this idea probably won't fly. Then again, with GA we tried to become a gaming site similar to IGN or Gamestop...An indie gaming blog would be more along the lines of Joystiq or Kotaku, but with a bigger focus on the forum and community. This seems a lot more feasible than what we tried to do with GA, (i.e. less work and less oversaturation of similar sites).
Those are just my thoughts, but I give you all permission to flame me about it. 8)
I agree to an extent.
Like I said, GA was an attempt to keep our user base, a failed stupid attempt. I'm shocked I still have respect here to be honest. None the less, that is not something we will do that time around, if this option were to be taken.
There has been in the past, suggestion of what I once called "OSESG". Open Source Entertainment Software Group, it was a theory I had with a friend of mine that i brought up with torchie. A layout was made, it was cut and put into HTML (All CSS <3) but we never moved on it. I also decided I didn't want the project to be limited to open source content, or even free content. It will probably drift away.
I think ZFGC would have to stay intact, and an alternative project would have to be launched for 'control' purposes. Thus we make no one made, and we make a few people happy.
However, I would rather see ZFGC have growth in the area of game development, just because we have Zelda in the name doesn't mean we have to limit our creativity to zelda, lets make other fan games, it wont be too difficult, don't feel as if you are bound by "Zelda", you're not.
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Then why not GDC,Game Developement Community :o
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Then why not GDC,Game Developement Community :o
As he said, the last attempt (GA) Failed horribly.
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Well, we could make it as a side project >_> not affiliated with ZFGC, to see if it is well accepted by ZFGC people.
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Well, we could make it as a side project >_> not affiliated with ZFGC, to see if it is well accepted by ZFGC people.
That actually is a great idea. Atleast then if its not accepted we can just refuse to acknowledge we ever did it >_> <_<
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Well, we could make it as a side project >_> not affiliated with ZFGC, to see if it is well accepted by ZFGC people.
That actually is a great idea. Atleast then if its not accepted we can just refuse to acknowledge we ever did it >_> <_<
*shrugs*. We need to work on what we have now, putting more things on our plates tends to slow us down.
I do think its always an option, an option that, in my opinion, has always been open. I'd want to the project to be affiliated, but loosely.
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The answer to life is denial. Why don't we have a poll to decide what kind of project, and RPG, a platformer, a Zelda game, etc.
Why not we just make a community engine in LTTP style or something?
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The answer to life is denial. Why don't we have a poll to decide what kind of project, and RPG, a platformer, a Zelda game, etc.
...
What?
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I just want to say I loved GA and thought it was the best thing ever (though killing ZFGC to make it exist was pretty dumb), and I'd love to see another attempt of it.
But for the most part, I think the staff are taking an excellent direction with the community, and I don't see members complaining about things all over the place or anything like that.
Just keep doing what you're doing, and things should turn out alright. I can pretty much safely say I fully trust the current administration in whatever direction they want to take ZFGC in for its future.
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I must agree with Comrade Kesha, Well here are some of my ideas for ZFGC:
Blogs: Well, since we have a main page why not some blogs? In blogs you will post updates of your game, we could remove the Zelda game board and indie game board,
tutorials: well make a team that help improve the quality of newcomers and old members by posting some tutorials about spriting, composing, game design, and coding, this would make those board more active (this could be zelda related stuff, so in the tutorial if you ask them to sprite a NPC, that NPC could be added to the zfgccp)
Remove the Forum Games board: this board seems useless and more like spam to me.. but thats just my opinion.
More Contest?: well, make some spriting contest, music contest, etc, I haven't seen those in a while, probably a xmas contest would work alot.
Affiliate: well, we should try to expand our user base, to make this site even more active, we should affiliate with other fan game communities or indie game communities, that way we will have more games to play and test.
Chat: whenever I go to zfgc chat, it is always empty.. more people should go there..
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Blogs: Well, since we have a main page why not some blogs? In blogs you will post updates of your game, we could remove the Zelda game board and indie game board,
Oooooh Project blogs sounds like an excellent idea!
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I must agree with Comrade Kesha, Well here are some of my ideas for ZFGC:
Blogs: Well, since we have a main page why not some blogs? In blogs you will post updates of your game, we could remove the Zelda game board and indie game board,
tutorials: well make a team that help improve the quality of newcomers and old members by posting some tutorials about spriting, composing, game design, and coding, this would make those board more active (this could be zelda related stuff, so in the tutorial if you ask them to sprite a NPC, that NPC could be added to the zfgccp)
More Contest?: well, make some spriting contest, music contest, etc, I haven't seen those in a while, probably a xmas contest would work alot.
Affiliate: well, we should try to expand our user base, to make this site even more active, we should affiliate with other fan game communities or indie game communities, that way we will have more games to play and test.
These 4 ideas I think we should really do. :D
For instance I could really use some tutorials on things, and other people would like them too.
Blogs would be great for other people to see and check out.
I say the community would, and probably will enjoy contests. (I would personally like more contests and things)
And like Kren said, with affiliates the community will expand and be more active along with a possible amount of new people.
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Blogs wouldn't be bad, but my theory (vision) with the wiki is the ability for developers to have project pages for their games.
Then use project thread's more or less as a 'blog' and a way to update and get comments on things.
(There is also ppages :D)
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Speaking of the Wiki, when are you planning to get that thing up and running?
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Actually, if Kirbs gets ahold of me tonight, there's a chance we could have a Wiki up tomorrow, if he's willing to accept my suggestion.
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I got a few suggestions. I might expand on a couple though.
1. User Blogs: I guess with user blogs, you could access a user blog by checking their profile. I know with phpbb, you could integrate a blog system for a user's profile. If you could find a mod for this, with the ability to make your own theme (sorta like MySpace), then I'm sure that posting personal stuff in your blog won't add more topics in Community Speak or whatever it's called.
2. Affiliates: I know this has been mentioned before by myself and other people but seriously, ZFGC needs affiliates. You could probably put an affiliates list on the portal page and also make a topic in the Announcements forum about and on the News Rotator, you could put something to see the site's affiliates there. Oh, and it could help get new members and stuff.
3. A Zelda Forum: Where you can discuss Zelda in a separate forum. Seems pretty logical to me.
4. Members of the Year: Similar to MotM, but there could be up to 3-5 MotY, but there are separate categories and ZFGC users would nominate a member that fits that category. For example, a category could be "Most Loved Member" or something like that. I guess this would happen in December. You would get one week to nominate and you could get maybe 1-7 days to vote and the users who win MotY would be revealed on New Year's Day. But it could be a random category each year, so from now to a nomination process, users could give ideas for categories.
Well, those are my ideas/suggestions. I hope they will be taken into consideration. :)
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I got a few suggestions. I might expand on a couple though.
Not bad, just going to give my opinion,
1.) Yes, blogs might be fun. But, people would still want to post their life in Community Speak, they want the others' opinion, I doubt people would comment if it were a blog. I don't see a problem with it. But yes, blogs might be fun, Zeldacentral's forum had a system for it and I used it sometimes. :P
2.) Yup.
3.) Yes, obvious.
4.) Maybe, I've seen it happen in many forums and it works and well. Something like prizes - sigs which mean: reputation.
Let me see, on the Insert Coin forum (another forum I'm in) there are every December the "Coins of the Year".
And there are many categories (if this idea goes forward I don't mind copy+pasting the categories), like, Best User Overall, Most Fun User, Most coerent User, and so on... And everyone votes on each category.
But actually, it was organized by members, and no staff was needed on that.
I don't even mind doing that myself, but I'll see how busy I am in the end of the year.
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I know IGN has their blog system and a ton of people comment for each article. *looks at Dragon Ball Z: BT3 Blog* Lots of comments there.
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I got a few suggestions. I might expand on a couple though.
1. User Blogs: I guess with user blogs, you could access a user blog by checking their profile. I know with phpbb, you could integrate a blog system for a user's profile. If you could find a mod for this, with the ability to make your own theme (sorta like MySpace), then I'm sure that posting personal stuff in your blog won't add more topics in Community Speak or whatever it's called.
2. Affiliates: I know this has been mentioned before by myself and other people but seriously, ZFGC needs affiliates. You could probably put an affiliates list on the portal page and also make a topic in the Announcements forum about and on the News Rotator, you could put something to see the site's affiliates there. Oh, and it could help get new members and stuff.
3. A Zelda Forum: Where you can discuss Zelda in a separate forum. Seems pretty logical to me.
4. Members of the Year: Similar to MotM, but there could be up to 3-5 MotY, but there are separate categories and ZFGC users would nominate a member that fits that category. For example, a category could be "Most Loved Member" or something like that. I guess this would happen in December. You would get one week to nominate and you could get maybe 1-7 days to vote and the users who win MotY would be revealed on New Year's Day. But it could be a random category each year, so from now to a nomination process, users could give ideas for categories.
Well, those are my ideas/suggestions. I hope they will be taken into consideration. :)
Those are some nice suggestions, but I have an objection:
A Zelda Forum: I don't know what you mean by that. But if you mean a new catagory and all the zelda games in it labeled with pages to discuss, that would be a great idea. OR if you mean that we make a complete OTHER forum just to talk about Zelda, I seriously don't think we should do that, becuase then half of the regular members will be gone and thats a whole other forum to pay for.
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I'd rather split the forum in two... (One forum for gaming discussion and general discussion; and another for fan-games and resources)
ZFGC would have one homepage and two forums, but each forum would work separately and independently (with possibly different members, topics, boards, moderators and even layout).
EDIT: I don't know if that would work though...
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I got a few suggestions. I might expand on a couple though.
1. User Blogs: I guess with user blogs, you could access a user blog by checking their profile. I know with phpbb, you could integrate a blog system for a user's profile. If you could find a mod for this, with the ability to make your own theme (sorta like MySpace), then I'm sure that posting personal stuff in your blog won't add more topics in Community Speak or whatever it's called.
2. Affiliates: I know this has been mentioned before by myself and other people but seriously, ZFGC needs affiliates. You could probably put an affiliates list on the portal page and also make a topic in the Announcements forum about and on the News Rotator, you could put something to see the site's affiliates there. Oh, and it could help get new members and stuff.
3. A Zelda Forum: Where you can discuss Zelda in a separate forum. Seems pretty logical to me.
4. Members of the Year: Similar to MotM, but there could be up to 3-5 MotY, but there are separate categories and ZFGC users would nominate a member that fits that category. For example, a category could be "Most Loved Member" or something like that. I guess this would happen in December. You would get one week to nominate and you could get maybe 1-7 days to vote and the users who win MotY would be revealed on New Year's Day. But it could be a random category each year, so from now to a nomination process, users could give ideas for categories.
Well, those are my ideas/suggestions. I hope they will be taken into consideration. :)
Those are some nice suggestions, but I have an objection:
A Zelda Forum: I don't know what you mean by that. But if you mean a new catagory and all the zelda games in it labeled with pages to discuss, that would be a great idea. OR if you mean that we make a complete OTHER forum just to talk about Zelda, I seriously don't think we should do that, becuase then half of the regular members will be gone and thats a whole other forum to pay for.
When I mean forum, I don't mean an entire message board from scratch. All of the "Gaming" topics are in the "Gaming" forum. Zelda Game related topics would go into a "Zelda" forum. I think a category would be a great idea. It would be called "Zelda Games" Then you could have forums in it called Zelda Virtual Console (Talk about LOZ, AOL, ALTTP, OOT, and MM), Zelda Handheld (LA, OOA, OOS, FS, and TMC), Zelda Wii/Cube (TWW, FSA, TP, and Link's Crossbow Training), and the last one for be "Phantom Hourglass". A new upcoming Zelda game would have it's own forum, and when another game is announced, then you could dump all the topics into Zelda Handheld and delete the Phantom Hourglass forum.
I'd rather split the forum in two... (One forum for gaming discussion and general discussion; and another for fan-games and resources)
ZFGC would have one homepage and two forums, but each forum would work separately and independently (with possibly different members, topics, boards, moderators and even layout).
EDIT: I don't know if that would work though...
That could work, you would have to have the URL different for the second one. The current ZFGC forum runs under the name "forum" in the URL, so I guess a second one could be put under the name "forums" or something else not to confuse everyone.
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I don't like the zelda forum Idea, they aren't that much topic about zelda gaming unless a new game is announced.
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I agree with most of the ideas that Kren mentioned.
User blogs sound like a pretty good thing to have, but as you said, as far as projects go the Wiki should cover it, (I can imagine in the future most support signatures being linked to the respective wiki article). It would still be neat to have general user blogs about daily life, rants, and whatever else...I'm just not sure if anyone would use them, and if they did, I'm not sure anyone would read them. It'd still be nice though.
Tutorials seem like a must-have for the main page. I'm sure we'll have them, so I'm not going to really give any argument on why we should. Tutorials FTW.
Affiliating with other sites would be great, and it sounds like there is a pretty good chance of that happening. It would make competitions much more interesting if nothing else. Speaking of competitions, yeah, keep them coming. Whenever we have any major ones it seems to breath some life in the community, and I think most people really enjoy them. We just need to come up with more of them.
Hammer Bro. Mike mentioned having a Zelda subforum. I don't really agree with this honestly. If anything, maybe make subforums for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and PC games...but even that seems almost completely unnecessary.
If the Gaming forum was extremely active, (i.e. you make a new topic and it's already on page 2 of the thread listing 5 minutes later), then the subforums might be good....but it's not that active, so I wouldn't bother.
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Lemme know what kind of tutorials you guys want, and I'll see what I can do.
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Lemme know what kind of tutorials you guys want, and I'll see what I can do.
I do say about anything from how to do a walking animation to how to sprite tiles and AA, for coding I guess, GM basic, and some more advanced step by step process, how to do a walking animation and certain other easy stuff, coding I guess should also cover some c++ or c#, then music, how to makea basic music( Q,K. tutorial is probably a must in here), then game design, how to make a good dungeons and not repetitive areas, how to make a more natural forest.. etc.
like anyone in here can submit a tutorial, but the people will rate them depending if they work or not.
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Thats another advantage to the wiki.
We found a Wiki that integrates painlessly with SMF's user stuff, that will allow us to really fix/modify permissions. It should be great.
I still think blogs are a bit unnecessary, and will consume a lot of space/bandwidth. We should try our best to rely on ppages, or using a thread for a game as a 'blogging' place for the game, and the wiki as an informational/resource place for the game.
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Ideas:
More competitions:
a comp for official art people make for their projects.
a comp for spriting whole scenes (could be separate comps for scenes using ripped sprites and original sprites).
a comp for video game fan art (could be broken up into different kinds of art).
3d modeling comp (probably won't work) a couple of times a year.
MotW - I find that when I am being encouraged by others I work harder. If we were to hold MotW, I think ZFGCers might feel encouraged to work harder (not that they don't already). It would not have to be as carefully considered as MotM.
Game lit comp.
GotM/GotW/Featured Fan Game/etc. - this would encourage more game to be completed.
I think that
more comps = more involvement in the community and encouragement.
More involvement and encouragement = more completed games.
More completed games = more people being excited, more people joining, more potential games.
It'll be a fantastic spiral betterment of the community.
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We could add a sub-forum called "Fan-Gaming" on to the gaming forum. Because there are alot of fan games that are becoming increasingly good and it could boost activity if we discussed them.
I know most of you don't play fan made games but I do to see what others have "cooked up" from the Zelda, Mario, and even Sonic series.
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We could add a sub-forum called "Fan-Gaming" on to the gaming forum. Because there are alot of fan games that are becoming increasingly good and it could boost activity if we discussed them.
I know most of you don't play fan made games but I do to see what others have "cooked up" from the Zelda, Mario, and even Sonic series.
I like the idea for that. It's easier for the topics in the fan game development forums to post updates when you can discuss about them in a different forum.
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I came for OOT2D. I stayed for the community. To make the focus more on the growth of the community and the people in it, instead of just puking out fan-made Zelda games, would be a welcome change and a good idea that should have been done long ago; before a lot of good members took their respective leaves. Actually having a plan to promote fan-game development and to help anyone who's interested in it; instead of making us look like a bunch of Zelda-crazed twelve year olds; might earn more respect from the internet as a whole.
I welcome this change and I urge others to vote yes as well. If there's anything I can do to help, just give me a shout on PM or something and I would probably be happy to lend my services.
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I just want to make a note, all of the ideas that were suggested were looked over by me. I am working on compiling a Plan that will be broken down into various phases. Thus far the plan has four phases (two of which could easily be omitted regarding the poll Kirby created). The first phase has to do with bettering ZFGC, the second with how the implementing of the either passed/failed result of the poll that is currently on going. As of now I've really only completed the drawing up of phase 1. Its within the management section being picked over now, but once the Wiki is up and the plan is approved by management, then staff, it will be made public.
Thanks again for all of your opinions, please keep them coming.
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I've been thinking over what to say for a long time; I was planning on making a long post, but I decided not to. I don't need to. My thoughts: I have never, in the entire time that I've been at ZFGC, come here for the fangames. No offense guys, but I don't even like TLoZ that much. Sure, I was interested in TRMs fangame at one point in time, but what has always really meant something to me, was ZFGC itself-- the people who make this place what it is.
Thats it. I couldn't care less whether we change the name or not-- not because I don't care about the fate of ZFGC, but because it makes no difference in how I percieve ZFGC, and I will love this place no matter the decisions made.
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We should totally support a fangame and have it's own forum. You know, some epic fangame. Doesn't have to be on here. Could just be an indie game. It'll be exciting like the OoT2D board was.
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We should totally support a fangame and have it's own forum. You know, some epic fangame. Doesn't have to be on here. Could just be an indie game. It'll be exciting like the OoT2D board was.
Zelda Online 3D.
Or if you are looking for a more traditional fan-game...
Shadowgazer. :|
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Removed a few posts due to being off-topic. Stay on-topic people.
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We should totally support a fangame and have it's own forum. You know, some epic fangame. Doesn't have to be on here. Could just be an indie game. It'll be exciting like the OoT2D board was.
Yeah, because that worked out so well the first time.
Where's Demo 4?
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supporting fan games like that always end badly we need to expand our horizons for this forum not center around one fan game or only one console. Hey here's an idea, why don't we set up a poll for how popular console systems are and another for how popular... windows, mac, dev stuff is... do ya get my point? we need to first figure out what to expand upon.
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Reminds me of my old ZFGC Polls Idea. Ill start some.
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I said this in the reply to the future of ZFGC and I'll say it again here. I still believe we should have some kind of online-multiplayer game that would in a way be just another way of interacting. A good example of what I mean would be JDuno (LINK (http://www.zfgc.com/forum/index.php?topic=20621.0) (except it isn't browser based. :P)
Now I'm not saying to just replace chat with this, a game like this would just be another communication medium (obviously you'd be able to talk in-game too, though it'd be dumb to ONLY talk in there).
One problem I see is that originally the IRC chat was the place to hang out at and was very active. Then that shifted to the spam board around Invision/SMF. Now it's just kind of fading and I think there needs to be some other new mean of interacting to liven up the interacting again.
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A zfgc online game? That would own so hard, who would design it though?
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Well, I wouldn't really call it a ZFGC online game because other than the people playing, it really wouldn't have any connection to ZFGC (like it's not an online game based on ZFGC like some people have attempted in the past)
For example, the IRC chat doesn't have any real connection to ZFGC other than the people in it (and the topic, but that's set by the people in there :P)
So if anything like this is going to happen, I strongly believe it should be something general and not really ZFGC-focused (other than the players)
Maybe in the future we could even have some multiplayer action with QuakeZero.