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Stuff in the works

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Thu, 12/11/2003 - 12:57
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013

Guys,

Here is some stuff I am interested in pursuing:

Revive the Collaborative Game Design project: Will probably work closely with Oracle on this (as he has an idea to publish the game) sometime after the start of the new year.

Get the wiki steering committee back on track. I really think this thing could take off, but it will take some real vision and motivation from a single person. Unfortunately, that person can't / won't be me. Here is where I'd like to get a good solid user to take their involvement to the next level (much like Jeff did with GDW and Oracle with the designer registry). This person would need to have strong computer skills to effectively explore the features of the wiki, strong organizational skills to organize the wiki in an effective manner, and a decent background in game design theory to effectively implement a wiki that is informative and useful for our users. Anyone have any ideas who might fit this bill?

A site FAQ which detailed where to go to find information, how to use each feature, basic tips if you are having trouble, etc.

Again, possibly implementing the marketplace for selling users games via the BGDF. Eventually we will need to implement the marketplace idea to sell the prototype components that will hopefully be available by sometime next year. It would be nice to be able to sell user's games also. Perhaps this is something we need to develop internally.

Also, If anyone can figure out how to fix the journals I'd appreciate it. For some reason, after you save your journal entry from a WYSIWYG editing session, it dumps all of your detailed formatting. I was told it was as easy to fix as setting the content type from text to HTML, but this is beyond my scope.

How about the calendar, is it really useful at the moment? Perhaps we can remove it until we have something else to put on it besides regularly scheduled chats..

That's all I have been thinking about at the moment.

-Darke

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Tue, 12/16/2003 - 04:22
#1
FastLearner
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Stuff in the works

Oops, sorry I missed this earlier.

Revive the Collaborative Game Design project
Sounds great. Sorry I've dropped the ball... I know I've never picked it back up again, mostly because I lost interest in the project overall. It's headed in directions that I just don't find that interesting and so can't seem to focus on it well.

Get the wiki steering committee back on track
This will indeed take a good volunteer. Did the guy who had volunteered to do it (can't remember who it was) lose interest?

A site FAQ
Great idea! Maybe you could divide it up into parts and then assign them out.

implementing the marketplace
Good idea, though I worry about the financial side of it. Who is the business that's receiving the payments, and how does he feel about paying taxes on the income generated (even if he passes 100% of it along)?

fix the journals
I'll take a look. Didn't know there was a problem there. The same thing unfortunately happens when you create a news story, too, and other times. I suspect there's something stripping HTML out, like the "Disable HTML in the post" checkbox here in the forums.

How about the calendar
I don't see it as too useful. Maybe if we put some cons on it, but still... I dunno.

-- Matthew

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Wed, 12/24/2003 - 11:04
#2
jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Stuff in the works

I don't really think I'm an "admin" of this site, but since I can see this forum, I'm assuming it's ok for me to comment. And hey, disregard my opinions as you see fit!

Quote:

Revive the Collaborative Game Design project

Fine by me. As you know, I haven't really been participating in this project, but I'd be happy for you guys if you can come out of it with a working game. It would be interesting to have someone write a capsule summary of where the project is at, not just "what are the rules of the game we're developing", but also "does this process work?" kind of thing...

Quote:

Get the wiki steering committee back on track
This will indeed take a good volunteer. Did the guy who had volunteered to do it (can't remember who it was) lose interest?

Wasn't it SilverDragon who initially had the idea? He seems like the obvious pointman, because he's already thought about what should go into it. I'm interested in the project, but couldn't commit to much more than writing an article. If someone said "here's what we need articles on", I might whip one up, but I'd also want to know what the "big picture" of the wiki was going to be. It's definitely got the potential to be an awesome reference, I'd love to see it come together.

Quote:

A site FAQ

Definitely a good idea. And also, a good place to send "new users" to let them know the policies and protocols of the site, in light of the recent influx of people whose discussion interests really don't match the rest of the community's.

Quote:

implementing the marketplace

Ok by me, but it's not, as Fast points out, without it's implementation challenges.

Quote:

fix the journals

Sounds good.

Quote:

How about the calendar

Useless.

Other stuff I might suggest looking into:

The graphics on the site cause the page to take a long time to load up on my 56k modem at home. Not sure if there's any way to address this.

Also, the chat topics are interesting, but I think they'd be interesting discussion topics in and of themselves, and I know I personally can't attend the chats. Just as the GDW systematized a "feedback" system as compared to "anyone wanna look at my game?", some systematized "discussion topic" schedule might also be an interesting thing to have. For example, "for the next 2 weeks, we're going to be discussing 'ways to reduce luck-of-the-draw effects in card games'" and then we'll discuss "what's so bad about Monopoly anyway?" , etc There could be a separate forum for "game design topics", with a new topic coming up for discussion every week or two. This need not be seen as distinct from the chat -- perhaps it could work hand-in-glove with the chats. I see it as being potentially useful particularly in terms of development of material for the Wiki.

A good example is zaiga's essay about "resource loops" and "schema". I'm not saying we'd need something that detailed as a discussion starter, but something topical like that would certainly be interesting to talk about, and currently, those kind of discussions only happen when someone posts something like that "out of the blue". Having something more "regular" might encourage more such in depth discussions to occur.

Also, I thought, from reading the transcripts, that the chat with gamemaker was one of the most interesting and informative we've had. An occasional "ask the expert" chat would be a really cool thing. I'm sure some designers would be willing to participate in such a thing if they were asked. Joe Huber, Greg Lam, Snoop, and a few other published designers are members here, so maybe they'd be willing to participate? Or maybe we could take turns filling the role of "expert" and have the chat be about how we design games, what kind of games we find interesting, etc? I don't know...

It would be nice if someone could clean up the designer registry so that peculiarities in entering locale don't lead to multiple entries per state. For example, there are currently entries for both "FL, USA" and "Florida, USA". And if someone had put in "FL, US" that would be its own entry too. Changing the conventions there would make the thing much more user-friendly.

Finally, it seems that the technology exists to be able to play games across the net, and it seems like this site could "facilitate" virtual playtesting of games. Maybe, kind of like the "chats", we could set up "virtual playtest sessions" where a user's game would be on the table, and we'd all show up and play it "virtually" and then offer feedback. This would be challenging, but potentially the "next step" from the GDW.

Anyway, just some off-the-wall ideas, take or leave them as you see fit!

Again, great work on the site, and thanks for making it such a great resource to the design community!

-Jeff

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Tue, 01/06/2004 - 11:43
#3
phpbbadmin
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Joined: 04/23/2013
as suggested

I removed the calendar...

Also I cleaned up the designer registry a bit... Changed all the US and United States to USA. The states I'm going to leave as is for right now. I know it's ugly but it's kind of time consuming...

I am brainstorming about the wiki now.

As for virtual playtesting.. It's possible... I think we are limited by software at the moment. I'd love for someone to come and prove me wrong. It would be totally cool to playtest virtually.

-Darke

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