[Site] Suggestions, requests, etc.

edg3

Hi guys,<br><br>So as (I hope) you have noticed, we are kinda trying to do what the community wants for this site, so I figured I should detail the current plans (or what I know of them) as well as offer proper space to give suggestions of what should actually make it onto the site.<br><br>Firstly, this is <a href="http://www.makegamessa.com/discussion/17/make-games-logo#Item_8">not directly related to the logo discussion</a>. Discussion about the look and feel would be more appropriate there, I am more focussed on what tech needs to be written and/or integrated into the forum software to make it a fully functional community site that gives us the power to correctly drive the community. <br><br>So the major plan that I personally had from the start was to build a plugin to handle news and "feature" community content. This would be featured on the main page, along with the twitter feed and the "latest posts". There would be 4 main things that I feel would be ideal to have implemented (even if it isnt used yet) and they would be:<br><ol><li>Posting news articles on the site itself</li><li>Getting latest news <u>related to making games</u> from local release avenues for news (company blogs, etc)</li><li>Featuring forum posts (whether they are projects, good conversational topics, etc)</li><li>The plugin would closely link a thread for each item so they can be discussed on the forums</li></ol><p>Any thoughts or input on that system directly would be good, and any other backend additions you have to suggest should be done here I think, to give a good central "Tech" place to go to.<br></p>

EvanGreenwood

Could we have the ability to "heart" posts, like at Ludum Dare? (is that a good idea even)<br><br>Is it possible to make the site full width centred ? Like the Penny Arcade forums. I think this is a bit better for artists that want to put up big images? (although what we have at the moment is better than the old SAGD for displaying images)<br>

Karuji

<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">1. If I understand this correctly this would be a news blog in the site itself.</font><div><br><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">2. Not everyone blogs about making games, and often those blogs will just be about progress about the game. How would this be different for the news blog on MGSA?</div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">3. I really like this. And if we have some really good "How to start making games" that could sit at the top it would be a brilliant resource.</div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">4. I assume this would only be from the MGSA newsblog and not the external feeds, if that's the case I think it would be a good idea.</font></div><div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div></div></div>

Aequitas

I'd like to suggest that the twitter feed be displayed in the same fashion as the the "recent posts" list. I don't like the constant update rollover thing that the twitter widget does, and I think it would make the site look more ... integrated?<br><br>Using @<span class="Author">BlackShipsFilltheSky's original mock-up as a baseline (ignore the colors), this is the kind of layout I'd like to see.<br>But again I caution about the news column, and I think it should be easy to turn off if there's not enough post churn happening to keep it fresh.<br><br><img src="http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/images/SAGDFRONT_Exploded.jpg"> </span><span class="DateCreated"><a href="http://makegamessa.com/discussion/comment/208#Comment_208" class="Permalink" name="Item_2" rel="nofollow"></a></span>

edg3

<div>I would like to stress that I will just implement what the community wants, and that I would prefer to do all implementation of the features now while I am on holiday so that if we need to activate things at some point it can be done simply, and not need any extra work.</div><div><br></div>@BlackShipsFillTtheSky Hearting posts is an idea, though in my mind it drives people to ignore less "popular" threads to an extent, do we want that? For the width centering, when someone comes up with a design everyone agrees to I will do the discussions full width and centered, I think that even if there wasnt already a good reason (the artists) there is a lot of whitespace just being wasted. If we decide to just do a logo and adjust the current theme will do that change still.<br><br>@Karuji It wont be a blog for the site news, no, more like actual news from the community (i.e. there should be a channel for places like Luma, Tasty Poison, Free Lives, etc to submit press releases, as well as our other community members). You will also note I didnt say get everyones blogs specifically, but there should be a way for us to link to good blog posts in the community and feature them when they are related to game dev AND worth featuring (like what Sgt. Conker and the XNA Community Communique's did/do). The links will most likely be for the on-site news, though should people wish we could open discussions on featured content of theirs if they prefer.<br><div><br></div><div>@Aequitas I just used the twitter widget that twitter themselves offer, but I agree with what you are saying, I will look into getting/writing one that is more suitable from that perspective. I also like the mockup, but with the minor modification of it integrating the "what our leading Development Studios are up to" in the News, as it is most likely to drive the news column. The news plugin will definitely be easy to enable or disable (throught he forum control panel).</div>

Karuji

@edg3 thanks for the clarify sounds like a good idea. I'm looking forward to the 'new' main page :)<div><br></div><div>[Edit] Is there a way that the mention notification will be removed if I read the post I am mentioned in?</div>

EvanGreenwood

@<span class="Author"><a href="http://makegamessa.com/profile/2/edg3">edg3</a> I didn't mean hearting threads... I meant hearting individual posts within threads... So being able to heart a helpful response. Like the way it works at Ludum Dare.<br></span>

edg3

the notifications do go away after a short while, yes.<div><br></div><div>@BlackShipsFillTheSky ah, right, yeah, that is a good idea. Im not sure anyone will really have objections to that?</div>

Elyaradine

<p>Yes, please. It'll mean I can say, "YEAH. THAT IS AWESOME." without feeling as if I'm spamming by contributing nothing new. :P</p><p>Oh, also, I do rather miss being able to quote stuff. I wonder whether it was left out of Vanilla by design, or if something's just turned off...?</p>

edg3

Will take a look at it as soon as I can (most likely in around an hour 30 mins).<br><br>EDIT: @Elyaradine there is a plugin for it, <strike>will upload it when I get home in a few hours.</strike> the plugin works for the next version of Vanilla (which is in alpha), I will upgrade to it when there is a stable release that is secure enough to update to (there are other features they are adding in that version that would be very useful to have).<br>

Karuji

Is there a way to remove my posts being highlighted. I pasted from another post, and when I look at my own post I see some rather ugly white lines in a blue post.

Karuji

Edit double post. Also why was something I posted in my drafts O_o?

Elyaradine

<p>@edg3 cool! :)</p><p>@Karuji I think it's just the text highlight colour. When you copy-paste from another post, it copies the formatting too. Can't see it when you're editing, with white-on-white. :/</p>

Karuji

@Elyaradine I know the process by which it happens. I can make it go away for me by adding a blue highlight colour, but they everyone else will see blue on white, as opposed to my white on blue which I assume will be more annoying since it affects more people.

Elyaradine

What you could probably also do is click the "Show Source" button, and manually remove the offending formatting. :)

Karuji

<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">I noticed when I was replying to a thread that I was notified that someone had posted in it. This was only because it happened to be in a thread of which I was the author.</font><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">Is there a way to enable notification of new posts in a thread being viewed?</div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><hr></div><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">Also would there be a way (single button click) to set the styling of the post to all be the same text size and font? Preferably the board default.</font></div>

dislekcia

"Also would there be a way (single button click) to set the styling of the post to all be the same text size and font? Preferably the board default."<br><br>Yup, click the 'Remove Text Formatting' button :) - Although to be fair that seems to have decided to limit line lengths for some crazy reason. Hmm.<span style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: small;"><br></span>

Karuji

<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">@dislekcia it is, so far, only certain sections of my posts that I have needed to remove my formatting, although I do see the potential need for entire post formatting; especially if the post was initially written somewhere else.</font><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">Also I was hoping that the 'Remove Text Formatting' would remove the white streaks in <i>my</i> blue post issue, but it is not the case. </font></div>

dislekcia

"Also I was hoping that the 'Remove Text Formatting' would remove the white streaks in my blue post issue, but it is not the case."<br><br>Just testing the 'Paste as text' functionality. @Karuji all your posts do seem to have a different formatting to the rest of the posts on the forum. What's with that? Are you copy-pasting your text from another editor or something?<br>

edg3

If you copy paste from anything that does rich text formatting into this editor it breaks for some reason (which is also why we dont have quotes yet), but I have set up other editors offline to test to switch to an editor that will work better (and allow quotes).<div><br></div><div>EDIT: also, had a random thought, would a small box (3x3 tiles) that shows the latest 9 images attached to forum pages on the front page be worth doing? It could obviously be adjusted (2x4, 2x6, 3x6, [CxR] etc), but it would show for works in progress as well as the weekly sketchgroup posts, which I think would be pretty cool.</div>

GlitchM

Hope i didn't miss it in a previous post but will the discussions be categorised into eg. game design, concept, project, art etc.?<br><br>@edg3 - I think that's a pretty cool idea. Have always enjoyed seeing ppl's actual works-in-progress in imagery instead of just worded posts. Being able to jump straight to them would be a plus for me :)<br>

Karuji

@dislekcia as edg3 said pasting from any rich text source, this forum included, will break the editing. I'll be adding adding a shift to my ctrl + v now :) <div><br></div><div>It is also rather confusing when in the typing box the fonts size is not equal, but when looking at the "Show Source" it shows it as equal.</div>

dislekcia

@GlitchM: Discussion categories will evolve as needed. Right now it's a bad idea to split things up too much because it makes it hard to know where to post something new (for new posters, which most people are atmo) and we need the board to be busy. Breaking things up into too many categories actually kills activity, as SAGD so tragically taught us.<br><br>But once there's a ton of posts cluttering up the front page about art and character design (for instance, which would be a great problem to have), then we'd evolve a category for those posts in order to clear up the general view. At least, that's how I see this board moving in the future.<br>

edg3

Ok, so after looking around, pretty much every WYSIWYG editor has the same problem with rich text formatting, the only methods that fix the issue are very horrible (and could impact site responsiveness for you when writing comments), the alternative is to move away from WYSIWYG and use BBCode with a BBCode oriented plugin.<div><br></div><div>Also, I have found a plugin for "liking" posts, I just need to adjust the semantics slightly, and add in a highlight function for the posts with the most "likes"</div>

Karuji

@edg3 BBCode sounds great :)

Elyaradine

@edg3: I'd like that if I could. :P<br>

dislekcia

I'm happy with BBcode too. Plus it kinda references scripting, which people should be getting into if they're here anyway ;)<br>

EvanGreenwood

@Edge Yay! That "liking" posts plugin sounds exactly the same as the Ludum Dare method.<div><br></div><div>This forum already highlights one's own posts, which is nice.</div>

Bensonance

A relatively minor issue, but is it possible to change the dictionary language away from American English? Seeing all those red lines is painful for a Grammar Nazi such as myself to see.

Elyaradine

The default time doesn't seem to be GMT+2.

edg3

@Bensonance I believe that the language depends on your browser, the forum software doesn't have any form of spell check.

@elyaradine The timezone should be Africa/Johannesburg now by default.

Denzil

I really think we need a section or category for useful resources that we can share with each other. I thought of putting some of my resources/links in a discussion, but that could get too unorganized. I was thinking in terms of assets such as sound effects, music, programs and tutorials. It may be very helpful for anyone who is trying to get into game dev, and some of us may discover something that we haven't seen before!

edg3

@denzil I am actually working on a project related to that, if you dont mind sitting tight (till hopefully the end of next week) that content would fit there perfectly

edg3

Im proposing a vote for me to add a way to delete drafts you have made, and to remove the notifications number from the profile link (by your name).

Karuji

@edg3 if you have a draft you go to drafts. On the top right of the draft there is an 'x' you can click to delete the draft.

With regards to notifications. In your profile you can select what you want to be notified about. You can un-check them to receive notifications.

edg3

ooh thanks! Didn't know that :D

Karuji

Can you tell I've spent too much time on the forums ;) and after I had some obvious things pointed out to me I decided to snoop around.

I would still love the option to disable seeing my posts as highlighted if it is possible ;)

edg3

Karuji said:

Also under the profile there is a hearted tab. It currently shows my posts that have been hearted, any chance there is a way that I can find posts that I have hearted? (If possible keeping them in two lists would be cool.)

Noted, and noted. :)

creative630

I'm not sure if this has been asked yet/is currently in development, but I was wondering if we could have discussion categories (or something similar) for the weekly sketch groups as well as GameJams/Events. Just so we could easily find and look at past sketchgroup weeks/game jams etc.

Thanks!

Rigormortis

@creative630

I think the current consensus is to keep everything in one category so there is more "churn". That may change in the future though.

edg3

We can always add a category for weekly things so that you can easily find them, it will all still show as the one main category for now, but you can go to the category specific view?

mattbenic

Two things:
1. Love that the site is generally so mobile friendly, though if there's a way to make the navigation links at the top of the page not quite as tiny on mobile that would be great.
2. One good thing SAGD had was developer and game profiles (a wiki I think) does anyone know if that's still accessible? Could we pull the content off and set up a similar wiki here?

edg3

You can try asking Korax if he is willing to give the db dump (if he even still has it), but the consensus was that maintaining a wiki is very time consuming.

What I could suggest (with or without the db dump) is that we enhance Vanilla's profile pages to offer their developer profile? With the added option of static pages for companies?

EDIT:
Notes about the mobile things: The header sizes are easy to change, will do that quickly later today, the images not showing is more specifically that the attached files do not show like they do on the main site, whereas embedded images do work (which is why it is a larger job to sort).

mikstur

I'm still very new here but i have a small idea that might be useful. As part of our profiles, maybe we could have the option to upload our created projects or links to them to showcase our work. It can be a useful portfolio mechanism perhaps? I'm not sure if that was part of the developer wiki that @mattbenic was talking about, but it would be cool :). That way everyone can see what you have worked on and are working on and previous projects that you completed, all from their profiles.

Denzil

@mikstur yeah I was thinking it would be cool if we had a little bit of space to expand on our profiles. Even if it is just like an "about me" where we could put these details.

mikstur

@Denzil +1 :)

mikstur

This might not be related to the site exactly just didn't know where else to post this, but I was thinking we should start a YouTube channel for the community like "MakeGamesSA" channel or whatever the association will be called. Then as part of the making games resources everyone can make video tutorials on whatever their good at and have different play lists or shows within the channel. So if some one is an expert at Unity, then they can make video tutorials about some cool things beginners can do with Unity. Just an idea, hope this was the right place to post this :).

Edit:
Oh also, if the channel becomes partnered or monetized then the proceeds can go towards the community. Could help out with funding the hosting and what not.

edg3

Would it not make sense for that channel as you described it to be part of Dev.Mag?

mikstur

Yeah whichever works best for the community :).

Denzil

This is maybe a little unnecessary, but I'd like to be able to see how many people are registered so we can see how the community grows :)

Elyaradine

@Denzil: The hacky way I've been checking that out is by checking the Activity tab, and looking at the number there for a newly registered member. :)