Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: Iain Baker on September 24, 2018, 07:46:47 pm
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Hi everyone!
As some of you may know, I am HLP’s new Social Media Manager. Before I get stuck in, I will be asking for everyone’s input, to make sure I represent HLP the way the community wants.
Look out for that post soon.
Once the social media side of things is in full swing we may start getting new members joining HLP, so it would be a good idea to make it easy for them. I am aiming to capitalise on the resurgent popularity of space sims, such as Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, No Man’s Sky etc. to attract a fresh audience.
Some of our prospective new members may be much younger than most HLP veterans, my self-included (since I’m pushin’ forty). As such, they may not remember the days when forums such as ours were commonplace. Their experience of forums may be limited to Facebook pages and subreddits.
For such newbies the HLP forum could be a daunting place as it is huge, and comes with a number of rules and caveats, not all immediately apparent or obvious. I doubt many newcomers would be inclined to read through pages and pages of rules. In my own experience, inadvertently breaking these rules – by say, posting about a bug ‘in the wrong thread’ can bring down criticism from some members, who are not always especially helpful in explaining exactly what one should have done instead.
A new member may well be put off contributing entirely by such responses. If we wish for our community to grow, this cannot be allowed to happen.
I propose we create a new noob-friendly ‘Guide to Freespace and HLP for dummies’. This should explain in short and simple plain English terms what people should and should not do. This should also include a ‘jargon buster’ guide to explain some of the often-used but not immediately clear terms.
‘OP’, ‘FRED’, ‘Nightly’ ‘tables’ ‘stickies’ etc.
Note that this is my professional opinion, and should not be seen in any way as an indictment.
It is common for groups, businesses, sports teams, clubs, public sector organisations etc. of all sizes to become slightly insular after a time, as members soon forget what it was like to be the ‘new kid’. In fact, I do not think I have encountered one yet where this has not happened. Think of it as a ‘Universal Truth.’
See what I did there? 😉 Case in point. Most veterans would get the reference, a newcomer wouldn’t.
It is common for jargon to get thrown around by long standing members of groups/teams/organisations who forget that not everyone knows what it means. It becomes even more confusing when different groups with their own jargon try to talk to each other. I remember a rather comical episode in my past career where an engineer, who spoke ‘English-engineer-ese’ was talking to a school teacher who spoke ‘English-school-teacher-ese’. Since I ‘spoke’ both, I had to translate for them. I also had to translate the ‘English-bureaucrat-ese’ that came from my department to them both.
Thankfully this is something I am very good at, as is inducting and orientating new members.
I am happy to take the lead on this aspect, but I would need the cooperation of the rest of the community, its longest standing members especially, to be able to do it well. To help others, I will need you to help me, as I am by no means an expert in the rules of forums myself.
This whole post is another case in point which illustrates this perfectly. I have probably put it in the wrong place. Where then should this post have gone??? :confused:
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Good points you've got there. :nod:
One small thing though is that you should distinguish between community references (in particular references to certain missions) and general forum language such as OP, stickies etc.
Also, I don't know what the exact target demographic of HLP is, as a significant part of the content creator (atleast the most skilled part) might have a different background than the players (but it's rather my personell uniformed guess).
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The only way to make this game's playerbase grow is a one click installer which configures everything so you can play it (which I believe Knossos is?) That is the standard people expect of mods these days.
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Iain is motivated and has ideas. Oh, and he's actually doing things about it... which is more than I can say for most of us.
I heartily urge this thread not to continue down this discussion path and get back to discussing how to most easily get new people playing, discussing, and modding FSO.
Seconded. I feel like a new member, yet I have been here for 8 years already... I think highlighting the ease and awesomeness that is Knossos will help. Capitalizing on the large amount of content that it provides and ensuring that folks understandthat these are not 'just mods for a 20 year old game', but rather high quality content using an opensource, continually updated space-combat engine.
Similarly, I agree that jargon buster is a great idea, as well as a quick guide. I am very excited you are excited for taking on this role, Iain, and I look forward to seeing your plans in action! I would be happy to provide more details or thoughts, though I think the role of Social Media Manager is in very good hands.
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Nightmare has written a nice draft of a "Getting Started" section for the HLP Main Page. I've uploaded some of it there already: https://www.hard-light.net/about/get-involved
I'm currently waiting on Sandwich for some bug fixes before I'm able to upload the rest of it. Unfortunately, this time of year is right in the middle of the Jewish Fall Festivals, which are to Israel what Christmas is to the USA, so it may be some time before he gets a chance to fix them.
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This is more a knossos thing but where are patch notes for mods posted now? The threads attached to mod pages in knossos take you to the OP of the release thread. Is it even possible to auto link patch posts in a release thread? For example the link on Derelict takes you to the 3.7 release thread from 2013 though there was a compatibility patch for it last week (?).
Steam's patch note support is pretty spotty since it's up to individual devs to deal with it (which is what it is here too) but having some more organization on that front might be useful since we're trying to get new blood in here. It's more overhead for everyone but I do think it'd be good for the amount of work added, but that could just be the project manager/CS teacher in me talking.
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What about writing a guide about HLP/FS forum memes? There's already a trivia/acronym page on the wiki, which could be extended to mods as well. Spoiler warning and possibly black text is required too.
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I started the Facebook page years ago. It still gets new members weekly. #Ididsomething
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This is cool. (: Glad to see more people stepping up to help out and especially try to smooth things out between groups.
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Here are the sites I referred to:
http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Various_Terms
http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/FreeSpace_Trivia
In particular the first could be interesting.
As for references to projects, it might be also reasonable to have it that way; I mean you might have heard of Jedis, the Force or the Death Star even when you know nothing about SW, and it might encourage people to find it out themselves - hopefully.
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I think something to keep in mind is that new players are not going to want to read several pages worth of stuff. It's good to have it available, but the priority should be to get them in game as quickly as possible. After that, point them to places to talk about the game, learn the jargon, and how to start modding.
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Youtube is your friend if trying to entice people to play Freespace.
If I wanted to introduce someone to Freespace, or some of the content produced here, I would use this guy's let's plays:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOneTrueRenairen
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"Oh god not rocks, Anything but more rrrooocks. . .
Yes, TheOneTrueRenairen is a good source, but he has not uploaded anything FS related for years now.
Maybe we should get Scott Manly to do some more FSO? BP, BtA, or ST:R footage could be great.
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Youtube is your friend if trying to entice people to play Freespace.
This is a very good point. So many people prefer videos to text. It's really quite remarkable.
Iain Baker, why not start a weekly Five Minute Freespace video series on YouTube? It could be a quick overview of HLP happenings, trivia, modding news... anything really.
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I know I'm responsible for a bit of the OP, and I'm sorry if I came across as a bit snippy. I should have at least directed you to the right folder in my first post. Honestly I was more bemused that you even found year-old highlight threads than anything else. (We should just start locking the things after they're posted, since they're not meant for replies.) Then again I've seen far more obscure threads dug out of their graves, so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Whatever form it takes, some sort of concise little intro to the community sounds like a solid idea.
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I wrote the Reddit intro to FreeSpace here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/freespace/wiki/index
Could be better, could be worse, but it's a good enough starting point.
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The only way to make this game's playerbase grow is a one click installer which configures everything so you can play it (which I believe Knossos is?) That is the standard people expect of mods these days.
This is the only intro new players should need: a Knossos link
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New players, yes. But if people want to actually interact with the forums they may want a bit more guidance than bugger all. There will also be people who want to get into modding or FREDding etc. Having a single, new guide that points out where to fnd the info you need would be a good idea for them.
What I'm saying is that you shouldn't need to read a whole page of stuff to join the forum but it should be there if you want to. We do get a lot of lurkers who don't join because they feel a little intimdated. Anything we can do to lessen that isn't a bad idea.
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Yep, Knossos is fantastic. Simple to install and run, user friendly and easy on the eye :-)
But even Knossos has a few quirks that are not immediately apparent. For example, I found that many mods wouldn't load, and I couldn't work out why. It was only when someone said 'you need a nighty' that I had a clue how to fix them. I then had to do some digging on the Knossos settings to find the 'Preferred Engine Stability' drop down. This has three options - 'Stability', 'RCs' and 'Nightlies'. I had it set to 'Stability' since I figured that was the best option. I didn't know what 'RCs' was (and still don't) so I chose 'Nightlies', and that fixed almost all of them.
I spent most of a Saturday recently installing and testing every FS mod on Knossos to see which still had issues or the 'Double Hud Bug'.
The few that still didn't work I posted about to get them fixed. I am very pleased to say that almost all of them were then fixed within 24 hours. Outstanding work guys!!! :-)
A newcomer to FS / HLP who has just installed Knossos may run into similar problems, and conclude that it simply doesn't work, then give up. I can't remember what Knossos's default setting for this are. It it does not already, perhaps it should default to nightlies to prevent others having this issue.
I'm happy to put in the leg work to get mods running - I also play S.T.A.L.K.E.R and VTM:B which are well known bug-fests, but a newbie might not be so willing, or even know where to start. I'm thinking here of my own kids generation, who grew up in the post XBL / Steam environment. They expect everything to 'just work' straight out of the box with minimal effort. (Funny story, I told them about how we used to have to use Dos prompts to run Doom. They just looked at me funny :lol:)
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RC = Release Candidate - Basically what we at the SCP think is almost a stable build. When we're ready to release we'll put up an RC build. If no major bugs are found in it, it will become an official build. RC's are therefore much more stable than normal nightly builds because we have spent a lot of time fixing bugs before we put up an RC build. But they're still less stable than an official release build.
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RC = Release Candidate - Basically what we at the SCP think is almost a stable build. When we're ready to release we'll put up an RC build. If no major bugs are found in it, it will become an official build. RC's are therefore much more stable than normal nightly builds because we have spent a lot of time fixing bugs before we put up an RC build. But they're still less stable than an official release build.
Thank you for that, much clearer now. This is something else that will need to go into the 'dummies guide' :-)
Speaking of which, what does 'OP' mean here? That acronym has a lot of uses, some of them gaming related, such as 'Over Powered' and 'Observation Point'. This could be very confusing for newbies. I'm guessing in 'HLP-ese' OP stands for something different, but I cannot find an explanation as to what. :confused:
Halp Pls ;)
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OP is common forum-speak for "Original Post" or "Original Poster". The second use is rare on non-anonymous boards as you can simply call the poster by his forum handle.
When someone says "Look in the OP" they just mean "Look in the first post that started the thread".
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When someone says "Look in the OP" they just mean "Look in the first post that started the thread".
This is false. When someone says "Look in the OP" they mean that you should cut the original poster open. Take a direct look at their grey matter. See if they have any guts etc.
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When someone says "Look in the OP" they just mean "Look in the first post that started the thread".
This is false. When someone says "Look in the OP" they mean that you should cut the original poster open. Take a direct look at their grey matter. See if they have any guts etc.
Gotta make sure there's no Cylon infiltrators roaming about.
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Most of the content here requires Freespace to be purchased to play. (And since most of it is based on Freespace, kind of requires you to have played it too.)
But the total conversions require neither, making them useful indeed as a gateway to Freespace...
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For example, I found that many mods wouldn't load, and I couldn't work out why. It was only when someone said 'you need a nighty' that I had a clue how to fix them.
FWIW, this is a bug in Knossos. Knossos itself usually knows that you need a nightly and takes care of it. However, if a player opens the "FSO settings" window (where you can also select which FSO version to use), it kind of forgets that fact and defaults to the latest stable if the stability is set to stable. I'm currently working on fixing it (among other things). Generally, your stability should be set to "Stable" (which is the default) since those builds usually are better tested than the nightlies.
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It seems the Freespace games are on sale at GOG right now:
https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=95166.0
Seems like it would be a good idea to let this be known and talk up the games and the content produced here through whatever social media means you have at your disposal, if you haven't already. :)
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Hi there, thanks Lorric for the heads up! Just done that now :-)
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You're welcome. :)
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I have done my civic duty on Twitter
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I have done my civic duty on Twitter
Nice!
Thus far I have posted to my personal FB timeline, my 'Nomad's Reviews' FB page, the HLP FB page, about ten other FB gaming groups, the Nomad's Review Twitter feed, the HLP twitter feed and on the r/gaming, r/pcmasterrace, r/spacesimgames and the r/freespace sub reddits.
And now time for a rest :p
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:lol:
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I have done my civic duty on Twitter
Nice!
Thus far I have posted to my personal FB timeline, my 'Nomad's Reviews' FB page, the HLP FB page, about ten other FB gaming groups, the Nomad's Review Twitter feed, the HLP twitter feed and on the r/gaming, r/pcmasterrace, r/spacesimgames and the r/freespace sub reddits.
And now time for a rest :p
Awesome job! :) :yes: