Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: willy_principal on May 29, 2005, 01:28:02 pm
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I feel like the forum is slowly dying...
i don't know why.
I remember that in November/December 2004, the forum was very active. But after 1st April...the forum are....somewhat dead.
Do you think the same???
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no.
I was just thinking about April Fools Day today... will we ever really know what happened?
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Yes! For God's sake, it was a practical joke! Yeesh! :-p
Anyway...the forums aren't dying, it's just Real Life(tm) and finals have a lot of people busy.
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Exam time for uni & school peeps.
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Exams have kept me busy....until like today.
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I gotta go with "exam" reason as well.
And remember, it's not just the browsing and posting that people can't do when exams/heavy work loads are on. It's the modding, the SCP coding... whatever everyone here is involved in. It all grinds to a halt when real life takes over - which translates into a quieter forum.
That said, I'm stupid (alright, more stupid..) if I didn't throw out the question "how could we improve the forums?" at this stage - given the topic. No reason not to get some user feedback when the topic comes up...
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The forum is going in the opposite direction from DEAD.
More and more members pour in every week.
There are many people that were added in the last six months, all of which have more than 100 posts. I am very active, but I have only the third largest post per day number of those six-monthers.
I might post a graph of the members from day 1 to now.
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It's strange to hear this from the keyboard of a user who only has 392 posts. Have you really been here for so long that you can judge it? I haven't noticed the decrease in our traffic. Exam reasons are valid, I sit exams, too. The next one will probably be the hardest one, Advanced Italian Oral Exam. :nervous:
I am beginning to prepare myself from tomorrow. So if you don't see me as often as you did until know, you know why.
Anyway, I don't know why I say this, nobody would notice my absence. :p
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@Kalfireth's How can we improve the forum? question.
I've said it before but I think we need a "Rants & Flames" forum, where anything goes except Racism and Porn. Threads in Hard Light tend to get locked if flaming starts, IMO it would be better if they were moved to a "Rants & Flames" forum. You could have a special usergroup for people 18+ and they're the only ones allowed in, รก la GTD Bastion Forums.
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This was already suggested and refused.
I wouldn't mind its presence, though. But I don't support it, either.
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kietotheworld: A flaming forum would be entirely pointless. How would creating a place specifically for flaming possibly benefit and enhance our community? We don't have any real problems with flaming at HLP anyway, so creating a place for it would be a waste of resources, and would do nothing more than turn people against each other. That's the last thing we need (or want), as this is a pretty small and close-knit community anyway, and creating a subforum just so people can abuse each other will destroy it. This isn't a place for people to fling childish insults, it's a forum about the games that we all have a passion for, and it's also a cool place to hang out, full of great people. Why spoil it?
willy_principal: No, the forum isn't dying. Over the years we've lost some people, but we get new people joining on a regular basis, and the number of active posters (I'm sure Thunder or another admin can post some statistics) hasn't really changed much. Sure, the community is smaller than it was in 2001 or 2002, but that's hardly surprising for a rather obscure and low-selling space combat game that was released more than five years ago.
I think you'll find the place will liven up a fair bit in about a month or so. Exams will be over, people will want to relax, they'll start coding, fredding and modding again, they'll hit the forums again.
Long live HLP, I say. :yes:
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LONG LIVE HLP!!!
The idea for a forum of rants & flames is..bad...i don't like it...
The bound that joins us must be made stronger, not weakened...
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this is part of the year is always kinda slow, youve been here since november chill
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There's not much I can add. We've been here more than four years; we've gone through far quieter periods than this, and as pointed out, it's exam time (me too, by the way - 4 exams in 5 days, coming up in a couple of weeks!). But the SCP is alive as ever, several hosted projects are passing critical stages of completion, and just wait till you see what's around the corner for this community. Dying is the very last word I would use to describe HLP. :)
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It's not the exams that's keeping me busy, its the damn year end/summative assignments. But I'm happy to say I have incorporated FreeSpace into my independent study that's due next week.
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You incorporated FS into schoolwork? Please elaborate.
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Oh, sh**! HE'S RIGHT!!!!
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1013395/Graph.jpg)
Took a f***load of time, too! Good thing I'm good at math...
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When did we ever have 500 active members? :wtf:
I think that the ~100 of us that post regularly are the ones keeping us afloat.
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The 500 active was probably during the Derek Smart debacle.
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how did you get that?
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That's a rather impressive graph.
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I call bull****.
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It is accurate. An active user is a user with 2 or more posts. You become inactive when you stop posting. Thank god for advanced member searches!
If you think active is 100 posts, then I could make a new graph. Wonder what that leads to.
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Of course, you also have to remember that quite a few people here have lost hundreds of posts. Me, for example, with the deletion of the Node Wars and GTD Wolf forums.
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:wtf: :wtf:
You have too much time on your hands.
As for fixing forum attendance, I keep saying that hardcore pornography would do the trick, but no one ever listens to me.
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Ummm, cool. I think. :) But yeah, I reckon I'd lean towards having more than 2 posts as being active. Like a member who comes in and posts asking for help, then leaves; that's active in a sense of the word, but I'd be more looking towards consistent posters for a sustained amount of time. Try drawing it up with activity = 50 posts or so... but not if it's taking up all your free time. ;)
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That would only matter in the tens, so it would only shift the graph by an unnoticabally small degree. Not many people post solely in one sub forum.
Also, your being active is removed the next month unless you keep posting.
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Jebuz. Do I have to start posting ~30-50 posts a day again, just to make this place look alive to the youngsters? ;)
And yes. I'm still reading the boards and posting occasionally. Its okay. Don't bother pointing it out, m'kay?
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Well, no one's making demands on you Mik, but I know I miss your distinctive voice around the place. But that's the way things are, sometimes. It's good that you still hang about; an older voice (and eye) is much appreciated, trust me.
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Nah. Can't get too involved, Steak. Most of my posts are arguing politics and I'm not going to argue politics any more. Last time I even discussed politics, I lost respect for people I liked. I'd rather not have that happen again.
Besides, do you know the last time I actually touched Freespace (or Iwar2!) or Lightwave? I don't have anything to contribute anymore except "WOW. ALDO IS TEH WINNAR!*"
* Note: Aldo really IS the winner. ;)
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:lol:
It's funny because it's all true. You've made your point, I understand it.
I feel like a bit of dead weight here, too. I itch to render again... but the time just isn't there. Not to say that I totally regret that, because the time is spent on worthwhile things - mainly family and church. And besides, as you notice, when we have winners like Aldo around it's not so bad that we're so useless. ;)
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I have a sudden urge to play IW2 again due to your post, Mik.
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The graph doesn't change much if the active value is 50 posts.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1013395/Graph2.jpg)
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Mickey-poo!! ;)
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Where the hell are you getting these graphs? :wtf:
And I heart Mik.
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Originally posted by Dark RevenantX
The graph doesn't change much if the active value is 50 posts.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-5/1013395/Graph2.jpg)
We stopped spamming.
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And I'm not about to start... :nervous:
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
Where the hell are you getting these graphs? :wtf:
I'm making them.
And, I don't see how the spamming rate of people and the length of active membership has any coorelation.
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There's also the "active age range" to take into consideration. Although there's always exceptions to the rule - most active members are in their teens. As we hit that older age range, the weight of life such as jobs, love, money and what have you take their toll and the forum visiting goes out of the window... as does work on projects, modding and such.
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I think Me, Mik and Whitelight are then oldest three around here.... :nervous:
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Originally posted by mikhael
Nah. Can't get too involved, Steak. Most of my posts are arguing politics and I'm not going to argue politics any more. Last time I even discussed politics, I lost respect for people I liked. I'd rather not have that happen again.
Besides, do you know the last time I actually touched Freespace (or Iwar2!) or Lightwave? I don't have anything to contribute anymore except "WOW. ALDO IS TEH WINNAR!*"
* Note: Aldo really IS the winner. ;)
Originally posted by Setekh
:lol:
It's funny because it's all true. You've made your point, I understand it.
I feel like a bit of dead weight here, too. I itch to render again... but the time just isn't there. Not to say that I totally regret that, because the time is spent on worthwhile things - mainly family and church. And besides, as you notice, when we have winners like Aldo around it's not so bad that we're so useless. ;)
Dammit, now i need to bookmark this thread and bask in reflected glory whilst feigning 'aw shucks, you guys' style modesty.
:D
I still think we should look at a community effort to make some sort of original (because TBP, WC, etc aren't concerned with subjects exclusive to our community) freeware game from the SCP, and use that to attract new people.
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Originally posted by TopAce
We stopped spamming.
And started studying. Well, sorta.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I still think we should look at a community effort to make some sort of original (because TBP, WC, etc aren't concerned with subjects exclusive to our community) freeware game from the SCP, and use that to attract new people.
That'd be ideal, but where's the manpower going to com from? The projects already running aren't equipped with the people they need. A new one like that would be... unlikely to succeed.
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Hasn't this community-wide project been discussed hundreds of time already?
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Yes.
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Originally posted by Black Wolf
That'd be ideal, but where's the manpower going to com from? The projects already running aren't equipped with the people they need. A new one like that would be... unlikely to succeed.
the main reason I suggest community wide is because of that; there's not enough free people for a dedicated team, but maybe if you have a ****load of people doing one small thing as a side task, it could add up.
I would hope it'd be a future possibility, though; I realise it's highly unlikely at present or in the forseeable future. I know the problems with it; for one thing you'd need to have some form of really professional setup and attitude to manage it. But IMO it'd be a logical way to expand the community.
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Yup, I'd be 100% behind something like this, however, I'm going to wait for the SCP to be more recognisable as a 'finished' product before looking at it. One of the main problems with working on Mods with the SCP is that it changes and updates so fast that the first models I made look really really poor and low-poly compared to the stuff I'm seeing now. I'd personally like to avoid that kind of 'incontinuity' if I was working on a project like this, so I know what I can and cannot do before I start ;)
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Originally posted by Flipside
Yup, I'd be 100% behind something like this, however, I'm going to wait for the SCP to be more recognisable as a 'finished' product before looking at it. One of the main problems with working on Mods with the SCP is that it changes and updates so fast that the first models I made look really really poor and low-poly compared to the stuff I'm seeing now. I'd personally like to avoid that kind of 'incontinuity' if I was working on a project like this, so I know what I can and cannot do before I start ;)
Yup. One of the things that occurred to me is that you could use this as way of helping focus the SCP work around the content (if that's not an arrogant sounding thing to say) and vice versa.
Either that or simply pick a specific SCP version and stick with it (only updating where 'minimal impact' type features are added; for example adding bumpmaps)..
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Originally posted by aldo_14
Either that or simply pick a specific SCP version and stick with it (only updating where 'minimal impact' type features are added; for example adding bumpmaps)..
That's a logical way to do it, but the problem is that so many cool things, things that would be useful when trying to create a new universe/technology set, are just over the horizon, or have been implemented and then removed, probably to return soonish - Bob's material system, Tertiary weapons, gravity, cloaking, etc. But that's the nature of the SCP I guess - cool things will always be just over the horizon.
Flip: You could prevent that by standardizing (approximate) polycounts and texture sizes I'd think. If you just said at the outset "Figters will be no greater than X polies and will have WxW texture maps, Cruisers will be no more than Y polies and will have no more than three ZxZ maps, etc. etc." you could prevent that sort of quality gradation.
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SCP is reaching a point were it's going to be totaly cutting edgeand development of new graphical features will no longer be a matter of codeing.
I am restructureing a lot of stuff right now, giveing the materials system controle over how models are loaded, it is a real mess so it's going to take me a while. but once I have this done, and I get the file format for POFs upgraded, and I merge everything back (oh yeah, and get it working with OGL), and I do a lot of bug hunting, it'll be time to intrgrate shaders, and once that's done there'll be nothing left to do graphics wise for quite some time.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
SCP is reaching a point were it's going to be totaly cutting edgeand development of new graphical features will no longer be a matter of codeing.
I am restructureing a lot of stuff right now, giveing the materials system controle over how models are loaded, it is a real mess so it's going to take me a while. but once I have this done, and I get the file format for POFs upgraded, and I merge everything back, and I do a lot of bug hunting, it'll be time to intrgrate shaders, and once that's done there'll be nothing left to do graphics wise for quite some time.
Then, the time for making it stable would come at last.
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Originally posted by Flipside
I think Me, Mik and Whitelight are then oldest three around here.... :nervous:
tell that to Geezer ;)
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Originally posted by TopAce
Then, the time for making it stable would come at last.
true, once I get this done, there would be no more hacks to get stuff working, it'd be time to do some code cleaning, and bug hunting, once this is done all bugs related to graphics will be gone, replaced with a totaly new and unseen set of horable bugs that no one is prepaired for.
fortunately what I'm doing right now is simplifying the code base a lot, so it will make bug hunting much easier. exept maybe for the texture system... that's still a mess.
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Speaking of a community-wide project, the FSU is looking for (or will be, once I can get the time to formulate a thread about it) a project taskmaster - someone who has the time and capability to coordinate a team. I have the vision, but neither time nor management skills, unfortunately.
I'll gladly offer the FSU to be the SCP showcase - that's what it's geared to be in the first place. :p And it has a storyline that I'm dying to see revealed to the FS public. :D
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Wow, and I though the upgrade project (if that's what you're referring to) died a long time ago.
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ye of little faith. :blah:
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Well, there hasn't been any mention of it for a long time so I thought it was dead. I'm glad I'm wrong though.
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Nope, not dead. I'm just too much of a perfectionist to manage the project. ;)
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I thought Maeg was running it for some reason.
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Nope, not dead. I'm just too much of a perfectionist to manage the project. ;)
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Excessive perfectionism has already delayed Silent Threat: Reborn by almost two years. :nervous:
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf
I thought Maeg was running it for some reason.
He was, for awhile, but then the internal machinations started to come apart, and, well... I think the core of the issue is that, at the moment, nobody is running it.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Excessive perfectionism has already delayed Silent Threat: Reborn by almost two years. :nervous:
Perfectionism = Death
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Originally posted by Black Wolf
...at the moment, nobody is running it.
It's taken on a life of its own. :nervous:
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Originally posted by Sandwich
Speaking of a community-wide project, the FSU is looking for (or will be, once I can get the time to formulate a thread about it) a project taskmaster - someone who has the time and capability to coordinate a team. I have the vision, but neither time nor management skills, unfortunately.
I'll gladly offer the FSU to be the SCP showcase - that's what it's geared to be in the first place. :p And it has a storyline that I'm dying to see revealed to the FS public. :D
I have the management skills, some time. But lack the enthusiasm. :p
I'd love to help part time though. As in part part time. ;)
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Originally posted by Grug
I have the management skills, some time. But lack the enthusiasm. :p
I'd love to help part time though. As in part part time. ;)
You want internal access, look around the storyline, stuff like that, see if you get excited or bored or whatever?
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Excessive perfectionism has already delayed Silent Threat: Reborn by almost two years. :nervous:
Excessive perfectionism delays virtually everything I do, these days...