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Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 13:42
by Jazcash
So, here's the release of the forums I already told a few people about. I'll try and keep this post simple and allow any in depth discussions about its use to take place on the board itself.

Basically, the primary goal of the board is initially to shift player-posters from these engine forums to this player-specific forum. For some time now, these boards have been used for many different topics and purposes which contrasts with its intentional use which is to provide a place for engine developers and other such coders to discuss ... well, the engine.

This new board should simply act as a place for the players to gather and should serve player-purposes. They will have slightly lighter rules in terms of non-constructive posts being allowed provided they are not anti-constructive or break any of the other rules. Simply put, posting something like "Cool story bro" will not earn you a warning, provided it isn't aimed at somebody's personal work. Think of them as #main and other lobby channels but in forum form.

When I asked a couple of engine developers about this, the response seemed positive due to the drive of reducing the clutter on these engine forums. However, as with most projects, I'm expecting disagreements, so please post those in this thread.

For posting bugs and suggestions for the board itself, chuck those in here. Else, if you're not planning on registering, a PM would be appreciated.

So without further ado: Spring Community

Note that at the time of writing, it's in very early development and I've only just set it up, so don't expect shiny shiny just yet.

More updates soon!

Edit: Also the mockup if anybody's interested

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 14:25
by very_bad_soldier
Nice idea, I hope it will work. I still think those type of designs (clean and simple) look nice but are not appropriate for a games website. Frankly it looks a bit boring. It should look more interesting and like it is about fun (which it is I hope).

I just looked around how professional game forums look like and the idea is pretty clear:
http://forums.gaspowered.com/
http://www.insidesupcom.de/forum.php
http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jfo ... /list.page
http://www.starcraft-2-forum.de/
http://forum.agecommunity.com/

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 14:32
by Jazcash
I'll think about making a different more in depth theme in the future, but for now, I just wanted to make a simple layout. I just don't want to spend a lot of time making a really funky skin if nobody uses the board which is a possibility at this stage.

Although, I agree the board is very grey looking, I've had a few comments about that already. Personally, I like using monochrome colours for the base layout, that way, logos, icons and signatures and things on top just generally work better. Also, I wanted to keep the theme up for the Spring Network homepage itself. But again, I'll work on a new theme for the future if the board gets used.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 14:44
by very_bad_soldier
There is a better chance for the average user to stick with it if he likes what he sees in the first place, dunno...

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 16:29
by exciter
Nice work :D Looks great...

But on your spring-network page you named zero-k still as "CA" which is outdated I think :D

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 16:39
by Jazcash
exciter wrote:Nice work :D Looks great...

But on your spring-network page you named zero-k still as "CA" which is outdated I think :D
Yeh, I'll fix that up eventually. It's kind of annoying because they changed the name not long after I finished the site but meh, shouldn't take too much to change. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 16:46
by knorke
primary goal of the board is initially to shift player-posters from these engine forums to this player-specific forum.
This seems like a good idea. If a player clicks "games&mods" and expects to talk about playing but instead sees threads like "Constant +/- switches for cegs with operators" that can be a bit offputting i think.
Though on other hand this close player/dev/gamemaker is very much needed for content creation.
So I think the forum section "Spring Creations" with Modelling, Mapping, Widgets is a double to the ones in this forum, i think that will not work. Instead you should concentrate more on ingame stuff, like tournaments. I have a feeling that long time spring players (like all the ba clans maybe?) would be most likely to use this playerforum. Better to have few "target audience categories" than a lot of unused ones.

New players will not want to register at 2 forums.
And most important for new players is probally "Help & Bugs" and the subforum of whatever game they play. And both these topics are in main forum. And you can not have 2x Help&Bugs, that would not work.

so tl;dr good idea but needs fewer categories, more concentrated on playing rather than technical things.

Uhm so its been ~15 minutes since i registered but i got no confirmation link email yet... When i try to register again it says: The entered e-mail address is already in use. so adress should be entered correct.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 17:00
by Jazcash
Thanks Knorke, appreciate that feedback. I've set the settings to allow multiple accounts with the same email for now, if you still can't get it working then I'll activate your account myself, it's weird how the others managed to get it working though. What email client do you use? It's not in your junk is it?

And yeah, the original plan was to have a few forums and then expand and sort them based on the content, but I think I got a little carried away. Well, I've set them up so I'll leave them for now, but if some get underused I'll remove them.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 17:07
by knorke
just made a "knorke2" (<-close enough) account with different email and link got send in few seconds. dont know why it would not work with other account. Both email adresses were @web.de and i had checked all the folders etc.
(using the online interface of email provider)

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:12
by Forboding Angel
Like knorke said, get rid of everything in the "Spring creations" section. You want this to be able players, not content devs, so focus on the players. Moreover, needs a proper background.

Otherwise, lookin good :-)

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:14
by MidKnight
I really like the style. You just need more big colorful game pictures.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:15
by CarRepairer
very_bad_soldier wrote:Nice idea, I hope it will work. I still think those type of designs (clean and simple) look nice but are not appropriate for a games website. Frankly it looks a bit boring. It should look more interesting and like it is about fun (which it is I hope).

I just looked around how professional game forums look like and the idea is pretty clear:
http://forums.gaspowered.com/
http://www.insidesupcom.de/forum.php
http://forums.commandandconquer.com/jfo ... /list.page
http://www.starcraft-2-forum.de/
http://forum.agecommunity.com/
I have to disagree. I hate nearly all of those types of forums. They hurt my eyes and brain when I end up on them and I try to understand what to look for. The forum categories have tiny text in painful colors, and mixed in among flashy banners, icons and messages full of random text I don't care about. The spring forum is the one and only forum I enjoy!

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:19
by MidKnight
Yeah, most "professional" game forums are just really hard to read. As I mentioned, keep the current style and just chuck some banners into the forum categories or something.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:24
by FLOZi
Agree with knorke and forb.

Also it'd be really nice if it shared user info with this forum, :(

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:40
by Jazcash
Ok, I'll run with that. However, if the forum does get popular, I think mappers would benefit from posting a topic about their latest maps or w/e on these forums more than if they posted on the engine forum, here.

Also, I want to give the opportunity for players to vote their favourite maps, perhaps make their own map collections and things to perhaps get a system going for what maps I can put on my autohosts. We'll see, but for now, I've removed the modelling and widget sections.

Also, integrating the engine forums and the player forums would be awesome. Considering they're both using PHPBB 3 and are both on the same server, it should be easy to do as well right? If this is possible, perhaps somebody with the access and know-how could try it out with a test board first?

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 18:44
by exciter
Forboding Angel wrote:Like knorke said, get rid of everything in the "Spring creations" section. You want this to be able players, not content devs, so focus on the players. Moreover, needs a proper background.

Otherwise, lookin good :-)

Having a "Spring creations" sections is also interesting for players. Players need to be informed about new maps, widgets etc. I think. So you dont need to control both forums all the time... ;)

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 30 Jan 2011, 19:52
by TradeMark
hmm.. good idea, now we can finally get rid of unfair moderation!

Edit: oh crap, you have hosted the sites on springrts.com... i dont think thats a good idea since if and when springrts gets down again, theres no place to talk or ask for help. and lately springrts.com has been fucking slow for me. PLEASE GET ANOTHER HOSTER.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 31 Jan 2011, 02:07
by Licho
its been slow due to some springfiles.com issues (its hosted on same server).
But jj said he has fixed those now.

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 31 Jan 2011, 05:48
by MidKnight
SRTS server is super! If we want to share user databases, it's ideal to stick them on the same server.

...we could just mirror everything to another server and hot swap in the case of an outage, if you're that concerned...

Re: Spring Community Forums

Posted: 31 Jan 2011, 12:48
by TradeMark
MidKnight wrote:SRTS server is super! If we want to share user databases, it's ideal to stick them on the same server.

...we could just mirror everything to another server and hot swap in the case of an outage, if you're that concerned...
why its needed to be on same server if we want to share files? i dont get it...

mirror everything... because of a chat room? yeah right... sure... go for it.
Licho wrote:its been slow due to some springfiles.com issues (its hosted on same server).
But jj said he has fixed those now.
springfiles.com is on springrts.com server? O.O oh for fucks sake... gg.

you guys totally miss out the idea with different servers... its to reduce the lag on different sites, and when one site goes down, not every site will.