Subforums for the larger mods

[BaNa]

I agree with OP. it is silly that while there is a separate subforam for the werewolf game, BA (or CA for that matter) is confined into 1, gazillion page thread. And i think that at the current size of the spring community, it is also silly to expect all mods to have their own, well working forums. By what Ive seen, the 70 page CA thread has a lot more life than their official forums (last reply: 4 weeks ago). Even s44, i would call their forum activity almost on par with the 1 thread they have here (it got 77 posts in 20 days, forum avg. seems like mabe a bit more). So don't try to force people into little, disconnected cubbyholes. Let the talk be where the life is. Small, lifeless forums suck and will make dialog about most things that much less likely.

[[Krogoth86]]

Yeah - discussing in those megathreads can become quite a pain when people show up and throw in entirely different aspects they want to comment about and you often end up with people quoting around postings from different pages. Subforums with topics for each major issue would be way more organized for the discussions plus all the other mod related topics aren't scattered around the entire forums like I've got graphic error / crashes in BA posted over here and my AAI doesn't work with this mod posted there.

Springinfo has offered hosting to any and all mods (and yes BA is welcome... If SA is welcome then why wouldn't BA be?), so mods not having webhosting as an excuse really doesn't fly very well.

Even if you'd get webspace lots of people don't know (including me) how to set up the entire forum software mumbo jumbo and they've better things to do than learning this too. Also for example BA once had their very own forum. It was just an empty wasteland though with like a max of 5 people posting something regularly. So why considering doing a very own forum when the by far most played mod can't get a community big enough to have any relevant discussions going on. It also won't make the players force to register at a jack different forums just for dropping a stupid comment. I for example would never have given any comment about S44, Gundam or whatever else there is if the discussion would have been just in another forum. Why should I register for a simple comment I wanna make? Here you can register once and talk about all what's related to Spring. As it's not like we're flooded with messages from the endless amounts of Spring users here I don't see any reason to enforce an "outsourcing" of every single mod. Just having subforums also doesn't turn the forum into like a BA forum (face it - most of the non help-me with errors & co topics are BA related anyway) but just makes things a bit more organized and you can find BA related topics way more precise and fast...

With the werewolf subforum there also has been made sort of an own goal as this game really is of very little relevance after all...

[BlueTemplar]

I suggest we rename and manage the categories and forums to look like this:

General
Official News & Announcements
Community News & Announcements
Help and Bugs - Windows - Linux - Lobby Client
General Spring Chat
Clans & Tourneys - Clan Recruiting - Clan Battles - Tournaments
Off-Topic - Forum Games

Community Creations
Modding - Modding Help
Mapping - Mapping Help
Lua Scripts - Widgets - Lua Script Help
Other

Development
Official Releases & Fixes
Development Articles & Discussions
Single Player & AI
Engine Requests
Other

Site
Rules (Link)
FAQ (Link)
Site Content


Or something similar...

Then where's the "Spring Games & Mods Discussion" subforum we are talking about?
And imho the "Clans & Tourneys - Clan Recruiting - Clan Battles - Tournaments" should be also about talking about games other than those of clans and tourneys.
And do not the Linux (and Mac) distrubutions merit a sub-forum of their own?
Why removing "Art and Modelling" forum? Or is it supposed to go in "Other"?

[Jazcash]

Then where's the "Spring Games & Mods Discussion" subforum we are talking about?

That would come under Modding. Should probably make it Games & Mods instead.

And imho the "Clans & Tourneys - Clan Recruiting - Clan Battles - Tournaments" should be also about talking about games other than those of clans and tourneys.

What? That would get used about 1% of the time in the world.

And do not the Linux (and Mac) distrubutions merit a sub-forum of their own?

"Spring is a powerful free RTS engine developed for Windows and Linux"

Why removing "Art and Modelling" forum? Or is it supposed to go in "Other"?

Hmm yes, I guess a Modelling, Art & Design forum would be appropriate too.

[BlueTemplar]

And imho the "Clans & Tourneys - Clan Recruiting - Clan Battles - Tournaments" should be also about talking about games other than those of clans and tourneys.

What? That would get used about 1% of the time in the world.

that's just one random topic on the first page

And do not the Linux (and Mac) distrubutions merit a sub-forum of their own?

"Spring is a powerful free RTS engine developed for Windows and Linux"

What's you point? The majority of players have Windows.
Linux and Mac Spring versions have specific problems of their own. For instance, AFAIK on Mac you don't have an equivalent of springsettings.exe

[smoth]

*a projects need not apply as they are already denied, hear that PISS OFF!

[Forboding Angel]

@krogothe
http://www.evolutionrts.info/wordpress/?page_id=242/

Plugin for wordpress, fully featured forum and requires no real knowledge of how to do such things. I've also offered to set this crap up too.

All you have to do is pm me and I can have the stuff set up in a matter of minutes.

[BlueTemplar]

Also for example BA once had their very own forum. It was just an empty wasteland though with like a max of 5 people posting something regularly.
So why considering doing a very own forum when the by far most played mod can't get a community big enough to have any relevant discussions going on. It also won't make the players force to register at a jack different forums just for dropping a stupid comment.

I for example would never have given any comment about S44, Gundam or whatever else there is if the discussion would have been just in another forum. Why should I register for a simple comment I wanna make? Here you can register once and talk about all what's related to Spring.

QFT

Setting up separate websites and forums for Spring mods (sorry, games) will be appropriate the glorious day that the number of active players will count in thousands, not in hundreds.
Otherwise, IMHO you're just diluting the community...

[smoth]

I'll dilute all I bloody well want to!

[JohannesH]

It's not really dilutive (is that a word?) to have several different sites, if they're active I think. It just can be hard to get new (or old) forums active.

[Regret]

http://spring.clan-sy.com/ is a website for the SPRING ENGINE

Mods, games and other projects using the engine are not the engine.

[SwiftSpear]

I'm a fan of the werewolf game and there was no way to run it on the forums without a subforum.

Mods don't get subforums there is too many to give every mod a subforum, and because I don't want to figure out who deserves a subforum and who doesn't. Mods should really have their own hosting and communities anyways, the spring site isn't open to be used as an e-penis size contest.

There's no reason a mod should be doing anything here that requires a subforum.

[BaNa]

swift, the reality is that all the mods use this forum as their main vehicle of communication. Look at CA's forums. Look at smoths forums. They are very very inactive, compared to this one.

I understand the policy, but at the current size of spring it is counterproductive. It wouldnt hurt anybody to have subforums for the most active 5-10 mods (based on usage stats mabe?). We would actually have a place to move specific mod-based threads, instead of the general lets-huff-a-bit-about-them-and-then-ignore thing thats going on now.

[Forboding Angel]

That isn't entirely true, the majority of conversation regarding EvoRTS happens in pm and in #evolution.

Doesn't the majority of CA communication happen in #CA? That's the impression I always got. Same for the other games really, except BA, that all happens in games and in #main.

[Jazcash]

What's you point? The majority of players have Windows.
Linux and Mac Spring versions have specific problems of their own. For instance, AFAIK on Mac you don't have an equivalent of springsettings.exe

What's your point? Windows and Linux should have their own sub forums because they both have different kinds of bugs or w/e. Spring isn't designed for Mac so people needing help with support on a Mac can just post in the main forum, Help and Bugs. Oh btw, I pity Mac users...

[Otherside]

Correct Forb most if not all CA discussion happens in CA lobby channel and developer polls. CA barely uses the spring forum for discussion every so often a post of new developments is made in the CA thread but all the work and dicussion is done elsewhere.

If BA channel in lobby had proper active use people could discuss stuff there or if they had there own basic webhosting/forums.

Tbh as been said before this is a Spring Engine forum and it should not be used for mods/games as there own forum. I think thats the stance from the dev team and admins.

+ how could you justify who deserves there own subforum gameplay percentage ??

so BA/CA/XTA/NOTA would get there own forums ?? that makes Spring look like TAspring again which is what the engine is trying to get away from. + all the original content mods have there own forums/website and hosting i dont understand why *A mods cant do the same and need to be babysat.

[Jazcash]

I don't know what all the big fuss is about. It's just like creating a new folder on your PC. It takes less than 1KB and makes your PC more clean and organized the more folders you have. It really wouldn't be an issue to make a sub-forum for every mod that has ever been created.Even if they've only been played once in their existence. If they don't get used, fine.

[Forboding Angel]

One thing that is true of web forums is the fact that if oyu have multiple forums that never get posted in it has a widely detrimental effect on the forum as a whole.


For example, how many forums have you see with 20 forums and subforums, with 2 - 3 that are actually active? Dunno about you, but I've seen quite a lot.

If ba needs hosting and a forum (and ffs I'll even make a Springinfo newspost about em if it's that big of a deal) all noize or TFC has to do is ask me and it'll be done.

This topic is about BA, lets get that out in the clear. Website and forum with little to no work for you, how does that sound to you?

[Beherith]

More folders do not make your computer more organized. Having a lot of empty folders just makes it worse.

[Jazcash]

More folders do not make your computer more organized. Having a lot of empty folders just makes it worse.

Ofc, but that's not what I meant...
I personally don't really care if we have sub-forums for separate mods, I just want the forum to be divided up more so we don't keep getting topics in places where they shouldn't be.

@Mods: Don't keep complaining about topics being where they shouldn't be if they haven't got a place where they should be anyway. Hell even if you just create an 'Other' section under each category it would make the forums a lot more organized.