Spring RTS Engine

All posts in this Forum will be shown on the frontpage when a category is set by prefixing the post-subject with (atm)

• [game]
• [map]
• [engine]
• [website]
• [misc]

without a category prefix it won't show up on the frontpage. All users who are member of some special group in this forum are able to post a new thread.

Posts in this blog-forum are only allowed when the follow these rules:

1) Related to the spring engine:
The post must be about spring or a spring-project.
("My computer broke and now I can not post about spring for a while" is not a post about spring.)

2) Clean posts
Much of this stuff will be shown in places where it's basically the public face of spring. No swearing, no sexual references, no racism or crude humor, and if you have screenshots containing violence, keep them at the PG-13 level.


3) It has to be major enough:
-a new map
-a new game or major game version
-large change in engine
-something else "big", for example a collection of models or a Lua gadget or long text, etcetc.
-generally some effort / thought must have gone into it.
"Fixed some typos" or "Added 2 more mex spots to south" is not major. try to avoid what you plan, try to write what you did.
Avoid to common style, especially in "new map" threads is a post as this:
"My new something XY. Should work for all games. Thanks to bla and blub. Download here: [link]

• "
  That is way too general: Barely giving basic info like authors is not interesting.
  Instead describe how it was made, what is special, how does it work, problems you had when you made it.
  
  4) News must be understandable and interesting to outsiders too:
  If something needs background-info to be understood then news must give that info.
  If the topic is super-technical-complicated then it needs to be explained how it matters for players/other devs.
  Include an image! (if possible): People like images, Give them something to look at!
  Images as forum attachments to post, so that they do not disappear.
  No file-hosting sites, no private websites - no matter how reliable you think they are.
  
  5) Follow the community rules:
  Trying to sneak in flames against another users in valid news, or other stuff that will create drama, will be deleted.
  
  6) Respect Content creators:
  Posting news is the right of a content creator releasing content to the community. Unless you have express permission, do not post in a content creator's stead. If a content creator gives you permission to post news about their content to our site, that is fine, but fundamentally they should be allowed control over how their project is advertised to some degree, and we respect that.

So what tags would you use for stuff such as: scenario editor, liblobby/chililobby, springgrid, myai, chili?
It wouldn't fit in the existing tags, but most stuff (except [lobby] and [ai]) probably don't deserve a special tag for themselves. Maybe a [misc] or something?

gajop wrote:Maybe a [misc] or something?

yes, misc sounds useful. to many categories aren't so useful for the beginnig at least.

Wiki stuff, [wiki] or [website] or [misc] ?

FLOZi wrote:Wiki stuff, [wiki] or [website] or [misc] ?

atm [website]...

You should also have a category for [Event]

Edit: An image should also be a requirement.

Edit2: You should implement open graph... Seriously, this isn't just some fad, it matters.

Forboding Angel wrote:You should also have a category for [Event]

atm i prefer adding categories by needs, don't want to add categories which aren't used :)

Forboding Angel wrote:Edit: An image should also be a requirement.

hm, difficult if post is only about coding, imo no requirement, just a nice to have.

Forboding Angel wrote:Edit2: You should implement open graph... Seriously, this isn't just some fad, it matters.

uhm, when i have some time maybe

abma wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:You should also have a category for [Event]

atm i prefer adding categories by needs, don't want to add categories which aren't used :)

Tournaments are quite frequent. There are the evo get togethers, zk has planet wars, etc.

[Events] is not an unused category. If you want people to start paying attention to the front page, you need to give them something that they give a shit about.

abma wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:Edit: An image should also be a requirement.

hm, difficult if post is only about coding, imo no requirement, just a nice to have.

It isn't difficult to take a screenshot of an editor and make it a thumbnail.

Exhibit A:


It's not hard to drum up a modicum of creativity.

For anyone not creatively inclined, https://pixlr.com/ will automate much of the process and give you a nice result.

abma wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:Edit2: You should implement open graph... Seriously, this isn't just some fad, it matters.

uhm, when i have some time maybe

This matters. You may not understand why, and that's fine. But it matters.
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/

Facebook started it, then twitter and google jumped on the bandwagon and vastly improved upon the way it is displayed. It matters. Not to mention the fact that it is fantastic for seo.

you didn't understand what i wrote...

Oh? My apologies then.

Forboding Angel wrote:Edit: An image should also be a requirement.

hm, difficult if post is only about coding, imo no requirement, just a nice to have.
[/quote]
This is what the media usually pictures code with, current example in case of virus found, but you get the idea:

Edit: You cannot use certain BBCodes: [img], so here's the link instead.

http://imgur.com/qCXRCDu

In other words, this is how code looks like to most people.

Hmm, what kind of special permissions do I need:

You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Can only admins post here?

All users who are member of some special group in this forum are able to post a new thread.

What is a special group exactly? Does it suffice to be a member of this group:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/memberlist.p ... oup&g=3585

I also wonder what we mean with "major version" of a game. XTA releases new versions maybe once a month and they are basically all equal, we used to have a thing where all versions with 2 decimals were major ones and following were incremental ones, but this is no longer the case. But is once a month too often to post something to the community news, considering that XTA is not one of the big games played?

Jools wrote:What is a special group exactly? Does it suffice to be a member of this group:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/memberlist.p ... ile&u=7909

a group != Registered users. see my profile maybe as example.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/ucp.php?i=167

How do you join the "Banned" group? It says you have to have an invitation from group leader, but it doesn't say who that is.

Banned
These users have been banned.
This is a closed group, new members can only join upon invitation of a group leader.

I also wonder why it's a closed group. I would like to see what they are discussing...

For XTA:
I think not every new game version is nessecarily interessting.
For example detailing each small fix/change in zombie modus is not interessting to general public (there is changelog for that) but one news that describes zombie modus is good.
So several game releases could be combined into one news:
"A bit ago a new game modus was introduced, over the last few versions it has been tweaked.
It works as follows...[...] Some of the problems that had to be solved are...[...]"

--- =

But for news, attachments are better.

The only time an attachment is better is if it is in img tags, which is (I assume) what you meant (because then no reliance on 3rd parties).

The springinfobox is meant to remain unchanged, right?
If it were made larger, contained more text and had room for an image, it would make sense to enforce that every post has one, otherwise it's just not necessary for code (non-graphical) projects.