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WILL
05-09-2005, 03:45 AM
Well I finally got around to moving things around in here. Tell me what you guys think of the layout.

Also take note of the two new main categories; 'Graphics' and 'Sound & Music'.

Please invite all your artist and musician friends. ;)

Paulius
05-09-2005, 06:01 AM
Looks overbloated to me, adding graphics and music under design would have been enough.

WILL
05-09-2005, 07:39 AM
:lol: I supposed you'd prefer a mere 5 single forums huh? ;)

Well all kidding aside, indeed it's still a whopping size of a page for forums. And I have some ideas to shrink it a bit still. However it's implimentation will be the challenge.

What do you guys think of GameDev.net's collapsing categories? It'll be tricky to modify, but I'm sure it can be done.

Anyone else? Common people, I need feeback as this effects everyone who comes to these forums.

Traveler
05-09-2005, 09:52 AM
Looks good to me!
I kinda agree with paulius about the 'Graphics' and 'Sound & Music' sections though. I don't think these sections are popular enough to warrant an entire category.

About GameDev.net's collapsing categories. IMO its an unnecessary feature, I don't use it at all.

tux
05-09-2005, 10:34 AM
doesnt help that we cant read the link text on the sub forums ;)

cairnswm
05-09-2005, 10:44 AM
Well I like lots of forums - I like things categoriesed nicely :)

Ultra
05-09-2005, 10:38 PM
I don't have any strong opinion on which way was the best, but I thought I would point out that it's called "graphics programming" and not "graphics prgramming". :wink:

czar
05-09-2005, 11:30 PM
Why use the khaki as the link colour you can't actually read the links unless you select it with the mouse.

WILL
07-09-2005, 12:07 AM
Well, I didn't really 'choose' the yellow-ish color, but thats what the default a tag theme was set for. I'll have to see about fixing the yellow link color issue soon anyhow.

So noone else out of ALL the people who read the forums cares about the changes??? :roll:

LP
07-09-2005, 01:53 AM
I really think your forum hierarchy is very confusing, especially for first-timers.

Please... lets be serious! This site is called Pascal-Game-Development.
You develop Sound and Music in Pascal? Prolly not :)

The entire Graphics section is off-topic, Design section is too, in a way.

Help me section is very related to Programming - General and to a bunch of other sections in Programming.

Now, Design - (Technical, Creative) section and Programming - Design ... err... isn't my programming design very creative? (just trying to make a point)

If I would want to post a specific question on PGD, it would be really difficult choosing the required category. I think you guys should seriously reconsider the current forum structure :wink:

Also, to illustrate my point, consider this (there're all jokes btw):

1) Why not adding "Microsoft Visual Studio" forum? It's not related, but well... Sound and Music isn't either :P
2) Your Projects should be divided in "Your Projects made in Pascal" and "Your Projects not made in Pascal".
3) Network Programming should be divided in "TCP/IP", "UDP", "HTTP", "SMTP", "Direct-Play", "Help me with this buggy network code" and "Network Design".
4) Graphics section should also contain forum for Point-Based Modelling, Geometry Images and Fractals
5) Add PHP, HTML and JavaScript categories! A good Pascal programmer would need a web page to publish his work, right?
6) GNU Pascal forum is a must! How come you didn't include it before?
7) New forum for PalmOS Pascal Compiler. If there is Free Pascal, then why not PPC?
8 ) Where is X86 Assembly + SIMD extensions forum? You can include inline assembly in pascal, so why there's no such forum?
9) "Completely lost" and "Don't bother to answer" forums should be added to Community section. After all, you wanted more categories :)

Just some thoughts after playing with ProjectALA (read about it in Off-topic section) for several hours... so don't bother reading this :shock:

czar
07-09-2005, 02:32 AM
I have to agree in part with lifepower. There is just too many categories and spread too thin. Very few posts for many of the topics.

e.g.,
It is unclear how say "programming graphics" is different from "design creative"

I would rather see sub menus if you wanted to keep so many categories.

Here is a reasonable idea.

You should be able to see all the categories on one screen (1280x1024). Any longer and you have too many major topics.

At least that way you can quickly see where the new topics are.

A little while ago there was a discussion about scaring new users away. I still think too much emphasis on topics that do not interest the majority of visitors.

Sly
07-09-2005, 12:07 PM
Personally, I don't see the categories much. My bookmarked link to PGDev is set to the "View new posts since last visit" page. I only think about the categories when I start a new thread, and then that is usually in the Off-Topic category. :)

czar
08-09-2005, 02:27 AM
That is a great idea. Thanks.

WILL
10-09-2005, 09:52 PM
Ok well this gives me some good ideas. I will try something this weekend hopefully.

Also, I have yet to put up the new RSS Feed for the Forums. I think people will find this as useful as the View new posts since last visit feature.

JernejL
29-10-2005, 05:26 PM
the forum is too big trying to cover too much, is too fragmented which makes browsing topics harder and unorganised, several forums cover same things (like "Game Design" and "Project Planning & Design"), i suggest these changes:

the forums should be reordered by the importance, for example sound is more important than AI (ok, we can argue about this but i hope you get the point)

Delphi, Free Pascal, Kylix, Lazarus forums should be put into an own subcategory "programming tools"

tutorials & help forums could be merged since they deal with same thing, tutorial topics could be pinned there.

network and input could be merged (since technically network is a method of getting input)

game design & getting started should be merged, since if you fail your game design when getting started on a project you're screwed up badly.

"Project Planning" & "Design technical & creative" forums and "Game Design" should be merged into a single "project design" forum

a new forum named "ART" should be created, this forum should have three sections:
3D modeling
2D texturing & sprites
Sound & effects