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Crisp_N_Dry
10-05-2003, 03:56 PM
How's about a forum related to games design. The non-technical side of things. A place where people could talk about game mechanics but not so much the code stuff. People could post on what makes games fun and why certain mechanics work and others don't and this would help other people with their own designs.

Alimonster
12-05-2003, 08:55 PM
Sounds like a pretty good plan to me. We'll have to be careful about the amount of forums, though, since they seem to be growing exponentially :shock: ...

BlueCat
12-05-2003, 10:24 PM
Hmmmm, it's a difficult one alright. I know what you mean, Alimonster, I do seem to be using the purple scrollbar a lot more lately!

A game design forum would be excellent, but I don't know if it's what DGDev is here for (memo to self - must find out what DGDev is here for :? ). The obvious difference between somewhere like GameDev's forums and here is that we only use Delphi/Kylix so the emphasis is on programming. What I'm trying to say (semi-conscious semi-drunk) is that game design isn't bound to any one language/IDE but game implementation is.

I think we've got most things covered and I don't expect the number of forums to increase much more. It's mainly the game libraries and components category that's seen the most growth :)

Personally, I don't have a problem with having a Game Design forum. In fact if we were voting (and I have a feeling we will be), I'd vote for it. There's a great community thing going on here and if we want to talk about game design then being Delphi fans shouldn't stop us :twisted:.

I'm just not sure where to draw the line. I'd like to hear what y'all think out there in Delphi land.

Sorry about that - I don't get access to alcohol much these days so when I do it's like I'm 14 again :drunk:

TheLion
12-05-2003, 10:56 PM
I think it would be a great idea! :)

Designing games is often a big problem and bad design often the most common reason (in my case at least) to quit working on a game. Delphi is the tool to build stuff with but we also need a design to design what to build... I'm not sure but a Delphi design might be different from a C / C++ design or a VB design. :)

I would vote for one too

cairnswm
13-05-2003, 05:43 AM
Not sure if its exactly game desing but what I find frustrating is running into spagetti code after a month or two of working on a game.

I'd like to see discussions on how to create classes that support the adhoc development of games. What and how to structure classes, properties and methods.

WILL
13-05-2003, 07:41 AM
Here's an opinion from the new guy - I think that it would not only do the site some justice(This a community or learning enviroment for Delphi Game Developers, right?), but it would allow us Pascal-Inclined programmers to discuss gamming issues here instead of some other C forums. Why not make this a complete site for us Pascalians to gather here to discuss game development issues instead of having only GameDev.net? I think it would be nice to read a tutorial or discuss programming issues in pure Delphi terms rather than have to translate what someone is trying to explain in C(most really don't know any Pascal!). I would much rather come here and read tutorials geared for Pascal than a C tutorial on some other those other sites or end up having to translate it and bug fix the things that don't translate well.

It would be nice to have a bigger Delphi community than what exists now. The more of us that come here and post and contribute the better, I say.

BlueCat
13-05-2003, 10:18 AM
Couldn't agree more with that :) That's why I started DGDev, to give us our own place. OK how about this:

Two new forums, one for the creative side of game development (game ideas, stories, art, music) and one for the 'other side' (design docs, object-oriented design, reusable game classes). I hope you see what I'm getting at :)

I don't think we need to break those two forums down into separate ones for all aspects of game design, for example, an art forum (Delphi programmer art?) but we can always change things later if we get hundreds of art topics!

And we can finally combine the Chat and General Discussion forums into one, DGDev Lounge maybe? :twisted:

And while we're at it, post any other suggestions on how to make this a better place for the Delphi Game community here.

TheLion
13-05-2003, 06:14 PM
I have said it b4 and I will say it again ... BLUECAT YOU ARE A GENIOUS!!! 8) 8)

WILL
14-05-2003, 04:47 AM
Sounds good to me. :)

cairnswm
14-05-2003, 05:58 AM
Two more suggestions for forums

1. Resources - where is the best places to get sounds, images compoennts etc. (Including coparisons between tools etc)
2. Shareware links - I've takena look at shareware for the first time in a long time and there are some really good shareware games out there. We should be looking at getting our games into this sort of environment. We should look at links about what is required etc. Basically we could call this a publishing forum.

Cheers

Useless Hacker
14-05-2003, 10:36 AM
http://gamedev.net/community/forums/icons/icon14.gif http://gamedev.net/community/forums/icons/icon14.gif http://gamedev.net/community/forums/icons/icon14.gif http://gamedev.net/community/forums/icons/icon14.gif

BlueCat
14-05-2003, 11:52 AM
Here's something we could do. I know of a hack I can install that would let us have sub-categories, forums within forums. The new categories appear on the front page under the main categories.

For example, under the Community main category there would be a 'Resources' sub-category. Click that and you get a page with either more sub-categories or the forums under the sub-category, like 'Art','Music','Selling your Game',etc. In the future, any of these forums could be turned into a sub-category with separate forums on the next level down in the hierarchy.

There would be some risks involved of course :) These hacks invariably give us trouble for at least a few hours while I panic and try to work out what's gone wrong. And then there's the bugs... oh the bugs :evil:

I'm willing to give it a go though if people are happy with the idea. I think the way to do it would be to get the mod installed and then convert each forum to a sub-category one at a time.

Sounds like a plan to me :idea:

TheLion
14-05-2003, 07:07 PM
Sure, give it a go ! :) I have been thinking about that for a long time, however I didn't know there where hacks for it ! :)

If there are bugs I'll gladly help you to (try and) filter them out! :)

BlueCat
16-05-2003, 02:19 AM
Ok now we have more room to add forums, let's decide what we need.

We've already seen a few suggestions in this thread but we have to work out how to fit them in.

Here's my first attempt, * means category or sub-category, all others are forums:

DGDev*
--News
--Site feedback (was Forums)

Community*
--Chat
--Your Projects
--Marketing and Distribution
--Help me!

Design*
--Technical*
----Documentation
----Tools and methodologies (I made that up, lol)
--Creative*
----Visual
----Music and Sound Effects
----Game Ideas
----Story writing

Programming*
--Getting Started*
----Delphi Basics
----Tutorials and Links
--Graphics*
----OpenGL
----Direct3D and DirectDraw
--Sound*
----DirectSound
----FMOD
----BASS
----OpenAL
--Networking*
----Network Programming
----DirectPlay
--Input*
----DirectInput
--AI*
----Artificial Life
----Genetic Algorithms
----Pathfinding
----Neural Nets
--General
--Game Programming
--Kylix

Game Libraries and Components*
--A3D nGine 2003Ar
--DelphiX
--GameVision SDK
--GLScene
--GLXTreem
--PowerDraw
--Project Omega
--SDL
--Xcess Game Development Kit

OMG we're turning into GameDev :shock:

That's 26 forums/sub-categories on the front page, so it's a little less than we have now. And 39 forums all together.

What do you think? Is that enough forums for now? :)

WILL
16-05-2003, 04:57 AM
Turning into? Hell this is better than GameDev. ;) I like it!

Crisp_N_Dry
16-05-2003, 04:48 PM
That seems like an excellent way to arrange things. Good work. I assume most of the bugs in the sub category hack have been ironed out. I was rather surprised when I saw 55 new posts in every category yesterday. I thought all my Delphi applications had compiled at once.