Increasing traffic on PGD...

[SilverWarior]

I have been increasing PGD popularity in a way from the wery first day I came here. How? When I visit PGD site from work I always come here trough Google. When I started visiting this site I had to write atlest "pascal game dev" for google quick results to show link to PGD in the results. Now it is enought just to write "pascal ga". So by doing this I increased PGD popularity in Google sercher. This means that there is greater chance for PGD site to come up in serch results even if they are the search isn't about PGD directly.

Also I plan to contact Žarko Gajić author of Delphi About site so that he will update his site acordingly or point any Delphi devloper who is interested in game development to PGD.

Also one of the problems is that many pepole doesn't know that Delphi uses pascal language. I must admit that it took me quite some time to realize that myself. But blaime for this goes to the Borland wich tried to create a uniqe programing language caled Delphi and not pascal. Only recently Embarcadero started to metion again that their Delphi IDE actualy uses pascal programing language and not Delphi programing language.

I would also ask PGD members who have developed their own Graphic engines and such to try to make those compatible with Delphi and write proper tutorials of seting up their graphic engines in Delphi. Yes I know that it isn't easy to do that especialy since you don't use Delphi yourself but without this only a few of Delphi developers would be wiling to try and hastle of seting your graphical engines to work in Delphi by themself.

Also if we want to atract more newbies we should start writing some tutorials about how to start a game developement preferably for both Delphi and FPC and write tehm in a way so that they would be understod by newbies. We also have to take into acount that there may be many newbe programers wich might be interested in game development from start. What does this means? Our tutorials must sometimes even explain some programing language technics. For instance in my article about RPG battle system I heavily rely on classes and class inheritance. And becouse of this the article will include short explanation of how classes and calss inheritance works and why I used this aproach. That is the second biggest reasony why I'm working on my article for so long.

I myself am still working on my article about making a Combat system for RPG game. I also have ideas for a few more articles (Handling Savegames, Making GUI components, Making proper code structure for games - using gamestates). If noone else would write them I will do it myself but unfortunatly I don't know when since my free time is werry limited.

[WILL]

Well more Delphi specific stuff is in the works as requested. I will do my best to push this more.

Best thing I can say is if you want it talked about here, make the post in the forums. I will do my best to tweet, facebook link it and draw others to come talk about it. (If Delphi users think that it really is FreePascal Game Development, then we have to make the effort to show that it's not that anymore!) but if you don't make these posts then you're only failing PGD and you will not get what you want out of it.

"[PGD] is a community you can only expect to get out of it what you put into it." -- Alimonster(aka Alistar Keys) telling me off for blasting the old DGDev forums for being quiet as a new member.

As for the game releases, I feel that this is just as important as the technical information. It lets people know not only that there are actual commercial or freeware game projects out there (from someone other than the authors who know about PGD), but it also shows the areas where Pascal is being used and how to track it's success in the industry. So I will continue to post these along with more technical information about things like Delphi4Lua and the TKinect library and other game libraries and/or engines such as Asphyre Sphinx and TERRA.

I'd love to get more people writing tutorials for PGD. So far only Ben(code_glitch) has been creating tutorials in the last few months. Sadly I think that he has been overshooting by being overly technical or heavy in the project management portion alienating beginners or simple hobbyists that don't care about methodologies and the like. Being of simple mind some times, I can't say that I've been overly drawn to them myself. Not that hey are bad articles, it's just that the scales have tipped too far to that side I believe. We need simplier more basic articles.

Maybe something like A* pathfinding, LOS, how to make a tilemap, loading 3D objects with FireMonkey, plug in code for making a screenshot with OpenGL/DirectX, etc... these are simple and probably don't require a lot of writing on the part of the author(YOU).

The social networks seem to actually bring in traffic. Yes if can spend a lot of time reading Tweets from Notch, IGN and many others who I've come to follow recently, but it is a great networking tool. Recently I've spent a little time on Facebook and I've seen the Pascal Game Development group grow from only a mere 9 group members to about 45. Plus I've been posting in the Delphi developers group which has well over 500+ members and I'm sure that has attracted the attention of a few and maybe added a couple of new members as well. (Members also include Nick Hodges, David I., Jim McKeeth, Malcolm Groves, etc)

Visibility is the key for social networks. You just have to stay away from getting caught up reading them too much, I have to agree there.

And a huge thanks to you SilverWarior for your efforts! I don't know how many others are doing what you are doing, but I'm very happy that you are making all this effort. It really does help.

I was also considering doing some ad campaigns as well. Maybe Google Ads or something, but those can get costly over time.

[LP]

Also if we want to atract more newbies we should start writing some tutorials about how to start a game developement preferably for both Delphi and FPC and write tehm in a way so that they would be understod by newbies. We also have to take into acount that there may be many newbe programers wich might be interested in game development from start. What does this means? Our tutorials must sometimes even explain some programing language technics.

Actually I think teaching programming by itself is not a very useful tactic here because newbies have many options to choose from: C# and XNA, C/C++, Perl, Python, Lua, Java and so on. This is what institutions are for, and dealing with institutions, I think, is quite out of scope for PGD commuinity.

My posts were about luring *existing* Delphi developers in here as in Language Stats which I've mentioned earlier it is clear that Delphi is still quite popular. It is not that difficult as you just need to provide interesting stuff to motivate people visiting this site; eventually, they may decide to participate in forums.

Specifically for the forums, I would recommend joining together all graphic's libraries forums as well as compilers since there have not been much activity (some had no posts since 2007!) but together they will appear quite populated to outside public. Honestly, right now with so many forums and very low activity, it is counterproductive: I only use "What's New?" button as scrolling through entire forums takes quite some time and is confusing. You may want to get rid of forums with less than 10 posts and join them together as well. This type of hierarchical navigation is not needed: Search option exists exactly for cases where you need to find something specific.

P.S. I've been trying to get my hands on writing tutorials for some time now, but since I also work on scientific articles, which is quite stressful (especially when dealing with reviewers), you get tired and at the end of day writing more text is the least thing you want to do.

[WILL]

Specifically for the forums, I would recommend joining together all graphic's libraries forums as well as compilers since there have not been much activity (some had no posts since 2007!) but together they will appear quite populated to outside public. Honestly, right now with so many forums and very low activity, it is counterproductive: I only use "What's New?" button as scrolling through entire forums takes quite some time and is confusing. You may want to get rid of forums with less than 10 posts and join them together as well. This type of hierarchical navigation is not needed: Search option exists exactly for cases where you need to find something specific.

I had been thinking of archiving and slimming down the forums lately. You are right it's becoming more like a ghost town in the Forums section of PGD. I have most of them collapsed, but still they are all open by default. Another motivation for this was how long and hard it was for my to move it all from the old server to here. The database in raw SQL was 500MB large. I had to break it up into 46 pieces to run it all for the import.

Rather than simply merge libraries, I'd rather archive them and take them off the forums page altogether. Noone cares about the XCESS library at this point it's been dropped ages ago for example.

Some other forums like Writing, Technical and all the other non-programming stuff probably could be merged and trimmed down. They are somewhat excessive. I can slim down the forums quite a bit just with these.

P.S. I've been trying to get my hands on writing tutorials for some time now, but since I also work on scientific articles, which is quite stressful (especially when dealing with reviewers), you get tired and at the end of day writing more text is the least thing you want to do.

No review process here at PGD! If that helps...

[WILL]

...and let us not forget to welcome new members! http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com...irst-post-here

[WILL]

Reorganizing the forums as per some of Lifepower's ideas...

[SilverWarior]

Actually I think teaching programming by itself is not a very useful tactic here because newbies have many options to choose from: C# and XNA, C/C++, Perl, Python, Lua, Java and so on. This is what institutions are for, and dealing with institutions, I think, is quite out of scope for PGD commuinity.

I disagree with you. I myself am stil a newbie in game development (hasn't published any game jet) and my programing skils also arent very advanced.
When I found first article wich suposinlgy would teach me how to make my fist game in Delphi I hardly understood it. Reason for that is that at the time my programing skils were still quite bad. I still hasn't understand some basics at the time (namely classes and class inheritance). So even after reading that article for few times I still didn't knew how to make my own game. I only figured that out about a year later when I was reading another article about creating custom components (components heavilly rely on classes). Actually at that time I had no intention for writing games, becouse I thought they are out of my reach becouse of me lacking knowledge. If someone would have told me then that I requre proper knowledge of handling classes, today I might have already some game finished.
That's why I'm including this knowledge in my article becouse I suspect, that many potential game developers are turned away on the start, becouse they don't understand neccesary basics, and noone tels them that they have to.
Anywhay it is not neccesary that you always write about programing basics in your article, but atleast do point the readaer to another article wich would help him understand yours.

Also if we don't take atleast some time for teaching some programing, pepole might turn to other programing languages instead, becouse they might find other forums who do so.

The main reason why I decided to become programer becouse I wanted to make my own game similar to some other but much better (don't recal wich one). So basicaly if I wouln't be so stuborn by nature I would have already given up long time ago.

[Eric]

Actually I think teaching programming by itself is not a very useful tactic here because newbies have many options to choose from: C# and XNA, C/C++, Perl, Python, Lua, Java and so on.

I disagree, this is because they still have choice that you can capture new recruits.Though in that reguard Delphi starts with a severe disadvantage as there is no "free" option anymore besides Lazarus.

Also sites like turbo & Delphi3D did thrive a lot on "teaching", just not programming, but games, Ai, graphics, etc.

This is what institutions are for, and dealing with institutions, I think, is quite out of scope for PGD commuinity.

I disagree here too, institutions are in practice either universities (where they usually don't have any serious grasp of game programming) or work-sponsored (and bosses ain't gonna pay for game programming).

My posts were about luring *existing* Delphi developers in here

The problem is that a good deal of existing Delphi developpers are on old versions, sometimes very old (Delphi 7), and XE2 caters to just a niche of the Delphi users.
Even though I wrote some articles about XE2 during the time my trial lasted, I'm still primarily on XE.

XE2 doesn't have any free version, so the situation just isn't like in the turbo & Delphi3D days, when people that found something interesting could go test it.

IMHO this goes beyond any raw cost consideration as it affects mindset: people just don't have the same incentive/willingness promoting "for free" a tool that isn't free.

Specifically for the forums, I would recommend joining together all graphic's libraries forums as well as compilers since there have not been much activity

Agreed.

[Cybermonkey]

Sorry, if I barge in as I am rather new here, but please do not drop support for Freepascal. I am not interested in Delphi but searching for good tutorials for FPC. Most good libraries (e.g. Asphyre) seem for Delphi only. The only exception is ZenGL.
It was mentioned that in the Language Stats http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/conte...pci/index.html Delphi is quite popular but as far as I can read the item is named

Delphi/Object Pascal

which refers to Freepascal/Lazarus as well (Object Pascal).
Well, I am also interested in mobile developmet (Android/iOS) but again: if a tutorial is made please with Freepascal.
Just my two cents from a newbie.

[Carver413]

Educating new members is the best way to insure new members stick around. most of us don't have the luxury of school training. and what classes are out there for delphi/fpc users anyway. any good group takes care of it's own. what is really needed is a modern opengl code base to work from some sort of wikki to organize it. DGL has a nice setup but most of us don't speak German and goggle does a poor job of translating.