What is the deal with PGD?

[BlueCat]

ops: ops: ops: ops:

Thanks, good to see you too

[Crisp_N_Dry]

Lief -
Circle jerk = When guys sit around jerking eachother off for no good reason. Patting someone on the back is fine but it needs explanation otherwise it's worthless.

[WILL]

[size=24px]AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!![/size]
... oh... it's not a ghost, it's Blue!!!

It's so great to see a returning face

Are you kidding? This is the man who got me involved in creating the PGD site over a yeah and a half ago. Not to mention he was the man of the 'Delphi' scene scene back in 2003. I have nothing but good things to say about this man.


As for leif, technomage, Traveler and the rest of everyones thoughts; There is a lot of good points and a ton of issues brought up in this thread. A lot of stuff that has been an issue since PGD was started and some even before we changed it over from the original sites [size=9px](DGDev & DelphiGamer)[/size].

Truth is, I would love to fix alot of these issues, but we need a bigger staff and more of the modivated individuals that we do have now. Me and Dom have discussed this, and will have to fill in BlueCat sometime soon I image, that we are goingto go hunting for possitively modivated people to help do the vital things on this site.

Now noone take this as me bashing the current staff or esp. Dom. Every one of these guys to a smashing job of keeping the site from going under while I'm away, but as it has become evident since I started sailing with the Navy normally, the site seems to go into a near comma whenever I leave for 2 weeks.

Why? Well because I think I have taken on far too much responsability onto myself here. I cannot count the number of positions I fill on a daily basis. I seek out from my nice thick selection of bookmarks and report news almost daily, I do the Editor's job when required, I add new and fresh content to the Library('our' big project) weekly[size=9px](thanks to tux's help in keeping up with them)[/size], I do consistant modifications to the site's scripts to fix up critical errors and any bugs the break the functionality of the site, update the news bar, recently published the ]Alimonster[/b](formerly active member of DGDev and the current PGD sites) once told me before I became a daily visitor of the old DGDev[size=9px](before I became an admin and created the PGD project)[/size] He said "...it's up to YOU (points to reader) to make it an interesting place to be..." meaning that what people bring tothe site is what you get back form it. I would offer this advice to anyone and everyone that even just visits to the staff that runs it. We want it to be a nice big community active and growing then we have to be active and help it grow by seeking out news and new Library listings, writting new articles and posting interesting topics like we do see in the forums.

If we put our hearts into this site it will grow becasue we will make it so. Pascal has that potential in it's scene and it's community of developers.

[Sly]

I seek out from my nice thick selection of bookmarks and report news almost daily

Been there and done that for the turbo site. It got to the point where I was tired of searching each day for something to post, and real life left me with less and less time to spend maintaining the site. I would post news items when I found them, and often not get any response, or sometimes one or two comments. The biggest response I got was when I announced that I was closing the site. I didn't realise just how many lurkers were out there. Now the site has been passed on to Kai Jager who has been doing a good job of keeping it updated. I still visit it every now and then.

[Specis]

Mmmmm

Could it really be that we scare off newcomers with our (Free)Pascal instead of Delphi? Our discussions about conversion to Linux instead of just for Windows?

That is a good point. Given that the most popular game platform on the PC is windows perhaps linux talk is scaring people off, or they are just not intersted in cross platform development..... food for thought....

I have to agree here, There is an air of negativity here about none crossplatform projects or projects that ignore Freepascal. I personally use linux but im not intrested in writing games for linux. I dont use freepascal because really why would i? I have delphi. I slowed my posts down yup.. im at fault for that myself. But i done it because the core group here seem, and im not saying this is true, but seem to be big freepascal fans and if i aint crossplatform they aint really intrested. I still visit almost daily though and if i may post a few comments about the actual site which i dont like please remember this aint a personal attack WILL.

Anyway the forum itself.. there's just so many sections.. IMO its way to much and needs to be trimmed back theres sections with subsections. Its kinda a pain to move about really.

The news items on the main page are great. but how about a recent discussions list too? So we can see from the entry page which threads have been active since our last visit. Kinda get new folk into the forums.. without them having to click the forum button at the top then getting greeted by so many forum sections.

The Articles bit on the main page its javascript.. i personally know quite a few folk who disable javascript on there browser. i myself do it, so i dont actually see anything in there.

I know everything is reachable from the menu at the top.. but this site is kinda large and isnt that user friendly for someone that hasnt visited before.

Thats just my views, erm thanks for reading them.

[Paulius]

@WILL: What did you find of a joking nature in me saying that it's good to see BlueCat back? Enough boasting how good of an admin you are, better go and fix what needs fixing since PGD started: unreadable dark yellow text on blue-grey background (like in the "who's online now" for normal users) and changing site feedback forums description from DGDev to PGD

[WILL]

I think you misunderstood my point of listing all the things that I listed Paulius. I work a full time job and then some(It is the Navy afterall) and have a company that I work on with a friend and yet I have all these things that I've commeted to doing and need doing to keep the site going the way I envisioned it and when I stop so does most of the workings of the site. Not because everyone else is lazy or doesn't care. They do and they are extremely busy and have families to boot. So I can't ask them to sacrafice that. I figured that I could keep this up for the start and when I'd finished the start of it then we'd get help to keep the speed up and it just didn't happen. I'm going to burn out pretty quick like this. If you see this as boasting well then you missed the point.

As far as BlueCat being back, think of it as my way of saying "Damn right we're glad to see him back!". I was posting in good humour, but I think somehow you had taken a sour air about my entire post and you had taken to turning nasty, which is unfortunate. :?

Specis: I don't mind man. It keeps me on my toes and points out areas that I need to improve upon on PGD. I don't always get to it right away, but it's not from lack of caring. I just spread myself too thin. It's hard to do so many things without help. Which is the major factor with getting everything under control.

This is just my personal thoughts, but I don't think that there is really a major FPC vs. Delphi problem on the site. I think it's meerly that alot of people are upset with Borland and the direction of Delphi and that this mixed with a ton of new Free Pascal talk might be confusing to those that, if I'm wrong someone correct me, have seen PGD as a Delphi mostly site. I think that there may be alot of FPC optimizim that modivated those that have 'found Free Pascal' [size=9px](gee, sounds like a religion said like that doesn't it?)[/size] that brings them to turn all Jahova on their Delphi asses. :lol: But that should probably not be pushed on too much as I can see it might have an intimidating factor so this is an issue to look at, but not nessissarily a problem. If you guys feel otherwise please let me or Dom know, I don't want to dismiss this, but I haven't gotten this feeling myself yet. Then again I'm one man and it might not be where I'm focusing my attentions. Esp. since I'm trying to encourage increased awareness of game development amoung FPC users, not trying to dismiss it from Delphi users. That would, of course be counter productive.


Ok, this turned into a mosnter post. I just want to clarify to everyone that I am not trying to be super-admin, nor do I want to be. I simply want PGD to be active to a specific level and I myself can't even make it so. I just don't want this site to die a slow death like all the other Pascal projects that do so because of lack of interest. It can be done, but we just need to take on new staff and do some things different.

[WILL]

changing site feedback forums description from DGDev to PGD

I swear I must have looked at changing this so many times. :? How it's still DGDev I swear I have no idea. *shrug* Proof that I'm not perfect. :lol:

[Paulius]

I hoped the wink at the end would make my post seem less angry, well Traveler did kind of allow me to write negative posts, so there

[LP]

I think there's a great deal of people visiting PGD. As for myself: I check it twice a day.

Now that you talk about it, the news and almost anything on this site has emphasis on FreePascal and (sometimes) stuff related to Linux, etc. Any discussion related to Delphi ends with criticizing Borland and how bad they did (do) with Delphi, etc.

I still use Delphi 2005 (and plan on using it for next 1 - 2 years, no matter if Borland CEO withdraws or not ) and I'm into Game Development using (only) Delphi. So what happened to old known Delphi community? Did it vanish?

There are still many wonderful things you can do in Delphi and still a lot of space for many technical articles, but what you can find *here* in Articles section talks basically about: 1) GLXtreem, 2) SDL and 3) Quake (??!!) -- somehow focusing on n00bz I know many PGD Staff ppl are in love with SDL + portable code, but keep in mind that making games is not just putting a bunch of sprites on the screen

Damn, if you really lack of any technical Delphi-related info that could be interesting not only for beginners, but for people working with Delphi in general - I can always write an article or two