And then there was silence...

[technomage]

I think these are allot of experienced coders here, all of which would be able to help anybody new to game programming in pascal, but we very rarely get any posts for people starting out.

All I can say is to anyone out there, if you have questions, dont be afraid , ask, we're all here to help each other Don't just limit yourselves to "how to I code that" kind of questions, how about some questions on class design for game objects or the pro's and con's of storing game data in proprietory/open formats or anything else for that matter. :idea:

[cairnswm]

I - a regular here - no longer find this site as welcoming as it used to be. To me there are no longer enough supporting posts on the site. People seem to be a lot more negative here than in the past ("Too much"/"not enough Delphi", "not enough posts" etc)

If I as a regular no longer feel that I want to come here anymore how do you think newcomers are feeling.

[Paulius]

I don?¢_~t agree with you cairnswm, the most negative things here are topics likes these, but they shouldn?¢_Tt be avoided. Not enough supporting posts? You do get more support than average here. Have you given feedback on anybody else?¢_Ts project recently? Sure you?¢_Tre a regular who barely has time for his own projects, but maybe that?¢_Ts the way other regulars feel too.

[Traveler]

I dont really share the negativity point, but I agree on the supporting posts part. Paulius, I think cairnswm was refering to posts in general. There's room for a lot of improvements in that area.

[Specis]

I am sort of new around here. and well tbh it is kinda of uninviting, there's a lot of Freepascal / SDL etc fans around these parts and the vibe definatly comes accross, all in all, when i first found this place, It stunk of elistism, i know this not to be true, but not from the forum itself. From the irc channel.

This is just because most of have been around each other in some format (online/irl/etc) for a while and are comfortable with each other which is how it should be, But to us new folk its hard to find a place to fit in.

Also as ive said before, the forums are very very crowded with sections, and tbh most if not all of us are making games as a hobby, and just browsing every section of this place to see new posts takes far to long. A nice recent discussions list on the main page, in place of the blank space... which i think is some javascript new article thingy (I have javascript disabled most of the time) would bring more people into the forum and generally make it easier for people to find threads instead of having to slog through the sheer amount of sections.

Also how about some little code off's? not prizes and nothing large like a complete game etc, just something like a weekly procedure/function/etc that does xyz. that might get more activity

and as another suggestion, how about an actual showcase for projects instead of just a forum section? something thats right there on the main page, News is great, but well the whole site doesnt just revolve around the news does it?

[Traveler]

and just browsing every section of this place to see new posts takes far to long

But there's a search for new posts feature at the top of the page [clicky
Alternatively all sections with new/changed topics have red buttons.

I definitely support the showcasing of projects. And I believe WILL is working on it, but I'm not sure what the status is.

Btw, savage nice attempt to bring back some older members, by bumping threads

[savage]

Nudge the tree and see if anything falls out :twisted:

[Mirage]

This is very good site, but it's too hard to find it. Especially for newbies.
The google rank of the main page is 2, which is very low for a one year old site. The normal value (without any special efforts) is 3-4. (fpc4gba.pascalgamedevelopment.com has 4! :shock: Add a link from there to main page!)
For the keyphrase "game development pascal", "pascal game programming" etc in Google you can find a lot of much less relevant sites, but there is no pascalgamedevelopment.com on the first page!
I suspect that the traffic from Google is close to zero.

The absence of the alexa traffic rank is also very strange. Pascal is not very popular among game developers, but it's not SO unpopular. Delphigamedev.com has 222716 alexa rank which is pretty good.

So what can be done to attract traffic to the site?
1. Make it search engine friendly. I've noticed a "&sid=xxx" part in URL. This is not SE-friendly. The code is also not SE-friendly.
2. Good old link exchange. With thought-out keyphrases as anchors.
Most friendly sites are still linking to old URLs (delphigamer, etc) which useless for search engines.
3. Submit it to DMOZ!

Even 100 visitors per day from search engines (there should be much more) can at least animate the forums.

[BlueCat]

*BUMP* Ouch! :shock: :fuzzy: :scratch: Who nudged the tree? :?

[JernejL]

i don't know how you missed this news but you didn't post anything about Quake 3 -> delphi project!!

http://quake3.delphigl.com/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.delphigl.com/forum/viewfo...7&lang=english