What about tutorials & Articles?

[WILL]

This one is mostly for BlueCat, but I'm sure quite a few people might have an interest in this. BlueCat, why don't you have DGDev host tutorials and articals relating to Delphi Game programming issues. I'm sure that there are a few members of DGDev that would be glad to author a few things for you.

It might also offer some staying interest for those programmers that just float on into here and take off due to a lack of content(You have to admit, the forums *could* be busier). The forums are great, but think that having something to check up on and read from time to time would promote the site more. Didn't I hear it menioned that this is THE community site for Delphi Game programmers?

Also the fact that there aren't that many articals written in Object Pascal just for general game design things kinda stinks too. Why should all the C guys steal all the glory?

:arrow: This is my proposal; What does BlueCat and everyone else think?

[Traveler]

I believe we already have a place where you can add tutorials.

It's right this way:
DGDev Forum Index -> Programming -> Getting Started -> Tutorials and Links

[BlueCat]

I think it's an excellent idea, in fact I thought it was an excellent idea when the site was about ummm... 6 days old :twisted:

This thread kind of got things started but it would be great to see some more tutorials here.

I've always said I'd like to see DGDev expand into more than just forums, new ideas are always welcome. I don't always have the time to promote the site as much as I'd like (very little in fact for the past few months) but I don't really think of it as my site any more than it's your site. It would be great if we could get a team together (DGDev staff? )who could work on improving the site and adding new features. It's not something I can do alone, but we could make a really great site together. :mrgreen:

So what do you say? Who's in the team?

[Traveler]

What exactly are your plans BlueCat? Do you want to put this site at the same level as Flipcode and gamedev.net? I mean, with (daily) news, articles, forum, books(reviews), tutorials, links, iotd's etc?

It think it would certainly help to put DGDev on the map. But I can't help thinking, what about DelphiGamer and Turbo?

[BlueCat]

This is exactly the sort of the thing we need a team for... to talk about what we want from the site and how to achieve it.

If you visit DelphiGamer and click forums you'll find yourself here. We joined up with DelphiGamer because they had no forums and this was a forum site. If we were going to add all those features Traveler mentioned that would change DGDev into something entirely different. I have no problem with that, but as I said, we need to talk about it

What I propose we do is:

• I'll set up a new usergroup with it's own private forum
  
  Anyone who's interested in helping out can join the group (might set a size limit at some point though )
  
  We use the forum and have regular IRC meetings to chat and talk about what we want to do with the site

Post here if you're interested

[Traveler]

I'm quite interested as to were all this is leading to, you may put me on this list.

[Sander]

Ahh, this should be interested, I'm interested in joining that group as well. I was already thinkin about writing a low-level tutorial anyway...

[cairnswm]

Why a seperate group. I have time to look at one forum everyday and this is the one I have chosen. If you make an 'exclusive' seperate group to discuss this site I probably wouldn't take the time to visit it.

Just add a new forum at the bottom of the list for suggestions and I'll visit it every day.

Also I think I have already got the highest number of tutorials on this site. Why arn't there more? Because nobody gives any feedback on tutorials and therefore it seems a bit pointless to write them if nobody is interested.

I also think the same of the DGDev project - why does it have to be exclusive - why cant the progress be discussed here in a general forum so everyone can chip in with comments?

[WILL]

BlueCat: I'm gonna be a big hypocrite here and tell you that I want to but may not have the time(new carrer starting and all). At least maybe not for a bit anyways. I do want to though and have some interesting ideas. Something on par with that you'd see on GameDev.net. If you can put me down as a part-timer I'd be greatful.

cairnswm: I'm not sure you fully understood my idea. I'm not talking about making a second site or group of pages or anything like that. Maybe at first until the pages can be sorted out it may be only linked to. I'm sure BlueCat kind of figured this out (I'm pretty sure he actually does want to do this, I'd put money on it ) we want to add articals and tutorials to the site in a more sophisticated manner.

A bunch of(almost text) tutorials, no matter how great the content is, stuffed way back in some hidden folder in a forum is no way to display your masterpeices. I'm actually talking about making nice fully graphical tutorials made by anyone that wants to contribute, but as BlueCat is requesting, with a deticated staff. Well, when we have the time of course

:lol: [[size=9px]Pictures BlueCat throwing things at him for making alot of work for him now.[/size]]

Seriously though, if you guys really want DGDev to stand out as THE Delphi Game programmers home, you have to make the place more ...furnished, pardon the pun. This may involve making a menu bar that sits at the top of the pages and you can flip through the sections of the site. News, Forums and Articals(/Tutorials), "Project Spotlight"? Maybe we can enlist the help of both Turbo and Dominique Louis to handle the news get them to team up. The project can be as big or small or any shape really that we all(well... BlueCat, really) want it to be.

[BlueCat]

Yeah that's about right WILL!

The forum doesn't have to be private at all, I just think that 'signing up' to a team shows some kind of commitment (however small) to helping to improve the site.

It doesn't matter if you can only spend 10 minutes per week. I just don't think much is going to change around here until we get a group of people together who care enough to change things.

cairnswm: The comment you made about the lack of feedback is a fair one and it's true that the tutorials aren't exactly easy to find. But I really appreciate you writing them and posting here and I'm sure many other people do even if they haven't said so yet ops:.

If we do make a tutorials and articles section of the site, the tutorials we already have will be a good start.