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Nexuiz
Darsana
Transfusion
Hunted Chronicle 2
Cold Heat!
Aliens!
In a previous post (the "veteran" interview with Mauve, available ), Urre was (rightly, I think) pointing out that one of the reasons why things look a little gloomy modding-wise for the Q1 community is that a whole bunch of people are working on their DP-based game project and don't feel like mingling with us. What do you think about this?
Now, what I am wondering is whether or not...
1) there would be ways to attract those people here
2) if there were, would that be something this community would like?
I can't help but find it a little goofy that there are people out there working on a game that is so deeply based on Quake1, but yet that Inside3D somehow does not reach to them and, somehow, maybe also fails to take more seriously into account.
Do you guys think turning part of these forums into specific discussions about those DP-based (and, in fact, any game based on any Q1 engine) games would be an option? Could that be a way to revitalize the I3D community? Or is it already too late?
Seeing how FrikaC has modified the coding sections so as to welcome engine-coders who turned "homeless" after the shutting down of QuakeSrc and how these forums are still, up till now, totally empty, I do have my own doubts about how many "new" people such additional rearranging of our forums would actually attract, but couldn't it be worth a try?
My personal vision is that it makes so much sense for us to be one of the "central" points for both engine coding questions about these "new" games and - and this is of course the part that interests me most - modding for these new games. Granted, many of these teams have their own forums, but wouldn't it make sense to have a forum section that would enable people to talk across "platforms" (well, they're not really platforms, but you see what I mean)? And we wouldn't "lose our souls" so to speak (even though I'm sure some Func members think we already have) because, well, all these games ARE Quake1! This would also maybe encourage some people (like Urre, in fact!
) to share some info about and screenshots of their work.
Obviously, and particularly since Darkplaces itself does not have its own forums (as far as I know), this section of the I3D forums could be presented as the place to start for people who are considering modding for DP but aren't sure yet. And hopefuly we can manage to keep them here. And, yes, there will be newbies and, yes, some of them will be annoying, but isn't that an inevitable step we have to go through if we want new members to keep this place somewhat alive?
I'm thinking about situations as when people like Jim from Cold Heat or Fallus666 from the Aliens project pop in here (both of whom were, of course, not at all annoying, I need to point out). I might sound overly dramatic, but I really think that, if we want to keep this community alive, we simply cannot afford to let these people slip out of here. This might be a weird comparison but, to my eyes, they (and a few other new modders that visited our forums recently) might very well become the future "Tei's". I feel the later bumped into us a bit by accident, the community managed to make him feel at home and his contribution to the community became much bigger than what some might have expected at first. This might sound maybe far-fetched, but I almost feel like sites like Jim's and Fallus666's would totally have their place here, hosted by I3D. And their forums could be a sub-section of this new category of the general forums discusses above. I do realize that QuakeDev might look like the "natural" host for those games, but, after all, we do deal with both QuakeC and engine coding here, so I don't think that I3D is somehow less appropriate... (but I'd like to hear your opinion on this)
Maybe, at this point, all we would need is a "Modding/Mapping for DP games" section with a couple of really good "sticky notes" (or even a third section, editable by moderators only) listing the available games and projects (in individual threads, in the case of a third section?), with screenshots and websites. This section could be divided in two: coding and mapping. We could also contact some of the team members directly and invite them to introduce themselves, write a few notes on how to mod for their game, etc. I could take care of that part if nobody wants to do it. We would also need a couple of people willing to spend a little time in creating those "sticky" notes and make them as detailed and regularly updated as possible. I can do some of it, but I cannot do it all on my own. The idea here would be to create a place that would be at least second best to the coding sections of all the forums for all these DP-derivatives.
Again, the idea is to redirect some people that are unsure about modding for these games towards a community (us) that has all the QuakeC (and/or general coding) knowledge they need and, as a result, make the I3D community stronger and hopefuly also introduce some of these people to what is being done today with "vanilla" Quake.
The reason why I'm thinking of this is also because this is the kind of path I myself followed before ending on AI's Cafe. I wasn't going to code for Quake1 originally, but Hexen2. The problem was that people kept redirecting me towards Quake1 because it was assumed that you needed QuakeC knowledge and there were so few tutorials out there for Hexen2. I started playing around with QuakeC and just got hooked. I really think, for example, that a couple of modding tutorials for, say, Nexuiz or Darsana, might generate some "new" traffic here and (maybe?) make these forums a little more active.
What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea?
Of course we'd also need to come up with a good list of Q1-based games we would want to include.
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As the name of this thread indicates, this is a pretty broad topic. I do feel that we should do something about the fact that these forums have been slowing down in activity so dramatically lately. Feel free to give your opinion about this topic here and to suggest alternative solutions
