I’ve noticed we’ve had an increase in posts that relate to game design principles (as opposed to implementation details) here at BlenderArtists.org, and It’s been my feeling for a while that it would be nice to be able to discuss such topics within the community of the Blender Game Engine users. It might even be that we moved this outside of the “Game Engine” forum. There are often users who come here with the false understanding that this is for all Game Engines, and their integration pipeline with Blender. This would also alleviate these issues.
If we were to create a new forum (Which I am aware is no small undertaking), it may also be sensible to rename the existing forum categories/ perform some restructuring.
Would it be sensible to rename “support and discussion” into “BGE support and discussion”, and rename the “Game Engine” form to “Game Design”? Then we’d create an additional forum within “Game Design” called “Design principles” (or words to that effect) where users can discuss generic game design principles here at BA.
What you say is true, but it is a bit of the other way around too. Many new users post their BGE API questions in the Python forum, and have to be directed here.
Great proposal – a game design/study/etc. section would be great. Something like gamedev.net, but it would be easier to post here than there since you would then have to work with two forums.
At gamedev.net they have the following subforums which could be replicated. They are broken down into three sections:
Technical:
[LIST]
Game Programming
General Programming
Graphics programming and theory
DirectX and XNA (which would be irrelevant)
OpenGL
Multiplayer and Network Programming
Artificial Intelligence
Math and Physics
Mobile & Console Development (maybe also irrelevant)
Build Systems and Source Control
APIs and Tools
[/LIST]
Creative:
[LIST]
Game Design
Writing for Games
Music and Sound
Visual Arts
Gallery (would love this – maybe should be its own subforum)
Business (publishing games etc.):
Breaking into the Industry
Business and Law
Production and Management
[/LIST]
I think having the three subforums which would relate to those topics would be a good way to do it.
I was considering GameDev.net when I wrote this! I don’t necessarily want to create a duplicate forum, but to provide a subset of the features in the context of Blender.
Indeed. I don’t mean to create an exact duplicate, but rather something perhaps to the effect of gamedev.net – all relating to the bge of course. If it wasn’t relating to the bge, it wouldn’t need to be a part of blenderartists.org.
Well, I guess it be nice to see a ‘ludology’ or ‘game design’ forum. We could have a nice sticky with links to websites about game design and books about game design. And a topic like “New game development functionality added to Blender today!” Which details the work the valve-paid devs are doing as well as the regular BGE devs. Though I guess it would be nice to have that in the news section to begin with, top-of-the-page-forumnites have no clue what is going down with the game engine.
With the improvements to the game asset functionality of blender, it be nice to have a ‘low-poly’ gallery or ‘interactive models’ gallery anyhow.
At first I was thinking that this would be pretty useful, But now I realised that it will be a headache! Basically because all of the -relatively- old resources and questions will be lost forever and then the forum will get spammed with questions. And also most of BGE users, are blender users too (including me), So it would really be annoying to keep track of your stuff which may be similar in 2 different websites which will cause some confusion too.
I think I misunderstood the purpose of this. My thought is not to create an entirely new, seperate forum, but a SUBforum (i.e. something like “Game Engine” or “General Forums” is a subforum). So the Game Engine subforum would remain, but to “seperate” the questions/discussions like “Game level design”, it could be posted in a separate subforum, rather than “Game Engine Support and Discussion”… Not sure if this would be as good as an entirely separate forum.
I agree that 2 forums is more frustrating than one, unified forum.
I really like to support such things. Why do we need a separate forum?
If you want to detail out your ideas regarding game design, you can store it in the resource forum.
If you have questions you can ask with a support request in the discussion forum. Supporters can point to according resources wherever they are (resource forum, other forums, websites, etc.).
You can even open two threads one as resource (in resource forum) and one as discussion thread (in discussion forum). You can place links to each other inside the threads.
We still can work it out. But some questions need to be answered:
Who should post what in which forum?
Which of the current threads will be moved to where?
We need to make sure we do not create a short-living forum.
From knowledge about web designing, It’s nearly impossible to import threads from a website to another, even if they both were using the same forum making tool (in this case vbulletin). Or did I misunderstand and you meant like a sub-forum in this website?
I agree. However, I think that a distinction needs to be made between questions relating to the usage of the BGE, and questions relating to game theory. Both for the posters sake, and that of the responders. As well as this, perhaps a development forum would be good as well, because I really cannot stand seeing any more posts relating to such a topic.