Foolish community

Hey,
a problem of these forums for more experienced users often is, that there are quite a few beginners posting their smaller problems, which results in many more advanced questions without answers, as nearly nobody notices them between all the others.
Another thing I don´t like is, that there are many discussions about technology and everyone posts there while not even the half of those posting knows, what it is about.
The solution I proposed is a kinda closed community. Everyone can read it but only selected users are allowed to post.
There are already 16 active users, but we of course want to grow.
So if you are interested in getting involved, please register in the forums and give us some information on who you are in the apply forum.

You can find the forums at http://fools.slindev.com.

If i understood your post correctly, your Page is an "Experienced Users Only" Community?
Means, only registered / experienced Users could create / answere to Topics and the "Newbies" only could read the Stuff?

cYa Sebastian

Yes exactly.

It is probably more suited for programmers, but skilled designers, modellers, ... are also welcome, as they often see things from another perspective than programmers, which can be very usefull.

i dont think that i join... in the last month i havent done very much with 3DGS / Blender...

Maybe in winter if its to cold to get out ^^

But i think this is a really good Idea, so the Topics are always clean without "Bullshit Posts" ^^

cYa Sebastian

who decides if you're skilled enough?

Slin does, I guess.

I guess he was born with this talent"he never been a Newbie"!!

In the end I do, but I am going to add a possibility for all fools to vote yes or no, which I will follow then. Sure, this is a bit problematic, but I also don´t see another solution. An alternative would be per invitation. But if I give each member the possibility to invite 5 others for example, it usually results in inviting those you know better independant of their experience. But I am open for ideas.

And no, Vinous_Beret I also was a beginner and still am regarding some topics. And I have absolutely nothing against beginners. Otherwize I wouldn´t invest many hours into creating tutorials, would I?

and that was EXACTLY the reason for this forum. congrats. you just proved the concept XD

well I very much like the article by hummel on that page. but other than that it's missing content, so live up to your names and post some excellent content ^^.

Yes, of course it is missing content and that is, why we are looking for more members .
And that article by Hummel actually isn´t really what the forum is meant to be for, as such articles just don´t really fit into forums. Such a forum is meant to change rapidly while such articles should just be at an easy to find place where you find them instantly.
The forum really is meant for solving problems and discussing different topics. The problem is that mostly due to the little number of users, there aren´t really any problems yet and also no real discussion which is worth discussing.

that's correct.
and BTW:thanx for you'r tutorilas "i never read them though".

may be you are right about the SPECIAL forum for advanced user's,but don't forget that 3DGS is mainly aimed for Absolute Beginners.

I don't see that.

one thing some people missing about the 'Fools': It's not just about GS.

??????????????????????????

STOP POSTING !

If you don't understand that... you should STFU...

Its about other engine, too, damn...

And yet there is perhaps a lot more truth in that comment than you'd ever admit. I wonder why for example that 'pros only' forum has only 16 members so far. Such a thing has been tried in the past before and failed. Why would it work now?

Honestly a lot of the more experienced users tend to lose their interest in 3DGS and move to other programs by the time they're really able to use 3dgs to it's full potential. Think about Unity3D, the free Unreal engine and so on. There's so much else.

The fact that you can still use C-script and the relatively newbie-friendly lite-C too isn't perhaps that relevant to getting things done in 3DGS, but it's definitely a serious clue about the target audience.

Just think about how Unity3D automatically integrates with other programs like 3D Studio Max and Photoshop within a very neat and effective work-flow. It's aiming at an entirely different audience. One that can't easily be classified as 'absolute beginners' by any standard.

3DGS is no Click-n-Play or Gamemaker and still requires skills (especially programming skills once you'll get serious with it), but I think it's not a wrong classification to think of it as a beginner engine.

• There are "only" 16 users because I didn´t invite more in the beginning.
• I can´t remember anyone having tried something like this before.
• So far I am pretty happy with how it is running.
• If it does fail, I don´t see a problem with it.
• Unitl now I only asked gamestudio users to join, but the forum isn´t meant to be focused on gamestudio as the engine shouldn´t matter much for a more experienced user anyways.
• Unity vs. A7 has nothing to do with this thread.
• That C-Script is kept is mainly an advantage for professionals like Dejobaan Games.
• Lite-c is a lot less beginner friendly than Unitys Javascript thingy.
• Gamestudio is "aimed" for absolute beginners. But more experienced users can get much more use out of it.

Okay, it is beginner-friendly, and I am constantly wondering why so few professionals are using it. Either they're not around here in the forums or they're non-existent. So probably you're right. And I'm also, well, annoyed would be the wrong word... disappointed? I don't know..., by the majority of the stuff posted here. I owe great respect to a few of you who either get things done or really know something about coding and game programming. And in addition I really like the community here. I've learned a lot and although I've not been using A7 for the last two years I try to stay updated about the features and functions and help out here and there.

I'm not sure all of those I'd like to see in this community will "change". I like the idea of a forum to show and discuss more sophisticated stuff. This should be quite interesting. But I'd like it even more if it was integrated in these forums here.

bla.

let me tell you, i know a few people that use 3dgs and believe me, the things ive seen you would not believe. those people just dont post here alot because they actually work on their projects instead of posting in an off topic forum.
oh how i wish it was july already...

well I know what the engine is capable of.

What a low topic name. I disapprove.

Why? Can you explain it?

We are really interested in this, because we are aware that this community can lead to some misunderstanding.
We want to communicate about it, because that´s the only way to handle it.

Giving a topic title that's denigrating towards a community is plain childish. Instead give a short description about the contents of your thread, like what should be common in a forum.

http://FOOLS.slindev.com -> foolish community...
where is the problem?

Oooh I read right over the link. Well someone had to misunderstand it.
Right, who's the fool now.

*goes away doing more senseless stuff*

I have actually choosen the title as I wanted people to misunderstand it first, click it as they want to defend this community or at least like to argue about such things and then notice that it is not meant to attack this community at all, as that was definatly not my itention, because I really like this community.
I liked to call it "Fools", because insight is the best way to improve and hopefully all members know that they don´t really know anything. I at least am making mistakes every day and nearly always behave foolish. The whole community was a foolish idea, I am still not sure about. But there have been people asking me to give that idea a try and so far it seems to work .

I was agreeing somewhat on the contents of your first post but didn't like the title . So you almost succeeded, spare that I oversaw the link.

Mr T pitys you XD

/o\

Yep, I could not agree more with you.

I guess 'we' see the true potential of 3DGS as a whole, but very little truly good programmers (or should I say 'game makers' / developers) take 3DGS to that level.

Myself obviously included, although I really do not look up-on myself as a 3DGS pro at all. I can use it and make things that sort of resemble games hahah, but I rarely ever truly finish making my games (all excuses aside, like having no desktop PC at the moment, lol). That probably has most to do with determination and nothing with 3DGS. I'm well aware of that.

Anyways, I do think people with a more serious programming background or preference for specific languages like Java, C and so on will simply instantly opt for other engines.

I think in that sense 3DGS is somewhat of an oddball with it's own scripting language (which I think is great, don't get me wrong there). It is definitely more flexible than meets the eye, but I don't think that's one of the first things people will see.

Yeah, it's amazing how much can be done when taking a break of posting on these forums haha.

I'm not saying my games are totally incredible, but I totally agree with the idea that being on these forums too much will waste lots of time you could have spend on building games hehehe.

Well can't solely focus on building games without distraction. But yeah can get out of hand .For myself it goes in waves, sometimes i'm more active, sometimes I don't check the forum for weeks and be productive in one way or another .

i Think there should be a page like the wiki, that gathers all the problems and all the solutions, into one.
And make that a script library thing.
So that you can see examples of script resolutions, that can improve your productivity, insteead of reading text, and searching for the huge amount of posts, that sometimes, has nothing to do, and dont even have a solution...
Because most times, what happens is when a problem is solved, they just say SOLVED.
and never post the solution (some of you know what i mean...)

There should be a script library.. i have mine with tons of handy scripts.. but the truth is we still see posts like (how do a rotate camera in a pivot fashion to a object etc.. etc..) Useless.. and my post too.

I used gold library from rhuarc a lot in my past days, and I think I'm not the only one. I guess making such an application has potential then.

We could create a more-community managed(by volunteers) resource archive other than the AU.

I once decided to create a site for Models, particularly in mdl7 format, which are mostly converted from the models on the internet with the permission of the original artist. Models would have one of the 2 main properties "which are free for non-commercial use" and "unrestricted use". So when one decides to start a prototype, goes there picks models that are needed and create their prototype etc. Also there could be some base-models, which users build upon, like a base male character model that everyone use, then when someone adds new animations they share them with the other users, since everyone using same model, that model gets a lot of new animations and add-ons useful for everyone over time.
Internet is full of nice models with free-to-use licenses, most beginners have problems converting them.

Same site could be used for scripts too, but unfortunately i scrapped this project.

I even got the domain name for that project(mdl7.org) but there is only a dummy page currently.

I don't think a web page would be used alot. See the wiki is there too . Library integrated into SED which updates online would be better.

ever tried code templates in SED?
It's a real cool feature!

(rightklick-show image)


Just drop your snippets (as wdl) in the "sed_templates" directory and select it from the "Code template" list.

maybe someone can make a plugin to download such snippets from the internet? This would make a great snippet source!

wdl only?

it's just the file extension.
you can write anything (e.g. lite-c code) in these files...

No, but I think I put my linkedlist in there harr. Templates sounded so "we made this for you but it's limiting you everywhere" so hadn't looked into it yet!

I've never tried them either, but I sure should! Thanks for that, mercuryus.

Jibb

As the whole stuff worked out as expected and I am currently cleaning up my webspace, I would like to delete the whole forum. So if you can´t tell me a good reason not to do so, please save what you would like to save.
As the only really interesting post is probably the one by hummel, I plan to save it as a blog entry if he doesn´t mind.

Thanks

I must say I forgot about this. I still like the idea to have an advanced 3dgs site/forum, but have no arguments other than that opinion .

Sometimes I still visit the Fools forum but sadly, there are never new posts.

flush it