Have your voice heard! Contribute towards Tremulous development

[khalsa]

Howdy Folks!

Khalsa, your new favorite member of the Tremulous Development Team here to tell you kids to stay in school! School is Cool!

In other news after joining the dev team I immediately went AWOL as per the stated requirements. Now that my required afk time is about done, it's time I do some of the things I signed up to do.

Over the next few weeks I will be making a series of posts here on the forums asking for help and input from the Tremulous community. I have high hopes that with your help, we will be able to push 1.2 development even further along than it already is, and get a number of new cool stuffs along the way.

The first item of business that Dasprid and myself will be handling is a new and improved website/forums. While we have a nice list of features and fixes, I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of replies I would get from the community about what they want to see in the next version.

So have at it! Reply to this thread with any new feature or fix you want to see on the new website. It can be anything from a list of functions (like - Wiki, downloads, screenshots, magical money making advertisements) or simple little things (Make the forums hot pink!). No suggestion is too trivial!

Khalsa

Edit as they Come: Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5

[TinMan]

- Official map submission where maps go into a base directory like "http://www.mercenariesguild.net/base/" that servers can use to link clients to the map with cURL. Maps go into a /base/beta directory until they're approved on the forums by a poll that they are stable enough to be a 1.0 and be released.

- Report to moderator option on forums

- Spell check with American English and British English dictionaries, have it force spell check on "post" to make it more obvious that posts should be readable.

- Forum rules, ones that are upheld.

- A tremulous theme. The main site looks good and the forums used to, the forums should look good again.

- Signature image size limits or something like that.

- A features vote area, not thread polls, but an actual feature vote where your account is used to vote "+1" or "-1" (example: http://dplogin.com/dplogin/featurevote/ )

That's all I have for now.
Thanks for coming back

[Death On Ice]

Khalsa, though we've known each other for a while, you're frickin' hilarious
I know I lol'd at the AWOL and the School is Cool. More power to ya'.

Of course, the first suggestion I would make is a wiki, because besides being a more-in-depth manual, as the game changes, it can easily be changed.
Another less important (4tehlooks) feature is a forum theme that isn't the default. With a community as rich as Tremulous' in graphic artists and the like, can you have better? You can even re-use the (sexy) icons from your old PHPBB forum.

[E-Mxp]

Add links to the backports on the download page, along with a link to the HUD catalogue and the Tremulous Server Browser

[Odin]

Definitely have an official SMF skin, this default is too generic.

[kevlarman]

hello gwangew theme please.

[khalsa]

I see some good suggestions here, keep them coming!

Let me reiterate that at this time we are looking for suggestions regarding the website/forums only. Later posts in this series will look for input on other topics.


Khalsa

[TRaK]

1. Link to a map repo (mg or somesuch) on the files page, or create a brand new tremulous.net map repo 
2. Link to, or offer a download for, the tjw client, which is so widely used by people with any clue about the game that it has pretty much become 'official'.
3. As mentionned many times, a more appropriate forum theme would be nice.
4. Minor, but fix the last link on http://tremulous.net/faq/ ('Tremulous Mapping'), so that it links to the actual mapping forum rather than to an obsolete phpBB2 link that just redirects to the board index.

[khalsa]

4. Minor, but fix the last link on http://tremulous.net/faq/ ('Tremulous Mapping'), so that it links to the actual mapping forum rather than to an obsolete phpBB2 link that just redirects to the board index.

Link fixed. An updated FAQ is on the books.


Khalsa

[Rocinante]

- Report to moderator option on forums

- Forum rules, ones that are upheld.

Yeah, the report to moderator bit should be fixed - though I thought I prodded Khalsa into doing that before, guess we were unsuccessful.

As for rules, I wholeheartedly agree.  Right now, the rules are a bit too open-ended.  If I see crap going on, I tend to do something about it; but for a while I wondered, "Am I going over the line doing this?  Or should I have done it sooner, and be doing more?"  Having clean-cut black and white rules in such a community aren't good either, there should always be some room for interpretation or else everyone just bickers about their take on the rules.  But something a little more substantial, so I can perform an action and add to the thread something akin to Player1's "Threads We Don't Need To See" mark of why the action was taken, would for me be more welcome.  And I think it might help those who "break" the rules without really knowing, if there's something more concrete they can look at and know what is appropriate and what is not.

For my own $.03, I still wonder if a moderator's forum would be useful.  Might help to keep some chatter on the inside instead of airing it out, and while another existing method of discussion was mentioned to me as what should be used, I've found I don't get any answers when using it

[player1]

- Links to updated clients for all operating systems (or universal binary with the usually asked-for features - allowdownload, backport, GUID, guidserveruniq, sort-by-ping, Options menu, brightness as a menu option - the patches that most players would say one should have)

- A nice map review section with a map repository with screenies and links

- An overall "PlanetTremulous" type of integrated theme

- A thread cleanup project, jettisoning some of the locked, crap and spam threads

Go devteam!!!

[Paradox]

Perhaps, instead of SMF, we could use dasprid's aurora forums or whatever they were.

BBPress is still too immature

[kozak6]

I'd like to see an improved manual, as discussed in the sticky.

I wonder if an official wiki would be worthwhile.

Wasn't there a slightly larger larger set of Trem smiles?  Adv maras zapping and such?  That would be nice.

[jackForward]

We need a decent Wiki for Newbies. I am willing to help on that.
And thank you, Khalsa for bringing new energy to this place.
 

[gareth]

list of dev team members and what it is they are doing?

sure im a cynical bastard, give me a reason not to be.

[tuple]

Forum theme options would be nice.
A wiki would be very useful I'd think.  If possible, linked to forum users so write access could be granted and/or limited in the inevitable case of vandalism and abuse.
A link to get the TJW client.  Not required, but maybe listed as recommended.
Links to map repos.  There's lots of them out there, they are kind enough to offer them, might as well point to them.
Postings of sekrit dev chat.  We know they talk about us, lets see the proof!

Perhaps a section of community contributed stuff that isn't a mod or art.  Scripts, binaries, etc.  There are people who could help getting things like an installer working, or an admin front end for servers, log parsers, or a scripted dev environment setup to get potential modders started.  That sort of thing that isn't really a tremulous change/mod/map/art but is directly related.  Those folks could be very helpful in getting the neat tools out there.

[HamStar]

Make the forums hot pink!

Yes, I'm all for that!

[David]

Just split the thread and change the topic.
People are just that stupid.

(And delete this while your at it, its off topic)

[khalsa]

Official Wiki is on the list, perhaps we will set this up prior to the new version to allow time to populate it with content.
Report to Moderater is fixed.
I will think about what to do with "community generated" *stuff* I suppose these could live comfortably on the wiki.
The updated manual is coming along very nicely and will ship with 1.2


Khalsa

[Paradox]

Khalsa, perhaps for the community generated content stuff, you could use pligg or something like it

[TinMan]

Report to Moderater is fixed.

w00t, thanks.

[blood2.0]

a page devoted to what has to be done what bugs need fixing and what could be improved so coders mappers, modelers, textures can all work together to get something done.
a page for competitions so people post there work and people vote on the best.  like a contest for the best map or the best skin 
 

[Death On Ice]

a page devoted to what has to be done what bugs need fixing and what could be improved so coders mappers, modelers, textures can all work together to get something done.

Bugzilla.

[Pete]

Dev and Moderator ranks for the forum, so newcomers know if it's actually a dev speaking and not a random forum member.

[tuple]

<--- Look for the Avatar.  That will mostly show you who is at least a moderator.  Devs do talk in these forums, though not a whole lot, less they incur the wrath of the interminably impatient hordes.   I believe most of the devs are listed here.

There are community dev's.  People who develop features/patches and whatnot but aren't part of the official dev team.  It would be cool if they could be identified somehow.  Although they could in their forum signature if they wanted to, and some do.

[daenyth]

I like the idea of a trem wiki. I know there were several, but they never really got off the ground. I'll help with it. Also anyone is free to take content from my tips for newbies thread.

Bringing back the old forum skin would be nice, if possible. Much better to have it themed. I also like the idea of a community contribution area, it would help so much for keeping it together. Forum threads just get lost, you can't sticky everything.

[Bajsefar]

David, stop being such an negative piece of whine.
Noone thinks it is cool.

Why would this be impossible, and if it is impossible to directly rip it off the old forum style, would it be that hard to remake it for the simple machines forum?

On a side note, I demand a fanart/art subforum.   Would be nice to have something to encourage creative work and help spread the zest around Tremulous if it actually looked like it had a devoted group of fans, making art and whatnot.

NOAW, or else, I make shitty mspaint pictured goading you.

[David]

David, stop being such an negative piece of whine.
Noone thinks it is cool.

I'm not being negative, I'm being realistic.

Why would this be impossible, and if it is impossible to directly rip it off the old forum style, would it be that hard to remake it for the simple machines forum?

Well it comes down to the simple fact that there is nothing in the old that can be reused bar a few bits of art.  So if your making something from scratch, you may as well go for something that fits the new site not the old...
Your basically demanding that the limited resources be used to make something outdated, when it would be easier to make something that fits the new site.  AKA I'm going to assume you're a retard as its easier than assuming you're deliberately trying to make the idiots press for something anti-constructive.

Allow me to pre-emptively drop an "I know what I'm talking about" with http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=6644.msg100144#msg100144
The bits that were done looked 99% like the old.  But its slow going when you have such a strict target and art that wasn't quite designed for it etc.

[Amanieu]

I'll repeat this community contributions section idea, because I think a forum is a bad way to keep track of them.
Here is my view of it:
- Format should be similar to that of the MG patch tracker: Everyone can post their contribution, entries can be voted on, people can post comments...
- Should have these sections (and more): Patches, QVMs (server), Clients, Servers, Mods, Maps, Models, Textures, Wallpapers, etc
- Consider some of it for 1.2?

Also the idea of having a dev TODO list for 1.2 with regularly updated progress information would be nice.

[David]

IMO things like maps shouldn't be in a patch tracker sort of system.
A 'releases' sub forum would work, assuming it has strict rules, such as no threads unless its a map release, and has link etc in it, no dupes, no other threads etc.  Would get it all in one place.