Revamping the Forum

Hi everyone,
as has been discussed in another thread, the forums are not very welcoming right now. Since that thread is about another topic, I created this one to keep the discussion focussed.

First off, we should define what purpose the forums should actually serve. In my opinion, they are (roughly in priority):

1. Discussion platform for developers (i.e. graphic and sound artists, designers, programmers, etc.)
   
2. Communication platform between developers and community
   
3. Information source for people that want to participate in development
   
4. Information source for people that want to play the game (this should be mostly covered by the neat website Oliver and Jacob are building)
   

So, what are the problems with the current forum structure? I think the most pressing issue is that there are too many forums. We have a total of 49 subforums. Most of those are overly specific, which shows in the low topic and post count in those forums. One of them (Algorithms and Math) doesn't even have a single post. This fragmentation makes it hard to find the right place to post a new topic as well as keeping track of the ongoing discussions.

I propose the following forum structure:

• General: General discussion that is about Thrive, but doesn't belong anywhere else
  
  
  • Development Blog: News from the development front
    
  • Suggestions: Feature suggestions from non-developers
    
  
  
• Development: General discussion about development that doesn't belong in one of the sub-forums
  
  
  • Get Involved: Introduction posts + stickies for important links (where to start with development)
    
  • Design: Gameplay design
    
  • Graphics: Textures, models, concept art
    
  • Programming: Discussions about anything that needs to be compiled
    
  • Sound: Everything audible
    
  
  
• Archive: Posts from the old (current) forum that either have no sensible place in the new structure (unlikely) or are so outdated that they have become completely irrelevant.
  

I've put the development blog under "General" because I see it mostly as news for the community.

I'm not sure if "Get Involved" is in the right place. Maybe it's better in the General category, in which case it may be named "Welcome" or "Introduce yourself".

To keep the forums themselves neat, especially the Design forum, it might be a good idea to tag threads if they only discuss a specific stage or game element, like this: "[Microbe] Movement and Controls".

That is a huge prune. I will have to let other discuss the actual sections we should have.

However, i'm strongly in favor of an archive subforum, where we could dump all threads that are no longer valid.

Just to name a few, https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t830-programming-information and https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t831-class-structure are just not valid any more. The programing information links to places we are not developing with, and that are two years old. The class structure is only meaningfull with object-oriented code, not with an entity framework like we are using.

I wanted to get rid of them so people doesen't get confused, but i dont feel deleting them is ok.

I would support an archive subforum, for the same reasons listed above. However, the main proposal of rehashing the forum seems quite drastic, but in a good way. I'll consider it, but I want to see what the other mods/team leads think.

I support an archive section, and some restructuring, but not to such a high degree.

~sciocont wrote:

some restructuring

Anything more concrete?

~sciocont wrote:

but not to such a high degree.

Why not? Too much work? Old habits die hard? (Please note that this is not meant sarcastically, but those are the only counter-arguments I can come up with right now).

Nimbal wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

some restructuring

Anything more concrete?

~sciocont wrote:

but not to such a high degree.

Why not? Too much work? Old habits die hard? (Please note that this is not meant sarcastically, but those are the only counter-arguments I can come up with right now).

It is a ton of work, but more importantly, I think that pruning that many sections would make it more difficult to differentiate between topics, and would increase the rate at which relevant threads get buried underneath others. I'll look around and see if I can propose a less drastic pruning, then we'll take the best of both.

Nimbal, thank alot for making this!
I support archive sub forum beacuse of same reason.
Also, as general discussion, do you think on biomes, controls, other, and etc. stuff put in one sub forum?
However, where will ,,Welcome'' go?

EDIT: I would also want to guests (not registered) can post their suggestions. Also, in ,,read before posting, there should be an ,,GET INVOLVED'' thread link.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

Also, as general discussion, do you think on biomes, controls, other, and etc. stuff put in one sub forum?

If a topic is about gameplay design (I would count biomes and controls to that), it would have gone into the "Development -> Design" forum. But let's wait and see what scio comes up with.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

However, where will ,,Welcome'' go?

See my note for the "Development -> Get Involved forum".

Nimbal wrote:

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

However, where will ,,Welcome'' go?

See my note for the "Development -> Get Involved forum".

So Welcome would be renamed? Good idea.

Current concept goes like this, here is what i think:

Quote :

General: General discussion that is about Thrive, but doesn't belong anywhere else

Good idea.

Development Blog: News from the development front

We have that, so i dont have nothing more to say about it.

Suggestions: Feature suggestions from non-developers

Very good idea, i would also want to non-registered users can post in it as they are not devs.

Development: General discussion about development that doesn't belong in one of the sub-forums

Good idea.

Get Involved: Introduction posts + stickies for important links (where to start with development)

Good idea.

Design: Gameplay design

Good idea.

Graphics: Textures, models, concept art.

Good, but i think drawings, not 3d arts and things like GUI concept and etc. should go with music.

Programming: Discussions about anything that needs to be compiled

Good idea.

Sound: Everything audible

Good idea also.

Archive: Posts from the old (current) forum that either have no sensible place in the new structure (unlikely) or are so outdated that they have become completely irrelevant.

VERY good idea, it would help new users dont read old stuff and dead concepts.

After some consideration, I think I may restructure like this.

What nimbal sugested or were you suposed to post your scheme and forgot about it?

Anyway, let me know if you want any help moving threads around and reorganizing them there is over 9000/9 and althrough there are fast ways to dump them all into a holder section, reorganizing them must be manual, and will take a long time.

Daniferrito wrote:

What nimbal sugested or were you suposed to post your scheme and forgot about it?

Anyway, let me know if you want any help moving threads around and reorganizing them there is over 9000/9 and althrough there are fast ways to dump them all into a holder section, reorganizing them must be manual, and will take a long time.

Nimbal's idea. I'll start moving them this week.

Great then! But we will need to move all this threads, also.
Wow, does anyone know how much times i typed ,,Good idea''?

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

,,Good idea''?

I apologize for going off topic, but this has been bugging me for too long. Have you noticed that whenever you use quotation marks your first ones are always upside down? Is that something to do with your keyboard?

NickTheNick wrote:

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

,,Good idea''?

I apologize for going off topic, but this has been bugging me for too long. Have you noticed that whenever you use quotation marks your first ones are always upside down? Is that something to do with your keyboard?

Ah, sorry for that, its with my keyboard, it always bugs. It once gone ,,crazy'' and when i delete, it copyes and etc. but its MOSTLY fixed. (Its old 10 years, not strange its like that)
That causes some problems with typying so its easier to use upside down, beacuse button for right quotation marks needs alot of time to work. Yep, its problem with my keyboard, so i make only half of quotation marks.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

,,Good idea''?

I apologize for going off topic, but this has been bugging me for too long. Have you noticed that whenever you use quotation marks your first ones are always upside down? Is that something to do with your keyboard?

Ah, sorry for that, its with my keyboard, it always bugs. It once gone ,,crazy'' and when i delete, it copyes and etc. but its MOSTLY fixed. (Its old 10 years, not strange its like that)
That causes some problems with typying so its easier to use upside down, beacuse button for right quotation marks needs alot of time to work. Yep, its problem with my keyboard, so i make only half of quotation marks.

Now I'm even more confused, because I've never seen a keyboard with separate right and left quote buttons.

I've looked, and you are using two commas (,,) for starting quotes, and two single quotes for closing ones ''.

Thats two single ones, not a double one: '' against ". No idea why.

Anyway, try pressing alt+mayus. It helps when my keyboard goes crazy and swaps special characters around.

~sciocont wrote:

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

,,Good idea''?

I apologize for going off topic, but this has been bugging me for too long. Have you noticed that whenever you use quotation marks your first ones are always upside down? Is that something to do with your keyboard?

Ah, sorry for that, its with my keyboard, it always bugs. It once gone ,,crazy'' and when i delete, it copyes and etc. but its MOSTLY fixed. (Its old 10 years, not strange its like that)
That causes some problems with typying so its easier to use upside down, beacuse button for right quotation marks needs alot of time to work. Yep, its problem with my keyboard, so i make only half of quotation marks.

Now I'm even more confused, because I've never seen a keyboard with separate right and left quote buttons.

No, it doesnt have two quotation marks, i need to prees two diferent buttons in same time, but second button (I think its ALT) always get stuck, so its faster like this, i have to wait 2 times to it get ,,unstuck'' instead of 4, which would take alot of time. But i can just type in ,, ,, if you want, its faster to me.

I think that all we need to do to make the forums more welcoming is to order the subforum groups by approximately descending order of usefulness for introduction and learning, and ascending order of technical and scientific complexity.
"Information" at the top, "Other" right under it, "Hard development" at the bottom.

So when is first new subforums coming?
REally, forum needs to be revamped fastly.

when i first found the forum it took ages to find any information in the right order. Its a bit of a mess at the moment, does need better organization. As far as one can tell from looking at the forums at the present time, the whole projects going stale with nobody seeming to be doing any coding (although i know that there is...I hope) and just a few people throwing a one or two old ideas about. I dont think it was a good idea to have any discussions on anything other than the microbe stage at all until this first stage is done (well maybe one section for post-microbe ideas but that should have been it). Its a huge project and you need to start with small steps, but everyone has gathered that now as far as i can see. Of course, as I said the lack of activity is a big problem and even though the forum should probably be revamped now, it isnt going to be for some time in all likelihood.

Sorry to go off topic (I know im new here and that what im about to say will probably sound naive but hear me out and then tell me off afterwards), but why did the programmers have to start from scratch? why couldnt this open-source project piggyback on other open-source projects as long as credit was given? watch the 2 videos on this page oops cant post external links just search 'scriptbots' because it seems like this is a super starting point, to say the very least. You have creatures with multiple sensory inputs, processing with a proper neural network as in real life (ok, microbes dont have neural networks as such but they respond to the stimuli of their external environment as if they did - obviously their 'outputs' are not plentiful enough to need a proper nervous system) and then a variety of effector responses. From this emerges actual hunting behaviors and predator-prey population dynamics that match the equations highlighted in another thread on this forum. You even have diets sorted - on a continuous scale from 0 (herbivore) to 1(carnivore) so that omnivores can evolve. Ive had a look at the code and it seems easy to modify. You can add your 'compound system' to the agent class easily. There is already a health bar system in place. This could be renamed as 'energy' (it actually seems more accurate this way if you look at what causes reduction in health). All you would do is make this energy bar (say, measured in units of ATP) dependent on the different metabolic processes your trying to model. It would take a while to sort out the graphics since they are at the moment procedurally drawn (you'd replace this with animated sprites which would actually simplify things from how they are now, i still dont understand why you want 3d graphics if youre looking down on top, 2d is more realistic as if looking down a microscope - i blame spore). The big things that would take ages are the cell editor (definitely the trickiest part); using a cell made in the editor as a playable cell in-game; and then adding in to the game functionality for varying amount of chloroplasts,mitochondria and flagella in each microbe. After the cell editor is done, it really shouldnt take long. I swear, if i remember to in the summer after exams, im going to have a good go at this.
ok im done now you can shout at me.

I think sciocont~ is pretty swamped with other stuff right now, so I guess the forum restructuring will have to wait until he can make time for it. Be patient.

@hypoxanthine: I agree that the conceptual part of Thrive suffers from a lack of focus and organization. We are working on it. The code repository, however, has seen a sharp increase in activity in the last couple of months.

About your suggestion to use the scriptbots project or something similar as a starting point: Unless the project is specifically designed for it (or has an exceptionally clean codebase), it can be pretty hard to change it extensively. That's often more work than starting from scratch.

We use the 3D engine for the microbe stage because

1. It's not much more work than a 2D engine, since we use a third-party library (Ogre3D) anyway
   
2. Although we're still far from doing serious work on the later stages, using the same engine in the microbe stage allows us to gather experience with it, making the following stages that much easier to work on
   

The major disadvantage I can see is that content creation might be harder, but I have no first hand experience on that, so you'd have to ask the artists whether or not this is really an issue.

ah i see, but i think its fairly obvious that its easier to make 2d graphics than 3d. sounds good then. its brilliant to see definite proof that the programmers are still going strong.

i think that scriptbots is very well designed for the task and the codebase is nice and clean. have a look, its small, well organised and commented too. it doesnt seem at all like it would be more difficult than starting from scratch for the microbe stage in particular since there are so many attempts at pretty much the same thing floating about on the internet. Would there not be a lot to learn from how other people have solved the same problems? Scriptbots doesnt need changing extensively, it needs one or two addons and a facelift in terms of graphics.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

So when is first new subforums coming?
REally, forum needs to be revamped fastly.

It doesn't need to be revamped fastly, there is no impending disaster. Give scio the time he needs, we have lives outside of Thrive, and right now is exam season.

hypoxanthine wrote:

when i first found the forum it took ages to find any information in the right order. Its a bit of a mess at the moment, does need better organization. As far as one can tell from looking at the forums at the present time, the whole projects going stale with nobody seeming to be doing any coding (although i know that there is...I hope) and just a few people throwing a one or two old ideas about. I dont think it was a good idea to have any discussions on anything other than the microbe stage at all until this first stage is done (well maybe one section for post-microbe ideas but that should have been it). Its a huge project and you need to start with small steps, but everyone has gathered that now as far as i can see. Of course, as I said the lack of activity is a big problem and even though the forum should probably be revamped now, it isnt going to be for some time in all likelihood.

The activity is not as low as you make it out to be. Especially considering how right now is exam season for many students. I disagree that only Microbe Stage should have been discussed up until this point. That means we wouldn't have had ANY concept on the Organism Editor, the Tech Editor, what any of the future stages would look like past a basic understanding, nothing on Function Parts or Society Centers, no Research Web or biomes or niches or food webs, no auto-evo. Basically, no nothing. What is important is to not focus on the later stages when the same effort could instead be used to develop the Microbe stage. However, I for one have very little to offer the Microbe Stage, and have lots of ideas and inspiration for the Strategy Mode, and so I would not liked to have had to wait for years on end until we reached the Strategy Mode before I could contribute and discuss my ideas. Every concept for the later stages we nail down right now is a concept we don't have to nail down when we get there, aka less work for the future.