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Plan for Ben Garney
Plan for Ben Garney
| Name: | Ben Garney |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Oct 08, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  2.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Ben Garney |
Blog post
IGC 2005. TDN SDK Owner's Beta now open. Whoa.
Hey guys,Just a quick plan from the IGC floor (more or less... sort of :P). First off -- IGC 2005 is in full swing. Just got back from it around midnight. Talking to people, playing crazy games, having a good time. I got to play almost a full course of Golf? with its creator. Very fun game. Got to try out the latest Tube Twist build. WOW. The level of quality of games compared to last year's IGC is much higher. Lots of near-complete or complete things out there. Just incredible.
I got to talk a bit on the traditional Friday night "GG Dog & Pony" show. The biggest news that I got to impart was that TDN is finally into beta for SDK owners (people who own TGE, TSE, T2D). Head on over to tdn.garagegames.com and check it out. Don't forget to read the introduction page, it'll give you a more detailed notion of where we are on this monumental, revolutionary project! Short summary - we're a lot closer to making it public than we were before. ;)
TDN pages are also going to start making their way into the Google search on the site, updated nightly of course.
Some of you have already found it on your own - testament to our fanbase and the desire for this product, I'm sure. Congrats, now you're in my database. ;)
This is going to be a cool IGC.I'd love to give a full report, go on and on, but I have a LOT of pictures and video to organize, and I also need to get some sleep, cuz I have to be at the conference hall in less than eight hours.... Crazy!
Let's just say this is going to be interesting. ;)
-- Ben
Notes added after reading comments - up here so everyone can see it! - follow:
Just to be clear, this is a case of "here's the container, let's start collaborating", not "all the docs are up right now." In response to those who asked, YES, absolutely start putting articles up. For now, just drop me or Adam deGrandis an e-mail if you've got an article posted, and we'll hook it into the hub pages... Don't forget to categorize it!
We'll be having interns, employees, and community members participate in official documentation projects (for instance, porting existing docs into TDN); meanwhile individuals should feel free to get involved. We'll have a page up announcing where we're doing heavy doc work so that you can be sure you're not going to get run over by a big doc dump or something. :)
(Once IGC is over) one of the most useful things you can do to help co-ordinate on TDN is get into the #tdn channel on the GG IRC server. That's where Adam and I hang out, and we also have all the changes to the site streaming into the channel via a bot. We'll also explore setting up a forum area or things like that.
I'll definitely be posting a lot more information on TDN once IGC is over; for now I'm just trying to stay on top of all the AWESOME stuff happening here!
If you do have any problems with TDN, please send me a copy of the source of the broken page, as well as the URL it happened at, and a description of what went wrong. You need a fairly recent browser or the site will look not-good. (ie, latest IE or Firefox is probably good though it should run on older browsers fine. IE5 is a known issue, some images won't work, we'll be addressing that.)
And... once again... Thanks guys, for checking this out and taking the time to use TDN! It's just going to get better from here on out - we've got at least one major surprise coming up in a week or so. (As always... when it's ready. :)
Oh yeah - multiple language support. We do support it; we'll be focusing on it once the site is a little bit more mature (and once we've identified people who can "own" each language - definitely don't want docs that are out of date!). Right now we need to get the basic structure put together, and pound out the bugs, so that we can have a solid platform for other languages to build from.
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 12/19/08 - Blast From The Past: Blitz3D Models in Torque 12/04/08 - Blockland Physics 09/22/08 - Austin GDC Talks: Robust Efficient Networking and Flash MMOs 05/30/08 - Next Big Thing 02/12/08 - Come See Me At GDC 2008! 10/27/07 - TGEForest Free Release 10/13/07 - Polysoup Free (And IGC) 01/26/07 - Speaking and Running Into Walls (Collision Fix) |
|---|
Submit your own resources!| Ben Garney (Oct 08, 2005 at 09:30 GMT) |
| Toby W. Allen (Oct 08, 2005 at 10:24 GMT) |
Toby.
| Toby W. Allen (Oct 08, 2005 at 10:26 GMT) |
Say you have the a section empty in the TDN - but you know the docs cover it well; or to an ok-level but essentially it would be best to wait for the docs and then polis them up.
What do you do? Are you already on the ball with the docs comign in the next few days or what? Should we go ahead, copy the docs in and then work on them?
Toby.
| Toby W. Allen (Oct 08, 2005 at 10:30 GMT) |
| Gary Preston (Oct 08, 2005 at 11:44 GMT) |
oh and keep the IGC pics coming, between you and danny hopefully nobody will escape the camera :P
| Davey Jackson (Oct 08, 2005 at 12:06 GMT) |
Now if I could only fall asleep maybe I could start sleeping off my IGC hangover....
| Andrew Nicholson (Oct 08, 2005 at 14:16 GMT) |
| Rob Terrell (Oct 08, 2005 at 14:19 GMT) |
| Greg Findlay (Oct 08, 2005 at 15:00 GMT) |
| Dave Calabrese (Oct 08, 2005 at 15:12 GMT) |
| Lee-Orr Orbach (Oct 08, 2005 at 16:09 GMT) |
TDN looks great!!!!
:)
I have one question:
Is it possible to translate recources on TDN to other languages?
and one error:
After I tried changing the language setting(to test the other languages), I couldn't enter the change
setting page because when I clicked on the link, it loged me out.
[edit]
I succeded to enter the setting page, but I had to write this:"tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Special:Preferences", is there any way to disband that need?
[/edit]
Keep Up The Good Work,
Lee-Orr
Edited on Oct 08, 2005 16:22 GMT
| Harold "LabRat" Brown (Oct 08, 2005 at 16:15 GMT) |
EDIT BEGINS:
OK let me Amend my post.
It seems Ben did fix the access proble to the TGE pages.
Yes you will see an Artist and Scriptor section. As well as a Coder sectiion. The content for the TGE pages needs a bit of Polish and well that will be something the community will help provide. I know I for one have several things I need to either finish, or start posting to help fill in the TGE holes for the scripting section.
Edited on Oct 08, 2005 16:19 GMT
| Alex Rice (Oct 08, 2005 at 17:07 GMT) |
I browsed through the T2D section earlier today and was not very impressed. No new docs, just a rehash of all the old tutorials and it didn't even have the full set of T2D docs (T2D reference guide for instance)
Well it's a BETA- I guess I should shut up now.
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 08, 2005 at 17:19 GMT) |
| Jeff Peck (Oct 08, 2005 at 17:42 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Oct 08, 2005 at 18:04 GMT) |
I've added my comments to the blog post itself so more people can see it. Thanks for pounding on things!
| Ben Garney (Oct 08, 2005 at 18:07 GMT) |
| Unsung Zero (Oct 08, 2005 at 18:23 GMT) |
| Alex Rice (Oct 08, 2005 at 19:14 GMT) |
Hopefully this will be a successfull wiki.
| Tony Richards (Oct 08, 2005 at 19:38 GMT) |
Oh, and the IRC bot in #tdn is an absolutely incredible idea.... it tells you when new content is added / modified, right?
| Joseph Euan (Oct 08, 2005 at 20:46 GMT) |
| Chris (Oct 08, 2005 at 20:50 GMT) |
edited
Happens every so often to me. Just log in and out to fix it for me...
I'm more interested in the "You have to own the Torque Game Engine to view this article." error, cause I really want to view that articel :P
Edited on Oct 09, 2005 00:56 GMT
| Ben Garney (Oct 08, 2005 at 23:49 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Oct 08, 2005 at 23:52 GMT) |
| Chris (Oct 09, 2005 at 00:45 GMT) |
| Toby W. Allen (Oct 09, 2005 at 05:15 GMT) |
The login issue is still there - you can bypass it by login out and then back into it, then refreshing the page. I'm using Opera 8.x
Toby.
| Matt Troup (Oct 09, 2005 at 07:39 GMT) |
| Teck Lee Tan (Oct 09, 2005 at 08:38 GMT) |
Oh, one more thing. The double quotes in my username don't translate properly, instead showing """.
Edited on Oct 09, 2005 08:39 GMT
| Grugin (Oct 09, 2005 at 11:25 GMT) |
| Neil Marshall (Oct 09, 2005 at 17:39 GMT) |
Haha, that's me! I accidently found it the other day.
| Alex Rice (Oct 09, 2005 at 23:01 GMT) |
2. Searching on TDN could use some work. I searched for "scriptobject" and there is only 1 hit,
Quote:
"T2DScript/PlatformerWorld (11186 bytes)"
yet it shows a hitlist/pagelist as well?!
Quote:
Showing below 1 results starting with #1.
View (previous 20) (next 20) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500).
Also there are a bunch of checkboxes for "namespaces" whatever those are for:
Quote:
Search in namespaces :
(Main) Talk User User talk TDN TDN talk Image Image talk MediaWiki MediaWiki talk Template Template talk Help Help talk Category Category talk
[edit: and checking off all the namespaces doesn't yeild any more hits]
3. Also there is both a "GO" and "Search" button on TDN. What's the point aren't they doing the same think- submitting the search form?
Oh well; back to searching the old garagegames.com for "scriptobject" (222 hits).
Edited on Oct 09, 2005 23:02 GMT
| Jeff Peck (Oct 10, 2005 at 00:16 GMT) |
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 10, 2005 at 00:25 GMT) |
As TDN is used more and more, those "empty" links become valuable repositories of knowledge.
| Robert Pierce (Oct 10, 2005 at 03:51 GMT) |
I think what Jeff is going for is that you don't know if what you are clicking has the information one is expecting.
I'd think it would be easier for one to fill in blank articles if they knew it was blank beforehand. (At least, that is the way I think).
That is just my odd, twisted method of thinking...
--Robert
| Alex Rice (Oct 10, 2005 at 04:49 GMT) |
"you clicked on this link so you must be an expert, or at least know something about SpecialWordsLikeThis, so go ahead and document that ...would you there, champ?"
Most articles in a typical wiki are neither empty or finished, they are somewhere in between.
| Nick Zafiris (Oct 10, 2005 at 07:16 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Oct 10, 2005 at 09:47 GMT) |
The Opera login issue is interesting. I'll have to test with it.
And the link highlighting will get taken care of, don't worry - still have the info in the pages, just no CSS assigned to it yet.
anyway, it's 3am and I'm going to bed, take care everyone! :)
| Jeff Peck (Oct 10, 2005 at 12:14 GMT) |
@Ben: Sleep is good, try and get some.
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 10, 2005 at 16:35 GMT) |
| Eduardo Baiao (Oct 10, 2005 at 18:22 GMT) |
After saturday I could not login on TDN anymore.
I'm a TGE owner but I can't login.
Are there any issues with language of the browser(I'm from Brasil)?
The status bar of IE says to me that there an error on page.
Can someone help me?
| Ben Garney (Oct 10, 2005 at 22:18 GMT) |
@Eduardo&all others with login problems: I'll be looking into this a little later today.
| Ben Garney (Oct 11, 2005 at 00:24 GMT) |
| Joseph Euan (Oct 11, 2005 at 02:00 GMT) |
So I have to logout and back in again to sort it.
I'm using FireFox 1.0.7
Edited on Oct 11, 2005 02:00 GMT
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 11, 2005 at 02:04 GMT) |
Quote:
@ Alex & Stephen: I do understand how wiki's work, I contribute pretty frequently to the python.org and wxpython wikis, what I was saying (possibly confusingly) was that unlike wikipedia where empty articles are highlighted in red (I think), the TDN wiki lacks unique empty link highlights allowing one to differentiate between articles with information and articles lacking information. I know that when I was browsing the TDN yesterday I kept clicking links going "Oooh this should be interesting!" and finding a blank article, kinda felt a little cheated that I didn't know ahead of time that it was blank, if you know what I mean.
I found this actually myself--you have to change the preferences to the "alternate display for broken links", which makes it have a question mark at the end of the wiki word instead of presenting it as a normal link.
It does of course imply that you need to "leave empty words alone", and not put in stubs for words that are being planned, but that can be handled as well.
| Jesse (Midhir) Liles (Oct 11, 2005 at 02:57 GMT) |
Also, Is it allowed to put up links to GG resources if we didn't put them on GG in the first place?
Edited on Oct 11, 2005 08:10 GMT
| Teck Lee Tan (Oct 11, 2005 at 08:19 GMT) |
:(
edit: Forgot to mention, I've tried the logout/login trick countless times. The only time it's worked so far was a couple of lucky occasions on the first day. After that, nada. :(
Edited on Oct 11, 2005 11:41 GMT
| Grugin (Oct 11, 2005 at 10:29 GMT) |
| Lee-Orr Orbach (Oct 11, 2005 at 15:49 GMT) |
| Eduardo Baiao (Oct 11, 2005 at 17:36 GMT) |
| Vashner (Oct 11, 2005 at 18:25 GMT) |
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 11, 2005 at 19:45 GMT) |
Forgot to mention using IE 6 and standard windows firewall. It starts to bring me to the specialuser login section but then reverst back to the wiki login.
Edited on Oct 11, 2005 19:47 GMT
| Eduardo Baiao (Oct 11, 2005 at 20:23 GMT) |
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 11, 2005 at 21:04 GMT) |
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 12, 2005 at 02:44 GMT) |
From TDN:
"Coming Soon!
We apologize, but the Blender DTS Exporter FAQ is still in the process of being developed. We should have something for you October 1. Until then, thanks for your interest!"
From you:
"If someone wants to step up and write some docs, certainly."
Is the blurb in the wiki just a placeholder pending some brave soul stepping forward or are you guys (James perhaps?) actually planning to put something together?
Either way is fine by me, I just want to know if I should wait for the doc to come out or should slug it out with what's available now. I will say a well-organized doc would be nice, but I understand if you guys don't have the bandwidth to put one out.
-MJL
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 12, 2005 at 04:07 GMT) |
In either case (stubbed, or empty), feel free to jump in and put something up--wiki's work so well because it is a collaborative effort, and content builds on previous content. If you start something, even if it's very basic/unformatted, someone else will build off what you do and the resource as a whole gets better!
A perfect example is the TorqueNetworking article I wrote. Lots of content there, but it's not formatted well (IMO at least) for good presentation, and it certainly has many holes that could be filled in by others as well...especially in the user case examples (which I stubbed completely), as well as the platform and packet layers.
Edited on Oct 12, 2005 04:08 GMT
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 12, 2005 at 04:55 GMT) |
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 12, 2005 at 04:59 GMT) |
I'll let Ben respond to this when he has a firmer grasp on the issue, but anecdotal checks of the display names of people having trouble all show quotes or special characters in their display names...
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 12, 2005 at 06:42 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Oct 12, 2005 at 10:30 GMT) |
Did some work, absent articles show up as red links now. (Just had to readd some CSS :) Also added some docs on how to choose your article titles, very important to read. Read it here! - not all of the site takes it into account yet but will soon.
We also protected the hub pages; we want people to focus on adding new articles, tutorials, etc., and we'd like those to be very consistent, cohesive pages, so we figured it would best to just remove the temptation altogether. If you think a link should be up there feel free to contact an editor/admin (Adam or I are good bets) and we'll update the links/page as necessary.
Done some research on the login issue, but I've not fond anything obviously wrong. Some firewall/AV software seems to interact poorly with TDN's session cookies. What would be super useful would be for you to clear your TDN and GG cookies, then go back to TDN and try to login (don't visit the main GG site before this point). Let me know what happens (probably best to do this by e-mail if you have specific information beyond yes/no).
Thanks for all the help, guys, TDN is really starting to come along!
Ben
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 12, 2005 at 16:29 GMT) |
| Joseph Euan (Oct 12, 2005 at 22:31 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Oct 12, 2005 at 23:47 GMT) |
| Joseph Euan (Oct 13, 2005 at 00:05 GMT) |
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 13, 2005 at 04:06 GMT) |
Read you loud and clear, boss.
I read over the Meta and honestly, I'm totally lost on how to add content. Even if I figure out how to add something, I'm afraid of screwing up the site.
I tried to put something up, but found no way to do it except to edit pages that looked like they shouldn't be messed with.
And... clicking TGE home just gives me this:
You have to own the Torque Game Engine to view this article.
Retrieved from "http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Torque_Game_Engine"
It's all just... too hard.
| Ben Garney (Oct 13, 2005 at 06:19 GMT) |
Hey, don't worry. Right now the "how to" docs are a bit rough. And if you don't have anything you specifically want to add, well, then there's no need to just do something for the sake of doing it. :)
As far as making new content, just type in the URL you want it to be at, and go to town. The howtos in Meta will cover this as soon as I finish them.
Also, the login stuff as mentioned several times in this thread seems to be slightly broken. I'm going to be doing some serious troubleshooting and figuring out what the problem is in the immediate future, and hopefully tracking down the problem. The symptom of this is being logged into the site but not having permissions to access anything, ie, getting denied messages everywhere.
Don't worry - all this is normal for a beta. All the issues are going to get resolved soon, and meanwhile, a lot of people are already contributing some awesome docs to TDN.
| Edward F. Maurina III (Oct 13, 2005 at 06:50 GMT) |
I finally got to sit down and really look through TDN. In a word, impressive. I think this is going to be really great and in fact it already has some super content.
I really like the layout. You guys did a really good job of setting it up and picking a theme. Sweet.
Now, if I can just wring some free time to fill in some of those empty spots. Ha! Sure, in about a couple months....
Well, back and it.... tappa tappa...
EdM|EGTGE
| BG DUMMY! (Oct 13, 2005 at 07:08 GMT) |
Found a potential bug in the code related to changing user names and names with funky characters in them. And even got an account that reproduced the issue to work again. All you guys with troubles... give it another try. :)
Thanks,
Ben
| Ben Garney (Oct 13, 2005 at 07:11 GMT) |
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 13, 2005 at 08:53 GMT) |
I really want to see TDN take off and do well. And, yes, I do have some things to contribute. This is why I'm riding you a bit here. Just so you know, I've been on the other side of beta, so I know what it's like. Looking forward to your fix and how-to on writing articles.
Charlie Mike.
-MJL
| Ben Garney (Oct 13, 2005 at 09:43 GMT) |
@Mike: Don't know if you're in contact with Adam or I but shooting us an e-mail to help co-ordinate effort would be awesome!
| Eduardo Baiao (Oct 13, 2005 at 13:34 GMT) |
| Joseph Euan (Oct 13, 2005 at 14:34 GMT) |
Quote:
Fix should be up, would be great if people with problems can deny/confirm.
I still get the login error.
| Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze (Oct 13, 2005 at 14:57 GMT) |
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 13, 2005 at 16:30 GMT) |
Well, I had the same problem again, BUT. I logged out (something I haven't done since first trying TDN) and logged back in and all is well.
I dunno if this would have fixed my problem in the first place, but there it is. Works now.
Editing help - apa.org? LOL. Was this intentional?
Edited on Oct 13, 2005 16:36 GMT
| Kevin Rogers (Oct 13, 2005 at 20:53 GMT) |
| Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence (Oct 14, 2005 at 00:34 GMT) |
(http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/WorldBuilding/Making_Real_World_Terrain) [This is just a text article, but it's complete.]
Twice I've gone to preview and the page says that it's locked an I lose all the work I did since the last preview. This has happened to me twice and I've lost an hour or so of work each time.
If anybody else is having this problem, I can see this being a big deterrent to folks contributing.
Also, I don't see my article being linked anywhere. I'm sure this is due to my own ignorance on placing it. It shows up in search, but not in any of the directories. Gentle steerage in the right direction to ensure it shows up in the directory would be appreciated.
-MJL
Edited on Oct 14, 2005 01:21 GMT
| Samuel Lopez De Victoria (Oct 14, 2005 at 00:56 GMT) |
| Stephen Zepp (Oct 14, 2005 at 01:59 GMT) |
I imagine that the locked problem may be related to the "log out to log in required" bug, which I know he's still researching. Hopefully he's gotten it fixed. I know that several people write their big articles in a word processor, and Spider has posted a macro for OpenOffice in the Meta pages that can convert some standard word processing formatting for you automatically.
It requires OpenOffice, but will read in MS Word files (OpenOffice will).
| Ben Garney (Oct 14, 2005 at 02:15 GMT) |
I have sent you an e-mail. Please get in contact with me ASAP so we can resolve your problems!
Everyone:
In general, one good piece of advice is to make sure that you can view TDN in another window before submitting more content. Previewing frequently can also help keep the session alive. And I always, always, always copy any large piece of text I'm submitting to any web page into the clipboard quickly before hitting the button. It helps guard against dropped connections, intermittent server errors, and all manner of other nasty situations.
Links are not automatically added anywhere. The hub pages are manually managed; if you have an article you want linked, please get in contact with Adam or I via e-mail so we can figure out where to link things from. Content will still show up on search and be linkable regardless of whether an admin is involved.
And, once again, if anyone runs into problems, PLEASE send me screenshots, source code from the pages, the URLs that caused the problem, steps to reproduce the probem (or a description of what you were doing, in as much detail as you can manage). That sort of information is CRUCIAL to resolving these issues. And please, send it via e-mail.
Thanks,
Ben
| Welias D. Willie II (Oct 14, 2005 at 15:08 GMT) |
Thanks Ben! I am very excited to see TDN and with the WIKI system I am sure everyone will benefit.
| Anthony Lovell (Oct 15, 2005 at 18:48 GMT) |
The TGE community is great, but having to follow threads of ideas and "integrate" an understanding through a conversation is laborious. Having a competent and knowledgeable person maintain a best-of digest in the article is the quickest way to combine the powers of coherent documentation with community involvement in bettering it.
tone
| Ben Garney (Oct 16, 2005 at 01:47 GMT) |
(Well, there are talk pages, but they are not intended to be used as comment areas in the same sense that the GG resources use them, and if people have improved docs they should NOT post them there.)
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