What is torque3d.net lacking

#41 Using a separate post to represent GG a little bit:

1. As mentioned, we've stated time and time again what our intentions were, what our current role is, and the level of contribution we can maintain without hurting our business. No one should be surprised at this point when I finish this list.

2. GG, LLC maintains garagegames.com at a minimal level (keeping it up, paying the cost of hosting, answering support e-mails, maintaining the store). The heavy moderation is both voluntary and necessary to keep up appearances. Do we want to do more with the site? Sure, if there was a fast and cheap way to do it. Can't justify the cost and time with only one web dev on at the moment, though.

3. There were three reasons Torque was released under MIT. First, we were losing money and the engine market became bloody. Second, our love of the engine prompted us to release it, rather than shelving it. Third, goodwill and headlines. We felt we owed it to the community and we wanted to be viewed as "the good guys" for not shelving it.

4. No matter what we say or do, GG is permanently tied to Torque. There is no way at all to sever that. Anything short of shutting down this site, changing the company name, and switching identities would not break the bond. So people are going to actively search out Torque and end up here. What we are willing to do is help funnel traffic in the direction that the community desires. We try to push everyone to the GitHub repos, since that's the official hosting (which we also pay for). If Torque3D.net is what the community wants to use going forward, we will help facilitate it.

I swear, if there is any confusion from existing members after this post, I will continue to be shocked. Our role and intentions for the past, present, and future could not get any clearer.

#42

Quote://///ABOUT TIMMY////

C'mon man, can you read an attack from timmy's words? I don't believe so! It wasn't even criticism!

To register a domain, install phpBB with a free theme and give it title within a few minutes, then almost begging for credits on these forums?!

Quote:If anything I think GG needs to mail me a plaque with their thanks ^_^ (Contact me for my address, please nothing more than $200. I'd feel bad)

It's clearly you don't use T3D, and you don't know what is important to us! There are people here who are working their )*( off in their free time to keep T3D alive by lifting it up to modern standards, while nobody is asking for ANYTHING! @Timmy included! Don't go around with your $8-per-year-website and offend the people who do matter here!

One thing is all clear now; I'm clearly misjudging people from time to time: Attacking people personally when the posts are a not what they expect to be??? That's the exact reason why people stick to this website as long as possible, there are no sides here! And I thought you'd be the perfect moderator... h.c.!!!


Edit: Michaels post crossed mine, I'm a slow writer

#43 The way I see things as they are now, there are three main sites for Torque. There's this forum here at GarageGames, Torque3d.org, and your site Torque3d.net. Each one of these sites seems to want to fulfill a specific function. These forums, at least in my opinion, are the equivalent of an IRC channel where developers go to discuss among other things, development. Not necessarily a place where a lot of artists are going to hang out to show off their work. Not to say that there isn't any artwork shown here, but more often than not, you get development oriented threads, which is to be expected. I view Torque3d.org as the main landing page for Torque3d. It includes information about the engine, download links, mission statement, etc. Very similar to the homepage here on GarageGames, but with a specific target in Torque3d. To borrow from another open source project, this would be similar to Blender's main page at blender.org.

Then if we take a look at your site, I get the feeling that it's supposed to be like a centralized hub that links everything together. Again to borrow from blender, your site looks like it wants to be set up like blenderartists.org. Perhaps if you browse their site for a little bit, you might find that there are things they did that you might want to incorporate into your own site. Creating separate sub-forums for things like Finished Games, WIPs, tutorials, and news and discussion might help make things a little easier to manage later on as well as everything would be explicitly categorized. In the end, I think it's just going to take time to build the userbase. As more users come to the engine, your site will grow as well. It's taken the blender project 10+ years to get to the point it's at now. I think, at least in this case, patience is a virtue.

Just my 2 cents.

#44 @James - sorry, 'pouring oil on troubled waters' is an English saying that has come down from the 14th century, basically it means attempting to calm a problematic situation.

There's nothing wrong with you running your own site but it's not going to be a community hub that replaces this site simply for the reason Michael Perry points out about - the question of a kill button. Any website paid for by one person automatically gives them the kill button and no way for the community to stop it. So if the situation arose a new website was required, and I can't really see why given what Michael wrote above. A new site would need to be a community initiative and not a single members.

If you really want to help get the engine known write articles and blogs and post them at gamasutra and article hubs. That's what should be happening with most of the post-mortems and technical blogs that appear here anyway. I'm not certain it does, I don't see many articles at these sites about Torque 3D or 2D. That's how people will find out about the engine by bringing it to the attention of developers and gamers on sites about gaming, and not by putting up another Torque site.

#45 Reddit's /r/gamedev for the love of God people. Cross post your cool stuff there. It will help immensely.

#46 Michael thank you for chiming in, I think your statement clears up a lot. And boss I've been a member a long time, I'm one of the few people here who PAID for Torque when it was indie. I've bought several of y'alls products so while some can speculate what my intent is I think it's clear with y'all where I stand. I always and will continue to support Torque on any platform, TGE, 3d, 4d, 16d....

Nils I started reading your comment and just left it where it is, if it was important I'm sorry, I'm not wasting my time for you to stick up for timmy or insult me.

Kenneth I'll look into it. Thanks for the support, I really appreciate the time you took to look into that.

JED, that statement still makes me wonder... I just don't know the history behind it sorry.

Sure there is a kill button, there is a kill button everywhere... I think michaels closing comment is best, Crosspost... Help torque out by advertising it, like I have with my FB Page and Torque3d.net.

I think I do more to get Torque's name out there in the past year than any single person in the community, I've bought a website and put time into developing it, when the platform failed I rebuilt it from scratch with another CMS. I have been pushing a FB page hard and it is now growing nicely.

If you don't feel the need for the site then why bother posting on here? If we're all worried about Timmy's feelings here then lemme express some of mine at the current moment. Like giving some children a gift and they just speculate on whether it could've been better-or that their previous one was better. It's pretty silly I have to stick up for myself here... I've not once said stop using GG or ordered anyone to do so. I'm giving people an alternative, because it was asked for several times and ya know what... I'd like to be that driving force-behind a new torque community, it makes me proud to know I'm putting my $ to something that matters. I feel this matters, Jed I don't make rash decisions... and what would cause me to blow up and kill torque3d.net? Torque3d.org could die off tomorrow too in that case... A community driven one could die off also... in a split second.

Now if you have a better idea on a community site, please share it, in fact explain a model in which it would not be held by one person and funded by one person, explain to me how it would be built, upgraded, how the domain name would be purchased or even the actual name agreed upon.

IF you come up with this, IF you find some gem of a name with a gem of software, and a safe way for me to help out with it, I will jump on the idea! So I challenge you to come up with this.

#47 @James - Definitely understand where you are coming from and what your intentions are. No confusion there on our end.

Quote: Lets just get crap moving.

#48 Lol too funny. Thanks for the support Michael and for lightening up the mood here.

#49 It's Friday. If people don't lighten up, they should go back to Thursday where they belong.

#50 lol idk man, since my hernia surgery every day has meshed together... I guess everyday is a Saturday for me :), I still take my daughter to daycare every day so it's like I'm on a nerds version of spring break from 9am-4pm... just sit and work on websites all day, or play video games-and of course I've been watching the next generation :P... Gotta love my trek.

#51 Why do you have this superiority complex?

Quote:
I think I do more to get Torque's name out there in the past year than any single person in the community, I've bought a website and put time into developing it, when the platform failed I rebuilt it from scratch with another CMS. I have been pushing a FB page hard and it is now growing nicely.

You talk like you are the only one contributing to T3D. What about the countless hours the steering committee guys like andrew,luis,daniel etc have spent behind the scenes. What about the huge amount of work Brian has put in and also heaps of great code lukas from WLE has contributed (and all the others i have completely missed). Personally i have spent a lot of time releasing MIT code back to this community. Search these very forums and see for yourself how much work others have put in.

Insult me all you like, i let my contributions do the talking for me.

#52 Get back on topic or I'm sending all of you back to Thursday. Focus on what to do to improve Torque3D.net, increase T3D traffic on the available sites, and so on. Stay away from personal attacks.

#53 Timmy, if I insulted you or any others I apologize. I said to put torque's name out there, not working on the engine. I have no doubt you put a lot into this. Granted I could've worded that better but I am a bit fumed over this whole thread, I came in here trying to spread fairy dust and a few people turned me into a wicked witch... please don't make fun of my analogy... I've been stuck watching little girls cartoons for the past 6 months... you'd be doing the same thing too :).

Michael I agree... back on topic is what's needed here. Now I've noticed since the 17th that the torque3d.net site has received more involvement so first to all I do want to say thank you, I see good things at work here and it's very enjoyable to see some life come out of this. I've also continually noticed more torque3d followers on the FaceBook page. What i'd like to see is more people step up that I can share the page with to bring more content to the FB community of Torque.

Also is anyone really skilled with phpBB, I'd love to sit down with someone and attempt to add modules to enhance the website to better suite everyone? Let me know...

#54 I never portrayed anyone as a wicked witch. You took my comments the completely wrong way. Anyway i'm happy to accept your apology. We all have more important things to do than argue like children :)

My apologies if i offended anyone. Peace!

#55 -- @James, I'm sorry if my last post upset you or anybody here. Perhaps I should have written it differently; Though I think you should at least wonder why I lost my temper. I've been here for a long time too (and I own paid licences as well); and as far as I know it's the 1st time in 9 years I behaved like this here on GG. It doesn't matter if @Timmy is my partner with DeadlyMatter; I stuck up for more people in these forums, and I'll keep on sticking up for those who I think are wrongly accused. --

So to head back to the topic of this blog;

I think it should do well for your website if you'd implement RSS feeds from other sites, including github. Keep all the data up-to-date and have it all in one overview. Use your own bulletin board as an extension of that. If you know your way around Wordpress this should be fairly easy to setup, as this could be easily done with widgets. Of course you better ask permission from the owners first (because of copyrights etc.)

Try to avoid self-made logos and other graphic elements like that (imo!). I think that you should keep it as clear as possible, without distraction to things that aren't related to the subject. Also the phpBB theme of "Dinosaur facts" can be cloned and personalized.

Ask the community how to organize your forums. Programming and scripting for example are 2 different things; those are 2 different disciplines within the game industry. You better could split it up in 2 different forums, if you'd ask me. It's just an example; better you ask people what they would like to see.

Display on your homepage the positive news about T3D. I'd see an article about BeamNG.drive going to Steam for example. There are people working really hard on T3D and you see the results on github. Expose the new stuff to the outside world.

It's just my input; my opinion and some examples. Nothing more.

If had the time I would help you with this, but the problem with game development; there's always a huge lag of time to begin with. And because of that, I'm sorry that this will be the last word I put into this. I really need to get back to work now!

Good luck to you and hopefully a quick healing of your back-injury!

#56 Ya'll want a simple solution, says the guy who's been around for a while?

#57 Do tell....

#58 Use the existing reddit forum?

#59 @Daniel Buckmaster - if the same post can be entered in both forums why not. But the link provided by Michael is the more useful if one wants to bring T3D and T2D to the attention of potential new users of the engines.

Any write ups though should be cross posted everywhere. Not every gamedev or potential gamedev goes to reddit. Every single post that goes on these blogs could have been posted elsewhere. If you look at gamasutra there are mounds and mounds of shovelware articles about everything, but as their purpose is to get readers to look at the original website or bring a game developer and their project to the attention of others, these articles do work to some extent.

There just needs to be a constant drip. Stuff that one would balk at putting on reddit would easily pass muster at a great many other sites.

It's not that much additional work to post to various other sites as well, it is possible to get software to automate the process.

#60 (Does math... may comes before november-this is in response to how long I've been on these forums) Holy Crap I've been on these forums too long. I think I might be Michaels older brother from another mother.(Someone please verify this lol... I'm not sure if I'm misreading-I'm getting a laugh out of this though)

This is where I stand, I'm open to all ideas-if someone makes a poll in the community and the overwhelming result is to tear it down and do wordpress I'm happy with that (more satisfied actually), I would only be drawn back because lack of forums. I like the idea of an RSS feed between GG and the website, I love content! I'll jump in and separate scripting and programming-that is a very important thing that I missed!

The way I think things will end up, people who want to get their products out there (games for sale or additions to the game engine) should probably jump on both websites and attempt to advertise. I'm looking to make a lot more out of this forum, it'd be pretty cool to see a community marketplace where people can advertise their stuff (Although this would need heavy moderation). I'd love to see people like Lukas posting all his additions that are for sale on one page, then people can sort thru and just click a link taking them to the page where it's for sale, this can also go for free resources as well.

One thing I hate is when people erase themselves from the internet and all of their work as well, they don't put it up anywhere for someone like me to find even though they abandoned it. While I'm not about to start a file sharing website I'd be willing to come up with a download area that people can access via ftp for quite a number of things.

Again open to all but I do need some assistance... If someone can find me an easy article on how to install modules into PHPBB then I'd be appreciative... I've been looking but not found anything yet that is not cryptic (that could be because I'm on Percocet's too though-everything has to be broken down Barny style with even 5 mg of this mess in my system)