Recent .Plans, and you

#1 So my idea of posting "I'm hungry" and posting a host of Stile pics is probably not the best course of action.

Man, ruin all my fun!

#2 Starcave should have been smarter and staggered their posts by a day or so

though it got people talking about them...

though honestly, that type of viral marketing is worthless on a DEV forum. ship a game and do the same stuff on gamespot.... 4 teh win!

#3 I see nothing wrong with it. Now, all these idiotic .plans that say TEST or some other completely useless BS, those I have a problem with.

#4 Being part of Star Cave, I dont think they should have done that (crazy Irish :P) j/k. I think what seemed like a good attempt to get the Irish members of Star Cave into the GG community and get some recognition, ended up, like Stephen said, aggrivating people about it taking up so much blog space. They could've spaced them out to one a day (though people still may have said something) or just done it all in one plan. But ya, I have seen much more annoying plans than those, like C2's recent one.

#5 Actually I think that this is as good of a time as any to bring up one of those unwritten ettiquete rules that the community has here. That is, please post only relivent updates on your GG .plan that you feel that the community would be interested in learning more about.

For example: As a general rule of thumb I personally try to only post only when I know that I have a significant update that is worth sharing with the rest of the community about the project that I am working on. For one-liner updates or personal news thats not really GG .plan worthy I use a blogging site such as blogger.com.



I think if we all make a concerned effort as a community to try to be a bit more professional in how we use the .plan resource we can all benefit from it and keep some of the spirit of this community alive versus abusing the .plan system with brinkmanship and having actual important posts become lost.

I think its also important to note that in some ways this is the reason why the GG BuzzMonkey needed (and still needs) to exist, great posts and .plans are being ignored and missed on a daily rate. It's just lucky that we have someone close to the heart of the community that had the time and compasion to compile these gems together so that we can all benefit from them. Its unfortunate that someone else has to take the time out of their day to do this though simply because the actions of a few others who fail to treat the .plan resource with the same professional care and consideration that they treat their own projects with.

The .plan system is a resource that we all need to put special care and consideration into using. So lets ensure that we can utilize it as best as possible.



Logan

#6 I have been deleting many of the one liners. The Starcave stunt was simple a PR effort that didn't work out as well as it could have. BUT, the Starcave people are doing incredible work, so I forgive them:) I am much more concerned with the obvious scam that happened today with the guy that said he had 20,000,000 customers or some such balony. I deleted that one, and will delete any blog that hints of scam or spam.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#7 Also being part of starcave i can see the sudden influx of plans , one after the other might have annoyed some people. I try to only post plans when i have something significant to show (screenshots/movies).

Look on the brightside, at least all the starcave ones are out of the way :)

Bring back the GG Buzzmonkey, i used to love reading through stuff that i have missed.

#8 I began having weird thoughts about this exact topic a few weeks back. I couldn't decide if it was to be tolerated, as this is an 'open' community and all...or if such posts simply annoyed everyone as much as they annoyed me and a certain 'etiquette' was to be applied.
I believe you guys made the right decision.

#9 I do want to comment back to the StarCave folks: we DO want to know what you guys and gals are doing, and it's especially helpful to see what each of you are doing in relation to the project as a whole. There aren't many large teams out there that are being successful, and information that is timely and informative is really, really nice.

The main reason your intro .plans weren't accepted as you were hoping is because of both their short nature (most were 3-5 liners without much real content), and the very short period in which they were posted. You just happened to unintentionally strike a nerve with several people on a topic that has been felt by a lot of people, but never really talked about much (short/spammy 3 liner .plans).

Please don't get discourged/frustrated by the response they got...as Jeff T. said, you guys are doing excellent work, and we absolutely hope you make it through the barriers and frustrations of large team remote/virtual development!

#10 Thanks Stephen! :) Seriously, these words of encouragment mean more than you think. :) We plan to have some games done very very soon!!

#11 Hrm, I got yelled at because of a one-liner plus a link. No scams or anything. The point of my blog was a status update on Volitant Assault (aka Renegades). The whole status update was a website with our newly posted concept art (over 50 pictures, a complete user's guide and our entire web-based design document).

I felt that those of you interested in the work of RenWerX Studios might seriously be interested in our new web site and the link was enough. Am I wrong?

#12 Tony: I wouldn't say you were wrong. If the rest of RenWerX came along and posted similar plans, then fair enough ;) I'd tell kc_0045 to bog off if s/he did that to one of my plans.

I can see the difficulty though. You've just made some significant updates to your website/journal/whatever and want to let people know. Repsoting the same stuff in a GG .plan is a bit pointless, so a quick line of text and a link should be fine.

I think it was just unfortunate timing. I'm sure in another couple of weeks people will be back to posting their short .plans (I R making 1337 MMORPG - best eva!!!11!) and all this will have blownover.

#13 My impression of the .plan blog concept is that it is a way for game developers to share their ideas, procedures, problems and accomplishments both to have an audience and to get feedback and help. Telling your dog how wonderful your new ballistics procedure is doesn't cut it some times and you need real people to see what your doing and acknowledge your work. In this regard, we are still human.

I have received *excellent* feedback to my blogs and consider .plan an invaluable resource.

At the same time, I personally think using .plan solely as a promotional device is inappropriate. And, although I enjoy some of them, completely OT posts probably should be done away with as well.

Things that don't fit in with the .plan concept should probably go right here in general discussion.

#14 I certainly did not mean a break out of one liners from the StarCave posts and anyone that has done so afterwards have missed alot of points and its good to see this forum being created to address such issues.

Thanks for the encouraging words towards StarCave, we did not mean to upset the community but to rather try to enrich it with more talent that uses the Torque platforms.

Myself have only posted a very few plans and each of those plans covered very important events covering StarCave during this year to where i have not posted a plan since April but i will be posting a new one very soon. We had an old Irish team in 2004 that the staff did not post themselves here, this time around i wanted to make sure the community can benifit as well to ourselves the knowledge, experience and helping out each as we march onwards with our own goals of developing great computer games for all to enjoy.


Keith Killilea
CEO - Producer
Star Cave Studios Ltd.
Ireland


Edit: My vote is in to bring back the Monkey!

#15 I posted a thread on the disappearance of the Grease Monkey.... but noone really responded. he just disappeared without a trace.

#16 Hmmm...what's Grease Monkey? I feel like old timer here but I realy don't know what is that :(

#17 The Garagegames Grease Monkey did a weekly recap of everything (important) that had happened. He disappeared one week and never came back...

Search for Grease Monkey and you will probably find his .plan and news entries

#18 I wish there was still a Grease Monkey. I thought of taking up the torch, but I heard something about the Grease Monkey coming back. It has been quite a few months since I read that. Maybe I'll just do it. I read most of everything anyways and I am ussually pretty positive about what everyone is doing so I won't be playing favorites or anything. Nobody else is stepping up to the plate. I didn't want to step on any toes. It should give me some writing practice. I think I will do it. For a while, until someone else wants to do it. I like talking about what's going on in this community, it is exciting to me, so, at least everyone will get a nice boost from what I have to say about their stuff. This should be cool. Plus, it will use up all of my .plan energy and I won't be writing such long boring plans myself. :P

#19

Quote:I R making 1337 MMORPG - best eva!!!11!

You're just jealous. ;)

Ari
"Check your ARP table, the firewall logs won't help you..."