Post your ideas/feedback for the Charas overhaul

[Momeka]

How about a section on the main page to share scripts for the later RPG makers and Unity3D and maybe just code snippets in general.

[Dr. Ace]

let's offer tools, graphics, and advice for current game developers

I'd say go as far as make it not a RPG Maker forum with game development on the side, but a Game Developer forum with boards for the major game development environments including and not limited to XNA, Unity, AS3, MonoGame, GameMaker and of coure RPGMaker.

Support for new makers, as well as for games coded in real languages such as xbox games coded in XNA, flash games, Java games

I suggest revamp the whole complete resources to be less RPG Maker 2k and 2k3 specific. Keep the stuff on it for sure, because this site has the biggest classic RPG art collection I've seen so far, but reorganise it to allow for more styles of art, perhaps even already coded scripts for Unity or coded classes for other languages.

Community driven tutorials/support/guides.

Definitely a big plus, tutorials and guides will certainly help with luring outsides into the community. Again, think big and don't limit it RPG Maker. I'm pretty sure a lot of users (Momeka and myself included) that will gladly help with tutorials.

Individual Game/Project section on the main site

One of the easiest way to do this would be, in my best bet, a wiki section on the site. This way our users can add their projects as a new wiki page and easily edit it.

layout skin selector that includes "Classic Charas"

Do this, please do this. I want CLASSIC classic Charas, 2005 - 2009 era Charas. The current skin is really difficult on my eyes (and I see like a hawk).

Some advanced user information stuff

Not mandatory but would make it more interesting and I've seen it on a lot of different sites.

should be divided up based on the program the game is developed with

Program, runtime environment or language (or all). Wouldn't hurt to have a separate sections of C# next to Unity and XNA, or C++ next to UDK, because it can vary a lot depending on that. (Unity even supports Javascript and Boo for example).

birthdays

Kill it with fire, it's useless and clogs up too much space.

bigger and different banner

Yes.

-----

Besides this, some ideas of my own.

Idea #1: Main boards for a main branch of game development. A main board for PROGRAMMING (with the above suggested subboards), for ART (Pixel, 3D Modelling, music, sound etc) and perhaps even a board for DESIGN (level, character and world design, how stuff relates to each other as well as story and setting).

Idea #2: Example projects, this can be part of the tutorial section mentioned before. Deliver the source code so that people can look into it because that really makes people learn new stuff.

Idea #3: Contests, I always liked the idea of contests and they're a good way to get a community to work.

Idea #4: Team Projects. I mean, get a team together here and make a game.

Idea #5: Those goddamn verifications, do we really need 7? Just do one re-captcha, not the annoying one now but the readable ones. Or hell, add a slider you have to slide from left to right, that keeps the bots out.

[Fisherson]

Ed

TuT Ofcourse it was. Gosh I miss his crazyness.

What if we create a new banner with you in it as well? Ideally we'd have a not-so-tiny banner lol

=D Then I would be less zappy and more helpful. Well as helpful as I can be not even knowign the first thing about web coding other than it uses HTML and I mostly played chess in those classes. ^^;
Didn't help I was still in my "I don't need complex code to make games" era. To be fair I did learn to make two awesome systems by not wanting to use complex code but now I regret it as I lost those systems when I first
upgraded my computer OS and I can't help other than suggest things and sit on the sidelines. -_-;

[DragonBlaze]

Great ideas Ace! I'll add them to the list

I'd say go as far as make it not a RPG Maker forum with game development on the side, but a Game Developer forum with boards for the major game development environments including and not limited to XNA, Unity, AS3, MonoGame, GameMaker and of coure RPGMaker.

Yes!

We have a wiki, but it sucks and is not what a wiki should be at all. I like DB's idea of being able to create a project page, though. It's not a simple task, but if he says he can do it, great.

Should be easy enough :p In a nutshell, when you type or link to a page in the format charas-project.net/projects/?projectId=someId, the server will look in the database project table to see if someId exists, if it does, pull the projects info (text, creator(s), images, etc) and plug the values into a standard html/css project template, and there you go lol

As for the verification. We were having some REAL bad issues with bots. Nothing seemed to fix that. So I changed the number of verifications to something outrageous, and, well, it worked. Not really the best method, but if anybody knows a not so invasive way of keeping bots out...

I should be able to make it a bit better, but I'm not too familiar with working with captchas. My company mainly uses the method "we'll call/text you with a confirmation code to enter", but that method won't work for charas. I can do some research and see if I can come up with something better.

=D Then I would be less zappy and more helpful. Well as helpful as I can be not even knowign the first thing about web coding other than it uses HTML and I mostly played chess in those classes. ^^;
Didn't help I was still in my "I don't need complex code to make games" era. To be fair I did learn to make two awesome systems by not wanting to use complex code but now I regret it as I lost those systems when I first
upgraded my computer OS and I can't help other than suggest things and sit on the sidelines. -_-;

No worries, just ideas and feedback help tremendously! Otherwise I could spend all these hours coding up something, only for people not to like it or want it done completely differently, which would be a huge waste of time for me. If we can be fairly confident that we're on the right track, it will save lot's of time and work.

BTW, I probably won't use html anyway (maybe a few lines), it'll be mainly in javascript (jQuery and ExtJs) and PHP with a dash of CSS for styling.

[fruckert]

This is a pretty small detail that I doubt many people are aware is even a feature of Charas, but our RSS feed SUCKS.
It's limited to five posts, which considering how often we talk is...stupid.
Could you make it, like, not suck?

[DragonBlaze]

This is a pretty small detail that I doubt many people are aware is even a feature of Charas, but our RSS feed SUCKS.
It's limited to five posts, which considering how often we talk is...stupid.
Could you make it, like, not suck?

Usually when I think of RSS feed, I think of a news feed or something, but I am unsure of how charas handles this right now. Adding additional RSS feeds should be easy, but I'm curious on how/where it is being used right now and how we can improve it. If we can identify how we can can improve our capabilities in this area, I will do my best to my best to make it happen. Can you give any examples of how you would like it to work?

[Razor]

Different background colours for alternating posts.
I think we had it at one stage, but now we don't, and it all blurs into one mess.

[Moosetroop11]

Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!

[fruckert]

Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!

Cue everybody making their post backgrounds fuchsia.

Different background colours for alternating posts.
I think we had it at one stage, but now we don't, and it all blurs into one mess.

Yup, we did!
It was going to be in the redeux theme that I was working on, but that didn't really pan out because I know about as much PHP as an insufficient metaphor.
Also, my CSS isn't that fantastic.

ed: BTW, everybody who's asking for the old theme: it still exists!
It's just that if you change to it, a bunch of things are broke and you can't switch back.

[DragonBlaze]

Hell, different background colours for different members. It'd be maaaaadnesss!!!

Nooooooooooooo!

Chrome has this nifty feature where you can modify your local cache of a site's css file and you can see the changes in real time, so I'm tinkering with the style right now, it's fun

[Fisherson]

It occurs to me something that that defiantly needs to be done: The Music section in the Resources. It needs to have sperate categories. Ya now. MP3's, Midi's and Wav files. This occured to me while I was a sleep oddly.

[Meiscool]

The resources section in general needs a quality makeover. However, that should be lower on the priority list.
Contests... I came back and did some, and I saw a few other members tried some too, but after the first two contests no interest was shown. A lot of the contests that fail are set up to fail (make your own game competition, etc), but some take little to no effect and still go nowhere (make an avatar, etc.).
I wouldn't mind doing some tutorials on how I do my graphics in games, but I don't think anyone would get much use out of them.
TBH, one key reason I've not worked on my game much in the past month is because I know most people here won't try it. I'm just as guilty of this though when it comes to the games of others.
I guess what I'm trying to say... is that there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life. IF I get people to say otherwise I'll try my part as contest mod to kick some life back into this place. I know these changes are geared towards attracting more people, but just because you change your country doesn't mean you've got a bigger spot on the map. I feel discouraged overall.

[DragonBlaze]

I guess what I'm trying to say... is that there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life. IF I get people to say otherwise I'll try my part as contest mod to kick some life back into this place. I know these changes are geared towards attracting more people, but just because you change your country doesn't mean you've got a bigger spot on the map. I feel discouraged overall.

There is no guarantee that we will bring the site back to life, but a site overhaul to make the site more appealing as well as an advertising campaign to get more people in the door has a good chance to make this place a little more lively again.

[Moosetroop11]

there just aren't enough people on the forum to bring it back to life.

13 people in this thread isn't a bad start.

[Prpl_Mage]

I'd say it is alive. But if we manage to get guests to be more inclined to join us because of a pretty layout and other neato features.  That could change. I'm not extecting the 1500 member activity like back in the days, but some need blood could be nice, this incest is killing our chocobos.