Hey everyone! If we calculate the activity of PPM using the recent news posts as a measure, I'm pretty sure that 9 out of 10 people would say that it is dead and nothing is happening at this community. And, surprisingly, it is not true. The truth is that the recent events, mod releases, mod progress and resources created recently were simply not documented in our news section.
The problem with the news is old and it is something that I've been trying to fix for a couple of years. If I do not act, the tendency is just to get worse and worse and worse. I'm busy and the tendency is that I'll only get more and more busy. So, I really need help.
I'm doing a master course in computing. My objective is 100% inspired in this community: I want 3D graphics to become something that is easy to be created, without needing any advanced knowledge on physics, maths or even on the way video cards optimizes graphics. So, my idea is quite simple: why don't we build a geometry, paint it like voxels and save it? So, every tim you save your model, it would create all textures, make the model uses less polygons, etc. In a later time, it could also rig and animate the model automatically.
That may sound cool, but it is complicated to do. In my case, I have less than an year to finish it, several articles to study to figure out solutions for several random problems that I'm having, as well as some classes to watch and deadlines for writting papers and my dissertation.
So, I've been trying to hire news posters for a while. We had some candidates that posted few news and bye bye. Aro was a great exception in this case, since he posted several news. But he is not being very active with news post either.
Then, my second attempt was creating a Community News forum. So, anyone can post news and if it is well written and relevant to PPM, we'd move to the Site News. So, yea, anyone can be a news poster now as long as you are registered in our forums. Guess what? We had 2 posts in... what? 6 months? God damn it, we are doomed.
The third plan may sound offensive to your eyes, but it's something that we've banned in our forums all these days: BOTs. Yea, that's not a joke. We'll have to rely on bots to assist me to post news. A news post like this one takes from 20 minutes to 3 hours to be written, because I do a lot of menial tasks while I write a news post. I have a to check a bunch of sites, I have to verify if the links from each news are valid, convert images to a size that doesn't deteriorate the look of PPM, etc. I want a bot to do most of that stuff for me and, instead of taking 3 hours posting a community roundup, I'd take 15 minutes. Wouldn't it sound better? And it is viable, thanks to RSS. I still have to work on that in my free time, but I've got several mods here exporting their news as RSS feeds. Now, I have to figure out means to get them organized by date, convert their description to BBcode, resize pictures automatically and some other stuff. Once these things are done, we'll have a better flux of news here. For now, we still expect you to cooperate by posting your news at Community News forum.
Thanks for you comprehension and sorry for any inconvenience. Last edited by Banshee on Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:08 pm; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
The question is - do we even have a demand for news? I can't remember anyone complaining for the lack of weekly, even monthly updates. Personally, if I care about what's happening in the community outside PPM (and I rarely do), I go out and check for myself. I'm not saying everyone should do that, no, but my question is perfectly justified.
Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Location: Dordrecht, the Netherlands
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:51 pm Post subject:
Crimsonum wrote:
The question is - do we even have a demand for news? I can't remember anyone complaining for the lack of weekly, even monthly updates. Personally, if I care about what's happening in the community outside PPM (and I rarely do), I go out and check for myself. I'm not saying everyone should do that, no, but my question is perfectly justified.
Just my two cents.
That, and there aren't that major mod updates lately. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:59 pm Post subject:
Dutchygamer wrote:
Crimsonum wrote:
The question is - do we even have a demand for news? I can't remember anyone complaining for the lack of weekly, even monthly updates. Personally, if I care about what's happening in the community outside PPM (and I rarely do), I go out and check for myself. I'm not saying everyone should do that, no, but my question is perfectly justified.
Just my two cents.
That, and there aren't that major mod updates lately.
That is exactly the point: There were two mod releases recently (Crossfire and CnC: Final War) and most people do not know. So, of course we have a demand for news. Otherwise people will start to think that there is nothing happening here and they'll get bored. QUICK_EDIT
Yea, I never look at the news for new voxels or PPM mod updates. Really I think it's only necessary for server/site updates, outside news and mod releases. QUICK_EDIT
Agreed. I go to ppmsite.com because it's quick to type in, i'd rather add a button right to the forum on my browser than bother with the front page. Nevermind that theres usually topics made about the news. What's the point of reading that when I can just go and read the news and comments in one page? _________________ Victory! QUICK_EDIT
Schools(/college/universities/jobs) have started, i don't believe that much will happen in the near future, though i perhaps could finally post my gaisb mod and make a forum for it.
Anyway cnc seems to be slowly dying, but it almost seems like all modding is starting to become less, like if people prefer gaming over modding as free time. And if honestly i must say i'm sorta feeling like that too. QUICK_EDIT
Anyway cnc seems to be slowly dying, but it almost seems like all modding is starting to become less, like if people prefer gaming over modding as free time. And if honestly i must say i'm sorta feeling like that too.
I'm not so sure about that. These forums for instance have had bursts of activity, especially in days when new C&C games was released (2007 for example). There have been moments of inactivity as well. Overall, I think it's more or less the same it has always been. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
wow 2 mods released, need to check these out. _________________ I am authorized to send out the TMP Studio, PM ME IF YOU WANT IT And check this out, these were sent to me for help with terrain and zdata help along with TMP Studio/Builder
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Regarding news activity.
