Suggestion: New sub-forum in Hacks Showcase

Well it's come to my attention there are three places you can post your hack in this forum, the Hacks Showcase (for well progressed), the Progressive Hacks (ones that are starting out) and (the one I forget) which is for small hacks such as 386 hacks.

But I propose the idea that we open up a Beginning or Development section where you aren't required to have screenshots, but an idea, features and a plan on what you are going to accomplish. Through my many years in that forum (on my way too many accounts) I've noticed there isn't much attention going towards the planning stages of a hack.

Why not add a forum where people who are in the Storyline development or planning stages of the hack that want to see what other people think, not only does it give them a general idea of the game before it's produced, people could also give feedback on the most important thing in games; the background.

This is just an idea that I've come up with recently, because I believe it will strengthen the games that come through in the future and bring out heaps of strong, original ideas that have been thought about plenty.

I apologise if there already is a section for this, I must've missed something.

Could a dedicated thread in one of the aforementioned forums not just do the same job? A whole new subforum would need to encourage a lot of activity, and though Emulation is huuuuuuge, I'm not sure that there is the demand for a whole forum for this.

I'm ready and waiting to be proven wrong by colcol/giradialkia/Jake on this one, though.

If you've been here many years like you say, you should know that we used to have one of those and it was called the Scrapbox. It isn't there any more.

Basically, the amount of 'ideas' that had no basis, no work and effectively no future, clogged the forum up. Instead of bringing out heaps of strong, original ideas that had been thought about plenty, it was filled with bad, repeated ideas that had been put together in three minutes, the overwhelming majority of which were never given another thought to by the 'creator'.

The current system, in which all hacks have to be reviewed by moderators, means that hacks actually have to have some work put into them before they could be showcased and commented on. This is definitely better, as poor stories and that stuff can be straightened out in the Progressing Hacks section.

Arlen said:

Well it's come to my attention there are three places you can post your hack in this forum, the Hacks Showcase (for well progressed), the Progressive Hacks (ones that are starting out) and (the one I forget) which is for small hacks such as 386 hacks.

But I propose the idea that we open up a Beginning or Development section where you aren't required to have screenshots, but an idea, features and a plan on what you are going to accomplish. Through my many years in that forum (on my way too many accounts) I've noticed there isn't much attention going towards the planning stages of a hack.

Why not add a forum where people who are in the Storyline development or planning stages of the hack that want to see what other people think, not only does it give them a general idea of the game before it's produced, people could also give feedback on the most important thing in games; the background.

This is just an idea that I've come up with recently, because I believe it will strengthen the games that come through in the future and bring out heaps of strong, original ideas that have been thought about plenty.

I apologise if there already is a section for this, I must've missed something.

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This has existed before at least twice, in the form of the Beginner's Lounge and the Scrapbox. Neither worked very well. People hardly ever gave constructive feedback and then when that happened it was "your maps sukc you should do them again becuse they're bad". Also, people never stayed dedicated to a simple idea, people did this, people did that, etc etc etc. The forum became a spam pit and it never ever achieved its intended purpose. It's a brilliant idea in theory, but not in practice. It's been disproven twice already and I don't think it needs a third time.

edit: since Ninja Caterpie lived up to his name and ninja'd me I also want to repeat his entire post for emphasis but particularly this:

NC said:

Basically, the amount of 'ideas' that had no basis, no work and effectively no future, clogged the forum up. Instead of bringing out heaps of strong, original ideas that had been thought about plenty, it was filled with bad, repeated ideas that had been put together in three minutes, the overwhelming majority of which were never given another thought to by the 'creator'.

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When I first joined PC I used to frequent the Hacks Showcase forums a lot and I tried my own at making a few hacks, which didn't work out too well. But that's besides the point.

I don't really think we should bother having an entire other subforum for these "Developing Hacks." If we have a forum for such an early part of the hacking stage, plenty of noob hackers like myself will go and post their storyline idea up for discussion. First of all, that's actually probably a bad idea incase anyone decides to go browsing this forum a few years later, maybe comes across one of the Developing Hacks threads where the idea was abandoned, and build their own hack off of that storyline. We could be dealing with plagiarism and stealing, which I don't think anyone wants to deal with. We probably already have enough of that as it is.

Secondly, personally, if I were writing the storyline to my hack, I wouldn't want to give it all away immediately. What works so well with a Hacks Showcase presentation is when you have exactly what's needed: screenshots, a team of workers, and a great storyline. If you spoil your story in the Developing Hacks section, that'll kinda suck for when you go post it in the Hacks Showcase.

What I used to do when I wanted to make a hack was discuss and develop a storyline with a friend, and maybe consult a few other friends and ask their opinions. To me, that's the proper way to build a storyline and then present it to the public in the Hacks Showcase board.

A Developing Hacks forum would just bring in tons of under-developped storylines and projects to-be dropped, in my opinion. I can see where you're coming from wanting a subforum like this one, but I feel like it'd to more harm than good.

I think what needs to be done is on the other end of the spectrum, Aiming for basically a complete hack section
I mean I came on this site initially jsut looking for new hacks and it took me an absolute age to seive through all the pages of abandoned and half complete hacks in the showcase forum

I mean, great, they've made enough progress to get in to the showcase but 9/10 whats being showcased is something that is quite clearly still in development albeit quite far but that doesn't gureantee it will ever be finished

Once the initial mod has gone through both preogressing hacks and hacks showcase, both of which do contain some compelte hacks and transfers them to the new board it would take minimal effort to maintain because it is a seciton dedicated to complete hacks so people will mostly be asking for help or rating the game

Hopefully would inspire people to actually finish their hacks

Dave_ said:

I think what needs to be done is on the other end of the spectrum, Aiming for basically a complete hack section
I mean I came on this site initially jsut looking for new hacks and it took me an absolute age to seive through all the pages of abandoned and half complete hacks in the showcase forum

Hopefully would inspire people to actually finish their hacks

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It's incredibly difficult to have a completed hack. People spend years and years on it. A section with only completed hacks would have very few threads and everyone posting there would be more or less spamming it up with questions or generic comments "this is awesome!!!! thanks for finishing it". I'd rather have a thread with links to all of the "completed" hacks but I think we have one (or used to maintain one, I'm too lazy to check right now).

If you want to be consulted on your hack in its beginning stages then post in the according threads, the scrapbox used to be a place for ideas and new hacks, but the amount of ideas which eventually went nowhere or even never started development was much to high. Use threads like these though to get help on your beginning hack instead of posting it as a full thread...

Quick-storyline thread, map rating, script help, etc.

Good luck in your future hacking endeavors.

If you're willing to moderate it, be my guest.

Ninja Caterpie said:

If you've been here many years like you say, you should know that we used to have one of those and it was called the Scrapbox. It isn't there any more.

Basically, the amount of 'ideas' that had no basis, no work and effectively no future, clogged the forum up. Instead of bringing out heaps of strong, original ideas that had been thought about plenty, it was filled with bad, repeated ideas that had been put together in three minutes, the overwhelming majority of which were never given another thought to by the 'creator'.

The current system, in which all hacks have to be reviewed by moderators, means that hacks actually have to have some work put into them before they could be showcased and commented on. This is definitely better, as poor stories and that stuff can be straightened out in the Progressing Hacks section.

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I knew there was something missing from the section when I came back.

But I do think that could be easily fixed by adding Moderator approval to threads, and also setting a guideline so we don't just have people splatting out ideas.

Vrai said:

This has existed before at least twice, in the form of the Beginner's Lounge and the Scrapbox. Neither worked very well. People hardly ever gave constructive feedback and then when that happened it was "your maps sukc you should do them again becuse they're bad". Also, people never stayed dedicated to a simple idea, people did this, people did that, etc etc etc. The forum became a spam pit and it never ever achieved its intended purpose. It's a brilliant idea in theory, but not in practice. It's been disproven twice already and I don't think it needs a third time.

edit: since Ninja Caterpie lived up to his name and ninja'd me I also want to repeat his entire post for emphasis but particularly this:

Click to expand...

I understand where your coming from, but maybe the problem is within the idea of the section.

colcolstyles said:

If you're willing to moderate it, be my guest.

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To be honest I wouldn't mind but I know that wont happen.

What I mean by this idea isn't simply what the Scrapbox or Beginners Lounge was for, but a Development thread where you post your progress on the story and things like that without making the game. So people can see what to expect and criticise while the game is still in it's developing stages, not releasing it's third beta.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Arlen said:

But I do think that could be easily fixed by adding Moderator approval to threads

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Threads in the Beginner's Lounge were on approval but that didn't work either. We (giradialkia and myself) received a ridiculously large amount of new threads every day, most of which were either too short to warrant their own thread or belonged in one of the stickied threads. And most of the "idea threads" were more like "I want to make a hack but I need people to map, sprite, script, etc. for me."

Arlen said:

also setting a guideline so we don't just have people splatting out ideas.

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If you have any ideas for guidelines that can effectively weed out the massive amounts of SPAM, I'm all ears. The problem that we encountered was that we couldn't come up with a balanced system that allowed people to post their ideas with no progress restrictions and, at the same time, keep SPAM to a minimum. It's a trade-off, as far as I'm concerned.

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of an idea section. In theory, it's a great concept and it would give aspiring hackers a place to start out and receive constructive criticism on their ideas. However, we have tried implementing it twice now and in practice, the sections turned into forums full of threads with little to no effort put into them. Needless to say, they were a pain in the neck to moderate and both forums were subsequently closed.

colcolstyles said:

Threads in the Beginner's Lounge were on approval but that didn't work either. We (giradialkia and myself) received a ridiculously large amount of new threads every day, most of which were either too short to warrant their own thread or belonged in one of the stickied threads. And most of the "idea threads" were more like "I want to make a hack but I need people to map, sprite, script, etc. for me."



If you have any ideas for guidelines that can effectively weed out the massive amounts of SPAM, I'm all ears. The problem that we encountered was that we couldn't come up with a balanced system that allowed people to post their ideas with no progress restrictions and, at the same time, keep SPAM to a minimum. It's a trade-off, as far as I'm concerned.

Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of an idea section. In theory, it's a great concept and it would give aspiring hackers a place to start out and receive constructive criticism on their ideas. However, we have tried implementing it twice now and in practice, the sections turned into forums full of threads with little to no effort put into them. Needless to say, they were a pain in the neck to moderate and both forums were subsequently closed.

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Reminds me of communism xD

I do think alternatively, you could work on some sort of exception in the Progressive hacks section, where people don't have to have screenshots, but do need a very detailed storyline, a plan of action, comprehensive features list etc; if you understand where I'm coming from.

Kind of like trading image for detail.

But I do understand where you're coming from, you can't really create a forum that allows for beginning ideas or development hacks with minimal restrictions, but at the same time have restrictions to make sure they aren't just narrow-minded attempts. Maybe somewhere in the future a fair guideline could be created, and I'm hoping it does happen :P

Arlen said:

I do think alternatively, you could work on some sort of exception in the Progressive hacks section, where people don't have to have screenshots, but do need a very detailed storyline, a plan of action, comprehensive features list etc; if you understand where I'm coming from.

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That makes it just like the Beginner's Lounge. A bunch of threads without screenshots would just make Progressing Hacks lose its own touch.

And, to be quite frank, I'm against this idea. I mean I like the idea of "idea threads" but there will always be people who will ruin that kind of forum.

I don't think a forum would work for this, I do have one solution how ever:
http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=6621993#post6621993
:)