What categories do we need?

(Zachary Lewis) #1

Continuing the discussion from Welcome to the FlashPunk Developers community!:

I set up a few basic categories for the community, but I have a feeling I might have missed some…

Here’s a listing of the old topics, and how I invision the new topics corresponding:

###Old Topics

  • FlashPunk: Discuss FlashPunk, suggest features, discuss the latest changes.
  • Discussion: Discuss games, game-dev, Flash, get to know each other.
  • Assistance: Ask questions, get tips, tricks, assistance, and all that.
  • Tutorials: If you’ve written a useful Flash/FlashPunk tutorial, post it here!
  • Code & Examples: Post useful functions, code snippets, source code, etc.
  • Creations: Show off what you’ve made with FlashPunk!
  • Work In Progress: Post your games in development here to get feedback before release.

###New Topics

  • (no category): Posts that don’t pertain to FlashPunk but improve the community would fall here, similar to the Discussions board on the previous forum.
  • flashpunk: Essentially unchanged from the previous forum.
  • tutorials: A combination of Tutorials (natch) and Code & Examples from the previous forum. I’d like to see any code snippet have at least a brief demonstration of how to use it.
  • creations: A combination of Creations (natch) and Works In Progress from the previous forum.
  • help: Similar to Assistance from the previous forum.

Would you like to see more categories? If so, what category are we missing, and why do we need that category? Let us know!

Edit: Added a forum-to-category breakdown.

(Jacob Albano) #2

The original FP forum had a section for code snippits and useful libraries. I think that would be a welcome addition.

(Zachary Lewis) #3

Do you think they would be better in the tutorials section? I can invision a user sharing a code snippet and having an accompanying tutorial outlining use. Do you think this would make the snippets and code samples stronger, or do you think this would deter users from sharing otherwise useful samples?

(Jacob Albano) #4

That’s a good point; it would be pretty rare for anyone to just say “Here’s some code” and leave. I don’t think the forums had a tutorials category anyway, so I guess we already have that need filled.

(Zachary Lewis) #5

There might be room here for a category like feedback to get user feedback on anything from games to code to ideas. It would pull some of the weight off creations and would be more useful than the previous Works In Progress forum.

(Blackstream) #6

I can see where you’re going with it, although I did like the splits from before. In general I kind of like breaking things down. Especially work in progress and creations, one of which is more geared towards feedback and criticism, and one which is just more of a “Hey look what I just released”.

Some kind of category dedicated to art, sound, and resources, might be nice, I’m not sure. Maybe one for people ISO help. Just ideas.

(Zachary Lewis) #7

So, would the addition of a feedback category fill the gap that exists with the current, single creations, or is there a need for more than one category designed explicitly for feedback?

My concern with adding too many categories is that it actually slows people down from engaging because of option overload. With fewer choices, it makes the decision much easier and they actually get to posting and interacting instead of worrying which of three categories their post belongs in.

(Jacob Albano) #8

I would agree with that. I think maybe we would be better served by keeping the creations category and just encouraging people to state that they’re interested in feedback – exactly as it is at the moment.

(Zachary Lewis) #9

I can see a lot of use in having a category explicitly for those seeking feedback (on anything, doesn’t have to be a complete game) and those who just want to share things they made.

You’ll get into situations where you’re working on a library to easily import Ogmo files which isn’t done (not tutorials), isn’t created with FlashPunk (not creations), but you do want people to let you try the code you made and let you know how to improve it. Where would that go?

(Dez) #10

This is a bit late, but what about collaboration?

(azrafe7) #11

OK… Just came on this topic by chance.

The purpose of creations and feedback could be easily be mistaken (feedback can be seen to relate strictly to FlashPunk, and not to any new library/addon).

(Zachary Lewis) #12

As in, asking people to work together on a project? I believe creations would be an appropriate category for that.

(Zachary Lewis) #13

In the category list, it says it’s for feedback on anything relating to FlashPunk, and the category definition serves to further this opinion. I feel it is adequately represented.

(no-jo) #14

I don’t know whether this fits in to the Flashpunk ethic but a jobs/freelance section would be welcome from my point of view. I’m a part time developer and in all fairness I prefer doing the gfx and music more than than code. Plus i’m a one man band which means everything takes ages to do because you’re doing 3 or 4 jobs. Sometimes, i’d be willing to hire a FP guru or budding guru to tackle some of the programming side.

Also, i’m sure there are programmers that would benefit from some quality custom gfx, sfx or tunes for their commercial projects.

(Brendyn Todd) #15

@zachwlewis

I think “Creations” should be renamed “Showcase” and “Feedback” should be “Work-in-Progress”. Also a separate collaboration category would be more fitting than just using “Creations”, in my opinion.

(Abel Toy) #16

Yeah, this would be helpful!

And what @brendyntodd said as well, I think, would be great!

(Abel Toy) #17

Also, what about a Libraries category? This way, we can keep the Showcase and Work-in-Progress categories for Games, and have a specific Libraries category that users can use, or something.

(Zachary Lewis) #18

This is what I was trying to avoid: A massive amount of options when a user posts a topic. The search feature is really good on Discourse, and I don’t want to rely on this as a database of all FlashPunk knowledge (in case something happens to it again).

Are you sure we really need all these categories?

(Abel Toy) #19

Keeping backups of it somewhere not in this server would be a solution I think… we need a database of FlashPunk knowledge, and this is ideal.

We don’t need them, but it’s a cool way of keeping stuff organised. Another thing we could use is post-tags (like [Library] PunkUI) but it’s uglier…

(ryme-o) #20

I don’t know if this has been said already because I am too lazy to read all the replies but what about an art category, Now youre probably asking “Why do we need an art category if this is a coding website” But what if someone wants to work with someone that uses FP, and all they can do is pixel art or vector art and barely knows how to code. So the art category will be used as like showing the programmer what you can do.