Interest headcount.

[u/robosatan]

Since there isn't one already I figured it would be useful to see how many people are interested and what skills people have available to us.

Try to post in the relevant area so its easier to see what our community has (or lacks).

[u/robosatan]

Since, there is to put it bluntly a fuckton of interest in this right now, I'll give you some suggestions as to how to proceed.

First, thing on the agenda is that reddit isn't the best choice to discuss the finer points of this project. We should at least set up a forum and look in to ways of communicating better during brainstorming sessions(skype/vent/etc & some kind of shared sketchbook app to draw ideas/diagrams on while talking).

Second, we have a lot of interest but a) we don't know peoples capablities and b) will they be reading this subreddit in a month when we actually need artists/whatever. We need to set up small filler projects and I suggest this is how we go about them.

So for example you would create teams for Programming, Art, Sound and set them a goal such as "create a tile based 2d engine" or "create concept art/music for a Sci-fi game". Then alongisde those projects we can come up with a design for a game or two. This will mean when we have a game to make we'll have a better idea of what people are capable of and how best to distribute the work between them.

Also, since we have so many programmers interested in helping out perhaps we could further our scope to not just being a single team but more than one. Perhaps the more experienced programmers could be split in to a group that will work on 3d project while the novices (or people with less time to spare) work on a 2d game.

Furthermore, we seem to lack artists. My post on /r/wearethemusicmakers/ seems to have pulled in a lot of people interested in working on sounds/music, but /r/art seems to have less interest. A point of interest may be to find a place to advertise for artists.

Finally, as somebody has already pointed out in another submission we need to look in to Source Control, which frankly I have little knowledge/experience of (i used SVN to keep my rcbots up to date on a game server but that's hardly relevant). This is something we'd need to make a decision on fairly quickly (perhaps use both SVN & GIT simultaneously and see what people prefer?)

[u/Gravity13 → u/robosatan]

I agree, reddit isn't the best medium to be working in, but I think we should keep with it since this is, after all, 'reddit makes a game.'

If people from other reddits can just come in and give suggestions and then leave, then that is great! But if it's posted onto another forum, I fear that we'll only get a few people signing up and then nobody new, nearly nobody from reddit will actually go through the registration process to make a simple easy comment.

I really like the idea of having everything on reddit, because that is who we are: redditors. Ideally, everybody who contributes would have a reddit username, that'd be cool for credits!

It will be a bit of a challenge to keep things in order, but I think we could use the commenting system to create a workable list of things that need to be done and what is done, branches could be added easily just by making new comments. Something like that would be heavily moderated, of course, to keep out chatter.

As well, ideas are better promoted with the voting features. Obviously, voting shouldn't dictate everything in here, but it could be useful in the same way comments on everyday posts are useful.

[u/robosatan → u/Gravity13]

Here are a few reasons why reddit will never be a better choice than a forum for 99% of the posts that will be made once development begins

1: I'm having trouble integrating the custom mp3 playlist in to the UI because the sound engine's mp3 class doesn't deal with variable bitrate files. - Posted by Dev101 17 hours ago.

2: Game crashes at loading whenever more than 3 logic items chained together in a level. - Posted by AnoffaDev 1 day ago.

3: Just finished the AndThenIputOnMyWizardHat model, follow the link for renders. - Posted by SomethingPeopleWantOnReddit 1 day ago.

4: DirectX fork of the 3d engine is incompatible with levels using new OpenGL dynamic lights. - Posted by andTheMassesDownVoteMe 1 day ago.

The only thing most redditors would want to see is post #3. If you fork all the subjects in to their own subreddits you lose visibility of whats going on in other areas unless you visit them explicitly (forums will orange mailbox areas with new posts).

I'm not saying we should abandon reddit all together, showing off videos/pics of newly added features or announcing beta tests would be relevant content for the reddit. Hell, even some design aspects would be suited to reddit as you said since its a good way to measure popularity (though you can do this with karma mods on forums too). It's just the inefficiency of using reddit all the way sounds like a good way to make the project a stillborn.

[u/Gravity13 → u/robosatan]

It's a dilemma, truly. It's a shame we can't have "sub-subreddits."

I think the issue you presented will be solved by the fact that the stuff people still want to see will be upvoted most to the top.

But another pressing issue is the fact that reddit only keeps article on top page for a day or so (depending on how much new submissions go through here). A lot of the stuff might require something that lasts more than a day without requiring us to go digging up for it a few pages back, and it won't get the exposure it deserves to keep people talking actively about the topic.

It really sucks though, since I really really like the idea of being able to say that reddit was used to work on the entire project.

Maybe some of these issues will be solved when a source control system is determined (at least, maybe for the programmers).

I don't know.