rmx: A wiki is an archive of information maintained not by the webmaster, but by other people who submit information to it. Wikipedia is the most well-known. Here you can clearly see how it works - you can submit information about some subject. The only maintaining required is checking the history to ensure no inappropriate/irrelevant/false information and removing any updates that fall into one of these three categories.

Wikis work really well: Check out the Spiderweb BoA/BoE communities.

Speaking as a primary EVN user, I don't think you really need to worry about it. We get plenty of newbie players over there asking questions, but about the developers we get use our forums mostly for progress logs and personal threads on their own plug...there's very little content creation discussed there. A huge percentage of our conversation is just Member's Lounge stuff that doesn't really fit in any of the forums I know of here (I guess it's Just Chat, but I haven't been in). Most of the rest of it is answering questions about continuing storylines and such.
And, though there may be some interesting concepts that we've come up with nobody else has, but I doubt there are many. I didn't know about SpacePirate's background music thing, and I frequent those forums. Certainly all our plugins go up here.

I didn't really leave. I spend time at both ASW and KRF. Although, I am not a true developer yet I will be. I really like DB's idea. We could set up a mini scale encyclopedia on line with links to the author or to site. This would provide central database or knowlege storage.

I would also set up hyperlinks to and from major groups. If you want the community to hold together it is best to keep the whole thing fluent as to allow data transfer. Best to expand, rather then condense. I would also like to reassure you that KRF is a filler for the ASW forums, it is simply a place where a couple teams can get together and discuss private matters on their TC's without being disturbed.

Now that this has moved past 40 posts I will just say a small word of thanks to all of you who have contributed so far to this discussion, and encourage more of you to weigh in, no matter how small that contribution may seem to you. I will be responding in detail to as many of your points as possible. I have been reading this topic, but wanted to hold off for a while to see what developed. I am very pleased so far. Keep up the good work, and I'll be respond soon!

My take on the issue:

Traditionally, the EV developing community has been largely independant: indeed, at the Beginning (EV 1.0.1), anyone could download ResEdit and the Bible, use the ResEdit templates, open the data files, and start hacking/cheating/etc, before eventually doing somethings worthwhile and releasing it, much like sprite/sound replacements in Maelstrom: I s'pose this wasn't expected when Maelstrom was first released, but people just needed to open the files that came with it with ResEdit and modify, and eventually Ambrosia hosted such mods for their customers. The EV developing community followed in this tradition, doing stuff largely independantly from Ambrosia. For instance, we will never see anything like Apple's Human Interface Guidelines from Ambrosia for EV plug-ins.

That doesn't mean we can't have a centralised source of information and discussion, but that explains in part the situation. Another thing is, I think, the fact that a new guy that may come to the EVDC checks the topics here before doing anything and is terrified by the technical level of some stuff, and decide it's not for him, and either develops completely independantly (in which case he is likely to give up, given some issues inherent to the Nova engine and scenario that didn't exist with EV and EVO, such as "my new ships can't buy any outfit!", and others such as the lack of a Nova plug dever FAQ), or goes to EV-Nova.net or the like for info.

I think it is essential that the EVDC remains the centralised source for information, as it's the only place we're almost sure a beginner plug-in developer will first come for info. The plug dever FAQ is dead when it comes for Nova (sorry Martin Turner, but that's what I think), though it contains some useful gems, and any other would just be unfindable.

That's why I started writing my guides. I just don't really have ideas for a plug right now, and I'm crap for graphics, but I have a lot of technical knowledge (which right now includes 68k assembly, no I'm not kidding) and I'm willing to share it while ideas build up. I think the technical information, such as counters, "cool Nova hacks", most of the "important links", can remain as it is: it's more meant for experienced people who know how to look for information. However, stuff for beginners should exist, in the first place, and it shouldn't have to be found: it should be readily available, a most a few hyperlinks away, without having even to look for it in the "important links", as most of them are quite daunting to the newbie. It should be included in every website willing to include it (that's why I allow some stuff on my guides, they are a bit like open-source, but managed), but it should also rely in an Ambrosia place or at least a reliable place (I think EVula's empire can be reasonably considered reliable), an Ambrosia place being preferable. And we just happen to have the place for this.

Bomb's plug-in guide

What I would like is to have (yet another) sticky topic at the top of the EVDC, that says "Welcome to the EVDC!\nPlease read this first.", that would conain a welcome message and a link to a topic in Bomb's Plug-in guide forum. Then in this topic will be found this, which will link to an intro tutorial for each editor (at this point, we cannot expect the new plug-in developer to have acheived editor-independance), then the Bible Explained to Dummies, then the annotated templates, all in their own topics in Bomb's Plug-in guide forum, each linking to the following one but also independantly available from the topic list, if need be. Of course, I wouldn't be the only one allowed to post topics (anyone can right now, though it may get deleted...), but it would need to be managed by someone, who may or may not be me. Discussion about them would be in topics in the EVDC, that way they wouldn't interfere with the tutorials but may participate in their improvement, as I will more than gladly consider good remarks about them.

Right now I need to correct the weap annotated template, then I'll try to format my guides as much as the local BB code allows me (too bad HTML is no longer possible in special boards such as FAQs), then post a whole batch of them (the first batch likely being foreword, intro tutorials, BEtD, maybe troubleshooting guide). Maybe then we could consider asking the Powers That Be to change the name of Bomb's plug-in guide and maybe set a new admin. Of course, old stuff from there will be kept, just not stickyed so not visible, as it contains useful gems, just like the plug dever FAQ.

Please tell me what you think of this project.

ZP: Got a query for you.
You've gone on a lot about how difficult it is for you to put these guides in HTML format. Couldn't you just copy and paste the guides into an html document?

I'm probably missing something here, and if I come off archaically ignorant, I apologize.

They wont be formatted properly. Things like unordered lists and such, even line breaks (unless he uses some crappy html dev tool) aren't hard to put in, their just a pain, and take quite a while. Plus, if he adds cross-referencing links, this would take even longer. The only problem is he doesnt really have a dedicated domain/area for them.

ZP, I think that is about the best idea I've heard so far. Just my $.02.

rmx256, on Mar 10 2005, 10:29 PM, said:

ZP, I think that is about the best idea I've heard so far. Just my $.02.
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Agreed on..

Here's my take on this:

Having information in an easy to find location is very important, but it won't mean jack if you have volumes of every single Nova hack possible but you don't have some devoted people actually working on plugins and TC's.

It's an issue of motivation and devotion to a project, not how many cool things you can do with the engine. If you have all the hacks in the world, but no team to put them together, you're no better than when you started. Many of these satellite boards are mainly devoted to developing (such as AP^3, and its recent offshoot -which is solely dedicated to production.)

If you don't have people actually doing something with the knowledge, that knowledge is useless...

That's why people must be where the knowledge is: mostly here.

Yes, that's the main problem about "doing HTML": indeed, the guides in the form they are here are not really meant to be used like this, but I expected people like Space Pirate, i.e. better web designers (which is not just knowing HTML but also being able to do an elegant, easy-to-read design) to make HTML documents from them. It happened for the BEtD and two templates, so it will be the basis used for the other guides, but I will still need to put HTML tags where there is (mostly) nothing, and set a BB-compatible reduced version of it for Bomb's Plug-in Guide.

The worst thing is, I have a little webhosting that comes from my ISP, but I can't manage it right now due to lack of Internet access other than by my school, the firewall/proxy of which blocks ftp upload!

Huh, although I have a link to EV-Nova.net on my homepage, I never go there myself. I just added it because it was a link that came into my mind, so that the Links page is not completely empty. I had a Dark Swarm forum there, but one day the comments stopped coming and I stopped visiting it.
In my eyes, the problem is that all these communities are completely separate. There's no real connection between them, except for the game they're about.
That's what should be changed, I think.
That or they should specialize. Instead all of them offering the same things, they should add to each other. An example for this is that while ev-nova.net has a thread for upcoming plugins, ASW does not.
At least that's my opinion.

Arion, on Mar 13 2005, 08:22 PM, said:

In my eyes, the problem is that all these communities are completely separate. There's no real connection between them, except for the game they're about.
That's what should be changed, I think.
That or they should specialize. Instead all of them offering the same things, they should add to each other. An example for this is that while ev-nova.net has a thread for upcoming plugins, ASW does not.
At least that's my opinion.
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Thank you so much, that's what I'm looking for. I have a feeling that that connection will be made in the future.

Edit:
I guess my view on this is... I see where mrxak is coming from on this subject, I would probably think the same way if I were in his position, we do need to keep things organized, and have all information at disposal, but I don't belive that having sub-communities will corrupt this, unless of course they don't have a clue what there doing and lets face it, not every person wants to do everything on EVDC, or on Ambrosia net for that matter, they have that choice. Like others said, as long as the EV series remains, so will EVDC....I'm kinda rambling on because I have so much I want to say... What we needs is one place to establish a connection between every single other developer, one place for every developer or future developer to come, it will be hard to do that with EVDC because were only limited to a forum, if Andrew would give the resources to do so, then hey that would be great...But that's not going to happen any time soon, in my opinion, I rather have a central connecton ran by fellow developers anyways, nobody knows truly what we need more then the developers... I have so much more to say, but that all I'm gonna say for now.

This post has been edited by Matthew Walk : 17 March 2005 - 04:55 PM

Okay, before I address everybody's comments, I want to redirect a bit and ask a question:

What do I need to do to improve things for everybody here on EVDC?

What would help this week, this month, and this year?

Week: uh, sticky the Cool Nova Hacks thread?

Month: dunno.

Year: help get the dev wiki running, organized, and write up some guides on how to use them - I, for example, can browse wikis fine but have no idea how their upkeep and content creation works.

Post topics, maybe stickied, about it, to go to it, how to contribute, etc. etc. etc.

Otherwise, just keep up the moderating job, making this a good place for people to come and discuss.

I would at least leave all the wiki work to Darthbob since it was his idea, he could explain some things maybe.

This post has been edited by Matthew Walk : 23 March 2005 - 07:15 PM

Matthew Walk, on Mar 24 2005, 12:15 AM, said:

I would at least leave all the wiki work to Darthbob since it was his idea, he could explain some things maybe.
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Ya, plus I've found that DB has much more time then the rest of us. He actually gets things done in a fairly timely matter, as long as you keep annoying him about it.

By the way, where can I find the wiki thing? :unsure:

Swithich, on Mar 25 2005, 07:41 AM, said:

Ya, plus I've found that DB has much more time then the rest of us. He actually gets things done in a fairly timely matter, as long as you keep annoying him about it.

By the way, where can I find the wiki thing? :unsure:
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heh, let me rephrase that, what I mean is let him explain how it works, how to get things started, how we should go about things, etc. But I highly incoruage everyone to use it, this could turn into something special. But for now, the EVDC wiki is down because were having technical difficulties, I'll get to the bottom of this and see if I can fix it.

EDIT: You can find the wiki here when we get it back up for you. http://www.devring.net:16080/evdcwiki/

This post has been edited by Matthew Walk : 25 March 2005 - 03:41 PM