[quote name='Servant of the Lord' timestamp='1357188082' post='5016971']
Sounds good, except for users putting up five pong clones and getting points.[/quote]

Well honestly with this community, I trust the users enough to use the honor system to avoid things like that. Plus, there's enough of here to police that anyway :)

I think users should rate the game in terms of accomplishment ("Good work (beginner project)", "Great work (advanced project)", "Impressive work").
[/quote]

I like that as well. But honestly, if a beginner finishes a game and posts it, I think that user should be awarded immediately for it. We get automatic points for logging in. So why not get automatic points for actually making and finishing a game? And have you suggestion as well?

I'd like to see issues like the above fixed in 2013 . All I did was try to add this to the end of the post: "I'm also hoping old posts will get fixed, like this one (I just chose it at random; I haven't even read it), for example (notice the quote is borked and the smiley is [rollseyes] instead of the actual ). I imagine fixing old posts would require some script or something that actually modifies the posts contents and updates them as much as possible, which I bet would be a slow process (to not overload the server)." Read the first version of that post's history to get a more readable format of my original two requests.

Glad to hear that Articles are being overhauled, I was recently tempted to write one until I realized I didn't even know where they were on the new site...

Have you guys considered adding staff or moderators? I've been reading this "we're too busy for x feature" stuff for years. It seems like there's some community guys (like Alpha_ProgDes or SoL, for example) who would be happy to help with some aspects of running the site.

I agree that Your Announcements needs some kind of overhaul. Really, if it were not like a traditional forum at all but rather tiled screenshots, that would be great. A separate Spotlight Project of the Week would also be nice (maybe even split into in-progress and complete?).

As for the whole lack of creative types, I'm not sure there's a lot of stuff to do to immediately improve that, but there's some little things to consider:

• Split Visual Arts into separate 2D and 3D forums. How on Earth is it still one forum?
• Maybe something similar to the above with Music and Sound
• Game Design could be "Gameplay Design" since a lot of beginners seem confused about the terminology. Might even be split into sub forums for specific gameplay questions and those overarching threads about genres, etc.
• Cull the stickies. So many are ancient, and really make the forums look dead.

I'm not a fan of subforums now that we have prefix tag options for posts. More people need to pick up using them to help in forums like Visual Arts to make it easy for people to find 2D or 3D-related content.

[quote name='Prinz Eugn' timestamp='1357265759' post='5017332']
Cull the stickies. So many are ancient, and really make the forums look dead.
[/quote]

Anything like this should be reported directly to a forum mod for consideration. I'm all for cleaning up stickies but oldies can be goodies.

I'm not a fan of subforums now that we have prefix tag options for posts. More people need to pick up using them to help in forums like Visual Arts to make it easy for people to find 2D or 3D-related content.

I disagree, at least for 2D vs 3D. It's absurd to have this:

[attachment=13078:Technical.png]

...yet lump 2D and 3D art. It's somewhat confusing to have such different media just sort of stuck together. I think tags still need a lot of work before people can rely on them to separate out topics, especially in terms of auto-tagging and suggested tags.

I think even then for general browsing having them separated would be nice from a basic usability standpoint and make it look less like the site treats art as sort of a bewildering afterthought; "Maya... Photoshop... what's the difference?"

[quote name='Gaiiden' timestamp='1357267632' post='5017338']

Prinz Eugn, on 03 Jan 2013 - 19:15, said:
Cull the stickies. So many are ancient, and really make the forums look dead.
Anything like this should be reported directly to a forum mod for consideration. I'm all for cleaning up stickies but oldies can be goodies.

[/quote]

At this point, it would be more efficient to get someone to go through all of them in Visual Arts. Almost all of them need to be either reformatted, checked for broken links, or retired since they're from 2006. Plus, how do you even report posts anyway?

I would say that if you want tags to be more especially to separate content, then you'll have to come up with a pretty good Search system for them.

[quote name='Prinz Eugn' timestamp='1357265759' post='5017332']
Split Visual Arts into separate 2D and 3D forums. How on Earth is it still one forum?
[/quote]

When you say 2D and 3D art, do you actually mean Sprite Art and 3D models?

Split Visual Arts into separate 2D and 3D forums. How on Earth is it still one forum?

When you say 2D and 3D art, do you actually mean Sprite Art and 3D models?

Basically. Anything using sprite sheets or rendering 2D images as opposed to using 3D models and environments. Of course there's some crossover with textures and pre-rendered sprites, etc, but that's not a deal breaker to me.

This and this do not belong in the same forum in my mind.

I would like better benefits for the GD membership(one T-shirt sent for all who enroll, options between two different themes(I WANT MY BLACK AND PURPLE THEME BACK ))

More articles and even separated community threads for different engine users(if legally possible) so people can delve into development and knowledge exchange. I know we engine users can go to the relevant engine communities, but still it would be nice to have a safe haven for development where the more commercial aspect from the companies who provide us with the engines are left in the background so all the energy goes into game development

Oh and did I mention my black and purple theme?