I have a thought: Can we somehow redo the idea of Oddworld Questions & Answers? The way it is it's ninth thread and it has at least 11 pages.

Nobody sane would browse through all the threads just to see if his theoretical question was answered already (especially knowing that multiple posts are just white noise). On the other hand, I can completely understand that more experienced users might find endlessly answering the same questions a chore. I'm thinking of some sort of trivia aggregator (maybe for that Trivia thingy Manco proposed), that also includes all the stuff Alf has said (with citations) over the years.

Whadya think? Can we pull that off?

The first one is already available... it's about Scrabs :p

I think it would be a lot of work to compile a full set of trivia, especially when most of that information will be on the wiki or on TOL.

A redo for the Q&A thread isn’t a bad idea, though. It’s been very dead for a while, so making it approachable for new members could rejuvenate it nicely.


That thread is going places, but I think I know something that would also be popular :fuzwink:

No-one has really posted in Q&A for ages. The few times people have had questions, they've created a thread. Isn't that pretty much what you're suggesting, Varrok?

That's basically the opposite of that. I want something that has all the answers in one place, but without all the other stuff in Q&A, and filtered.

Oh. Nah, that's too much work. At that point what you're asking for is TOE or the wiki.

As a recovering lurker myself, I feel I should offer my input here. I viewed these forums often way back years ago, but never joined until now being inspired by Oddworld's new project - an inevitability which some of you have predicted. But I think one way to spark new life into these forums is to look into ourselves and think about why we loved this place to begin with, and where the most fun came from.

For me, during my time as a stupid little lurker I read the fan corner more often than any other section. Specifically, my favorite memories was from reading your various fan fictions and RPG games - especially the old Work at Rupture Farms by the legendary dripik. And the times when I stopped paying attention to this place coincided with when the fan corner slowly began to lose activity (though it still has some love here and there today, like Fennec's comic). This makes me wonder if maybe what we need is more original creativity, not just random spurts of off-topic discussions combined with super-topical discussions such as project Soulstorm's weird PR stunts or "gameplay guides" for age-old oddworld games for which everything has basically been said and done for. To be active and to attract a younger generation of posters we'll need to have something to talk about, and playing more games together is a great way to make people feel involved. I strongly agree with Kjjcarpenter's ideas for game night, or at least some variation of it, because I think we should find more involving ways to form bonds - something especially important for newcomers. This goes for both actual multiplayer gaming (I.E TF2 night, Cards against humanity, Call of Halo Modern Gear, minecraft ect) and forums games as mentioned by the OP.

I also strongly agree with most other ideas thrown around here, mainly the ones compiled by Manco back there. But still, in looking at my own past and why I loved this place in its prime was its fanfiction and RPG community, which seems all but dead now. I think we should motivate ourselves to start exploring our creative sides once more to maintain a strong and lively image to new members.

He says as he has never contributed to anything here ever and is too lazy and untalented to start anything himself

It's a great friendship-builder, and it's a great way to keep the spirit of Oddworld alive regardless of how often we get actual games from the series. One way or another, we should interact with each other often.

We must bond my brothers and sisters
Bond with me.
BOND WITH ME

Bond with me, Jimmy!

As for the Fan Corner, hopefully, some stuff might pop out there in the non-distant future ;) Especially following Soulstorm's release

We'll it's not that I don't have any Fan art lying around, I'm just shy about my terrible drawingskills (*^_^*)

I'm down with game night though, yo

I think we should definitely think about resurrecting the Minecraft server. It's easy. It's affordable. It's something everyone can acquire. It would be a great place to start.

I have no idea how Minecraft servers work, so if someone wants to offer their services, let me know, haha.

Havoc would be the man to know, since he ran the second Minecraft server (dripik ran the first, but he isn’t active any more).

But I doubt it’s too complicated to set one up, there must be tutorials all over the internet for Minecraft these days.

I wouldn’t want anyone to fork out on a paid server until we know there’s an interest though, since Minecraft has been out for a while now.

You're always more than welcome to post regardless! I'm sure plenty of people would appreciate and enjoy your work, and help you to improve if you were interested.

It's literally a case of

1. Download minecraft-server.jar
2. Create batch file with premade javaw command in it that they give you
3. Run batch file

You have to accept a eula too that's inside of eula.txt once you first run nowadays but that's it



If you're hosting from home obviously like anything else you host behind PAT, you're gonna need to port forward or create a PAT rule to make sure the sockets are translated correctly.

That doesn’t seem so bad, I guess we could try out a Minecraft server if people are interested then. Then if it’s popular we could probably spring for a paid server, the prices don’t seem so expensive.

Any other multiplayer games people would be interested in setting up OWF groups for? Terraria, Overwatch, TF2 – things like that?

i personally like halo online but that would be totally up to how many people gaf enough to set it up on their own

What about online poker?

It also depends on whether or not we want a vanilla game, a weird-ass game, or a semi-vanilla server with some good mods set up. I personally gave up with my own single-player adventures because I broke my game with a bunch of mods...because I'm a retard. BUT, the thing about Minecraft is after a while you start to realize how much the game sucks with out at least the basics set up for a server.

I'd be up for an OWFcraft server, it's been ages since I've found a good multiplayer minecraft server.

If you're thinking Forge, it's not that hard either - the setup itself creates the server/clients for you, then its a case of just looking for what mods you want and placing the .jars in the /mods folder on the client and

Of course, the key is finding mods that aren't so heavy that users/the server itself tank with them, as is the case with most 'good' Forge mods.



Also Vanilla does suck, *especially* since 1.10. I would argue since 1.6, multiplayer has been dead af. (I know I dropped off hosting on 1.7 due to shit netcode and shit support on mojangs behalf, also slightly cos it was boring)

Personally, since I tried to get back into Minecraft I feel that most of the best mods are for 1.7.10. Some good ones went forward to 1.8 but I've seen hardly anything good for 1.9 and above. I think most people stopped playing past 1.7.

I definitely did because they changed the netcode to some fucking shit library and then didn't patch easily exploitable (and easy to patch) bugs like the duplication glitch.

I'm trying my best to breathe some life into Fan Corner/Non Oddworld Art & Literature. Hopefully it manages to attract some newcomers to join in and start posting there.

Speaking of, I haven't seen Splat online in ages and he's the only moderator for Fan Corner.

Splat visits when you report stuff in FC. At least the last time he visited was because of that.

Varrok is a snitch.

Reported.

Agreed. They are usually full of griefing 12 year olds...

Yeah that reminds me... The first thing we gotta do is allow the administrator to use server-cheats and do that anti-griefing code... Whatever it is. The one that stops creepers and endermen from ruining your stuff. I mean yeah that may be the whole point of them, but honestly, it's the most frustrating thing ever. Especially if you're playing legit, with no item spawning tools like TooManyItems or anything.

Yea especially if we are gonna be building a completely Oddworld inspired world.

What happened to just surviving and building a shanty? Minecraft used to be cool.

I'd be down for merging Fan Corner and Non-Oddworld Art And Literature into some kind of "Creators' Corner" or even just keeping it as Fan Corner. Those forums barely get enough activity nowadays and I feel like the seperation between the two only discourages people from posting and makes it more difficult for multiple threads to maintain any kind of consistent activity.

Alternatively we could move non-oddworld art and literature into the off-topic section.

I agree. We don't exactly have a huge proportion of artists creating both Oddworld and Non-Oddworld art to warrant the two forums. Not anymore. Consolidation makes the most sense, especially with the state of the forums. Oddworld Art has almost become a joke unto itself, and outside of FennecFyre and JayDee, there's not a whole lot going on there, so I think a re-branding could help.

I feel like this merely shifts the problem. We should encourage both Oddworld and Non-Oddworld Art/Literature equally, and forging a unitary Creator's Corner would be the best bet, in my opinion.


Also, concerning Odd Piece of the Week, I'm thinking this thread should be released every Wednesday. Hump day seems as good as any other. If anyone has other ideas, please voice them!

Manco, would you like to do next week's Piece?

That just adds further seperation between the people who want to make stuff, merging the two definitely seems like the better idea.

I'd be down to do one for The Schism next week if I can include some batshit theory. Or even just some massive lore theory piece.

Go for it, brother! ;)

I think some kind of separation needs to exist so that people can find stuff easily - if there were a tagging system like in newer forum softwares, I'd be fine with that, but with what we've got I think using subforums will have to do. It's important to separate so people can find the stuff they're looking for - probably most people will be more interested initially in seeing fan works, so mixing them with original content would make it harder for people to find. I'm open to convincing though.

Speaking of which, any news on reorganizing from Nate? Xavier?


I have an idea lined up, but the last thread was only posted a couple of days ago, so I can hang on til next week.


Of course, if you want to go ahead first I'd be fine with waiting.

I'll merge with you if you know what I mean. Murrr hurr hueeuA1!! MAUEURHHRR!!

because I don't....

I can't speak for Xav, but personally I'm waiting for people to stop arguing about the forum organisation before implementing anything. I'm up for the idea, though.

Yeah guys, sort it out, make a poll or something :D

I’ll happily post a poll in a couple of hours – it seems like everyone was happy with my overall suggestion, and we’re just looking to decide how Fan Corner should be restructured, is that correct?

Yes. ;)

Concerning Fan Corner, either keep Non-Oddworld Art and Literature in the same Zulag, or merge it with Oddworld Art and Literature. Consolidate and simplify, don't partition them across the forums.