Fangame and fanvideo makers; discussion
 

First of all, I'd like to request that if you have nothing helpful to contribute to this discussion then you don't post here. That means you, OANST.

Right, it has increasingly come to my attention that Fan Corner has moved with the times and no longer incorporates only fan-art and fan-fiction.

Fan games and youtube videos are becoming increasingly common in the Fan Corner.
Since I myself and still in the stoneage where books are made out of paper and pictures stay still (televiwhat?) and rarely watch or play these (I'd watch my video, but my laptop is rubbish and will rarely play youtube videos), I want to ask the people who make and watch/play these productions how they suggest I best moderate them, to keep you enjoying them and keep the forum tidy.

So this is pretty much open discussion. If you make, watch or play fangames and videos, feel free to post here with any relevant ideas we can discuss.

I want to hear what you think is worth posting.
Is it worth posting to say 'I have an idea' or 'I need someone to program for me'?
What makes a demo worth posting?
How can you tell if a game is trustworthy?
I'm thinking about making a specific thread for all 'I have an idea' posts; is this a good idea?

If you have any opinions on the above or any other issues relating to fangames and fanvideos, please let us know. I will be using the results of this discussion to shape my moderation of FC, so really it's worth your posting and if no one posts, I'll just have to do all this on my own guesswork.

I do want to make FC relevant for all who post there, so it is worth you posting here.

Thanks,
Splat.

No, this is never worth posting, you wouldn't really accept it with fics and art (Except in novelty situations) so why accept it with technomancy? Anyone who needs to ask the latter question should damn well head off to Gamemaker forums or the like.
Anything really, I suppose it's just the same as a initial sketch or prologue, the difference being that the majority of those finish or at least make some attempt to continue Don'tyoudarelookatmelikethat. Really to make it fair you need to allow all demos to be posted in one thread for one game but discourage people on giving up projects easily.
All gamemaker games from Yoyogames are trustworthy, pass on .exe files from random file sharing programs.
Possibly it'd allow fans to better pool and amalgamate ideas?

As Wings of Fire just said, I reckon that should generally be frowned upon. I know one site that locks any game thread that doesn't have proof (e.g. screenshots or a small demo) that the game is actually in production, maybe we could implement a similar policy?

Unfortunately this one is quite tricky, because although it'd probably be beyond the ability of most of the game designers here, even Game Maker can be used maliciously - Game Maker itself has a few things that can cause damage if used wrongly, and with extensions/DLL files it can potentally do anything.

So it's a tricky thing really, you can require screenshots and such, but that still doesn't mean anything - it could just as easily be a trojan horse. Maybe someone else will have some suggestions on this one?

That sounds like a good idea - maybe make one similar to the writing tips thread too. I believe there already is a thread in Fan Corner with game making tips, so maybe that could just be stickied.

Thanks for making this topic. It's nice for people to talk about Fan Corner in a productive way (I think of it as my second home).

Fan Corner is like a meeting place of the minds for people who want to do more than say "I love Oddworld". My fanfiction started life as a tribute to another fanfic, but then it grew and grew, until I have my own universe of stories and characters.

The problems with Fan Games are the same as the problems with new game makers in general. They make all the promises in the world and tell everyone that they'll keep working, and then they stop making the game mid-flow (mostly due to the pressures of everyday life). My opinion is that this will almost always happen regardless, so we shouldn't penalize the users who don't manage to complete a game. If we put any restrictions on creativity, you're more likely to see a Black Hole where the creativity has gone. We'll go from unfinished ideas to no ideas. For new games, I would recommend at least one screenshot and a brief description of the game, to dispel any doubt.

Right now we have at least 3-5 game projects which are being developed heavily and look very promising (including the 3D Abe's Oddysee remake). I say we keep a close eye on these projects and help out as much as we can. The more support and ideas we give, the better the final product will be.

As a fan artist and fanfiction writer (as well as a games maker), I see no problems with regards to attachments at the moment. Demos should be a small size (people can always host the larger files on their own websites). I can only hope that the current level of dedication of both the fans and the administrators will continue as it is.

EDIT: Just a thought, but maybe we should split Fan Corner into these categories;
Games, Artwork, FanFiction, YouTube Parodies, Ideas, Misc

We won't create subforums for all of these, but we could add some new thread icons for you guys to use to differentiate your threads.

That's not a bad idea. I'd be quite happy if each game topic had a little games joystick symbol there... but how do we get people to use it?

I like this idea. You can only encourage people to use it. It would be on the mods to ensure that everything's properly marked.

I think that my contributions are very helpful, thank you very much. I mean, I made them an entire forum last time.


OANST can't get no love? Damn.

There have been some great ideas here, and I love the idea of different icons for games, art, stories and videos. If nothing else if I had to edit them in myself it would ensure I gave all the threads the attention I ought to :p

So at the moment I'm thinking...

Make a stickied thread for IDEAS for games and requests for assistance. When you post a game idea, you give it a name so anyone replying to your post can use the name.
Then decree (:p) that you can only make a thread for your game if you have a demo and screenshots to upload.

Also, would it be wise to have the rule that you can only make a request for assistance in making a game if you have some programming abilities yourself?

As for videos, what do you guys think makes a video worth posting? How far do you have to go beyond cutting and rearranging scenes from gameplay or cutscenes or whatever?

OANST,
Note your post did nothing of the sort. Thank you.

If you didn't want OANST to post in this thread, you shouldn't have addressed him directly in your opening post.

I don't understand the logic of limiting requests in this way. I see the appeal, because it will reduce the number of requests, and it will also meant that those that do decide to contribute will have their work appreciated much more accurately. But it's the people with artistic vision of a game but no programming experience that will need help the most. Plus you can't really enforce this.

Perhaps have a single thread for videos, like there's a single thread in OD for sharing glitches. Any limit on how good a video has to be to be posted will have to be set by those that frequent FC, because they're the ones involved in the community. But surely a video would have to posted in the first place for people to determine whether it's good enough. Plus there's no such limit on fanart and writing, so it seems a bit unfair, especially to the young and fledgling videomakers.

Oh, come on. You have to know that upon hearing my name spoken (irregardless of context) I perk right up, and chase my tail around the room for half an hour. You knew better, man. You knew better.

Edit: Max beat me to it.

Excuse me? I do believe we're not spekaing Spanish here.

Guess what? It's a colloquialism!

Already this thread is getting submerged wiht OANST's irrelevant crap.

Also what is so bad about a sub forum for games?

Doesn't have to exist; fangames fall quite comfortably into FC, its just the case of moderating them fairly.

Also guys, please don't post here if you have nothing to contribute to the topic. I don't want this thread degrading like most others in FS&H do, and I do have the ability to infract people for spam in any forum.

Actually you could pretty much say the problems with Fan Games are the same as the problems with any long term fan creation. Really, if you go to Ajeillyn's Fanfiction Library and look through some of the threads there you'll see that the majority of the stories never get finished. So no, users shouldn't be penalized for not managing to complete the work, but if you look at it the same way as a fan fiction, it's not generally accepted very well if someone starts a thread saying how they have these big plans for a story they're going to write, but they don't actually have even the introduction to it written. Games are exactly the same - you need to at least have something to show the public.

But as has been pointed out, sometimes new game makers need some help getting started, so that's where that idea of a stickied thread for general game making help would be very useful. Of course, as people have pointed out in other threads new game makers would be better off asking the basics on an actual game making forum, but I don't think we can realistically expect to see that happening, so at least having a single thread for people to ask for help would keep it contained to one place.

As for restricting requests, as Max pointed out it's a bit unrealistic to not allow any one to ask for help unless they already have programming skills of some kind, but we could always include guidelines, for instance ask that they provide a detailed description of whatever it is they want help with, and if they've already tried something, tell us what it is and what's wrong with it. Something like that is a bit hard to enforce, since there are so many people who never read the instructions and just go ahead and post "hw i mak games plz hlp!", but at least you would have something to refer them to.

Just my two cents.

Usually videos become a problem when they're just 99% of the same scene with a fart noise placed in an inappropriate place. The only problem I see here is if we become too restrictive and cut off all the creativity.

You might want to make a sticky about posting games; ie. how to take a screenshot, what file formats to use, etc. I think Fan Corner should be loosely moderated. We don't need 24/7 surveillance, just a little nudge here and there. Again, thanks for all the comments guys. This discussion is really going places.

Edit: Your fanfiction comment is well noted. I try my hardest to finish every piece I start. However dropout is quite common. Perhaps we need different levels of Game Making discussion? All the way from the newbs (game maker) to the intermediate (flash / c++) to the pro (3D stuff). We should try and assist people at the different levels as much as possible.

Perhaps you need to delineate the difference between game design and game programming. Have some sort of guidelines on what an aspiring game designer should include in his/her postings (eg character and environment designs, description of plot, description of gameplay) and allow them to develop this over time in the same way that a fiction writer would.

Also, encourage people to think about designing their games on paper as a skill in its own right, and not to jump too quickly towards programming. Once they have a detailed plan, they can then put out a call for experienced programmers to help them out.

Briefly, regarding the horror of too many stickied threads: You could re-purpose your Rules and Guidelines thread into a more generalized introduction thread: provide users with links to all the useful resources and reference works on (joshkrz's Oddworld Resources; Oddworld Fonts; Fanfic Library) and off (Game Maker; Yoyo Games) the Forums.

And though it pains me, the Oddworld MMOSG isn't exactly popular... or up... right now.

I agree with Max, the MMORPG should be un-sticked for now, until we see a revival in it. Perhaps we can just keep it on the back-burner until the next Oddworld game gets released (whenever that may be).

Stickies can be used wisely, but I wouldn't suggest more than 3 stickies on the front page of each board. It would be good if we could all chip in with our ideas and come up with a basic FAQ for game making and fanfiction writing or fan art.

You wouldn't need a stickied thread for game making; it should be more like the OD glitches thread or WDYLL; they're there and they get posted in but they don't need to be at the top all the time.

NOA&L has stickied threads where you can offer and ask for advice for writing and art. I'll add one for game-making soon(ish).

As soon as I saw this thread I wanted to contribute some ideas, but you guys seemed to of hammered down everything already. You guys are awesome.

Realistically in the world of game making no one wants to make 'your game' because they are busy making their own game. No one with the skills to program, sprite, model, or what ever sits around waiting for someone to come up with ideas. Ideas are honestly a dime a dozen and practically everyone has them. It's much better for an aspiring game designer to find a way they can contribute to their own game so others will take them seriously.

Now sometimes there are people with revolutionary ideas that are so fantastic that their creativity makes up for itself. This is rare however. I think people who want to start their own threads about their game idea should have to write a design document with vast detail of their vision.

I agree. Not to mention that many of these "original game ideas" are just re-workings of the Oddysee/SligStorm idea! I had to do Oddworld Party because I felt that the Fan Corner was full of platform games :D.

I have two questions all aspiring game designers should answer before making an Oddworld game;
1) Does it really have to use the established Oddworld main characters and locales?
2) Does it really have to be a platformer? Why not a FPS or turn-based?

Is it worth posting to say 'I have an idea' or 'I need someone to program for me'?
See the 4th question

What makes a demo worth posting?
Any demo is worth posting, but make rules that forbid people to post various threads about different versions of the same game. Let them just have on thread about their game, and keep everything related to that game in that thread.

How can you tell if a game is trustworthy?
Any game is trustworthy. As long as the one developing it is focussed. As soon as they lose interest it goes the wrong way.

I'm thinking about making a specific thread for all 'I have an idea' posts; is this a good idea?
It is a good idea but make it more like into a collaboration thread. Where people can request help on a project but can also offer help to others. The best Idea for this would be to assign someone with the duty of keeping the first post up to date with a list of persons searching for and offering help.

Hope this helps you with the decision. I think it is a great idea to split the fan corner up in maybe two section but not more. Also a set of new rules specifically for the fan corner will help. Good luck with this;)

Hey Splat thanks for making a thread over my little question =D

I think that a sub foru mshould be made for us liek the non-oddworld literature area in the fan corner, there we can be free =)

It's nice ot see some people take an interest in this but some people never even go there so why post u gits lol =)

I'll take this question.

Because we have nothing better to do.

What's wrong with platformers? There is a lot of them because people just want to recreate the oddworld feel.

I prefer full on story games / platformers, to arcade / short games, and some people prefer it vice versa, so really, the question people should be asking themselves is:

Do I have time and effort to create new characters and will new characters compromise the graphics / feel of the game?

What type of game would my audience most enjoy / demand?
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I think the icons are a good idea, along with the stickied thread.

Really we need to organize threads by catagory, such as, fanfic, game, video, graphics, etc. It would make browsing so much easier. The icons would cover that partly, but actually separating them into groups would be good. (I don't mean separate forums, just visually separated.)

well i was origonally going to make slig wars a FPS but i suck a textures and "organic" 3D modelling

Just to clarify, until the release of Citizen Siege (if such a thing ever happens) the Fan Corer will NOT be splitting into separate forums or subforums. There is absolutely no likelihood of this happening.

And as far as I'm concerned, people can choose for themselves what sort of game they want to make; RPGs or platformers or whatever. I wouldn't complain because everyone's writing stories in third person, or because there isn't enough art made with natural dyes made from crushed Australian beetles or whatever.