This forum - Why? - How? - FAQ. Read this!

[Admin]

Hello there. I guess you all want to know why this forum is created and how we are going to use it. Moreover: why this forum? Why not some fancy project site?

Fattycat17 had the idea of creating a forum on "forumotion", a free forum hosting site. I asked him what a good hosting site would be for such "big" project, and he said this.

The more I am editing and configuring here, the more I have the idea this will really work. In fact, I'm now 100% sure this will work.

Main organization
As you probably saw the forum has 2 main categories - "The game" (which holds the Suggestions and General Talk forums) and "Organization" - which can be used to organize this big project.

Let's start with the "The game - Suggestions" forum. In that forum, everyone can post their suggestions. The main benefit of this is that every suggestion will get it's open topic, for a much better overview. (This also makes it possible to talk about multiple suggestions all the time!). The best part, however, is that we can decline and accept suggestions. And also, they will have a feedback on the "Organization" forums. I'll explain soon.

Every member can give their topic a "Topic Icon". Please don't randomly assign them, they are there for a reason. The icon is for a "Bug Report" and the icon is for a "Suggestion".

Now, I (and soon others) can change this icon. (I'm talking about suggestions here, I have to find a solution for the bugs here, but I have an idea on that). There are 4 icons:
- Completed Suggestion (This has been implemented in the Dev Game). Feedback on the Organization forums.
- Accepted Suggestion (This suggestion has not been started yet!)
- In progress (Someone is working on this). Feedback with organization forums.
- Declined suggestion. (Reason provided in topic).

There are two other icons which will not be found in the "The game" forums. These are only found in the "Organization" forums.

The Organization Forums
Every organization forum has at least the following 3 subforums: Signup, Tasks and Task Proposals.

The main forum
Let's take the "Building" forum as example. This forum can ONLY be written on by "Building Moderators" and "Builders". It's only used for anything that is not a task proposal and not a task. For example, you can talk about "building guidelines" there. (I'll leave that to the building moderators).

Signup subforum
Every signup subforum can be accessed by everyone. If you'd like to help in "Building", post a topic there and show some things you can do. See it as a "job application" for building.
When a Building Moderator things you are suitable to join the Building Team, he/she will promote you to a Builder. (There is one issue here: I just asked it, and only one person of the Building Moderator can actually promote this. However, I am always available to do this - if you are such moderator give me a PM. ONE of the building moderators will be the "Builders" group moderator and he/she can promote the people to there).
Also note that you are not limited to only building. You can also signup for Designing for example.

Tasks subforum
Now things get interesting. Every building moderator can post a task on here. The task will get guidelines. Let's take for example the creation of the tool "Axe". A task could for example be;

Make a tool handle for the Axe tool.

Well yes, a short description but I think everyone can understand what you have to do there. It's else when a task is an island for example, you will need to provide a better description. I learned that in the setup of the "first stranded" developer organization. You can't expect that people just start doing anything. You need to provide a task. Keep that in mind.

Now - god I love this - the most awesome thing is this.

Tasks can have two icons.
- Task is open!
- Task is closed!

At the moment a Builder Moderator posts a task, he/she can (I suggest you do) to "open". Everyone can then see which tasks are open. At some point, someone will say (note: that can only be a Builder) "I will do it!". From that point, he/she will work on this task and the Builder Moderator will clsoe the door of the task. Note: it can also be reopened.
Then, when it's finished, one can put the finished icon on.

Task proposals
As you can see, Builders cannot post their own tasks. However, they can post their "proposals" in the Task Proposals forum. When a Builder Moderator things the task is a nice addition, he/she can MOVE this topic to the actual Tasks forum, so anyone can take the task.

As you can see here, the suggestions can lead to a task proposal, which will lead to a task, which will lead to a finished task! (And if someone takes a task, this suggestion will be "in progress"!).

Also note that - I don't want to sound offensive - the game is in my hands. However, using this, the game will be less created by me. And, I think that's a good thing. As I told you, I am horrible at designing GUIs and building. I need to face that the only thing I can do to make this game awesome is coding. Most people think that coding is the most important part on a game. No. It is a part of it, and it's at the same level important as for example designing islands.

If this game doesn't have an attractive world, it fails. (As it does now).
If this game doesn't have a nice User Interface, it fails (you gotta agree it's very messy now).
Etcetera.

And that is exactly why I need YOUR help. I can't do this alone, and I hope you will help me. I'm sure that we can make an extremely fun game together.

You gotta agree this is awesome.

The other forums
The last thing I'd like to say that this project has another, underlying reason. This will teach us all how to work together on a gigantic project - management. And I think you can really use that in real life.
Another nice thing is that we are trying to make a nice and cozy community - at it was before I drifted off track with the game. I hope you will make some friends here. That's also why there are some other forums to do some things that do not have to do something with the game.
Thanks for your time, and enjoy your stay.

If you have questions, post them here.

Last rule, which is the most important thing for everyone to KEEP OVERVIEW - we have to keep this organized.
Do not start creating something on your own.

[Xulp]

I'll work on it.

[Admin]

On what, exactly?

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