Andor's Trail

I voted "Yes (I'm simply browsing the forums)", because the points made by Zukero:

4# - The point is to be able to send "Group PMs", that is, if I want to notify translators that new content can be translated, I can send a PM to the "Translators" group, and it automatically arrives in all the translators' inbox. Moreover, it can help keep track of who did what, help newcomers identify contributors, and also, it offers some kind of public recognition of the work done.

seem very useful.

And I personally can't see any downsides so I think there's nothing wrong with trying a group system

Go for it. If it makes things easier for you guys, give it a go.

Personally, I want to help you guys improve the game, so if this can do that, fire away.

M

Zukero wrote:3# - We already have a broad group with "easy" access: "Developers". It only requires you to ask for it, and send a PM to sdevaney explaining your motives.

I think you mean "Development Corner", which everyone has read access to, but not write access. Everyone has access to "Developers".

What happened to Development Corner though? There's a couple of posts from June, but other than that it's all months old. It seems to have died. There's a whole bunch of quests listed there, but I assume most of them are now dead material, with the original developer long gone. Any comments on that?

Nope. I mean the "Developers" user group, which gives write access to the development corner if you have membership in this group. This is not to be confused with the "Developers" forum section.
I just noticed how confusing this is getting. I guess renaming the "Developers" group to "Contributors" could help

Zukero wrote:Nope. I mean the "Developers" user group, which gives write access to the development corner if you have membership in this group. This is not to be confused with the "Developers" forum section.
I just noticed how confusing this is getting. I guess renaming the "Developers" group to "Contributors" could help

That's a good idea.

As I understand it now, a contributor would need to create something that gets accepted into the game to be accepted into one of these groups.. Yes?

My ideas in Ideas and Future Dev don't count then.
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4798

Oh well. I can keep working.

I like the idea of tagging forum members contributing to AT! This will definitely help us to identify contributors and on top of that we know what kind of content they are contributing.
I guess these groups won't include many people but this will make the groups over viewable and even more efficient.
So I vote for a "tag" system.

rijackson741 wrote: What happened to Development Corner though? There's a couple of posts from June, but other than that it's all months old. It seems to have died. There's a whole bunch of quests listed there, but I assume most of them are now dead material, with the original developer long gone. Any comments on that?

I dont know about the other projects, but as you said, the original devleopers mostly are already gone. I can only tell you that the ***~Fungi Panic quest is still on my focus, if you may have read the whole things more closly you may have read that zukero need his new code to get the things run as he likes - so there will be some time till the whole quest is completed (Furthermore I dont have actually time to work on my part of the quest) - but i guess the first part 'A delicious Mushroomsoup' could be integrated soon.

What I like about the Development Corner is that not everybody can post there, so you're able to keep your thread more structured (Even for yourself). Maybe we really need to split the whole Developement bunch into the two sections "(head-)developers" and "contributers" to have the hierarchy more transparent. Contributers could be able to post in the "Development Corner" and Developers are all forumadmins who are able to edit/move topics and invite other to the Developers or Contributers group... That way you could use the colored names better, i think when there will be too many colors it will get a bit confusing

Melarec wrote: But what if someone makes content and maps? or maps and code? or content, maps, and code? Or any other number of combinations.. Will users get multiple tags? And one that says Ultimate Contributor if you do everything?
Hmm..

We could discuss about a Design Standard for the user's signature to help communication
eg. for me:

Mapmaker | Translator | Content maker



PS: Sorry, i did not voted, cause i think "yes, it helps forum users communication" and "No, there are enough coloured names, and there is the problem when some user forfills more than one developers/contributers attributes. The actual colours are showing me some kind of hierarchy"

I think the biggest plus of development corner is that it keeps most of the new development material in one big "spoiler". Anyone can read it if they want, but it's very easy to avoid doing so. I have deliberately avoided reading almost anything there.

A group does not necessarily have a color associated with it, so having several groups does not mean having several colors. Being a member of the development group currently does not confer any fancy colored name. So I think they are really two different options. If the lead developers think multiple groups for different types of contributor would be useful, then try it out. If it doesn't work out the groups can easily be dissolved again, and everyone merged into the one developers group. Then, as a separate issue, I would say contributors should get a special color for their name, but just one color for all contributors.

One question I have is regarding who can PM a group. Currently, it's not possible to PM the developers group unless you are a member. I don't see any real downside to that. However, if, for example, I'm a content creator and I want to PM the coders because I need some code changes, then not being able to do so would be inconvenient. So would contributors be able to PM any contributor group, even if they are not a member of it?