Categorize the Modding Showcase

I'm not sure having a 'team' would make it any easier, anyone should be able to mention info if they have it, while at the same time it wouldn't really suit to make the document 100% public and in that case all others would be doing is filling in info slightly before I get around to it.

Can't we just share everything that shouldn't be 100% with everybody who wants to help, and let people join along the way should they want it?

 

Do you trust everyone who frequents these forums?

 

Do you trust everyone who frequents these forums?

I know right? I wouldn't trust that Noxid guy either, he's clearly up to something.

Jokes aside, I'm sure that whoever is gonna host the documents and stuff knows who to trust and who not.

 

I can pastebin what I have so far if you guys want references, I've only got 6 pages of Showcase left to go through. We still need descriptions and whatever else DT wants.

 

Can't we just share everything that shouldn't be 100% with everybody who wants to help, and let people join along the way should they want it?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here actually. I should clarify though that by "100% public" I meant editable by anybody, not viewable. Nothing wrong with it being looked at.

No sample tonight I'm afraid, I've been unexecpectedly genuinely very busy all day. This may or may not improve tomorrow.

 

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here actually. I should clarify though that by "100% public" I meant editable by anybody, not viewable. Nothing wrong with it being looked at.

More or less that anybody who wants to be involved(and is trusted of course) should be able to get access to the project in terms of editing, and if anybody wants to join the project along the way they should be able to(considering they are trusted of course).

 

So am I supposed to be doing something? If so -- what?

No, nobody requires your help here or anywhere else

More or less that anybody who wants to be involved(and is trusted of course) should be able to get access to the project in terms of editing, and if anybody wants to join the project along the way they should be able to(considering they are trusted of course).

First I think it'd be better to get an idea of how this is going to work and so on. Anyone should be able to get involved in the ongoing discussion but I really don't think we're going to need that many people doing the actual editing, especially once the archive's up to date.

 

Alrighty, I've made a start, mostly transferring the oldest entries I already have over to the new document. Here is what it looks like so far: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uq4xtiw3fIIHzykkCF47wjjj0ADO_QzQ8K7ShVYBY3k/edit?usp=sharing
(Seriously look at those dates hahaha D: )
Make sure to check the other tabs at the bottom of the doc, they explain some more about what's going on there. It's kind of late so I'm not up to saying a whole lot more right now. Like I said, I'll be prioritising getting entries done over perfect info for now, which will still include going over every thread/mod of my own accord at least once. I want to keep as much fresh in my memory as I can this time

 

guys im so bad at web design lol

 

guys im so bad at web design lol

No you're not, that looks really good!
[Or I must be the one bad at web design ^_^; ]

 

After some discussion with Noxid, we came up with a few optimisations, which he requested I document. Based on the mod page mockup he showed me:

Spoiler

-The main mod intro will be copied from the OP of the matching thread, with any links removed to avoid people trying to click them and then asking why they're dead. Other changes or more info can be added if necessary.
-Screenshots can also be taken from the thread, or uploaded by users to help show off what the game looks like.
-The page will contain an link to the archived mod, as well as a link to the thread in Showcase, which is only active if the mod itself is still active, i.e. not abandoned, or completed without updates for a certain length of time (6 months maybe?). Otherwise the link will be greyed out with a note to ask questions in a general discussion thread on the forums instead. Still figuring out the details of this.
-Versions tracking is probably overkill, unless one release significantly changes from another. Maybe modders could request their older versions be archived if they really want it?
-Under the game info will be a space for discussion(s) about the mod; active mods will have a note asking for feedback and new bugs and such to be mentioned in the Showcase thread.
-Proposal for the rating system: Because so many mods are unfinished but not necessarily bad, and the aim of a rating system should be to show which mods are worth checking out, and to avoid circlejerkery, I discussed a 'positive credits' type system. This would rate from, say, 0 to 3, where 0 would be a mod with almost no notable original content, while 3 would be a scintillating bastion of both quality and quantity. (May as well include .5's in there too.)
-If such a rating system is used, there'll be someone on the page to list the ratings all users have given + their attached comments (of limited length). If a mod updates, new/updated ratings will be given higher weight compated to outdated ones.

And the archive front page shown above:

Spoiler

-Mods are displayed by latest update near the top, by default. They can be sorted by name, length, rating etc. or tag filtered. (There should probably also be a mention of how many people have rated a mod, so that a mod doesn't look really good based on only 1 or 2 ratings.)
-Would also be nice to have a list of the mod pages that have most recently been commented on, so everyone can see where the discussions are.

Think that was everything

 

I think it'd be a pain to have to re-add links every time a mod thread becomes active again, honestly. Plus people might still want to look up the thread even if it's inactive, so I feel the link should still be there. Maybe you could just mention that it's too old to post or something.
Additionally, I feel like adding OP descriptions is a bit overkill. Those descriptions can easily change and it can become a ton of work to keep updating them. I mean hell I won't be updating it so not my problem I guess, but seems like a lot of work to me.

 

Will the discussion section be sorted in ascending date order, or descending date order?

-Proposal for the rating system: Because so many mods are unfinished but not necessarily bad, and the aim of a rating system should be to show which mods are worth checking out, and to avoid circlejerkery, I discussed a 'positive credits' type system. This would rate from, say, 0 to 3, where 0 would be a mod with almost no notable original content, while 3 would be a scintillating bastion of both quality and quantity. (May as well include .5's in there too.)

We could autocalculate it using the existing fields, maybe? Status, length, last update, edit type, and mod type can all factor in on this.

Of course last update wouldn't have an effect if status is complete, unreleased mods would rate the lowest regardless of other factors, and the weight of the length modifier would vary based on the mod type.

 

Noxid/Doublethink, this website is absolutely fantastic! I give a big thumbs up to this project. It's much better to be able to see what the mod is all about while being visually represented as opposed to a paragraph describing what it is. Lots of overlooked hidden gems would shine pretty damn well with it. (wrath of ravoshkenahdaj)

 

Excellent!

I think my home compy may have some mods (one by SeriousFace and maybe one by DB) that were never released to the public, sooooo yeah. If you still want them in five months and have gotten over moral hurdles of a) hosting someone's work without permission and b) hosting the work of someone who is a little unsavory, I'll see if I can find them for you!

I'm wondering about automatically ripping the first post from a mod's thread and using that in the description/pulling tags from it somehow. Can't decide whether it would be more or less effort intensive than making everything manually. I guess there'd also be problems in the case of, like, ZT's mod (not the one called "ZT's mod"--the other one) whose opening post is basically just {Redacted}

If you're going to do a positive credit system, I'd say don't use any .5's. Keeping it as simple as possible I think would be a boon. Maybe something like 3: Unqualified success, 2: Qualified Success, 1: Qualified Failure, 0: Unqualified Failure. Obv there'd be a lot of 1s and 2s, but it's pretty unambiguous how to vote, and then you'd know that those which got 3s, (like schism, presumably), were actually really very good. My main worry here is that you're going to get a lot of ratings like "this would be an unqualified success if it wasn't so goddamned short" (The Future~), so maybe the prompt could be" if this were a finished mod, how would you rank it?" or something. I'm also wondering how ratings would work with mods that are consistently being updated: would old ones still count as much as they originally did with the release of a new version? Would there be some kind of vote decay? If you only vote based on facets of the mod, e.g. originality and design sense, then this might be easier, as I wouldn't think those would change too much.

Another thought was maybe having an author page as well as a mod page, which would show every mod they've made, and maybe give the creator a rating based on the weighted average of their mods, and show they're website (http://ionline.vectec.net/) or something, where that information exists. Something like

Metalogz (3.3)
- The Future~, 4, puny
- Magic~, 3, medium length

Maybe this was already planned/in place

\o/

Who knows!