Ok. I've thought more into the combining idea of forums to reduce clutter as Emon put it.

Combine: JK/MoTS editing and COG into one. JO & JA forums into one (in some respects, same game). Toss out the Asheron's Call forum (only 127 posts?). I want to say merge Rbots in with JK/MoTS editing buuut I'm iffy on that. Also to me, it seems like the SWG forum is out of place here @ Massassi. To me, this site is all about the DF/JK series from its conception to now. Now we have forums dedicated to MMORPGs? Expanding our base or..what? Religious and Technology should be subforums of the Discussion Forum (if possible)

Brian: You brought up about it being a pain to import ALL the threads. My question is why would you import all threads? In my days here @ Massassi, I've learned that you all have a very very adverse reaction to old threads being revived. So why bring in threads that will either a) never get read again b) periodically get read but so sparangly c) read, revived, closed, lost and forgotten. Why not archive these threads then import the threads say...2 days old from each forum.

-My further ideas.

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<scribbly handwriting barely resembling name>

*ahem*

If possible, I think the ISB has few enough threads to import all. Even if not, the time-method is iffy, and if there was a limit on the number of threads assuming such an option, I'd like to request specific threads from the ISB to be archived and/or transfered.

And Tracer, I'm tellin' ya, IM: it's the wave of the future, really Check your e-mail now.

Only one suggestion.
LET US PUT FLASH VIDEOS IN POSTS!!!
i love flash videos.
Other than that. I like it around here.

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A real man uses JK2.
A smart man uses GTK.
This is why i am not a smart man.
*Remnant Temple A soon to be ready for beta*
Light And Darkness

I think itd be cool if next to each name on the forum a thumbnail of a picture or even a picture itself could be shown next to the person, it'd be cool cuz then you could see who replied back, just a thought.

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I Recieved an angel from god when he sent me Jess, I Love You Forever and Always Jess, you'll always have my heart.

I agree with a few others here. New forums but no avatars (please).

Thumbnails of screenies would be cool also.

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"First off here's what you do to me
You get rough, attack my self esteem
It's not much, but it's the best I've got
And I thought you saw the good in everyone"
Sloan

I just had a thought which would make the Religious Discussion forum far less of a headache. Implement standardised footnote features, I dunno make it so that when posting you can click the "insert footnote" button and it'll insert a little superscript number into your post at that point and add a footnote (up to about 10) at the bottom of your post.

Why? Because it means you can make the actual content of your post into what you have to say then the footnotes can have whatever information or links you have to backup any factual claims you make.

I've been in favour of another MLP, but on the condition that judges are picked sensibly. With radiant it is far too easy to make a pretty map which plays like crap, so judges would have to focus primarily on gameplay (very few honestly do).

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On the subject of avatars, i've always been in favour of them (as long as there are restrictions). I've used 56k for the past 6 years and never had a problem with slow-loading due to avatars and sig-images. If they are remotely hosted and are sensible enough there is no reason that I can think of not to have them.

As for a new site design, i've seen what Kedri has been working on. It's fantastic, up-to-date style but retains the massassi-ness, only trouble is he hit a bit of an artists-block halfway through

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. . . So? Has he ever even been involved with the MLPs? I just don't see why he can stop it from happening.

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

Well... uh... since he owns and runs the site, then yeah, I think he could stop an "official" Massassi level pack from happening (not that I think he should keep one from happening, mind you ).

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[This message has been edited by Wuss (edited October 23, 2003).]

http://www.massassi.net/chat

If that^ hasn't been taken down by now, anything is possible.

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

How about the Editor's Corner could be upgraded to be a resource for major projects?

I had the thought it could be something like sourceforge - set up a project and then you can get something like:

• Some webpages for the project - standardised, created/edited by script, no customisation of the HTML, just the content, with a news script and screenshot uploading facility
• CVS tree that can be accessed by the members of the project
• Ability to release the project to a set of publicly available beta testers (people who have signed up to be beta testers for all these projects - obviously will need some kind of anti-abuse system so you don't get people who are trying to get an early look at these projects)

Perhaps you could allow projects to rank beta testers and then future projects can use those rankings as a guide as to which ones they choose to beta their project.
You'd also need to enable beta testers to indicate how 'busy' they currently are so they don't get swamped with work, and also be able to decline to beta something.

Hmm, the more i think about it, the more complicated it becomes.


If you want any help with the scripting side of adding features, I'm willing to lend a hand.

That's a fantastic idea, Giraffe. I hear Subversion outdates CVS, but CVS is a lot easier to setup in my opinion, and is more widely used. Nightly tarballs would be great, too. I'm working on a fairly large coding project for JA, and freepository.com just sucks, and we can't get on SF or other places since we aren't technically open source due to restrictions in the EULA.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

That would involve allowing HTML, because of the <embed> tags needed for flash. And allowing HTML on the forums is BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD

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1 of 14 - The Coucil still lives
6-16 Never Forget.
Click.

No. There's boards that has a [flash] tag similar to the [img] one. But Flash is the devil, so why allow it?

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"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."[/img]

I'd really appreciate it if you would not put words in my mouth. I never said that at all.

The only problem with level packs for JO/JA is file size. Putting four or five MLP-quality maps in a PK3 would result in a huge file to download. For some people, that can be a problem. That's not to say we'll never do it, though.

I'd also appreciate it if people would get their facts from the horse's mouth, instead of from hearsay.

I want avatars

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Kilroy Was Here

Can we drop the avatars discussion please? I think all sides have been presented. I think the thing that would make most people happy would be to allow avatars, but turn them off by default. So the only way to see them is to log in and turn it on in your preferences. I think that's a great compromise.

The ideas for the EC are great, great, great. The problem I have is a hosted CVS server... well, we are on a windows IIS server so some things are simply out of the question. We can of course have a file upload service and the beta testers service, but all of these introduce problems. The beta testers services is easy. The file upload isn't easy because there are file size upload limits in place that can't be changed (and we can't offer FTP service at this point in time).

The beta testers thing is a great idea. I was also thinking of offering a better service like the "projects" page that offers screenshots, project info, news, etc. It's a lot of coding, I'm going to take things one thing at a time. I already asked blujay to let me do some of the EC updates mentioned in this thread. We'll see what he says

Brian

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Maybe for the competition limit the file size of submissions to keep people from going overboard with custom resources.



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Cantina Cloud | BCF
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

Better yet, why the hell do they have to be offered in one zip? The only reason it was that way for JK was because it made sense; JK had support for level packs. JO/JA, if I'm not mistaken, don't. (?) Why can't we offer all the levels in a pack as well as separately? The main focus here isn't that the levels are in a pack, but that they are the levels that won the contest..

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

And get someone to optimize assets, so you don't get away with 500 TGAs that can be JPEG instead.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

Now you are the one missing the point. If a MLP becomes widely used and played on, it will become likely that many people will download the pack. This means that you have five levels that "most people have", which is entirely the point. Now you've got five great custom levels that people shouldn't have to worry about having to have auto-download on for. To allow selectivity really splinters the whole idea.

As for "it's too big" argument... many simple one level game demos are 150 mb these days, so I really don't see how you could go "overboard". I mean, I could see an MLP5 being about 40 mb, max. Anything more would be overboard. But what level is going to need more than 7 MB?

Blujay: sorry, I guess I misunderstood you then. I guess you must have been citing the size issue against it before, and I didn't remember it correctly and instead remembered something about auto-dl? Honestly, no words-in-your-mouth intended
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Ω of 14
Half-Life 2 Central: your definitive source for everything HL2!

[This message has been edited by oSiRiS (edited October 23, 2003).]

Over 15 MB would be more overboard, a large BSP is a few megabytes, plus any custom textures or sounds.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

Putting levels in a level pack into one 'package' is important. This way it is portable, and you can say, "OMG lets go play some MLP8!!!" and you won't have to worry about having each individual level.

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Mystic0 Editing Resources
Mystic0 Forum
The Massassi Post Count Summary

-new forums <--good
-new design <--bad
-optimize current design with rewritten code <--good
-automated files <--good
-massassi.com email <--good
-massassi.com email with pop3 <--uber
-Brian returning for good <--good beyond belief


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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14

Yecti, trust me, if you'd seen the design i've seen you, wouldn't be saying a new design is bad

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Oh I'm sure it's great DeT, and I wouldn't be opposed to implementing a new design were there the ability through PHP to change themes (thus saving the current design, the /2 design, and perhaps the old tan design) and have them save a cookie to your system to remember which theme to use on page load. That would make me ever so happy.

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-=I'm the wang of this here site, and it's HUGE! So just imagine how big I am.=-
1337Yectiwan
OSC Returns!!
10 of 14

Hehe, you could always bump the old design back to massassi/2 and the other one to massassi/3 for all you conservitive people.

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Mystic0 Editing Resources
Mystic0 Forum
The Massassi Post Count Summary

PIE!

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If everyone is so enthused about level pack contests, how come all the interest died off for the Massgames level pack? Is it because it was for JK and not JO?

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You underestimate the power of the Dark Side...

DSettahr's Homepage
The Jedi's Saber

[This message has been edited by DSettahr (edited October 24, 2003).]

Its not important that they are a pack. Yeah, its important that they are PRESENTED as a pack, but I think a smarter way to do it is have a simple html page which has a thumbnail and a description for each of the winners. There, you can download the files individually, OR you can download them as one big zip file.

Best way to do it. If you can't hold enough bandwith to have 5 levels, you don't have to, and if you can, boom there ya go.

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To myself I surrender to the one I'll never please.
But I still try to run on.
You know I still try to run on. But it's all or none.

Eddie Vedder

1) Massgames isn't officially Massassi

2) The great editors have left JK editing, I know from the word of the judges that it was tough enough putting together MLP4, normally there wouldn't be two maps by the same author.

3) MLP5 is gonna have to be for JA

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Poor JO. Got skipped.

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

I am all for this idea. I often visit the EC and look at great works by Emon and Sine, so it would make it a lot... cooler I guess.

As far as avatars go, Brian has a good idea. For those who find them annoying, you could switch them off. I personally think avatars are fun to mess around with, from my experience in more complex forums like Ctrl+Alt+Del.

A few more features could be implemented to make Massassi a little more "modern", but not so much as to scare off old time members. For instance, private messaging, but not something like a Massassi Store where you could buy stuff to duel with using a points system... that would be messed up, and have no place here.

Yes, I think we should have a new design. I think the shades of green and borders used on the site are kind of depressing even. Use more shades of green and don't have everything hard-edged! Go for a softer, more friendly look.

Just my two cents.



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[Insert witty anti-signature here.]

"- Automated level submission"


*Homer Simpsons Drool*

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Official Staff of Massassi Temple:
-Chat Op
-Level Poster
-Forum Admin
-Level Comments Admin
-EC Admin

Moral to the Story: Don't Mess

Avatars could be reasonable with strict size guidelines, they can be kinda pleasant. Ie the one i tend to use on other forums [opera and one or two others on occasion]:
http://my.opera.com/forums/avatar.php?userid=24307&dateline=1062120149

Alternatively, just remove all the standard images from the forums, the massassi header, the icons for reply/edit be texted, all that.

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Blue Mink Bifocals !
fsck -Rf /world/usr/
Capite Terram
"Stupid English language... Why does nothing rhyme with 'primordial goo'???" -happydud
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

Now that I know isnt entirely true.

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You underestimate the power of the Dark Side...

DSettahr's Homepage
The Jedi's Saber

If there was a MLP5, I think it would be for both JK and JA. If it were all JA, I think most of you would all scream and rant that MLP5 didn't have a JK level (you know who you are). Sooo...combine best of the both worlds.

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<scribbly handwriting barely resembling name>

Uh, why? There's already five level packs for JK, and we want to attract some new users, JA users, and they aren't as likely to get it if it has a bunch of levels for a game they don't even own.

If you want more JK MLPs, make it another MLP, don't try to combine it.

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Bassoon, n. A brazen instrument into which a fool blows out his brains.

YECTI: Great Idea!! I think themes are already planned, but what you said struck a note with me. Recently, ShackNews came up with a new design, and I personally hate it. With the upgrade, I think it would be prudent to make a "Massassi oldskool" theme.

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Ω of 14
Half-Life 2 Central: your definitive source for everything HL2!

An oldschool theme would be easy enough, but the problem is thus the frames I'm not sure how to template that, although I'm sure it's somehow possible...

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