92 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

This is totally awesome, you made this?!

Just an half-hour sketch, though its fun to not give a damn and just create some weird stuff at times.

Pasi: You didn't make pictures of Revorian boobs. so no cookie until that happens.

Beyond that, I think Revora got one thing going for it: Casual creativity. I'm scared to death of posting on the higher-prestige forums around the world. Even though we might want to get a higher level of competence, I think its important to avoid falling into the "elitist" pit.

Oh, and attempting to gather together a group to create a proper indie game under Revora might have been cool. Not that I should be suggesting that, I'm messing around with half-forgotten dreams of grandiose games that fizzles into apathy right off the bat, but it's a thought at least.

[Hostile]

Your work renews my faith in Revora. I remember when you were indifferent about posting, now I've seen something really cool. Great Job Duke!

[Ash]

Haha, that pic is priceless. Awesome.

[Az3r^]

Well its the first time ive logged onto here in litterally years as i was playing C&C3 and thought ... i wonder what Revora is upto nowadays. Not much it seems, i dont think i ever got to see a finished version of D-Day for RA2 either, :( . still funny to see a few usual suspects around though.

P.S : Robot storm was alot of Fun Ash

Edited by Az3r^, 10 August 2012 - 12:20 AM.

[OmegaBolt]

Hey, D-Day was released! The world ended and it wasn't so bad: http://forums.revora...ic/85495-d-day/

[Romanul]

I'm really surprised to see Caspa missing me. Again.

C&C have sort of died since then

No, CNC didn't die, just a lot of members moved. It actually evolved, to be honest, but the Guild wasn't too populated. The Guild is now a place for the 1337 mods who however market themselves a lot on the PPM forum, since it's more active.
Another thing I can't get is the heavy skin of Revora. It's annoying. It feels like a Twitter mixed with a forum, but then it's the update, so I won't complain. If only we could have switched back to the old skin.

I see all these plans and they all feel like a big fail:
-"let's move the forums up and down" - no, you did this, and it fucked up the whole forum. It was better before, but then moving them again would fuck stuff even more.
Before it was better since you had the most "general" discussion forums at top, and the most "specialized" forums at the bottom. Now it's totally random. It had more sense to have Creative Network ->Community->Network than Creative Network->Network->Community. Whilst the naming is retarded, the idea behind it was better.

-"let's create a web app forum" - fine, do one, but think that there are better specialized sites out there such as XDA Developers, where they do not only have app
development, but also ROM development, so they get a plus. Yes, it is a very populated place, but it does it's job way better than Revora could. It's not a niche thing, it's the fact that newbie developer X has more chances to get support there, sadly.

-"porn" - well, this is our savior, to be honest. Really, it would be good for our niche. Porn discussions would probably make this place more active, since hey, it's that small pub niche.

A spambox might help. Really, the Guild sites (E.g. Mental Omega, D-Day) have spamboxes and are quite a nice place for a discussion. If let's say some forums would have a spambox it would help things a lot. A spambox is also what keeps Freedom Studios (the CNC modding site) alive, somehow. Or my mod and me modding stuff there. Don't know.

proper indie game under Revora

Go to PPM and see how PPM mod lives. Currently developed by a giant mass of people, I think they are so many...you know, 1 is a big number.
These kind of projects usually fail.

[Phil]

How nice to see that some people use proper etiquette when criticising others. "You fucked it all up" and "it sounds retarded" really contributes to a good discussion Thanks for that.

I do believe reorganising some forums is probably in order. I also realise that moving the community part down was a bad idea. I'm not sure if we should really compress it as much as Mathijs suggested though. We could probably discard all the Community sub-subforums though so that we're only left with Open Topic, Art & Design, Media, Tech Talk and Think Tank. Merging them further just makes it very hard to navigate the forums and find the topics you're looking for, IMO. The other issue is that merging forums is easy, but we'll never be able to properly split them up again once they're merged (because you'd have to sort out and move all the topics by hand).

My current suggestion would be:

Revora
- Revora News
- Network Questions, Feedback (needs better name)
-- Hosting Support
-- Jobs

Community
- General Discussion (ex Open Topic)
- Art & Design
- Media (Games, Movies, Music, Books)
- Role-Playing Games (?)
- Tech Talk
- The Think Tank
-- Games Nations Play

Network
as is

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

I think, if anything, the Jobs section, with its subpart Hosted Project Jobs, should be further promoted as the forum encompassing small teams in need of a specifically-skilled person, as at the moment, it boasts a massive 11 topics. So, say a C&C crew needed a skinner because their modeller doesn't like texturing, or maybe due to slow progress, a Unity team could do with another coder to speed things up, they could post that position in the Jobs section.

I honestly can't comment on the reorganization of the forums, I've always been able to find my way around without too much trouble. As to feedback, well, I think that's probably the most appropriate and well-describing word for the subject at hand.
For Roleplaying Games, well, it'd be something new, but we'd probably have to get a massive amount of our current modders to drop what they're doing (or at least sideline it) and take a great plunge into researching into it, and developing articles, sourcing tools, not to mention actually choosing which games we want to go for. EDIT: Am I misunderstanding your interpretation of the RPGs section as RPG modding, not gaming, or was that your intention?

However, on your above proposed order of events, where do you intend to put the BFME2, C&C, etc. areas?

EDIT: Pasidon seems to have found something worth a tournament, here, which could go under Community>Role-Playing Games>Organized Tournaments.
In fact, Pasidon's seemingly endless selection of new games and interesting things, despite being mostly from one source, Steam, is a valuable asset in Revora's rejuvenation.

Edited by FellbeastIII, 18 August 2012 - 07:34 AM.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

The RPG section is literally the Role playing section.
The BFME,CnC etc section is the Network division.

The Network Questions, Feedback can simply be renamed Revora Support.

Maybe it's time we redesigned Revora's theme the Blue and White cloud theme isn't the most exciting and Game oriented theme ever.
The colours are also too similar to IPB's colours which also makes us look less organised.

Basically it's time we shook things up completely the worse that could happen is we stay the same the people here now are unlikely to leave.

Also I think we need to hire someone back into the News and Promotions role and take care of the Social Media sites since there's no activity on any of them.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

Also I think we need to hire someone back into the News and Promotions role and take care of the Social Media sites

Though I can't speak for him directly, Pasidon seems to have taken on that role already, in his own way, with his Youtube Channel.
But that Facebook page... ugh. Needs something done to it. It's rather chaotic in the few places it has information.
I'd be willing to moderate it, if people sent me what they wanted posting there via PM. I'm on here and Facebook a lot, so I could do it without too much trouble, but it'll only work if people are willing to contribute something for posting.

Maybe it's time we redesigned Revora's theme

Always wanted something different, though we should be careful to steer clear of ModDB's theme, though.

Edited by FellbeastIII, 18 August 2012 - 10:54 AM.

[Ash]

Are you really sure a bit of window dressing and forum reorganising will be all it takes revitalise things?

You need a reason for more people, old and new, to come here. A little market research, or finding a new niche, might be in order.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

I'm really sure an inactive news feed will put people off, if that helps.
Though yes, whilst we are all saying 'oh, we should really decide on something new to mod', we should actually do so.
OK, what would you people around here suggest? We'd best create a poll once we've got a few choices.
If you look on the lower-right of any Filefront (now Gamefront) game's page, you can see a selection of popular moddable games.
Such as here: http://lordoftherings.filefront.com/

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Are you really sure a bit of window dressing and forum reorganising will be all it takes revitalise things?

You need a reason for more people, old and new, to come here. A little market research, or finding a new niche, might be in order.

The most important thing is activity simply put we need to put in more work on mods,post more often and all that.
Plus there's other suggestions being made in other places on this matter.
In my opinion our best bet of rebuilding Revora is to upgrade it in a major way and promoting the sites more.
The way it should be is Revora is the main site where we get people in the same applying to the division sites.
The forum should then be used to discuss the stuff they see on the main site.
Other divisions like the Creativity section should also have websites.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

OK, I know it sounds like a wishful thinker's utopia, but think of Revora like a city.
Cities need tourism, like Revora needs active members, and the best ways to attract tourists is to provide attractions, as aforementioned by most people in this topic.

• Cities have historical buildings, monuments to the people who meant so much and contributed so much to the city. So maybe a hall of fame, showing the best of mods, indie games, art, literature and other projects hosted on Revora. It gives people something to work towards, as most people want to be noticed as shining out among the sea of other members. Granted, there would be far more competition in the mods and art section than most of the rest, because that's what the majority of people are here for, but it'd be nice for some people to have the choice.
• Cities have shops. Yes. Food shops, art print shops, music shops, and the bane of most men: clothes shops. Back to the point, we here could host a non-commercial store for 3d and 2d art, short and useful Unity scripts, soundtrack music, etc, which members could contribute and benefit from. Possibly members-only, but that might bump up the numbers of 1-post-members, the spawn of the devil.
• Many cities are the most disgusting holes you'll ever see on earth, but most at least attempt to keep the streets clean. One thing which I would say is annoying for me on this site (though I may just have OCD) is the sheer amount of members which post once, can't be bothered to check for replies, then never return. I'd say it's surely a sign of decay that there's more of them than the normal, active, members, and that someone should go through and delete their accounts, whilst leaving their posts intact if they're any use. Otherwise, they should go, too.
• Police patrol any self-respecting city looking out for any dubious events occurring, and likewise the forums of Revora should be sought after for their cleanliness and absence of spam, so the most active (and of course, honourable) members of Revora could be given a power to delete any spam topics immediately. Though, if possible, it would be useful to keep backups of all the topics' content and their removers to prevent abuse of the power.
• Cities good and bad cannot escape the existence of underground groups, though a few embrace them as part of society as a benefactor, and in the Revorian community, we already have one. True, 'underground' isn't the best term to describe it, as it's an honour to be part of it as I hear, but the Istari Productions crew should not be alone as an elitist mapping group. It would be a personal benefit for many members, and would draw more members into the Revorian populace, if there were online elite groups for programming, art/video (and, possibly music), based in Revora, but spreading across multiple websites and games, as the {IP} Clan does currently.
• Newspapers are an essential part of city life, and news is something Revora lacks. As we've said already, we should update our social media connections. It's all good and dandy saying that, but if not now, when? I've already volunteered, but it seems everyone's content to sit back and wait for something to happen. That or keep talking about it like it's something we can do any time we want. That's right, we can do it any time we want, but until that time, nothing's really going to happen.

I understand most people are holidaying right now, so I'm just putting this out there for a few suggestions as Revora brand rejuvenation fuel.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Um what?
(Confusion is totally my thing now)

[Pasidon]

He's saying cities are successful, so we should be more like a city.
-Cities have caged animal fights. We should invest in pitting our graphic artists up in real caged death matches so we can get money from rigging matches.
-Cities have routine stabbings. We should stab people so we can get ad revenue for every pint of blood spilt.

But Fell, we don't have a showcase since we don't have enough finished work to do anything like that. Also, no one buys digital art unless it's from a reputable art source. That's not us, by the way. Also, we don't have spam. Bots are easily destroyed using precise shouting at admins. Also, IP is still the best clan ever and all of our competition is retarded. Word. Also, what's this? You volunteer to do the newspaper? It's all yours, spanky. I just don't have the time to search through all of our content and get highlights and updates. At least that's what I like to imagine you were suggesting.

Again, the solution: gaming. Not that complex and not that horrible. Everyone can go slash their wrists and ankles over some other hole since playing games isn't as painful as it seems.

[OmegaBolt]

Well of course gaming is great to bring Revora together but since we can't even seem to get that going due to there being a lack of participating members we should probably also focus on getting new guys. I'm still up for playing something in the meantime though.

[Pasidon]

I have a tournament scheduled for this weekend. HEY... let me actually get that posted, now that I think about it.

[Irenë Hawnetyne]

We should invest in pitting our graphic artists up in real caged death matches so we can get money from rigging matches.

You are so strange... I should stop saying that.

No one buys digital art unless it's from a reputable art source.

Yeah... I mean free uploading/downloading, whilst it would not provide any income, would be something a number of sites do not offer.
A (more or less) unique thing for Revora, used mostly for game and mod development, which is something places like TurboSquid and the 3D Studio lack.

It's all yours, spanky.

Well, I'd have done so already, but for the tiny, tiny problem that I'm not a Facebook admin (hint, hint). The Twitter one seems well populated by Rad, so that's all good.

[Radspakr Wolfbane]

Actually Phil is in charge of the 3.
I only helped set up the youtube playlists.