Hey all, you may not have noticed my absence at all, but I took a step away from the forums for a while and well, was productive for once, I would highly recommend giving it a try, my productivity went up about 40% .
A pet peeve of mine.
Why does everyone feel the need to label their work [WIP] in the Work In Progress Forum? Is it to enforce the fact it is a WIP? Or some other reason?
Also, is the horizontal line insert broken on anyone elseās browser, because I cannot see this line /
And now an actual non pointless question. Back on topic
How do you all like to see the WIP projects you view structured? I am assuming you do not like walls of text.
What sparks your desire to actually LOOK at a project? Or do you just click down the page?
Me personally, I will usually look towards the titles with tags of the sort [RPG] or [Sci-Fi FPS] or [FPS] in the brackets before the title. Does anyone else think this is a good labelling system?
Do you like WIPās that are straight to the point, or provide a little backstory?
All that really matters are the screenshots and the game, I bet like 10% of people actually read all the text in the thread. Anyway, really who cares how good it is? I just use mine as a way to show people some stuff and see if people approve of my ideas.
The WIP forums are a place where dozens of topics battle for my attention, and the best ways to get that is a good descriptive thread title (I rarely pay attention to āMy new gameā unless I recognize the OP as a regular forum member) and screenshots. Screenshots. SCREENSHOTS!
If you just want to share a picture of a gameās early stage you should post it in one of the two pinned threads.
Yes, I do put quite a lot of time into everything I present with any sort of pitch behind it, I pretty much just structure it the way I would want to see it. I often spend hours just re arranging stuff to my liking (Geez not sounding obsessive compulsive am I xD).
My ideal thread uses the bracketed labels with genre, etc, starts out with a brief (and I mean very brief) description and some pretty pictures. I usually never read the large blocks of text, nor do I play webplayers often (unless youāve got some nice screenshots) and I rarely ever download .exes.
Looking at yours, Myhijim, Iād just add a sentence or two outlining the desired outcome of the project before you get into the rest of it.
Good input, I agree with the .exe thing and as for long lines/paragraphs of texts I believe they are good, IF they are hidden or linked (eg for lore etc)
From now on I also plan to just use the bracketed labels including genre, and Iām surprised it isnāt a common thing.
As for Three, sadly not going at all right now, I still fiddle with the code every now and then, but apart from my current small contributions the rest of the team are quite busy, so I guess for now I will just have to place holder it. But I am keeping at it. Iāve got a feeling it will revive eventually, when we all get some free time.
This is interesting, it looks like you all would like something more structured instead of a free-for-all-write-what-you-like deal so that itās more visually appealing to you while browsing?
If everyone is using brackets itās not really an improvement, imo. I enjoy the freedom for everyone
Not everything can be put into a fitting genre or short description. I just click through all new wip threads and see whatās inside, and yup pretty picture and/or videos are what keep me from closing the tab. Not some well formatted text or thread title.
Still, having a [WIP] in front of it seems weird in a clearly defined WIP forum
Long paragraphs donāt need to be hidden, there just needs to be a small, clear description for us lazy folk.
Off topic:
I havenāt been very active in Unity, but the new 2D tools are kind of appealing. Been practicing art mostly (painting and drawing), though I did apply for a local Academy of Interactive Entertainment.
Visual appeal helps, but Iām more interested in the essential info being clearly displayed. For the most part my attention span for a new thread is about 5 seconds.
Yeah the 2D tools are fantastic, although I would like to see an easy way to make sprites in sprite atlases āreplaceableā rather than after every change having to recalibrate itā¦
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