Project Development Subforum

[40oz]

In the wake of the announcement of Doomworld’s future adoption of new forum software, I’d like to pitch an idea I’ve been bouncing around for a while and would like to hear community feedback on it.

Doomworld is a centralized place for all Doom fans, and Doomworld’s Wads & Mods subforum is probably the most active subforum on the entire website’s forum. Wads & Mods has a pretty ambiguous purpose, people pitch project ideas, community projects are managed, and people release new wads and gameplay mods there. There's a lot of competition to remain relevant when new wads are released every day, and having been a project manager for a few community projects, worked on some projects with chosen members of the community, and have worked on my own secret independent doom wad projects, I've found that Wads & Mods can be a bit of a clusterfuck and the general forum layout is not ideal for fostering wad development.

• Project managers who are looking for help with their project have to compete with large volumes of forum activity for exposure by bumping their threads with seemingly meaningless posts.
  
  
• Pitching a project idea without much to show often results in one of two responses, a shitstorm of [/newproject] tag posts and other shitposting about how the project is unlikely to go anywhere, or a wave of excitement about the idea, but not actual talk about how the project will be carried out.
  
  
• Secret projects or invite-only projects cannot be made on the forums without unwanted attention before anything is actually done or discussed. (Mass Private messaging can only be sent to 10 people at a time and cannot be sent within a 60 second time limit, and there's no CC'ing with private messaging to include multiple people)
  
  
• Chronological post order is not great for project management. Project leaders can't avoid non-members interfering with discussion, and can't segregate discussion into categories that are relevant to the members participating in a project.
  
  
• There's no concrete way to assign members to a project. I'm sure many people who have been involved with large-scale doom projects know the frustrations associated with people volunteering to help and then disappearing off the face of the earth, or perhaps volunteering for a project and then forgetting about the project after it gets bumped to the next page in Wads & Mods.
  

To benefit doom project development, I’d like to propose the idea of splitting Wads & Mods into two separate subforums:

1. Wad Releases - Subforum for official wad releases, release candidates, and public beta testing
2. Project Development - A forum for pitching wad ideas, promoting a project, seeking volunteers, and other general discussion for WIP projects

I don't know how likely or possible it is, but ideally I'd like to see the project development forum act as something not far off from other 'secret' subforums, such as blogs or losers (or others of varying degrees of obscurity) A forum where it is possible to assign concrete deadlines for the project, officially assign members to projects and roles within the project, send mass project invites via private messaging or a notification system that members can accept or decline, etc. This would foster the potential for Invite-only projects instead of full blown anyone-can-help community projects that tend to attract uninterested or undisciplined people.

I'd like to see a system in which a project leader can initiate a thread and break it down into sub-threads to categorize discussion where its needed, so playtesters can talk about gameplay in one location, musicians can share their music in another, and mappers can post screenshots of their work, and general discussion categories for discussing how the project should be carried out. Project leads could toggle the visibility settings of their project thread so that only invited members can see, or anyone can see, depending on the secrecy of the project. The project leader could send out mass private messages such as project related announcements or autotext reminders for project members to post updates on their work. Assign deadlines to each member's contributions, etc., and mappers could view a worklist of all the projects and responsibilities they're involved in through their user control panel.

I understand much of this is kind of a pipedream, and I don't know what the current forum software or future forum software is capable of, but the idea of migrating doomworld members to sign up to an alternate forum or website better suited for project collaboration for something as secular and expendable as Doom mapping is a tough sell, and I'd like to see Doomworld integrate something like this in it's future to make Doom mapping more fun, organized, easier, faster, and user-friendly and eventually promote cooler and more focused projects in Doom's future.

[CapnClever]

40oz said:

In the wake of the announcement of Doomworld’s future adoption of new forum software, [...]

I must've missed it: can I get a link to this information? Depending on what's in there that might change some of what I've assumed below.

Reorganizing the WADs & Mods forum sounds like it'd be a good idea... except it can't just be limited to releases and development subforums. What about the DWmegawad Club and DWIronman League threads? What about all the miscellaneous wad/mod-specific topics that are a little too niche to fit into Doom General? Perhaps if you added the OP-mentioned subforums in addition to the current one, you'd have a satisfactory layout.

I don't have experience in Doomworld's project threads, but if you require organizational tools to better track your project then you should use those tools and not forum posts. Forums are meant for discussions and, as you point out, are not well-organized for project management. Perhaps some of the Doomworld technicians can look into and agree on some software that becomes the standard for projects, but I wouldn't expect integration with the forums themselves (other than the possible inclusion of sharing accounts between software).

[Mordeth]

CapnClever said:

I must've missed it: can I get a link to this information?

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/blogs/92433-alea-iacta-est/

[Sayok6]

Offtopic, but there should be a Polls board like a long time ago.

[VGA]

Can gameplay/music/sound/whatever mods please be separated from mapsets?

[Combinebobnt]

yes zdoom finally divided their project section and it is much better now

doing the same to wads and mods would turn it from the hand waving contest it is now into something manageable, good too

[Sick Bow]

Sayok6 said:

Offtopic, but there should be a Polls board like a long time ago.

Not that it would hurt, but we're not missing much. Most forum polls are "can you guys affirm my opinion?" Or "Here's a loaded or biased question" or "I am making a post, but saw the poll option so I added a poll when one wasn't needed". They can also take away from the discussion, because without the poll users are required to go into some sort of detail about their answer, or just shit post. Just my experience elsewhere.

[40oz]

CapnClever said:

I don't have experience in Doomworld's project threads, but if you require organizational tools to better track your project then you should use those tools and not forum posts. Forums are meant for discussions and, as you point out, are not well-organized for project management. Perhaps some of the Doomworld technicians can look into and agree on some software that becomes the standard for projects, but I wouldn't expect integration with the forums themselves (other than the possible inclusion of sharing accounts between software).

I appreciate the suggestion, but many of the free project management tools often require creating an account or logging in with an email account or something. They also seem to have a lot of fluff for actual work-type things and not just hobby projects. Even if it didnt, i still dont see the average doomer signing up to use it, especially if there's no intention of using it again once the project is over. Perhaps discussion about an agreeable universal collaboration tool for the doom community is an opportunity for another thread. I suspect were going to have trouble agreeing on that, though.

It would make more sense to host it here at doomworld because everyone is already here, and some of the new forum features seem to complement a couple of the user interface ideas I have in mind.

[Doomkid]

Combinebobnt said:

yes zdoom finally divided their project section and it is much better now

doing the same to wads and mods would turn it from the hand waving contest it is now into something manageable, good too

Gotta agree, as it is now your thread is lucky to have 24 hours on the front page before the other stuff pushes it to the bottom. This would be a great improvement, imo

[Memfis]

What I would like to see is some kind of a listing of active people volunteering to test people's projects. They could write something like "I'm a low skilled player, usually I choose Hurt Me Plenty or lower, I'm interested in testing non-slaughterfest wads that focus on exploration more than on tightly controlled fights, I can record videos with commentary, etc". Then mappers could look there and quickly find some help.

[Lüt]

40oz said:

I don't know how likely or possible it is

Adding a forum or subforum is one of the easiest things to do in the admin control panel, so the possibility isn't even a question. It's the likelihood that's up for discussion.

I think some manner of project management would help greatly, and subforums would be a significant aid in that process.

That said, let me set aside practicality for a moment and summarize the best game project management system I've seen. I have no expectations for a thing like this being implemented here. It's a lot to ask of anybody, especially with all that Ling's working on already, and even I probably wouldn't do a project of this caliber unless I were getting paid, since it would require creating a whole new database and interface, then integrating it with the forum.

But here we go: I use another classic game site that integrates a forum (IPS in fact) with a project database. It's for the original NES Zelda, and the main site's here. On the nav bar, you'll see a Quest Projects dropdown. This is where people can post the mod(s) they're working on. The projects can be viewed as a list, where they're presented by Title, Author(s), primary screenshot, project specs, and a brief summary. The list can be sorted be A-Z/Z-A, Date Opened/Updated/Closed, Version (Source Port), and Genre.

Now let's open a random project from the list: Triforce. You get the basic info up top, the screenshot highlights bar below, and a number of management tabs below that. Feed shows all updates, Description allows an extended summary, Screenshots displays the full screenshot gallery, Comments provides an area for non-project members to leave feedback, and Staff is where the project leader(s) can assign different members to different categories, i.e. Creators, Advisers, Beta Testers, Contributors, etc.

But the Updates tab is where it gets interesting: this is where the projects and the forums coincide. The project leader(s) can post a public forum topic that goes directly into a dedicated Project Updates Forum, and if you open a thread in that forum, you'll see the project it's attached to at the upper right. (Threads to that forum can only be posted through the project page itself.) Now, if you view the primary Zelda Classic forum index, you'll see not only the Project Updates forum 3rd down, but you'll see Custom Quest Discussion above it - this is where people talk about finished projects, and where things like DW Megawad club would go. (Also to VGA's point, the Developers' Exchange forum is where texture/audio/etc. resources would go.)

Furthermore, each project page also has its own private "forum" that only staff members (i.e. Creator, Beta Tester, Adviser, etc.) can see. It functions exactly like the regular forum, except it's exclusively limited to the people the Creator assigns. Here, you'll never have to worry about project development topics falling off the main page.

Finally, all public project activity is also summarized in the project feed, which shows all latest project updates in every category: descriptions, updates, screenshots, demos, etc.

But that's just for WIP projects. On the nav bar, you'll also notice a Database tab, which is where finished projects are hosted, along with graphics, MIDI, scripts, and tutorials. That's a totally different system, but a thing like that would probably be the successor of Hosted Sites, as far as WAD projects go at least.

Anyway, coming back to practicality, one of the core components that makes that system so well organized is the division between the In-Development Projects forum and the Completed Projects forum, as well as the division that the Developers' Exchange forum creates between full projects and miscellaneous resources. The new setup on ZDoom's forum is perhaps a little too expanded to be duplicated here, but it's a good forum equivalent in lack of an integrated project management system.

All that to say, I think separate forums for WIP projects, completed projects, and project resources would be a good idea. However, we might want to wait on that until/if the new forum software is installed.

[roadworx]

Lüt said:

All that to say, I think separate forums for WIP projects, completed projects, and project resources would be a good idea. However, we might want to wait on that until/if the new forum software is installed.

why the "if"? is there a chance we'll be sticking with vbulletin?

[Lüt]

Not my place to say. The processing/bandwidth requirements of the new software are being weighed against VB, among other things. Ling's testing, he'll make comments in the blog post. I really hope the transition works though, especially with how much the software cost. VB was only $160 when I bought it.

[Voros]

roadworx said:

why the "if"? is there a chance we'll be sticking with vbulletin?

The thread in the Doomworld-The-Forums forum has the title "new forum software maybe". I'm guessing it's still being discussed, since its a maybe.

[Lüt]

Oh you guys can still see that huh.

[roadworx]

what is this fabled "Doomworld-The-Forums"?

[Voros]

It's an admin only forum about the DW forums itself. Similar to how the BTSX forum is only for people like essel, xaser, etc since they're the BTSX team.

[roadworx]

Voros said:

It's an admin only forum about the DW forums itself. Similar to how the BTSX forum is only for people like essel, xaser, etc since they're the BTSX team.

they should make it public and unmoderated

[40oz]

Thanks for the post Lut! Your suggestions sound pretty promising, and that NES modding website looks pretty cool! It seems like a very convenient and practical way to handle Doom mods :)