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Guest Rabbit

Site Updates - A CNCNZ to-do list

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Guest Rabbit

These are a few of the changes that I feel could benefit the forums or website.  Feel free to comment, make suggestions, tell me why the changes are terrible, or otherwise.  Normally something like this might make it into the staff section, but I feel like this is a community, and needs to grow as a community.

Major Changes

  • Add "Mods" section to the main website.  This section will show featured mods with a writeup and information about them, much like the "Games" section.  CNCNZ has always had a strong following of people want more mod news, so why not have a section dedicated to featured mods?
  • Add tech-support section to the main website.  There's forum posts littered around that explain how to make the games work on different versions of windows, using different versions of the game (disk vs download), etc.  An organized instructional section to getting your game working would be a tremendous help.  Each guide would link to a relevant forum post so people can ask questions if they're still having trouble.
  • Support more RTS games than just C&C specifically? Let me know what you think.  We could keep things the way they are, we could support all Westwood/EA RTS games, or we could even expand to supporting ALL RTS in general.  What do you think?  We can revisit this later if more people mention it, but for now, let's just focus on a mod section for C&C games.
  • Organized gaming sessions? Perhaps a CNCNZ vs W3D Hub game night, or different CNCNZ members playing Mental Omega together.  I'm probably being optimistic here, but it could work.

Minor Changes

  • [Complete] Removed the word filter.  People swear on the internet.  These games are based on violence.  Gratuitous swearing is now ok.  Just don't overdo it.
  • [Complete] Increased PM limits.  Most of you used to be set to 150 PM's.  Now everyone is set to 500.
  • Consolidate forums.  Do we need a Red Alert forum AND a Red Alert modding forum in their own section?  I'm thinking of moving game-specific modding forums so that they are a subforum of their parent games.  For example, as you scroll down, you would see Tiberian Twilight Maps / Modding directly underneath Tiberian Twilight, as a subforum.  People are against this, so we'll leave it how it is.
  • Rearrange forums. I don't think "Tiberian Twilight" and "The Ultimate Collection / The First Decade" needs to be at the top of the list.  I feel like the more commonly played games should be higher up.  Mostly a non-issue, nobody needs this changed.
  • Adjust news image template to just open up the full image file in a new tab instead of displaying the image in a weird page.

This is all I have on my brain right this second, feel free to let me know if you guys have anything else in mind.

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18 minutes ago, Zee Hypnotist said:

Support more RTS games than just C&C specifically? Let me know what you think.  We could keep things the way they are, we could support all Westwood/EA RTS games, or we could even expand to supporting ALL RTS in general.  What do you think?

I know I told you this in private, but I'd like to make it public because of this thread's nature.

I can't really see us going further than the scope of C&C with a potential expansion to Westwood's Dune games and Battle for Middle-earth series, which are connected to C&C by developers and technology. Not sure if even that would be stretching our efforts. The title and tradition of the site say "CNC" in the first three letters. I admit that RTS is underrepresented nowadays, but general coverage of the genre is more of a job for Wayward Strategist.

18 minutes ago, Zee Hypnotist said:

Rearrange forums. I don't think "Tiberian Twilight" and "The Ultimate Collection / The First Decade" needs to be at the top of the list.  I feel like the more commonly played games should be higher up.

Ordering by release date in reverse works fine and is easy to navigate, IMHO.

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15 hours ago, Zee Hypnotist said:

[Complete] Removed the word filter.  People swear on the internet.  These games are based on violence.  Gratuitous swearing is now ok.  Just don't overdo it.

To be honest with you, as someone with a long time forum administration experience, while transparency is a great thing in 99% of the cases, there are certain things I recommend to not announce in public. Simply do it, but do not announce it to not motivate anyone to use this kind of vocabulary ;).

Edited by Banshee

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2 hours ago, Zee Hypnotist said:
  • Support more RTS games than just C&C specifically? Let me know what you think.  We could keep things the way they are, we could support all Westwood/EA RTS games, or we could even expand to supporting ALL RTS in general.  What do you think?
  • Organized gaming sessions? Perhaps a CNCNZ vs W3D Hub game night, or different CNCNZ members playing Mental Omega together.  I'm probably being optimistic here, but it could work.

I would love part of the Mental Omega forums in Revora integrate with here, since pretty much most of the users going into the Revora forums are for Mental Omega discussion. Revora is also home to the sub-forums of C&C Online, The 3rd Age, Commandos, Dawn of War and other mod hosting forums. I am pretty sure over half of the users in this forum still love Red Alert 2.

Adding the Dune series is also great, since CNCNZ used to have a Dune section. Adding other RTS game series such as Battle for Middle Earth, Starcraft, Dawn of War, Petroglyph RTS (including 8-Bit, UAW, Grey Goo) and others might need CNCNZ official name to be well.... renamed... even if other titles are to be included that isn't C&C.

But I also propose the following:
1) The CNCNZ logo to go back to the one in 2008 with the groovy Pepsi font. The proposed new slogan for that.... Reloaded for the Future.
2) Shift-enter key to be eliminated.... just use enter to the next line, not every two lines.
3) The reputation system should not have downvoting, just like Revora.

Edited by PurpleGaga27
  • Downvote 2

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1 hour ago, PurpleGaga27 said:

The reputation system should not have downvoting,

If you think a change in leadership will give you another shot at this futile effort to suppress criticism, you would be wrong. Sonic was the only member of the staff who wasn't opposed to "Like"-only reputation, including when Zee Hypnotist was still a part of the staff here.

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13 hours ago, Zee Hypnotist said:
  • Consolidate forums.  Do we need a Red Alert forum AND a Red Alert modding forum in their own section?  I'm thinking of moving game-specific modding forums so that they are a subforum of their parent games.  For example, as you scroll down, you would see Tiberian Twilight Maps / Modding directly underneath Tiberian Twilight, as a subforum.

As a modder, I have to say I pefer the way it currently is - one section for games and one for mods. As a lot of the games share the engine and most modders have experience with modding more than one CnC, its usefull to be able to see all modding forums at once.

And if someone deosnt care for modding, he can simply hide that section of the forum and never be bothered by it again.

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22 minutes ago, Stygs said:

As a modder, I have to say I prefer the way it currently is - one section for games and one for mods. As a lot of the games share the engine and most modders have experience with modding more than one CnC, its useful to be able to see all modding forums at once.

And if someone doesn't care for modding, he can simply hide that section of the forum and never be bothered by it again.

I agree with this!

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11 hours ago, PurpleGaga27 said:

1) The CNCNZ logo to go back to the one in 2008 with the groovy Pepsi font. The proposed new slogan for that.... Reloaded for the Future

@Zee Hypnotist has the final say. But the logo won't change. The new logo fits the current design. 

11 hours ago, PurpleGaga27 said:

2)Shift-enter key to be eliminated.... just use enter to the next line, not every two lines.

No. This is how the post editor is meant to work. It ensures correctly paragraphed posts. Stop think about the past and embrace what is new. 

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Guest Rabbit

Updated the main post, to reflect people's comments.

Additionally, no, I'm not removing the dislikes, or changing the logo.  As for the shift+enter key, aside from what Sonic is mentioning, that is something that would probably require rewriting part of the code of the forum engine itself, and it would likely be overwritten any time there's an update for the forum, prompting me to go through the whole process again.

Shift + Enter as an immediate line break has been a thing since... forever? I remember using Shift + Enter to make a single line jump back in the days of AOL Instant Messenger.

Alright, so we've solved some of the smaller issues, I guess the next step is actually building the bigger stuff.

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If you need any help Zee, I'll jump on board again for certain things if necessary. I know Sonic's had to make the Ultimate decision to let go. But I, like you will happily contribute something to keep it alive.. Not so much on the Webmastering front, that's a time killer. But I'll happily contribute to a more strategy game site... Hell, you might be better going all Strategy. I'm mostly on the turn-based and 4X community side of things these days. That's my specialty. Not so keen on the RTS elements these days (Getting old)...

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Guest Rabbit

As it is, I've had a number of people coming out of the woodwork asking if they can join the staff.

I'm going to hold off for a little bit until I get myself situated and let the hype die down a bit, I don't want a group of people suddenly wanting to join to "save" CNCNZ right now, only to realize it's not disappearing anymore, and suddenly most of the people just disappear.

 

I'll consult our current staff and see what needs we may have, and based on their thoughts and opinions, I'll consider opening staff positions in a week or two.

For what it's worth, most of the active users here consist of staff as it is, and truth be told, I feel like we already have more staff than we actually need.  What I'd be looking for is content providers.

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On 6/12/2017 at 5:22 PM, Zee Hypnotist said:

Organized gaming sessions? Perhaps a CNCNZ vs W3D Hub game night, or different CNCNZ members playing Mental Omega together.  I'm probably being optimistic here, but it could work.

Regarding organized gaming sessions, two things.

1. CNCNZ having a Discord of its own should prove helpful in organizing players together. It works well for W3D Hub in filling the server, and likewise for C&C Online when hosting tournaments. If we're really wanting to talk about optimistic, I think a CNCNZ Discord can be just the server in which all C&C communities can convene in. I'm of the opinion CNCNZ is influential enough to rally all communities under its house for this purpose, and having many members from various communities a highlight away can lead to some epic gaming sessions.

2. Collaborate more with project leaders and time organized gaming sessions accordingly. Mental Omega released an update? CNCNZ gaming session. OpenRA hotfix? Gaming session. I doubly support the idea of Community vs. Community gaming sessions. With the right reach across CNCNZ media, I'm positive there would be more than enough signups of representatives to get the ball rolling.

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I'd suggest giving the site a SSL certificate.

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