I'd like to see a new forum under NES / Famicom for Personal Projects. This would be a place for people to create threads devoted to their personal homebrew games, utilities or other projects. You'd post screenshots, YouTube links, progress updates and the like.
I like to follow other peoples' projects, but they tend to get lost in the mix in the main NESdev forum. Having them all in one place would make it easy to see what everyone is working on, and it could be another way to attract non-programmers to the forums (artists, musicians and fans). I know on the RHDN forums there are many people who don't rom hack, yet follow the
projects forum because they just love games and want to talk about and play the (in RHDN's case) hacks. I think we could attract a similar type of audience for homebrews if we had a place that said "look - here's what people are working on" and invited them to join the discussion and offer feedback.
It would also clear up some clutter in the main NESdev forum. Programming and technical discussions in the NESdev forum. Show off your projects in the Personal Projects forum.
Compared to two years ago it feels to me like more and more people are getting into nesdev and starting game projects. New games are getting released on cart, the wiki is filling up with more programming articles and I'm seeing more and more NESdev-related videos showing up in my "suggested videos" sidebar on YouTube. I think it's time.
This sounds like a great idea to me! There is the wiki but it doesn't give you that immediate feedback that somebody just made an update, for example.
I suggested something similar some time ago
here and
here but it didn't generate any discussion.
Reminds me of another thing: the front page really could use a facelift. Not volunteering to do it though.
I agree. This will sure make this place more interesting for the rest of the internet.
I think it's a good idea, roughly paralleling the "DS homebrew announcements" over on forum.gbadev.org.
I like this idea too. I thought that Atariage had a similar forum area, but I was mistaken. Nintendoage has something for homebrew discussion, but it has lots of other non-homebrew material in it (like how to clone a commercial ROM....)
"Forum -> The Brewery"
http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/catego ... entercat=y
clueless wrote:
I thought that Atariage had a similar forum area, but I was mistaken.
They do have a
Homebrew Discussion area. It is used for all kinds of systems though, not only Atari ones.
Wow. I only looked under the "2600" forum header. I only signed up there a few days ago and have not spent much time looking around. Thanks for the info.
Well personally I'd rather keep the surprise about my projects as much as possible, and see people impressed when I eventually release it freely for the public.
If I really make videos and such, nobody will be impressed on the release. However it's a personal choice.
Also, I didn't release any project yet, and my biggest project's is fairly advanced but is going on slower and slower, if you ever studied an asymptotic function in mathematics, then you know what I'm talking about.
Bregalad wrote:
Well personally I'd rather keep the surprise about my projects as much as possible, and see people impressed when I eventually release it freely for the public.
If I really make videos and such, nobody will be impressed on the release. However it's a personal choice.
Also, I didn't release any project yet, and my biggest project's is fairly advanced but is going on slower and slower, if you ever studied an asymptotic function in mathematics, then you know what I'm talking about.
Are you in favor of, or opposed to, the creation of the requested forum topic?
I would not post about my current project in the forum, (MAYBE future ones) but I would love to see what everyone else is working on.
Part of me likes the idea of coming out of nowhere and saying, "Here's a finished game.", but most people aren't like me, and they should have a place to show their progress.
Kasumi wrote:
I would not post about my current project in the forum, (MAYBE future ones) but I would love to see what everyone else is working on.
Part of me likes the idea of coming out of nowhere and saying, "Here's a finished game.", but most people aren't like me, and they should have a place to show their progress.
I know. I face the same dilemma. I'm itching with excitement over my current project. I'm debating if I want to enter it into the coding compo, or spend a bit more time polishing it and possibly attempt to sell it through retrousb.
I so very much want to "spill the beans" and post screen-shots and recruit a few private beta-testers... But I keep holding back as I'm unsure if doing so will spoil the compo (if it is even going to happen) or jeopardize my opportunity to sell through retorusb (and those options seem mutually exclusive anyway).
It is very exciting to keep my project a secret until the "very end", but I wonder if doing so will hurt my opportunity to make it the best that it could be.
clueless wrote:
But I keep holding back as I'm unsure if doing so will spoil the compo (if it is even going to happen) or jeopardize my opportunity to sell through retorusb (and those options seem mutually exclusive anyway).
Sivak posted videos of Battle Kid and gave copies of parts of the game to beta testers before selling copies through retrousb. We had
a topic about beta test security several months back.
EDIT: quoted the part to which I was replying
Quote:
Sivak posted videos of Battle Kid and gave copies of parts of the game to beta testers before selling copies through retrousb. We had a topic about beta test security several months back.
Why are you saying that ? It doesn't answer any of the pots in the topic apparently.
Quote:
Are you in favor of, or opposed to, the creation of the requested forum topic?
Neither ! If it is created I probably won't use it as I'd rather keep the surprise and that's all. I won't be pissed or anything if it is created though.
I agree. It's nice to see what others are working on.
It seems most of you are more excited about seeing what others are doing than about sharing your own progress... which can be frustrating in case everybody wants to see but nobody wants to show...
tokumaru wrote:
It seems most of you are more excited about seeing what others are doing than about sharing your own progress... which can be frustrating in case everybody wants to see but nobody wants to show...
- I believe that a blog would be a better fit. For many times we had new topics within a progress report of something; and some of the replies were "get a blog".
I think that "get a blog" is the typical response to people talking about their personal issues in this forum (like that one guy worried about STDs), but project updates are usually welcome.
Maybe more people need to start showing their stuff to help make others comfortable doing it. What harm could it do? I think soon I'll start making some more videos about my dev process, etc. just for fun. Nobody has to watch 'em. I know for me, seeing progress on games is always inspiring. When I first came here, I learned a ton, and then I saw Sivak's game and it definitely gave me added momentum.
tokumaru wrote:
It seems most of you are more excited about seeing what others are doing than about sharing your own progress... which can be frustrating in case everybody wants to see but nobody wants to show...
Maybe I'll restate then. I actually
need to keep my current project secret. I doubt I'll have such a restriction in future projects, and may use this hypothetical board then. Still a maybe, but it's more likely.
tokumaru wrote:
I think that "get a blog" is the typical response to people talking about their personal issues in this forum (like that one guy worried about STDs), but project updates are usually welcome.
Reminds me of good ol' time... Jargon...
Gradualore wrote:
Maybe more people need to start showing their stuff to help make others comfortable doing it. What harm could it do? I think soon I'll start making some more videos about my dev process, etc. just for fun. Nobody has to watch 'em. I know for me, seeing progress on games is always inspiring. When I first came here, I learned a ton, and then I saw Sivak's game and it definitely gave me added momentum.
Gradualore, I'm following your progress. Keep it up!
Actually, I follow all of the homebrew projects that I know about: Cartlemmy's big-grinning Japanese dude, Tepple's various falling block clones, Tokumaru Sonic-like project (what little I can find on it) and others whose names escape me at the moment. I think that these projects are exciting. I feel that they definitely add some energy to this community.
As for my own self-imposed secrecy... I hope to post something formal soon. I just don't know when that will be. I'm afraid to jinx my project though. But I am starting to run out of steam, so sharing it might be good. I should change my username to "conflicted".
tokumaru wrote:
It seems most of you are more excited about seeing what others are doing than about sharing your own progress... which can be frustrating in case everybody wants to see but nobody wants to show...
Not everyone will want to share of course, but I think there are plenty of people who do want to show:
I'm sure there are others too. I had to search through six pages of the NESdev forum to find all those. If they had their own forum, they'd all be right there on page 1. Some users have shared their projects on YouTube but don't have a dedicated thread yet (miau, me). I plan on starting a thread for my game as soon as the new forum is up (if it gets created that is. Do we have enough "yea"s yet?). There are some people getting into NESdev over on the NintendoAge forums too that could sign up and post their stuff here.
And that's only games. There are plenty of utility projects too.
Well I have a crappy webiste about my NES project that I haven't updated since 2 years or so...
(but it's all my fault for not taking much care of it... I'd say that I didn't make much progress anyways)
So I don't need a blog or an additional forum.
Also I'd usually talk about technical things in my game either to help other NESdevers (as long as they don't steal my idea and sells them I'm fine with sharing them), and to get possible ideas of improvement of how I implemented things from other NESdevers. This doesn't really cover the actually game design part though, which I mostly take care of my own or with a friend.
MetalSlime wrote:
...and it could be another way to attract non-programmers to the forums (artists, musicians and fans).
I think that's a strong point. I used to be alienated by all the technical talk on this forum, but I still couldn't resist checking it every now and then. Yeah, this forum IS for technical talk, but unlike us sweaty nerds who are immersed in their code all day, I think non-programmers are the ones who share the love and could make nesdev more attractive!
A projects forum could be the central place to get feedback or, for example, look for beta testers. Right now I'd rather start feedback threads on nintendoage since that's where the fans and some fellow nesdevers are.
As for my project, things have changed a bit and I've started keep my recent progress secret as well. I will eventually start a thread about it here, though.
I see a consensus for creating it. Now all I need are the forum name and description, as would be seen on the front page.
The name could be "Homebrew Projects" if it's not supposed to include hacks or other kinds of projects.
The description could be something like "A place where you can keep others updated about your NES-related projects through screenshots, videos or information in general", again, depending on what kinds of projects it should cover.
I agree with Tokumaru's sentiments. I think that it is important to emphasize that the group should be for homebrew projects only (hardware and/or software), but NOT for software hacks / edits of existing titles. The name sounds fine, too.
Looks good. The word "NES-related" makes it general enough to cover games, tools and hardware projects. We can have a rules sticky in the forum itself if we need to be more specific.
Done, starting with the topics MetalSlime listed. Thanks.