Regarding recent comments on the theme "Three Rivers Region" for some time now I wonder if the community or the website SC4D is in decline.
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=112.msg409106#msg409106 (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=112.msg409106#msg409106)
I wanted to start this topic to share my feelings and my concern about the activity in the forums and to find out and ask other members what think about that (both the recent users and the old ones). First of all let me say that I made about 2 years I'm really active in the forum and only 1 year and two months since my first message. So I have a limited perspective on what has been SC4D since its founding in 2006, although as a SC4 player I had a period from 2003 to 2006 and another from two years before till today.
First of all, I have to say that I write the message with a translator because my English level is not high enough to discuss these issues. Although the other reviews I do not use translators and I'm improving my English. So sorry if there are some mistake.
When two years ago I returned to SC4D and SC4 I noticed that they had already done many things between 2006-2009/2010 but already in 2010 had less to LEX files that of previous years. I also saw that there were many teams, but that few had long lacked messages. At that moment I thought I had already lost the best years of SC4D (between 2006 and 2009). Also looking at statistics of 3RR I saw the strength and comments had dropped in 2010.
As for the picture competition of 2010 was very fast and was difficult to even find the time to compete. Now voting sometimes is a long process and go 1 and 2 days without any image to compete.
Recently I have been looking at statistics SC4D every year and have seen different things:
Looking at the general data is the number of items dropped from 3157 (2007) to 1699 (2011), the number of messages have dropped by half (from 108,084 (2008) to 48,813 (2011), but the number of new users hasn't dropped so much (from 23,709 to 17,257, a decrease of approximately 25%) and the only online users has dropped insignificantly.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg201.imageshack.us%2Fimg201%2F2582%2Festadistiquessc4devotio.jpg&hash=0281eca07a05cb7c65b1268c3cd7d4ebb35d346e)
Looking at more specific data from different days is the number of messages per day has fallen far from 2008 (there were between 250 to 500 messages per month), and there are 100 to 150 Messages per day approximately. The number of new issues has also fallen to less than half. The number of new users per day has also gone down since 2009 but at a rate lower. Finally, what is more surprising is that the number of online users has fallen slightly but the last 3 years and even be superior to 138 of 2008. Currently there are about 130-170 users online (in December 2011 and January 2012 can be explained because there are more people on vacation. But the quantity of posts is 60 to 140 post. So looking at data from different months and different years can be deduced that allele ratio of post per user connected to decreased considerably with respect to 2007-2009.
The statistics of the LEX but is not there between 3000 and 6000 downloads every day so many people interested.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg69.imageshack.us%2Fimg69%2F2582%2Festadistiquessc4devotio.jpg&hash=0d14cdab63e073de092aa14277488d1e88207495)
1-New Topic, 2-New Posts, 3-New Members
The image are not in a high qulity so if you don't know where, here you can see the stats of the forum http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?action=stats (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?action=stats)
I am also CapitalSimCity user (website in spanish) that without the data I've seen enough activity dropped last year. ()sad()
What I can deduce from these data that many users do not send messages that are relatively new and always better to read at first as there are many things to learn, some others are active in other communities and just follow the news of SC4D, others are old but only connect occasionally to look at how things are going but no longer plays such as before or not, or are simply making a break.
I don't know if I'm wrong but it seems that many users currently active are more dedicated to MD (as is my case) than BATS and MODS, which has led many teams there are very active or inactive. This may be because there is not much need for new BATS as there are a lot of material available from previous years and people do not need both BATS.
Well, I like to read the statistics of the forum as I things are interesting.
Although this is only a few thoughts of what I often think about the community. Personally for me the SC4 is more than a game, a hobby, and is the only game I play now and SC4D a community that I visit almost every day and I am very grateful. And the truth is that I am concerned that the activity in the forum is down. Obviously life provides many turns and there are important users who fail assets for personal reasons or simply because they are tired of the game. Users like Andreas, Ripplejet, Barbyw, Ennedi, Ferox (SCPolska still active :)), Jeronij (allowing us to enjoy this site :thumbsup:) and much more. But there are always pleasant surprises when you see how old users like Pat, Dedgren, TheTeaCat with which I have not shared temporary space but have always been referents, return to the community.
What do you thing about? ()what()
I hope 2012 will be a great year for the SC4Devotion community! :)
I think the main issue is because some people are lacking interest in Simcity 4, or have dropped it for another game, or even the real life has taken a biggest part than before.
I'm going to think the whole issue through a bit more before I post in detail here, but what Kergelen has posted is very important information for folks who are concerned about the future of the community. I'm not necessarily feeling bleak about the current situation- I've been laughing at predictions since about 2007 that assert that "this year (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, fill in the blank) is absolutely, positively it for SC4, as there is no way anyone is going to want to play a (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, again fill in the blank) year old computer game. To tip my hat, SC4 has just about been reinvented by the community in each one of those years, and the commitment of the folks who play it has always been at the highest levels.
So, I'll be back.
David
I think, just as Arthur, quite some people are moving on to another game. I've seen quite some people come and go on this site, and sadly, sometimes talented people too. For instance, JMVL, from who I learned to make puzzle pieces for the NAM, is not active anymore for more than a year.
Besides that, the game getting out of sight for new users, which explains the decline of new members. The game itself gets into the background, while new game titles are popping up, like Cities In Motion or CitiesXL. But for quite a while, this side does have a solid core group of members that once they got hooked on, they'll never seem to get away. These are off course our moderators and administrators, as well as some respected and long-term members who often stop by here and there on the forums.
Our community may be in decline, it's not dead yet. In fact, on SimTropolis it's still alive too, but that's a more casual platform...
Best,
Maarten
Over the previous months I've also been a bit concerned about the declining activity around here. At times it has worried me quite a bit. While there are less active MDs, less posts, etc, I feel like the ones remaining are of outstanding quality. Many MD scenes would be amazing to someone viewing just a year or two ago and the accomplishments of teams like the VIP and NAM, among others, are truly something to behold.
What I'm getting at is that it appears that the community is solidifying into a "hard core" rather than dwindling away.
The major downside of that is that the community becomes increasingly inaccessible to newcomers. With the plethora of amazing add-ons playing the game vanilla doesn't make sense but tracking down all the goodies can be a daunting task.
Keeping the community accessible to users other than the "very advanced" doesn't have an easy solution that I'm aware of, but as long as we retain the critical mass of interest, talent, and creativity that has characterized the community at SC4D I don't think we'll lose our SC4 home anytime soon.
While I don't think the community is necessarily in trouble, I have a similar experience to
Kergelen, in that I was intensely into the game in the mid-2000s before RL got in the way, and have only in the past year found the time to jump back into the game. In the process, I've discovered an entirely different game then the one I played 5 years ago - massive developments, the kind of things that fell into the "wouldn't it be awesome if..." category, now exist. And they exist only because of the incredibly strong and dedicated fan community that exists here and on other sites.
That aside, there definitely appears to be a "Golden Age" of SC4, roughly from 2006 to 2009, when you look at the dates of items on the LEX and the age of posts in the forums. Like Kergelen, I thought that,
Quote from: Kergelen on January 07, 2012, 01:09:36 PM
I had already lost the best years of SC4D
And it took some time to see how much development is currently ongoing, and find where activity is still happening. I think part of it is a perception problem, that people see teams that haven't produced anything in a long time, or high profile projects that have dropped out of view. Some of this I think is truly abandoned projects or ideas that hit dead ends, but some of it is projects where the work has simply moved behind the scenes. Which I think leads into what
noahclem is saying, and which I've also witnessed here, which is that for the most part, cutting edge development is being done by a relatively small number of hardcore developers. And I think there are two very valid reasons for this:
- The easy work has largely already been done. The game is roughly nine years old, and it's been under nearly constant modification since it came out. So as a community, we know how to add buildings, change the terrain, make it behave in new ways, and really, completely customize just about everything but the simulator itself, and even that we can tweak in significant ways.
- There is a relatively high barrier to entry for those looking to make significant changes to the game, which goes hand in hand with my point above. SC4 is a complex game, and while we now have some very powerful tools to develop new buildings and mods with, there's a heavy learning curve to figuring that stuff out.
The end result of this is that newcomers who are interested in changing the game find themselves facing a giant pile of existing mods and tools and tutorials to dig through, and a not insignificant challenge if they want to create their own content. Fortunately, there do seem to be many people who are up to the challenge. New content is constantly coming out, and the existing community is generally receptive to those who are starting out and looking for help.
But, I think some of these trends speak more to the strength of the community than its decline. While the overall numbers do appear to be falling, it's worth remembering that the real world has spent the past 3 years doing much the same, and that's going to affect any game or hobby and the communities that develop around them. However, the overall SC4 community retains several important elements that are necessary to keep things alive:
- We have people who have been modding the game for years, the gods of SC4, many of whom reside at this site, and who are able to aid newcomers while they pave the way into new frontiers with their encyclopedic knowledge of how the game works,
- We have those devoted to playing the game and spreading the good word, the MDers, and their innumerable silent counterparts that create a constant demand and testing ground for new content,
- We have steady producers, occasional producers, and those that just pick at things that catch their interest, who generate new content for the community and explore new areas of development, and
- We also have the newbies, new to the game or new to modding and batting who are constantly asking questions, and bringing fresh talent and ideas and energy into the community.
So, long-winded post aside, I think that things are in a good shape overall. Sure, the recent years have seen a small decline in development, but not a full stop. Continuing development is not all of the mundane variety, but much of it quite good, and not just from established developers, but also relative newcomers. Superprojects such as NAM do still get updated, others not so much, but that's the nature of development. The MDs have not withered down to a few standards, but have new ones popping up all the time, and old ones in ongoing production. The biggest hurdle I think the community has is more likely organization - there is simply so much out there that it is overwhelming to try and get a handle on it all. But there is also work ongoing to counter this, such as here (http://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/reference/for-the-eager-yet-overwhelmed-newcomer-r204) and here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=61.0). And the boards are very much alive with those willing to help troubleshoot and guide and introduce others to the wondrous world of SC4.
:)
It still amazes me whats going with the new developments to the game. Communities like this have taken the game to a place no one could imagine. Its truly amazing what ordinary people can do when they passionate about a creative endeavor.
I for one have pursed a career and grants related to what I have learned by playing and modding SC4. I hope to soon share these with the community.
@whatevermind Wow! Just wow! You pretty much didn't leave me anything to say. That is probably the best assessment of the state of the community today that I have ever seen, and is well worth a karma point. I'm taking your comment and the others posted here into account and will sleep on all this overnight.
@JonM Your upbeat and personalized viewpoint brings to mind one of the best features of SC4D over the years- that so many folks who think like that have found a home here.
@Noah (noahclem) I'm not so inclined to think that the game, as it stands today, has become that inaccessible. More on that tomorrow.
@Maarten (mrtnrln My son Jon is an avid computer gamer, with many friends who are also inclined that way. Watching them play whatever is considered latest and greatest leads me to a couple of conclusions, none of which make me worried that we are losing any significant number of folks, even after nine years, to something new and better. Tomorrow for that, too.
David
Quote from: whatevermind on January 07, 2012, 07:09:32 PM
...And it took some time to see how much development is currently ongoing, and find where activity is still happening. I think part of it is a perception problem, that people see teams that haven't produced anything in a long time, or high profile projects that have dropped out of view. Some of this I think is truly abandoned projects or ideas that hit dead ends, but some of it is projects where the work has simply moved behind the scenes....
I can only speak for our team to say we are still working on new RTMT stations for the NWM networks, but its a very time consuming business, especially trying to fit it into RL, I'm doing the models ... have done about 30 so far and have at least that many more to do, other members of the team are working on the lots and new textures ... even if we get more volunteers its still going to be quite some time before the new RTMT version will be ready to be released.
Would it help if we did monthly progress reports?
Catty
RTMT Team
Maybe i speak from my own case but, first of all, real life is quite a big issue when needing time for SC4. I think everyone of us has been away from the game or the forums for some time.
Second, the ability to create new stuff, which is still in need, is unreachable for the most (including myself). Even with others help, learning how things works takes a lot of time and even some kind of talent, so its hard to make any quality contribution. Although many great batters prefer the simtropolis forums (like the BSP team among some others), SC4D gathers players, modders and creators with a really high level (which simtropolis don't quite have) which also makes contributing quite hard for the mayority.
And third, i myself have been waiting for the next big thing. A new game that takes it a bit further. New cameras, better region views, getting rid of the grid, you name it. I know that it isn't out yet (i hope syneskism gets opensourced soon so that it grows to become a full game) but i kinda feel like SC4 is an old game. It takes way too much time for me to just open the game and play a city tile because of the addons and stuff. The game wasn't made to be run on a dual core i think and wasn't supposed to have so much custom content.
Maybe we can make something to bring people back. Maybe some kind of monthly competition in groups that keeps everyone interested and involved and shows some real contribution. Make some kind of bat by the end of the month and win something, i dont know...
Multiplayer Sim City was really good but didn't work out because people played on their own rather than as a team and players of different levels were playing side by side. But maybe it could be improved to become something great. A bunch of players in the same map, playing a couple tiles each with a certain common objective sounds like some fun. If RL takes you out someone can take the control of your city for you until you are back.
Maybe its too difficult to make it work, it's just what i thought when i read this...
Quote from: catty on January 07, 2012, 09:03:18 PM
Quote from: whatevermind on January 07, 2012, 07:09:32 PM
...And it took some time to see how much development is currently ongoing, and find where activity is still happening. I think part of it is a perception problem, that people see teams that haven't produced anything in a long time, or high profile projects that have dropped out of view. Some of this I think is truly abandoned projects or ideas that hit dead ends, but some of it is projects where the work has simply moved behind the scenes....
I can only speak for our team to say we are still working on new RTMT stations for the NWM networks, but its a very time consuming business, especially trying to fit it into RL, I'm doing the models ... have done about 30 so far and have at least that many more to do, other members of the team are working on the lots and new textures ... even if we get more volunteers its still going to be quite some time before the new RTMT version will be ready to be released.
Catty
RTMT Team
I feel the same as Catty, I feel bad for not posting updates more often from the SCAG Team, even though I've been working on quite a lot of stuff. I don't know if it would help to post more pictures, or what. I'm at a bit of an impasse. I didn't want to feel like I was building up undue expectation - I could drop dead at any moment, or I might not finish it before RL kicks in and (permanently) ends my ability to work on the project. Luckily neither have transpired, and I will be able to release a lot of stuff as soon as this week.
I think the lifeblood of the Simtropolis community is it's free and open content exchange, something that is lacked by SC4D. My experience of the LEX (without wanting to have a big gripe here about it, because there are no hard feelings) was that a combination of very high (sometimes unneccesarily so) standards, and a Scrutineers' department in desperate need of more volunteers meant that I gave up my goal to become a certified LEX Uploader. I'm not upset about it, because I know it's my own fault in various ways, but it was hardly achievable from the beginning. What that equates to is that I'm more prone to take my work to ST, although SCAG and I are very thankful for the fact that we still have a team board here, and I certainly like the community feel here better. I don't think the LEX will change its ways, and it will certainly remain the archive of
some of the best quality custom content.
But then there is a perception sometimes that SC4D is elitist, and I can say I've felt that way too sometimes. I can only speak from my own experience, but sometimes it seemed like having the rest of the community was a hassle for some who communicated in a way that came across as very intolerant of newcomers. I remember [edit] some events that could have been handled better in my earlier time as a member.
At any rate, it's no longer a concern to me. There were some personalities that I didn't have a good rapport with, and I'm sure that can happen to anyone. For the most part, they were outweighed by the good relationships I had with other members I was priviliged to meet here. The point is that a perception was created, and for some, it was confirmed.
I concur with kergelen, I too feel like I entered the fray at a time after the community's golden years. I feel like I'm almost part of the twilight zone, which is not particularly inspiring.
I think that SC4D was the ideal place for a (decent sized) handful of really enthused players, and it still is, but a lot of the really enthused players - some of whom had been modding this game almost since it's release - have started to disappear in a noticeable way. It hasn't been able to attract much of the new crowd, who for various reasons may prefer the more laissez-faire environment at Simtropolis.
All of the above is my own subjective opinion, and anyone is free to disagree, but I'm glad to have aired my thoughts on the matter. I've been thinking about it for a while.
Kergelen, I think your observations are astute, and they're coming from the right place, too. I've been feeling a similar thing off-and-on for the past year, and I think there are a few things at play.
I don't think competition from other city-simulation or related games (Cities XL being the most cited) is really doing it. From what I've observed of the Cities XL community, that franchise was severely wounded shortly before the release of the first installment by Monte Cristo's failings, and its followers are basically a modestly-sized but tight-knit group of "hardcore" folks, who have stuck with it as the new developer/publisher have picked up the pieces. There were no major "defections", if you will, of key SC4 community members over to the CXL realm, and I don't expect to see any thing changing on that front. Most of the major CXL folks were either mildly involved in the SC4 community or are completely new folks, and many CXL players that played SC4 still seem to play SC4.
SimCity Societies had no effect, I think Cities In Motion is a different enough niche that the SC4ers playing it are still playing SC4, CityScape is no longer being distributed after the Navteq buyout, and the various community efforts at making a new game haven't yet produced any results.
As far as other factors go, I think there's been some considerable shifts in terms of the custom content landscape which haven't entirely sorted themselves out.
The NAM Team side is about like what catty reported with RTMT. We're still going and there's been some great additions to the team in the past several months, but whatevermind's conclusions are quite accurate. The types of things we are doing now are quite involved, and have to be heavily integrated with one another. In many cases, it's not simply a matter of cranking out new puzzle pieces or RUL2 overrides anymore. Between that and RL, which has kept me and many other NAMites busy as of late, it's slowed things down. Our developers also have different philosophies on showcasing things, which can make things look less active than they really are behind-the-scenes.
Outside the transit modding realm, it seems like there's been a shift away from the traditional "powerhouse" team paradigm, toward individual creators and more informal collaborations. Having surveyed the team place boards while typing up this reply, the most activity seems to be in the boards for relatively new teams, like NUTs (est. 2008), VIP (est. 2011), BNL (est. 2011) and EBLT (est. 2009). The BSC is still going, but there's been a lot of RL that has left only a handful of really active members right now. HKABT seems to be primarily active at ST (though CAMeLot versions of some of Cockatoo's BATs recently hit the LEX), and the rest of the teams seem to have been beset by RL and have (at most) significantly reduced numbers. The "independent" BAT Projects board, however, seems to have a fair bit going on still, and quite a few of them have had content make it to the LEX. On other sites, NYBT and BSP still seem to be going at ST, and SimPeg seems to be missing its namesake.
On the MD front, right now, there are 64 MDs on "active" boards (including the HoF), a relatively healthy number, particularly when you consider that many of them are long-running efforts that have been updated in the past month-and-a-half. I have noticed that the commenting has indeed slowed down, and in general, I think there's an increased prevalence toward lurking community-wide. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Some of the lurkers are once-active folks who have faded into the background due to RL, but a lot of newer members seem to be taking that tack as well.
I think SC4D (and SC4) are going to stick around for quite some time, though these shifts are curious and may be speaking to something. Just what, I'm not sure yet, though I tend to think Noah's explanation of a "hard core" is viable. I also think that if our RLs allowed more stable SC4 time, it'd probably alleviate a lot of things, but it's not that simple, unfortunately.
-Alex
Quote from: joelyboy911 on January 07, 2012, 10:34:25 PM
...I feel the same as Catty, I feel bad for not posting updates more often from the SCAG Team, even though I've been working on quite a lot of stuff. I don't know if it would help to post more pictures, or what. I'm at a bit of an impasse. I didn't want to feel like I was building up undue expectation - I could drop dead at any moment, or I might not finish it before RL kicks in and (permanently) ends my ability to work on the project. Luckily neither have transpired, and I will be able to release a lot of stuff as soon as this week.
and there's the other side of the coin to posting updates on your project, we do this for free and hopefully cos it something we want to do and enjoy doing, most people respect that and are gratefully for the work you do and understand the time delays, unfortunately you will always get a few people who seem to think that your purpose in life is to provide them with whatever they want, when they want it.
Quote from: emmotic on January 07, 2012, 09:51:41 PM
...so its hard to make any quality contribution.
just taking part in the community is a "quality contribution" :thumbsup:
Quote from: catty on January 08, 2012, 01:18:21 AM
and there's the other side of the coin to posting updates on your project, we do this for free and hopefully cos it something we want to do and enjoy doing, most people respect that and are gratefully for the work you do and understand the time delays, unfortunately you will always get a few people who seem to think that your purpose in life is to provide them with whatever they want, when they want it.
I've had to deal with quite a few of those types quite recently and over time. Unfortunately, it's a reality of the business. It always puts a damper on things for me, and I'd definitely say it makes me more cautious about developmental updates.
-Alex
Quote from: catty on January 08, 2012, 01:18:21 AM
and there's the other side of the coin to posting updates on your project, we do this for free and hopefully cos it something we want to do and enjoy doing, most people respect that and are gratefully for the work you do and understand the time delays, unfortunately you will always get a few people who seem to think that your purpose in life is to provide them with whatever they want, when they want it.
I've seen a few of these people around the forums as well (though most forums seem to have them), particularly in the AC Team board, which I think is also the reason why the Voltaire locked the RMIP-3 thread. Some people seem to completely fail to understand for some reason that developing huge packs of custom content (NAM, RMIP-3, etc) take quite a lot of time to be developed. That said, the RMIP-3 has been in development for quite a lot of time already so I can understand the frustration of some people as well.
Back to the topic at hand, I've also noticed SC4D going less active over the course of a few years as well. I haven't gone through the trouble to look at the statistics, but it was my general perception too. I've both seen people go MIA and return out of the blue after more than year.
That's the very interesting thread. As at SC4D I'm mostly a "guest" who keep MD, post comments and follow the latest news, while the most of my activity is at SimCityPolska, I couldn't report how the situation is looking right here. We had few discussion about those topics at SCP last years and our conlusions were similiar. 2009 was propably the last "golden" year for SimCity and 2010 had drastically lowered activity, as well as in creating new custom contents (mostly BATs), keeping MD's and playing the "SimWorld" (we had such a project, which is based on virtual map, where our regions are coonverted into countries, trading with each others, organising sports event etc. There are probably many similiar projects at manu other sites). The last one reached the lowest activity. There was some of new custom content uploaded, but its amount was also incomparably lower.
However at our forum we do not have only Simcity-related topics, but there are many discussions about RL things, mostly about architecture, cities, investments, city transport etc. These ones didn't decrease.
Fortunately 2011 was different than 2010. Much more news from "simworld", much more new updates in MD's, especially after May. It was probably due to the fact, that many of regular users (me too) had mature exams, which obviously didn't allow to play games so much. The end of 2011, also with a bunch of new users from last months, were quite good in activity statistics. However amount of new content is still very low. On my example: most of my BATs I've made in 2009, in 2010 none, in 2011 - a two small uploads.
Simcity is the old game. When it appeard, most of today players were ~9-14 years old (like also me). But with time, they grew up. They are now ~18-24 years old, when there isn't so much time to play, as in the past. Of course, there are many older players, 30, 40 or more (like Ennedi - when he was last logged in? I'm not able to see anybody's profile, I do not know why. Does anybody heard something from him?), but this is a very, very regular group.
What is more, our forum transformed in something more than game-related-site. Because the most of people are regular users for years, ("elitist", how joelyboy said), SCP is now more like some kind of society portal - we speak about our real life, our experiences in school, at university, in work, we are asking about advices (e.g. last time we were talking which, computer, bike or TV would be the best to buy), etc. We just now each other very well, furthermore, due to living in the same country, many people met each other in reality. And probably this is the thing which handle the community, while simcity turned a bit into some addition.
I wish all the best for sc4d community in 2012! :)
Kamil, Ennedi was last active the 28th February 2011, a little less than a year ago.
I think it is natural what we see. As many has pointed out already, there are many factors contributing for this.
First we have the age of the game. it does not make it obsolete, it just isn't, but there are few new members because there is lack of advertisement on SC4. it is easy to buy on some game stores, but they are there just hidden on some shells or baskets, and only by casual search someone gets them and start to play them. More, one thing is to start playing it strait of the box, other is to find out this communities and its mods of the game. It makes the game even more enjoyable to play (thou sometimes I like to play the original game without plugs too ^^) and I may speak in particular of NAM, every time there is a new NAM, I fell like a new patch was made to the game, or a new game was release! and I go in a new SC4 frenzy ^^
Secondly we have Real Life. We aren't sims, we are people. I can give you my example. I was quite active on 2007 to 2009 +/-, specially on ST, made lots of bats, texture mods etc etc, but then I got struck by my mastership thesis and I went off the radar. I barely had time to play, what ever to mod and/or bat. And like me, many got their issues too. But, again like me, many of us return. I have and I've being updating my Essencial file, with new props, new textures, learning new stuff and doing a lot of Lotting on a personal project (make all maxis lots look less American and look more like Portuguese/Euro like). Of course, not all return, we had some great losses, and unfortunately not all due to lack of time or interest =(
Third, we have some people in the middle ground. They still follow up the communities, they just don't interact or are fully active. I mean, we have to think of all who are "guests" or just "viewers" of threads. There are many of them. maybe they don't interact or aren't active because of "all that is easy" was made already and what they face up is to much for them. So they just watch. But they are there!
In the bottom line I believe that SC4 communities are still here to last, but of course the golden ages are gone. I don't believe there will be new, unless something incredible is found.
I played SC4 from the time it came out to until around early 2009. I then got involved into other things and got more involved in those then in communities revolving around SC4. I used to post at ST and SimPeg often until 2009, but then I started getting more involved with my kids and their dirt bike leagues and little league, and other aspects of real life that SC4 became an afterthought.
Until late last year, the last things I had downloaded were from 2009 and someone could probably confirm this, but lately I have been on a downloading spree from the LEX re downloading files I had downloaded in 2009 but now that I did all of that, again, I am losing interest in the game again. To me the game is a feast or famine game. When I have a kick, I want to play it as often as I want, but then I get sick of it and go back to other standby games to play(like Command and Conquer).
I used to post on ST all the time, now I rarely post on SC4 sites. This is about the only place I post, and someone could easily verify, I did not post here for a long time(I want to say close to a year and a half). And even now, I still rarely post outside of a few area's of the board(which I think should be re-organized to bring the MD section higher up on the boards to try and gain more page views from) that interest me. Yes I am guilty of reading the MD's and commenting, but I don't want to make a simple post and then repeat the same stuff over and over for the most part 20+ times as I could then be accused of post whoring as well, so I don't comment.
Will this site eventually die? Of course it will, so will ST and SimPeg and every other simcity site, but it won't be for awhile either, because as long as there are thousands of people who still play the game, there will be a need for sites like this. But its getting new people into a 10 yr old game that is the issue. My kids play SC4, my sister plays SC4(but only what came with the game with updates, no custom stuff at all), but the other day when my kids were playing it and some of their friends were over, the comments of "why are you playing a game with those lousy graphics" and "man this game is boring, where is the challenge" came up, and that right there is a major issue that will never be won. Kids today are used to instant satisfaction and state of the art graphics, which SC4 does not give.
Well, I did not know if this issue was interesting for you, but I see there is much interest and I am happy to have generated debate and read the opinions of others.
I am not a creator of custom content but I understand that the creators did not feel good when people are rude requiring the new content regardless of content creators that they do when they want and because they want, without obligations. However, we must highlight that the vast majority of users are very grateful with the work of the Teams and many of us would like to contribute with new content but we are still learning (as is my case) which requires a long time.
Regarding the learning and new members I think is very important that we have all the SC4D tutorials and other communities tutorials as indicated whatevermind. There are many members with very little knowledge of computers and code issues, we can learn much by reading tutorials (like myself already beginning to be familiar with the Reader and many other programs). This wealth of the community will always be available to those who want to learn and that can turn out new modders, baters, lotters, etc..
I also think you have every reason noachlem mrtnl and that there is a solid core group of members which is also a great asset for his knowledge.
On the other hand wanted to add some information that I did not explain in the previous post and could be interesting.
I made a small table with 5 different days in different years (I've taken at random on 10 October each year). And I did the ratio between the quantity of messages and the quantity of people online at the same time. Which is statistically not correct as I have done but gives an idea of participation. To do so would be to make the average of many days of the year chosen randomly and compare the ratios of the averages of each year, which brings a lot of work :P. Neither is entirely correct to take the quantity of "Most Online" because most online users at the same time does not mean that throughout the day has been connected much users in total, but is an indicative figure.
[tabular]
[row] [head]Day[/head] [head]Messages[/head] [head]Most online[/head] [head]Ratio: Messages/Most online[/head] [/row]
[row] [data]2007-10-9[/data] [data]339[/data] [data]70[/data] [data]4.84[/data] [/row]
[row] [data]2008-10-9[/data] [data]329[/data] [data]85[/data] [data]3.87[/data] [/row]
[row] [data]2009-10-9[/data] [data]177[/data] [data]119[/data] [data]1.48[/data] [/row]
[row] [data]2010-10-9[/data] [data]128[/data] [data]87[/data] [data]1.47[/data] [/row]
[row] [data]2011-10-9[/data] [data]161[/data] [data]171[/data] [data]0.94[/data] [/row]
[/tabular]
We see that the ratios decrease over time and therefore the number of messages per user is shrinking, the number of users connected is not reduced. But it also shows how the number of users online unabated which suggests that there are many people interested in the forum. Maybe from others forums, maybe newbies, maybe old users still interested, maybe some users with a bad day ::),etc.
The causes may be different and you have described several in your previous posts.
In any case my message was not necessarily negative as in the last year I saw a new NAM, inovations as the Double Decker among others, new teams like BeNeLux and VIP Team(very productive), the great innovations of seasonal flora (which I love), the constant renewal of the universe of MMP (especially Antigone), a concept that was new to me as SimNature, the possibility of removing the water and placing lots under the water (pipes in Mind Scape), a new street for SAM (by vortex), and many incredible MDs and BATS , and many more things I leave or do not know. I have also seen members who were registered in 2010 have greatly contributed such as for example Lowkee33, a relatively new member.
Glad to have generated debate and to read the opinions and feelings of all of you. :)
And thanks for the K-points. :) :thumbsup:
So many great points here, I'll try to keep mine simple:
To me there's no doubt that SC4 is in a decline on the net, but that's what happens when a game approaches 9 years of age. No amount of updates or custom content can save old age, it just happens.
What keps SC4 going and going is player content, of which new creations never cease to stop flowing, not to mention the lack of a decent sequel. In a world with such a competitive market for video games, most players will have short lived experiences with games until they move on to the latest craze. Quality games like SC4 come few and far between.
I don't believe that SC4's time is up, but the clock is almost certainly ticking now. Agree with me or not, there is less and less interest in the game as time goes on, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying the game.
Anyways just my thoughts.
-Ryan (Haljackey)
~ Hal was this a slip here never seen you sign your real name ever wow! Point taken though for sure SC4 is an old game but we still love it!!! ~ Patrick Board Mod
QuoteI could drop dead at any moment, or I might not finish it before RL kicks in and (permanently) ends my ability to work on the project.
I hope when the unexpected happens no one feels guilt for it. Sadly, life or death happens, but it goes for anyone, anywhere, anytime. I have had unexpected fallouts from going online in general, dare I technical difficulties, but real life in general is just a burden. I remember having a very brief, friendly outside forum chat with JP post the 2nd release of NWM, there seemed to be relief a bunch of that stuff was now a reality.
Maybe there is decline, but that decline does not mean everyone gets to go on to other gaming, for some their interest changes, but for others, they are family folk, others have to now pay for their own living expense, and in this ecconomy who can blame them for going off the map? But right here, this is not SC4, this is a community. Personally, the clock in this here community seems to be better then [__]space.
@dedgren: Thank you! That means a lot :)
@catty and others:
I agree there is no easy way around the question of when and how extensively to update. As some of you pointed out, larger projects take a lot of work, which takes a lot of time, which I think (hope) everyone understands and appreciates. Not to mention the internal issues of deciding who posts, what to post, when to post, how to showcase, and in the case of several teams and projects with multiple homes, where to post. It's all quite the puzzle. I don't have any answer to it, but to sit back in awe of the amazing work being done.
Quote from: Tarkus on January 07, 2012, 10:40:36 PMI have noticed that the commenting has indeed slowed down, and in general, I think there's an increased prevalence toward lurking community-wide. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Some of the lurkers are once-active folks who have faded into the background due to RL, but a lot of newer members seem to be taking that tack as well.
I had to smile when I read Alex's observations on lurking. I, too, have started lurking more lately, but the reason is easy to explain. I have several personal (NUTs) projects underway. Then as an administrator, moderator, committee member and 3RR team member, I spend several hours a day doing "site work." I never worked this hard for money and I love every minute of it. :D Still, all of these things take time. Anyone who knows me well knows, "Great update. Can't wait to see more," just isn't my posting style. Instead, I prefer to make thoughtful posts I hope will help our members. So, lacking the time to do so, I tend to lurk more than I used to.
RL is not at the root of the problem. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I would like to do. So in my case, lurking is not a sign of inactivity. Indeed, it's a sign that I'm more active in the community than ever before.
It's human nature to look at things from our own point of view. Unfortunately, however, sometimes it leads us to draw incorrect conclusions. Posts in this thread by Cathy (catty) and joelyboy911 indicate there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on, just as there is in my case.
The "face" of our community may be changing, but it isn't a sign of impending doom. I see it as a positive sign that we won't be scratching SC4D or SC4 off our list any time soon.
Quotethat's what happens when a game approaches 9 years of age
SC4's ninth birthday, btw, is on January 14th.
Still thinking (as I work on SC4 stuff- that ought to say something by itself).
David
I know that personally, I've dealt with a gamut of issues over the past 24 months (from having a computer that wouldn't run SC4 to work), but I just haven't had a lot of time to play the game or work on stuff. I think my particular situation (RL in general) applies to a great deal of us.
I'm very proud to be a part of this community. I've made some great friends here, and I definitely look forward to contributing again (with the obvious caveat of 'when I can')!
At least I'm not the only one whose had been down the road with PC's acting like that, but this:
QuoteIn a world with such a competitive market for video games, most players will have short lived experiences with games until they move on to the latest craze.
There is something symbolic to that statement which reminds me of something, like this:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.picvalley.net%2Fu%2F2023%2F135431520717826745921326093671wU6ruikqda2UBCPfkT9j.JPG&hash=e0f3884cb38a4da6cd37a5bcdadae9fdf34341a9)
Carefully see the parallel element to SC4 here?
Much have been said already and I'm relative new to the community so I can't really tell if it's dwindling or not. I do know it's been of great help and inspiration to me since rediscovering simcity almost a year and a half ago. Thanks to a friend of mine whom mentioned there were sites out there . . sites with new buildings, new transit stuff, new terrain mods. . When I visited sc4d and simtrop for the first time my jaw literally dropped and it's safe to say I've been hooked ever since.
The fun really begun however when I started customizing. Lotting at first, just to remove some trees. Next step was creating my own growables and nowadays I'm really into street modding, like Kergelen mentioned already. &blush Point is, it's all thanks to the tools and knowledge made available here at sc4d.
Personally I never really cared much for video games and still don't. I consider simcity a simulator, which always has been a niche genre. There's nothing to strive for in these types of games (you can't 'win' anything) except what a player sets out to do, which is bounded only by his or her imagination. Given that and the fact it's relative old, it's understandable people will give up on simcity eventually and move on. However, I don't see sc4d going down the drain anytime soon.
That said, remains the lurking issue. Much like Jmouse I'm not quick to post a 'looks great, keep it up' kinda reply. Maybe I should more often since last time I updated my thread there hasn't been a single reply yet, which is somewhat disappointing. I can imagine the same is true for people who just spent an evening preparing an update for their MD. However for non English speakers like me, a decent reply takes times. Time that could otherwise be spend on simcity. ;)
Most has been said already so I want to focus my comment on a new aspect.
I think that the structure of the SC4D forum makes it not easy to discover new and interesting topics and answer to them. In my opinion there are way too many too deeply nested subforums and subforums of subforums. I have my regular routine of sections I visit. But most of the time I do not bother looking into other sections because everything is so widespread and complicated to find. I am sure there are sections in the Forum I have never seen.
And when I sometimes take the time to click through all the sections I find several threads that are really interesting but I do not comment any more because they were written months ago.
My personal opinion is that, especially regarding the dropping number of posts, it would be better to concentrate everything a bit more so that "special interest" threads that are now buried deep in the forums, get more attention. This would also encourage more people to actually open new topics. At the moment, why should I bother opening a topic in a remote section that hardly anyone visits. Take the "Planning and Urban Design" section as an example. Why is there almost no activity? In an Urban Simulation Forum?
Sorry for the wall of text and please take this as constructive criticism and not negative bashing.
QuoteMy personal opinion is that, especially regarding the dropping number of posts, it would be better to concentrate everything a bit more so that "special interest" threads that are now buried deep in the forums, get more attention.
I concur, there're way too many nested threads. Which on the one hand makes it fun to explore the fora. But when I come across something interesting, I bookmark immediatly because it's almost impossible to find it again later on! So some rearranging might be in order. For example, it's somewhat puzzling the pic competition isn't featured on the front page, just like the MD section should be. Then again, a complete overhaul of the site might be a daunting task, not to mention there will always be folks complaining they liked the previous edition better ::)
Guess everyone agreed saying that the clock is ticking for this "game", that's what I saw in most of yours comments.
Also, we do have a strong community, and that's not something you see everywhere. Most of us here are passionate and have nothing to win exept sharing ideas, creativy, projects... which is actually huge...
I'm quite new here, I discovered this website not even a year ago, but that's the first thing I saw, the opportunity to improve thanks to the community.
Even if their is less and less activity, their is nothing to be mad at, this is just how it works... This is unbelievable that their is still such a community after nine years...
I guess that this could be explained by the healthy environment. Indeed, no one is fighting to "win", you have to share something for that, and then you take the benefits. (Exept in the picture competition ! No MERCY ! )
Does anyone knows how many times the word "Thanks" have been said here ? That means a lot... (What a weird community !)
You know what ?
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, stateless and revolutionary socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production. In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.
Communism comes from the Latin word communis, which means "shared" or "belong to all".
This is just like modern communism ^^ Marx should have been proud of us... lol !
Thanks from France !
Benoit.
I have a few quick points....
Kergelen, thank you for starting a very interesting and well thought out concern of our game and community. You may have noticed I gave you a well deserved karma point.
Kergelen again, becareful when you do stats from "most online". I remember a year or so ago we had spambot problems and I believe that they are included in those stats, so they may not be entirely accurate.
I can only echo what most of you all have already said and I agree with most of it. This game is old and it will die out entirely one day, but that day is not any time soon. (***I say that while standing up with confidence and look towards the skies***) We still have several healthy years ahead, especially if the ones that are making these remarkable break throughs lately continue to do so.....such as MMPs, the RHW, the rest of the NAM team and we still get high quality BATs at least every week from someone, some where across the community.
RickD, vortex and this goes out to anyone else as well, if you have any ideas or see something that could be organized better here at SC4D do not hesitate to PM myself or any other Staff member. Just go have a look at the SC4D Picture Competition and where it is now. ;)
Robin :thumbsup:
Quote from: Ol.S / Benoit on January 09, 2012, 05:00:59 AM
You know what ?
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, stateless and revolutionary socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production. In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.
Communism comes from the Latin word communis, which means "shared" or "belong to all".
This is just like modern communism ^^ Marx should have been proud of us... lol !
Thanks from France !
Benoit.
Hmmm now that is a interesting point of view ^^ somehow I have to agree :)
Hmm they both begin with M, and have some similarities. carl MArXISt I feel this community is a prime example we as an international cross-country line society can do without the political and ecconomic troubles, considering the work involved. RL aggrivates me because the requirment for money is the cause of the problem. No ever need for money, then no ecconomical problems. No need to work for the money, more time for SC4!
Well... I think that somehow, the community reflects the passion of its members. Somehow, when you look at it, its a one single site that absorbs every kind of player into it. Unfortuntely at the same time, it also shows the problems that the actual game is starting to have. Think about it... every time something REALLY COOL like the RHW or the new NWM comes up... there are a lot of comments and pics and stuff. Why is that? well i believe that happens because of the excitement that it generates... but the real reason why is because of the game limitation's itself. No matter what people create for the game, there will always be a SC4 limitation... that somehow is going to reflect it on the community, that's why its gettin harder and harder to create new topics... hence the lacking of posting.
I believe that lately the lurking means the affection that people still have for the community, but at the same time it shows the lack of the excitment for the game, an until something extremly BIG or NEW or whatever comes up, there wont be an impact to make people change the way they are now...
Just my thoughts... no comments are intended to any user specifically... and it is not meant to offend anyone :thumbsup:
Quote from: rooker1 on January 09, 2012, 08:25:19 AM
Kergelen, thank you for starting a very interesting and well thought out concern of our game and community. You may have noticed I gave you a well deserved karma point.
Kergelen again, becareful when you do stats from "most online". I remember a year or so ago we had spambot problems and I believe that they are included in those stats, so they may not be entirely accurate.
Yes, I have noticed the Karma point from you and from Dedgren and I fell very honoured. It was a nice surprise on saturday morning and, as I said in my previous post, many thanks. :) :thumbsup:
About the stats, thanks for the information, I didn't know about. Although statistics are not entirely accurate, we can see where things are going. Anyway, the stats are only a way to confirm our perceptions, which are always more important than numbers. .
Good new location of the competition. It is much more accessible :thumbsup:
Quote from: rooker1 on January 09, 2012, 08:25:19 AM
...RickD, vortex and this goes out to anyone else as well, if you have any ideas or see something that could be organized better here at SC4D do not hesitate to PM myself or any other Staff member. Just go have a look at the SC4D Picture Competition and where it is now. ;)
Not sure if this will help or not, but these are the current boards on the site, the ones starting as "SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION" are the main site groups
3RR ATLAS
3RR BACKSTORY
3RR COLLABORATION SHOWCASE
3RR GAZETTEER
3RR GRAPHICS EXCHANGE
3RR HONORS LIST
3RR QUICK FINDER
3RR TABLE OF CONTENTS
AC CREATIONS
AC FUNCTIONAL AIRPORTS
AC TEAM PLACE
ANNIVERSARIES AND OTHER DATES OF NOTE
APOIO PORTUGUÊS E AJUDA
B.A.T. ANIMATING HELP REQUESTS
B.A.T. HELP
B.A.T. LIGHTING HELP REQUESTS
B.A.T. LODDING HELP REQUESTS
B.A.T. MODELLING HELP REQUESTS
B.A.T. PROJECTS
B.A.T. RENDERING HELP REQUESTS
B.A.T. TEXTURING HELP REQUESTS
BEST SC4 PICTURES CONTEST
BEST SELLERS
BIRTHDAYS
BNL CREATIONS
BNL PLACE
BSC CLEANITOL
BSC CREATIONS
BSC HELP
BSC LEX DOWNLOADER
BSC NHP DATPACKER
BSC PLACE
BSC PLAYS THE GAME
BUDDYBUDS EXPANSIVE ATTEMPTS AT ANYTHING & EVERYTHING
CAFE POLAND
CAM - COLOSSUS ADDON MOD
CHALLENGES
CITYMANIA - OPEN SOURCE SIM CITY
CLASSICS
CLOSED REQUESTS
COMPLETED CONTEST ARCHIVES
CUSTOM CONTENT CREATION TOOLS
DEUTSCHES SUPPORTFORUM
EBLT CREATIONS
EBLT PLACE
ESPACE FRANCOPHONE
FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC
FORUM GAMES
GENERAL DISCUSSION TOPICS
GENERAL MD INFO AND STATISTICS
GENERAL MD INFORMATION AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
GENERAL SUPPORT ISSUES
GENERAL TEAMS PLACE INFORMATION AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
GRV II - BORDERTOWN
HKT CREATIONS
HKT PLACE
HOW TO BUILD A... HELP REQUESTS
ILIVES READER
INACTIVE BEST SELLERS
INACTIVE CLASSICS
INACTIVE RECENTLY PUBLISHED
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
JAPAN
LEX DVD DISKS
LEX LOGIN AND ACCESS SUPPORT
LOT EDITOR HELP
LOT EDITOR PROJECTS
LOT MAKING HELP REQUESTS
LOT TWEAKING HELP REQUESTS
MACINTOSH HELP REQUESTS
MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST
MAYORS' DIARIES
MD STATISTICS
MEMORIES FROZEN IN TIME
MOD PROJECTS
MODDING GAME SIMULATORS HELP REQUESTS
MODDING GAME TEXTURES HELP REQUESTS
MODDING GENERAL HELP REQUESTS
MODDING HELP
MODDING PLOPABLE STUFF HELP REQUESTS
MODDING TOOLS
MODDING TRANSIT NETWORKS HELP REQUESTS
NAM CREATIONS
NAM HOW-TOS AND TUTORIALS
NAM INACTIVE THREADS
NAM PLACE
NDEX CREATIONS
NDEX PLACE
NEDERLANDS- & AFRIKAANSTALIG SUPPORT FORUM
NEW BAT REQUESTS
NEW CREATIONS REQUESTS
NEW MAPS REQUESTS
NEW MODS REQUESTS
NEW TEXTURES REQUESTS
NEW TOOLS REQUESTS
NEW TRANSIT ITEMS REQUEST
NHP CREATIONS
NHP PLACE
NULL45'S TOOLS
NUTS CREATIONS
NUTS PLACE
OF SPECIAL INTEREST THIS MONTH
OPEN REQUESTS
OTHER GAMES
OTHER PROJECTS
OTHER TOOLS
PC/COMPUTER HARDWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEM ISSUES AND QUESTIONS
PERFORMANCE TOOLS
PIM-X'D
PLANNING AND URBAN DESIGN
PLAYERS
PLAYING THE GAME HELP
PROJECTS
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
RECIPES FROM YOUR KITCHEN
RL PICS OF GENERAL INTEREST
RTMT CREATIONS
RTMT PLACE
SC4 ANIMATOR
SC4 COMMUNITY-RELATED
SC4 LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS STUDIO
SC4 TERRAFORMER
SC4 TOOL
SC4D BRIDGE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
SC4D GOINGS-ON
SC4D MAYORS' DIARY HALL OF FAME
SC4D NEIGHBORHOOD PLACES
SC4D OFF TOPIC SECTION - POSTS IN THIS SECTION DO NOT INCREASE THE POST COUNTER.
SC4D THEMATIC COMPETITION
SC4DEVOTION PICTURE COMPETITION HALL OF FAME
SC4DEVOTION REQUESTS AND ISSUES
SC4LOTINFOSGENERATOR
SC4MAPPER
SC4PIM
SCAG CREATIONS
SCAG PLACE
SECTION RULES
SFBT CREATIONS
SFBT PLACE
SHOW US YOUR...
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION BSC LEX
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION CERTIFIED TEAMS PLACE
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION CUSTOM CONTENT - DISCUSSION AND REQUESTS
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION CUSTOM CONTENT SHOWCASE
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION HELP
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION OTHER TEAMS PLACE
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION PICTURES AND PROJECTS SHOWCASE
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION TEAMS PLACE
SIM CITY 4 DEVOTION TOOLS
SIM CITY 4 JAPANESE DEVOTION
SIMCITY AIRPORT GROUP
SIMULATOR L
SITE RULES
SKANDINAVISK SUPPORTFORUM
SO FAR
SO NEAR -- ???????????
SOPORTE EN CASTELLANO
STARTUP MANAGER
TD CREATIONS
TD PLACE
TECHNICAL HELP REQUESTS
TERRAFORMING HELP REQUESTS
THE "X" TOOL OR PIM-X
THE 3RR EXCHANGE (3RREX)
THE ARTIST'S PLACE
THE DUNYA PROJECT
THE GRAPHICS POINT
THE PAVLOVA SPORTS BAR
THE RURAL RENEWAL PROJECT
THE SC4DEVOTION PODCAST
THE THEMATIC ARENA
THE TRIUMPHAL WAY
THEMATIC COMP ARCHIVES
THEMATIC COMP PLAYERS ENTRIES
THREE RIVERS REGION
THREE RIVERS REGION - ST
TRANSIT NETWORKS HELP REQUESTS
TRANSLATION REQUESTS
TSC CREATIONS
TSC ORANGE TROPHY
TSC PLACE
VIP TEAM'S NEST
VIP TEAM CREATIONS
WELCOME GUEST! CANNOT SEE IT ALL?
WHERE CAN I FIND THIS ....?¿
:)
That's quite a list. On a quick glance I say all BAT threads could be grouped together, as well as the LOT editor ones. Also, last week I was searching for something (already forgot what exactly $%Grinno$%) and it led me to the tutorial sections. I noticed a lot of those are 1) outdated because of new tools and 2) mostly incomplete on the specific subject. I know from experience it's quite a hassle to pull all the bits and pieces up from the depths. It may be worth while to rewrite some of them and placing them somewhere more accesible, since they're apparenlty not a main site group.
Quote from: RickD on January 09, 2012, 04:05:03 AM
...Take the "Planning and Urban Design" section as an example. Why is there almost no activity? In an Urban Simulation Forum?
Quote from: vortext on January 09, 2012, 02:16:42 PM
...On a quick glance I say all BAT threads could be grouped together, as well as the LOT editor ones. Also, last week I was searching for something (already forgot what exactly $%Grinno$%) and it led me to the tutorial sections....
Had a quick go at doing a draft site plan (
this is only an example to get people thinking about where they would like to see the various boards and topics located)
SC4 DEVOTION HOME
- COMMUNITY (anniversaries, birthdays, etc)
- FORUMS (welcome guest, site rules, etc)
- LEX & DVDs (login and access support)
- TUTORIALS & WIKI
SC4 DEVOTION CUSTOM CONTENT (BAT, LOT & MOD)
- DISCUSSION
- HELP (where can i find this ....?)
- REQUESTS
- PROJECTS
- SHOWCASE (show us your ...)
SC4 DEVOTION INTERNATIONAL
- JAPAN
- APOIO PORTUGUÊS E AJUDA
- CAFE POLAND
- DEUTSCHES SUPPORTFORUM
- ESPACE FRANCOPHONE
- NEDERLANDS- & AFRIKAANSTALIG SUPPORT FORUM
- SKANDINAVISK SUPPORTFORUM
- SOPORTE EN CASTELLANO
- TRANSLATION REQUESTS
SC4 DEVOTION MAYOR's DIARIES
- MD INFORMATION AND STATISTICS
- SC4D MAYOR's DIARY HALL OF FAME
- OF SPECIAL INTEREST THIS MONTH
- CLASSICS
- BEST SELLERS
- RECENTLY PUBLISHED
SC4 DEVOTION SHOWCASE
- PICTURES (best sc4 pictures contest, etc)
- PROJECTS (GRV II, etc)
- THREE RIVERS REGION
- TOOLS (cam, cleanitol, datpacker, downloader, ilives, null45, sc4pim, sc4tool, etc)
SC4 DEVOTION TEAMS
- CERTIFIED (ac, bsc, hkt, nam, nhp, nuts, rtmt, sfbt)
- OTHERS (bnl, eblt, ndex, scag, td, tsc, vip)
SC4 DEVOTION TECHNICAL HELP
- SC4 HELP REQUESTS
- LINUX HELP REQUESTS
- MACINTOSH HELP REQUESTS
- WINDOWS HELP REQUESTS
- PC/COMPUTER HARDWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEM ISSUES AND QUESTIONS
SC4 DEVOTION URBAN DESIGN & PLANNING
- SOFTWARE
- SHOWCASE (real life city & rural creation - open to all city simulation software)
- THEORY
SC4 DEVOTION OFF-TOPIC
- FORUM GAMES
- OTHER GAMES
- MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST
- RL PIC'S OF GENERAL INTEREST "$Deal"$
EDIT: Added a few more categories under "Technical Help" cos I missed them last night
Catty you hit on the one thing I was afraid to post about earlier with a forum revamp, which was putting all the teams in their own section as subforums. That there IMO would make the board alot more appealing because you owuld not have to scroll down past every team section to get to the MD area or picture area, which are really the two area's I like to browse through
Some more thoughts on rearranging; I remember what led me to the tutorial section, it was this (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14207.msg408576#msg408576) simple question how to make a custom lot. That's so easy to do nowadays but if one is completely new it may seem pretty complicated and alas, currently there're no step-by-step tutorials. It may be useful to make a 'custom content creation' portal, with a breakdown for LOT, BAT, MISC (transit, automata, rewards, etc.). This way the appropriate tools and tutorials could be grouped together instead of having these in different sections.
Also, imo it makes more sense to arrange all 'ingame pictures' threads together, i.e. the competition / MDs / Show us your . . / Project showcases / etc.
My two cents so far.
Well. I've been reading this topic and I have to admit that it were the longest posts I ever read (apart from the tutorials) I didn't even knew that there was a sc4 devotion urban design & planning area. How great. I must have missed that the last 3 years here. But I don't think that the forum beeing that complex is the evil-doer. It's just what already has been said. A to old game not made to last 9 years.
We got everything here. If you want to search powerlines you can go ahead and find some. That's not difficult. And for me that's because I can't finish something. We already have everything. There's no actual point in creating them. It has been done by someone better. I don't get motivation and can't finish anything because I realy can't put myself to work. I just cannot create something, which has been done before. I'm also not motivated by the community. It's not because of the lack of replies, because I have enough, but more because I don't have any inspiration. If there were just throughout the community some bigger projects or just something to keep me motivated than I maybe create a BAT which will eventually get into game. How to do that. That's the question %confuso because I put up a project for the BNL team but that has gone to nowwhere. It was much too ambitious. If someone has an idea please say it. It's so bad from me that I haven't done anything for the community yet, while getting serious replies on my BAT thread.
I rarely visit either this site of Simtropolis anymore but I have certainly noticed that the whole of the Simcity community is in permanent decline. This is expected given the age of the game, and I'm surprised it hasn't dropped off a cliff at this stage. When I joined Simtropolis back in 2005 there would be 30+ uploads to the STEX a day (at the least). You'll be lucky to get that in two months now. The LEX seems to be getting that almost per annum recently, though this is a cosequence of how closed it is. Natural decay of the community is hardly shocking in my opinion.
What does surprise me is that you can deny that modding the game is difficult to access for new members. As someone who has been on the periphery for a couple of years it looks to me to be completely impenetrable. I'm not sure where I would even start if I just bought the game in one of the frequent Steam sales.
The language of the community is probably a problem, all these ridiculous acronyms can be very confusing. There's really nothing worse than joining a modding community and having to work out what everyone is talking about. It seems to be a pretty common issue for a lot of modding communities, I got into OpenTTD last year for a bit and was constantly confronted with this patois where people regularly exchange words for acronyms. Eventually you learn what everything means but it's still an annoying barrier to overcome.
The thing that really hinders new players on a far greater scale than that language is dependencies. There have been many debates before (which is basically the reason why this site was founded as far as I remember) but it remains a massive problem that will not go away. Over the years I have collected and catalogued a grand total of about 1,300 files (3.6gb in size) which basically allow me to download almost anything without brown boxes. Connection speeds are much faster and hard drives much bigger than back in 2005, but plugins are spread across more than one exchange and most of them are separate downloads zipped up and then contained in installers. The process of getting yourself to the point I find myself in could take days and days. Who wants to do that? Who has the time? There were simple solutions to this that could have been implemented, package managers or maybe SVN but these never happened. I always assumed it was because no one in the community had the technical ability to do so, there are still separate accounts for the LEX and this forum for example. Some non community members have simply made up their own solution. I am a member of a forum that has a fairly active Simcity thread in it's games section. They compiled a 'gigapack' of dependencies and that's how most people get into the game there. AFAIK it's quite incomplete and riddled with duplicates but it's the quickest way to get into the game for newcomers and they take it by default rather than mess around with the dependencies on here or the STEX.
Really this whole thing could have been solved years ago, but no one wanted to do it because of politics or arrogance or whatever (real life was obviously an issue but probably a minor one). If anyone who was around then is still wondering why people kept complaining over and over about dependencies, it was because there was a real problem. It's a shame that instead of addressing it you just made another site with another exchange so you didn't have to listen anymore. I don't think I ever disputed that dependencies add real visual value to the game, only that their implementation was wildly wrong. I suppose the current situation isn't as bad as it was back then as we have megapacks now, but my point still stands.
So yes, this community is declining but this process probably could have been slowed if the right decisions were made.
Even if it were handled differently 6+ yrs ago, the issues would still be here today because the game itself is 9 years old and when I went to Best Buy and a video game store, and not one time did I see a SimCity 4 Deluxe game being offered for sale. At the Video Game store they stated they could order one if I really wanted it, but why would I since its so old? Thats the problem, basically the only way new people are going to get into the game is from their parents now, since most retail outlets only stock current games these days
Peter, I'm not meaning to pick on you, but what you said catalyzed my thinking about several aspects of the game. I agree with you as to many things but gently disagree with you on a number of points.Quote from: peter007Well. I've been reading this topic and I have to admit that it were the longest posts I ever read (apart from the tutorials) I didn't even knew that there was a sc4 devotion urban design & planning area. How great. I must have missed that the last 3 years here. But I don't think that the forum being that complex is the evil-doer. It's just what already has been said. A too old game not made to last 9 years.
I certainly agree that the organization of the SC4D site, while complex, is not generally a barrier to participation. I think that something of its size on the web is inherently never perfectly accessible, but the staff is tweaking things all the time, and most functional areas (i.e.: the Mayor's Diary section, the Custom Content section, the Tools section, etc.) generally give someone who's looking for something a push in the right direction. If anything could be better, it would be the in-site search engine, but that's a fault of the site software. I don't see that search ability is any better on other forums I frequent, so I'm leaving that issue there.
What you say raises the larger issue of the vast amount of SC4 information that is out there. We now have nine years worth accumulated, and some is at arcane levels that the game designers would have never dreamed that the user community would have access to. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is great to know how to tweak that one little thing that, in the individual player's eye, detracts from the city/countryside she is working on. It is massively frustrating for a player to see others doing things that are seemingly taken for granted and have no idea how it is being done. It is completely true that folks who have been playing the game since its first days have a huge leg up on newcomers who started last year. It doesn't mean those long-timers are any "better" (in the objective sense) at SC4, but it does mean that they generally have an easier time with the more advanced aspects of gameplay on any given day.
The big point I see here is that SC4 does not fit the usual computer game paradigm- mastery of a new game within sometimes days but almost always weeks or at most months. After mastery, though comes the boredom born of the game having become too easy or too repetitive, and then it's on to the next new game. That fits the software developer's marketing plans to a T, as you are back in the checkout line several times a year. The fact that most all computer games are not open-ended like SC4 is also part and parcel of the dominant paradigm. Those who are used to that- folks who can whiz through 20 levels of a first-person shooter before breakfast after playing it for a short time, I think find SC4 disconcerting after the same period of time. The cities and rural landscapes after playing for a couple of months look pretty much the same with some slow refinement. Then, though, he or she sees someone else's work that just nails it. That inspires some folks and discourages others. The bottom line, though, is that the folks who hang on are generally rewarded.
Think hard- is there another computer game out there where you can gain the equivalent of nine years of mastery (besides NetHack, but that's another story)? The trouble with doing that is that it pretty much takes, err... nine years to do that. Sure, there's SC4 prodigies out there who somehow seem to have bypassed the "pay your dues" period, but they are few and far between. Time and time again, the most talented members of the community have demonstrated that, just like anything else in life, the way to get really, really good at something is to stick with it, to work at it, and to not give up. As a "Nine Year Guy" myself, I can only promise you that the effort is worth it.
SC4, my friend (and all my friends out there) is absolutely not "too old." It was pretty cutting edge and placed a heavy demand on the average consumer computer when it was released in 2003. Computers have caught up and, even though it is only a single-core game, it pretty much flies on any machine compared with how it used to run. I think Maxis/EA showed a lot of foresight in using the "blended" 3D approach- 3D objects viewed from a fixed perspective. If you think a true 3D citybuilder is in the cards any time soon, go play CitiesXL for as long as you can stand it (my tolerance is pretty low, so it's not a good guide). Don't words like "cartoonlike," "blocky," "unrealistic" and the like pretty much quickly replace the initial shock and awe of seeing street-level graphics. At the rate we are going, there will be a SC4-quality 3D city builder played by your children someday. Don't hold your breath.
I've said before that Maxis/EA gave this community a huge gift. They developed SC4 in a manner more or less open and accessible to MODding, fixed most major deficiencies within a year with Rush Hour, then went away and left us alone. To our own devices, as it were. And what devices! EA may hold the copyright, but we, the community, own this game. With a small number of exceptions we can pretty much it do whatever we want, and we are still finding new things out. Sure, we will never be able to make a curved tunnel or flowing water "in-game," but get a life! Those are pixels on a computer screen you are looking at, my friend. And there are MDs out there with pics that I defy you to look at and explain how this failing makes any difference.
By staying out of our hair, EA has made us self-reliant and pioneering. We did it because we had to. If EA had followed "The Sims" business model, all of us would now be about (US) $500-$1,000 poorer and likely be locked into a game where, just like Apple has with the iPod and iPad, EA would stamp ruthlessly on user efforts to gain a degree of control. The narcotic of "someone else is taking care of that" would have stifled all the development and MODding we take for granted today. At bottom, our situation, IMHO, is one to celebrate, not to lament. Quote from: peter007We got everything here. If you want to search powerlines you can go ahead and find some. That's not difficult. And for me that's because I can't finish something. We already have everything. There's no actual point in creating them. It has been done by someone better. I don't get motivation and can't finish anything because I really can't put myself to work. I just cannot create something, which has been done before. I'm also not motivated by the community. It's not because of the lack of replies, because I have enough, but more because I don't have any inspiration. If there were just throughout the community some bigger projects or just something to keep me motivated than I maybe create a BAT which will eventually get into game. How to do that. That's the question %confuso because I put up a project for the BNL team but that has gone to nowhere. It was much too ambitious. If someone has an idea please say it. It's so bad from me that I haven't done anything for the community yet, while getting serious replies on my BAT thread.
First off, my recollection is that things you've done that I'm familiar with have been quite nice, and that Team Benelux is a center for quality in the community.
I do agree that all the easy MODding is probably done, although I always have the capacity to be surprised. BATting is hardly any different (as I understand it- as I've said elsewhere, I can't BAT for poop, so don't take my word) than it was way back when. LOTting is pretty much the same as well. The trick today is simply knowing where to look for the things you need among the tons of stuff out there.
I don't agree, either, that "someone can always do something better than you can" as any sort of principle to live by. People striving for excellence have made the game and this community just that much greater. I always start a project with the idea that I'm going to do the best I can, period. If I do that, and it turns out to be the best there is, that's just gravy. If it is not, I'm ready to accept that the particular division of labor involved does not favor me, except- and this is a big deal- I get the complete benefit without cost of the better item plus the experience of having tried. Lighten up on yourself, eh?
So I still have more to say about this. As with Peter, there's been comments I agree with and comments I haven't. This is a process we need to go through though, as I begrudge the loss of a single member of this community who would have otherwise stayed had it been in our power to make that possible.
David
Quote from: mike3775 on January 10, 2012, 03:11:58 PMThats the problem, basically the only way new people are going to get into the game is from their parents now, since most retail outlets only stock current games these days
This is completely inaccurate, Deluxe is sold on the Steam platform for £9.99 and there are regular promotions. Every time there is one new people come to the thread on the forum I was talking about. As I pointed out the community will naturally decay over time.
Yep, Deluxe is pretty much always at all the box stores here (Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer, Target, etc.). Last time I looked it was (US) $9.99.
David
Quote from: mike3775 on January 10, 2012, 03:11:58 PM
...Thats the problem, basically the only way new people are going to get into the game is from their parents now, since most retail outlets only stock current games these days
I don't have a problem getting the disks in NZ and they are LHD which is even better, its the cost ()sad() I have a problem with
http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Games/Sim-City-4-Deluxe-Edition-PC/5030930036386
luckily I don't have to pay for postage being local (the shipping cost to the US & Canada is $14.95 NZ + $4.95 NZ per item)
On a different subject a couple of people commented that they didn't like to keep posting the same things in each topic, I'm not sure if its available to all the site users, but at the top of each post is the "Bookmark and Share buttons", I've used it to send links to posts or pictures that I have liked to my Twitter account and it has a little counter to show how many times people have done this ... not the same as posting, but at least it shows the person doing the post or picture that someone liked it enough to want to share it with other people.
:)
I suppose I'll drop my thoughts on a couple of the topics floating around here.
First, the topic of site organization. I agree that there is work that could be done, both visually and organizationally to improve site accessibility. Someone mentioned earlier being unsure about whether SC4D was one site, or a collection of related sites under one name. This falls in the same category of problem of having two passwords for what is (essentially) the same site. The LEX, the main page/forum, and the Wiki all look different, which gets a bit confusing. I understand there are technical reasons for some of this, but even if parts must remain separate on the back end, work could be done to bring the LEX's appearance more in line with the main site, and creating a more uniform appearance overall, as well as consolidating and updating some of the information (for example the dependencies pages on the LEX and the main site are different). The LEX in particular could use some profile options, so that you could at least change your s/n or password, etc. to match across the entire site if you wanted to.
On the topic of forum organization, right now, some of the sections are confusing, and some of the subforums (and even sections) appear to be duplicates at first glance. For example, there are three sections on SC4D Teams. Consolidate the entire thing into the SC4D Teams Place, which then breaks down into: 1) General Info, 2) Certified Teams, and 3) Other Teams - each section can then break down further from that point similar to how it does now. Considering their prominence, subforums for 4) BSC and possibly 5) NAM - would also make sense to me.
The section on SC4D (the site and community, top of the forums), is fine as is. However, site related help should be clearly within this section; at the moment it's not so obvious where to post those questions. The sections related to the LEX, MDs, Japan, and Off-Topic discussion I think also work as they are.
The custom content and technical help sections, however, are a bit jumbled at the moment. I think it would help to rearrange these into more clearly defined sections. Right now there are two sections for displaying content (outside teams): "Sim City 4 Devotion Pictures and Projects Showcase" and "Sim City 4 Devotion Custom Content Showcase", which seem to largely overlap each other, which makes it confusing for finding work, and also figuring out where to post your work. Maybe rearrange these into two new sections 1) Things you can use in your game (ie for displaying BATS, Lots, Mods, etc.; and 2) Pictures of other people's games (ie the picture competition, show us your.., GRV II, 3RR, etc.)
Likewise, there are four sections for technical help (non-site related): "Sim City 4 Devotion Tools", "Sim City 4 Devotion Tutorials", "Sim City 4 Devotion Help", and "Sim City 4 Devotion Custom Content - Discussion and Requests". The first two, tools and tutorials, are well organized. The second two could probably be combined, since they seem to overlap a lot. They might keep all the same subforums, just under one heading (ie SC4 Devotion Custom Content Help, Discussion, and Requests).
So, what I imagine is a forum organized roughly like (new parts italicized, and descriptions in () ):
-Sim City 4 Devotion Site and Community Related
-Sim City 4 Devotion BSC LEX Related
-Sim City 4 Devotion Mayors' Diaries
-Sim City 4 Devotion Custom Content Showcase (the things you can use)
-Sim City 4 Devotion Pictures and Projects Showcase (the things you can't)
-Sim City 4 Devotion Teams Place (as described above - all team related pages)
-Sim City 4 Devotion Custom Content Help, Discussion, and Requests
-Sim City 4 Devotion Tools
-Sim City 4 Devotion Tutorials
-Sim City 4 Japanese Devotion
-SC4D Off Topic Section
Now, that's just my personal take from how I use the forums, but perhaps others will find that layout useful as well.
Next, I have to say I agree with toxicpiano regarding the acronyms, I suppose it's just part of the way we are, but it does get awfully confusing at first keeping them all straight.
Also, can't say I've generally had trouble finding the game in stores. Whenever I do wander through the games section of any major big box or electronics store, I'm generally proud to discover copies of SC4 Deluxe (or more often the full set, with SCS and so on) setting on the shelves.
I looked for it because my disc 2 is scratched and to install the game I need to use a copy that I had made. It won't run off the copy, but the scratched disc plays the game fine, just won't install off of it.
The Walmart in my area I always go to doesn't carry many PC games(but 3 whole aisles of systems though). Maybe tomorrow I go on a little shopping run to see where its at
I'm going to echo David's words by saying that the game is available at every Wal-Mart in my area. Honestly, 9 years is a long time for a game to be on the shelf. This game has already outlasted the typical game console (~5 years) and Windows operating system (~3 years) life spans. Now, that's saying something!
It could be that people just have other interests besides SC4, whether those interests include other games or non-game activities. This is part of the reason for my recent inactivity, along with a little RL here and there. This has happened to me with every game, SimCity or otherwise, that I've played. However, I always find myself coming back. My theory is that this will happen in the SC4 community as a whole, and we will once again see a great resurgence of vitality that the game and the community deserve!
Dedgren, David.
Thanks for the reply. I like the community very much. It's a very pleasant area and it's at the top of my daily want to visit list. I'm still happy with such a big community. You're right that not everything can be perfect here. But when I yesterday stumbled across urban design and planning area. I found it almost empty. It's totally not what I had expected from it. Almost nobody is using that. Do we still need that part of the community then? I say (not offensive meant) get rid of all the forums which hasn't been used recently or just blend them into another forum.
SC4 is a great game. No argue! I played recently Men Of War Assault squad & L.A. Noire. That last game was played for three days when I was finished with it. I have done batting for almost 1 year and a half. I know that I got the game when I became 10 in 2005. It was a gift from my my grandma. It was a nice game and I have been playing it since then. I never totally stopped with it. It's a timeless game. And I don't think that the community will stop before 2015. At least if the apocalypse isn't going to take place here. ;) I hope that there will be lots of new updates and uploads to the community untill the end. (I hope that the end will be a new better game). And I'm kinda looking forward to the new game. This old rubbish is going to annoy me. I want to get 3D. Just like L.A. Noire & Men of War. And this sound maybe a little bit snobby but I want to get new. The level of 3D has been passed by almost every game. There's a small amount of games that still uses the perspective of SC4
Quote from: dedgren on January 10, 2012, 03:26:42 PM
SC4, my friend (and all my friends out there) is absolutely not "too old." It was pretty cutting edge and placed a heavy demand on the average consumer computer when it was released in 2003. Computers have caught up and, even though it is only a single-core game, it pretty much flies on any machine compared with how it used to run. I think Maxis/EA showed a lot of foresight in using the "blended" 3D approach- 3D objects viewed from a fixed perspective. If you think a true 3D citybuilder is in the cards any time soon, go play CitiesXL for as long as you can stand it (my tolerance is pretty low, so it's not a good guide). Don't words like "cartoonlike," "blocky," "unrealistic" and the like pretty much quickly replace the initial shock and awe of seeing street-level graphics. At the rate we are going, there will be a SC4-quality 3D city builder played by your children someday.
True I have a Acer Aspire 5750 i5. 2,9 Ghz. Great PC. Simcity 4 is going great, but if it was 3D it would have been better looking. Though I will
only accept a new City-Building game which has the same realistic level as Simcity 4. And as I read there isn't one computer which can run such a detail in a city with thousands of buildings and models. I guess I have to wait untill then. But I will be there if there's going to be one new game. Maybe when I will turn 65 or something. It doens't have that much priority, because when Simcity 4 is stillan old game. 3DS MAX isn't. It's going new every year. And the fact that you can still use 2012 made buildings in 2003 SimCity is great. I truly commend the game. (If you say it like that)
Quote from: peter007 on January 11, 2012, 07:33:15 AM
...But when I yesterday stumbled across urban design and planning area. I found it almost empty. It's totally not what I had expected from it. Almost nobody is using that. Do we still need that part of the community then? I say (not offensive meant) get rid of all the forums which hasn't been used recently or just blend them into another forum...
I don't disagree with you regarding tiding up the forums or even getting rid of the "Urban Design and Planning" board, but I do worry about your statement "
Do we still need that part of the community then?" we run the risk of specializing ourselves to the point that no-one is visiting the site, I'm not saying we should open our arms to CitiesXL or any of the other "city building games" and turn ourselves into a smaller version of Simtropolis as well, but I think if someone was recreating London or any of the RL Cities using CitiesXL or something else and wanted a place they could showcase what they were doing, I for one would be following their work ... we need to embrace our visitors and their contributions to the site ... but not compromise the site values or why this site was set up in the first place.
:)
I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure there are others in similar situations.
My activity has always been sporadic. Bursts of energy with periods of just lurking. I have always been this way...so its not saying there is a lack of interest or that there is anything wrong with SC4D...its saying I actually have real life to deal with as well as other interests than SC4.
For instance..not only do I play SC4 regularly but I enjoy other games as well...
Distant Worlds: Legends, War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition, Harpoon Commanders Edition, and Star Wars: The Old Republic are the 4 that currently compete with SC4 for my time. There are also XBox titles releasing this quarter that I will be spending time with...
What it comes down to is simple: There is not enough time in the day to do everything I enjoy doing (one has to work to support these hobbies after all). This reflects in my posting here on SC4...when I'm spending time with other games, I tend to spend less time browsing the forums at SC4, etc.
In the end, the lower activity could be something, but in some cases (like me) its nothing out of the ordinary. I'm sure there are plenty of others like me that spend more time playing the games than posting about them, but as I said, I can only say definitively about myself.
Quote from: gn_leugim on January 09, 2012, 08:26:48 AM
Quote from: Ol.S / Benoit on January 09, 2012, 05:00:59 AM
You know what ?
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, stateless and revolutionary socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production. In Marxist theory, communism is a specific stage of historical development that inevitably emerges from the development of the productive forces that leads to a superabundance of material wealth, allowing for distribution based on need and social relations based on freely associated individuals.
Communism comes from the Latin word communis, which means "shared" or "belong to all".
This is just like modern communism ^^ Marx should have been proud of us... lol !
Thanks from France !
Benoit.
Hmmm now that is a interesting point of view ^^ somehow I have to agree :)
Now are we talking if SC4 is communism and the content that is made? lol then yes in strange way this game does belong to us!
Ohhh speaking of still on the store shelves is the original SC4D Box set at my wal * mart in Hastings MN for would you believe it $19.95 yes that is right $19.95 not 9.95 lol
Quote from: catty on January 11, 2012, 12:26:02 PM
I don't disagree with you regarding tiding up the forums or even getting rid of the "Urban Design and Planning" board, but I do worry about your statement "Do we still need that part of the community then?" we run the risk of specializing ourselves to the point that no-one is visiting the site
But if people aren't going to that section and utilizing it, then it's just an empty space, isn't it? A restaurant that doesn't sell slices of cake or pie doesn't continue to maintain an empty bakery case, in the event that someone one day might wander in and look for a slice of pie? (Even if the bakery case has pie/cake in it, like the Urban Design and Planning section might, they're older and dusty slices of pike/cake.) If there's nothing special to set this site apart from the others, then I think you've run in the opposite direction - it would be too broad and too much like the others. Personally, I don't think specialization is a bad thing per se, for that very reason.
QuoteWe need to embrace our visitors and their contributions to the site ... but not compromise the site values or why this site was set up in the first place.
Bold emphasis above is mine - I will admit that there are lots of things about the site that I don't understand, which is fine. The organization, the segmentation, what-have-you. And not to dredge up the past, but I am also unclear as to the nature and circumstances of "the Great Schism" which caused this site to be created in the first place. But I think the "mission statement" of what this site is and what this site is supposed to offer should be clear. Why
was this site set up in the first place? And how can the organizers and moderators help to forward that mission statement?
I would also add to the above that "the home for the serious player" and "the best SC4 custom content" isn't the mission statement, in part because they are descriptive and not active. Personally, that first phrase sticks in my craw every time I read it - the implication being that if you're not posting or uploading or downloading from this site, you're not a "serious player." I
know that's not the implied intent of that statement, but be aware that this is something that might be construed or
inferred by its presence; it would be very easy to read those two phrases at the top of the page and misconstrue "elite" as "elitist," particularly if you are new to this community.
So, ultimately, I guess I'm saying, what is the goal for SC4Devotion? And how can the site best meet that goal? And what currently within the confines of this site do not meet with the aims of this goal, and what can be removed that doesn't help in any way of achieving it?
QuotePersonally, that first phrase sticks in my craw every time I read it - the implication being that if you're not posting or uploading or downloading from this site, you're not a "serious player."
I agree that first part can be taken that way, but I always took it more along the lines of this site likes to focus on more realism within the game then many other sites that have lots uploaded do.
This place tends to have more realistic style buildings and lots, not fantasy based lots like a subway station that looks like the stargate(not knocking that, I won't lie, I did download those, I like them a lot). Thats the way I take what they say.
Fantasy looking lots are also good as well. Most of my cities always have a mixture of realistic and fantasy and civic buildings that are as unbelievable as can be, and also civic buildings that are more realistic. I tend to use more fantasy based civic buildings that give way more radius then the civic buildings that follow the maxis radius though, because in reality a city of 50K only tends to have a few elementary schools, maybe a couple middle schools, and 1 high school, but Maxis seems to think that a city of 50K needs multiples of everything when in reality the opposite is true.
QuoteSo, ultimately, I guess I'm saying, what is the goal for SC4Devotion?
madhatter106, on one hand that's a legitimate question. In the context of the rest of your post, though, I'm a little bit concerned about the intention behind asking it. I don't want to see this thread head too far off-topic, as it, after all, is about the community at large and not specifically about SC4D, but when you say a statement by the site's management: "the home for the serious player," "sticks in your craw," red flags start going up for me.
First off, let's make sure we understand the part of the fan community that we are talking about. SC4D is a site where English is the common denominator language. Community members from all over the world are welcome, but the ability to post and interact in English has always been one of the requirements here. That's not necessarily fair, but until the entire world can agree on a universal language, setting up the site as an English-speaking one was a purposeful choice on jeronij's part. Note that he is from Spain. Colyn, another key player in the site's early days, is from South Africa. Barby (barbyw) is from France. So you necessarily have to read into the "serious player" statement the player's ability to utilize English, even if it is not the player's first language. Thus, the statement says nothing about non-English SC4 sites, such as (not meaning to leave any of the other fine sites out- these are just examples) Sim City Plaza/Simforum.de, Tout Sim City, and Sim City Polska. Those too I understand to be homes "for serious players."
That said, we turn to English-speaking sites. Simtropolis and SimPeg immediately come to mind. Both also provide, I am sure, a "home for serious players," because if nothing else I know community members who primarily post at one or the other and not here whom I consider some of the finest players and custom content creators out there. I'm a member of all three sites, and I wish everyone would choose to be, but that's not the case.
Schisms and arguments and site wars are so yesterday. Right now I know for a fact that the management of SC4D and the management of ST have a great working relationship. The relationship with SimPeg has always been at best more neutral, but the absence of any controversy between sites about anything over the past couple of years and the large number of folks with MDs here at SC4D that use significant custom content developed at SimPeg ought to be taken for something.
So, back to why this site styles itself as "the home for the serious player." Not to take anything away from any other SC4 fansite, but that is SC4D's mission- it's ultimate goal. To make itself such a place. It does that by providing a venue that is intended to attract the highest quality MDers, custom content creators, MODders, code engineers, and occasional mad scientist to work together and interact with a single-minded purpose- to continue advancing and improving SC4 in the absence of the original developer (Maxis/EA) doing so. By and large, jeronij and his staff have been hugely successful at doing that for the past five years. The focus here, unlike some other sites, has always remained purely SC4. Nobody was distracted by Sim City: Societies, City Life or Cities XL. The site's popularity is apparent in terms of both membership numbers and ongoing activity. Many of its members and the teams that are hosted here are among the most productive custom content creators in the community. "Devotion" is far more here than just a part of the site's name, and has been from day one.
Note that, in order to be "the home for the serious player," SC4D does not have to seek to destroy, undermine or compete with any other site. There has long been a strictly enforced policy here of discouraging any comment about any other fansite that was not both objectively constructive and contributed to harmony in the community overall. That has, IMHO, worked well, too, and has been instrumental in allowing the current peaceful state of affairs in the SC4 community to be reached.
So, speaking for myself (I was officially an administrator here many years ago, but it belongs to jeronij and his staff to speak officially for the site) to be "the home of the serious player" is both SC4D's goal and its overarching purpose. That is what the site does, and that is, as far as I'm concerned, what the site is.
David
Quote from: dedgren on January 13, 2012, 01:07:30 PM
QuoteSo, ultimately, I guess I'm saying, what is the goal for SC4Devotion?
madhatter106, on one hand that's a legitimate question. In the context of the rest of your post, though, I'm a little bit concerned about the intention behind asking it.
My "intention" is to merely pose the question. I'm playing devils' advocate. Are you perceiving an ulterior motive (whatever it may be) on my part?
QuoteI don't want to see this thread head too far off-topic, as it, after all, is about the community at large and not specifically about SC4D but when you say a statement by the site's management "the home for the serious player," "sticks in your craw," red flags start going up for me.
The thread was started as a question regarding the community activity on this particular website and what changes can be made to this site to make it better, and has morphed into a discussion of the community at large.
And that phrase does stick in my craw. The frustrating thing about it is that it smacks of "hey the people in this clubhouse are the
real deal." The implication being that other clubhouses don't have the real deal people. Which I want to emphasize -
I know that is not your intent. But it can still be inferred that way by others.
QuoteThat said, we turn to English-speaking sites. Simtropolis and SimPeg immediately come to mind. Both also provide, I am sure, a "home for serious players," because if nothing else I know community members who primarily post at one or the other and not here whom I consider some of the finest players and custom content creators out there. I'm a member of all three sites, and I wish everyone would choose to be, but that's not the case.
Yet none of those sites have a banner at the top saying they're a "home for serious players." No one creates a website for a hobby with the intent of being a place for people who aren't serious about the subject. So why the need for the phrase "home for the serious player?"
Listen -
I know you're not all sitting in the clubhouse twirling your moustaches over expensive brandy and patting each other on the back saying you're the elitest of elite. I know that's not the case. I'm merely trying to point out that the banner phrase can be misconstrued or inferred as elitest or arrogant. Again, I know that's not what your intent is.
QuoteThe site's popularity is apparent in terms of both membership numbers and ongoing activity.
Yet the whole thrust of the thread at the beginning was in response to what the OP perceived as a decline in activity on this site. So I am left to ponder...how can SC4Devotion evolve to meet current interest/activity levels of today?
There are many words around simple theme ... I like DEVOTION from first date ...
My mind - don't worry about SC4Devotion ...
Quote from: toxicpiano on January 10, 2012, 01:46:01 PM
What does surprise me is that you can deny that modding the game is difficult to access for new members. As someone who has been on the periphery for a couple of years it looks to me to be completely impenetrable. I'm not sure where I would even start if I just bought the game in one of the frequent Steam sales.
We've actually had quite a few folks become active NAM Team members after joining or becoming active in the community fairly late in the going. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that these folks have been among the most productive NAMites we've ever had. It's pretty much always required some combination of skill, intelligence, and dedication to succeed at producing custom content. Someone with enough dedication can usually pick up enough of the other two to be successful. Admittedly, it is probably harder now, because many of the easier things have been done and the things left are more daunting, but it's not impossible.
Quote from: toxicpiano on January 10, 2012, 01:46:01 PM
The language of the community is probably a problem, all these ridiculous acronyms can be very confusing.
I agree that there are a lot of acronyms to deal with . . . I'm to blame for many of the NAM ones. But I'm not sure the non-acronym names for things are really too much more helpful.
Quote from: toxicpiano on January 10, 2012, 01:46:01 PM
The thing that really hinders new players on a far greater scale than that language is dependencies. There have been many debates before (which is basically the reason why this site was founded as far as I remember) but it remains a massive problem that will not go away. Over the years I have collected and catalogued a grand total of about 1,300 files (3.6gb in size) which basically allow me to download almost anything without brown boxes. Connection speeds are much faster and hard drives much bigger than back in 2005, but plugins are spread across more than one exchange and most of them are separate downloads zipped up and then contained in installers. The process of getting yourself to the point I find myself in could take days and days. Who wants to do that? Who has the time? There were simple solutions to this that could have been implemented, package managers or maybe SVN but these never happened. I always assumed it was because no one in the community had the technical ability to do so, there are still separate accounts for the LEX and this forum for example. Some non community members have simply made up their own solution. I am a member of a forum that has a fairly active Simcity thread in it's games section. They compiled a 'gigapack' of dependencies and that's how most people get into the game there. AFAIK it's quite incomplete and riddled with duplicates but it's the quickest way to get into the game for newcomers and they take it by default rather than mess around with the dependencies on here or the STEX.
Really this whole thing could have been solved years ago, but no one wanted to do it because of politics or arrogance or whatever (real life was obviously an issue but probably a minor one). If anyone who was around then is still wondering why people kept complaining over and over about dependencies, it was because there was a real problem. It's a shame that instead of addressing it you just made another site with another exchange so you didn't have to listen anymore. I don't think I ever disputed that dependencies add real visual value to the game, only that their implementation was wildly wrong. I suppose the current situation isn't as bad as it was back then as we have megapacks now, but my point still stands.
I'll admit, the dependency situation can be a bit daunting, and there's always been detractors over the years. There are legitimate arguments against it, but there are just as many for it, and sure, there's always improvements that can be made in the implementation. But it then gets to the point where it comes to whether the custom content creators--doing all this for free, as a hobby in their free time--should be spending time making SC4 content or organizing that content. While no one is saying that content should be disorganized, there's a balance that needs to be struck there.
I should also point out that the current conception of dependencies existed before SC4D. It was a paradigm on the old "official" SC4 exchange on the EA/Maxis site, and carried over to Simtropolis and elsewhere first. While I can't entirely speak to why our exchange is the way it is, I'd imagine the reason the LEX is the way it is is out of familiarity with the STEX and SimPeg approach, such that it would not come off completely foreign to the userbase.
There's also issue of intellectual property. There's been a lot of SC4 custom content creators over the years, many of whom are no longer active, and some who have opposed the creation of Megapacks of their content (some old NDEXers come to mind). Without permission from those folks, it would fly in the face of the community to package things up into Megapacks in spite of that, and instead, those items have to be referred to on a piecemeal basis as dependencies. A lot of older stuff was also designed and packaged not knowing the requirements of future game developments (or current internet speed/bandwidth) that weren't even dreamed of at the time, so that complicates matters even further. Things like the aforementioned "gigapack", while perhaps convenient to download, are
completely irresponsible, and also compete with the content DVDs that SC4 Devotion, Simtropolis and SimPeg have offered for years as a way to thank donors who contribute to the sites' continued operation.
I will say that given the nature of increased broadband speeds, higher site bandwidth, and to minimize the potential for "component mismatches", the next NAM release, Version 31, will essentially be a Megapack (dubbed the "Monolithic NAM"). It will merge in all major peripheral components (e.g. RealHighway, Network Widening Mod, Rail Addon Mod, etc.), and we will be discontinuing the separate-download versions of those plugins.
As far as the installers go, they exist mainly as it's less problematic for creators to deal with "click next finger" complaints than it is to deal with constant "how do I install this?" tech support cases. Yes, there are drawbacks, but the types of installers we use in the SC4 community are vastly superior to some I've seen used in other games' custom content communities (try unzipping 100 WinZip Self-Extractor .exes in one sitting, where the creator hasn't registered the software and there's a nag screen on every file) and generally have very good compression ratios (the NSIS package we use with the NAM has a better compression ratio even than RAR or 7Z files).
The LEX/Forum divide was done for security reasons, primarily, and as the LEX software is a proprietary custom software package, we cannot really modify it. Unless we take the unlikely step of switching software, which would be a rather complex undertaking (the ones that exist as SMF Plugins are too primitive), I don't see that changing. Are there things that could be improved with it? Sure--that's true of just about every complex piece of software, and I'm sure all of us are sick of "I can't find the download button" complaints (which have fortunately calmed quite a bit). But aside from that, the software works and generally does what it is supposed to do.
Quote from: madhatter106 on January 13, 2012, 11:55:07 AM
Bold emphasis above is mine - I will admit that there are lots of things about the site that I don't understand, which is fine. The organization, the segmentation, what-have-you. And not to dredge up the past, but I am also unclear as to the nature and circumstances of "the Great Schism" which caused this site to be created in the first place.
Though it is often attributed as such, "The Great Schism" was not caused by the creation of this site. From what I know of jeronij's vision of the site, it was to create a veritable "skunk works" of SC4 development, and offer developmental space for teams and creators. I know he also wanted to keep things focused on SC4, with off-topic to a minimum and an avoidance of rampant speculation on the mythical SC5 and such. The site opened in November 2006. Folks started moving over here gradually at the beginning of 2007. The reasons were many, and naturally, there were some hard feelings as at that point, ST was the unquestioned developmental hub of the SC4 world.
I can't really speak for the BSC side of things, but on the NAM side, there were some issues with the STEX's 10MB upload limit, and the way some site regulars and then-staff members apparently thought that ST "owned the NAM". They lambasted us when we allowed SC4D and SimsZone.de to host it, while they were roadblocking us from having it at ST (because it exceeded 10MB, Dirk was having to manually FTP it up to the server, and it was taking him weeks to get it up). Between that and the fact that we could have an entire private board at SC4D rather than a single, disorganized private thread at ST, we migrated over here. The NAM Team's relationship with ST has largely improved since then. Dirk made a concerted effort to satisfy some of our concerns with the ST 6.0 upgrade, and several current ST staff members are also NAM Team members. We began to start taking a somewhat more active presence there again in late-2008/2009. The relationship between the SC4D and ST staff has also improved over time, and we somewhat regularly have cross-site dialogues about issues affecting both sites.
But back to the main point:
Quote from: madhatter106 on January 13, 2012, 02:26:50 PM
Yet the whole thrust of the thread at the beginning was in response to what the OP perceived as a decline in activity on this site. So I am left to ponder...how can SC4Devotion evolve to meet current interest/activity levels of today?
That is a good question. And I think it's one we need to get back to discussing in earnest. Here's my take: SC4D is, first and foremost, an SC4 site, which is the primary home of several major content teams and projects, as well as originating the Pic Competition and also housing a number of MDs that, at least in my view, seem to have a different feel to them than the CJs at ST (even though some of them are posted on both sites). Between a lot of RL with long-standing creators, more projects happening primarily behind closed doors, and an increasing tendency of folks to view/lurk, it's created the impression of decreased activity on the public side of the site.
There's quite a few different angles from which this can be attacked. As I've been typing quite awhile now and have other things to get to, I'll come back with more on this later.
-Alex
Quote from: madhatter106 on January 13, 2012, 02:26:50 PM
Quote from: dedgren on January 13, 2012, 01:07:30 PM
QuoteSo, ultimately, I guess I'm saying, what is the goal for SC4Devotion?
madhatter106, on one hand that's a legitimate question. In the context of the rest of your post, though, I'm a little bit concerned about the intention behind asking it.
My "intention" is to merely pose the question. I'm playing devils' advocate. Are you perceiving an ulterior motive (whatever it may be) on my part?
QuoteI don't want to see this thread head too far off-topic, as it, after all, is about the community at large and not specifically about SC4D but when you say a statement by the site's management "the home for the serious player," "sticks in your craw," red flags start going up for me.
The thread was started as a question regarding the community activity on this particular website and what changes can be made to this site to make it better, and has morphed into a discussion of the community at large.
And that phrase does stick in my craw. The frustrating thing about it is that it smacks of "hey the people in this clubhouse are the real deal." The implication being that other clubhouses don't have the real deal people. Which I want to emphasize - I know that is not your intent. But it can still be inferred that way by others.
QuoteThat said, we turn to English-speaking sites. Simtropolis and SimPeg immediately come to mind. Both also provide, I am sure, a "home for serious players," because if nothing else I know community members who primarily post at one or the other and not here whom I consider some of the finest players and custom content creators out there. I'm a member of all three sites, and I wish everyone would choose to be, but that's not the case.
Yet none of those sites have a banner at the top saying they're a "home for serious players." No one creates a website for a hobby with the intent of being a place for people who aren't serious about the subject. So why the need for the phrase "home for the serious player?"
Listen - I know you're not all sitting in the clubhouse twirling your moustaches over expensive brandy and patting each other on the back saying you're the elitest of elite. I know that's not the case. I'm merely trying to point out that the banner phrase can be misconstrued or inferred as elitest or arrogant. Again, I know that's not what your intent is.
QuoteThe site's popularity is apparent in terms of both membership numbers and ongoing activity.
Yet the whole thrust of the thread at the beginning was in response to what the OP perceived as a decline in activity on this site. So I am left to ponder...how can SC4Devotion evolve to meet current interest/activity levels of today?
Madhatter now what I see in your post v Davids post first here,
Quote from: dedgren on January 13, 2012, 01:07:30 PM
QuoteSo, ultimately, I guess I'm saying, what is the goal for SC4Devotion?
madhatter106, on one hand that's a legitimate question. In the context of the rest of your post, though, I'm a little bit concerned about the intention behind asking it. I don't want to see this thread head too far off-topic, as it, after all, is about the community at large and not specifically about SC4D, but when you say a statement by the site's management: "the home for the serious player," "sticks in your craw," red flags start going up for me.
First off, let's make sure we understand the part of the fan community that we are talking about. SC4D is a site where English is the common denominator language. Community members from all over the world are welcome, but the ability to post and interact in English has always been one of the requirements here. That's not necessarily fair, but until the entire world can agree on a universal language, setting up the site as an English-speaking one was a purposeful choice on jeronij's part. Note that he is from Spain. Colyn, another key player in the site's early days, is from South Africa. Barby (barbyw) is from France. So you necessarily have to read into the "serious player" statement the player's ability to utilize English, even if it is not the player's first language. Thus, the statement says nothing about non-English SC4 sites, such as (not meaning to leave any of the other fine sites out- these are just examples) Sim City Plaza/Simforum.de, Tout Sim City, and Sim City Polska. Those too I understand to be homes "for serious players."
That said, we turn to English-speaking sites. Simtropolis and SimPeg immediately come to mind. Both also provide, I am sure, a "home for serious players," because if nothing else I know community members who primarily post at one or the other and not here whom I consider some of the finest players and custom content creators out there. I'm a member of all three sites, and I wish everyone would choose to be, but that's not the case.
Schisms and arguments and site wars are so yesterday. Right now I know for a fact that the management of SC4D and the management of ST have a great working relationship. The relationship with SimPeg has always been at best more neutral, but the absence of any controversy between sites about anything over the past couple of years and the large number of folks with MDs here at SC4D that use significant custom content developed at SimPeg ought to be taken for something.
So, back to why this site styles itself as "the home for the serious player." Not to take anything away from any other SC4 fansite, but that is SC4D's mission- it's ultimate goal. To make itself such a place. It does that by providing a venue that is intended to attract the highest quality MDers, custom content creators, MODders, code engineers, and occasional mad scientist to work together and interact with a single-minded purpose- to continue advancing and improving SC4 in the absence of the original developer (Maxis/EA) doing so. By and large, jeronij and his staff have been hugely successful at doing that for the past five years. The focus here, unlike some other sites, has always remained purely SC4. Nobody was distracted by Sim City: Societies, City Life or Cities XL. The site's popularity is apparent in terms of both membership numbers and ongoing activity. Many of its members and the teams that are hosted here are among the most productive custom content creators in the community. "Devotion" is far more here than just a part of the site's name, and has been from day one.
Note that, in order to be "the home for the serious player," SC4D does not have to seek to destroy, undermine or compete with any other site. There has long been a strictly enforced policy here of discouraging any comment about any other fansite that was not both objectively constructive and contributed to harmony in the community overall. That has, IMHO, worked well, too, and has been instrumental in allowing the current peaceful state of affairs in the SC4 community to be reached.
So, speaking for myself (I was officially an administrator here many years ago, but it belongs to jeronij and his staff to speak officially for the site) to be "the home of the serious player" is both SC4D's goal and its overarching purpose. That is what the site does, and that is, as far as I'm concerned, what the site is.
David
Cut chop and snip out differnt parts of the responses will lose the whole explanation behind the meaning of the logo "Home of the Serious Player" I do believe you totally missed out so I will do my only actual cut snip of both post now here.....
QuoteSo, back to why this site styles itself as "the home for the serious player." Not to take anything away from any other SC4 fansite, but that is SC4D's mission- it's ultimate goal. To make itself such a place. It does that by providing a venue that is intended to attract the highest quality MDers, custom content creators, MODders, code engineers, and occasional mad scientist to work together and interact with a single-minded purpose- to continue advancing and improving SC4 in the absence of the original developer (Maxis/EA) doing so. By and large, jeronij and his staff have been hugely successful at doing that for the past five years. The focus here, unlike some other sites, has always remained purely SC4. Nobody was distracted by Sim City: Societies, City Life or Cities XL. The site's popularity is apparent in terms of both membership numbers and ongoing activity. Many of its members and the teams that are hosted here are among the most productive custom content creators in the community. "Devotion" is far more here than just a part of the site's name, and has been from day one.
QuoteYet none of those sites have a banner at the top saying they're a "home for serious players." No one creates a website for a hobby with the intent of being a place for people who aren't serious about the subject. So why the need for the phrase "home for the serious player?"
Listen - I know you're not all sitting in the clubhouse twirling your moustaches over expensive brandy and patting each other on the back saying you're the elitest of elite. I know that's not the case. I'm merely trying to point out that the banner phrase can be misconstrued or inferred as elitest or arrogant. Again, I know that's not what your intent is.
Now just reading and not looking over the whole post how is all this mess gonna look to someone? Not well right? I do trust that we do agree on that cutting and snipping is not good and can be confusing... I do agree there has been a decline there is no doubt about it but here on SC4Devotions what we pride ourself on is being pure to SC4 itself and noting else... Anyone who takes the time to actually come on the forums will find that out we are very friendly and helpful here and will share our knowledge albeit it may take some time to get a response or nor may it be fully clear, someone will try their best to help out about our love for SC4...
Patrick
I lurk a lot in SC4D nowadays, only really visiting the NAM forums and a couple of the MD forums.
Considering that the number of new MDs have dropped off over the last few years, and considering how intimidating the forum index can be, perhaps consolidating the entire MD section into a single forum might be an option to be considered - while it's only a small part of the index itself, it would make sense. And honestly... the SC4D Tools forum could do with consolidating too. There's just not enough traffic going through that section to justify having all those subforums inside subforums...
Though, all good things can and do come to an end... SC4 has had a good run. I doubt we'll ever see its golden age (2004-2005, after the BAT first came out) ever again, but I'm by no means saying that SC4 (and its associated fansites, like ST and SC4D) will die out entirely... it definitely won't, but there will be a point where consolidation of content becomes necessary.
Personally, I seriously believe that without NAM, I would have stopped a long time ago. The still current and constant innovations and proving what was do-able, then previous considered before, interested me to keep coming back. Had the old ANT not been considered, who knows what could of happened, my guess is the route to the RHW in it's state now would be a mystery. I have had more detailed programs designed more for traffic engineers, but Sc4 seemed to combine a lot of elements together that were faster to do instead. I am not able to name another city builder where you can do so much rail and road and building custimization. All I know is, I don't think I'll see something like this ever again, that got this much attention and work done to it, where so many different nations did their own personal thing to it.
Quote from: j-dub on January 13, 2012, 10:28:44 PM
Personally, I seriously believe that without NAM, I would have stopped a long time ago. The still current and constant innovations and proving what was do-able, then previous considered before, interested me to keep coming back. Had the old ANT not been considered, who knows what could of happened, my guess is the route to the RHW in it's state now would be a mystery. I have had more detailed programs designed more for traffic engineers, but Sc4 seemed to combine a lot of elements together that were faster to do instead. I am not able to name another city builder where you can do so much rail and road and building custimization. All I know is, I don't think I'll see something like this ever again, that got this much attention and work done to it, where so many different nations did their own personal thing to it.
Personally, I would never have stopped playing, but the NAM has certainly made the play appeal a whole lot better. I haven't actually been playing for very long, but I have always preferred Simtropolis over SC4D. I don't suppose there would be a merger in the foreseeable future, but needing only one account for everything there, as well as ONE search box, are just some of the reasons why I prefer it. Sure, SC4D is good, but this is just my opinion. ::)
Quote from: dedgren on January 13, 2012, 01:07:30 PM
...So, back to why this site styles itself as "the home for the serious player." Not to take anything away from any other SC4 fansite, but that is SC4D's mission- it's ultimate goal...
I think I've always thought of the site as not so much "
the home for the serious player" but "
the home for the city engineer"
QuoteA city engineer is a multifaceted position that encompasses the planning and design of a city's current and future needs. A city engineer collaborates with businesses, the city government, the citizens and the transportation department to design the city's infrastructure.
:)
Well, I'll chime in, too, even tho I only read the first page of posts because, like everyone else, RL provides me with very little time for paying attention to gaming anymore. And, I think, the issue of time is a huge factor in many people's lives these days.
Let's face it, over the past 3-4 years pretty much all of our lives have been changed and/or interuppted by what turned out to be a major global economic recession. Many of us lost our jobs and/or our homes. And while most of us have now recovered, to some degree, a new (if less secure) life, things just aren't as good for us as they were before the meltdown. Speaking only for myself, spending time playing games seems a waste of energy when I feel like that time would be better spent paying attention to getting my life back on track. Yes, I am working again, after an unbelievable 3 years out of work, but I am now working part-time for minimum wage after 35 YEARS of being a full-time high wage white collar professional. I lost my beautiful home, just about everything I own has been in storage for 3.5 years, and I am stuck sheltering in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with a good friend who agreed to take me in for 2-3 months. Under the circumstances, playing games of any sort is just not high on my list of priorities.
There are, for me as well I am sure for others, other issues that come into play. The game has begun to frustrate me quite a bit, as I don't know how to do what I want to do and what I can see other folks have done in spades. My biggest and ongoing complaint is, as all who know me know, the lack of credible game water to plop water transitions. Plop water has gotten pretty good but we still do not have a way to meld it seamlessly with game water and to me that is a HUGE issue. My personal game play style is such that I enjoy creating landscapes more than human habitats, but if I could ever create a landscape I liked, perhaps I'd become interested once again in creating built environments. But as many have already said, the learning curve for creating custom content for this game is quite steep and requires a LOT of time. I have neither the desire, time, or patience to learn coding, batting, modding, and lotting to be able to create the visions of regions and cities dancing in my head. Nor do I want to have to plop each individual transit piece or building from a drop down menu containing thousands of items or a plug-ins folder with tens of thousands of dependendcies. Keeping all that custom content organized, updated, and non-conflicting is a task I am unwilling to take on on order to spend 1-2 hours actually playing the game. Again, I just don't have the time for it.
I don't know what the solution is, for me or for the game itself. I can't help but think that Maxis or EA should cull through all the various fan websites like this one and grab all the best content and use it to create a new Super SimCity, one that allows us all to create the fantastic and gorgeous stuff we all know the game is capable of allowing us. What we have now is unbelievable, but it's a huge hodge-podge that for me is impossible to manage.
And that makes me sad, because I love this game, have been playing since SimCity Classic, way back in 1992, 20 years now.
Lora/LD
I am a newcomer to this site. I do a lot of reading to learn what is going on in the community. There are probably a lot of people like me, who prefer to look and listen to the Masters of the Game. I have had mine for several years and did not know about this site, or all of the brilliant developers here who breathe new life into the game. This site has given me a great deal of material to work with, and I have not scratched the surface in terms of all of the options available. To that end, there are many like myself who have been flooded with ideas each time we visit and find a new BAT or MOD. Long live SC4 Devotion and all who contribute to the delight of many grateful fans! http://sc4devotion.com/forums/Smileys/JasonSmilies/appl.gif
Just my 10 cents on the issue ... I'm a fan of the game since launch and how many witnessed the selfless devotion of many content creators, programmers, analysts and other users who have contributed to keep alive the game even decade after its release. Maybe the best explanation is this article ..
( link also Simtropolis ) http://www.squidoo.com/simcity4
Now regarding the Devotion, I know most if not almost all the sites content for SimCity and this is undoubtedly the most information about the technical aspect of the game, but this obviously is not for everyone. The existence of separate LEX with his responsible position to analyze and approve the material for download but does not favor the search for news of this as in other forums. Of course they will say that many of these users are just out of curiosity or just in search of additions to your game but users are posting.
Some of these other forums has led to a more social communities like the one that attracts most visitors though it causes the massive accumulation of messages making it very difficult to find what interests as well as view great plugins that are lost in a sea of other "things" ..
Anyway I think it is necessarily also the trade issue because we all know that Web sites are not free and its traffic volume is logically the engine behind the advertising sold.
How can the quality without giving up much and always a difficult question to be equalized so only administrators can judge what is best ...
But hopefully I will still log in devotion for a long time.
Nobody has posted here for a while but I felt the need to give some input. I've never been a particularly regular poster, but I want to give my view.
Firstly, SC4 is getting older - it's only natural that people will stop playing it. There will always be a core of players who keep playing, and there will always be newcomers, but I would hazard a guess that the number of newcomers to SC4 is probably less than the number of people who have stopped playing. It is inevitable that the SC4 community will get smaller and smaller over time, but I really do hope that there is something we can do keep the community going and keep it fresh and active, with posters old and new. Whether that is possible or not, I am undecided.
Secondly, my personal involvement with SC4 is becoming rather sporadic. I always have, and probably always will drift in and out of the game. I do enjoy SC4, but I often go months at a time without playing the game or visiting SC4D. I raise this issue because I'm probably not the only person who has a tendency to drift in and out. I've never been able to identify why this happens, but I'm becoming rather concerned by the fact that a couple of years ago I would play for a month or so and then have a couple of weeks without playing, but now I'm at the stage where I play the game for a couple of weeks, and then don't play for several months. Before writing this post, I was catching up with what I had missed in several threads, and as I looked through some of my favorite MDs I realized that I hadn't visited the site since December, and that I hadn't actually played the game since the end of summer in late August or early September. The point is that I believe myself and many other members only experience short bursts of enthusiasm for SC4 and SC4D, whereas a thriving community needs members who are constantly involved and interested.
I agree with others that the layout of the site could be holding it back. There are so many forum categories and sub-categories etc that it is incredibly difficult to find your way around - I cannot imagine how a newcomer feels when they register and then are confronted with this huge and bizarre forum structure. This is not a criticism of the site, because the vast range of SC4-related topics is what makes it so great, but a simplified layout and structure could possibly help.
Another point others are making is how difficult it would be for a newcomer to understand acronyms and to understand how to make custom content. The reason people still play SC4, and the reason why SC4D and other sites still exist is because of the wide range of custom content and because the content is always growing. The community is so intelligent, creative and innovative that it moves at a really fast pace, and for a newcomer to go from vanilla to being a lotter/BATer/Modder must be virtually impossible considering how much knowledge would be needed, and there is perhaps a lack of simple and clear tutorials (I'm not criticizing anybody here by the way). Just to prove my point, if I don't visit the site for a month or so, I find that there is always so much that I have missed, and it is difficult to try and catch up with the new content, so it must be impossible for somebody who has never visited the site.
Significantly, the fact remains that SC4D is definitely the best site for anybody who enjoys playing SC4 and using or developing custom content. Simtropolis is much more off-topic and features other games, which I see as a disadvantage to anybody who only plays SC4 and wants to enhance their gameplay. However, the SC4D community is clearly in decline, based on the statistics and the discussion that took place on 3RR, which is where I found the link to this thread. Making improvements to the site and improving the accessibility to new players could have some effect, but I fear that the main cause of this decline is the fact that SC4 is getting older and less and less people are playing. The heavy focus on SC4 makes SC4D the best site, but also means it is more vulnerable than other, more 'diversified' sites where there is more off-topic and casual discussion.
Furthermore, in 3RR there were many posts in early January alluding to a recent 'sudden' decline in activity on this forum. This may be a little controversial, and please do not take this as a criticism, but does the recent 'sudden' decline in activity coincide with when the site was re-designed and the new forum rules/restrictions were put in place? It's something I remember thinking about when the changes first happened.
In September, I start a degree in town planning, and I'm not sure whether that will re-ignite my interest in the game or whether it will sap away all my enthusiasm, but I really do hope it is the former and not the latter. I intend from now on to put in a great effort to be more active on the game and this site, but RL and sporadic interest will probably take its toll on me. I really hope that the community can keep going, but I think there will have to be some degree of evolution. In its current form, I just don't think that this site can exist much longer. Sticking with the original principles behind the site is paramount, but it has to supply a demand, and it seems that the demand for this site is possibly showing signs of a decline.
Now that I've come to the end of this post, I really don't know how to finish it. I've raised my main concerns with the site, and discussed what I think could be causing the decline, but I'm not really able to offer any solutions. It could be that we're seeing a temporary lull and things will pick up again, but I've been absent recently so I'm not entirely sure what the situation is. This a great game, a great site and a great community, and I hope that will continue, and I offer my sincere thanks to all those who have taken this game and community to where it is today.
Connor, thanks for the thoughtful post and feedback on the future of SC4D, SC4 and its community.
Quote from: Connor on February 10, 2012, 12:49:25 PM
There are so many forum categories and sub-categories etc that it is incredibly difficult to find your way around - I cannot imagine how a newcomer feels when they register and then are confronted with this huge and bizarre forum structure. This is not a criticism of the site, because the vast range of SC4-related topics is what makes it so great, but a simplified layout and structure could possibly help.
Personally, I'd tend to agree some of your points in this quote from your post--I wouldn't call it bizarre
per se (I've seen much, much weirder layouts), but huge, yes. If someone is using the internet in general as a baseline, this is probably about average (maybe slightly above), but if one is using Simtropolis as a baseline (which many folks here do), then yes, it's a good bit larger structure. There's plenty of times where a newcomer has made a post way down in one of the "Help" boards about a NAM item, but no one (including myself) has seen it until a good while after the fact because it's not in an area of the forums we'd think to look for it (the NAM Place board).
I don't think the complexity of the layout is necessary the reason for any perception of a decline, or an obstacle that can't be overcome by a new member, but I think discussing layout has merit, and some re-arrangement could be beneficial in a more general sense.
I think the Team and MD areas do generally seem to work, though there might be some tweaking there (namely merging Place/Creation boards, as they kind of end up serving the same purpose). There are some other spots, particularly the whole realm below there with all the myriad of generic "Help" and "Tutorial" boards that I personally feel we, the site staff, should discuss.
Quote from: Connor on February 10, 2012, 12:49:25 PM
Another point others are making is how difficult it would be for a newcomer to understand acronyms and to understand how to make custom content. The reason people still play SC4, and the reason why SC4D and other sites still exist is because of the wide range of custom content and because the content is always growing. The community is so intelligent, creative and innovative that it moves at a really fast pace, and for a newcomer to go from vanilla to being a lotter/BATer/Modder must be virtually impossible considering how much knowledge would be needed, and there is perhaps a lack of simple and clear tutorials (I'm not criticizing anybody here by the way). Just to prove my point, if I don't visit the site for a month or so, I find that there is always so much that I have missed, and it is difficult to try and catch up with the new content, so it must be impossible for somebody who has never visited the site.
And perhaps even more confusingly to us content creators, we have instances where folks (including newcomers) are saying there's an overload, but then those same folks are simultaneously
requesting new content. Speaking as a content developer, this is quite bewildering. ???
Quote from: Connor on February 10, 2012, 12:49:25 PM
Furthermore, in 3RR there were many posts in early January alluding to a recent 'sudden' decline in activity on this forum. This may be a little controversial, and please do not take this as a criticism, but does the recent 'sudden' decline in activity coincide with when the site was re-designed and the new forum rules/restrictions were put in place? It's something I remember thinking about when the changes first happened.
The changes happened at the end of June/beginning of July. There was a brief dip in July, but that's mainly because the site was actually down for several days for the upgrade, and because the domain registrar was taking their sweet time propagating the DNS. The number of new members also dropped after that point, but in the last couple months before the upgrade, we were having 1-2 spammers registering
per hour, inflating the numbers. The forum software upgrade beefed up security and it kept the spammers from even being able to register for some time. The actual number of posts and number of members online started to increase back up in the months after that, with the 2011 activity really peaking in September and October (after the release of NAM Version 30).
Interestingly, though, looking over the forum stats, the start of 2012 has been much better than most of 2011 (especially November/December). I think the return to activity by prominent community members and content developers like David (
dedgren) and
buddybud has helped that. February seems to be going decently.
I think really, going over the general trends, the thing that would create the biggest surge of activity would be the release of more content. I'd imagine a NAM release would probably bring us back to 2009 levels pretty quickly. But the trick is sustaining that. It is, to a large degree, a momentum thing. The returns I mentioned definitely build momentum up, and hopefully, we can keep that going through the rest of the year.
-Alex
I am a regular at ST and sometimes post here, but I mainly discuss the BATing side of things. I've noticed a couple of things recently which I shall discuss.
1. The return of old BAters, I find it hard to buy into anything related to the community dying when after a good 3-4 years old BATers like Sparky the Penguin and Gary Reggae pop up sating they are batting again, like mentioned before I think it's just a case of RL taking hold.
2. The quality of BATS, love him or hate him and whether he continues to be aprt fo the community or not I think Simfox has left an absolute wonderful tool in BAT4MAX. I know I lot of people do not embrace the modern BATs and people argue they stand out too much and in my opinion rightly so, why settle for less when you can eventually fill a City of beautifuly rendered life like models. So the quality of BATS has gone up which in my opinion is better and will make the community stronger. Quality not quantity is the key...
Quote from: Connor on February 10, 2012, 12:49:25 PM
In September, I start a degree in town planning, and I'm not sure...
My own studies in urban planning transformed how I played SC4. Not only was I testing what I was learning about planning in SC4 (an excellent sandbox when you don't have a real world city at your disposal ;) ), but I found I was building far more realistic and vibrant cities. And I was never a haphazard city builder to begin with, my plans simply took on a whole new dimension, and just as amazingly, SC4 was delicate and intricate and powerful enough to respond.
It's just the nature of how it works.
- People get older, have families move on.
- EA has taken so long to (reportedly) come out with SC5 that many have given up waiting around.
- People are simply "talked out" on Simcity 4 and don't have as much to say anymore.
Most sites like this one that offer downloadable material usually has more activity in the download area than they do in the forums. I have a site devoted to Minecraft that has over 110,000 members that grew from Nov 2010 until now very fast, the largest activity that we see is people visiting the part of our forums that offer downloadable schematics for the game. While we have a lot of posts, it's only those that post their downloadable content and maybe a couple comments on them.
It's simply the way that things work and if Simcity 5 truly is in the works, and it allows user created content, then things will pick up here too I'm willing to bet.
Quote from: City Builder on March 05, 2012, 02:20:30 PM
... It's simply the way that things work and if Simcity 5 truly is in the works, and it allows user created content, then things will pick up here too I'm willing to bet.
Do not know where people repeat this information that the new game will be modifiable in the same way for SC4. Nowhere in the AMA as widely disseminated there is an affirmative answer in this regard on the contrary gave several evasive.
I think I can say with certainty that the circumstances that resulted in the way this game was produced .. never be repeated today.
There is no disagreement that the current interest in the game to complete a decade is not the same and that the level of participation tends to decrease without a change in forum posts, but I do not believe that the interest of those who seek the modification techniques and new discoveries in SC4 will have something like the new Simcity at least with a philosophy of gratuity. The portion of the DLC should be part of the business plan of any current game and I doubt very much that EA give it go.
Not to mention the online mode that will be pushed with the new game ... so it was possible to understand so far ... demonstrating that changes the level of the land, maritime or land road structures, animations etc ... should be much less flexible in the universe of GlassBox.
Quote from: NCGAIO on March 17, 2012, 03:38:34 PM
Quote from: City Builder on March 05, 2012, 02:20:30 PM
... It's simply the way that things work and if Simcity 5 truly is in the works, and it allows user created content, then things will pick up here too I'm willing to bet.
Do not know where people repeat this information that the new game will be modifiable in the same way for SC4.
I don't know why you are quoting the line from my post, nowhere do I say that it WILL allow the kind of modding that was for SC4. I say, IF it's truly in the works (which we now know for certain) and if it allows ucc, bla bla bla
However, while w edon't know if it will allow the kind of modding that SC4 allowed, according to an article, it will allow modding. We just don't know to what extent.
Quote from: City Builder on March 17, 2012, 05:10:17 PM
However, while we don't know if it will allow the kind of modding that SC4 allowed, according to an article, it will allow modding. We just don't know to what extent.
Here's (http://www.shacknews.com/article/72768/simcity-designed-to-support-mods) the article.
I have to agree with pretty much everything that is being said here about SC4D, the Community and SC4 alike.
I definitely think that there are more members switching over from posting to lurking.
(I for one, joined this site in 2009, and I haven't even posted for more than 60 times!)
It may be because people don't know what to post or because people are too busy to post and instead, opt to lurk, simply because it's less time consuming! (Heck, it may be even both!)
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Besides playing SC4, I also play Flight Simulator X (FSX), which had caused the same problem for Flight Simulator 2004 (FSX came out in 2006, FS2004 came out, coincidentally, in 2004!) $%Grinno$%
Because FSX was an "improvement" and "newer", people lost interest in FS2004, however, the fs2004-community is still flourishing, just as much as the fsx-community! Why? Because both games are also 'moddable'. (you can download new planes, improved and more realistic airports, new airline repaint and even replace the default traffic with realistic traffic) This has enhanced both Flight Sims, and nowadays, the difference between the two sims is hardly recognizable for a beginner new to the Flight Sim world...:P
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What I'm trying to say here ^(in the Off-topic section above)^, is that as long as people keep creating custom content, the SC4 community will continue to flourish!
I do agree though, that it's getting harder and harder for beginners who want to BAT to actually realize their 'BATing dreams'.
Also, LOTS of my friends who have visited me at least one or twice before and who have seen me play SC4, asked where I got the game and if it's still for sale. It's because they saw someone play the game, that they had decided to buy it themselves, not only that, (and I'm not trying to be selfish here or anything) but I'll also tell them that they can find cool websites on the web where they can download extra buildings, automata, and much, much more! (And I've always listed the two most famous community sites, SC4D and ST as great examples of such websites!) And by the time I've told them about the websites, I'll see them running toward the nearest electronic store to buy SC4! :D
Now ALL my friends have the game, girl and boy alike, and they also have accounts on SC4D and ST, however, they don't post and they don't look in the forums a lot, they're just here for the downloads, so don't go thinking that the Community is gonna die off, because there are a lot of people using SC4D, we're just not aware of it, because they're either chronic lurkers or just come here to download plugins.
I think that is a MAJOR reason why it looks so 'dead' at times!
A chronic lurker ::)
-Ricky :)
You raise a few very good points Ricky and have a very mature view on things for your age.
Also, with regards to the lurking thing: My IT teacher at college last week said that over 70% of registered forum members are lurkers. The ones that post are the so-called "vocal minority".
Xander
Well for the 4th time in 8 years i am back searching the SC4 forums (3rd time SC4D) and downloading like mad. There nothing else out there (yet! ie SC5?) that can give that city building fix and has such endless variety of custom content - 10 something years worth!!!
This is my first post this time round. Why? To busy downloading 10+ years worth of experience and brushing up on my knowledge reading 10+ years worth of forums.
I have bought the lex disk and thrown a little money into this site. As long as custom content is available and people are enjoying the game and supporting the site I hope those who host an maintain it can keep ongoing. Even if SC5 is as good as its likely to be it will be years before it has the sort of backlogg of mods SC4 has!
I'm one of these lurkers and new players you're talking about :D So I just wanna tell my perspective on that matter:
I've been playing Sim City since the first or second game, don't remember exactly, but always been frustrated because vanilla game didn't allow me to do the things I wanted to do. Last year I discovered this community and got astounded by the amount of great custom content people have created along these years. But, on the other hand, I just got overwhelmed by the quality of the works shown here.
That, in some way, may just frighten new people a bit: the amount of dedication this game requires to show a simple screen shoot that meets the standards shown here. Lately, and not only with games, people seem to want things NOW with a lack of effort by them. So it seems this game is not for them but, instead, for that minority we like to care about things we do ;)
And, for the lurking thing, well.. If I don't have something to say that improves the conversation, I better keep quiet :) Also, I don't like to repeat "Hey! nice thing you've shown here" over and over again, so I only post when I really want to point something, ask for help or just mere curiosity about how that particular thing have been done.
Don't know about the others, but these are my reasons to lurk
Quote from: Cierzo on March 26, 2012, 01:58:30 AM
And, for the lurking thing, well.. If I don't have something to say that improves the conversation, I better keep quiet :) Also, I don't like to repeat "Hey! nice thing you've shown here" over and over again, so I only post when I really want to point something, ask for help or just mere curiosity about how that particular thing have been done.
Don't know about the others, but these are my reasons to lurk
Well, in most situations I would agree with you but here I see it different. People who are creating things (be it Bats, Lots, Mods, or MDs, doesn't matter) put a lot of effort in their work. Surely most of them are not doing it primarily for the fame. But a small positive comment, if only a "Hey, I like it" gives a big motivation to keep up with it. If he gets no feedback then there will come the point were the creator thinks that it is not worth it because no one is interested.
And, if you do not like something, then I am sure most of the creators like to hear constructive criticism, too.
Quote from: RickD on March 26, 2012, 02:09:28 AM
Well, in most situations I would agree with you but here I see it different. People who are creating things (be it Bats, Lots, Mods, or MDs, doesn't matter) put a lot of effort in their work. Surely most of them are not doing it primarily for the fame. But a small positive comment, if only a "Hey, I like it" gives a big motivation to keep up with it. If he gets no feedback then there will come the point were the creator thinks that it is not worth it because no one is interested.
And, if you do not like something, then I am sure most of the creators like to hear constructive criticism, too.
I totally agree with you RickD but would go a little farther. If a creator did not receive comments (both positive and negative or constructive) to show his creations then probably became tired of showing in public their creations. This leads us to a few people who show their creations and then if no one show his creations, users (active or lurkers) do not have the opportunity to exchange ideas, knowledge or ways of doing things. If one has a good idea, other users can find interesting and even improve it. Or conversely, if you see something you like you will use for your creations.
For example the issue of MD's: above many of us have ideas or inspiration from other images we've seen in others MD's, and combine our own ideas about what we want to do with ideas that give us the other MD's.
I think that all creations have a part from the creator and another part from the things that were done previously.
The essence of this community is the cooperation. :thumbsup:
Sometimes I don't like to post only "I like it" and I tried to write a little more. But I think is better to say " I like it" than nothing. And sometimes I don't have a lot of time to write some sentences.
Agreed. Also on my 1st post, I'd like to add that if we'd maybe 'show' more people what SC4 is and what you can do with it, that they might join the community. We don't have to, but that's what I've been doing for the last 2 years or so...In fact, I recently discovered that one of my classmates plays SC3000, and I've been telling him to drop by my house one time so we can fire up SC4. :)
Now we shouldn't force them and we once again don't have to tell the entire world about Sc4, but who knows? Maybe an entire 'group' of people will be joining the community. :thumbsup:
Either way, SC4 is great, and I will keep playing it until the day comes that discs will become obsolete or the game won't work anymore... ::) And from my not-so-many-years of experience, all good things come to an end.
(But don't worry, the end is definitely NOT in sight, and I think, the end won't be near for another 3-5 years or so!) :D
Also what I noticed with other games/communities, is that it's 'pretty normal' for it to have periods where it will go 'up and down'...I think if we just stay calm positive, everything will turn out to be not so bad! $%Grinno$%
-Ricky :)
BTW, I'm 13 now, not 12, just haven't made the effort yet to change my signature!):P
QuoteSometimes I don't like to post only "I like it" and I tried to write a little more. But I think is better to say " I like it" than nothing. And sometimes I don't have a lot of time to write some sentences.
I couldn't say it any better. I completely understand if it feels a bit silly to say "I like it" or "other generic positive comment" over and over--but it can be really nice just to hear something like that, especially if you're not getting many comments, and certainly it's much nicer than nothing at all. I like to give as detailed of feedback as I can but there's lot's of great stuff around here that I'd like to leave such comments on and all kinds of reasons I sometimes don't have time to leave those kind of comments. I've found that when I wait for the time to compose what I want to I often end up forgetting entirely. Instead, when I don't have much time I try to at least say something.
Nice discussion guys :thumbsup:
I have been an active member of SC4 community for a time and released some lots of my own. At the same time I have also been an active member of another forum, leaving SC4D only my casual lurking-ground.
Reason for this is that I simply don't know what to write here. Yes, I admire (and I am also truly thankfull) for all the hard work you guys have done and and keep doing in here. Yet I remain mostly silent, because everything here is also a bit more serious. It's hard just to jump between long lasting conversations about technical stuff and future plans, when it is done by a tight community - even if you are well aware about the basics of that discussion and you know people in here still want some outside opinions and encouragement.
SC4Devotion is for SC4 players. Yet it often feels that this community is more for it's currently active members. Persons feeling themselves as outsiders, of who are active members of another forum, may find it easier to discuss about their ideas and problems elsewhere. I am still checking trough Resent Unread Topics several times in week and reading most of the posts and topics - even/especially technical ones. But, do I really have anything valuable or interesting to add? It is hard to think that I do.
I hope you all understand that I am writing this with a positive attitude. I just don't know allmost any one here and there currently isn't any easy way to jump in.
%confuso
Rest assured, I keep lurking around, reading your posts clapping my hands to your works and diaries. I might even put in a comment or two now, when I finally found some way to infiltrate my self in to SC4D's discussions.
I hope that other readers are able to find their own way as well.
- Ilja
P.S. In case I ever manage to get this trough the verification: I understand the need for this, but this is allready my fifth sixth time, when I try to get this message trough. ;)
QuoteI hope you all understand that I am writing this with a positive attitude. I just don't know allmost any one here and there currently isn't any easy way to jump in.
I think you just jumped in ;)
I can't give any good reason why I also found it hard to jump in but I did. If you have any suggestions for what might make it easier for people to quit lurking I think people would be open to suggestions and if I had a good idea on the matter I would already have said something.
Of course there are advantages to a tight-knit community as well. And I hope that you continue posting after your jump--and there's certainly room for more Finns in my MD Siilijoki ;D
Before SC4D, I was an active member of www.simcitycentral.net, from when I joined in April 2007, to when the site went completely dead around the end of 2010. The problem with the site was that many of the "classic" members had not been active on the site for months, even years, and many of the current members at the time would sometimes disappear for ages, which meant that from mid-2009 onwards the site was pretty quiet. There was still a small community of us that posted regularly, but most of it was off-topic stuff which usually had nothing to do with SC4, so I guess for the most part the site served simply as a social networking site in a way.
One user in particular was homeandaway, who was also called Alex coincidentally, and we actually became good friends through SCC, and we were both the biggest posters on the site, with about 7000 posts between us. Us two and a few other regular users ended up becoming the only active members on the site, and we tried everything we could to stop the site from "dying". Most of us regulars had CJ's (Mine and Alex's were the most popular on the site and biggest in terms of replies and updates), we had a group called NHC (which me and a user called dada222 even made BATs for) and I even started a club called Society of Active Posters, (which had an awesome acronym imo) all in an effort to save SimCityCentral.
The fact that Alex disappeared without a trace after the Christmas of 2009, (or 2008, I can't quite remember) which severely affected the site's activity, as he posted about as much as the rest of us together, and he was by far the most popular member on the site. This was one of the main reasons that SCC started to decline, coupled with the general lack of active users in general.
There were a lot of MDs (known as CJs on SCC) including my old Delta Valley CJ, and there were some very talented people, with a lot of readers. Me and Alex even started CJ of the Month awards, and we even hosted a CJ of the year award back in 2008, which proved to be very popular. Us two even started up The Brotherhood of Sim Nations, which was kind of like a mini SCJU or URSC, with our own nations based around our CJs. Again, this was popular, but it only involved the small group of active posters, as no new members seemed to be posting anything.
Another reason why I think SCC declined was due to the way the forum and the site in general was laid out, as well as what was in the forums. The forum software, while perfectly fine, was relatively simple. Unlike SC4D, there was no Karma system, no custom titles and no CMLs. (at least not until the last forum upgrade, long after the site went dead) I know these things aren't essential, but they do help make using a forum a more interactive, personal and enjoyable experience. None of these things were available to use with phpbb software, and I don't think Martin (the Admin, formerly known as cogo) could afford a better forum software, mainly because there was no way of supporting SCC. (something I would have done instantly at the time)
SCC had a downloads section as part of the forum, and this is where the lack of activity stemmed from. Many of the BATs, LOTs and MODs found there are, as far as I know, exclusive to the site. This means that people will see these downloads that you won't find here, at ST or anywhere else, register, download the items and then most likely never visit the site again, not even to leave feedback or criticism for the downloads they've joined to get. Again, this was because the community was small, and there wasn't enough content on the site to attract large numbers of new users. Last time I had a proper look at the forum stats (around the end of 2008 I think) there were about 15000 members on the site, only a couple of thousand had posted once, and only about three dozen were active members. I imagine those who never posted just came for the exclusive downloads.
At one point I even asked Pegasus if I could get some of his downloads onto SCC to maybe attract more people, (although they would have most likely never posted, but I didn't think of that at the time) and I even considered asking at SC4D (I site I had only just discovered at the time) if the BSC team would consider opening up shop at SCC as well. In the end I didn't bother, as I seriously doubted whether BSC would see the point of operating at SCC.
This was another problem at SCC - Sometimes I felt that the future of the site rested in my hands, and that Martin wasn't trying anything to keep the site from going dead. Our group of active members was slowly getting smaller, and Martin was never around, and disappeared for months at a time. When we all stopped visiting around the end of 2010, afterwards the activity in the forums shot up, because of SPAM. When I checked back with the site a couple of months back, there was something stupid like 60000 members, all of which were spammers, thriving because no-one was there to stop them. This was because Martin was on his own, and with no-one to help him as he was the only admin and with no moderators and him gone for long periods, his once enjoyable site became a giant advertising billboard.
I understand how he must have felt, as I also know what its like to be the admin of a dead website. From November 2007 to Nov. 2010 I had a site called apeguyproductions.com, which had problems from the start. First of all, the forum software was primitive at best, and the only members who joined were my friends from SCC and a couple of people from SimPeg. (where I advertised the site as well as at SCC) There were only a handful of CJs, no downloads and about 50 users in total racking up about 1500 posts, about a quarter of them being my own. Like SC4D, the site had a wiki, but only me and my older brother used it, and was pretty much unknown to the other users, as it was about my fictional planet of Alterra.
By now you're probably wondering what all this has to do with SC4D, but I'm getting to that now. The biggest threat to this site and all the other SC4 sites is, in my opinion, the saturation of the SC4 website "market", that is, too many SC4 sites. Over time, other sites will most likely fade away and close, and eventually ST and SC4D could be the only sites remaining. The main reasons for SCC's decline was the lack of active users, not enough SC4-related content, lack of site moderation and staff, and simply the fact that the site didn't really stand out amongst the other SC4 sites. There was a downloads thread, but very few users actually had development threads where people could check out their progress. There was a site admin, but no proper staff who could help him keep an eye on things and manage the forums. The forums could have been made better with some investment by users, but there was no way to donate.
The reason SC4D is so successful is because of the sheer diversity and quality of the content here. This site is home to NAM, 3RR, BSC, VIP, and many other teams and individuals, many of which are the best SC4 content creators in the world. There is full support to be found in all aspects of the game, as well as the opportunity to develop and showcase cities, regions, BATs, LOTs, MODs and everything else for this wonderful game. While you may find this at Simtropolis also, The main reason I started posting at SC4D is because of its accessibility, its thousands of friendly and helpful members and its role in the SC4 community as the hub of great content.
Personally, I believe that as long as there is interest in SC4, (and as long as the upcoming SC5 is good enough to attract lasting interest) this site will never suffer from the same fate as SCC and my own site. Sure, the forums may have to be reduced in size and the number of posts and new downloads in the LEX may start to decrease, this site will still have an active and thriving community, something I hope to be a part of for at least a few more years. This is why I will do everything I can to help keep this site alive, by supporting people, keeping my MD going, and who knows, I might give custom content another go. I made a lot of good Friends at SimCityCentral, something I hope to happen again here over time.
I know this was a very long post, but hopefully my experiences at SCC and my own site provided a contribution to this thread. :) :)
Well, I just learned how to edit a polygon ()stsfd()
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg190.imageshack.us%2Fimg190%2F6098%2F40556761.jpg&hash=dcc62b204e4b1dd28814e600a6699f1dc5a21bb6)
Don't know if that hinders SC4's demise or not :P
Edit: and yes, I know how completely unnecessary it is for me to model a small house these days.
@Lowkee33: That may only be a small house, and you're right that it won't stop a whole website losing activity, but the fact that you've decided to post a picture of something new, that you've just learned how to make does help the site, and if for example you were to show this in your development thread, it may help attract more people to this site, and may help to turn more lurkers into posters. Like people have already mentioned, people's support, constructive criticism and appreciation for yours and other people's work keeps them going, as they know there are people on this site that will be interested in what they're making.
This kind of community interaction and involvement is what makes SC4D special, and what keeps it alive. That may only be a small house you've made, (and even without textures it's far better than anything I ever made with the BAT) but this and many other of your superb things you've made are helping the site and the SC4 community. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Quote from: RickD on March 26, 2012, 02:09:28 AM
Quote from: Cierzo on March 26, 2012, 01:58:30 AM
And, for the lurking thing, well.. If I don't have something to say that improves the conversation, I better keep quiet :) Also, I don't like to repeat "Hey! nice thing you've shown here" over and over again, so I only post when I really want to point something, ask for help or just mere curiosity about how that particular thing have been done.
Don't know about the others, but these are my reasons to lurk
Well, in most situations I would agree with you but here I see it different. People who are creating things (be it Bats, Lots, Mods, or MDs, doesn't matter) put a lot of effort in their work. Surely most of them are not doing it primarily for the fame. But a small positive comment, if only a "Hey, I like it" gives a big motivation to keep up with it. If he gets no feedback then there will come the point were the creator thinks that it is not worth it because no one is interested.
And, if you do not like something, then I am sure most of the creators like to hear constructive criticism, too.
I must admit, Rick, that sometimes I get the feeling that nobody cares about my products when I see that there is just one or even no reaction after a presentation of a new lot. So I agree with you. I really feel good and sometimes even proud when there are reactions that only say things like "wow!". Even though a more lengthy comment on flaws and faults is even more welcome.
Another thing about old games and communities.
In a far and forgotten past someone gave me a copy of Quake, you may remember the name. It is a first person shooter and it was quite a big project in those days. I even forgot when the game came out, but it must have been somewhere halfways the 20th century.
Anyway, this is the only game I have played since 1990, together with Civilization 1,2 and Simcity 1, 2000 and 4.
Last year, after I had gone through the mazes once again (once a year I fire it up, run all levels and put it away for several months again), I suddenly thought: might there also be a community about Quake with new levels that I could play? Well.... there I found something! There is a very active community that has almost upgraded the game to a higher level. Quite like is done with SC4.
With this kind of devotion to games I never have to buy a new one and I can spend my budget on sustaining the community. That's why I am a subscriber to this site.
The discussions here are so intriguing and important, I feel I just have to air my views on this matter.
Decline in topics
I think the main reason for this is that, quite simply, we've already exhausted our options when it comes to things to start topics on. Here on SC4D we have boards for every single development group there is, a massive showcase board (the 'Show us Your...' section) with topics covering everything from game oddities to suburbs. City-bilding competitions exist in the form of GRV II. Not to mention the plethora of MDs we've got.
So naturally the rate at which topics are started is bound to slowly decrease. I think it's therefore a bit misleading to say that the site is declining simply on the basis of the number of new topics.
The only real way we can judge whether the site really is declining or not is to look at how many MDs get started. Since this happens quite regularly and isn't a one-off thing, it would provide a better picture of how things are going.
Lurking
Lots of people are nervous! It takes some courage to introduce yourself to a bunch of strangers from all over the world. This is why people tend to introduce themselves quietly, for example by leaving brief comments on MDs - because once you've made that first post, subsequent posts become a lot easier.
There are many reasons why people become inactive. Maybe they've found other interests or real life has simply got in the way and they don't have time for SC4.
This last point is especially relevant these days. Although the UK and other countries are now technically out of recession, we're still in one hell of a mess economy-wise. People are losing their jobs and their livelihoods, and they're scared for themselves and their families. Family comes first, and people will do anything to protect their loved ones. If I had to make a choice between staying active here and feeding my family/holding on to my girlfriend then I would choose the latter without hesitation, and I'm sure everyone else here would do the same.
Therefore, I'm sorry to say that there really isn't any solution to the problem of lurking. It's just the way things are.
Image of the site
Firstly, I want to say that, in my opinion, SC4D remains the best of the SC4 fansites. I really like the standard to which everyone here aspires, and the friendly, love thy neighbour community spirit shown by everyone here.
However, there are some things that I think need changing to encourage people to come here and stay here.
Firstly, there is a lack of help for the newcomer. For example, there isn't a single tutorial on making BATs here that I know of. Given how important these things are, I find this quite shocking. There are a few really good tutorials out there , but often they cover very specific things, whereas more general tutorials on realistic building are badly needed.
The reason I started Realistic Cities for Dummies was because I felt that I had to provide a simple, easy-to-understand, step-by-step tutorial on all aspects of realistic city-building for everybody, because, in my view, this kind of tutorial didn't exist and was what a lot of people were craving. I think that the reason it's popular is because it remains the only 'idiot's guide to SC4' anywhere on the Internet, at least in my view.
I think that the NAM tutorials should go into the Tutorials section, mainly because this is where a newcomer's going to go first to learn the tricks of the trade.
I never knew the Urban Planning and Design thread existed until I read about it on this thread earlier today. Such a thread will be useful to a lot of people, so it really should be accessible from the home page.
I also think that the most useful/popular threads (such as the 'Show us Your...' and the MDs) should have very obvious links from the home page. This way they'd be easy to find and would attract newcomers. If they can't find the info easily, they'll stay away.
Secondly, sometimes I do get a feeling that this site can convey an elitist image.
I frequently look at the 'Show us Your...' section and I never see any images of things under construction. I really think that it would be helpful to everybody if we started seeing some of these, because then we'd know how you guys made those masterpieces.
The way things are at the moment, it's very easy for people to look at those images and think 'I could never do that.' They then get despondent and stay away, which is a great shame.
The truth is that everyone CAN do it. If a few 'how-to's' and 'under construction' shots were posted now and again, it would make people think 'hey, this isn't so hard!', and they'd be encouraged to try the techniques for themselves and improve. Then we'd have more good players. Something to think about?
The LEX
I think that the rule saying that only selected people get to upload to the LEX is the single biggest thing on SC4D that conveys an elitist image.
Don't get me wrong, it's really important to preserve the quality of uploads, but this is the wrong way to do it. It doesn't allow for the fact that even the best people can do a bum upload, and it excludes all the rest of us who might, out of the blue, come up with a truly stunning piece of work.
In addition, it can (and probably does) stink to some people of "we're only gonna let our best mates upload, not you commoners." This sort of attitude doesn't go down too well.
My solution would be to let everyone submit files for approval (and subsequent upload) by the LEX Committee. If they're good enough, then they get uploaded. If not, then provide a clear explanation as to why the file was rejected, so that the person can act on those deficiencies and get better at making stuff.
Writing Style and Acronyms
I'll keep this short as I know I'm going on a bit. Nobody wants to see huge blocks of text littered with jargon. The only thing people do when they see posts of this nature is turn away, because they don't have the time or patience to understand the post.
Therefore it's really, really important that you all use lots of paragraphs, correct spelling and grammar and clear English throughout in all of your posts (as best you can), and keep acronyms and emoticons to a minimum.
Conclusion
I know I've gone on a bit, but that's simply because I had so much to say!
To conclude, the site and the game aren't dead. One of my best friends has recently resurrected AOM (an empire-building game) and an associated forum more or less single-handed. That's an older game than SC4, and that forum has far less members than SC4D, so there's no reason why we can't keep this site and the game going. My friend had (and still has) the dedication, and so do we.
But we all need to work really hard to keep this great site and game going. If we don't, we'll lose the best simulation game ever made.
Chris
QuoteMy solution would be to let everyone submit files for approval (and subsequent upload) by the LEX Committee. If they're good enough, then they get uploaded. If not, then provide a clear explanation as to why the file was rejected, so that the person can act on those deficiencies and get better at making stuff.
Thats exactly what we do. The hardest part about the process is great work that doesn't translate well into the SC4 engine.
Chris, we know you're good intended, but in what concerns the LEX, please take a look at this thread (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=5.0) and it's first (sticky) 7 topics. Those rules are the reason all the content in this site are first quality and there are no restriction other than those rules to anyone to upload their work.
I posted in another thread anout how I prefer to download from the LEX here because I know the people who make the lots have undergone scrutiny before being allowed blanket access to upload, which is good. ST has a great exchange, but sadly anyone can upload and sometimes lots that are "cool looking" can cause issues(like one futuristic lot that had a nasty habit of wanting to grow on a 2x3 CS$$ lot that6 looked immortal but wasn't), the only issues I have ever had from the LEX is caused because I assumed I had all the dependencies required, but didn't.
I don't play the game for realistic looking cities, I play for fun(hence in sandbox mode with a moolah tree plop to give $1 billion+ money to start), but I do not use maxis R buildings at all, I have so many R buildings downloaded from the LEX, STEX, and Pegs. So I download lots from several places, but I have my downloads separated in my plugins folder with the site they came from, so that if I have issues, I know which folder to locate the issue at.
As far as FrankU goes, I apologize for not posting in his farm threads lately, I forgot all about it with the 3RR birthday and multiple posts inthe NAM sections, I forget to scroll the entire forum length to look at the threads I like(I should subscribe to them I know lol).
As far as this forum goes, I love it, lurking is an issue every single messageboard on the internet has and it will never go away. I post on a pro wrestling messageboard that has over 1000+ members and I bet only 50 or 60 are active daily, and only maybe 120 weekly. This board has been around since 1997(I have the 2nd most posts on it, trail the leader by only 45 posts now, but that person has not posted in over 1 1/2 yrs so that tells you how active he used to be) but it has had its ups and downs over the years. A Piracy related board I am a member at is the same way, thousands of users, but few active daily posters.
Just to clarify and correct what I said about the LEX:
- I thought (before I checked it just now), that you had to submit 3 top-notch files to be able to upload. It turns out that this was an oversimplification - you can submit one file for upload, and it will go live if approved, and you get
permanent uploading
rights if you do 3 good enough uploads.
Either I must have misread it before or you must have changed it since then.
I apologise for my error - I really ought to check my facts before posting. I have to say that the situation is better than what I previously thought.
- I should have been clearer about who should get upload rights. (This is what happens when you rush posts!)
What I meant to say was that we should do away with upload rights altogether in my view, and make
all files be approved by the LEX Committee before they get uploaded.
That way, we can guard against the odd 'bum' upload and get rid of the 'privileged few' image I talked about in my last post.
It will also mean that we can reword this rule (the bold type is my addition):
QuoteIn an effort to keep the site's content quality, once the final exchange is up and running, only outstanding creators will be invited to have their work on the exchange.[/color][/color][/size][/font]
,which is, in my opinion, partly responsible for this potential 'privileged few' image (particularly the 'outstanding creators' part), to something more like this:
"In an effort to keep the site's content quality, all files will need to be submitted to the LEX Committee, and only outstanding uploads will be approved for upload to the exchange."This would completely get rid of the 'privileged few' image, and make people think that anyone can upload to the LEX as long as they make a good enough file, which will encourage them more to stay and to try to improve.
Remember, newcomers will look at the site rules long before they see the LEX Candidacies board.
We need to make it
completely clear in both the rules and the ethos of the site that we give
everybody, however new and inexperienced they might be, the
best possible chance to become one of the greats, and then they will stay for good.
Thanks to
Rayden and
Lowkee33 for pointing out my errors.
I will conclude by restating that I do think it is of prime importance to maintain the quality of the LEX. I just think that there are a couple of things that can be done to make it even more attractive to everybody.
Chris
Even without upload rights, it doesn't mean your work cannot be uploaded to the LEX, usually it does but by one of the Admins and under the name of the creator. And after you get your upload rights, that doesn't mean either that your work can go bypassing the scrutinizing process, even those "outstanding creators", most of them, still submit their work to be scrutinized by somebody else on the team. For example at BSC, that scrutineering is done internally at the BSC site, but you can be sure it happens and we are as thoroughly as with anybody else.
Not meaning to be rude, folks, but... if only half the time spent by everyone reading and commenting on this thread had been spent on commenting on someone's MD or creating a new LOT, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Any community that starts to talk about itself as being in trouble will usually get there in short order.
My two cents.
Cheers,
Willy
Thank you Willy!
@ smileymk - Taking away the upload rights of insanely talented creators that work extremely hard to get the rights they have will not help anything--and is no less than an abominable idea. Accusing SC4D of being elitist while claiming that most of the way the site is run is wrong and should instead be done your way is hypocritical. Suggesting that SC4D should be run more like other websites is redundant--why have many SC4 fan sites that do the same thing? Better to have one site or if there's multiple sites have them be run in the way that gives them a unique niche that best fits their members. Finally, if you really would like to contribute to the future of this website I suggest you spend half the words you've just spent here telling the leadership of the site what they are doing wrong by telling the plethora of MDers and content creators on this site what they're doing right.
@ Chris
Quote from: smileymk on March 29, 2012, 09:01:15 AM
.... I just think that there are a couple of things that can be done to make it even more attractive to everybody....
I think the appropriate action is to write a PM and submit your plan and grammar suggestion to an Admin.
The current conversion is moving away from the topic, and may have outlived its usefulness.
- Jim
Quote from: Swordmaster on March 29, 2012, 09:40:20 AM
Not meaning to be rude, folks, but... if only half the time spent by everyone reading and commenting on this thread had been spent on commenting on someone's MD or creating a new LOT, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Any community that starts to talk about itself as being in trouble will usually get there in short order.
My two cents.
Cheers,
Willy
This really.
Also, am I the only one who thinks it's slightly ironic this topic has quickly become one of the more active topics over here?
There are certain things around here that we can change and others that we will not. The LEX candidacy is one that we will not change. The founding members of this site wanted it this way and I believe this would be a loosing argument, but let me explain why.
Before there was anything on the LEX, the BSC Team went through their own stuff to make sure it was near perfection and than the content was uploaded. All new members must and will go through the LEX candidacy process until they manage to produce near perfect uploads on their every time. If anyone thinks for a minute that there are preferred members here over others you are sadly mistaken. The LEX candidacy works the way it does because every new LEX up loader goes through this process and gets a huge amount of help and support that not every upload every time can get. Once the LEX candidacy team believes the new up loader has the ability to upload near perfect uploads they are free to go on their own giving the LEX candidacy team more time for the newer candidacy member that still needs help. There are only a few active members on this team right now and they would be spread way too thin if every upload was double checked every time. Now, as Rayden has said already above, it is up to every team that gets uploading rights to continue the high standards amongst their own team and be always double checking their own work before uploading to the LEX. Any team that lowers their standards, or even just makes a mistake, the uploaded product is locked and fixed right away.
I believe the new comer, if anyone, is the preferred member here at SC4D. At any time they can PM any Staff member and get whatever help they need fairly quickly....any new member that goes for LEX candidacy gets more help, I believe, than they would any where else.
I understand this process can be daunting for anyone and I am sure this is why we don't have as many up loaders as other sites may have. But you can go to the LEX and find that the majority of the work there is damn near perfect, aside from the possible out dated read me and where to find some dependencies. This process is a very positive one and will not change and believe me when I say that every person that has gone through the LEX candidacy process has come out in the end better than before it.
Robin
Quote from: rooker1 on March 30, 2012, 04:31:34 AM
There are certain things around here that we can change and others that we will not. The LEX candidacy is one that we will not change. The founding members of this site wanted it this way and I believe this would be a loosing argument, but let me explain why.
Before there was anything on the LEX, the BSC Team went through their own stuff to make sure it was near perfection and than the content was uploaded. All new members must and will go through the LEX candidacy process until they manage to produce near perfect uploads on their every time. If anyone thinks for a minute that there are preferred members here over others you are sadly mistaken. The LEX candidacy works the way it does because every new LEX up loader goes through this process and gets a huge amount of help and support that not every upload every time can get. Once the LEX candidacy team believes the new up loader has the ability to upload near perfect uploads they are free to go on their own giving the LEX candidacy team more time for the newer candidacy member that still needs help. There are only a few active members on this team right now and they would be spread way too thin if every upload was double checked every time. Now, as Rayden has said already above, it is up to every team that gets uploading rights to continue the high standards amongst their own team and be always double checking their own work before uploading to the LEX. Any team that lowers their standards, or even just makes a mistake, the uploaded product is locked and fixed right away.
I believe the new comer, if anyone, is the preferred member here at SC4D. At any time they can PM any Staff member and get whatever help they need fairly quickly....any new member that goes for LEX candidacy gets more help, I believe, than they would any where else.
I understand this process can be daunting for anyone and I am sure this is why we don't have as many up loaders as other sites may have. But you can go to the LEX and find that the majority of the work there is damn near perfect, aside from the possible out dated read me and where to find some dependencies. This process is a very positive one and will not change and believe me when I say that every person that has gone through the LEX candidacy process has come out in the end better than before it.
Robin
Which is the largest reason why I prefer to get my add ons here at SC4Devotion. I know without fail that it has been rigorously tested, it will work and it will not cause any problems. The new lots may not come at a fast rate, but they won't cause problems and they install into a structured directory with a few clicks.
The LEX is the main selling point of SC4 Devotion. The forums are great, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I can get new lots, garaunteed to work and that look great is a really big draw for myself and countless others (no doubt). Yes it may take a while to go through the process from start to actual upload, but then the best things in life are worth waiting for.
Although I agree that the quality is very important, we must recognize that downloading updates is a big attraction to move the site in general.
For those who are used is easier to navigate through devotion, but for new visitors is no longer simple. The scheme of titles and sections, although well prepared is very large and takes a while to find what they want.
Maybe a new vision-oriented social networking sites as did others make the visit more interesting for beginners, but this would require a complete redesign which would lead to the inevitable cost to do so.
We know that the fan sites that keeps the air has its income from donations or CD sales, but also an important part of advertising is to come to this course, there must be public yet.
Following the announcement of the new game I noticed that several other sites such as Swedish, French, German, until the Spaniard, who had their areas of stagnant download began to receive new items for Downloads.
It is the suggestion of a greater incentive for new uploads to create the required page in the forum for information and support to the user. Besides the vast technical stuff about the game being reorganized to facilitate the search and understanding
Quote from: oljayto on April 01, 2012, 08:44:10 AM
... this forum is for advanced people in SC4D ... couldnt find the download link for CAM ... what can I do ???? I really love to have those lots and extra stuff in SC4 .... :'( :'( :'( help me !
LINK- http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14572.msg419248#msg419248 (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14572.msg419248#msg419248)
I think this an example of what I said above. Although much information on the Forum (By far the most comprehensive in this respect) the way it is distributed hampers their knowledge.
Quote from: NCGAIO on April 01, 2012, 03:16:56 PM
Quote from: oljayto on April 01, 2012, 08:44:10 AM
... this forum is for advanced people in SC4D ... couldnt find the download link for CAM ... what can I do ???? I really love to have those lots and extra stuff in SC4 .... :'( :'( :'( help me !
LINK- http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14572.msg419248#msg419248 (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=14572.msg419248#msg419248)
I think this an example of what I said above. Although much information on the Forum (By far the most comprehensive in this respect) the way it is distributed hampers their knowledge.
Yeah because the file exchange link on the left of the forums is hard to see right?
"Where's the download button?" is the "where's my water?" of SC4D LEX. It's been that way for a long time (it had calmed for awhile until a recent spike), and has to do with the separate registration--which is very unlikely to change, as it'd require a completely new software package on both the forums and the LEX. In other words, it's pretty much a non-starter.
I do think a few blatantly obvious notices (including sticky threads) would help, however.
-Alex
Hi,
If you want a bigger and more active community guys, you need to casualize it.
Make big packs, installers etc..
Epinay-
Quote from: Epinay on April 02, 2012, 07:49:22 AM
Hi,
If you want a bigger and more active community guys, you need to casualize it.
Make big packs, installers etc..
Epinay-
You want SUPER MEGA-MEGA-MEGA PROPS PACK about 1GB ()what()
Please no this ...
Many - not means Good
We have Hi-Fi Quality material here ...
Thank You ..
Quote from: Tarkus on April 01, 2012, 08:20:03 PM(it had calmed for awhile until a recent spike
Probably due to the new Sim City announcement. A bunch of "where's the download", "nightlites don't work", "how to install" questions recently.
Question:
Is there going to be a SC5devotion or this site will be for simcity 4 for ever ?
Quote from: Lowkee33 on April 02, 2012, 09:01:01 AM
Quote from: Tarkus on April 01, 2012, 08:20:03 PM(it had calmed for awhile until a recent spike
Probably due to the new Sim City announcement. A bunch of "where's the download", "nightlites don't work", "how to install" questions recently.
That was my guess as well. It seems that the new game is stirring renewed interest in the existing game.
Quote from: Epinay on April 02, 2012, 07:49:22 AM
If you want a bigger and more active community guys, you need to casualize it.
Make big packs, installers etc..
While some file consolidation wouldn't hurt (and in fact, the NAM Team is going to be doing just that with the next release--the so-called "Monolithic NAM" that merges almost everything together), and we've pretty much always had installers (to some advanced user's chagrin) I don't think "casualization" is really the solution. It'd be counter to the goal of SC4D to, for instance, create an active off-topic section.
I should note, this thread was started before the new SimCity was announced, which has, to some extent, upped the interest in the game. Heck, as
WC_EEND ironically pointed out, this thread has, too. And as always, new content will always bolster activity. A NAM or two would do the job, though RL has been keeping an increasing number of us away this year (myself included). We also maxed out our bandwidth last month a day early, which led to the site being down on March 31st.
Quote from: Epinay on April 02, 2012, 02:10:08 PM
Question:
Is there going to be a SC5devotion or this site will be for simcity 4 for ever ?
It's much too early to tell what role the new SimCity (which lacks the "5" after it) will play here. So far, personally, I like what I see with the new SimCity. But right now, the discussion about it is still very much in the speculative realm. The game was only officially announced last month, and it's going to be awhile still before it gets released.
I think that as much stuff as has been developed for SC4, and as established as the community is, and knowing the sentiments of many of the staff and regulars here, I would expect there to be "Devotion" for SC4 for quite some time to come, regardless.
-Alex
As I'm sure the activity on SimCity forums has increased with the announcement of SimCity '5', as well as the UI redesign over at Simtrop '8', I think that SC4D and the LEX could use a little paint in order to make it slightly more attractive to new users and the like...
Not too long ago my computer was wrecked in a flood, my external hard drives were saved but everything else was destroyed. While all my map/bat downloads were saved on the hard drives, I lost all interest in SimCity. However that changed when I saw the images of SimCity 5. So I installed SC4 on my new computer and started playing again.
Now, I am not an expert when it comes to city/region building, and sometimes I feel a bit shy about posting pictures and creating a MD/CJ. I'm not saying that the forum is unwelcoming, but for me at least, it can be a bit intimidating. :'(
Maybe a friendly weekly competition could be made where seasoned MDers assist beginners through building, presentation, style, etc. It could last 4-5 weeks (more or less depending on members) and help increase overall activity. The same can be done for BATers and mapmakers. Just a thought...
I've had to block every image, stylesheet, and script to make the new Simtrop run on my laptop, it's the heaviest site I've been to.
What do I do here? Log in and click "unread-posts", that gives me all the info I need.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on April 08, 2012, 11:57:44 AM
I've had to block every image, stylesheet, and script to make the new Simtrop run on my laptop, it's the heaviest site I've been to.
At the risk of dragging this thread offtopic: ST 7.5 has always been horribly slow for me. Not because it struggled performance-wise, but because the site took ages to load and more often than not restulted in a 500 error. ST 8.0 (ie: the current version) is much smoother and feels much more optimized than the old version.
edit: it's not my intention to talk badly about ST with this post. My point is: the new ST is a huge improvement over ST7.5
Quote from: DAB_City on April 08, 2012, 06:47:17 AM
As I'm sure the activity on SimCity forums has increased with the announcement of SimCity '5', as well as the UI redesign over at Simtrop '8', I think that SC4D and the LEX could use a little paint in order to make it slightly more attractive to new users and the like...
We just went through an upgrade on the forums back at the end of June/beginning of July. Before the recent one (which they've labeled "7.3.3"), ST's was a little over a year ago, and it had been 2 years back to their last major one (ST6) and 3 years back to ST5. I don't think ST would have upgraded now had it not been for the fact that the site was regularly having Error 500 messages, which increased dramatically after the new SimCity forum was opened.
I don't think
jeronij really has the time to do another forum upgrade at this point, and I also don't think it's really warranted right now, either. Aside from a minor bandwidth hiccup at the very end of March, the site has been running smoothly. While it's true the LEX hasn't really seen much of any change in quite a long time, and I'd speculate much of our post-new-SimCity influx has been on the LEX, but in spite of its age, it still seems to get the job done. It hasn't stopped us from continuing to have a steady stream of new members on there, and it hasn't stopped people from downloading. We can't really do much to the software, anyway, and the main draw for folks is still the content.
Quote from: orchid22 on April 08, 2012, 10:48:36 AM
Now, I am not an expert when it comes to city/region building, and sometimes I feel a bit shy about posting pictures and creating a MD/CJ. I'm not saying that the forum is unwelcoming, but for me at least, it can be a bit intimidating. :'(
Maybe a friendly weekly competition could be made where seasoned MDers assist beginners through building, presentation, style, etc. It could last 4-5 weeks (more or less depending on members) and help increase overall activity. The same can be done for BATers and mapmakers. Just a thought...
Those are fair points and an interesting idea you've proposed, which I think merits discussion.
-Alex
I like the idea of a BATing school and a CJ/MD school. A similar thing for city journals was tried over at Simtropolis but it seems to have died out. I would happily offer to help others with their building as I feel I would have good advice given that I have undergone a very steep learning curve over the last 18 months to get to where I am now.
Quote from: eugenelavery on April 09, 2012, 07:48:50 PM
I like the idea of a BATing school and a CJ/MD school. A similar thing for city journals was tried over at Simtropolis but it seems to have died out. I would happily offer to help others with their building as I feel I would have good advice given that I have undergone a very steep learning curve over the last 18 months to get to where I am now.
A step by step BATing how-to would be nice. Done right, even some one like me might be able to accomplish it. ;)
Something new is going on in the OSITM section.
Go on over to the OSITM (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=152.0) section and have a look, come back here and give us your thoughts.
Robin
Good idea to broaden the scope on OSITM :thumbsup:
Bit curious though as to why it only applies to "works from our resident BATters and LOTters". What happened to good ol' modding. ::)
And when is one considered residential, I might add.
Quote from: vortext on May 01, 2012, 09:48:22 AM
Good idea to broaden the scope on OSITM :thumbsup:
Bit curious though as to why it only applies to "works from our resident BATters and LOTters". What happened to good ol' modding. ::)
And when is one considered residential, I might add.
Modders are most certainly also eligible for the new Custom Content OSITM award. Part of our plans were to feature complimenting pairs of LOTters and BATters during the same month and I suspect that's how the miscommunication came about.
I don't understand your last question but I'm glad you like the idea of the new award :thumbsup:
Anyone that has a thread here showing their works is eligible.
Robin
This is how the OSITM section now reads....
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi119.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fo134%2Fthundercrack83%2FMiscellaneous%2FOSITM.jpg&hash=eb910909a4a907f1770cab7f694bb5653a856553)
This is an an area where several threads will be highlighted, choosen from the MD, Custom Content Creators, LOTters and MODders sections that are seen by the staff as currently presenting particular merit. Special effort will be in fact made to identify particularly promising MDs from the Recently Published and Best Sellers sections as well as the member that has recently started in Custom Content making and LOT making. We hope that readers will check back frequently to watch for updates made by the authors during the month, it should be a very exciting time for all involved. Remember that we are looking carefully all the time for what is going on around the site all the time, so if you feel like you made mistakes when you started out or took a wrong turn along the way, don't sweat it. We want to make sure that all the exciting work being done at SC4D gets the visibility it deserves, so just hang in there if it's not your month yet. If the Devotion is there, we'll see it and you will find your thread "Of Special Interest!"
Thanks for clearing that up, already figured it was a short-hand for all things custom. As for the term 'resident', it implies one has to be longtime member or there's somekind of threshold postcount. Pretty sure it's not the case but still, it seems to imply newcomers don't stand a change while they could maybe use the encouragement the most.
That said, I most certainly like the idea, without custom content all the gorgeous MDs wouldn't be possible in the first place. :)
EDIT: stubbornly ignored the warning I might wanted to review my post $%Grinno$% Much better Robin :thumbsup:
I do apologise for the poor chioce of the word "residential", but read the paragraph above please.
I believe this is much more clear.
Robin
Like the idea. I would suggest changing the description in the main forum page (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?action=forum) to indicate that the OSITM board now also includes bats/lots/mods, especially as the board remains in the MD section.
Of Special Interest this Month
Here will be a showcase of MD, BATting, LOTting and MODding threads that are Of Special Interest this Month!
Does that sound better?
How about: Here will be a showcase of MD and Custom Content threads that are Of Special Interest this Month!
Yup, sounds better. Done.
TY Noah.
Very good idea the custom content OSITM :thumbsup:
I get the idea that we should change the name of this thread into: "The future of this community. There is more and more activity in the forum!". :D
:D Thanks Frank.
This thread surely started out like the title implied, but I think it has been derailed a little, although in a good way. I may change the title to, "The future of the SC4D community", if no one has any objections.
And if anyone else has any SC4D ideas and/or improvements, please let us know, either through PM or by posting here.
Robin
Indeed, the topic gradually drift in another direction so I change the title as FrankU and rooker said :thumbsup:
But, unfortunately, I think there aren't more and more activity :D
I like the OSTIM idea. Maybe next moth the same two people wont monopolize it :D
People have brought up the idea of a BATing challenge. I will now propose a MOD challenge:
Disclaimer: This might not be possible
Premise: We have a God-Mode menu and a Mayor-Mode menu. Warrior has given us God Terraforming in Mayor Mode (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1711), and now it's time to take it one step further. Note the one big difference between the Mayor-Mode and God-Mode menu system: The GM menu has a sub menu, each raise/lower/level has different options. In MM we do not have sub-menus.
The Challenge: Make MM have a sub-menu! (I think it can have one :))
Observations:
Open up SimCity_1.dat in Reader and then the Exemplar Navigator. Scroll down to the "Terraform" branch. This is a list of all of the terraform tools that we have. Notice the GM exemplars: Most of them have a property "CategoryGodMountain" or "CategoryGodValley" or "CategoryGodMisc". This is how the sub menus are made. (Also note that Fauna have "SubmenuKey: Terraform: CreateFauna Menu").
Notice that "Mayor Level Brush" has a similar property "CategoryMayorMisc". This is either something Maxis didn't fully finish (like the rain tool), or something that Maxis removed. You will need to dig around some UI's and bang your head against what "id" means, but in the end you'll be stronger for it :P
%BUd%
Edit: I think this will be very popular, hopefully SC4D can take it $%Grinno$%
The new ideas to spruce up the community are really interesting. What has called my attention the most is, of course, the BAT contest proposal.
Perhaps we could do something á la "SimcityBrazil" contest made some years ago, where the first price is a juicy one (maybe a pre-order of SC 2013). Inviting people from all aroud the SC4 world to participate, and with BSC and other senior members as jury. :satisfied:
Quote from: Lowkee33 on May 07, 2012, 04:48:32 PM
The Challenge: Make MM have a sub-menu! (I think it can have one :))
That would be awesome!!! I can't imagine how much time it would save me scrolling through MMPs ;D
A BAT contest doesn't sound like a bad idea either :thumbsup:
I'm a little bit late, but I have another suggestion. Maybe you can add a link on the start page to the OSITM threads with a small image of the BATs or MDs and the name.
Something like this:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abload.de%2Fimg%2Fsc4ositmewu14.jpg&hash=dff4b8a835b781ccf9604f59080591d9856228bc)
The links and image can fade in and out and change to other OSITM threads.
If I am not mistaken, according to the backlash being received via several forums regarding Simcity 2013, SC4 is due for a revival. After what has been some heavy years for me, and following the best 8/9 months of my life, I see *it* on the approach. I like the concepts, and the ideas, and will go forward on the closed beta and trying it out at Eurogamer tomorrow (If I can). This being said the negativity surrounding it is pushing an attitude that focuses on playing the previous titles, especially SC4, until Maxis and EA release a 'proper' simcity.
But all in all you good fellows here at SC4D should see a spike in activity soon, if not Feb. 2013.
I'd also like to forward my apologies for not being active for several years and abruptly vanishing. I hope I am still welcome here, if not a team member, at least a user.
Nealos101 You will always be welcomed here no matter what thats for sure and far as being on BSC I think if you can see the teams boards your still on the team :-) but anyways you might be onto something there about seeing a resurgence of players for SC4 and I for one cant wait!
I suppose there's always a danger of RL, other games and the like taking away my SC4 time, but I've found myself getting into the game once again over the last month or so. I'm not even considering SC2013 atm, so I think I'll be sticking with SC4 for a long time.
my name is jerad and i still play this game i have this game installed on my classrom computers and the students love to play. i have around 20 kids age 9-12. but i love this gameit fun once you know how to play