New section for RPG maker titles

[BlueLight]

Okay so ever since the great split when the Flash artist decided they were to good for every other type of project; people have been asking to split off the RPG maker games in to it's own section. In fact people have been asking since before that but that's beside to the point and i don't care enough to care. <- this people means that i will never care!

Anyways in recent times, i've noticed that there seems to be a lot of RPG maker games on the site. this in part has to deal with the fact that i'm testing out RPGmaker. Anyways i decided to check and found that at the time of posting, the front page of the non flash sub forum had at least 8 RPG maker games; but a second check showed 13 games.
I feel that the RPG maker games have reached a critical mass and should be given their own sub forum. Now the amount of games isn't the only argument i have but it's my base. We also have the fact that we're right now treating the RPG maker part of the community as second hand citizen which i'd normally wouldn't have a problem with; but now that they've shown they have a content creator base, i think sticking them in with everyone else that isn't making flash products is harming this sub community we have. One of the great advantages of using RPG maker software is the great amounts of free resources they have; however most RPG maker sites i've gone to are supporting a 13+ community which means it has age restrictions on the content that can be shared. If LOK had better support for the RPG makers developers', we could likely attract some spriters that deal in hentai based animations. While we might get a artist that can do all that, the problem is that there is literally no support beyond, "here, have a forum topic" to these artist that quite frankly, produced much better products in the past than most of the flash community; or at least they did in the past. My last argument is the fact that a lot of people dislike RPG maker games. This isn't a small group of people. Splitting the "non- flash" would allow these people that would like to ignore RPG maker titles, the easy option to avoid it. I'd think in a boolean based world where people who like RPG maker titles and those that don't, this would make both parties happy.

[GoRepeat]

I'll bring it up in the Mod section. Personally, I don't see the need as 95% of the "non-flash" forum are RPG maker games so they essentially already have their own forum. It would be a bit silly to create a new subsection to split off the 5-10 threads that aren't RPG maker games in there.

And for the record, they are second hand citizens. Know your place, dogs.

[Renara]

As Gore says I'm not sure there are really enough non-RPG Maker games to justify the distinction. The point really is to distinguish between games you can play in your browser just by viewing the topic, and games you need to download, maybe install, run in certain software etc. Currently Flash is the only browser-based game type we support, if that changes there might be a reason to renamed Flash to "Browser Based" or "In Browser" or something, but until then the separation seems fine to me.

[BlueLight]

if i think you're making same arguments, having supporting arguments, similar arguments, i'm going to group part of your quotes together.

I'll bring it up in the Mod section. Personally, I don't see the need as 95% of the "non-flash" forum are RPG maker games so they essentially already have their own forum. It would be a bit silly to create a new subsection to split off the 5-10 threads that aren't RPG maker games in there.

As Gore says I'm not sure there are really enough non-RPG Maker games to justify the distinction.

See i completely disagree with this argument. Basically let me put it this way, what if RPG maker had 100% control of the forum. Going by your argument, they should be still in the "non-flash" because you'd literally have no threads. I wouldn't be shocked if you really think that would also be a problem; however why would that be a problem? next off even at 100% control of a sub thread, it still wouldn't be the RPG maker sub forum now would it? if 10000 people post 10000 new projects in the flash thread it wouldn't magically become the RPG maker sub forum even if there wasn't a rule saying you had to post RPG maker threads in the "non-Flash" forums. that means flash games would have less than 1% control of the sub forum. (that being said, it might become the RPG maker Sub forum because the mods are lazy and decide moving all the flash project is easier, which it is; i believe.)

Now Renara does bring up a point in his original post which kinda does counteract this argument so i must claim i'm only arguing from those 2 quotes and less at ren's than gore's.
Also, what if the "non-flash" sub forum had 100 threads after the split? would you still have the same argument of 5-10 threads? What if it had more than 40? if you have a problem with either of those numbers than based on what gore is saying (not ren), we should meld the the Flash forum and the non flash forum back to gather and it shouldn't have happened since i'm fairly sure you guys got lower than 40 threads on both forums when you locked 12 pages of old threads.

Here, maybe if you gave real numbers. Like if we have 2 pages worth of non flash games than we're fine with the split. I just think you kinda jumped the gun since i doubt you counted all the non RPGmaker threads we have and compared them.

As Gore says I'm not sure there are really enough non-RPG Maker games to justify the distinction. The point really is to distinguish between games you can play in your browser just by viewing the topic, and games you need to download, maybe install, run in certain software etc. Currently Flash is the only browser-based game type we support, if that changes there might be a reason to renamed Flash to "Browser Based" or "In Browser" or something, but until then the separation seems fine to me.

okay first off i'm not sure how to tackle your quote for the most part ren, since splitting it up into groups is leading me into counter arguments which you address in the next quote split.
I think i'm going to start from backwards, and i'm sorry if i'm putting words in your mouth. *tries to figure out how to make any sensible argument.*

the point really is to distinguish between games you can play in your browser just by viewing the topic, and games you need to download, maybe install, run in certain software etc.

Maybe i just disagree with this taxonomy you're using. I think i'd personally would organizes it by groups of what is the standard look/quality/ability of whatever you're using. For instance, you can spot a RPGmaker a mile away unless the developer of said game is really skilled at what he's doing. Hell, some people were able to make Action RPG from that engine which is darn near impossible from what i've seen. (Granted i'm working with standard stuff and not custom scripts.) Take a flash game and it has a identifiable markers, one of them being the ability to run it in a webpage easily; but that being said, i don't expect you to make a subforum for something just because 1 person is making a game with that thing and and it tints the screen green so you can recognise what program it is.

Currently Flash is the only browser-based game type we support, if that changes there might be a reason to renamed Flash to "Browser Based" or "In Browser" or something, but until then the separation seems fine to me.

Going back to taxonomy, i don't think i'd put anything that ran in the browser into the same sub forum just because it ran in the browser.
Again i guess we have different theories of how the taxonomy should be done.


This isn't a counter argument to what you guys said but more a statement of something you seemed to dismiss. If i was to come to this forum and was a artist, i quite frankly wouldn't think you supported rpgmaker games thus i wouldn't even think about making content for them and posing it. Maybe a few threads i randomly look at were RPGmaker games but i'd have to really look. I quite frankly had no idea how many RPGmaker threads we had until i counted which i never do so i assume no one elses ever does; but lets move to someone that's looking to RPGmaker games. Again i wouldn't expect there's much support for them and i might find a few but i don't check every thread and not every thread states in the title they're RPGmaker. Lets move to someone who hates them. well i wouldn't think their are many but every once in awhile i'd get one and it might annoy me.
The arguments i'm really hearing to this is "non-Flash" might not have many threads afterwards. I doubt there is enough RPGmaker threads to remove 50% of the threads from the non-flash sub forum. why i'm asking for this is not because we have too many or too few thread there; not because we have a high percentage of users that are using RPG maker; but because they have high activity and because how things are structured seems to limit what is possible. there is a ceiling which maybe they'll get past but i doubt it with how things stand.

And for the record, they are second hand citizens. Know your place, dogs.

My name is Bluelight, and I know my place. Thank you for allowing me my continued existence, Gorepete. Truly, you are a wonderful, kind, and benevolent Moderator. This statement was not edited or forced by Gorepete at all. Not at all...

GAHHH!!! I hope i picked up on all the logical, grammatical and spelling errors.

[Renara]

the point really is to distinguish between games you can play in your browser just by viewing the topic, and games you need to download, maybe install, run in certain software etc.

Maybe i just disagree with this taxonomy you're using. I think i'd personally would organizes it by groups of what is the standard look/quality/ability of whatever you're using. For instance, you can spot a RPGmaker a mile away unless the developer of said game is really skilled at what he's doing. Hell, some people were able to make Action RPG from that engine which is darn near impossible from what i've seen. (Granted i'm working with standard stuff and not custom scripts.) Take a flash game and it has a identifiable markers, one of them being the ability to run it in a webpage easily; but that being said, i don't expect you to make a subforum for something just because 1 person is making a game with that thing and and it tints the screen green so you can recognise what program it is.

I don't disagree with you exactly. What I mean is it's not an issue of RPG Maker games not being popular enough, not in the slightest, but the Other forum already is pretty much the RPG Maker sub-forum, but for the sake of non RPG maker games they go in there too because otherwise there's just not enough of them to justify them having a sub-forum.
So it's not that RPG Maker doesn't suit having its own sub-forum, but there aren't really enough non-RPG Maker titles to justify shoving them on their own. Most RPG Maker games actually already identify themselves as such, many identifying the specific version such as VX Ace etc., so I'm not sure there's a great deal of confusion really.

Currently Flash is the only browser-based game type we support, if that changes there might be a reason to renamed Flash to "Browser Based" or "In Browser" or something, but until then the separation seems fine to me.

Going back to taxonomy, i don't think i'd put anything that ran in the browser into the same sub forum just because it ran in the browser.

Actually I modded the forums to cache inline content (i.e - Flash games) differently; since the update to CloudFlare it doesn't matter so much anymore but it was part of the reason why I separated things that way
Even so I think it's a suitable distinction; while there are actually currently more non-Flash topics, that's partly because there's still tons of Flash stuff in the main Creative Corner parent forum, which I promised Gorepete I'd find a scripted method for separating into the correct sub-forums but haven't quite got around to yet…

This isn't a counter argument to what you guys said but more a statement of something you seemed to dismiss.

I don't want to seem like I'm dismissing it, I guess my main issue is I don't see that there's anything wrong with the way things are now, other than the mess of locked topics I need to sort out.
Is anyone having any particular trouble finding games in the "Other" section?

Functionally it seems like a problem that may be better solved by adding tagging to the forums; we currently just have voluntary tagging of topic titles, but a proper tagging system could let us distinguish (and easily search for) specific types of games, not just RPG Maker games for RPGs in general, action games, animations etc., it's something I want to investigate adding anyway but this may be another good reason to do-so.

[Sinsun1]

Is anyone having any particular trouble finding games in the "Other" section?

Functionally it seems like a problem that may be better solved by adding tagging to the forums; we currently just have voluntary tagging of topic titles, but a proper tagging system could let us distinguish (and easily search for) specific types of games, not just RPG Maker games for RPGs in general, action games, animations etc., it's something I want to investigate adding anyway but this may be another good reason to do-so.

I know there are some old probably dead text based games I was looking for the other day and could not find them after searching through countless threads.

Then of course there's the animations/pictures that aren't really games that might be able to get more attention in an "art" forum.

Also there's "games" with only plans for the games, no demo/alpha up of it to get better input from.

So yeah, some sort of separation would be nice to be able to tell what is what. I know the game I am working on will be seeing that side of the forum soon-ish (this month hopefully) once I finish up the last details I want for the release .

But even the thing you are thinking of would be perfect .

[Chameleon]

On a side note, I've never actually played an rpg maker game; wouldn't know where to start. If a tutorial was posted I can guarantee at least +1 member for that section =)