Centralized Amiga indie game forum or resource?

[Adrian Browne]

It occurs to me that there are more Amiga Indie games in development than ever before.
-I think one reason for this is because of the Amiga 25 years celebrations that happened last year. People's interest and passions in all things Amiga have been stoked.
Also the quality of these game is improving, there is a commercial quality bullet hell shooter in the works, tanks furry will be released soon and there are a few more games on the horizon - Many of these games like tales of gorluth 2 will come on Cd'S with proper packaging too.

My question is this; should we now capitalize on the current zeitgeist for all things Amiga and create a centralized place for newly released and upcoming Amiga games?
There are several games on different websites and bits of news scattered everywhere, granted there are a few threads right here for some of the upcoming games -

Any centralized location in my opinion should exist here on EAB. Why?
It's the most productive Amiga site by a country mile and I feel it would serve as the best custodian of such a place. Also loads of Amigans visit here and so we could leverage the exposure it would lend to Amiga indie games.

What about a sub-forum or location much like the "Zone". I mean at the top of this site on the menu bar similar to the "Zone" we could have an "Amiga Indy" section.

Game developers would have to be informed of this new place. Such a place could allow Indie game devs to problem solve together and run ideas past each other, even help out with each others projects.

It's just an idea but my gut instinct tells me it makes a lot of sense. It might help the amiga indy scene gain momentum. One ring to rule them all...

What does everyone think? Plausible? Doable?

[warfalcon]

it sounds like a good idea to me and I would love to visit such a place but I am not sure if the homebrew-scene is only on a temporary rise. The last 10 years the gaming scene was absolutely dead, dead as shit tbh. Even the spectrum or the vic 20 ruled the amiga out by far...Everyone yells AMIGA but only a few really care a dime it seems. Sad, but on the other hand - the situation can only improve in terms of quantity and quality. There is no way it could get any worse.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by warfalcon

it sounds like a good idea to me and I would love to visit such a place but I am not sure if the homebrew-scene is only on a temporary rise. The last 10 years the gaming scene was absolutely dead, dead as shit tbh. Even the spectrum or the vic 20 ruled the amiga out by far...Everyone yells AMIGA but only a few really care a dime it seems. Sad, but on the other hand - the situation can only improve in terms of quantity and quality. There is no way it could get any worse.

Yes, it could be a temporary rise that's why I think a centralized place might help bottle the magic so to speak. Certainly it would be fun and with devs helping each other and sharing ideas projects may progress quicker and more steadily.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by warfalcon

it sounds like a good idea to me and I would love to visit such a place but I am not sure if the homebrew-scene is only on a temporary rise. The last 10 years the gaming scene was absolutely dead, dead as shit tbh. Even the spectrum or the vic 20 ruled the amiga out by far...Everyone yells AMIGA but only a few really care a dime it seems. Sad, but on the other hand - the situation can only improve in terms of quantity and quality. There is no way it could get any worse.

Well, it is easy enough to change this situation: code, graph, create music, advertise, communicate, donate and buy as much as you can afford to.

If you want to see change, be that change. Outsiders are not going to make the Amiga scene better just for our pleasure, it is up to us to make this change and that means going from consuming gratis to producing and/or buying.

As I keep saying: be the change you want to see in the world. (I did not invent that sentence, obviously.)

And yes, Adrian, this is a good idea, but frankly a forum is ill suited for pushing news, it is made for discussion, not documentation.

The idea of an Amiga stack exchange as mentioned in another thread by TenLeftFingers seems more suited to sharing dev information.
As for news, a dedicated site would probably be better but it needs to attract an audience first and have a constant flow of news... Hard for now.

Update: argh, I'm mixing unrelated things together in my reply. Sorry for that.
Too late to fix, will re-reply tomorrow. Good night.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Well, it is easy enough to change this situation: code, graph, create music, advertise, communicate, donate and buy as much as you can afford to.

If you want to see change, be that change. Outsiders are not going to make the Amiga scene better just for our pleasure, it is up to us to make this change and that means going from consuming gratis to producing and/or buying.

As I keep saying: be the change you want to see in the world. (I did not invent that sentence, obviously.)

And yes, Adrian, this is a good idea, but frankly a forum is ill suited for pushing news, it is made for discussion, not documentation.

The idea of an Amiga stack exchange as mentioned in another thread by TenLeftFingers seems more suited to sharing dev information.
As for news, a dedicated site would probably be better but it needs to attract an audience first and have a constant flow of news... Hard for now.

Update: argh, I'm mixing unrelated things together in my reply. Sorry for that.
Too late to fix, will re-reply tomorrow. Good night.

I just googled stack exchange. So ten left fingers was positing the idea of creating our own site much like stack exchanges way of doing things/prioritizing pertinent information etc? A dedicated website could work, yes. I don't have the skills to put up a site myself, not a proper one anyways.
If a site was set up replete with it's own game dev forum and an area for news posts and video clips of games it could work. Contact would have to be made with as many devs as possible. Asking them to submit regular updates, videos etc would be important. A video diary chronicling the creation of a game would be a good idea too.

I have a friend who could set up such a website and he has space/bandwidth for one. I'd have to pay him though and cash is tight now, but I'm tempted.

Shit, at the very least I'd help out with ideas and some money too if others here were interested in working on such a thing? The main idea is to get the devs communicating with each other in one place and allow users to access everything about the games in one place.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Adrian Browne

I just googled stack exchange. So ten left fingers was positing the idea of creating our own site much like stack exchanges way of doing things/prioritizing pertinent information etc? A dedicated website could work, yes. I don't have the skills to put up a site myself, not a proper one anyways.

Actually it is better than that: the Stack Exchange network offers to create and host freely new Stack Exchange sites as long as there is enough interest and people to generate quality questions and answers on that site.

They offer their software and delegate the handling to a group of admins (I do not think a single person is enough) and add the "beta." prefix to it (beta.amiga.stackexchange.com for example) and after a few months they evaluate if the site has enough traffic and quality.

StackOverflow.com is by far one of the best coding resource on the planet and it is entirely community driven for example. There is also maths stackexchange, astronomy, and many more.

It would be really nice if there was enough demand for a dedicated Amiga exchange site but that is a hard thing to do: requires knowledgeable people to spend time answering questions, requires administrators to understand how to moderate fairly and according to the quality and theme criteria of Stack Exchange and establish formal and transparent rules, etc.

It is a lot of work but if there is enough traffic this could work. But from previous beta attempts it is not clear if the Amiga community is large and self controlled enough to manage it.

I have been caressing that idea for quite a bit too but it is also quite a bit of work by the admin team: they must be ready to step in and establish principles, advertise the site, work with Stack Exchange, etc.

Originally Posted by Adrian Browne

If a site was set up replete with it's own game dev forum and an area for news posts and video clips of games it could work. Contact would have to be made with as many devs as possible. Asking them to submit regular updates, videos etc would be important. A video diary chronicling the creation of a game would be a good idea too.

Well, this is an entirely different beast than the question/answer format of Stack Exchange sites.

And I think you really underestimate how much organizational work this is.
In order to have a regular production you would need at least one part time paid staff to do that. Or 20 volunteers and fantastic leadership with lots of personal time to sacrifice to hold them together.
This is enormous work and having a website framework, although important, is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Actually it is better than that: the Stack Exchange network offers to create and host freely new Stack Exchange sites as long as there is enough interest and people to generate quality questions and answers on that site.

They offer their software and delegate the handling to a group of admins (I do not think a single person is enough) and add the "beta." prefix to it (beta.amiga.stackexchange.com for example) and after a few months they evaluate if the site has enough traffic and quality.

StackOverflow.com is by far one of the best coding resource on the planet and it is entirely community driven for example. There is also maths stackexchange, astronomy, and many more.

It would be really nice if there was enough demand for a dedicated Amiga exchange site but that is a hard thing to do: requires knowledgeable people to spend time answering questions, requires administrators to understand how to moderate fairly and according to the quality and theme criteria of Stack Exchange and establish formal and transparent rules, etc.

It is a lot of work but if there is enough traffic this could work. But from previous beta attempts it is not clear if the Amiga community is large and self controlled enough to manage it.

I have been caressing that idea for quite a bit too but it is also quite a bit of work by the admin team: they must be ready to step in and establish principles, advertise the site, work with Stack Exchange, etc.



Well, this is an entirely different beast than the question/answer format of Stack Exchange sites.

And I think you really underestimate how much organizational work this is.
In order to have a regular production you would need at least one part time paid staff to do that. Or 20 volunteers and fantastic leadership with lots of personal time to sacrifice to hold them together.
This is enormous work and having a website framework, although important, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, indeed it could be a lot of work to maintain and regularly update such a site - I'm not entirely sure just how much; surely part time might be the minimum. There would be peaks and slumps of activity in the scene too though. Well it is an idea, I think the Amiga indie gaming scene is on the rise atm though and a helping hand of some kind would be useful.

[tassel]

This is a very good idea. However, I have some personal thoughts:

This could end up being just another Amiga page, what about indieretronews.com that already has an Amiga section? What about cooperation with indieretronews to inform about new productions and releases?

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by tassel

This is a very good idea. However, I have some personal thoughts:

This could end up being just another Amiga page, what about indieretronews.com that already has an Amiga section? What about cooperation with indieretronews to inform about new productions and releases?

That's not a bad idea. Indie retro news is a good site. I wonder if other sites Amigacoding.de? would add an amiga indie game section? I could ask via e-mail. It might be a start.

[Lemming880]

I'm imagining a place where game developers can create their own page for a game (like you create a page for a video on youtube). They can fill in information about the game, a download link (preferably hosted from this site), screenshots, videos, a comment section and a rating button (with a search function on the site that can show best rated games), maybe even a donate/buy button. And an option to first upload a test version and set status on the page to 'alpha/beta' and people can give tips in the comment section. And when the game's done you can set status on 'final'. Stuff like that. Have your own little place on the site. But then you probably need to make a new website or a subsite.

[Zetr0]

Fascinating idea Adrian Browne,

There are some Amiga related development communities out there on social media including Amiga Game Development FaceBook page/site.

Before jumping into the deep end I would suggest you have a chat with Cammy whom is a spirited passionate Amiga soul. If anything Amiga is being developed she will know about it =)

[Zetr0]

@Adrian Browne

If you are looking at a news site with a bolt-on for forums and member developments then I would humbly suggest having a look at Joomla's CMS (Content Management System) its free and there is a lot of help out there to set one up ( Google and YouTube) - this software will cover what your thinking of wanting.


@Thread
I personally find members of a development community are able to complete more than those that aren't. Communities can feed content creators with inspiration, collaboration and as well the strength to push though blocks and achieve an end result.

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by Lemming880

I'm imagining a place where game developers can create their own page for a game (like you create a page for a video on youtube). They can fill in information about the game, a download link (preferably hosted from this site), screenshots, videos, a comment section and a rating button (with a search function on the site that can show best rated games), maybe even a donate/buy button. And an option to first upload a test version and set status on the page to 'alpha/beta' and people can give tips in the comment section. And when the game's done you can set status on 'final'. Stuff like that. Have your own little place on the site. But then you probably need to make a new website or a subsite.

Thats sounds really great. Might be a bit of work but it sounds about right.

[neoman]

Is that thread still alive?

As developer I'm also *very* interested in such a thing.

And additionally, to help the Amiga Game Development rise again there is another thing I thought about: Especially in the Amiga scene a lot of technical information about coding is spread over the whole net and hidden in places where noone can find them.

A lot of stuff is still in articles, diskmags and especially in threads on boards like ADA, EAB, A1K etc. You can also find a lot on Aminet, guys like Photon also create some tutorials for e.g. coding the Copper but there is nothing which is well-structured. There might be a Wiki about Amiga API coding but that's mostly not what you are searching for when making games.

So I also thought about making something like a Knowledge Base where these information can be stored plus *related* books, articles and maybe some resources with fonts and graphics. Imho the Amiga is a very complex platform so I'm very happy more developers are still interested in coding games for it again.

For myself I started on a lot of stuff, coded a lot of effects but never released something for the Amiga except a small intro. I made a lot of stuff for AGA machines. But mostly effects. Games are harder to make and you need way more planning, organization and collaborations.

[jizmo]

It's true there hasn't been too many (decent) indie games for the Amiga in the last few years. But many of us old school Amiga users had a career to attend to during the last 20 years and now that we're +-40 it seems there's again more time to put into the old miggy.

Now, if I was ever to develop anything for Amiga, I'd do it primarily for my own fun, but I can't deny it would be still good to know if some others would benefit from it as well. A well thought out Games portal could be a a good indication there some people still out there interested in downloading the thing.

In the best scenario it could even be a motivation for some of us to start the development we've postponed in the past.

[neoman]

Originally Posted by jizmo

It's true there hasn't been too many (decent) indie games for the Amiga in the last few years. But many of us old school Amiga users had a career to attend to during the last 20 years and now that we're +-40 it seems there's again more time to put into the old miggy.

Now, if I was ever to develop anything for Amiga, I'd do it primarily for my own fun, but I can't deny it would be still good to know if some others would benefit from it as well. A well thought out Games portal could be a a good indication there some people still out there interested in downloading the thing.

In the best scenario it could even be a motivation for some of us to start the development we've postponed in the past.

It's like in the C64 scene where the old guys also start to code demos and games again. We got a similar development here. It's definitively a good chance because people like to download, play and even buy retro/indie games nowadays. Even if I don't think you can make up a living from that it's still a pretty nice benefit for yourself and the whole Amiga scene.

What also disturbs me is that again these private game projects are hidden in some threads. To have a page like you, Adrian Browne, suggested, is even nice to collect all started game projects and track their activity. With Donations, Kickstarting, Ratings, Comments. Did you start on something like that already?

We Amigans should really get more active.