SpaceSimCentral

I like these types of discussions to get all the feedback and most of the time with the input you can please everyone and make things simpler. I know one of my goals is to try to get people to play and love these great games and also not alienate games themselves. For so long communities were separated by game or flame wars happened between game communities, this is counter productive to the overall community. We are all gamers and have a passion and if new players to these games can see the passion and the wealth of info they will be more apt to get involved and post and have fun. Stardreamers suggestion we can all work on as a community and it could even be a nice brain dump for people and I will probably even link the post into the welcome message I send to everyone when they sign up to read.Here is a brief look at the security check during registration. This should stop non space gamers in their tracks because you could guess but it will take you some time [hsimg]http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7872/sscreginfo.jpg[/hsimg]Bots can get by the captcha images with ease. And I'm trying to make all aspects of the site space themed in some way. So thought this would be a nice touch and if the people pay attention at all on what they are reading in the forums questions like these will be easy.We'll get SSC to that point of bliss sooner or later. Hey it's only been about a 1.5yrs now SSC has been around so there is time for improvement. :)Bullwinkle, You might have gotten me on 3 of them I would have to do some research on. Maybe you should post these in the general area and let people have some fun with them or in the poll/survey forum depending on what you post. I know myself when I do finish all the site work and can have fun again I wanted to start a 'name that tune' game where I pull music tracks from games and you have to name them

Darkone wrote:
Bullwinkle, You might have gotten me on 3 of them I would have to do some research on. Maybe you should post these in the general area and let people have some fun with them
OK, sounds good. If you have an easy way to move or copy the quizzes then please feel free (and edit appropriately)... I would have to re-write the messages, including the links, since they are mostly non-text. I intended the quizzes as a joke, but the second "Advanced" quiz does have a few obscure pics. I am sure that you know all but one of the characters although you may not recognize the pictures.One character truly is a rarity, but she is my all-time-favorite sci-fi character ever, so I had to put her in the mix.Which ones did you have trouble with?As for your quiz, I am afraid that I would fail miserably. I have never heard of half of those games. And, also, ...... what does "MMO" stand for? (My guess is "Massively Multiplayer Or something". However, if that were correct, then what would be the difference between that category and the "Single or Multi Player" category?

Good idea about having a FAQ,but it needs to be some where people can find it,maybe some whereon the potal.No idea about the first 3 on bullwinkle quize,D I think is from Star Trek,the original series.

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As for your quiz, I am afraid that I would fail miserably. I have never heard of half of those games.
Really? If you scroll down the list of forums on the forum page you would have had to see some of those titles Here is a general overview of my thinking behind it. And as always very open to suggestions and opinions. I do want to make the quiz a little challenging to prevent spammers and rude users. As long as you are in touch with the space gaming scene or scifi you should be able to answer these questions.In the forums you have these categories:- Welcome to SpaceSimCentral.com- Space Sim Gaming- Standalone Space Sims- MMO Space Sim Games- Flight Simulators Chat- Modding and Coding- Space DOORS/MUD GamesUnder those categories are individual forums. Now for this example of the security question I have taken some older games that any fan of the genre should know Freelancer, Elite, Wing Commander III and Independence War 2 which are all single player (SP) games. And then I list more recent games Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games like Black Prophecy, Jumpgate Evolution, Infinity and EVE Online. Every single one of these games has a forum area in the forums (except Elite) under either (standalone space sims) or (MMO space sim games). I thought it was a little too easy actually. Because you have the games listed right in front of you.Now I can add more questions/answers entries to the registration piece so there is a variety and not just this one question. I just haven't thought up any more yet. But do feel free to donate a question with at least 5-6 answers in it. But they do need to be space/scifi related in nature.
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Good idea about having a FAQ,but it needs to be some where people can find it,maybe some whereon the potal.
Yeah thought about that a little last night and I wanted to try a little something and design a professional page around it kind of like the FAQ for the forum (http://www.spacesimcentral.com/faq.php). I will make a post to take in FAQ questions and answers and I will start building the page. I will make it so pics and videos will be placed into it. Once I get some FAQ Questions and answers I will start making the form. I wanted to make it a forum so we can add to it but also not have it a thread so it gets off topic.Advertising its existence is easy. I think you will like how it is done and I can also add it to the portal main page as well.---Oh Bullwinkle I will move that post for you and make it its own thread, i'll see if I can keep you as the topic starter on it.

Games Quiz
Darkone wrote:


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As for your quiz, I am afraid that I would fail miserably. I have never heard of half of those games.
Really? If you scroll down the list of forums on the forum page you would have had to see some of those titles
Well, ok, not really. It was a small exaggeration to avoid having to explain that, while I have heard of the names of all of those games, the only place I have seen them is on SSC. Therefore, a quiz asking me to categorize stuff that I will only learn about after I pass the quiz... it kinda makes my head hurt. But the short version is that I would never have been able to pass that quiz without having already seen SSC.MP vs MMOThank you for clarifying Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, but my question stands: How do you differentiate between MMO and any other Multiplayer (MP) game? I mean, all MP games are "online", and most support very large numbers of players. Moving my quizzes
Darkone wrote:
I will move that post for you and make it its own thread, i'll see if I can keep you as the topic starter on it.
Thanks, but I just figured out how to do it myself using the Edit button! I will do it, then clean up my messages with proper links.Now, if only you had a feature so that I could obscure hints and solutions...One more commentI see that you have updated the list of forums since the last time I looked. Nice update! I love what you have done there, and I think that I would be far less confused about the site layout if I had seen those explanations the first time that I visited SSC.

Spoiler BBcode... I can make that happen. I just have to locate the code somewhere on the net and I will get a button added to the posting window. Or at the least will be in the site upgrade (finished product).Ah but the try definition of MMO is a persistent online experience that continues on and things could happen to your world or your guild or you while you are not online. In MP games this isn't so unless the owner of the server does it manually. Once you leave a MP game no ill effects can happen to you.

Darkone wrote:
Spoiler BBcode... I can make that happen.
Excellent. With that then I could post solutions without spoiling the fun for everyone.Here is one spoiler snippet that I found (untested, and I am sure that you have your own sources): [url]http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=579376&start=180&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p3244656[/url]
Darkone wrote:
the definition of MMO is a persistent online experience that continues on and things could happen to your world or your guild or you while you are not online.
Wait... so you have to play the game 24x7 or risk "consequences"?Brrrr.... just the idea of that sends chills down my spine. How evil!Well, in any case, I would obviously flunk your registration quiz. That may be intentional but, just in case it is not, you might want to consider a different kind of quiz . EDIT: OK, now I feel kind of stupid, because it just occurred to me that anyone can read SSC... the registration is only for required for posting. So, yeah, your quiz should be just fine!!!PS: I moved the Quiz Proposals.

Not hard at all. I wanted to base the quizzes off of basic space gaming knowledge or something easy to find out by either looking here or some where else. The question should have at least 5 answers. One or more being correct and of course some wrong choices. I was going to work on some more this week sometime, wanted to have about 3-4 different quiz options for the registration page. But they need to be either space game based or scifi based questions.Spammers and other sorts of people really ruin good communities and can take away from the fun of the site. I know some people may not get the question right the first time and I will put a disclaimer down at the bottom that if they cannot register because they can't answer anything then they can email me specifically and I will take care of it.Because I run into the problem where I can start to ban IP addresses but the spammers seem to get different ones every time and if I block a range of IP's I could be blocking a legit person from ever registering. So these little quizzes I think will help a lot in that department. And I hope I don't offend anyone but I look at SSC as more of an adult/older gamer site so I also don't want 10yr olds posting crazy messages either. So I try to have questions that include games before their time.My reasons may be flawed but I have seen good sites crippled to spam and rude players and I work to hard on SSC to have this happen. I have zero tolerance for spammers and I don't even warn them they get instantly banned. It's a shame I have to be a hard ass on people, but if people don't respect others I get them

I have been working on the SSC site update in my spare time and I have already let people see some of it in the new links page. Besides all the code/mod updates i was planning to add the following:- New space gaming FAQ page.- Add a spoiler BBCode to the posting window.- Possibly add social bookmarking links to posts so people can easily spread the word about good info.- New security measures.- Removal of the arcade mod. Don't see a lot of people use it and it takes up space in the DB.- Removal of the store page or at the least a redesign of it. I'm not really in this for the money but if this type of stuff can make running the site less cost on me thats a good thing - Find a good way to provide a backup scenario for the website. Right now I backup the DB usually every week and a whole site backup maybe happens once a month. I have to think of a better disaster recovery plan.- Work of website SEO to get better placement in the search engines and possibly rename forum categories and pages to reflect on what people would search on.- Wanted to work on a submit form for the link area. But that will take some time since I have to code the whole page myself.- Add a page for advertising on SSC (request)I want to get all this done before I go on vacation in July, so I have some time but not really Since there will need to be lots of testing on all the changes. I hope to go live the last week of June to let the site be up for a week before I go.Any other thoughts on fixes and updates are appreciated and will do my best to get them in there.

How about a cafepress site where you sell t-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads, etc. with the Space Sim Central logo on them. If you mark things up a bit you could make a little extra ching to help keep the lights on.A way to generate recurring forum traffic would be to buy some bargain bin games and then have a contest or a raffle for them. I just picked up Starlancer for $3.99, for instance. Once a month send out an email with a link "post in this thread to enter to win a copy of XXXXX game" to all forum members to try and regenerate interest for members who have wandered off over time.

I have definitely thought about the game giveaway option. Once I get the site running right and work on the whole SEO thing to get more traffic pushed to the site I will try to do something like that. I am on a very limited budget so I can't go hog wild... :)I would love to hold some sort of competition and would like to award prizes for the top gamers or maybe I can get some developers to host some prizes as well its a few things I was looking into especially with a few games coming out soon.On the CafePress. I have never heard of this website or service until you mentioned it. Definitely a interesting. I will look into this and probably start a thread on this to see what people would be interested in and of course any text/images they would want to see and maybe some free stuff to the person(s) you have the best ideas or images for these things. Thanks very much for that feedback Kestral I will definitely revisit this very soon.

Potsmoker66 link to the XWA site has got me thinking maybe we should have a sticky thread with linksto these type of site in the show off section of the forum.

I can definitely do something like that or I can add these useful likes to the game/links page as well?If someone wants to start the thread and do some compiling of some links I will gladly sticky it for ya

Hey DarkoneWhat do you think about bringing in a rating system for posts? The Frontier Forum has this as well as a button to flag certain posts to the Admins. Just a thought.

Geraldine wrote:
What do you think about bringing in a rating system for posts?
I have definitely thought about this feature and can look into some mods that provide that if people think it is beneficial?
Geraldine wrote:
The Frontier Forum has this as well as a button to flag certain posts to the Admins.
This is actually already there, if you go into any post and as you are reading each one you will see in the upper right of the post a 'quote' button and a '!' button. That '!' button is the report a post button, if you mouse-over that icon you will see it.I have been putting off some maintenance that I have been meaning to do to remove a mod that isn't needed. And to do some general cleanup in the root of the webserver. But I need to do a fully download of the entire site which takes many hours to do first (that download area takes up some space).

Thanks for considering what I said Darkone. Sure if the forumites don't want it, it's no big thing. The only reason I mentioned it at all is because it's quite a common feature on my forums these days. You know I never noticed that little triangle till now when you mentioned it, I must need glasses!

Ok Geraldine I have the post ranking mod in place after some tweaking because my SEO mod was messing it up. It should be working, or least it seems like it with my quick testing.See here for more info: http://www.spacesimcentral.com/kb.php?a=55

Yes I did notice, nice job Darkone!

I have some experience with PHPbb, may I suggest a quick reply box to posts, something like this

Dramacius wrote:
I have some experience with PHPbb, may I suggest a quick reply box[/url]
Quick Reply is often abused, and can quickly make a mess out of a forum. I am hoping that DarkOne intentionally omitted it.In this thread, perhaps a Quick Reply might be sometimes useful (like for your suggestion, for example). In most threads the feature causes more trouble than it solves.However, changing the word "Quote" to "Reply" might be helpful to users who don't understand the importance of using Quote when making a Reply. But even that is optional, since there is already a "Post a Reply" button, and since most people quickly become accustomed to the way that the forum works.