What would you look for in an adventure site? And looking for help as well.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Ok, so I am working on an adventure site. I am trying to make it a one stop area for all your adventure needs. It is supposed to contain fanart/fiction, game resources, art programs and tutorials, forums, articles, walkthroughs, news, reviews, previews, etc... and more. I am keeping the name a secret until this actually gets made. I wanted to mention a few features of the site already. It does contain older engines on the site with documentation and such. For instance you will find:

Agast
Edpack (Spanish)
Maker r1 (German)
on the site. You will also have an archive of older versions of AGS and AC_editor.
I am planning on mirroring games and demo's and plugins/modules/templates for every engine I can find.

The site also contains some SCUMM, SCI, AGI tools.

I have a fairly large forum that is being set up. For instance there is a section for all the active engines I can find. Each engine has sub-forums to discuss released games, WIP's, cheats, etc...

There is a general forum which will also contain critics and critiques, new engine releases, etc... A general feature I am putting in here is the Team sections. Basically I just want to allow an area where anyone looking for help or offering help on a project/game can post individual threads for each requirement and not in a single thread. Eventually I want to create a component for the site to do this.

Some of my more prouder features which are incorporated already are:
A links library where you can submit links for approvals.
A users "MySpace" type page.
A Blog for each user.
Uploading files for users.
A Cafepress and lulu store.

And the biggest feature which is already incorporated and ready to go is the Projects page for the users. Think Sourceforge, just a little more conservative (if you choose). Basically you start up a project. You create a project. You can define a deadline if you want, add a description, a name and if the project is accepting new members and if its public.

Once the info is submitted, an administrator will need to accept or deny the project. Now, in the project screen itself, you have tons of features available to you to use that will help in the development of your project/game:

You can edit your projects profiles.
You can edit users and assign access levels
You can accept join requests or invite a user to a project.
You can add and assign groups
Each project has its own personal Board for posting discussions and such.
Each project has a calendar to add an event to a project.
You can assign tasks to a user.
You have a file manager to upload files for a project.

Basically its a great tool for teams to create an engine or a game. It keeps things organized and such.

My question to you all now is, what other features should I add to this site that would be useful to an adventure game developer? What feature would be good for an adventure game fan?

What would personally have you come to the site on a regular basis? What would you like to see on it?

For individual users, are the features I mentioned above enough? Or would you like more?

What kind of content would you like on the site? Interviews? Flash games ? etc...

What would help you to be able to develop games that the site could host?

What would it take to host your projects/games/engines/sites on this new adventure site? Yes, I will allow for sites to be hosted on my site. I just wanted to know what it is that I must do to get that to happen.

Now for the help part of it. I need some help in regards to board moderators. People who will be examplarary and uphold the rules of the board.

I also need others to help accept and deny projects that get submitted as well as make sure that they are not dead projects. This person must be honest and trustworthy and must keep all secrecy on all projects. I might not allow for anyone at the moment to take this job as I might be able to handle it personally.

I need someone to provide me with art for the site and for smilies on the board.

Anyone who wants to review and preview games/products or conduct interviews or write articles on the site is more than welcome to join as a writer.

Anyone who wants to host a project on my site or test out the group project site can send me a PM and I will send them a private link to where the page is located.

If there is anyone who does not want their game/module/plugin/template/files posted on the site, please say so here as well.

Thanks for all your feedback in advance. Let the insight begin...

[Nikolas]

Please tell me you're not alone in this!  :o

Either way, best of luck and I'll provide some feedback further on this week (difficult week for us family men with the holidays and all! )

[Joseph DiPerla]

I'm alone on the design and implementation. I have already put many uploads on the site. I am nearly done organizing the forum. The features I mentioned are already implemented.

But I do need help, thats why I posted here. This site may not come online for a few months if I dont get much help. But a lot is already done. It will be a reality. When is a different question.

[Dudeman Thingface]

Something to the effect of A guide to creating a game, or, at the very least, pointers.

[Radiant]

This is a major undertaking, and I wish you best of luck with it!

The most important thing that your site needs, imho, is a clear and fluid interface. You have a lot of functionality planned, so the key is making it easy for people to find anything. I would strongly recommend that you limit yourself to key elements first; it is far better to fully implement five features, then to start on twenty, run out of time, and not finish any of them.

I would come to a site like this to find games to play. That means that anything that helps me find games would be a feature that keeps me coming back. That primarily means a lot of categorizing (windows/mac/linux, freeware/paid, remake/original, and any game should be able to belong to multiple genres). Some ideas that came to mind are a feature that "if you liked this game, you'll probably also like X, Y and Z". Home of the Underdogs used that to great effect. It would also be nice, when you click on a user profile, that you get a list of the top five or ten favorite games of that user (other than stuff he wrote himself). And tag clouds. Actually I don't like tag clouds myself, but they are a common enough web feature that you should probably consider them.

One thing that would be very useful is a "report error" button, primarily to let users point out broken links. Of course, don't bother implementing that unless you have somebody watching the results every few days.

I mentioned categorisation earlier. For categorisation to be useful, it helps to have clear definitions. For instance, Tetris and similar falling blocks games are considered puzzle games by some, and action games by others (okay, bad example since it's not an adventure, but you get the idea). The Legend of Zelda is variously known as an action game, an adventure game, and an RPG, and probably others.

If you're going to host flash games as well, expect your content to skyrocket and, probably, your average quality to plummett (apologies to any flash authors out there). I believe that the target audience for "flash games" is fundamentally different from that for "indie games", so I would personally recommend focusing on either but not both.

The only thing that would help developing games that the site could host, essentially, is a big and active community. Free resources don't cut it, there's plenty of those on the web already.

[SSH]

Something like AdventureGamers would be awesome. Oh, there already is one... 

[Joseph DiPerla]

Dudeman: I will do my best to add a feature like that one. Its very insightful.

SSH: :p 

Radiant: Wow, thanks for your input. Very insightful.

Just to answer some of your questions on the matter:

Interface: I am using Joomla for my site. I am sure you heard of it, but if not... Its a Content Management System for websites. Sort of like Mambo or PHPNuke. Very useful. Very powerful. Very Automated. Makes my life very easy. You can categorize sections, add articles and such. Its very easy to use and setup. Joomla is a big reason why my site has been making the progress its been making. Sure, its not my own coding, but I am not looking for my own originality in site design. Not just yet anyway. Once I get stuff done, I may create my own site template. But for now, the design is attractive and neat.

Games/Finding games: I agree. Ease of finding some games is the most important thing. This is how the downloads will be categorized in the remository:

Windows-
          ---Engines
                   ----Freeware
                   ----Commercial
                   ----Defunct
                   ----Open Source
                                 ----Each category will have subdirectories for templates/plugins etc...
           ----Games
                   -----Freeware
                          ----Ags
                          ----Agast
                          ----Sludge
                          ----Wintermute
                          ----MAD
                          ----Etc...
                                       Each directory will also contain these subsections: Open Source games, Remakes, Fan-Games, Short games, medium sized games, large games, Misc, etc..
                    -----Commercial
                             ----Same structure as freeware
As far as getting a you will also like feature... I will work on that as soon as I can. I might need to custom code it myself. But the rest of the downloads are all set as far as categories go. I might add Genre's in the near future as well.

Tag Clouds: I absolutely hate tag clouds. I think they are a mess in my opinion. Everytime I go to a website to look for something and I have to use tag clouds, I get irritated. I really dont know why people like them, but I am not fond of them myself.

User Profile: Yes, good idea. Adding that to a user profile will definitely make it more of an adventure community. I was thinking of adding a section that mentions games he's worked on, Projects he was involved in and top ten favorite adventure games in order. Another feature I wanted to add was the feature that we have here on these forums, which is to have a section that demonstrates what talents a user has that he may want to contribute as far as a game goes.

Report Error Button: If I am not mistaken, I think Joomla has something like that. But if not, I will implement this. Its a good idea.

Categorization: Its going to be a site strictly based on Point and Click adventure games (Either first person or third person). If anything is made with an adventure engine, but is not an adventure will just be categorized as misc.

Download details: Just for your info... When looking at a download, you will see the following: Filename, date added, Size, Between 1 and 6 thumbnails, File Title, Description, Short description, File Author, homepage URL, License info and option to agree to a license, File version and an icon to assign to it. Also the remository will allow you to search for a file as well.

Flash/Java games: The only type of games I will host is only adventure games. Nothing else. And not many have been made like this. I think Lassie is the only engine to create Flash games. Also, in case anyone has ever made a game in indyjava, that will be posted here as well. And lastly, I think I might host Maniac Mansion NES version to be playable online through a java applet.

Active Community: Yes, I agree. I think having everything conveniently located in one site with plenty of forums and accessibility will allow for a large community. Hosting projects and even adding user features will also help. But this is why I am asking for opinions in what will get everyone to visit the site. If I have these features put in, I am certain that more will visit the site and contribute to it.

The thing I am most concentrating on is the user aspect of the site. I want to give users the option of being able to communicate to the maximum and work on projects in a very productive way. Thats the first task I am undertaking in this. And to be honest, pretty much every feature I wanted to implement is already there.

The content of the site will come little by little. If you remember the old Crows nest site, I am trying to add features like that to this site. You know, a list of engines, a list of games, if they are freeware, remakes, shareware, fan-games, and what engines they were made with etc.. I already got a partial working remository for that. But it needs a bit more tweaking and customization.

Hopefully with Help and opinions I can make this be a site that everyone will enjoy.

[m0ds]

I'd basically rework or bring back Adventure Gamers underground. News feeds, reviews, interviews, all geared to the indie scene. I checked that site regularly, but when they merged all the news feeds and stuff into one, I lost interest. Nowadays a lot of great info is on SSH's blogspot, but I can't say there's a website I find particularly geared towards all adventure indies, engines etc. Maybe I'm missing something? Anyway, good luck

[Joseph DiPerla]

The site is geared towards all types of adventures... Commercial, Indie, etc... But as far as anything non indie, it will be strictly to Interviews, Reviews and previews and possibly a store in which you can buy those games. But thats just a small part of the site and will be used just for the sake of having a complete Adventure game site.

I really liked the way the Crows Nest functioned. It truly had many features that I was looking for in an adventure game site. Some of the other sites such as just adventure or adventuregamers is not what I look for in an adventure site.

Also , I plan on putting in an Adventure Game Hall of Fame section to the site. If anyone wants to post idea's on how that should work, please go ahead and say so.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Just an update on the progress of the site...

I added a chat capability to the site. It uses phpfreechat but works like IRC and contains seperate channels and such and also contains IRC commands.

Also, user profile pages contain a list of favorite games you like.

Just an update.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Hey guys. I have updated the site some more. But I wanted to ask you guys regarding the Build a Team feature on the site.

The interface is nearly complete. How it works is that it has Main categories and then some sub-categories. I have a music category. For you musicians, what type of sub-categories would you like in this main category?

As far as advertising to recruit a team member, these are the fields it will ask for:
1) Category to post in
2) OS (s) being developed for
3) Which engine(s) being used
4) What specific help you looking for
5) Languages of the project
6) Requirements
7) Email to contact you at
8) Project title
9) Project description
10) Number of applicants
11) Website of project

Any other fields you think would be necessary?

[Joseph DiPerla]

I would come to a site like this to find games to play. That means that anything that helps me find games would be a feature that keeps me coming back. That primarily means a lot of categorizing (windows/mac/linux, freeware/paid, remake/original, and any game should be able to belong to multiple genres). Some ideas that came to mind are a feature that "if you liked this game, you'll probably also like X, Y and Z". Home of the Underdogs used that to great effect. It would also be nice, when you click on a user profile, that you get a list of the top five or ten favorite games of that user (other than stuff he wrote himself). And tag clouds. Actually I don't like tag clouds myself, but they are a common enough web feature that you should probably consider them.

One thing that would be very useful is a "report error" button, primarily to let users point out broken links. Of course, don't bother implementing that unless you have somebody watching the results every few days.

Sorry to keep posting about this. I have been updating the site A LOT!!!! Free hosting and other stuff is a lot of work. And I am trying to keep this thread alive as to receive feedback about this site. I just finished off the Download section. The downloads will consist of many resources and games. But Radiant, I took your suggestions to heart and completely finished the downloads system. So here goes:

You have the usual Title, Email, website, author and description fields. You can choose which OS's your download will work on, Requirements for the software, Instructions, What Genre (If applicable), If its free or commercial and how much. You also have a section where you can add links as to where you can buy the software. There is a field to show if its abandonware or not. A field to choose what type of software it is, two links to two youtube video's (If applicable), The Engine used or is for (If applicable), A you will also like these field, Official Forum link, Two download mirrors, Logo, File Icon, Meta Keywords and Meta description. In addition to that you can also add images (Which will be converted to thumbnails as well) and if you dont have a youtube video, you can upload video with the download.

I also included a field if its a game to ask how big the game is in the sense of is it medium sized, small, large, grand adventure, demo, etc...

And the best part about it is that most of the fields are searchable and sortable so that you can find what your looking for easily. Or you can optionally look in a category and find it there.

In addition to that, the downloads will also have a feature to report a bad link and to be able to have user reviews and voting.

So, all this is already available in the system. Of course file size will also be displayed. And when uploading your files, you can also specify a license if you choose.

So quite a lot has been done on this end. Is anything else missing as far as downloads go?