Proposal for a new forum called "Games Requests"

sounds good to me

sounds good to me to

Angua

i like the idea, but surely we could put all the informatiopn re a player's status into a table with the info across the botto and a listing of players bown the side based on like skill, exp, recentness of availibility or timezone even to make finding a partner easier, or it could be sone so that it can sort players based on any characteristic given, because if one were looking for a game then surely a quick to read table would allow you to single out the group of players to suit you in stead of having to read all the posts in a forum and every time you go to a new one you have to re adjust your mind to read the thing while a table is more ordered and easy to use.
My opinion anyway

A smart table would be a nice thing to have and i hope when Lee and Dewi read this thread then it will be added to the "nice things to have wish list" for when they have time to put in the nice extras but my suggestion is i hope one that could give a lot of benefit for a small amount of effort Croc said something after reading your post that made me think that having :-

Native Languages (English)
Other Languages (Cobol, 6502, 8086 only joking u know what i mean)

added to the shell text would be a good idea, this is the kind of thing that i am looking for in this thread suggestions of additions to the shell text file layout etc and if people think that this would be useful/better than what we have now.

The site suggestions forum is open for any member to post to, and Lee and Dewi do read it. If you have any other ideas that you think might improve the site put them here in this forum.

ok, i was able to follow you up to that part. what do languages have to do with thud requests?

The Language thing was that from experience a few players who arrive at the live game are not confident in their use of the English Language but are quite capable of playing Thud so if you know that their English Language is not that good you wont think them impolite for not talking to you (in the chat window) whilst playing. Also it does seem to me silly if you are both German for instance that you chat in English while playing the game ditto for Dutch etc or it could be that a persons second language is not English but say Spanish and too players could use a common language to chat with each other when playing.

I am not any good at languages and am constantly amazed at the abilities of some of our international players in a language that is not native to them. This site is primary English based but tries to be friendly to those from all round the world and i thought this might be another helpful addition.

really good idea,should i write that stuff on this forum?or are you gonna make a special one?

an entire neww forum will be made for this i am thinking, so hold the phone for now.

Otherwise, i very much like this idea indeed. SA, you are a genius.

there might be some other news for another forum, but im not the one to say it as it isn't finalised yet...watch this space!!!

i very much like the idea of putting down your fleunt languages, although i feel it should remain absolutely voluntary.

ja,seker

I agree, and good suggestion!

There may be a safer and more efficient way to do this. I have created a new textfield in everyone's profile. It can be edited by going to (your profile) -> Edit -> Personal - and edit the box called "Thud Preferences". Have a look at my profile to see how it could be done. The field is free form text so can contain as much or as little info as you like and can only be viewed by people who are logged in.

Then we can use the forum for game requests and people can click on your profile, when you post, for more information

C'est ne pas? Comments?

you mean, everybody who wants can have a forum thread in that game request forum, but instead of writing all that information there, people have to click your name? sounds reasonable to me.

clever,nice idea

I have tested this and think that going and constantly editing your profile is more cumbersome(tho a nice addition for some info) than editing a thread item. And with a forum of users game requests if done how i have suggested then those actively waiting for a game would be "sorted" by the way the system works to the top of the list whilst those who are in the midst of games and those who have not been on site for a while would be "sorted" to the bottom of the list. I think that the two ideas can be combined tho using those bits of the shell that people feel posting comfortably in a public forum with a link to anything that they only want members to see into the profile area.

More comments please or is there enough need for the forum to set it up and let it evolve tho with the Rule of one post per person to start off with.?

i have a feeling that if you start a forum for this then there'll be tons of comments from the same people.because people are like that.if you do create a forum is there some way you could restrict people to one comment with their details.but good idea to combine both ideas together

I like the general idea pointed out here so far.
Reduced to the essence of purpose, I think some kind of database would be more suitable.
You'd have to edit your own thread in a given forum anyway, so you could as well change your profile. Thus, the profile seems to do the thing.
The thing missing is a search function so you don't have to view everyone's profile. A database would be easy searchable for players who are open for a game.
The question is how complicated that would be to implement here.

i don't think ao...not to my knowledge. us mods would probably just have to go around checking. *sigh* more work...

they don't pay enough...

That's why I thought of that database thing. Kind of regulates itself and no mod would need to do extra work on it.

that database idea is clever,well done!

The database thing would be the ideal solution but i think that it would involve a lot of programming by Dewi who already has a long list of things to do on this site. So even if this is added to the list it is unlikely to happen for quite a while. After talking to some of the other Druids i think we are going to go for the suck it and see approach and do a kind of combination of mine and Lee's idea which we hope will be an improvement on what we have now but wont prevent us from trying better solutions in the future. It will take me a little while to write guidelines and set up links for the forum so if anybody still has any ideas for additional field information please add it to this thread.

Yeah, that would really be a possibly in 2008 kind of "quite a while". Not to diss anyone's ideas as they're all very good ones; it's just the practicalities of the time available means small, nice stuff like this will be able to be rolled out but only after the big stuff is done. Speaking of which, the good news is we're workng on some very interesting stuff in the meantime

I think this is a good compromise. To be sure, it may be best to use my idea for the profiles for things that won't change often (like the timezone you're in, languages you speak, etc.) and forum topics for actual game requests or whatever Alex comes up with...

Nice work, mate! And there will be onsite remuneration for people who take tasks in hand like this and do things for the site, or take over and run projects for the site in this way.

A big, big thanks to SANEAlex for doing sterling work on a day to day basis but also for managing this here, and on the game client, for us all!

thanks to everyone who's making this possible,it's really cool of you guys.

one day i'll take you all out for a couple of beers

i promise

no really,i promise

seriously guys,i'm not lying