I'm just thinking, to get more people on the forum would be a good idea, even though it's a pretty active forum, it would never hurt to have more people on.

If we all agree, we could have a separate thread group for maps not related to Portal as well as custom tutorials on mapping, this would also stop all the people asking how to create a level for a mod related to half-life or something.

Plus let's face it, if you want to make HL2 maps, there are half a dozen established communities to join. Why would it even occur to you to come to a Portal-specific board?

Crooked Paul wrote:
Guys, I disagree. In a perfect world, sure, more is more. But on a practical level... Do we really want different factions competing for members' attention? And it adds a lot of complexity to the download database (which msleeper and f0rkz and Hober would have to do, I guess) without really offering any new capabilities.

Plus let's face it, if you want to make HL2 maps, there are half a dozen established communities to join. Why would it even occur to you to come to a Portal-specific board?

QFT

Crooked Paul wrote:
Guys, I disagree. In a perfect world, sure, more is more. But on a practical level... Do we really want different factions competing for members' attention? And it adds a lot of complexity to the download database (which msleeper and f0rkz and Hober would have to do, I guess) without really offering any new capabilities.

Plus let's face it, if you want to make HL2 maps, there are half a dozen established communities to join. Why would it even occur to you to come to a Portal-specific board?

We could always keep the half-life 2 forum low and simple and not allow half-life 2 maps to be added to the database or something like that.

espen180 wrote:
QFT

QFT?

As for trying to do the job of the rest of the HL2 mapping community, I agree with Paul. What could we offer that would be better than a hyperlink to Interlopers, or one o the other HL2 mapping sites?

Wikipedia wrote:
"QFT", internet slang usually meaning "quoted for truth". This term applies on forums and posting boards where users can edit their posts, and describes a re-posting of another user's statement in order to counteract subsequent changes. Since the repost is not made by the original author, it can not be edited by him and will always preserve an unaltered copy of his initial contribution. Thus the QFT holds the poster to his original statement. It is also used to express agreement with a previous poster's statement and validate its veracity. Other variations include "quoted for truthiness," "quoted for truthery," and "quite fucking true". QFT can also mean "quit fucking talking".

Damn things meaning different things.

Anyway though, the reason I setup this site was to be specific to Portal and, as Hober said, not try to do the job of other, better, older sites and cater to Source mapping as a whole. I'm not opposed to people posting threads/screens/download links to TF2 maps they have made like I know Shmitz is mapping, or any other Source mod, but I don't want to make a whole seperate forum for it. The General and/or Off Topic forums are suitable.

Map reviews hardly exist at this point and I'm pretty sure Accident Prone has been the sites featured map since forever.

If another forum were to be added, it would be nice to see one dedicated to helping people with their mapping problems since right now those threads seem to be scattered all over.

Having some focus on lesser things (TF2, etc) is fine, but I think your best bet is to stay focussed on what you already do well, and make them even better:
- Lots of portal downloads/content.
- Good portal-related discussions (mapping and otherwise)
- Monthly mapping contests to encourage new content
- Reviews. "Official" reviews are your weakest point by far (you really need to work on that), but its great that you have such a large group of people willing to make constructive comments on WIP, etc. Encourage that; it will make this the favored place to showcase new content.
- Portal-related tutorials are a natural, but its harder to distinquish it from all the other non-portal things you can do with Hammer. That will never be the thing that makes this site unique. By all means do tutorials, but also provide links to other tutorials, etc; have you noticed the Valve Developer Wiki has a number of portal-related tutorials now?

My biggest gripe; apparently people just arent going for the ratings aspect of the download area; I can live with that, but what I'd really like to see as content keeps growing is a way to seperate the really good stuff from the. . . not-so-good stuff. Sort of a Hall-Of-Fame sort of thing, to let new people (like the ones who are going to get Portal at Xmas) know whats ceratainly worth downloading. Build up a list of 10 or so quality winners, and then add 1-2 more a month. Let mappers know what their standards should be; and make it an honor to be on the list.

Just my 2 cents. . .

As for the Download Database... I know I've said it a hundred times already, but I am still planning on revamping and modifying the download database to be a bit more user friendly. The pafileDB mod isn't necessarily my favorite, but it is the best one for phpBB integration, which is what I wanted when I was looking for a file system.

Quote:
Yes 27% [ 3 ]
No 72% [ 8 ]

I think we have a winner!

taco wrote:
I'm pretty sure Accident Prone has been the sites featured map since forever.

The logic behind that is that it won the October mapping contest, and will be replaced by the winner of the November contest. That will put updates about six weeks apart, assuming a one week voting period.

Put that way, it does seem like it could use more updating.

Also, just to put this out there: I do a lot of work on the wiki because I have an almost pedantic sense of grammar and style. If you feel intimidated about writing reviews because you're not a great writer, I'd be more than willing to edit them for you. The only reason I don't write them myself is that I have a hard time being critical. I like most stuff I run in to, so everything would probably get a 5/5.