What changes would you like to see on OG?

As you know, it's been a bumpy few months. I left, Morphic took over, He left due to same reasons I did.. I got forced back as nobody else on staff could take over. While I no longer have an interest in prototypes or it's community I will remain about for general gaming stuff.

With that in mind, What changes would you like on site?

I fixed the theme that had some overlooked bugs that broke menus. I've made some minor tweaks to fonts/made them bolder etc. I've done a few minor tweaks in other places.

Is there any sections you would like for retail stuff? general gaming? Better sections for mods/ game hacks?

While I'm posting this, we're looking for editors for builddb which has been running since september last year. If you wish to help please reply here and account info will be given.
 
Click to expand...
T_chan said:
Subsections for the Programming & Developpement section, as proposed & discussed here: https://www.obscuregamers.com/threads/recent-events-ogs-future.3285/post-21681

Or at least a poll in a thread to decide what the preference is.. I'm not on discord, and can imagine other people active in that section aren't either.
Click to expand...

This could be done. Would a section per console maker be suitable though? like you said but then it'll be prefixes to reduce to that specific console. I.e if you had a SEGA section only SEGA prefixes would show.

@Anthony817 & @FamilyGuy your input would be helpful if possible too please? You guys pretty run much the Dreamcast section :p
 
WD said:
This could be done. Would a section per console maker be suitable though? like you said but then it'll be prefixes to reduce to that specific console. I.e if you had a SEGA section only SEGA prefixes would show.

@Anthony817 & @FamilyGuy your input would be helpful if possible too please? You guys pretty much the Dreamcast section :P
Click to expand...
I agree with @T_chan on that one. Being able to find information in clearly structured sections should be the priority. No big deal of some of them seem almost empty at first, we're not supposed to be a Reddit competitor.
 
I agree as well. A community like this takes time to build, so just because some sections are not as active as others doesn't mean they will not pick up speed. What people fail to realize is the Dreamcast section had one of if not the most active development section on the site becasue the fans are so passionate. That is no fault of other communities, but Dreamcast fans are so fanatical becasue it was the last system ever made by the company, and had no successor other than maybe Xbox. And I did post in PS and Xbox sections as well, I got modded OG Xbox and 2 Jailbroke PS3's so I love them as well. But nothing is gonna compete for my love of Dreamcast.

The way the development sections were before was awesome, it mirrored how it was over at Assembler, If you guys want to become the successor to Assembler like it was stated when the mass exodus began keeping some familiarity to how certain sections like that were really helps. It is not segregation, it is keeping certain community sections more hyper focused so people don't have to sift through the clusterfuck that the development forum has become.

Also, I think this site needs to advertise way more. Most people don't even know this place exists. So that is a problem. I do post links to this place in the Dreamcast, Xbox and PlayStation sites I frequent often spreading the knowledge about how great this place is. I suggest others try and do the same to help out so we can try and funnel all that amazing homebrew news into our development sections and make them more active. You have my word I will make the Xbox and PlayStation sections more active when I can find some compelling news to post.
 
Last edited:
WD said:
Would a section per console maker be suitable though? like you said but then it'll be prefixes to reduce to that specific console. I.e if you had a SEGA section only SEGA prefixes would show.
Click to expand...

I think that would already be a big improvement, yes. A subsection per console would be overkill I think.
If we can go to a subsection (eg: sega), and then deselect some tags if we want to (compared to the default sega tags pre-selected), that would cover all needs then I would say.
Not sure how to cover things that are relevant for different consoles though (eg: Wii & WiiU, or PS2 & GC & Xbox).
Will probably need some cleaning though, since not all posts have been tagged.
Maybe making the tag mandatory might avoid the need for this kind of cleaning in the future ?
I also see that there are duplicate tags for XBOX & X360.
 
If you let me be disruptive, I'd completely change the forums' sections. I myself find it difficult sometimes to post topics on this or that zone and I feel like it should be really easy to know where to post at first sight. For instance, I would not separate Rare & Obscure Gaming, Beta Talk and Prototopia. If there's a download inside a topic, I'd tag it with Download o write download on the name.

I do really appreciate the efforts on making this forum a continuation of assemblergames sections, but it's time to make something more practical.

I'd re-do the forums' sections like this:

News
  • Site News
  • Video Game News
  • Fundraisers

Community
  • Introduce Yourself
  • Member Collections
  • Dumping & Preservation
  • Miscellaneous

Community Groups
  • Agent 9's Lab - A Spyro Research Community
  • GT Academy - A Gran Turismo Research Community ---> I think there's plenty of GT stuff scattered through the forum that would feel home here

Central
  • Microsoft
  • Nintendo
  • SEGA
  • Sony
  • PC
  • Others

Marketplace
  • Retail
  • Non-retail
  • Want To Buy
  • Price Check
  • Services
  • Feedback
  • Archive of sold items

I can help put labels on non-labelled threads and I can move them to the new sections if needed.
 
i would say bring back the AG archive if thats possible. A lot of my tool ps2 related forums and threads were on ag and they were very helpful in learning about the machine but now they are not accessible.
 
FamilyGuy said:
I agree with @T_chan on that one. Being able to find information in clearly structured sections should be the priority. No big deal of some of them seem almost empty at first, we're not supposed to be a Reddit competitor.
Click to expand...
I'll be working on this today, I need to look at old backups to see how it was done right but we have 3 years of site backups still. Thank you for your reply!

Anthony817 said:
I agree as well. A community like this takes time to build, so just because some sections are not as active as others doesn't mean they will not pick up speed. What people fail to realize is the Dreamcast section had one of if not the most active development section on the site becasue the fans are so passionate. That is no fault of other communities, but Dreamcast fans are so fanatical becasue it was the last system ever made by the company, and had no successor other than maybe Xbox. And I did post in PS and Xbox sections as well, I got modded OG Xbox and 2 Jailbroke PS3's so I love them as well. But nothing is gonna compete for my love of Dreamcast.

The way the development sections were before was awesome, it mirrored how it was over at Assembler, If you guys want to become the successor to Assembler like it was stated when the mass exodus began keeping some familiarity to how certain sections like that were really helps. It is not segregation, it is keeping certain community sections more hyper focused so people don't have to sift through the clusterfuck that the development forum has become.

Also, I think this site needs to advertise way more. Most people don't even know this place exists. So that is a problem. I do post links to this place in the Dreamcast, Xbox and PlayStation sites I frequent often spreading the knowledge about how great this place is. I suggest others try and do the same to help out so we can try and funnel all that amazing homebrew news into our development sections and make them more active. You have my word I will make the Xbox and PlayStation sections more active when I can find some compelling news to post.
Click to expand...
I really wish we had spoken to the forum users first before this. I always forgot that Discord and OG forums were pretty much two communitys.

Advertising is something I don't really have personal time for. But if we had people willing to help we could make a group for that. We've been looking for writers to cover mainstream news/mod news/finds etc but only have had two offers so far. Not really a writer myself and my spelling is rubbish.


T_chan said:
I think that would already be a big improvement, yes. A subsection per console would be overkill I think.
If we can go to a subsection (eg: sega), and then deselect some tags if we want to (compared to the default sega tags pre-selected), that would cover all needs then I would say.
Not sure how to cover things that are relevant for different consoles though (eg: Wii & WiiU, or PS2 & GC & Xbox).
Will probably need some cleaning though, since not all posts have been tagged.
Maybe making the tag mandatory might avoid the need for this kind of cleaning in the future ?
I also see that there are duplicate tags for XBOX & X360.
Click to expand...
I could add a nintendo section if needed, this'll least give focus to each main console maker, i.e ms/sega/ps/nintendo/misc. Finding content should be easy and I can mass move whats already there pretty easy without much work thank you. The prefix tags got enabled by mistake, will remove those once new sections are made.


Blai said:
If you let me be disruptive, I'd completely change the forums' sections. I myself find it difficult sometimes to post topics on this or that zone and I feel like it should be really easy to know where to post at first sight. For instance, I would not separate Rare & Obscure Gaming, Beta Talk and Prototopia. If there's a download inside a topic, I'd tag it with Download o write download on the name.

I do really appreciate the efforts on making this forum a continuation of assemblergames sections, but it's time to make something more practical.

I'd re-do the forums' sections like this:

News
  • Site News
  • Video Game News
  • Fundraisers

Community
  • Introduce Yourself
  • Member Collections
  • Dumping & Preservation
  • Miscellaneous

Community Groups
  • Agent 9's Lab - A Spyro Research Community
  • GT Academy - A Gran Turismo Research Community ---> I think there's plenty of GT stuff scattered through the forum that would feel home here

Central
  • Microsoft
  • Nintendo
  • SEGA
  • Sony
  • PC
  • Others

Marketplace
  • Retail
  • Non-retail
  • Want To Buy
  • Price Check
  • Services
  • Feedback
  • Archive of sold items

I can help put labels on non-labelled threads and I can move them to the new sections if needed.
Click to expand...
We don't really plan to do anymore fundraisers, and any that do happen won't be ones that require reshipping as I simply have no time to do that. Unless things majorly changed here and we could somehow hire people in the UK to manage that but it's unlikely to happen.


slycooper124 said:
i would say bring back the AG archive if thats possible. A lot of my tool ps2 related forums and threads were on ag and they were very helpful in learning about the machine but now they are not accessible.
Click to expand...
The AG Archive won't run on the hardware we have annoyingly due to lack of ram we can't upgrade. When I left the old servers expired and unknown to me the host doubled prices since. I'm not able to fork out more this stage to do that. I tried converting it to phpBB/MyBB but there was multiple issues. One being none preserved original id's, second being major security issues that could harm OG directly just leaving it live, MyBB literally had around 10 major exploits found wheres XF has had nothing major in the past 3 years. While Xenforo was fine security wise, it wouldn't allow HTML in posts wheres phpBB/MyBB did which just makes things painful. I may enable a private version for researchers if needed, but it'd be locked down due to these issues and each person would have ip's logged/unique htaccess logins to access it for sake of security.

XF,
1617805151070.png
MyBB,
1617805134196.png


Thank you everyone that replied. Also as a side note, I'll only be on the forums these days. I haven't touched Discord in a few weeks now so will remain just here.
 
Blai said:
Community Groups
  • Agent 9's Lab - A Spyro Research Community
  • GT Academy - A Gran Turismo Research Community ---> I think there's plenty of GT stuff scattered through the forum that would feel home here
Click to expand...

I second this. There are a shitload of great Gran Turismo modding communities out there. We got some pretty next level GT2 and GT5 mods adding in content from the previous games into them. GT5 has a lot of GT4 tracks workign that were missing from in game but actually already in the game files from when they literally just ported over the entirety of GT4 and built upon it but forgot to remove some tracks until a later patch that came in and removed them. There is a great online community for that and the aforementioned GT2 mod I would be interested in seeing brought over here so people could discuss the latest mods to the games.
 
WD said:
I'll be working on this today, I need to look at old backups to see how it was done right but we have 3 years of site backups still. Thank you for your reply!


I really wish we had spoken to the forum users first before this. I always forgot that Discord and OG forums were pretty much two communitys.

Advertising is something I don't really have personal time for. But if we had people willing to help we could make a group for that. We've been looking for writers to cover mainstream news/mod news/finds etc but only have had two offers so far. Not really a writer myself and my spelling is rubbish.



I could add a nintendo section if needed, this'll least give focus to each main console maker, i.e ms/sega/ps/nintendo/misc. Finding content should be easy and I can mass move whats already there pretty easy without much work thank you. The prefix tags got enabled by mistake, will remove those once new sections are made.



We don't really plan to do anymore fundraisers, and any that do happen won't be ones that require reshipping as I simply have no time to do that. Unless things majorly changed here and we could somehow hire people in the UK to manage that but it's unlikely to happen.



The AG Archive won't run on the hardware we have annoyingly due to lack of ram we can't upgrade. When I left the old servers expired and unknown to me the host doubled prices since. I'm not able to fork out more this stage to do that. I tried converting it to phpBB/MyBB but there was multiple issues. One being none preserved original id's, second being major security issues that could harm OG directly just leaving it live, MyBB literally had around 10 major exploits found wheres XF has had nothing major in the past 3 years. While Xenforo was fine security wise, it wouldn't allow HTML in posts wheres phpBB/MyBB did which just makes things painful. I may enable a private version for researchers if needed, but it'd be locked down due to these issues and each person would have ip's logged/unique htaccess logins to access it for sake of security.

XF,
View attachment 10897
MyBB,
View attachment 10896


Thank you everyone that replied. Also as a side note, I'll only be on the forums these days. I haven't touched Discord in a few weeks now so will remain just here.
Click to expand...
I'm perfectly fine with private access to the ag site. Im only looking for former threads related to my tool and other systems. I mainly want to increase the information contained in my guide to help other people.
 
Anthony817 said:
I second this. There are a shitload of great Gran Turismo modding communities out there. We got some pretty next level GT2 and GT5 mods adding in content from the previous games into them. GT5 has a lot of GT4 tracks workign that were missing from in game but actually already in the game files from when they literally just ported over the entirety of GT4 and built upon it but forgot to remove some tracks until a later patch that came in and removed them. There is a great online community for that and the aforementioned GT2 mod I would be interested in seeing brought over here so people could discuss the latest mods to the games.
Click to expand...
The only issue with this is the community groups was partners of OG. The A9L group is run by OG's former staff etc, but we can always make sections depending how active a userbase is. I don't really see an issue with that. Fact I'm sure some of the A9L staff would be happy as some are GT fans too.

slycooper124 said:
I'm perfectly fine with private access to the ag site. Im only looking for former threads related to my tool and other systems. I mainly want to increase the information contained in my guide to help other people.
Click to expand...
I'll setup a new domain that's public soon and sort you a link/access out.

If you haven't noticed, I've just bought a new addon for trending threads, this should bring focus to important content on OG.
 
A minimalistic skin which doesn't slow down the whole thing with abracadabra animations and transitions I don't need.
 
It's not easy to be the admin of a prototype forum... But are you staying as admin, @WD, or are you looking for someone to take your place?

I'm with @Blai. The top "layer" of sections should be very distinguishable, and for different subforums involving multiple categories/topics maybe tags could be a way to identify topics.

The old AG forums and perhaps links to other sites with info can be in a Resources section or be a pinned topic in the Preservation section?
Maybe OG should front the preservation side of the forum a little bit more? Make it easier for people to read about preservation, understanding the importance of dumping, and of course, make it very easy for people to learn how to?

And I think a lot of people just register to add their WTBs here, and they put it in the first proto/beta sounding forum and log off.
Just a creative idea... When you register all subforums are closed, so you have to click on them to reveal what's under them. That way users learn what's where. The open/unfold forum button should be a little bit more prominent then, maybe.

Personally, I would've had (rough list):

News and Announcements (just that) (tags: News, Ann., Fund.)

Preservation
Get started! - The big core - About, how to get started, resources, guides, tutorials, tools, links, etc.
Help needed / Discussions - Where people can ask for help with preserving and discuss it.
Tools and scripts - I guess this is for console harddrive backup?
Preservation news - latest big release efforts, significant releases, leaks, etc.
OG Build Database / Prototopia(until OGDB is active)

Community
Introduce yourself
Beta / obscure talk - talking about prototypes, dev equipment, but maybe also kiosks, documents, and other similar media.
Modding, hacking, and repairing - help / discussion
Programming, development and engineering - help / discussion
Community groups - dedicated research documentation project threads
General talk - how you doin'? Look at my amazing drawing! I have a pet pig.
General help - lift/pick-up jobs,
Collections
Game reviews
Discord - how-to etc

Marketplace
Proto/dev Selling / trade
Retail/regular Selling / trading
Feedback
Looking for / Want to buy

Everything else (just another suggestion. There's always a few questions or topics that fit nowhere) (Could be placed at bottom of Community section)

AGAIN we should strive for transparency, communication and keep drama from being hidden chit-chat and rumors, so we should try to find a way to digest difficult situations, or have one arena where things can be sorted out, in a civil manner.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom