Spreading the word

edave · 2014-09-25T22:07:31.000Z

Love this game. Got back into it after Jef Major’s latest series.

So much so I asked “Ask A Zombie” a question and got retweeted to 14,500 people. Success!

Ask A Zombie (realAskAZombie)

RT @edave: @realAskAZombie What do you think about the reckless killing of zombies in Cataclysm DDA? http://t.co/UFgsYrKD5T

2:50 PM - 25 Sep 2014

Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-09-25T22:08:27.000Z

YEAH BUDDY

HOPEFULLY NEW BLOOD INCOMING

X-PLODE · 2014-09-26T19:52:59.000Z

edave:

Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

I think you should play farmville.

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-09-26T20:16:31.000Z

X-PLODE:

[quote=“edave, post:1, topic:7454”]Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

I think you should play farmville.[/quote]

He’s not wrong. Looks my middle school website.

X-PLODE · 2014-09-27T01:49:52.000Z

FunsizeNinja123:

[quote=“X-PLODE, post:3, topic:7454”][quote=“edave, post:1, topic:7454”]Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

I think you should play farmville.[/quote]

He’s not wrong. Looks my middle school website.[/quote]
Why would your middleschool have a website, do they sell porn subscriptions?

KA101 · 2014-09-27T02:21:04.000Z

X-PLODE:

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:4, topic:7454”][quote=“X-PLODE, post:3, topic:7454”][quote=“edave, post:1, topic:7454”]Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

I think you should play farmville.[/quote]

He’s not wrong. Looks my middle school website.[/quote]
Why would your middleschool have a website, do they sell porn subscriptions?[/quote]

Ease up, yo. Schools routinely have websites, and they’re normally wracked with javascript and other such crap. By comparison I much prefer DDA’s web presence.

X-PLODE · 2014-09-27T03:36:01.000Z

KA101:

[quote=“X-PLODE, post:5, topic:7454”][quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:4, topic:7454”][quote=“X-PLODE, post:3, topic:7454”][quote=“edave, post:1, topic:7454”]Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

I think you should play farmville.[/quote]

He’s not wrong. Looks my middle school website.[/quote]
Why would your middleschool have a website, do they sell porn subscriptions?[/quote]

Ease up, yo. Schools routinely have websites, and they’re normally wracked with javascript and other such crap. By comparison I much prefer DDA’s web presence.[/quote]
I like the simple streamlined look as well.
But at least make an announcement on it every couple of months just to make it look alive.
It looks like everyone died and the front site is in limbo, i wasn’t expecting so much activity on the dev side.

vultures · 2014-09-27T04:31:39.000Z

Shame the website is a little less than appealing. Any plans to fix the technical/organisational issues?

Not aware of such.
The webmaster, the devs and otherwise contributers in general do coordinate to estimate work completion and inform everyone via announcements. They seek feedback or any misc help and receive it.
Regarding community and PHP outlook of SMF here - I haven’t read what’s bothering you about it, for example. Perceived by me (and fttb only me) it’s the easiest way to tag along and play a single-player RL with other people from everywhere in the world. The html/java webapp was dropped a long, long time ago and that’s just fine; inclining CataDDA goes by word of mouth, the first thing you hear about it should be !FUN! (!)

cheerz o/

Datanazush · 2014-09-27T07:35:34.000Z

As far as the base website design goes, it’s a little minimalist, it doesn’t really tell you much about Cata, and it’s got that sort of design that makes you think “Forum based site” rather than “Video Game Site”

KA101 · 2014-09-27T19:34:30.000Z

Datanazush:

As far as the base website design goes, it’s a little minimalist, it doesn’t really tell you much about Cata, and it’s got that sort of design that makes you think “Forum based site” rather than “Video Game Site”

KA101 looks at the front page, then back at the forum, then over at the wiki

And that is an accurate assessment of our site, I’d say. IMO it’s easy to navigate and easy on the browser/bandwidth. Both of those are assets in my estimation.

Barhandar · 2014-09-27T20:14:32.000Z

[quote=“KA101, post:10, topic:7454”]KA101 looks at the front page, then back at the forum, then over at the wiki

And that is an accurate assessment of our site, I’d say. IMO it’s easy to navigate and easy on the browser/bandwidth. Both of those are assets in my estimation.[/quote]
What it needs for popularity, though, is wiki that is updated at least to latest stable - or huge red text ‘WIKI IS TERRIBLY OUTDATED AND NOBODY IS UPDATING IT, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK’ on its main page.

Jarlaxle · 2014-09-28T07:05:43.000Z

[quote=“Barhandar, post:11, topic:7454”][quote=“KA101, post:10, topic:7454”]KA101 looks at the front page, then back at the forum, then over at the wiki

And that is an accurate assessment of our site, I’d say. IMO it’s easy to navigate and easy on the browser/bandwidth. Both of those are assets in my estimation.[/quote]
What it needs for popularity, though, is wiki that is updated at least to latest stable - or huge red text ‘WIKI IS TERRIBLY OUTDATED AND NOBODY IS UPDATING IT, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK’ on its main page.[/quote]

Gonna jump in someone should put a warning on the wiki main page. It would be a 7 day a week job updating the wiki for this game. So much is added, fixed, etc. that no way someone could keep up with it. This is not a bad thing. It’s awesome how much work goes into this game.

KA101 · 2014-09-28T08:30:11.000Z

[quote=“Jarlaxle, post:12, topic:7454”][quote=“Barhandar, post:11, topic:7454”][quote=“KA101, post:10, topic:7454”]KA101 looks at the front page, then back at the forum, then over at the wiki

And that is an accurate assessment of our site, I’d say. IMO it’s easy to navigate and easy on the browser/bandwidth. Both of those are assets in my estimation.[/quote]
What it needs for popularity, though, is wiki that is updated at least to latest stable - or huge red text ‘WIKI IS TERRIBLY OUTDATED AND NOBODY IS UPDATING IT, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK’ on its main page.[/quote]

Gonna jump in someone should put a warning on the wiki main page. It would be a 7 day a week job updating the wiki for this game. So much is added, fixed, etc. that no way someone could keep up with it. This is not a bad thing. It’s awesome how much work goes into this game.[/quote]

4 AM here, just merged yet more stuff and got roped into an IRC discussion on feasibility of quest-based system for getting power up post-Cataclysm. Wiki would be a full-time job for a While just to catch up, and once that’s done you’re still looking at a few hours per day keeping up.

So yeah.

edave · 2014-09-28T16:30:54.000Z

If the wiki is too hard to update then it should be deprecated/removed. It’ll do more harm than good.
Instead it would be best to utilise the community (for guides) or the source code (for dynamically generated documentation of items, traits, bionics, mutations, etc)

As a new player, here’s what I would’ve found most useful.

A simple website with:

a community-sourced video on the homepage showing cool aspects of the gameplay (i.e. OneFJef)
a couple of guides (i.e. the “First day” guides from the wiki) which are the only things that need to be manually kept up to date.
the list of default controls for easy grokking
links to downloads
links to the forum
link to the CDDA Item browser: http://cdda.estilofusion.com/ (this would replace a lot of the wiki content instantly)
link to a similar browser showing traits, mutations, etc.

I am a web developer and have a bit of product marketing experience and I’m happy to help.