the SL forum and the future Civ3-Creation forum

[Panda]

what do you think the "Community" part in the title of the "Apolyton/Community" forum is for?

IIRC it was an attempt to unite all Apolytoners around a single forum. When "Community" was synonomous for "Civ2 Community" we actually had quasi-community threads. Now we have column discussions and a deluge of technical threads.

In response: what do you think the "Scenario" part in the title of the "Scenario League" forum is for?

Here's a hint: the point has already been made that civ2 mp players play civ2 sans scenarios, and post accordiingly; Civ2 general is players of the unmodified game, or the occasional MPS scenario; civ2 creation is limited to civ2 creation, not play. Whereas this forum is the premier focal point for scenario users, be it playing, creation tips, annoucements. And while it had origins in civ2 I don't think Blackclove ever had in mind that that platform would be the League's raison d'etre.

Civ2 Help really lost meaning, didn't it? So few people posted there that newbies posted on general, creation, mp...everywhere but help actually. You recognised that it was redundant and merged it, as you now propose to do with creation. Perhaps that illustrates the dangers of rigid game-aspect segregation. SL covers it all, but focuses on scenarios.

[St Leo]

ScenLeague 3.0

Markos, your email doesn't work because of Reason: 5.7.1 ... Relaying denied

Scenario League 3.0

I am willing to develop a successor site to ScenLeague oriented towards a range of 4x games including Civ2 and Civ3 while learning PHP.

whistler: asp? hah! Many, MANY more people use JSP over PHP.. php is -seriously- a joke language for teenagers

I only need access to a clean directory of Apolyton and any databases currently used by the ScenLeague. The rest of the content I can grab off the net since giving out FTP rights is problematic.

[Kull]

I think we have the basis for a solution here:

1) MarkG has categorically stated that the forum stays if the site gets updated. So that should be our first concern.

2) Warvoid - through no fault of his own - can't do that until December at the earliest. On the other hand St. Leo has now offered to take on the task. And we're not talking about "Joe-from-left-field" here. Let's consider what St. Leo brings to the table:
- Recognized status as one of the Apolyton "old-timers". Heck, I remember when he was posting on Markos' Greek Civ II Site!
- A top scenario designer, with a well deserved reputation for inventiveness ("Roman Riots", nuff said).
- An active member of this forum - and has been so from the very beginning.
- Web Master of the acclaimed Civ2 Ziggurat, a site which was killed off through no fault of his own.

In my humble opinion, this choice is a no-brainer.

3) I've had my differences with Warvoid in the past, but kicking someone when he's down is flat out wrong. He wants to be involved, he's pleaded for patience, so I say we go with the Field Marshall Klesh solution: Separate the functions of Moderator and Web Master, and let Warvoid keep the former job.

4) To pick up where my last post left off, I still feel there should be a vigorous discussion in which we collectively define a vision of what the Scenario League should be. Include PBEM? Remain focused on the Civ series? Broaden to include offerings like CTP and MOO? Provide Scenario Reviews? Previews? Etc, etc.

There's a lot think about, and I recommend we open at least two additional threads to discuss the elements of a Scenario League Charter and the nature and content of the new Scenario League Web Site. Perhaps even a third (including a poll?) to debate and vote on new leadership for the League.

We all agree that the Scenario League must survive. But it also needs to grow and regain a focus. That's the long term challenge.

[Case]

Kull, I couldn't agree more

4) To pick up where my last post left off, I still feel there should be a vigorous discussion in which we collectively define a vision of what the Scenario League should be. Include PBEM? Remain focused on the Civ series? Broaden to include offerings like CTP and MOO? Provide Scenario Reviews? Previews? Etc, etc.

IMHO, the Scenario League forum should definetly cover scenario creation for all the civilisation games and discussions of completed scenarios. The aim of this would be to promote the development of good quality scenarios.
I'm not sure wether discussions of multiplayer scenarios should be included though. While on one hand this does involve discussng scenarios on the other hand there is a MP forum...

[techumseh]

I like it, Kull. I second the proposal, but I think we should solidify the positions of webmaster and moderator first, then organize a discussion of SL's focus. We also need to keep M.G.'s toes to the fire on the technical issues.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by techumseh
We also need to keep M.G.'s toes to the fire on the technical issues.

and i need to keep your toes to the fire on the content and update issues


Leo, SL does not use any databases

if you want to start from scratch, it would be better to install apache, php and mysql on your pc and work there(using ftp to upload updated scripts while development is not the coolest thing i have in mind ). when you're done we could just upload everything up

[techumseh]

Fair enough!

[Jay Bee]

to St. Leo! I could not think of anyone better than him for this job!

[St Leo]

(using ftp to upload updated scripts while development is not the coolest thing i have in mind ).

How crashable is PHP? CF errors just give you an error message on the output page.

when you're done we could just upload everything up

By "done", do you you mean when the basics are working correctly and I am still developing features off-line?

[MarkG]

Originally posted by St Leo
How crashable is PHP? CF errors just give you an error message on the output page.

same thing

By "done", do you you mean when the basics are working correctly and I am still developing features off-line?

more or less
what do you have in mind?

[St Leo]

what do you have in mind?

I am thinking of developing the tips section first and then tackling the rest of the stuff. When would you be able to email me an FTP username/password?

[mail]petrazi@sprint.ca[/mail]

[WarVoid]

I fully agree with St. Leo and Kull's proposals. I'd be more than willing to work with St. Leo on updating and expanding the site. As I do a lot of SHTML/HTML programming now, doing some pages here and there won't be a problem.

I can simply write the pages, zip them into an archive and forward them to Leo's e-mail addy.

This would be wonderful and i'm very happy Leo has offered his help. I cannot thank him enough.

St. Leo, contact me on ICQ or via e-mail at eithe UIN # 73438757 or at warvoid@aol.com, we have much to discuss my friend.

Also, Cam was using CuteFTP to access the 'Poly servers. I attempted to use the same service but utterly failed with continued connection denials. I'm not sure, but I can try and get ahold of Cam and see if we can't simply switch Cam's account over to Leo. Unless you'd rather simply use anothe FTP service.

[Goingonit]

I still consider myself somewhat of a newbie when it comes to scenario design. Yet one of the great things about SLeague is that everyone's welcome. I feel that if I ask a question here, people will take me seriously and respond to my question in depth - something that I'm not sure would happen in Civ2-Creation. The problem with that forum is that its readership is composed of a very small number of veterans and all of the people who are just dangling their feet in scenario design. Through no fault of anybody, the forum takes on an air of patronization to the new scen. designer, even if their question gets answered (which too many times doesn't happen).

SLeague also has the advantage of being able to know everybody, what they're working on, etc. I might even suggest an "ongoing projects" section in the website, when all of the technical and such issues are worked out.

[Case]

A nice feature would be to support 'abandoned' scenarios (eg, scenarios that get abandoned while only half complete)
You could also include 'building blocks' for scenarios such as maps with cities placed, etc.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MarkG

The question is not to have more than two forums, but what is the most logical way to break down the subject matter. Historical discussions, and other more general discussions will naturally cover both civ2 and civ3.

dont think so. usually someone start such a discussion with already an idea on which game he will make the scenario, right?

Well i cant speak to the Ctp1/ctp2 question as I dont follow those. (though im under the vague impression that Ctp is less historically serious than civ ) Other than that I cant think of 2 games covered on these fora, with scenarios, as close as civ2 and Civ3. Certainly there has been no difficulty discussing the many flavors of civ2 in one place. And we occasionally have some decent discussions of what would make a good TOT scen, etc,etc.

Perhaps its not a long term consideration, but at least for the transition I am looking forward to extensive comparitive discussions of the merits of Civ2 and civ3 vis a vis scenarios, especially with regard to potential for historical accuracy. Since based on what I have seen discussed of the "civ3 original game" it does not appear to be worth $50 for another civ game, this discussion may well determine whether i buy the game at all any time soon.

How about this Mark - make two seperate forums - civ2 creation, and civ3 creation, but relax the rules on duplicate posting between the two forums. Let the discusions of civ2 rules.txt go in civ2 creation, the discussions of how to use a golden age in a scenario go in Civ3 creation, and let broad historical discussions be cross-posted (oooh ive used a dirty word) to both, at the posters discretion.

LOTM