Site Suggestions

[James Nick]

Here’s a few site suggestions I had in mind since the site isn’t getting that much renovation / addition (I think so.), probably hard to work on but it’s worth suggesting!
– It would be nice to have the user page show the games they created! (I know that it’s connected to wordpress but aha, just something I thought.)
– The ‘Play’ page could have a little more touch! Upon clicking a game, there could be a longer description and a few screenshots to show – it makes the page look more appealing and look more like a real game page, in my opinion.
– Forum should probably have a ‘closed’ option if the question has been answered / bug has been fixed, it makes browsing for already answered questions easier and prevents more of the same question to be posted.
– You should probably add more forums such as ‘Competitions’ or ‘Forum Games’ for member made games and competitions, it makes the forum more alive!

[deWiTTERS]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Maybe we can all brainstorm on this topic, because I’ve been thinking about the same thing some time ago.

I want to end up with not only a “make your own RPG”, but more with a “make and play RPG’s”.

I want to integrate most part of that into the RPG Playground software itself. This means that when you start RPG Playground, you can choose between:

1. Start/continue to create your own RPG
2. Play/continue playing an RPG that someone else created

It could also update you on news such as when your game received comments, likes, how many people played it etc.

Why I want this in the software and not only on the website is because I want to keep my options open to release a mobile app version, or a console version such as on XBox or Playstation or Nintendo Switch.

But as you can imagine, this is a lot of work (adding game pages, adding ways to comment on games, etc).

So for now, I have this quick, hack version on my WordPress site. When someone shares a game, I make a post of that, and so I get the comment section for free.

Last time, I looked into NodeBB, which is a modern forum software package. The cool thing is that I can also integrate this into RPG Playground itself in the future. It supports features such as question-answer, following users, liking or upvoting posts, etc.

So what I could do is start out with NodeBB on the website, have everything there set up (such as posting games, commenting on them, normal forum posts, likes of games, etc), and then as time goes by, slightly start integrating that into RPG Playground itself.

This would mean that I would have a basic version of NodeBB up and running on the website pretty fast, and can later take the time to integrate that into RPG Playground. This would mean that I can get to keep all data that is already available on NodeBB, and keep both website and application in sync.

At first, this could mean that when you share your game inside RPG Playground, a new forum post is created on NodeBB, and others can then comment on it.

I don’t know if this all makes any sense to you, but if you have further ideas on this topic, I would be glad to hear them.

Some time ago I created a document while brainstorming on this topic, so it might also be useful to get the idea of what is in my head: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b8P09SRp-OisvGe4QTJOtQVYr7Q7hpRsleQ41qZzeEs/edit?usp=sharing

[deWiTTERS]

I looked into this NodeBB thing further, and it would indeed be possible to add your game straight into a forum post. So people could play it right there.

Sharing your game in RPG Playground would indeed mean that it automatically creates a new forum post with your game in it, under your account.

[deWiTTERS]

And a single account (single sign-on) for both RPG Playground and the website is also a must of course :).

[deWiTTERS]

Sorry to keep replying to my own stuff, but how about this:

1. We keep the current forum, but my blog posts are moved here. Including announcements,
   user games, challenges, etc.
2. The games are also moved here, under a “Play”-forum or something. Each game has its own topic, and the first post contains the game that you can play. The creator can then edit their own description as they wish, and others can comment
3. Since the forum already supports view counting, a creator can see how many times their game was played
4. Instead of the “top games” now on the Play page, I can pin the best games in the forum
5. When sharing your game in RPG Playground, it will automatically create a new topic under your name (it links your account using your email)

This basically means that more emphasis is put on the forum here. What do you all think?

[James Nick]

That’s cool for me! It’s a lot easier and less time consuming to post games with the forum than emailing! Also with the sharing, it’s a LOT easier!

Although I do have another suggestion, why not keep the ‘Play’ tab (probably rename it?) but only top rated games could be found? This way, new visitors can easily click on that tab instead of going to the forums. You could also add some sort of ‘This week/month’s top game’ in the ‘Play’ tab – and the creator gets some sort of role in the forum (‘Participant’ could be changed into ‘Creator of the week/month’) or some sort. In my opinion, this makes the community more competitive and fun!

Lastly, I just thought competitions with winners / prizes would be fun! As I said before, this makes the community strive for something to earn and makes them more competitive. You should probably add colored names and roles (probably icons too!) on the forums as prizes for the competitions you do – it makes a member unique and it’s fun!

I did sound like I have a lot of ideas but these are only ideas and I have no idea how long these might take to implement but I would really love to see these little things come to life since it’s becoming kind of silent in the forums suddenly. :<

[deWiTTERS]

Since I decided to keep using bbPress, why don’t you all take a look at some cool plugins and see what would be cool for this forum.

See https://wplift.com/free-bbpress-plugins and https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/15-wordpress-bbpress-plugin/

Let me know which ones you would love to see here.

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