Request: Reintroduce news posts

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Atahualpa
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Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Atahualpa »

Hello,

our last news post dates March 2016 (not counting release announcements). While I understand the argument that there is not much to showcase, I would prefer reintroducing somewhat regular news posts.

Here are my reasons:
  • News posts show our visitors that our project is still in active development.
  • Regular news posts are more likely to bind sporadic visitors because there is one thing more to look forward to.
  • News posts are a great chance for us to summarise the progress made in the last x weeks.
  • This way, we could also correct false reports about our engine (e.g., multiplayer status or the Android port) and give our opinion on current developments in the (Morrowind) community.
  • News posts also allow us to reward (=mention) developers who implemented a certain feature or solved a decent amount of bugs which should increase motivation.
I'd say that a two-week cycle or even a monthly post would be enough. Just some text about solved bugs, new features, hot discussion topics, mod testing progress -- whatever. Plus some screenshots, of course. Do you remember the old "Week in review" times? I always couldn't wait to read the next one.

Our current news writer is Okulo. Let me quote him on this:
Okulo wrote:I was just writing news posts between to show off what amazing shit OpenMW has done, but the project is so far along, it's mostly just bugfixing. There's nothing really fun to talk about. It's all bugfixing and stuff, which is important, but not interesting for the public to read about. All I need is something interesting for general consumption, and if you can provide it, I'm more than willing to write a very enthusiastic news post.
I must say that I disagree since there is an increasing interest in OpenMW and people like to hear the latest rumors. No activity is a killer in this regard. Anyway, it would be nice to hear Okulo's current opinion on that topic.
-- And what other opinions are there?


Best regards,

Atahualpa
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by AnyOldName3 »

Something like Dolphin Emulator's progress reports could be good (although they'd need to be well written). A lot of what they include is basically descriptions of fixing bugs, but they're still popular.
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Zobator
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Zobator »

AnyOldName3 wrote:Something like Dolphin Emulator's progress reports could be good (although they'd need to be well written). A lot of what they include is basically descriptions of fixing bugs, but they're still popular.
I'd like to actually read about that. For us common folk who don't know squat about C++ and all that stuff it would be interesting to actually grasp the vastness of this project. I think explaining the bugfixes, etc more in detail would make people apreciate the work that's going into OpenMW even more...
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psi29a
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by psi29a »

why not the progress of the ES? build interest in the project?
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Atahualpa
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Atahualpa »

psi29a wrote:why not the progress of the ES? build interest in the project?
Of course! This goes under "whatever" in my original post -- I knew that I missed something. ;)
Zobator wrote:
AnyOldName3 wrote:Something like Dolphin Emulator's progress reports could be good (although they'd need to be well written). A lot of what they include is basically descriptions of fixing bugs, but they're still popular.
I'd like to actually read about that. For us common folk who don't know squat about C++ and all that stuff it would be interesting to actually grasp the vastness of this project. I think explaining the bugfixes, etc more in detail would make people apreciate the work that's going into OpenMW even more...
That's the plan. However, this would make creating the news posts more time-consuming, especially if they were written by a non-developer.
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raevol
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by raevol »

I think news posts would be awesome to bring back, but we need someone willing to write them! All the background legwork for getting content for news is quite a chore.
Allofich
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Allofich »

However, this would make creating the news posts more time-consuming, especially if they were written by a non-developer.
Yeah, one thing about explaining bugs is that unless it's a pretty straightforward bug I think it would be difficult for anyone but the person(s) who researched and fixed it to give an accurate explanation. Even if you carefully went by the bugs on the bug tracker, those are often only a somewhat accurate or incomplete picture of what the problem is. Also, I don't know how much people care about this, but bugs, especially when you go into the details, can be minor spoilers or reveal game exploits, etc. People who haven't thoroughly played the game yet might not want to see spoilers or information that gives them knowledge of how to exploit the game's systems.

I think that if someone writes about bug fixes they should probably not be detailed, they should avoid spoilers, and they should also be careful to not just rely on the bug reports.
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Atahualpa
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Atahualpa »

raevol wrote:I think news posts would be awesome to bring back, but we need someone willing to write them! All the background legwork for getting content for news is quite a chore.
If Okulo resigned from doing this, the following would be true for the time after the FAQ videos have been released:
As I am in commitment mode... I would do the news posts since I have to dig trough the issues anyway in order to create the release commentaries. Other stuff, e.g., recent discussions or new features in the Example Suite, is easy to find when you are active on our forums. I'd also opt for a "Propose interesting OpenMW topics/stuff that you want on the news" thread to collect ideas.
Allofich wrote: [...]
I think that if someone writes about bug fixes they should probably not be detailed, they should avoid spoilers, and they should also be careful to not just rely on the bug reports.
You are right, we should avoid unnecessary spoilers. But many bugs have an impact on general game mechanics and can be described using an "abstract" scenario rather than a specific quest or NPC.
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Ravenwing
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by Ravenwing »

I wholeheartedly support this. I do realize writing about the bugs might be difficult, but I think learning about the inner workings of games is really interesting. I think this would also help clear up confusion around release time if there are delays. It's a much lower barrier to entry to read a blog post saying that we're having difficulties with a build so the release will be postponed rather than digging through the forums, which may or may not have a concise and easily understood explanation for the delay. Thanks for taking on yet another job Atahualpa!
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Request: Reintroduce news posts

Post by DestinedToDie »

Anyone want to give me news posting powers? I got my eye on certain features/bugs that I'm happy when I see fixed. Could write small snippets about them.
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