shmups.system11.org

So based on feedback we're trialling splitting off topic into general gaming and true off topic, and that's what this forum section is for. Please let us now how this works out for you, it's not necessarily final and would be trivial to revert at a later date.

<3

Looks pretty sweet.

any chance on maybe appending a poll to this topic for like/don't like it? i'm firmly in "don't like it" camp, but i could be in a trivial minority. i definitely get why some people don't want a politics thread bumping to top more often than the scrolling action thread or even having those within proximity of each other, but i grew to appreciate the weird marriage over time. i feel there's not enough activity to warrant extra sections and that having to split attention is going to make me more ambivalent toward coming back from posting hiatuses. the extra clicks and diverted attention are a non-trivial negative and i think are going to ultimately unbalance some of the pretty functional atmosphere over the time, and not necessarily for the better.

would prefer not to get into arguments about this, btw. just voicing my opinion - i doubt people are going to change their minds over their feelings on the matter and this is one of those things that tends to get really hated on places. would be nice to know if it's majority/minority and if it should stay this way.

I agree with you personally, my plan is to let it run some weeks like this and then see what people think. Of course you could also click on the 'general' heading which would include the contents of both sub forums, but also now the hardware section since it was increasingly hardware focused in general rather than shmup hardware focused. It probably didn't make much sense to lump it in to begin with, but a very long time ago there was more content to do with shmup PCBs in there. Moving hardware & development into a technical overall section might be an idea. Always open to feedback, ultimately I just want it to work for people.

Prefer the older non-splt version personally

We've gotten rather long in the tooth that it feels too late to do this. There's a ton of old threads that get a few posts every few years that would take days to scrape into here. Notably I see table top seems to be absent completely here?

Merging development and hardware isn't a good idea. It's already hard enough to get anyone to try your game, they don't need less visibility.

For that last point I'd meant two subsections under a technical main heading rather than merging all the posts in. Should tabletop reside in other gaming or stay off topic? I'd expected it would be videogame focused but it's a valid point. I just moved over a grab bag from the first few pages, there's no way to actually sort everything from existing OT into here so it was manual.

Also not a fan of the new setup.

Personally I like this setup. I honestly don't venture into Off Topic a whole lot these days precisely because many of the discussions there are...not for me I'll just say and leave it at that. I much prefer having a dedicated non-shmup gaming section where I can easily find such threads without coming across a thread full of everyone's hot social take of the week. I imagine there would be some growing pains with some older threads as mentioned but ultimately I see this as a net positive personally.

Would also like to say I appreciate the change, though I would have preferred hardware not in the center, but obviously a very minor gripe.

I agree with most of what kitten says. I much preferred the older setup.

All forums go into the "active topics" list, so it doesn't make a difference to me.

But I think this forum has some of the best video game discussions anywhere, so I can see why you'd want to group that stuff together, and I can see why you'd want to leave some of the really crummy off-topic threads far away from that.

Not a massive fan of the split, but I guess I'll adjust if it stays.

i like it

I pretty much lived only in off-topic so this is a minor inconvenience for me.

Minor update to the try-out. Moved Hardware back out to a technical section, you can now just click on General in the index if you want the old view of non-shmup gaming and off topic threads in one place.

That seems like a good idea, best of both worlds. Unfortunately it looks like there's a bug; you may be seeing a layout with the moderator account we're not seeing:

• Clicking the Shmups heading only seems to pull in recent topics from Shmups Chat.

• Clicking the Technical and Trading Station headings does not show any recent topics from all of their subheadings.

• Clicking the General heading displays a message instead of showing recent topics: "You do not have the required permissions to read topics within this forum." and you can still click the subheadings to read all of the posts in Other Gaming and Off-Topic.

Uhh.. that's unexpected. Ok will get that fixed.

Edit: I have unfucked it up.

Woot. The only thing I notice is that it only shows the first 30 recent topics (including stickied topics), with no page selection number at the bottom. Is that something that can easily be added? Or perhaps making it show a larger number of topics if not? (I'm not familiar with phpBB and what's doable or isn't.)

I vastly prefer this approach.

I've been offline most of the week, so this was quite the surprise to come back to!

I can't yet say which arrangement I prefer. I've always empathised with those who want OT's gaming discussion without the other threads (particularly as I love my VG talk, but ALSO love 2 shitpost ). OTOH, I found OT's ragamuffin jumble aspect kinda charming. I like seeing Twin Peaks threads pop up next to Virtual On ones, creates a certain mood, naw mean.

Peeps whose company I've enjoyed a great deal for many years have posted both for and against the split, ITT. I'll have to wait and see. I'm glad it's a trial period, for now. I got a lot of posting to do regardless.

In the meantime, is thread migration something regular users can help out on? Like Homer Simpson turning a bowl of cornflakes into a deadly kitchen fire, I'm not good at computer, but if there's a checklist or something I'll click the bastard good.

I was wondering where the SMT thread went, lol.

This was me with a lot of threads XD

I'll adjust if this ends up being permanent. I basically only posted in off topic, and I will still post there and in this section so that is a small annoyance.

I'm warming up to the idea. As long as the search function will allow to find content, I'm not frightened by the split.

i think being able to click "general" to combine the two more or less fixes my complaints. my biggest problem at this point is that doing that doesn't show "announcements," which means having to adjust where my eyes usually focus to find new threads. excruciatingly minor lol

Don't have an opinion yet, but it's good to experiment.

Yeah, this is pretty comfy. As mentioned, I enjoy OT's non-gaming content, but this is a great way to hide it with a click if desired.

Fix the announcements thing and it'd be OCD-perfect (I knew something was different )

The other disadvantage is clicking the "General" button currently only shows one page of results, with no option to show additional pages, so it'll only show recent threads from both OT Gaming and general OT, but you can still just look manually or do a search quickly enough to find a specific thread if you're looking for an older one that's fallen off the front page.

Well, one month in I have opinion.

I'm quite fond of this setup. I like being able to warble about favourite TV shows, movies and albums in OT, then go for BIG CHAIN BOUNS bumping up my favourite gaming threads with killer Hard Gayming posts. Clicking "General" gets the classic shabby ol' couch feel back whenever I want it.

Granted, this only shows the front page's worth of threads, but that's a lot of threads, and I always treated Page 1 as the "WHATS GOIN ON/WHAT NEEDS BUMP" page anyway. I am bad at computer, so no idea how practical a more functional hybrid display would be, but that'd be the best of both worlds OFC.

I will vote to keep FWIW.