Author Topic: Rather dead, eh?  (Read 21158 times)

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Offline Mr. K

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Rather dead, eh?
« on: March 05, 2007, 01:09:06 AM »
Yeah, I've noticed the forums are getting a lot less posts than they used to.

So what's up with that?  Something wrong with the forum?  Is Lemmings going dead again?

If there's anything I can do to make the forums better/more user friendly/prettier, let me know.

We need more TALK!

*smacks random people with megaphone*

Ice_Eagle

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2007, 02:26:49 AM »
Don't smack me!  :mikeembarassed: I'm still around!

And not just more talk, but we need more levels! Why has everyone stopped making levels? Why is nobody reviewing each others' levels?

It's like an abandoned city...

Offline covox

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2007, 05:59:30 AM »
I think that publicity is a problem; the current Lemmings community is far too fragmented. Searching for "lemmings" in Google brings up... well 2 copies of that DHTML game, the Wikipedia entry, Deinonych, a handful of irrelevant sites and several links to the PlayStation publicity pages.

Someone needs to build on the Lemmings Solution and Mindless' Lemmings File Archive by starting a wiki. It would have level descriptions, solutions to levels, breakdowns about the different platform releases of Lemmings, current level packs + reviews, information on working downloads etc.

It would, essentially, be a complete repository of all known Lemmings information, which would last until the sun runs out of hydrogen to power the internet.

Sure, most of this information is stored loosely as forum posts, but the lemmingswelt.de outage managed to severely curtail the retrievability of this information.

Hopefully a group wiki effort would unite the members, entice a stream of new punters and serve as an identifiable nucleus for promoting the Lemmings community. Does anyone else think this would be a good idea?

Offline Shvegait

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2007, 06:38:48 AM »
Sounds great! I would definitely be interested in contributing to something like that.

Oh, and I am still here, but I am busy with school and other stuff for the time being.

Offline Chmera

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2007, 07:50:11 PM »
Covox, you, sir, are a genius. I would start it myself, right now, were I not busy whacking my own head against the desk for not thinking of it myself.

And yes, I gotta agree the problem is publicity. We shall organise an advertising commitee! Or something. I'm too talkative right now because it's in a random sort of way and I always end up rambling endlessly while barely using commas or punctuation - Argh. There I go again.

Back on topic. If anyone here knows how, I'd start a Lemmings club on DeviantART if only they'd tell me.

Offline Mr. K

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2007, 09:41:01 PM »
A Lemmings wiki is indeed a brilliant idea!

I had such an idea myself, but I never did anything with it because I first didn't have the server space for a wiki, and because I knew next to nothing about Wiki formatting (and I still don't).  But if someone else would head such an effort, it could come out awesomely.

We could also use it to store all those file format descriptions we've got all over the place.

You'd think we'd have more publicity.  I mean, we're even linked on the Wikipedia Lemmings page.  But meh, maybe not.  Mostly what we've had are people that come in and ask about a technical problem with DOSBox and then leave when they've got their answer.

It also doesn't help that several of the Lemmings sites still standing continue to link to the Lemmingswelt forums and even the old LUDB!  :XD:  (btw.  If anyone cares about archival crap.  I found that my link to LUDB that seems to have stayed in my favorites is still functional.  The place is completely frozen in time, except for a few spambots, with no images working.  I was amazed to read through all that old stuff.)

Offline Mindless

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2007, 10:55:56 PM »
(btw.  If anyone cares about archival crap.  I found that my link to LUDB that seems to have stayed in my favorites is still functional.  The place is completely frozen in time, except for a few spambots, with no images working.  I was amazed to read through all that old stuff.)
I'd take that. :)

Offline Mr. K

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2007, 11:14:07 PM »
http://www.utahdesign.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi

Seriously still there.  Accessing just http://www.utahdesign.com/cgi-bin/forums/ gives a forbidden error but I seem to have accidentally gone around it.  Rather odd, eh?

Rather slow and broken though.  But the posts are still intact.

Oh, and btw I'm taking this forum and changing the graphics a bit.  We're still using the original generic icons and I'm going to give them a Lemmings spicing.

Also, the forum logo could be updated.  I got bored in PSP and made this:



Keeps the feel of the current logo, but it seems better to me.  Good or no?

Offline covox

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2007, 01:38:45 PM »
Hmmmm....

Yeah, it could work...

Offline Mr. K

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #9 on: March 07, 2007, 02:19:58 AM »
Excellent.  We've got a start.

Not sure how to proceed, though...  I was thinking of copying templates from elsewhere onto the wiki as a base to get us started with making an organized way to see level stats and game info, but nothing I copy over looks right in previews or otherwise.  I suppose those wikis I am copying from employ some extra features.  >>

I'd make one myself but I'm a web/wiki/etc programming moron.

Offline Chmera

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #10 on: March 07, 2007, 04:49:22 PM »
Yes sir, we seem to be in business. *Is proud of her quick level summaries*

Also, I'm liking the Forum's new look. Much... Shinier?

Offline Shvegait

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #11 on: March 07, 2007, 06:15:27 PM »
Can we please get rid of those little Lemmings graphics on the sides and bottom of the page? They look weird and they aren't spaced properly (on Firefox). The ones on the left touch the left line, but the ones on the right are spaced farther out. But anyway I just think they are annoying  :XD:

Chmera, I like that template for the levels, but one more thing to add to Stats is Release Rate.

Also! For the levels, how are we going to handle different versions of Lemmings? I mean, I'm all for just doing the DOS version for that section, at least for now, but suppose we wanted to add information for other versions of levels. What do you think would be the most logical way to do that?

I like it so far.  :thumbsup: I have a spring break coming up next week, so maybe I'll flesh out as many level descriptions then as possible.


Edit: OK, this is annoying. Whenever I make ANY edit, I get this message and have to solve an elementary math problem: "Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, ... "

Now I understand the purpose, however it is NOT TRUE that my edit includes new external links. All I did was add a line for release rate. Also, I thought logging in would be enough to get around this annoyance, but nope. Any help?

Offline Mindless

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #12 on: March 07, 2007, 09:22:36 PM »
Edit: OK, this is annoying. Whenever I make ANY edit, I get this message and have to solve an elementary math problem: "Your edit includes new external links. To help protect against automated spam, ... "

Now I understand the purpose, however it is NOT TRUE that my edit includes new external links. All I did was add a line for release rate. Also, I thought logging in would be enough to get around this annoyance, but nope. Any help?

Same problem here... I suppose mental math exercises never hurt anyone, but it does get irritating...

Offline ccexplore

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #13 on: March 07, 2007, 09:35:51 PM »
I've seen something similar on a different board (it uses phpBB).  The anti-spam detection on web forums generally seem to be pretty lame and will easily declare problems when none exist (for example on the phpBB board, I've found that a post with the phrase "just finished" is always detected as spam ???).

I'm simply not observing a spam problem on this forum, so, is it really necessary to have anti-spam measures turned on?

Offline Shvegait

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Re: Rather dead, eh?
« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2007, 10:43:51 PM »
@ccexplore: I'm talking about the wiki: http://covox.is-a-chef.com:8080/lemmings/